The Solitary House (56 page)

CHAPTER 6

QUITE AT HOME

T
he day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we went westward. We went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air, wondering more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy of the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the pleasanter weather seemed to have brought out like many-coloured flowers. By and by we began to leave the wonderful city, and to proceed through suburbs which, of themselves, would have made a pretty large town, in my eyes; and at last we got into a real country road again, with windmills, rickyards, milestones, farmers’ waggons, scents of old hay, swinging signs and horse troughs: trees, fields, and hedgerows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before us and the immense metropolis behind; and when a waggon with a train of beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding bells came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around.

“The whole road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington,” said Richard, “and that waggon is the finishing touch. Halloa! what’s the matter?”

We had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. Its music
changed as the horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except when a horse tossed his head, or shook himself, and sprinkled off a little shower of bellringing.

“Our postilion is looking after the waggoner,” said Richard; “and the waggoner is coming back after us. Good day, friend!” The waggoner was at our coach-door. “Why, here’s an extraordinary thing!” added Richard, looking closely at the man. “He has got your name, Ada, in his hat!”

He had all our names in his hat. Tucked within the band were three small notes; one, addressed to Ada; one, to Richard; one, to me. These the waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name aloud first. In answer to Richard’s inquiry from whom they came, he briefly answered, “Master, sir, if you please”; and putting on his hat again (which was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, reawakening his music, and went melodiously away.

“Is that Mr. Jarndyce’s waggon?” said Richard, calling to our post-boy.

“Yes, sir,” he replied. “Going to London.”

We opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of the other, and contained these words, in a solid, plain hand.

“I look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily, and without constraint on either side. I therefore have to propose that we meet as old friends, and take the past for granted. It will be a relief to you possibly, and to me certainly, and so my love to you
.

John Jarndyce”

I had perhaps less reason to be surprised than either of my companions, having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one who had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so many years. I had not considered how I could thank him, my gratitude lying too deep in my heart for that; but I now began to consider how I could meet him without thanking him, and felt it would be very difficult indeed.

The notes revived, in Richard and Ada, a general impression that they both had, without quite knowing how they came by it,
that their cousin Jarndyce could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he performed, and that, sooner than receive any, he would resort to the most singular expedients and evasions, or would even run away. Ada dimly remembered to have heard her mother tell, when she was a very little child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon generosity, and that on her going to his house to thank him, he happened to see her through a window coming to the door, and immediately escaped by the back gate, and was not heard of for three months. This discourse led to a great deal more on the same theme, and indeed it lasted us all day, and we talked of scarcely anything else. If we did, by any chance, diverge into another subject, we soon returned to this; and wondered what the house would be like, and when we should get there, and whether we should see Mr. Jarndyce as soon as we arrived, or after a delay, and what he would say to us, and what we should say to him. All of which we wondered about, over and over again.

The roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was generally good; so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked it so well that we prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got to the top. At Barnet there were other horses waiting for us; but as they had only just been fed, we had to wait for them too, and got a long fresh walk, over a common and an old battlefield, before the carriage came up. These delays so protracted the journey, that the short day was spent, and the long night had closed in, before we came to St. Albans; near to which town Bleak House was, we knew.

By that time we were so anxious and nervous, that even Richard confessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to feeling an irrational desire to drive back again. As to Ada and me, whom he had wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp and frosty, we trembled from head to foot. When we turned out of the town, round a corner, and Richard told us that the post-boy, who had for a long time sympathized with our heightened expectation, was looking back and nodding, we both stood up in the carriage (Richard holding Ada, lest she should be jolted down), and gazed round upon the open country and the starlight night, for our destination. There was a
light sparkling on the top of a hill before us, and the driver, pointing to it with his whip, and crying, “That’s Bleak House!” put his horses into a canter, and took us forward at such a rate, uphill though it was, that the wheels sent the road drift flying about our heads like spray from a water-mill. Presently we lost the light, presently saw it, presently lost it, presently saw it, and turned into an avenue of trees, and cantered up towards where it was beaming brightly. It was in a window of what seemed to be an old-fashioned house, with three peaks in the roof in front, and a circular sweep leading to the porch. A bell was rung as we drew up, and amidst the sound of its deep voice in the still air, and the distant barking of some dogs, and a gush of light from the opened door, and the smoking and steaming of the heated horses, and the quickened beating of our own hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable confusion.

“Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome. I rejoice to see you! Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present, I would give it you!”

The gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable voice, had one of his arms round Ada’s waist, and the other round mine, and kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall into a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire. Here he kissed us again, and, opening his arms, made us sit down side by side, on a sofa ready drawn out near the hearth. I felt that if we had been at all demonstrative, he would have run away in a moment.

“Now, Rick!” said he. “I have a hand at liberty. A word in earnest is as good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you. You are at home. Warm yourself!”

Richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of respect and frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that rather alarmed me, I was so afraid of Mr. Jarndyce’s suddenly disappearing), “You are very kind, sir! We are very much obliged to you!” laid aside his hat and coat, and came up to the fire.

