I don’t know. I think so. Yes.


Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship’s family? NOT connected? Oh! Oh! Not to your ladyship’s knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes. Very good! Now, this Miss Barbary was extremely close—seems to have been extraordinarily close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least) rather given to conversation—and my witness never had an idea whether she possessed a single relative. On one occasion, and only one, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a single point, and she then told her that the little girl’s real name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon.


My God!


Your ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?


I have heard it before.


Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship’s family?


No.


Now, your ladyship. I come to the last point of the case, so far as I have got it up. It’s going on, and I shall gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must know—if your ladyship don’t happen, by any chance, to know already—that there was found dead at the house of a person named Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great distress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown. But, your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer’s name was Hawdon.


And what is THAT to me?


Aye, your ladyship, that’s the question! Now, your ladyship, a queer thing happened after that man’s death. A lady started up, a disguised lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of action and went to look at his grave. She hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it her. If your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in corroboration of this statement, I can lay my hand upon him at any time. Oh, I assure your ladyship it’s a very queer start indeed. If you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off, you’d think it quite romantic. It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind him by which he could be possibly identified. But he did. He left a bundle of old letters. They were taken and secreted. And to-morrow night, your ladyship, they will come into my possession.


Still I ask you, what is this to me?


Your ladyship, I conclude with that. If you think there’s enough in this chain of circumstances put together—in the undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your ladyship, which is a positive fact for a jury; in her having been brought up by Miss Barbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss Summerson’s real name to be Hawdon; in your ladyship’s knowing both these names VERY WELL; and in Hawdon’s dying as he did—to give your ladyship a family interest in going further into the case, I will bring these papers here. I don’t know what they are, except that they are old letters: I have never had them in my possession yet. I will bring those papers here as soon as I get them and go over them for the first time with your ladyship. I have told your ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint was made, and all is in strict confidence.


You may bring the letters,


if you choose.


Your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,


You may bring the letters, if you—please.


It shall be done. I wish your ladyship good day. Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of that sort, and I couldn’t accept anything of the kind. I wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the same.


O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!


So, Miss Summerson, this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my son goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have money, but he always has what is much better—family, my dear. It IS, my dear, a great thing. It has its disadvantages; my son’s choice of a wife, for instance, is limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is limited in much the same manner. Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear, was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts of MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the Royal Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last representatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he will set them up again and unite them with another old family. My dear, you have so much sense and you look at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of mine. You don’t know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of him, I dare say, to recollect him?


Yes, ma’am. I recollect him.


Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character, and I should like to have your opinion of him.


Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt, that is so difficult!


Why is it so difficult, my dear? I don’t see it myself.


To give an opinion—


On so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT’S true. You do him justice! You define him exactly. Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession faultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must confess he is not without faults, love.


None of us are,


Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to correct. I am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear, as a third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself.


I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.


You are right again, my dear, but I don’t refer to his profession, look you.


Oh!


No. I refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never really cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still, it’s not right, you know; is it?


No,


And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear.


Mother, I will be; but you know me better than anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm—in short, mean nothing.


And you, my dear, regarding your dear self, my love?


Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?


Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek his fortune and to find a wife—when do you mean to seek YOUR fortune and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now you blush!


I don’t think I did blush—at all events, it was not important if I did—and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had no wish to change it.


Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to come for you, my love?


If you believe you are a good prophet,


Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very worthy, much older—five and twenty years, perhaps—than yourself. And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy.


That is a good fortune. But why is it to be mine?


My dear, there’s suitability in it—you are so busy, and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there’s suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love, will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I shall.


I was the best adviser that ever was known. gone through the Gazette,


custom-house and general agent,


And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?


Oh! Poor Pa, only cried and said he hoped we might get on better than he and Ma had got on. He didn’t say so before Prince, he only said so to me. And he said, ‘My poor girl, you have not been very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder him than marry him—if you really love him.’


And how did you reassure him, Caddy?


Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn’t help crying myself. But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better daughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned Peepy’s coming to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and said the children were Indians.


Indians, Caddy?


Yes, wild Indians. And Pa said that he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their being all tomahawked together. No, of course I know Pa wouldn’t like his family to be weltering in their blood, but he means that they are very unfortunate in being Ma’s children and that he is very unfortunate in being Ma’s husband; and I am sure that’s true, though it seems unnatural to say so. Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther. It’s impossible to say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough; and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was I don’t know what—a steeple in the distance, and then she shakes her head and says ‘Oh, Caddy, Caddy, what a tease you are!’ and goes on with the Borrioboola letters.


And about your wardrobe, Caddy?


Well, my dear Esther. I must do the best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor cares.


Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my dear,


My dear Miss Summerson, these are really ridiculous preparations, though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of Caddy being married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss! My good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have been equipped for Africa! Will my room be required, my dear Miss Summerson? For it’s quite impossible that I can put my papers away. Well, my dear Miss Summerson, you know best, I dare say. But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that extent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don’t know which way to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday afternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious.


It is not likely to occur again. Caddy will be married but once, probably.


That’s true, that’s true, my dear. I suppose we must make the best of it!


Poor Pa! It seems unkind to leave him, Esther. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I first knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it’s useless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We never have a servant who don’t drink. Ma’s ruinous to everything. My heart aches for him; that it does! I can’t help thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with Prince, and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a disappointed life!


My dear Caddy!


Yes, Pa!


My dear Caddy. Never have—


Not Prince, Pa? Not have Prince?


Yes, my dear. Have him, certainly. But, never have—


What do you wish me not to have? Don’t have what, dear Pa?


Never have a mission, my dear child.


My dear sir, these young people will live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation, and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have wished—you will understand the allusion, Mr. Jarndyce, for you remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent—I could have wished that my son had married into a family where there was more deportment, but the will of heaven be done!


Oh, you naughty Peepy, what a shocking little pig you are!


No,


I am very sorry I couldn’t go on writing from dictation, Ma. I hope you forgive me now.


Oh, Caddy, Caddy! I have told you over and over again that I have engaged a boy, and there’s an end of it.


You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are sure before I go away, Ma?


You foolish Caddy, do I look angry, or have I inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How CAN you?


Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!


You romantic child. Go along. I am excellent friends with you. Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very happy!


Thank you over and over again, father! I am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy.


Very. Ve-ry!


My dear son, and dear daughter, I have done my duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my recompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I believe?


Dear father, never!


Never, never, dear Mr. Turveydrop!


This, is as it should be. My children, my home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave you; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an absence of a week, I think?


A week, dear father. We shall return home this day week.


My dear child, let me, even under the present exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all neglected, are apt to take offence.


This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner.


Good! You will find fires, my dear Caroline, in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes, Prince! You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my apartment. Now, bless ye!


You are very welcome, sir. Pray don’t mention it! I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian,


I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see.


Is the wind in the east to-day?


No.


