I began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her resolute face so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with Mrs. Rachael than if I had had no one in the world to speak to or to look at. I passed to the altered days when I was so blest as to find friends in all around me, and to be beloved. I came to the time when I first saw my dear girl and was received into that sisterly affection which was the grace and beauty of my life. I recalled the first bright gleam of welcome which had shone out of those very windows upon our expectant faces on that cold bright night, and which had never paled. I lived my happy life there over again, I went through my illness and recovery, I thought of myself so altered and of those around me so unchanged; and all this happiness shone like a light from one central figure, represented before me by the letter on the table.
I opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me, and in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read much at a time. But I read it through three times before I laid it down. I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It asked me, would I be the mistress of Bleak House.
It was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind protecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the feelings they had awakened his. It dwelt on my being young, and he past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he was certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew since our late confidence and had decided on taking it, if it only served to show me through one poor instance that the whole world would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood. I was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, but of that he said no more, for I was always to remember that I owed him nothing and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often thought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age) would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up, had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it. If I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to be my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even then I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his old manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to his bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the same, he knew.
This was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his integrity he stated the full case.
But he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he had had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from it. That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in need of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the last.
But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means of thanking him?
Still I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect—for it was strange though I had expected the contents—but as if something for which there was no name or distinct idea were indefinitely lost to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very hopeful; but I cried very much.
By and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I said, “Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!” I am afraid the face in the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my finger at it, and it stopped.
“That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear, when you showed me such a change!” said I, beginning to let down my hair. “When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us begin for once and for all.”
I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was crying then.
“And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men.”
I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid them down in their basket again.
Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why I should be busy, busy, busy—useful, amiable, serviceable, in all honest, unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem strange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had not. “Don’t you remember, my plain dear,” I asked myself, looking at the glass, “what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were there about yourmarrying—”
Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it would be better not to keep them now.
They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room—our sitting-room, dividing Ada’s chamber from mine. I took a candle and went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand, I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and I stole in to kiss her.
It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for a moment to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard, though, indeed, the flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own room and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant.
On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian just as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was none) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and I thought it not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did not say a word.
So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week, over which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every day, that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never did.
I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days, and he never said a word.
At last, Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going down, came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the drawing-room window looking out.
He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, “Aye, it’s you, little woman, is it?” and looked out again.
I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down on purpose. “Guardian,” I said, rather hesitating and trembling, “when would you like to have the answer to the letter Charley came for?”
“When it’s ready, my dear,” he replied.
“I think it is ready,” said I.
“Is Charley to bring it?” he asked pleasantly.
“No. I have brought it myself, guardian,” I returned.
I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said nothing to my precious pet about it.
One morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys, as my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I happened to turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin shadow going in which looked like Mr. Vholes. Ada had been telling me only that morning of her hopes that Richard might exhaust his ardour in the Chancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and therefore, not to damp my dear girl’s spirits, I said nothing about Mr. Vholes’s shadow.
Presently came Charley, lightly winding among the bushes and tripping along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora’s attendants instead of my maid, saying, “Oh, if you please, miss, would you step and speak to Mr. Jarndyce!”
It was one of Charley’s peculiarities that whenever she was charged with a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld, at any distance, the person for whom it was intended. Therefore I saw Charley asking me in her usual form of words to “step and speak” to Mr. Jarndyce long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she had said it so often that she was out of breath.
I told Ada I would make haste back and inquired of Charley as we went in whether there was not a gentleman with Mr. Jarndyce. To which Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit to my educational powers, replied, “Yes, miss. Him as come down in the country with Mr. Richard.”
A more complete contrast than my guardian and Mr. Vholes I suppose there could not be. I found them looking at one another across a table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and upright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what he had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner that I thought I never had seen two people so unmatched.
“You know Mr. Vholes, my dear,” said my guardian. Not with the greatest urbanity, I must say.
Mr. Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself again, just as he had seated himself beside Richard in the gig. Not having Richard to look at, he looked straight before him.
“Mr. Vholes,” said my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he were a bird of ill omen, “has brought an ugly report of our most unfortunate Rick.” Laying a marked emphasis on “most unfortunate” as if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with Mr. Vholes.
I sat down between them; Mr. Vholes remained immovable, except that he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with his black glove.
“And as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to know,” said my guardian, “what you think, my dear. Would you be so good as to—as to speak up, Mr. Vholes?”
Doing anything but that, Mr. Vholes observed, “I have been saying that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr. C.’s professional adviser, that Mr. C.’s circumstances are at the present moment in an embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount as owing to the peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr. C. has incurred and the means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved off many little matters for Mr. C., but there is a limit to staving off, and we have reached it. I have made some advances out of pocket to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look to being repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capital, and I have a father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to realize some little independence for three dear girls at home. My apprehension is, Mr. C.’s circumstances being such, lest it should end in his obtaining leave to part with his commission, which at all events is desirable to be made known to his connexions.”
Mr. Vholes, who had looked at me while speaking, here emerged into the silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so stifled was his tone, and looked before him again.
“Imagine the poor fellow without even his present resource,” said my guardian to me. “Yet what can I do? You know him, Esther. He would never accept of help from me now. To offer it or hint at it would be to drive him to an extremity, if nothing else did.”
Mr. Vholes hereupon addressed me again.
