Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

frozen as I was!—and added this, “Submission, self-denial,

diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a

shadow on it. You are different from other children, Esther,

because you were not born, like them, in common sinfulness and

wrath. You are set apart.”

I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll’s cheek

against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon

my bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of

my sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to

anybody’s heart and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was

to me.

Dear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together

afterwards, and how often I repeated to the doll the story of my

birthday and confided to her that I would try as hard as ever I

could to repair the fault I had been born with (of which I

confessedly felt guilty and yet innocent) and would strive as I

grew up to be industrious, contented, and kind-hearted and to do

some good to some one, and win some love to myself if I could. I

hope it is not self-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it.

I am very thankful, I am very cheerful, but I cannot quite help

their coming to my eyes.

There! I have wiped them away now and can go on again properly.

I felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more

after the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her

house which ought to have been empty, that I found her more

difficult of approach, though I was fervently grateful to her in my

heart, than ever. I felt in the same way towards my school

companions; I felt in the same way towards Mrs. Rachael, who was a

widow; and oh, towards her daughter, of whom she was proud, who

came to see her once a fortnight! I was very retired and quiet,

and tried to be very diligent.

One sunny afternoon when I had come home from school with my books

and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was

gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of

the parlour-door and called me back. Sitting with her, I found—

which was very unusual indeed—a stranger. A portly, important-looking gentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large

gold watch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring

upon his little finger.

“This,” said my godmother in an undertone, “is the child.” Then

she said in her naturally stern way of speaking, “This is Esther,

sir.”

The gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me and said, “Come

here, my dear!” He shook hands with me and asked me to take off my

bonnet, looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he said,

“Ah!” and afterwards “Yes!” And then, taking off his eye-glasses

and folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair,

turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a

nod. Upon that, my godmother said, “You may go upstairs, Esther!”

And I made him my curtsy and left him.

It must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen,

when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I

was reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine

o’clock as I always did to read the Bible to her, and was reading

from St. John how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger

in the dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him.

“So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said

unto them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a

stone at her!’”

I was stopped by my godmother’s rising, putting her hand to her

head, and crying out in an awful voice from quite another part of

the book, “‘Watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you

sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!’”

In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she

fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had

sounded through the house and been heard in the street.

She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there,

little altered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute frown that

I so well knew carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the

day and in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my

whispers might be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed

for her, asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her

to give me the least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no.

Her face was immovable. To the very last, and even afterwards, her

frown remained unsoftened.

On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman

in black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by

Mrs. Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never

gone away.

“My name is Kenge,” he said; “you may remember it, my child; Kenge

and Carboy, Lincoln’s Inn.”

I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.

“Pray be seated—here near me. Don’t distress yourself; it’s of no

use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn’t inform you who were acquainted with

the late Miss Barbary’s affairs, that her means die with her and

that this young lady, now her aunt is dead—”

“My aunt, sir!”

“It is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is

to be gained by it,” said Mr. Kenge smoothly, “Aunt in fact, though

not in law. Don’t distress yourself! Don’t weep! Don’t tremble!

Mrs. Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of—the—a—

Jarndyce and Jarndyce.”

“Never,” said Mrs. Rachael.

“Is it possible,” pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eye-glasses,

“that our young friend—I BEG you won’t distress yourself!—never

heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce!”

I shook my head, wondering even what it was.

“Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?” said Mr. Kenge, looking over his

glasses at me and softly turning the case about and about as if he

were petting something. “Not of one of the greatest Chancery suits

known? Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce—the—a—in itself a monument

of Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty,

every contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure

known in that court, is represented over and over again? It is a

cause that could not exist out of this free and great country. I

should say that the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce,

Mrs. Rachael”—I was afraid he addressed himself to her because I

appeared inattentive”—amounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty

to SEVENty THOUSAND POUNDS!” said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his

chair.

I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely

unacquainted with the subject that I understood nothing about it

even then.

“And she really never heard of the cause!” said Mr. Kenge.

“Surprising!”

“Miss Barbary, sir,” returned Mrs. Rachael, “who is now among the

Seraphim—”

“I hope so, I am sure,” said Mr. Kenge politely.

“—Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her.

And she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more.”

“Well!” said Mr. Kenge. “Upon the whole, very proper. Now to the

point,” addressing me. “Miss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact

that is, for I am bound to observe that in law you had none) being

deceased and it naturally not being to be expected that Mrs.

Rachael—”

“Oh, dear no!” said Mrs. Rachael quickly.

“Quite so,” assented Mr. Kenge; “—that Mrs. Rachael should charge

herself with your maintenance and support (I beg you won’t distress

yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer

which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago

and which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable

under the lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now,

if I avow that I represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and otherwise,

a highly humane, but at the same time singular, man, shall I

compromise myself by any stretch of my professional caution?” said

Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair again and looking calmly at us

both.

He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice.

I couldn’t wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and gave

great importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself

with obvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own

music with his head or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was

very much impressed by him—even then, before I knew that he formed

himself on the model of a great lord who was his client and that he

was generally called Conversation Kenge.

“Mr. Jarndyce,” he pursued, “being aware of the—I would say,

desolate—position of our young friend, offers to place her at a

first-rate establishment where her education shall be completed,

where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants

shall be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to

discharge her duty in that station of life unto which it has

pleased—shall I say Providence?—to call her.”

My heart was filled so full, both by what he said and by his

affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though

I tried.

“Mr. Jarndyce,” he went on, “makes no condition beyond expressing

his expectation that our young friend will not at any time remove

herself from the establishment in question without his knowledge

and concurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the

acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which

she will be ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths

of virtue and honour, and—the—a—so forth.”

I was still less able to speak than before.

“Now, what does our young friend say?” proceeded Mr. Kenge. “Take

time, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!”

What the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need

not repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were

worth the telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour,

I could never relate.

This interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as

I knew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all

necessaries, I left it, inside the stagecoach, for Reading.

Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was

not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have

known her better after so many years and ought to have made myself

enough of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she

gave me one cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop

from the stone porch—it was a very frosty day—I felt so miserable

and self-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my

fault, I knew, that she could say good-bye so easily!

“No, Esther!” she returned. “It is your misfortune!”

The coach was at the little lawn-gate—we had not come out until we

heard the wheels—and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart. She

went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut the

door. As long as I could