Bleak House. Charles Dickens
a large seal-ring upon his little finger.
'This,' said my godmother in an under-tone, 'is the child.' Then she said, in her naturally stern way of speaking, 'This is Esther, sir.'
The gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me, and said, 'Come here, my dear!' He shook hands with me, and asked me to take off my bonnet – looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he said, 'Ah!' and afterwards 'Yes!' And then, taking off his eye-glasses, and folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair, turning the case about in his two hands he gave my godmother a nod. Upon that, my godmother said, 'You may go up-stairs, Esther!' and I made him my curtsey and left him.
It must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen, when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o'clock, as I always did, to read the Bible to her; and was reading, from St. John, how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him.
' "So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her!"'
I was stopped by my godmother's rising, putting her hand to her head, and crying out, in an awful voice, from quite another part of the book:
' "Watch ye therefore! lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!" '
In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had sounded through the house, and been heard in the street.
She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little altered outwardly; with her old handsome resolute frown that I so well knew, carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers might be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her, asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me the least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was immovable. To the very last, and even afterwards, her frown remained unsoftened.
On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs. Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if be had never gone away.
'My name is Kenge,' he said; 'you may remember it, my child; Kenge and Carboy, Lincoln's Inn.'
I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.
'Pray be seated – here near me. Don't distress yourself; it's of no use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn't inform you, who were acquainted with the late Miss Barbary's affairs, that her means die with her; and that this young lady, now her aunt is dead—'
'My aunt, sir!'
'It is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to be gained by it,' said Mr. Kenge, smoothly. 'Aunt in fact, though not in law. Don't distress yourself! Don't weep! Don't tremble! Mrs. Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of – the – a – Jarndyce and Jarndyce.'
'Never,' said Mrs. Rachael.
'Is it possible,' pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eyeglasses, 'that our young friend – I beg you won't distress yourself! – never heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce!'
I shook my head, wondering even what it was.
'Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?' said Mr. Kenge, looking over his glasses at me, and softly turning the case about and about, as if he were petting something. 'Not of one of the greatest Chancery suits known? Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce – the – a – in itself a monument of Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, every contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known in that court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause that could not exist, out of this free and great country. I should say that the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs. Rachael; I was afraid he addressed himself to her, because I appeared inattentive; 'amounts at the present hour to from sixty to seventy thousand pounds!' said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair.
I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely unacquainted with the subject, that I understood nothing about it even then.
'And she really never heard of the cause!' said Mr. Kenge. 'Surprising!'
'Miss Barbary, sir,' returned Mrs. Rachael, 'who is now among the Seraphim–'
('I hope so, I am sure,' said Mr. Kenge politely.)
'—Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her. And she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more.'
'Well!' said Mr. Kenge. 'Upon the whole; very proper. Now to the point,' addressing me. 'Miss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact, that is; for I am bound to observe that in law you had none), being deceased, and it naturally not being to be expected that Mrs. Rachael–'
'O dear no!' said Mrs. Rachael, quickly.
'Quite so,' assented Mr. Kenge;—'that Mrs. Rachael should charge herself with your maintenance and support (I beg you won't distress yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago, and which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow, that I represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and otherwise, a highly humane, but at the same time singular man, shall I compromise myself by any stretch of my professional caution?' said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair again, and looking calmly at us both.
He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full, and gave great importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with obvious satisfaction, and sometimes gently beat time to his own music with his head, or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much impressed by him– even then, before I knew that he formed himself on the model of a great lord who was his client, and that he was generally called Conversation Kenge.
'Mr. Jarndyce,' he pursued, 'being aware of the – I would say, desolate – position of our young friend, offers to place her at a first-rate establishment; where her education shall be completed, where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge her duty in that station of life unto which it has pleased – shall I say Providence? – to call her.'
My heart was filled so full, both by what he said, and by his affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though I tried.
'Mr. Jarndyce,' he went on, 'makes no condition, beyond expressing his expectation that our young friend will not at any time remove herself from the establishment in question without his knowledge and concurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she will be ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths of virtue and honour, and– the – a – so forth.'
I was still less able to speak than before.
'Now, what does our young friend say?' proceeded Mr. Kenge. 'Take time, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!'
What the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need not repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were worth the telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I could never relate.
This interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as I knew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all necessaries, I left it, inside the stage-coach, for Reading.
Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known her better after so many years, and ought to have made myself enough of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone porch – it was a very frosty day – I felt so miserable and self-reproachful, that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I knew, that she could say good-bye so easily!
'No, Esther!' she returned. 'It is your misfortune!'
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