But it must have been this morning, I think,


No


Much YOU know of east winds, my ugly darling. Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there was sunshine and summer air.


Well, Charley, we are improving. If we only get to make it round, we shall be perfect, Charley. Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time.


Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor person of the name of Jenny?


A brickmaker’s wife, Charley? Yes.


She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and said you knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn’t the young lady’s little maid—meaning you for the young lady, miss—and I said yes, miss.


I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Charley.


So she had, miss, but she’s come back again to where she used to live—she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the name of Liz, miss?


I think I do, Charley, though not by name.


That’s what she said! They have both come back, miss, and have been tramping high and low.


Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?


Yes, miss. And this poor person came about the house three or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss—all she wanted, she said—but you were away. That was when she saw me. She saw me a-going about, miss, and she thought I looked like your maid!


Did she though, really, Charley?


Yes, miss! Really and truly.


And where did you see her, Charley?


By the doctor’s shop, miss. Like as Tom might have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father,


And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?


She said, miss, how that he had once done as much for her.


Well, Charley, it appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to Jenny’s and see what’s the matter.


I won’t go no more to the berryin ground. I ain’t a-going there, so I tell you!


Don’t mind him, ma’am. He’ll soon come back to his head. Jo, Jo, what’s the matter?


I know wot she’s come for!


Who?


The lady there. She’s come to get me to go along with her to the berryin ground. I won’t go to the berryin ground. I don’t like the name on it. She might go a-berryin ME.


He has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma’am. Why, how you stare! This is MY lady, Jo.


Is it? She looks to me the t’other one. It ain’t the bonnet, nor yet it ain’t the gownd, but she looks to me the t’other one. I say! YOU tell me. Ain’t the lady the t’other lady? Oh! Then I s’pose she ain’t.


I came to see if I could do you any good. What is the matter with you?


I’m a-being froze, and then burnt up, and then froze, and then burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my head’s all sleepy, and all a-going mad-like—and I’m so dry—and my bones isn’t half so much bones as pain.


When did he come here?


This morning, ma’am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had known him up in London yonder. Hadn’t I, Jo?


Tom-all-Alone’s,


When did he come from London?


I come from London yes’day. I’m a-going somewheres.


Where is he going?


Somewheres. I have been moved on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t’other one give me the sov’ring. Mrs. Snagsby, she’s always a-watching, and a-driving of me—what have I done to her?—and they’re all a-watching and a-driving of me. Every one of ’em’s doing of it, from the time when I don’t get up, to the time when I don’t go to bed. And I’m a-going somewheres. That’s where I’m a-going. She told me, down in Tom-all-Alone’s, as she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the Stolbuns Road. It’s as good as another.


What is to be done with him? He could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew where he was going!


I know no more, ma’am, than the dead. Perhaps the dead know better, if they could only tell us. I’ve kept him here all day for pity’s sake, and I’ve given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will take him in (here’s my pretty in the bed—her child, but I call it mine); but I can’t keep him long, for if my husband was to come home and find him here, he’d be rough in putting him out and might do him a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!


Jenny, your master’s on the road home, and mine’s not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no more for him!


Give me the child, my dear, and thank you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good night! Young lady, if my master don’t fall out with me, I’ll look down by the kiln by and by, where the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!


I don’t want no shelter. I can lay amongst the warm bricks.


But don’t you know that people die there?


They dies everywheres. They dies in their lodgings—she knows where; I showed her—and they dies down in Tom-all-Alone’s in heaps. They dies more than they lives, according to what I see. If she ain’t the t’other one, she ain’t the forrenner. Is there THREE of ’em then?


This is a sorrowful case. What do you say, Harold?


You had better turn him out,


What do you mean?


My dear Jarndyce, you know what I am: I am a child. Be cross to me if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical man. He’s not safe, you know. There’s a very bad sort of fever about him. You’ll say it’s childish. Well, I dare say it may be; but I AM a child, and I never pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or five shillings, or five pound ten—you are arithmeticians, and I am not—and get rid of him!


And what is he to do then?


Upon my life. I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But I have no doubt he’ll do it.


Now, is it not a horrible reflection, is it not a horrible reflection,


My dear Jarndyce, you’ll pardon the simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why ISN’T he a prisoner then? Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should imagine. It seems to me that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into prison. There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and consequently more of a certain sort of poetry.


I believe, that there is not such another child on earth as yourself.


Do you really? I dare say! But I confess I don’t see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt born with an appetite—probably, when he is in a safer state of health, he has an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young friend’s natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young friend says in effect to society, ‘I am hungry; will you have the goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?’ Society, which has taken upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce that spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says ‘You really must excuse me if I seize it.’ Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected energy, which has a certain amount of reason in it and a certain amount of romance; and I don’t know but what I should be more interested in our young friend, as an illustration of such a case, than merely as a poor vagabond—which any one can be.


In the meantime,


In the meantime, as Miss Summerson, with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse. Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets still worse.


Of course, little woman. I can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there to enforce it, though it’s a bad state of things when, in his condition, that is necessary. But it’s growing late, and is a very bad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. We’ll do that.


Oh! Are you going back to our young friend?


Yes,


How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce! You don’t mind these things; neither does Miss Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do anything. Such is will! I have no will at all—and no won’t—simply can’t.


You can’t recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?


My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his pocket, and it’s impossible for him to do better than take it. You can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But it is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss Summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the administration of detail that she knows all about it.


Thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam, Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home.


It’s the boy, miss,


Is he worse?


Gone, miss.


Dead!


Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off.


Charley,


are you so cold?


I think I am, miss. I don’t know what it is. I can’t hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss. Don’t be uneasy, I think I’m ill.


Not now, my dearest. Go away. There’s nothing the matter; I will come to you presently.


You’re getting quite strong, Charley, are you not?


Oh, quite!


Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?


Quite strong enough for that, miss! Oh, miss, it’s my doing! It’s my doing!


Now, Charley, if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were for yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley.


If you’ll let me cry a little longer, miss. Oh, my dear, my dear! If you’ll only let me cry a little longer. Oh, my dear! I’ll be good. Trust in me now, if you please, miss. I am listening to everything you say.


It’s very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor to-night that I don’t think I am well and that you are going to nurse me. And in the morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley, and say I am asleep—that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep. At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one come.


Don’t disturb her, Charley, for the world!


How does my own Pride look, Charley?


Disappointed, miss,


But I know she is very beautiful this morning.


She is indeed, miss. Still looking up at the window.


Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for one moment as I lie here, I shall die.


I never will! I never will!


I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you, Charley; I am blind.


Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!


Sooner than which, myself. I would get my living by selling lucifers.


What, Mr. Weevle? Are YOU there?


Aye! Here I am, Mr. Snagsby.


Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?


Why, there’s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening,


Very true, sir. Don’t you observe, don’t you observe, Mr. Weevle, that you’re—not to put too fine a point upon it—that you’re rather greasy here, sir?


Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the place to-night. I suppose it’s chops at the Sol’s Arms.


Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh? Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning ’em, sir! And I don’t think I don’t think—not to put too fine a point upon it—that they were quite fresh when they were shown the gridiron.


That’s very likely. It’s a tainting sort of weather.


It IS a tainting sort of weather, and I find it sinking to the spirits.


By George! I find it gives me the horrors,


Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room, with a black circumstance hanging over it. I couldn’t live in that room alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and stand here sooner than sit there. But then it’s very true that you didn’t see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference.


I know quite enough about it,


It’s not agreeable, is it? Mr. Krook ought to consider it in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.


I hope he does. But I doubt it.


You find the rent too high, do you, sir? Rents ARE high about here. I don’t know how it is exactly, but the law seems to put things up in price. Not, that I mean to say a word against the profession I get my living by. It’s a curious fact, sir, that he should have been—


Who’s he?


The deceased, you know,


Ah, to be sure! I thought we had done with him.


I was only going to say it’s a curious fact, sir, that he should have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation, because I have known writers that have gone into brewers’ houses and done really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir,


It’s a curious coincidence, as you say,


Seems a fate in it, don’t there?


There does.


Just so. Quite a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid you good night my little woman will be looking for me else. Good night, sir!


You’ll know me again, ma’am, at all events, and I can’t compliment you on your appearance, whoever you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER coming! I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here. Why, I said about ten. You said about ten. Yes, so you did say about ten. But according to my count, it’s ten times ten—it’s a hundred o’clock. I never had such a night in my life! That’s it! Nothing has been the matter. But here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE’S a blessed-looking candle!


That’s easily improved,


IS it? Not so easily as you think. It has been smouldering like that ever since it was lighted.


Why, what’s the matter with you, Tony?


William Guppy, I am in the downs. It’s this unbearably dull, suicidal room—and old Boguey downstairs, I suppose. Yes, and he—yes, it was Snagsby,


On business?


No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose.


I thought it was Snagsby, and thought it as well that he shouldn’t see me, so I waited till he was gone.


There we go again, William G.! So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to commit a murder, we couldn’t have more mystery about it!


Tony. I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his ’eart. But there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.


This is strong language, William Guppy,


Sir, it may be, but I feel strongly when I use it. No! Dash it, Tony, you really ought to be careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his ’eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the taste. It is not—happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I could say the same—it is not your character to hover around one flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!


William Guppy, drop it!


I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord.


And now, touching this same bundle of letters. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have appointed twelve o’clock to-night to hand ’em over to me?


Very. What did he do it for?


What does he do anything for? HE don’t know. Said to-day was his birthday and he’d hand ’em over to-night at twelve o’clock. He’ll have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day.


Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him to-night, about eight—helped him to shut up his shop—and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed ’em me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming like the wind, the only song he knows—about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole. At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a hundred. Tony, he can’t read yet, can he?


Read! He’ll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on that much, under me; but he can’t put them together. He’s too old to acquire the knack of it now—and too drunk.


Tony, how do you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?


He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and asked me what it meant.


Tony, should you say that the original was a man’s writing or a woman’s?


A woman’s. Fifty to one a lady’s—slopes a good deal, and the end of the letter ‘n,’ long and hasty.


Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is there a chimney on fire? Ah! See how the soot’s falling. See here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won’t blow off—smears like black fat!


It’s all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol’s Arms.


And it was then, that he told you of his having taken the bundle of letters from his lodger’s portmanteau?


That was the time, sir. Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots.


You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That’s the arrangement, isn’t it, Tony?


You can’t speak too low. Yes. That’s what he and I agreed.


I tell you what, Tony—


You can’t speak too low,


I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one while it’s in my possession, you can show him the dummy.


And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely than not,


Then we’ll face it out. They don’t belong to him, and they never did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands—a legal friend of yours—for security. If he forces us to it, they’ll be producible, won’t they?


Ye-es,


how you look! You don’t doubt William Guppy? You don’t suspect any harm?


I don’t suspect anything more than I know, William,


And what do you know? What do you know?


I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in secrecy, a pair of conspirators.


Well! And we had better be that than a pair of noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it’s the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?


Secondly, it’s not made out to me how it’s likely to be profitable, after all.


Tony, you are asked to leave that to the honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that friend in those chords of the human mind which—which need not be called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion—your friend is no fool. What’s that?


It’s eleven o’clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul’s. Listen and you’ll hear all the bells in the city jangling.


Yes, Tony? You were going to say, thirdly?


It’s far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it.


But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony.


May be not, still I don’t like it. Live here by yourself and see how YOU like it.


As to dead men, Tony, there have been dead men in most rooms.


I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and—and they let you alone,


Fah! Here’s more of this hateful soot hanging about. Let us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It’s too close. By the by, Tony, don’t forget old Smallweed. I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family.


I remember. I am up to all that.


And as to Krook. Now, do you suppose he really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to you, since you have been such allies?


I don’t know. Can’t imagine. If we get through this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don’t know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It’s a monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should judge, from what he tells me.


How did he first come by that idea, though? That’s the question. He may have found papers in something he bought, where papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are worth something.


Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got, and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor’s Court and hearing of documents for ever,


What, in the devil’s name, is this! Look at my fingers!


I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been here!


This is a horrible house. Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off.


It’s the appointed time at last. Shall I go?


Have you got them? Got them! No. The old man’s not there.


What’s the matter?


I couldn’t make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there—and the soot is there, and the oil is there—and he is not there!


Look! I told you so. When I saw him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair—his coat was there already, for he had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up—and I left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor.


See! At the foot of the same chair there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it fall.


What’s the matter with the cat? Look at her!


Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place.


Help, help, help!


There’ll be a run upon us!


This is not a time, to haggle about money, give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you’re welcome to whatever you put a name to.


Good gracious, gentlemen! What’s this I hear!


Why, it’s true. That’s what it is. Now move on here, come!


Why, good gracious, gentlemen. I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven o’clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here.


Indeed? You will find the young man next door then. Now move on here, some of you.


Not hurt, I hope?


Hurt? No. What’s to hurt him!


And Mr. Guppy likewise! Dear, dear, dear! What a fate there seems in all this! And my lit— My dear, will you take anything? A little—not to put too fine a point upon it—drop of shrub?


No,


My love, you know these two gentlemen?


Yes!


My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don’t do it.


I can’t help my looks, and if I could I wouldn’t.


Wouldn’t you really, my dear? This is a dreadful mystery, my love!


It IS, a dreadful mystery.


My little woman, don’t for goodness’ sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good Lord, you don’t suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any person, my dear?


I can’t say,


My life, would you have any objections to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?


Why do YOU come here?


My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has happened to the venerable party who has been—combusted. I should then have related them to you, my love, over your French roll.


I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby. I should be glad, if you would come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than anywhere else.


