The Solitary House (98 page)

“Father,” returned Prince, with great submission, “I love this young lady, and we are engaged.”

“Engaged!” cried Mr. Turveydrop, reclining on the sofa, and shutting out the sight with his hand. “An arrow launched at my brain, by my own child!”

“We have been engaged for some time, father,” faltered Prince; “and Miss Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the fact to you, and was so very kind as to attend on the present occasion. Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, father.”

Mr. Turveydrop uttered a groan.

“No, pray don’t! Pray don’t, father,” urged his son. “Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, and our first desire is to consider your comfort.”

Mr. Turveydrop sobbed.

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

“Boy,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “it is well that your sainted mother is spared this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir, strike home!”

“Pray, don’t say so, father,” implored Prince, in tears. “It goes to my heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and intention is to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not forget our duty—what is my duty is Caroline’s, as we have often said together—and, with your approval and consent, father, we will devote ourselves to making your life agreeable.”

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

But he seemed to listen, I thought, too.

“My dear father,” returned Prince, “we well know what little comforts you are accustomed to and have a right to; and it will always be our study, and our pride, to provide those before anything. If you will bless us with your approval and consent, father, we shall not think of being married until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we
are
married, we shall always make you—of course—our first consideration. You must ever be the Head and Master here, father; and we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us, if we failed to know it, or if we failed to exert ourselves in every possible way to please you.”

Mr. Turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle, and came upright on the sofa again, with his cheeks puffing over his stiff cravat: a perfect model of parental deportment.

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

His benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched out his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect and gratitude), was the most confusing sight I ever saw.

“My children,” said Mr. Turveydrop, paternally encircling Caddy with his left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand gracefully on his hip. “My son and daughter, your
happiness shall be my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with me”;—meaning, of course, I will always live with you; “this house is henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May you long live to share it with me!”

The power of his Deportment was such, that they really were as much overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent sacrifice in their favour.

“For myself, my children,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “I am falling into the sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the last feeble traces of gentlemanly Deportment may linger in this weaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to society, and will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are few and simple. My little apartment here, my few essentials for the toilet, my frugal morning meal, and my little dinner, will suffice. I charge your dutiful affection with the supply of these requirements, and I charge myself with all the rest.”

They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity.

“My son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “for those little points in which you are deficient—points of Deportment which are born with a man—which may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated—you may still rely on me. I have been faithful to my post, since the days of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent; and I will not desert it now. No, my son. If you have ever contemplated your father’s poor position with a feeling of pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing to tarnish it. For yourself, Prince, whose character is different (we cannot be all alike, nor is it advisable that we should), work, be industrious, earn money, and extend the connexion as much as possible.”

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

“I have no doubt of it,” said Mr. Turveydrop. “Your qualities are not shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to both of you, my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of a sainted Wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting, I believe,
some
ray of light—take care of the establishment, take care of my simple wants, and bless you both!”

Old Mr. Turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the occasion, that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn at once if we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure, after a very loving farewell between Caddy and her betrothed: and during our walk she was so happy, and so full of old Mr. Turveydrop’s praises, that I would not have said a word in his disparagement for any consideration.

The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows announcing that it was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than ever. The name of poor Mr. Jellyby had appeared in the list of Bankrupts, but a day or two before; and he was shut up in the dining-room with two gentlemen, and a heap of blue bags, account-books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his comprehension; for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by mistake, and we came upon Mr. Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced into a corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed to have given up the whole thing, and to be speechless and insensible.

Going upstairs to Mrs. Jellyby’s room (the children were all screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening, reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn covers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she did not know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed, far-off look of hers.

“Ah! Miss Summerson!” she said at last. “I was thinking of something so different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see you. Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?”

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

“Why, not quite, my dear,” said Mrs. Jellyby, in the calmest manner. “He has been unfortunate in his affairs, and is a little out of spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each, either gone or going to the left bank of the Niger.”

I thought of the one family so near us, who were neither
gone nor going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be so placid.

“You have brought Caddy back, I see,” observed Mrs. Jellyby, with a glance at her daughter. “It has become quite a novelty to see her here. She has almost deserted her old employment, and in fact obliges me to employ a boy.”

“I am sure, Ma,—” began Caddy.

“Now you know, Caddy,” her mother mildly interposed, “that I
do
employ a boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your contradicting?”

“I was not going to contradict, Ma,” returned Caddy. “I was only going to say, that surely you wouldn’t have me be a mere drudge all my life.”

“I believe, my dear,” said Mrs. Jellyby, still opening her letters, casting her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as she spoke, “that you have a business example before you in your mother. Besides. A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy with the destinies of the human race, it would raise you high above any such idea. But you have none. I have often told you, Caddy, you have no such sympathy.”

