Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕
Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
"Mr. Tangle," says the Lord High Chancellor, latterly something restless under the eloquence of that learned gentleman.
"Mlud," says Mr. Tangle. Mr. Tangle knows more of Jarndyce and Jarndyce than anybody. He is famous f
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- Author: Charles Dickens
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believe that I had alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock
he had had in seeing me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs
who was with me, and they met with cordial pleasure.
I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they
spoke of Richard’s career, Mr. Woodcourt had a perception that all
was not going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as
if there were something in it that gave him pain, and more than
once he looked towards me as though he sought to ascertain whether
I knew what the truth was. Yet Richard was in one of his sanguine
states and in good spirits and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr.
Woodcourt again, whom he had always liked.
Richard proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr.
Woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not
join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became
so much more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace
to think I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was
not relieved of Richard. When the coach was almost ready and
Richard ran down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about
him.
I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open, but
I referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Jarndyce and
to his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr.
Woodcourt listened with interest and expressed his regret.
“I saw you observe him rather closely,” said I, “Do you think him
so changed?”
“He is changed,” he returned, shaking his head.
I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was
only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was
gone.
“It is not,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “his being so much younger or
older, or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being
upon his face such a singular expression. I never saw so
remarkable a look in a young person. One cannot say that it is all
anxiety or all weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown
despair.”
“You do not think he is ill?” said I.
No. He looked robust in body.
“That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to
know,” I proceeded. “Mr. Woodcourt, you are going to London?”
“To-morrow or the next day.”
“There is nothing Richard wants so much as a friend. He always
liked you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him
sometimes with your companionship if you can. You do not know of
what service it might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr.
Jarndyce, and even I—how we should all thank you, Mr. Woodcourt!”
“Miss Summerson,” he said, more moved than he had been from the
first, “before heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will
accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!”
“God bless you!” said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought
they might, when it was not for myself. “Ada loves him—we all
love him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you
say. Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!”
Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and
gave me his arm to take me to the coach.
“Woodcourt,” he said, unconscious with what application, “pray let
us meet in London!”
“Meet?” returned the other. “I have scarcely a friend there now
but you. Where shall I find you?”
“Why, I must get a lodging of some sort,” said Richard, pondering.
“Say at Vholes’s, Symond’s Inn.”
“Good! Without loss of time.”
They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and
Richard was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his
friendly hand on Richard’s shoulder and looked at me. I understood
him and waved mine in thanks.
And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry
for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead
may feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be
tenderly remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite
forgotten.
Stop Him!
Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone’s. Dilating and dilating since
the sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it
fills every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon
lights burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone’s,
heavily, heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking—as that lamp,
too, winks in Tom-all-Alone’s—at many horrible things. But they
are blotted out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as
admitting some puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit
for life and blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and
is gone. The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on
Tom-all-Alone’s, and Tom is fast asleep.
Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of
Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom
shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by
constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of
figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or
by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to
splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his
mind or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the
midst of which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly
clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be
reclaimed according to somebody’s theory but nobody’s practice.
And in the hopeful meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in
his old determined spirit.
But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and
they serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of
Tom’s corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion
somewhere. It shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream
(in which chemists on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of
a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the
infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tom’s slime, not a
cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one
obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a
wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its
retribution through every order of society up to the proudest of
the proud and to the highest of the high. Verily, what with
tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has his revenge.
It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone’s be uglier by day or by
night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the
more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the
imagination is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day
carries it. The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be
better for the national glory even that the sun should sometimes
set upon the British dominions than that it should ever rise upon
so vile a wonder as Tom.
A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for
sleep to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a
restless pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted
by curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the
miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright
dark eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and
there, he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied
it before.
On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street
of Tom-all-Alone’s, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut
up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in
one direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting
on a door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that
she has journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is
waiting, with her elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand.
Beside her is a canvas bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is
dozing probably, for she gives no heed to his steps as he comes
toward her.
The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to
where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her.
Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.
“What is the matter?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Can’t you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?”
“I’m waiting till they get up at another house—a lodging-house—
not here,” the woman patiently returns. “I’m waiting here because
there will be sun here presently to warm me.”
“I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the
street.”
“Thank you, sir. It don’t matter.”
A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or
condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many
people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little
spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily.
“Let me look at your forehead,” he says, bending down. “I am a
doctor. Don’t be afraid. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”
He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand
he can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection,
saying, “It’s nothing”; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the
wounded place when she lifts it up to the light.
“Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very
sore.”
“It do ache a little, sir,” returns the woman with a started tear
upon her cheek.
“Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won’t
hurt you.”
“Oh, dear no, sir, I’m sure of that!”
He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully
examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes
a small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While
he is thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a
surgery in the street, “And so your husband is a brickmaker?”
“How do you know that, sir?” asks the woman, astonished.
“Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on
your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework
in different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel
to their wives too.”
The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her
injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her
forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops
them again.
“Where is he now?” asks the surgeon.
“He got into trouble last night, sir; but he’ll look for me at the
lodging-house.”
“He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and
heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal
as he is, and I
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