My love, I don’t know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to go.


There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony, for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must, with very little delay, come to an understanding.


Now, I tell you what, William G.! If it’s a point of conspiracy, you needn’t take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that, and I ain’t going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking fire next or blowing up with a bang.


Tony, I should have thought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived.


William, I should have thought it would have been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you lived.


Who’s conspiring?


Why, YOU are!


No, I am not.


Yes, you are!


Who says so?


I say so!


Oh, indeed?


Yes, indeed!


Tony, when I say there is a point on which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the death of this unfortunate old mo—gentleman?


What facts? THE facts.


The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are what we knew of his habits, when you saw him last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and how we made it.


Yes. Those are about the facts.


We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric way, an appointment with you at twelve o’clock at night, when you were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with you, was called down—and so forth. The inquiry being only into the circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it’s not necessary to go beyond these facts, I suppose you’ll agree?


No! I suppose not.


And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?


No, if it’s nothing worse than this, I withdraw the observation.


Now, Tony. I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?


What do you mean?


Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?


At what place? THAT place? Why, I wouldn’t pass another night there for any consideration that you could offer me,


Do you mean it though, Tony?


Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that,


Then the possibility or probability—for such it must be considered—of your never being disturbed in possession of those effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find out what he really had got stored up there, don’t weigh with you at all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?


Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow’s living there? Go and live there yourself.


Oh! I, Tony! I have never lived there and couldn’t get a lodging there now, whereas you have got one.


You are welcome to it, and—ugh!—you may make yourself at home in it.


Then you really and truly at this point, give up the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?


You never, said a truer word in all your life. I do!


How de do, sir! How de do!


What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning, I wonder!


My dear sir, would you do me a favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn, sir?


The public-house in the court?


There’s your fare! Ask me for a penny more, and I’ll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won’t squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones!


Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling poll-parrot! Sit down!


My dear sir, there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either of you?


Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it.


You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it! My dear friends. I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed’s brother.


Eh?


Mrs. Smallweed’s brother, my dear friend—her only relation. We were not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric—he was very eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I have come down, to look after the property.


I think, Small, you might have mentioned that the old man was your uncle.


You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to be the same. Besides, I wasn’t proud of him.


Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or not,


He never saw me in his life to know me. I don’t know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!


No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored, but I have come to look after the property—to look over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as my solicitor; and grass don’t grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye. Krook was Mrs. Smallweed’s only brother; she had no relation but Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. I am speaking of your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years of age.


Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of bank-notes!


Will somebody give me a quart pot? Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker! Shake me up, somebody, if you’ll be so good. I have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch the property! The—the property! The property! Property!


that would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can’t account for!


to pitch into the young man


I have to beg your ladyship’s pardon. This is an inconvenient time—


I told you, you could come at any time.


Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable.


You can sit down.


I don’t know, your ladyship, that it’s worth while my sitting down and detaining you, for I—I have not got the letters that I mentioned when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship.


Have you come merely to say so?


Merely to say so, your ladyship.


In short, your ladyship, the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a sudden end, and—


And the letters are destroyed with the person?


I believe so, your ladyship.


Is this all you have to say? You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this being the last time you will have the opportunity. That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!


I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times. It is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the room was empty. I beg your pardon!


Stay! Remain here, I beg. I am going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!


Aye, aye? From Kenge and Carboy’s, surely?


Kenge and Carboy’s, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir.


To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!


Happy to hear it, sir. You can’t be too well, sir, for the credit of the profession.


Thank you, Mr. Guppy!


Now, what. Now, what may this be? Is it blank cartridge or ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?


Phil! Attention, Phil! Listen to this.


Steady, commander, steady.


‘Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months’ date drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.’ What do you make of that, Phil?


Mischief, guv’ner.


Why?


I think that mischeevious consequences is always meant when money’s asked for.


Lookye, Phil. First and last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal in interest and one thing and another. And lookye further, Phil. There has always been an understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And it has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?


I say that I think the times is come to a end at last.


You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself.


Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?


The same.


Guv’ner, he’s a leech in his dispositions, he’s a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his twistings, and a lobster in his claws. There IS a way, commander, of settling this.


Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could.


No, guv’ner, no; not so bad as that. There IS a way, what I’m a-doing at present.


Whitewashing. A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my old scores? YOU’RE a moral character, upon my life you are, Phil!


Well, George, old fellow, and how do YOU do, this sunshiny morning?


Now, George, here we are, Lignum and myself just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he’ll sign it like a man.


I was coming to you this morning,


Yes, we thought you’d come to us this morning, but we turned out early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and came to you instead—as you see! For Lignum, he’s tied so close now, and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what’s the matter, George? You don’t look yourself.


I am not quite myself. I have been a little put out, Mrs. Bagnet.


George! Don’t tell me there’s anything wrong about that security of Lignum’s! Don’t do it, George, on account of the children! George,


I am ashamed of you! George, I couldn’t have believed you would have done it! I always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but I never thought you would have taken away what little moss there was for Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know what a hard-working, steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec and Malta and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or could, have had the heart to serve us so. Oh, George! How could you do it?


Mat. I am sorry you take it so much to heart, because I do hope it’s not so bad as that comes to. I certainly have, this morning, received this letter but I hope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone, why, what you say is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody’s way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to. But it’s impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family better than I like ’em, Mat, and I trust you’ll look upon me as forgivingly as you can. Don’t think I’ve kept anything from you. I haven’t had the letter more than a quarter of an hour.


will you tell him my opinion?


Oh! Why didn’t he marry. Joe Pouch’s widder in North America? Then he wouldn’t have got himself into these troubles.


puts it correct—why didn’t you?


Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope. Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to Joe Pouch’s widder. What shall I do? You see all I have got about me. It’s not mine; it’s yours. Give the word, and I’ll sell off every morsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum wanted, I’d have sold all long ago. Don’t believe that I’ll leave you or yours in the lurch, Mat. I’d sell myself first. I only wish, that I knew of any one who’d buy such a second-hand piece of old stores.


give him another bit of my mind.


George, you are not so much to be blamed, on full consideration, except for ever taking this business without the means.


And that was like me! Like me, I know.


Silence! The old girl, is correct—in her way of giving my opinions—hear me out!


That was when you never ought to have asked for the security, George, and when you never ought to have got it, all things considered. But what’s done can’t be undone. You are always an honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power, though a little flighty. On the other hand, you can’t admit but what it’s natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging over our heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. Come! Forget and forgive all round!


I do assure you both, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to discharge this obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together has gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly enough here, Phil and I. But the gallery don’t quite do what was expected of it, and it’s not—in short, it’s not the mint. It was wrong in me to take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step, and I thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you’ll try to overlook my having such expectations, and upon my soul, I am very much obliged to you, and very much ashamed of myself.


George, hear me out! Old girl, go on! the letter must be attended to without any delay, that it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr. Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money.


