The Solitary House (99 page)

As I rode quietly home at night after the day’s bustle, I thought a good deal of Caddy’s engagement, and felt confirmed in my hopes (in spite of the elder Mr. Turveydrop) that she would be the happier and better for it. And if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her and her husband ever finding out what the model of Deportment really was, why that was all for the best too, and who would wish them to be wiser? I did not wish them to be any wiser, and indeed was half ashamed of not entirely believing in him myself. And I looked up at the stars, and thought about travellers in distant countries and the stars
they
saw, and hoped I might always be so blest and happy as to be useful to some one in my small way.

They were so glad to see me when I got home, as they always were, that I could have sat down and cried for joy, if that had not been a method of making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from the lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome, and spoke so cheerily, and was so
happy to do anything for me, that I suppose there never was such a fortunate little creature in the world.

We got into such a chatty state that night through Ada and my guardian drawing me out to tell them all about Caddy, that I went on prose, prose, prosing, for a length of time. At last I got up to my own room, quite red to think how I had been holding forth; and then I heard a soft tap at my door. So I said, “Come in!” and there came in a pretty little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who dropped a curtsy.

“If you please, miss,” said the little girl, in a soft voice, “I am Charley.”

“Why, so you are,” said I, stooping down in astonishment, and giving her a kiss. “How glad am I to see you, Charley!”

“If you please, miss,” pursued Charley, in the same soft voice, “I’m your maid.”

“Charley?”

“If you please, miss, I’m a present to you, with Mr. Jarndyce’s love.”

I sat down with my hand on Charley’s neck, and looked at Charley.

“And O, miss,” says Charley, clapping her hands, with the tears starting down her dimpled cheeks, “Tom’s at school, if you please, and learning so good! And little Emma, she’s with Mrs. Blinder, miss, a-being took such care of! And Tom, he would have been at school—and Emma, she would have been left with Mrs. Blinder—and me, I should have been here—all a deal sooner, miss; only Mr. Jarndyce thought that Tom and Emma and me had better get a little used to parting first, we was so small. Don’t cry, if you please, miss!”

“I can’t help it, Charley.”

“No, miss, nor I can’t help it,” says Charley. “And if you please, miss, Mr. Jarndyce’s love, and he thinks you’ll like to teach me now and then. And if you please, Tom and Emma and me is to see each other once a month. And I’m so happy and so thankful, miss,” cried Charley with a heaving heart, “and I’ll try to be such a good maid!”

“O Charley dear, never forget who did all this!”

“No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won’t. Nor yet Emma. It was all you, miss.”

“I have known nothing of it. It was Mr. Jarndyce, Charley.”

“Yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you, and that you might be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little present with his love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom was to be sure to remember it.”

Charley dried her eyes, and entered on her functions: going in her matronly little way about and about the room, and folding up everything she could lay her hands upon. Presently, Charley came creeping back to my side, and said:

“O don’t cry, if you please, miss.”

And I said again, “I can’t help it, Charley.”

And Charley said again, “No, miss, nor I can’t help it.” And so, after all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she.

CHAPTER 24

AN APPEAL CASE

A
s soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr. Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise, when he received the representation; though it caused him much uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge, and laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While they were thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent considerable inconvenience from the state of the wind, and rubbed his head so constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right place, was as genial with Ada and me as
at any other time, but maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our utmost endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping assurances that everything was going on capitally, and that it really was all right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him.

We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard’s behalf, as an Infant and a Ward, and I don’t know what; and that there was a quantity of talking; and that the Lord Chancellor described him, in open court, as a vexatious and capricious infant; and that the matter was adjourned and re-adjourned, and referred, and reported on, and petitioned about, until Richard began to doubt (as he told us) whether, if he entered the army at all, it would not be as a veteran of seventy or eighty years of age. At last an appointment was made for him to see the Lord Chancellor again in his private room, and there the Lord Chancellor very seriously reproved him for trifling with time, and not knowing his mind—“a pretty good joke, I think,” said Richard, “from that quarter!”—and at last it was settled that his application should be granted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards, as an applicant for an Ensign’s commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an Agent’s; and Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a violent course of military study, and got up at five o’clock every morning to practice the broadsword exercise.

Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, as being in the paper or out of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now in a Professor’s house in London, was able to be with us less frequently than before; my guardian still maintained the same reserve; and so time passed until the commission was obtained, and Richard received directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland.

