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

caused him weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, from day to

day, in a very anxious manner. At last he said to me, ‘Caddy, if

Miss Summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be

prevailed upon to be present when I broke the subject, I think I

could do it.’ So I promised I would ask you. And I made up my

mind, besides,” said Caddy, looking at me hopefully but timidly,

“that if you consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me

to Ma. This is what I meant when I said in my note that I had a

great favour and a great assistance to beg of you. And if you

thought you could grant it, Esther, we should both be very

grateful.”

“Let me see, Caddy,” said I, pretending to consider. “Really, I

think I could do a greater thing than that if the need were

pressing. I am at your service and the darling child’s, my dear,

whenever you like.”

Caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine, being, I

believe, as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as

any tender heart that ever beat in this world; and after another

turn or two round the garden, during which she put on an entirely

new pair of gloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that

she might do no avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we

went to Newman Street direct.

Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not

very hopeful pupil—a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a

deep voice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama—whose case was

certainly not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we

threw her preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after

proceeding as discordantly as possible; and when the little girl

had changed her shoes and had had her white muslin extinguished in

shawls, she was taken away. After a few words of preparation, we

then went in search of Mr. Turveydrop, whom we found, grouped with

his hat and gloves, as a model of deportment, on the sofa in his

private apartment—the only comfortable room in the house. He

appeared to have dressed at his leisure in the intervals of a light

collation, and his dressing-case, brushes, and so forth, all of

quite an elegant kind, lay about.

“Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby.”

“Charmed! Enchanted!” said Mr. Turveydrop, rising with his high-shouldered bow. “Permit me!” Handing chairs. “Be seated!”

Kissing the tips of his left fingers. “Overjoyed!” Shutting his

eyes and rolling. “My little retreat is made a paradise.”

Recomposing himself on the sofa like the second gentleman in

Europe.

“Again you find us, Miss Summerson,” said he, “using our little

arts to polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us and rewards us

by the condescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these

times (and we have made an awfully degenerating business of it

since the days of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent—my patron,

if I may presume to say so) to experience that deportment is not

wholly trodden under foot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in

the smile of beauty, my dear madam.”

I said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a

pinch of snuff.

“My dear son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “you have four schools this

afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich.”

“Thank you, father,” returned Prince, “I will be sure to be

punctual. My dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for

what I am going to say?”

“Good heaven!” exclaimed the model, pale and aghast as Prince and

Caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. “What is this? Is this

lunacy! Or what is this?”

“Father,” returned Prince with great submission, “I love this young

lady, and we are engaged.”

“Engaged!” cried Mr. Turveydrop, reclining on the sofa and shutting

out the sight with his hand. “An arrow launched at my brain by my

own child!”

“We have been engaged for some time, father,” faltered Prince, “and

Miss Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the

fact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the present

occasion. Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you,

father.”

Mr. Turveydrop uttered a groan.

“No, pray don’t! Pray don’t, father,” urged his son. “Miss

Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, and our first

desire is to consider your comfort.”

Mr. Turveydrop sobbed.

“No, pray don’t, father!” cried his son.

“Boy,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “it is well that your sainted mother is

spared this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir,

strike home!”

“Pray don’t say so, father,” implored Prince, in tears. “It goes

to my heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and

intention is to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not

forget our duty—what is my duty is Caroline’s, as we have often

said together—and with your approval and consent, father, we will

devote ourselves to making your life agreeable.”

“Strike home,” murmured Mr. Turveydrop. “Strike home!” But he

seemed to listen, I thought, too.

“My dear father,” returned Prince, “we well know what little

comforts you are accustomed to and have a right to, and it will

always be our study and our pride to provide those before anything.

If you will bless us with your approval and consent, father, we

shall not think of being married until it is quite agreeable to

you; and when we ARE married, we shall always make you—of course—

our first consideration. You must ever be the head and master

here, father; and we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if

we failed to know it or if we failed to exert ourselves in every

possible way to please you.”

Mr. Turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle and came

upright on the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff

cravat, a perfect model of parental deportment.

“My son!” said Mr. Turveydrop. “My children! I cannot resist your

prayer. Be happy!”

His benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched

out his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect

and gratitude) was the most confusing sight I ever saw.

“My children,” said Mr. Turveydrop, paternally encircling Caddy

with his left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand

gracefully on his hip. “My son and daughter, your happiness shall

be my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with

me”—meaning, of course, I will always live with you—“this house

is henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May

you long live to share it with me!”

The power of his deportment was such that they really were as much

overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself

upon them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent

sacrifice in their favour.

“For myself, my children,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “I am falling into

the sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the

last feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment may linger in this

weaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to

society and will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are

few and simple. My little apartment here, my few essentials for

the toilet, my frugal morning meal, and my little dinner will

suffice. I charge your dutiful affection with the supply of these

requirements, and I charge myself with all the rest.”

They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity.

“My son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “for those little points in which

you are deficient—points of deportment, which are born with a man,

which may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated—

you may still rely on me. I have been faithful to my post since

the days of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I will not

desert it now. No, my son. If you have ever contemplated your

father’s poor position with a feeling of pride, you may rest

assured that he will do nothing to tarnish it. For yourself,

Prince, whose character is different (we cannot be all alike, nor

is it advisable that we should), work, be industrious, earn money,

and extend the connexion as much as possible.”

“That you may depend I will do, dear father, with all my heart,”

replied Prince.

“I have no doubt of it,” said Mr. Turveydrop. “Your qualities are

not shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to

both of you, my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of

a sainted wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting, I

believe, SOME ray of light, take care of the establishment, take

care of my simple wants, and bless you both!”

Old Mr. Turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the

occasion, that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn at

once if we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure

after a very loving farewell between Caddy and her betrothed, and

during our walk she was so happy and so full of old Mr.

Turveydrop’s praises that I would not have said a word in his

disparagement for any consideration.

The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows annoucing that it

was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than

ever. The name of poor Mr. Jellyby had appeared in the list of

bankrupts but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the

dining-room with two gentlemen and a heap of blue bags, account-books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to

understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his

comprehension, for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by

mistake and we came upon Mr. Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly

fenced into a corner by the great dining-table and the two

gentlemen, he seemed to have given up the whole thing and to be

speechless and insensible.

Going upstairs to Mrs. Jellyby’s room (the children were all

screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we

found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence,

opening, reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of

torn covers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she

did not know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious,

bright-eyed, far-off look of hers.

“Ah! Miss Summerson!” she said at last. “I was thinking of

something so different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see

you. Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?”

I hoped in return that Mr. Jellyby was quite well.

“Why, not quite, my dear,” said Mrs. Jellyby in the calmest manner.

“He has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of

spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time

to think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and

seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each,

either gone or going to the left bank of the Niger.”

I thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor

going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be

so placid.

“You have brought Caddy back, I see,” observed Mrs. Jellyby with a

glance at her daughter. “It has become quite a novelty to see her

here. She has almost deserted her old