Don’t you mind a woman’s hasty word, George,


I trust my old Lignum to you, and I am sure you’ll bring him through it.


kindly said and that he WILL bring Lignum through it somehow.


George, you know the old girl—she’s as sweet and as mild as milk. But touch her on the children—or myself—and she’s off like gunpowder.


It does her credit, Mat!


George, the old girl—can’t do anything—that don’t do her credit. More or less. I never say so. Discipline must be maintained.


She’s worth her weight in gold,


In gold? I’ll tell you what. The old girl’s weight—is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight—in any metal—for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl’s metal is far more precious—than the preciousest metal. And she’s ALL metal!


You are right, Mat!


When she took me—and accepted of the ring—she ’listed under me and the children—heart and head; for life. She’s that earnest, and true to her colours—that, touch us with a finger—and she turns out—and stands to her arms. If the old girl fires wide—once in a way—at the call of duty—look over it, George. For she’s loyal!


Why, bless her, Mat. I think the higher of her for it!


You are right!


My dear friend. How de do? How de do? Who is our friend, my dear friend?


Why this, is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours, you know.


Oh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely! Hope you’re well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. George! Military air, sir! Judy, bring the pipe.


Why, I don’t know, that the young woman need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not inclined to smoke it to-day.


Ain’t you? Judy, bring the pipe.


The fact is, Mr. Smallweed, that I find myself in rather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that your friend in the city has been playing tricks.


Oh, dear no! He never does that!


Don’t he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might be HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter. What does it mean?


Judy. Have you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did you say what does it mean, my good friend?


Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed, a good lot of money has passed between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are both well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am prepared to do the usual thing which I have done regularly and to keep this matter going. I never got a letter like this from you before, and I have been a little put about by it this morning, because here’s my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had none of the money—


I DON’T know it, you know,


Why, con-found you—it, I mean—I tell you so, don’t I?


Oh, yes, you tell me so. But I don’t know it.


Well! I know it.


Ah! That’s quite another thing! But it don’t matter. Mr. Bagnet’s situation is all one, whether or no.


That’s just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here’s Matthew Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see, that makes his good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for whereas I’m a harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence come natural to, why he’s a steady family man, don’t you see? Now, Mr. Smallweed, although you and I are good friends enough in a certain sort of a way, I am well aware that I can’t ask you to let my friend Bagnet off entirely.


Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. George.


And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!


Ha ha ha!


Come! I am glad to find we can be pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here’s my friend Bagnet, and here am I. We’ll settle the matter on the spot, if you please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you’ll ease my friend Bagnet’s mind, and his family’s mind, a good deal if you’ll just mention to him what our understanding is.


Oh, good gracious! Oh!


But I think you asked me, Mr. George I think you asked me, what did the letter mean?


Why, yes, I did, but I don’t care to know particularly, if it’s all correct and pleasant.


That’s what it means, my dear friend. I’ll smash you. I’ll crumble you. I’ll powder you. Go to the devil! Go to the devil! I’ll have no more of your pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You’re an independent dragoon, too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before) and show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend, there’s a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these blusterers out! Call in help if they don’t go. Put ’em out!


Come, Mat, we must try the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?


If my old girl had been here—I’d have told him!


I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?


Yes, ma’am. Formerly.


I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at the sight of you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless you, gentlemen! You’ll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once who went for a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in his bold way, though some people did disparage him to his poor mother. I ask your pardon for troubling you, sir. God bless you, gentlemen!


Same to you, ma’am! Don’t be cast down! ‘Why, soldiers, why—should we be melancholy, boys?’ Cheer up, my hearty!


Let ’em come in then! Now, you men, what do you want? Sergeant, I told you the last time I saw you that I don’t desire your company here. I have nothing to say to you. If you get into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences. You have no occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose? Very well! Then the other man—this man, if this is he—must pay it for you. Very well! Then you must pay it between you or you must both be sued for it and both suffer. You have had the money and must refund it. You are not to pocket other people’s pounds, shillings, and pence and escape scot-free.


I tell you, sergeant, I have nothing to say to you. I don’t like your associates and don’t want you here. This matter is not at all in my course of practice and is not in my office. Mr. Smallweed is good enough to offer these affairs to me, but they are not in my way. You must go to Melchisedech’s in Clifford’s Inn. I must make an apology to you, sir, for pressing myself upon you with so little encouragement—which is almost as unpleasant to me as it can be to you—but would you let me say a private word to you?


Now! I have no time to waste.


Well, sir, this man with me is the other party implicated in this unfortunate affair—nominally, only nominally—and my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account. He is a most respectable man with a wife and family, formerly in the Royal Artillery—


My friend, I don’t care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal Artillery establishment—officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses, guns, and ammunition.


’Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any other consideration what you wanted of me the other day.


Have you got it here?


I have got it here, sir.


Sergeant, make up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won’t re-open it. Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you have brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you choose. In case you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you—I can replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you decided?


I must do it, sir. ’Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever had from him.


You can go. Show these men out, there!


Old girl!


Why, George! How low you are!


Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not.


He ain’t at all like Bluffy, mother!


Because he ain’t well, I think, mother,


Sure that’s a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too! But it’s true, true, I am afraid. These little ones are always right!


George, if I thought you cross enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier’s wife—who could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done it almost—said this morning, I don’t know what I shouldn’t say to you now.


My kind soul of a darling. Not a morsel of it.


Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say was that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you’d bring him through it. And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!


Thankee, my dear! I am glad of your good opinion. See there, my boy, there’s a good loving forehead for you! All bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the weather through following your father about and taking care of you, but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree. The time will come, my boy, when this hair of your mother’s will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she’ll be then. Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, ‘I never whitened a hair of her dear head—I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!’ For of all the many things that you can think of when you are a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!


Oh, more of these never-ending stairs, Charley—more and more—piled up to the sky’, I think!


Never, my sweet girl, never!


Charley, if you go on in this way, I must lie down again, my darling, for I am weaker than I thought I was!


Yet, Charley. I miss something, surely, that I am accustomed to? Are the pictures all as they used to be?


Every one of them, miss,


And the furniture, Charley?


Except where I have moved it about to make more room, miss.


And yet. I miss some familiar object. Ah, I know what it is, Charley! It’s the looking-glass. It matters very little, Charley. I hope I can do without my old face very well.


My dear, dear girl!


My little woman,


Only for the best, guardian,


For the best?


Why, no, my dear,


I have thought it better not to mention it to her.


And you speak of his writing to YOU,


He thinks he could, my love,


It has not changed yours, guardian.


IS it possible, guardian,


Ah, my love, my love,


It is a terrible misfortune, guardian.


It is a terrible misfortune, little woman,


We must not say so, Dame Durden,


We WILL hope so, my Esther,


When shall Ada come to see you, my love?