He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed before my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting, and said, “Come in, my dears!” We went
in, and found Richard, whom we had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece, looking mortified and angry.

“Rick and I, Ada,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “are not quite of one mind. Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!”

“You are very hard with me, sir,” said Richard. “The harder because you have been so considerate to me in all other respects, and have done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never could have been set right without you, sir.”

“Well, well!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “I want to set you more right yet. I want to set you more right with yourself.”

“I hope you will excuse my saying, sir,” returned Richard in a fiery way, but yet respectfully, “that I think I am the best judge about myself.”

“I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick,” observed Mr. Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good-humour, “that it’s quite natural in you to think so, but I don’t think so. I must do my duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; and I hope you will always care for me, cool and hot.”

Ada had turned so pale, that he made her sit down in his reading-chair, and sat beside her.

“It’s nothing, my dear,” he said, “it’s nothing. Rick and I have only had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are the theme. Now you are afraid of what’s coming.”

“I am not indeed, cousin John,” replied Ada, with a smile, “if it is to come from you.”

“Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute’s calm attention, without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My dear girl,” putting his hand on hers, as it lay on the side of the easy-chair, “you recollect the talk we had, we four, when the little woman told me of a little love affair?”

“It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your kindness, that day, cousin John.”

“I can never forget it,” said Richard.

“And I can never forget it,” said Ada.

“So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for us to agree,” returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the gentleness and honour of his heart. “Ada, my bird, you should know that Rick has now chosen his profession for the
last time. All that he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He has exhausted his resources, and is bound henceforward to the tree he has planted.”

“Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir,” said Richard, “is not all I have.”

“Rick, Rick!” cried my guardian, with a sudden terror in his manner, and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have stopped his ears, “for the love of God, don’t found a hope of expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!”

We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit his lip and held his breath, and glanced at me, as if he felt, and knew that I felt too, how much he needed it.

“Ada, my dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness, “these are strong words of advice; but I live in Bleak House, and have seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had, to start him in the race of life, is ventured. I recommend to him and you, for his sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I must go further. I will be plain with you both. You were to confide freely in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship.”

“Better to say at once, sir,” returned Richard, “that you renounce all confidence in me, and that you advise Ada to do the same.”

“Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don’t mean it.”

“You think I have begun ill, sir,” retorted Richard. “I
have
, I know.”

“How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we spoke of these things last,” said Mr. Jarndyce, in a cordial and encouraging manner. “You have not made that beginning yet; but there is a time for all things, and yours is not gone by—rather, it is just now fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether.
You two (very young, my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing more: What more may come, must come of being worked out, Rick; and no sooner.”

“You are very hard with me, sir,” said Richard. “Harder than I could have supposed you would be.”

“My dear boy,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I am harder with myself when I do anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own hands. Ada, it is better for him that he should be free, and that there should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what is best for the other, if not what is best for yourselves.”

“Why is it best, sir?” returned Richard, hastily. “It was not, when we opened our hearts to you. You did not say so, then.”

“I have had experience since. I don’t blame you, Rick—but I have had experience since.”

“You mean of me, sir.”

“Well! Yes, of both of you,” said Mr. Jarndyce, kindly. “The time is not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not right, and I must recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins, begin afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to write your lives in.”

Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada, but said nothing.

“I have avoided saying one word to either of you, or to Esther,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “until now, in order that we might be open as the day, and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I now most earnestly entreat, you two, to part as you came here. Leave all else to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do wrong; and you will have made me do wrong, in ever bringing you together.”

A long silence succeeded.

“Cousin Richard,” said Ada, then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to his face, “after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice is left us. Your mind may be quite at ease about me; for you will leave me here under his care, and will be sure that I can have nothing to wish for; quite sure, if I guide myself by his advice. I—I don’t doubt, cousin Richard,” said Ada, a little confused, “that you are very fond of me, and I—I don’t think you
will fall in love with anybody else. But I should like you to consider well about it too; as I should like you to be in all things very happy. You may trust in me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable; but I am not unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cousins may be sorry to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Richard, though I know it’s for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately, and often talk of you with Esther, and—and perhaps you will sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard. So now,” said Ada, going up to him and giving him her trembling hand, “we are only cousins again, Richard—for the time perhaps—and I pray for a blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!”