The Solitary House (75 page)

The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes, as they passed down the adjoining room on which the sun was shining, and out at its farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through the sunlight, as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the years to come, and making them all years of brightness. So they passed away into the shadow, and were gone. It was only a burst of light that had been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun was clouded over.

“Am I right, Esther?” said my Guardian, when they were gone.

He who was so good and wise, to ask
me
whether he was right!

“Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core of so much that is good!” said Mr. Jarndyce, shaking his head. “I have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor always near.” And he laid his hand lovingly upon my head.

I could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did all I could to conceal it.

“Tut, tut!” said he. “But we must take care, too, that our little woman’s life is not all consumed in care for others.”

“Care? My dear Guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the world!”

“I believe so, too,” said he. “But some one may find out, what Esther never will—that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above all other people!”

I have omitted to mention in its place, that there was some one else at the family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a gentleman. It was a gentleman of a dark complexion—a young surgeon. He was rather reserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least, Ada asked me if I did not, and I said yes.

*

CHAPTER 14

DEPORTMENT

R
ichard left us on the very next evening, to begin his new career, and committed Ada to my charge with great love for her, and great trust in me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write Richard once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of all his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute, and persevering he would be; I was to be Ada’s bridesmaid when they were married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep
all the keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.

“And if the suit
should
make us rich, Esther—which it may, you know!” said Richard, to crown all.

A shade crossed Ada’s face.

“My dearest Ada,” asked Richard, “why not?”

“It had better declare us poor at once,” said Ada.

“O! I don’t know about that,” returned Richard; “but, at all events, it won’t declare anything at once. It hasn’t declared anything in Heaven knows how many years.”

“Too true,” said Ada.

“Yes, but,” urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather than her words, “the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that reasonable?”

“You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will make us unhappy.”

“But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!” cried Richard gaily. “We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it
should
make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The Court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.”

“No,” said Ada, “but it may be better to forget all about it.”

“Well, well!” cried Richard, “then we will forget all about it! We consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her approving face, and it’s done!”

“Dame Durden’s approving face,” said I, looking out of the box in which I was packing his books, “was not very visible when you called it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can’t do better.”

So, Richard said there was an end of it—and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the great wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.

On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce
at Mrs. Jellyby’s, but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It appeared that she had gone somewhere, to a tea-drinking, and had taken Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt, sufficient active exercise of pen and ink, to make her daughter’s part in the proceedings, anything but a holiday.

It being, now, beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby’s return, we called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile End, directly after breakfast, on some Borrioboolan business, arising out of a Society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have strolled away with the dustman’s cart), I now inquired for him again. The oyster shells he had been building a house with, were still in the passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had “gone after the sheep.” When we repeated, with some surprise, “The sheep?” she said, O, yes, on market days he sometimes followed them quite out of town, and came back in such a state as never was!

I was sitting at the window with my Guardian, on the following morning, and Ada was busy writing—of course to Richard—when Miss Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom she had made some endeavours to render presentable, by wiping the dirt into corners of his face and hands, and making his hair very wet and then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear child wore, was either too large for him or too small. Among his other contradictory decorations he had the hat of a Bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a ploughman: while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare, below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby’s coats,
they were so extremely brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been hastily mended; and I recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby’s. She was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance, and looked very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in, by the way in which she glanced, first at him and then at us.

“O dear me!” said my Guardian. “Due East!”

Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to Mr. Jarndyce; to whom she said, as she sat down:

“Ma’s compliments, and she hopes you’ll excuse her, because she’s correcting proofs of the plan. She’s going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she knows you’ll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them with me. Ma’s compliments.” With which she presented it sulkily enough.

“Thank you,” said my Guardian. “I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby. O dear me! This is a very trying wind!”

We were busy with Peepy; taking off his clerical hat; asking him if he remembered us; and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first, but relented at the sight of sponge-cake, and allowed me to take him on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then withdrawing into the temporary Growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a conversation with her usual abruptness.

“We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn,” said she. “I have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn’t be worse off if I was a what’s-his-name—man and a brother!”

I tried to say something soothing.

“O, it’s of no use, Miss Summerson,” exclaimed Miss Jellyby, “though I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am used, and I am not to be talked over.
You
wouldn’t be talked over if you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!”

“I shan’t!” said Peepy.

“Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!” returned Miss Jellyby, with tears in her eyes. “I’ll never take pains to dress you any more.”

“Yes, I will go, Caddy!” cried Peepy, who was really a good
child, and who was so moved by his sister’s vexation that he went at once.

“It seems a little thing to cry about,” said poor Miss Jellyby, apologetically, “but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so, that that alone makes my head ache till I can’t see out of my eyes. And look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as he is!”

Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of his den at us, while he ate his cake.

“I have sent him to the other end of the room,” observed Miss Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, “because I don’t want him to hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There’ll be nobody but Ma to thank for it.”

We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby’s affairs were not in so bad a state as that.

“It’s of no use hoping, though it’s very kind of you,” returned Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. “Pa told me, only yesterday morning (and dreadfully unhappy he is), that he couldn’t weather the storm. I should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don’t care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa
is
to weather the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I’d run away.”

“My dear!” said I, smiling. “Your papa, no doubt, considers his family.”

“O yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson,” replied Miss Jellyby; “but what comfort is his family to him? His family is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week’s end to week’s end, is like one great washing-day—only nothing’s washed!”

Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor, and wiped her eyes.

“I am sure I pity Pa to that degree,” she said, “and am so angry with Ma, that I can’t find words to express myself! However, I am not going to bear it, I am determined. I won’t be a slave all my life, and I won’t submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed, to marry a Philanthropist. As if I hadn’t had enough of
that
!” said poor Miss Jellyby.

I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs. Jellyby, myself; seeing and hearing this neglected girl, and knowing how much of bitter satirical truth there was in what she said.

“If it wasn’t that we had been intimate when you stopped at our house,” pursued Miss Jellyby, “I should have been ashamed to come here today, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But, as it is, I made up my mind to call: especially as I am not likely to see you again, the next time you come to town.”

She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at one another, foreseeing something more.

“No!” said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. “Not at all likely! I know I may trust you two. I am sure you won’t betray me. I am engaged.”

“Without their knowledge at home?” said I.

“Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson,” she returned, justifying herself in a fretful but not angry manner, “how can it be otherwise? You know what Ma is—and I needn’t make poor Pa more miserable by telling
him
.”

“But would it not be adding to his unhappiness, to marry without his knowledge or consent, my dear?” said I.

“No,” said Miss Jellyby, softening. “I hope not. I should try to make him happy and comfortable when he came to see me; and Peepy and the others should take it in turns to come and stay with me; and they should have some care taken of them, then.”

There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more and more while saying this, and cried so much over the unwonted little home-picture she had raised in her mind, that Peepy, in his cave under the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister, and had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that Caddy was laughing
(she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we could recall his peace of mind; even then, it was for some time conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin, and smoothing our faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not equal to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.