Dear guardian,


As I have kept Ada out so long,


Our spoilt little woman,


I swear if Miss Summerson do not come down and take possession of my house, which I vacate for her this day at one o’clock, P.M.


Now, little housewife,


Now, pet,


My dear Fitz Jarndyce! Dear me! I have nothing here but documents, my dear Fitz Jarndyce; I must borrow a pocket handkerchief. With pleasure, my dear Fitz Jarndyce. Not the least pain. Pleasure to see you well again. Pleasure at having the honour of being admitted to see you. I am so much fonder of you, my love, than of the Chancellor. Though I DO attend court regularly. By the by, my dear, mentioning pocket handkerchiefs— Ve-ry right! Ve-ry correct. Truly! Highly indiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz Jarndyce, I am afraid I am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn’t think it) a little—rambling you know. Nothing more.


What were you going to tell me? You have roused my curiosity, and now you must gratify it.


If you please, ma’am, you had better tell then,


So sagacious, our young friend. Diminutive. But ve-ry sagacious! Well, my dear, it’s a pretty anecdote. Nothing more. Still I think it charming. Who should follow us down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very ungenteel bonnet—


Jenny, if you please, miss,


Just so! Jenny. Ye-es! And what does she tell our young friend but that there has been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear Fitz Jarndyce’s health and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little keepsake merely because it was my amiable Fitz Jarndyce’s! Now, you know, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!


If you please, miss. Jenny says that when her baby died, you left a handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the baby’s little things. I think, if you please, partly because it was yours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby.


Diminutive. But exceedingly sagacious! And so dear! My love, she’s clearer than any counsel I ever heard!


Yes, Charley. I remember it. Well?


Well, miss, and that’s the handkerchief the lady took. And Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn’t have made away with it herself for a heap of money but that the lady took it and left some money instead. Jenny don’t know her at all, if you please, miss!


Why, who can she be?


My love, in MY opinion—don’t mention this to our diminutive friend—she’s the Lord Chancellor’s wife. He’s married, you know. And I understand she leads him a terrible life. Throws his lordship’s papers into the fire, my dear, if he won’t pay the jeweller!


You have attended on the Lord Chancellor many years, Miss Flite?


Oh, many, many, many years, my dear. But I expect a judgment. Shortly.


Would it not be wiser, to expect this judgment no more?


Why, my dear, of course it would!


And to attend the court no more?


Equally of course. Very wearing to be always in expectation of what never comes, my dear Fitz Jarndyce! Wearing, I assure you, to the bone! Aye, aye, aye! You think so because I am a little rambling. Ve-ry absurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry confusing, too. To the head. I find it so. But, my dear, I have been there many years, and I have noticed. It’s the mace and seal upon the table.


What could they do, did she think?


Draw. Draw people on, my dear. Draw peace out of them. Sense out of them. Good looks out of them. Good qualities out of them. I have felt them even drawing my rest away in the night. Cold and glittering devils! Let me see. I’ll tell you my own case. Before they ever drew me—before I had ever seen them—what was it I used to do? Tambourine playing? No. Tambour work. I and my sister worked at tambour work. Our father and our brother had a builder’s business. We all lived together. Ve-ry respectably, my dear! First, our father was drawn—slowly. Home was drawn with him. In a few years he was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt without a kind word or a kind look for any one. He had been so different, Fitz Jarndyce. He was drawn to a debtors’ prison. There he died. Then our brother was drawn—swiftly—to drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my sister was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then I was ill and in misery, and heard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work of Chancery. When I got better, I went to look at the monster. And then I found out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there. You don’t quite credit me, my dear! Well, well! You will, some day. I am a little rambling. But I have noticed. I have seen many new faces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the mace and seal in these many years. As my father’s came there. As my brother’s. As my sister’s. As my own. I hear Conversation Kenge and the rest of them say to the new faces, ‘Here’s little Miss Flite. Oh, you are new here; and you must come and be presented to little Miss Flite!’ Ve-ry good. Proud I am sure to have the honour! And we all laugh. But, Fitz Jarndyce, I know what will happen. I know, far better than they do, when the attraction has begun. I know the signs, my dear. I saw them begin in Gridley. And I saw them end. Fitz Jarndyce, my love. I saw them beginning in our friend the ward in Jarndyce. Let some one hold him back. Or he’ll be drawn to ruin. Yes, my dear, as I was saying, I expect a judgment shortly. Then I shall release my birds, you know, and confer estates. But, my dear. You have not congratulated me on my physician. Positively not once, yet!


I did not quite know what she meant.


My physician, Mr. Woodcourt, my dear, who was so exceedingly attentive to me. Though his services were rendered quite gratuitously. Until the Day of Judgment. I mean THE judgment that will dissolve the spell upon me of the mace and seal.


Mr. Woodcourt is so far away, now, that I thought the time for such congratulation was past, Miss Flite.


But, my child, is it possible that you don’t know what has happened?


No,


Not what everybody has been talking of, my beloved Fitz Jarndyce!


No. You forget how long I have been here.


True! My dear, for the moment—true. I blame myself. But my memory has been drawn out of me, with everything else, by what I mentioned. Ve-ry strong influence, is it not? Well, my dear, there has been a terrible shipwreck over in those East Indian seas.


Mr. Woodcourt shipwrecked!


Don’t be agitated, my dear. He is safe. An awful scene. Death in all shapes. Hundreds of dead and dying. Fire, storm, and darkness. Numbers of the drowning thrown upon a rock. There, and through it all, my dear physician was a hero. Calm and brave through everything. Saved many lives, never complained in hunger and thirst, wrapped naked people in his spare clothes, took the lead, showed them what to do, governed them, tended the sick, buried the dead, and brought the poor survivors safely off at last! My dear, the poor emaciated creatures all but worshipped him. They fell down at his feet when they got to the land and blessed him. The whole country rings with it. Stay! Where’s my bag of documents? I have got it there, and you shall read it, you shall read it!


My dear, my brave physician ought to have a title bestowed upon him. And no doubt he will. You are of that opinion?


Why not, Fitz Jarndyce? it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great, unless occasionally when they consisted of the accumulation of some very large amount of money.


Why, good gracious, how can you say that? Surely you know, my dear, that all the greatest ornaments of England in knowledge, imagination, active humanity, and improvement of every sort are added to its nobility! Look round you, my dear, and consider. YOU must be rambling a little now, I think, if you don’t know that this is the great reason why titles will always last in the land!


Esther, my dear, I think you are quite sensible enough to sit down now and write a note of thanks to your host.


Esther, if you are to be happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true-hearted, you must keep your word, my dear.


Dear, dear, miss! Is that you?


Yes, Charley. And I am very well indeed, and very happy.


Stubbs, I am surprised you don’t canter when you know how much I like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only getting stupid and going to sleep,


Now, Stubbs, I feel quite sure from what I know of you that you will go on if I ride a little while,


Mother, why is the lady not a pretty lady now like she used to be?


