Bleak House. Charles Dickens
speak, 'Leave me, and send Mrs. Rouncewell here!' feeling his dignity, at such a pass, safer with her than with anybody else.
Mrs. Rouncewell has known trouble. She has had two sons, of whom the younger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back. Even to this hour, Mrs. Rouncewell's calm hands lose their composure when she speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover about her in an agitated manner, as she says, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay, good-humoured, clever lad he was! Her second son would have been provided for at Chesney Wold, and would have been made steward in due season; but he took, when he was a schoolboy, to constructing steam-engines out of saucepans, and setting birds to draw their own water, with the least possible amount of labour; so assisting them with artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure, that a thirsty canary had only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to the wheel, and the job was done. This propensity gave Mrs. Rouncewell great uneasiness. She felt it with a mother's anguish, to be a move in the Wat Tyler direction: well knowing that Sir Leicester had that general impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a tall chimney might be considered essential. But the doomed young rebel (otherwise a mild youth, and very persevering), showing no sign of grace as he got older; but, on the contrary, constructing a model of a power-loom, she was fain, with many tears, to mention his backslidings to the baronet. 'Mrs. Rouncewell,' said Sir Leicester, 'I can never consent to argue, as you know, with any one on any subject. You had better get rid of your boy; you had better get him into some Works. The iron country farther north is, I suppose, the congenial direction for a boy with these tendencies.' Farther north he went, and farther north he grew up; and if Sir Leicester Dedlock ever saw him, when he came to Chesney Wold to visit his mother, or ever thought of him afterwards, it is certain that he only regarded him as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and grim, who were in the habit of turning out by torchlight, two or three nights in the week, for unlawful purposes.
Nevertheless Mrs. Rouncewell's son has, in the course of nature and art, grown up, and established himself, and married, and called unto him Mrs. Rouncewell's grandson: who, being out of his apprenticeship, and home from a journey in far countries, whither he was sent to enlarge his knowledge and complete his preparations for the venture of this life, stands leaning against the chimney-piece this very day, in Mrs. Rouncewell's room at Chesney Wold.
'And, again and again, I am glad to see you, Watt! And, once again, I am glad to see you, Watt!' says Mrs. Rouncewell. 'You are a fine young fellow. You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!' Mrs. Rouncewell's hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference.
'They say I am like my father, grandmother.'
'Like him, also, my dear, – but most like your poor uncle George! And your dear father.' Mrs. Rouncewell folds her hands again. 'He is well?'
'Thriving, grandmother, in every way.'
'I am thankful!' Mrs. Rouncewell is fond of her son, but has a plaintive feeling towards him – much as if he were a very honourable soldier, who had gone over to the enemy.
'He is quite happy?' says she.
'Quite.'
'I am thankful! So he has brought you up to follow in his ways, and has sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knows best. There may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don't understand. Though I am not young, either. And I have seen a quantity of good company too!'
'Grandmother,' says the young man, changing the subject, 'what a very pretty girl that was, I found with you just now. You called her Rosa?'
'Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids are so hard to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her about me young. She's an apt scholar, and will do well. She shows the house already, very pretty. She lives with me at my table here.'
'I hope I have not driven her away?'
'She supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say. She is very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. And scarcer,' says Mrs. Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits, 'than it formerly was!'
The young man inclines his head, in acknowledgment of the precepts of experience. Mrs. Rouncewell listens.
'Wheels!' says she. They have long been audible to the younger ears of her companion. 'What wheels on such a day as this, for gracious sake?'
After a short interval a tap at the door. 'Come in!' A dark-eyed, dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in – so fresh in her rosy and yet delicate bloom, that the drops of rain, which have beaten on her hair, look like the dew upon a flower fresh gathered.
'What company is this, Rosa?' says Mrs. Rouncewell.
'It's two young men in a gig, ma'am, who want to see the house – yes, and if you please, I told them sol' in quick reply to a gesture of dissent from the housekeeper. 'I went to the hall-door, and told them it was the wrong day, and the wrong hour; but the young man who was driving took off his hat in the wet, and begged me to bring this card to you.'
'Read it, my dear Watt,' says the housekeeper.
Rosa is so shy as she gives it to him, that they drop it between them, and almost knock their foreheads together as they pick it up. Rosa is shyer than before.
'Mr. Guppy' is all the information the card yields.
'Guppy!' repeats Mrs. Rouncewell. 'Mr. Guppy! Nonsense, I never heard of him!'
'If you please, he told me that!' says Rosa. 'But he said that he and the other young gentleman came from London only last night by the mail, on business at the magistrates' meeting, ten miles off, this morning; and that as their business was soon over, and they had heard a great deal said of Chesney Wold, and really didn't know what to do with themselves, they had come through the wet to see it. They are lawyers. He says he is not in Mr. Tulkinghorn's office, but he is sure he may make use of Mr. Tulkinghorn's name, if necessary.' Finding, now she leaves off, that she has been making quite a long speech, Rosa is shyer than ever.
Now, Mr. Tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and parcel of the place; and, besides, is supposed to have made Mrs. Rouncewell's will. The old lady relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a favour, and dismisses Rosa. The grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden wish to see the house himself, proposes to join the party. The grandmother, who is pleased that he should have that interest, accompanies him – though to do him justice, he is exceedingly unwilling to trouble her.
'Much obliged to you, ma'am!' says Mr. Guppy, divesting himself of his wet dreadnought in the hall. 'Us London lawyers don't often get an out; and when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know.'
The old housekeeper, with a gracious severity of deportmerit, waves her hand towards the great staircase. Mr. Guppy and his friend follow Rosa, Mrs. Rouncewell and her grandson follow them, a young gardener goes before to open the shutters.
As is usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house itself, rests apart in a window-seat, or other such nook, and listens with stately approval to Rosa's exposition. Her grandson is so attentive to it, that Rosa is shyer than ever – and prettier. Thus they pass on from room to room, raising the pictured Dedlocks for a few brief minutes as the young gardener admits the light, and reconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. It appears to the afflicted Mr. Guppy and his inconsolable friend, that there is no end to the Dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to consist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves, for seven hundred years.
Even the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold cannot revive Mr. Guppy's spirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold, and has hardly strength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece, painted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a charm. He recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon interest; he seems to be fixed and fascinated by it.
'Dear me!' says Mr. Guppy. 'Who's that?'
'The picture over the fireplace,' says Rosa,