“Not if it’s Africa, Ma, I have not.”

“Of course, you have not. Now, if I were not happily so much engaged, Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, sweetly casting her eyes for a moment on me, and considering where to put the particular letter she had just opened, “this would distress and disappoint me. But I have so much to think of, in connexion with Borrioboola-Gha, and it is so necessary I should concentrate myself, that there is my remedy, you see.”

As Caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as Mrs. Jellyby was looking far away into Africa straight through my bonnet and head, I thought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit, and to attract Mrs. Jellyby’s attention.

“Perhaps,” I began, “you will wonder what has brought me here to interrupt you.”

“I am always delighted to see Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, pursuing her employment with a placid smile. “Though I wish,” and she shook her head, “she was more interested in the Borrioboolan project.”

“I have come with Caddy,” said I, “because Caddy justly thinks she ought not to have a secret from her mother; and fancies I shall encourage and aid her (though I am sure I don’t know how), in imparting one.”

“Caddy,” said Mrs. Jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation, and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, “you are going to tell me some nonsense.”

Caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and letting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily, said, “Ma, I am engaged.”

“O, you ridiculous child!” observed Mrs. Jellyby, with an abstracted air, as she looked over the dispatch last opened; “what a goose you are!”

“I am engaged, Ma,” sobbed Caddy, “to young Mr. Turveydrop, at the Academy; and old Mr. Turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man indeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you’ll give us yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never could!” sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful of her general complainings, and of everything but her natural affection.

“You see again, Miss Summerson,” observed Mrs. Jellyby, serenely, “what a happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am, and to have this necessity for self-concentration that I have. Here is Caddy engaged to a dancing-master’s son—mixed up with people who have no more sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has herself! This, too, when Mr. Quale, one of the first philanthropists of our time, has mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be interested in her!”

“Ma, I always hated and detested Mr. Quale!” sobbed Caddy.

“Caddy, Caddy!” returned Mrs. Jellyby, opening another letter with the greatest complacency. “I have no doubt you did. How could you do otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he overflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite child to me, if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these petty details might grieve me very much, Miss Summerson. But can I permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom I expect nothing else), to interpose between me and the great African
continent? No. No,” repeated Mrs. Jellyby, in a calm clear voice, and with an agreeable smile, as she opened more letters and sorted them. “No, indeed.”

I was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception, though I might have expected it, that I did not know what to say. Caddy seemed equally at a loss. Mrs. Jellyby continued to open and sort letters; and to repeat occasionally, in quite a charming tone of voice, and with a smile of perfect composure, “No, indeed.”

“I hope, Ma,” sobbed poor Caddy at last, “you are not angry?”

“O Caddy, you really are an absurd girl,” returned Mrs. Jellyby, “to ask such questions, after what I have said of the preoccupation of my mind.”

“And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent, and wish us well?” said Caddy.

“You are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind,” said Mrs. Jellyby; “and a degenerate child, when you might have devoted yourself to the great public measure. But the step is taken, and I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said. Now, pray, Caddy,” said Mrs. Jellyby—for Caddy was kissing her, “don’t delay me in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before the afternoon post comes in!”

I thought I could not do better than take my leave; I was detained for a moment by Caddy’s saying,

“You won’t object to my bringing him to see you, Ma?”

“O dear me, Caddy,” cried Mrs. Jellyby, who had relapsed into that distant contemplation, “have you begun again? Bring whom?”

“Him, Ma.”

“Caddy, Caddy!” said Mrs. Jellyby, quite weary of such little matters. “Then you must bring him some evening which is not a Parent Society night, or a Branch night, or a Ramification night. You must accommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. My dear Miss Summerson, it was very kind of you to come here to help out this silly chit. Good-bye! When I tell you that I have fifty-eight new letters from manufacturing families anxious to understand the details of the Native and Coffee
Cultivation question this morning, I need not apologize for having very little leisure.”

I was not surprised by Caddy’s being in low spirits, when we went downstairs; or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying she would far rather have been scolded than treated with such indifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in clothes, that how she was ever to be married creditably she didn’t know. I gradually cheered her up, by dwelling on the many things she would do for her unfortunate father, and for Peepy, when she had a home of her own; and finally we went downstairs into the damp dark kitchen, where Peepy and his little brothers and sisters were grovelling on the stone floor, and where we had such a game of play with them, that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I was obliged to fall back on my fairy-tales. From time to time, I heard loud voices in the parlour overhead; and occasionally a violent tumbling about of the furniture. The last effect I am afraid was caused by poor Mr. Jellyby’s breaking away from the dining-table, and making rushes at the window, with the intention of throwing himself into the area, whenever he made any new attempt to understand his affairs.