He’s a dear good fellow, miss; but he can’t write yet—he’s going to learn of me—and I wouldn’t shame him for the world!


Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have startled you. You can scarcely be strong yet. You have been very ill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it. You are recovering again?


I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady Dedlock.


Is this your young attendant?


Yes.


Will you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?


Charley, take your flowers home, and I will follow you directly.


Oh, my child, my child, I am your wicked and unhappy mother! Oh, try to forgive me!


To bless and receive me, it is far too late. I must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will. From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see the way before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I have brought upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it. I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that I am!


But is the secret safe so far? Is it safe now, dearest mother?


No. It has been very near discovery. It was saved by an accident. It may be lost by another accident—to-morrow, any day.


Do you dread a particular person?


Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of these tears. I dread one person very much.


An enemy?


Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir Leicester Dedlock’s lawyer, mechanically faithful without attachment, and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being master of the mysteries of great houses.


Has he any suspicions?


Many.


Not of you?


Yes! He is always vigilant and always near me. I may keep him at a standstill, but I can never shake him off.


Has he so little pity or compunction?


He has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but his calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets and the holding possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent in it.


Could you trust in him?


I shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years will end where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the end be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts, nothing turns me.


Dear mother, are you so resolved?


I AM resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie it, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully as if these woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but my course through it is the same. I have but one; I can have but one.


Mr. Jarndyce—


Does HE suspect?


No. No, indeed! Be assured that he does not! But he is so good and sensible, that perhaps if he knew—


Confide fully in him. You have my free consent—a small gift from such a mother to her injured child!—but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me even yet.


My child, my child! For the last time! These kisses for the last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We shall meet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be what I have been so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear of Lady Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering within her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable! And then forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven to forgive her, which it never can!


Charley, I will go by myself and walk along the road until she comes.


Here she comes, miss! Here she is!


Esther, my dear, my love, where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!


Oh! If you please, miss. You’re wanted at the Dedlock Arms.


Why, Charley, who can possibly want me at the public-house?


I don’t know, miss, but it’s a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and will you please to come without saying anything about it.


Whose compliments, Charley?


His’n, miss,


And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?


I am not the messenger, if you please, miss. It was W. Grubble, miss.


And who is W. Grubble, Charley?


Mister Grubble, miss. Don’t you know, miss? The Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble,


Aye? The landlord, Charley?


Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman, but she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother’s the sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he’ll drink himself to death entirely on beer,


My dear Esther! My best friend! Answering my very thoughts—always the same dear girl! Always the same dear girl! My love, there is no one with whom I have a greater wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me.


And I want you, Richard, to understand some one else.


Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce, —I suppose you mean him?


Of course I do.


Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind—you, my dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody. Well, well, my dear, we won’t go into that now. I want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under my arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your loyalty to John Jarndyce will allow that?


My dear Richard, you know you would be heartily welcome at his house—your home, if you will but consider it so; and you are as heartily welcome here!


Spoken like the best of little women! Oh, I like it well enough! It’s all right. It does as well as anything else, for a time. I don’t know that I shall care about it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out then and—however, never mind all that botheration at present. I am in town on leave just now,


Indeed?


Yes. I have run over to look after my—my Chancery interests before the long vacation. We are beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I promise you. As you say, it’s not a pleasant subject. Let it go to the four winds for to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?


Was it Mr. Skimpole’s voice I heard?


That’s the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a fascinating child it is! And he is worth—not to say his sordid expenses—but thrice his weight in gold. He is such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and green-hearted!


My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard, full of the brightest visions of the future, which he evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that’s delightful, that’s inspiriting, that’s full of poetry! In old times the woods and solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary piping and dancing of Pan and the nymphs. This present shepherd, our pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making Fortune and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of a judgment from the bench. That’s very pleasant, you know! Some ill-conditioned growling fellow may say to me, ‘What’s the use of these legal and equitable abuses? How do you defend them?’ I reply, ‘My growling friend, I DON’T defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There is a shepherd—youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into something highly fascinating to my simplicity. I don’t say it is for this that they exist—for I am a child among you worldly grumblers, and not called upon to account to you or myself for anything—but it may be so.’


Ada, my love, I have brought a gentleman to visit you.


For I am constantly being taken in these nets, and am constantly being bailed out—like a boat. Or paid off—like a ship’s company. Somebody always does it for me. I can’t do it, you know, for I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by somebody’s means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me who somebody is, upon my word I couldn’t tell you. Let us drink to somebody. God bless him!


This is a lovely place. None of the jar and discord of law-suits here! I tell you what, my dear girl, when I get affairs in general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest.


Would it not be better to rest now?


Oh, as to resting NOW, or as to doing anything very definite NOW, that’s not easy. In short, it can’t be done; I can’t do it at least.


Why not?


You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished house, liable to have the roof put on or taken off—to be from top to bottom pulled down or built up—to-morrow, next day, next week, next month, next year—you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. Now? There’s no now for us suitors.


My dear Richard, this is a bad beginning of our conversation.


I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden.


And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you once never to found a hope or expectation on the family curse.


There you come back to John Jarndyce! Well! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of what I have to say, and it’s as well at once. My dear Esther, how can you be so blind? Don’t you see that he is an interested party and that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the suit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well for me?


Oh, Richard, is it possible that you can ever have seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this solitary place where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?


Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean fellow and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being poor qualities in one of my years.


I know it very well. I am not more sure of anything.


That’s a dear girl, and like you, because it gives me comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all this business, for it’s a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion to tell you.


I know perfectly. I know as well, Richard—what shall I say? as well as you do—that such misconstructions are foreign to your nature. And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it.


Come, sister, come, you will be fair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a little twisted him too. I don’t say that he is not an honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him say so fifty times. Then why should HE escape?


Because, his is an uncommon character, and he has resolutely kept himself outside the circle, Richard.


Oh, because and because! I am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things may smoothly happen that are convenient enough. Esther, you are not to suppose that I have come here to make underhanded charges against John Jarndyce. I have only come to justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well and we got on very well while I was a boy, utterly regardless of this same suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it and to look into it, then it was quite another thing. Then John Jarndyce discovers that Ada and I must break off and that if I don’t amend that very objectionable course, I am not fit for her. Now, Esther, I don’t mean to amend that very objectionable course: I will not hold John Jarndyce’s favour on those unfair terms of compromise, which he has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or displeases him, I must maintain my rights and Ada’s. I have been thinking about it a good deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to. So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him about all this) that we are at issue and that we had better be at issue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our roads are not the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I should take much more than he. I don’t mean to say that it is the one to be established, but there it is, and it has its chance.


I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard, of your letter. I had heard of it already without an offended or angry word.


Indeed? I am glad I said he was an honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say that and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you tell her what has passed between us. But if you had gone into the case as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers as I did when I was at Kenge’s, if you only knew what an accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions, they involve, you would think me moderate in comparison.