“And how did you like the ride? And how did you like Mrs. Jellyby, my dear?” said Mr. Jarndyce to Ada.

While Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glanced (I need
not say with how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively, quick face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered iron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was upright, hearty, and robust. From the moment of his first speaking to us, his voice had connected itself with an association in my mind that I could not define; but now, all at once, a something sudden in his manner, and a pleasant expression in his eyes, recalled the gentleman in the stage-coach, six years ago, on the memorable day of my journey to Reading. I was certain it was he. I never was so frightened in my life as when I made the discovery, for he caught my glance, and appearing to read my thoughts, gave such a look at the door that I thought we had lost him.

However, I am happy to say he remained where he was, and asked me what
I
thought of Mrs. Jellyby.

“She exerts herself very much for Africa, sir,” I said.

“Nobly!” returned Mr. Jarndyce. “But you answer like Ada.” Whom I had not heard. “You all think something else, I see.”

“We rather thought,” said I, glancing at Richard and Ada, who entreated me with their eyes to speak, “that perhaps she was a little unmindful of her home.”

“Floored!” cried Mr. Jarndyce.

I was rather alarmed again.

“Well! I want to know your real thoughts, my dear. I may have sent you there on purpose.”

“We thought that, perhaps,” said I, hesitating, “it is right to begin with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted for them.”

“The little Jellybys,” said Richard, coming to my relief, “are really—I can’t help expressing myself strongly, sir—in a devil of a state.”

“She means well,” said Mr. Jarndyce, hastily. “The wind’s in the east.”

“It was in the north, sir, as we came down,” observed Richard

“My dear Rick,” said Mr. Jarndyce, poking the fire; “I’ll take an oath it’s either in the east, or going to be. I am always
conscious of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the east.”

“Rheumatism, sir?” said Richard.

“I dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is. And so the little Jell—I had my doubts about ’em—are in a—oh, Lord, yes, it’s easterly!” said Mr. Jarndyce.

He had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation, at once so whimsical and so lovable, that I am sure we were more delighted with him than we could possibly have expressed in any words. He gave an arm to Ada and an arm to me, and bidding Richard bring a candle, was leading the way out, when he suddenly turned us all back again.

“Those little Jellybys. Couldn’t you—didn’t you—now, if it had rained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything of that sort!” said Mr. Jarndyce.

“O, cousin—” Ada hastily began.

“Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin John, perhaps, is better.”

“Then, cousin John!—” Ada laughingly began again.

“Ha, ha! Very good indeed!” said Mr. Jarndyce, with great enjoyment. “Sounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?”

“It did better than that. It rained Esther.”

“Ay?” said Mr. Jarndyce. “What did Esther do?”

“Why, cousin John,” said Ada, clasping her hands upon his arm and shaking her head at me across him—for I wanted her to be quiet: “Esther was their friend directly. Esther nursed them, coaxed them to sleep, washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them quiet, bought them keepsakes”—My dear girl! I had only gone out with Peepy, after he was found, and given him a little, tiny horse!—“and, cousin John, she softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so much and was so thoughtful for me and so amiable!—No, no, I won’t be contradicted, Esther dear! You know, you know, it’s true!”

The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin John, and kissed me; and then looking up in his face, boldly said, “At all events, cousin John, I
will
thank you for the companion you
have given me.” I felt as if she challenged him to run away. But he didn’t.

“Where did you say the wind was, Rick?” asked Mr. Jarndyce.

“In the north as we came down, sir.”

“You are right. There’s no east in it. A mistake of mine. Come, girls, come and see your home!”

It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and down steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is a bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places, with lattice windows and green growth pressing through them. Mine, which we entered first, was of this kind, with an up-and-down roof, that had more corners in it than I ever counted afterwards, and a chimney (there was a wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with pure white tiles, in every one of which a bright miniature of the fire was blazing. Out of this room, you went down two steps, into a charming little sitting-room, looking down upon a flower-garden, which room was henceforth to belong to Ada and me. Out of this you went up three steps, into Ada’s bedroom, which had a fine broad window, commanding a beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying underneath the stars), to which there was a hollow window-seat, in which, with a springlock, three dear Adas might have been lost at once. Out of this room, you passed into a little gallery, with which the other best rooms (only two) communicated, and so, by a little staircase of shallow steps, with a number of corner stairs in it, considering its length, down into the hall. But if, instead of going out at Ada’s door, you came back into my room, and went out at the door by which you had entered it, and turned up a few crooked steps that branched off in an unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages, with mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a Native-Hindoo chair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in every form something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, and had been brought from India nobody knew by whom or when. From these, you came on
Richard’s room, which was part library, part sitting-room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound of many rooms. Out of that, you went straight, with a little interval of passage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce slept, all the year round, with his window open, his bedstead without any furniture standing in the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold bath gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that, you came into another passage, where there were back-stairs and where you could hear the horses being rubbed down outside the stable, and being told to Hold up, and Get over, as they slipped about very much on the uneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another door (every room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back there, or had ever got out of it.