Perhaps so. But do you think that, among those many papers, there is much truth and justice, Richard?


There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther—


Or was once, long ago,


Is—is—must be somewhere, and must be brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of is not the way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me; John Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change everybody who has any share in it. Then the greater right I have on my side when I resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end.


All you can, Richard! Do you think that in these many years no others have done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier because of so many failures?


It can’t last for ever. I am young and earnest, and energy and determination have done wonders many a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into it. I devote myself to it. I make it the object of my life.


Oh, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!


No, no, no, don’t you be afraid for me. You’re a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl; but you have your prepossessions. So I come round to John Jarndyce. I tell you, my good Esther, when he and I were on those terms which he found so convenient, we were not on natural terms.


Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?


No, I don’t say that. I mean that all this business puts us on unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible. See another reason for urging it on! I may find out when it’s over that I have been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer when I am free of it, and I may then agree with what you say to-day. Very well. Then I shall acknowledge it and make him reparation. Now, my best of confidantes. I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and—and in short. I—I don’t like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious, doubting character to a confiding girl like Ada. that may be true enough, my love. I rather feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-play by and by. I shall come all right again, then, don’t you be afraid.


Richard, you place great confidence in me, but I fear you will not take advice from me?


It’s impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any other, readily.


But I may ask you a question, Richard?


I think so. I don’t know who may not, if you may not.


You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life.


How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled!


Are you in debt again?


Why, of course I am. My dear child, certainly. I can’t throw myself into an object so completely without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don’t know, that under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It’s only a question between the larger sum and the smaller. I shall be within the mark any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl. I shall be all right! I shall pull through, my dear!


Esther has told me all you said to her this morning. I write this to repeat most earnestly for myself all that she said to you and to let you know how sure I am that you will sooner or later find our cousin John a pattern of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you will deeply, deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so much wrong. I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next, but I trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have some fears, my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for yourself—and if for yourself, for me. In case this should be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat and beg you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake that will make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon the shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry with me for saying this. Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for that source of trouble which had its share in making us both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it go for ever. We have reason to know by this time that there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing to be got from it but sorrow. My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you are quite free and that it is very likely you may find some one whom you will love much better than your first fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very rich with you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety and of your indifference to other aims. You may wonder at my saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own heart. Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate


We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who was wrong—he would show us—we should see!


Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson? I am the last man in the world for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life—I can’t be.


I am afraid everybody is obliged to be,


No, really? But every man’s not obliged to be solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson, there’s so much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of counting. Call it four and ninepence—call it four pound nine. They tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as much as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don’t stop, why should I? There you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that’s responsibility, I am responsible. Now, when you mention responsibility. I am disposed to say that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I should consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. You appear to me to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole little orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel inclined to say to myself—in fact I do say to myself very often—THAT’S responsibility! Most willingly, if I could. But, my dear Miss Summerson, I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand and leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after fortune, I must go. If he says, ‘Skimpole, join the dance!’ I must join it. Common sense wouldn’t, I know, but I have NO common sense.


It was very unfortunate for Richard,


Do you think so! Don’t say that, don’t say that. Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense—an excellent man—a good deal wrinkled—dreadfully practical—change for a ten-pound note in every pocket—ruled account-book in his hand—say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion, ‘I see a golden prospect before me; it’s very bright, it’s very beautiful, it’s very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape to come at it!’ The respectable companion instantly knocks him down with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic way that he sees no such thing; shows him it’s nothing but fees, fraud, horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that’s a painful change—sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but disagreeable. I can’t do it. I haven’t got the ruled account-book, I have none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition, I am not at all respectable, and I don’t want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it is!


Dear me! Vholes! Friend and legal adviser. Now, my dear Miss Summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and respectability, all united—if you want an exemplary man—Vholes is THE man. When he emerged from legal infancy, he parted from our conversational friend Kenge and took up, I believe, with Vholes. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to Vholes.


Had you known him long?


Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance with him which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession. He had done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner—taken proceedings, I think, is the expression—which ended in the proceeding of his taking ME. Somebody was so good as to step in and pay the money—something and fourpence was the amount; I forget the pounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence, because it struck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe anybody fourpence—and after that I brought them together. Vholes asked me for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of it. Vholes bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something and called it commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do you know, I think it MUST have been a five-pound note!


I hope I don’t disturb you, ladies. I arranged with Mr. Carstone that he should always know when his cause was in the Chancellor’s paper, and being informed by one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather unexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the coach early this morning and came down to confer with him.


Yes, we don’t do these things in the old slow way now. We spin along now! Mr. Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the post town in, and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!


Anything you please, sir. I am quite at your service.


Let me see. If I run down to the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or a chaise, or whatever’s to be got, we shall have an hour then before starting. I’ll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Esther take care of Mr. Vholes when I am gone?


Is Mr. Carstone’s presence necessary to-morrow, Sir? Can it do any good?


No, miss. I am not aware that it can. Mr. Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own interests, and when a client lays down his own principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it out. I wish in business to be exact and open. I am a widower with three daughters—Emma, Jane, and Caroline—and my desire is so to discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name. This appears to be a pleasant spot, miss. Indeed? I have the privilege of supporting an aged father in the Vale of Taunton—his native place—and I admire that country very much. I had no idea there was anything so attractive here.


To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr. Vholes if he would like to live altogether in the country.


There, miss, you touch me on a tender string. My health is not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had only myself to consider, I should take refuge in rural habits, especially as the cares of business have prevented me from ever coming much into contact with general society, and particularly with ladies’ society, which I have most wished to mix in. But with my three daughters, Emma, Jane, and Caroline—and my aged father—I cannot afford to be selfish. It is true I have no longer to maintain a dear grandmother who died in her hundred and second year, but enough remains to render it indispensable that the mill should be always going. You will excuse my having mentioned my daughters. They are my weak point. I wish to leave the poor girls some little independence, as well as a good name. You will drive me, will you, sir? It is all the same to me, sir. Anything you please. I am quite at your service.


Once more, duty, duty, Esther, and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and everything, you ought to be. That’s all I have to say to you, my dear!


And how is your mama, Caddy?


Why, I hear of her, Esther, through Pa, but I see very little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Ma thinks there is something absurd in my having married a dancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her.


And your papa, Caddy?


He comes here every evening, and is so fond of sitting in the corner there that it’s a treat to see him.


And you, Caddy, you are always busy, I’ll be bound?


Well, my dear. I am indeed, for to tell you a grand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince’s health is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. What with schools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND the apprentices, he really has too much to do, poor fellow! Four. One in-door, and three out. They are very good children; only when they get together they WILL play—children-like—instead of attending to their work. So the little boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen, and we distribute the others over the house as well as we can.


That is only for their steps, of course?


Only for their steps. In that way they practise, so many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at five every morning.


Why, what a laborious life!