“What Mr. Jarndyce remarks, miss, is no doubt the case, and is the difficulty. I do not see that anything is to be done. I do not say that anything is to be done. Far from it. I merely come down here under the seal of confidence and mention it in order that everything may be openly carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that everything was not openly carried on. My wish is that everything should be openly carried on. I desire to leave a good name behind me. If I consulted merely my own interests with Mr. C., I should not be here. So insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his objections. This is not a professional attendance. This can he charged to nobody. I have no interest in it except as a member of society and a father—AND a son,” said Mr. Vholes, who had nearly forgotten that point.
It appeared to us that Mr. Vholes said neither more nor less than the truth in intimating that he sought to divide the responsibility, such as it was, of knowing Richard’s situation. I could only suggest that I should go down to Deal, where Richard was then stationed, and see him, and try if it were possible to avert the worst. Without consulting Mr. Vholes on this point, I took my guardian aside to propose it, while Mr. Vholes gauntly stalked to the fire and warmed his funeral gloves.
The fatigue of the journey formed an immediate objection on my guardian’s part, but as I saw he had no other, and as I was only too happy to go, I got his consent. We had then merely to dispose of Mr. Vholes.
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “Miss Summerson will communicate with Mr. Carstone, and you can only hope that his position may be yet retrievable. You will allow me to order you lunch after your journey, sir.”
“I thank you, Mr. Jarndyce,” said Mr. Vholes, putting out his long black sleeve to check the ringing of the bell, “not any. I thank you, no, not a morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am but a poor knife and fork at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this period of the day, I don’t know what the consequences might be. Everything having been openly carried on, sir, I will now with your permission take my leave.”
“And I would that you could take your leave, and we could all take our leave, Mr. Vholes,” returned my guardian bitterly, “of a cause you know of.”
Mr. Vholes, whose black dye was so deep from head to foot that it had quite steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleasant perfume, made a short one-sided inclination of his head from the neck and slowly shook it.
“We whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of respectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the wheel. We do it, sir. At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think well of my professional brethren, one and all. You are sensible of an obligation not to refer to me, miss, in communicating with Mr. C.?”
I said I would be careful not to do it.
“Just so, miss. Good morning. Mr. Jarndyce, good morning, sir.” Mr. Vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in it, on my fingers, and then on my guardian’s fingers, and took his long thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach, passing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling the seed in the ground as it glided along.
Of course it became necessary to tell Ada where I was going and why I was going, and of course she was anxious and distressed. But she was too true to Richard to say anything but words of pity and words of excuse, and in a more loving spirit still—my dear devoted girl!—she wrote him a long letter, of which I took charge.
Charley was to be my travelling companion, though I am sure I wanted none and would willingly have left her at home. We all went to London that afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them. At our usual bed-time, Charley and I were rolling away seaward with the Kentish letters.
It was a night’s journey in those coach times, but we had the mail to ourselves and did not find the night very tedious. It passed with me as I suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At one while my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now I thought I should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever have supposed so. Now it seemed one of the most reasonable things in the world that I should have come, and now one of the most unreasonable. In what state I should find Richard, what I should say to him, and what he would say to me occupied my mind by turns with these two states of feeling; and the wheels seemed to play one tune (to which the burden of my guardian’s letter set itself) over and over again all night.
At last we came into the narrow streets of Deal, and very gloomy they were upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever saw. The sea was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but a few early ropemakers, who, with the yarn twisted round their bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they were spinning themselves into cordage.
But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel and sat down, comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful. Our little room was like a ship’s cabin, and that delighted Charley very much. Then the fog began to rise like a curtain, and numbers of ships that we had had no idea were near appeared. I don’t know how many sail the waiter told us were then lying in the downs. Some of these vessels were of grand size—one was a large Indiaman just come home; and when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in the dark sea, the way in which these ships brightened, and shadowed, and changed, amid a bustle of boats pulling off from the shore to them and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in themselves and everything around them, was most beautiful.
The large Indiaman was our great attraction because she had come into the downs in the night. She was surrounded by boats, and we said how glad the people on board of her must be to come ashore. Charley was curious, too, about the voyage, and about the heat in India, and the serpents and the tigers; and as she picked up such information much faster than grammar, I told her what I knew on those points. I told her, too, how people in such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast on rocks, where they were saved by the intrepidity and humanity of one man. And Charley asking how that could be, I told her how we knew at home of such a case.
I had thought of sending Richard a note saying I was there, but it seemed so much better to go to him without preparation. As he lived in barracks I was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we went out to reconnoitre. Peeping in at the gate of the barrack-yard, we found everything very quiet at that time in the morning, and I asked a sergeant standing on the guardhouse-steps where he lived. He sent a man before to show me, who went up some bare stairs, and knocked with his knuckles at a door, and left us.
“Now then!” cried Richard from within. So I left Charley in the little passage, and going on to the half-open door, said, “Can I come in, Richard? It’s only Dame Durden.”
He was writing at a table, with a great confusion of clothes, tin cases, books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus strewn all about the floor. He was only half dressed—in plain clothes, I observed, not in uniform—and his hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his room. All this I saw after he had heartily welcomed me and I was seated near him, for he started upon hearing my voice and caught me in his arms in a moment. Dear Richard! He was ever the same to me. Down to—ah, poor poor fellow!—to the end, he never received me but with something of his old merry boyish manner.
“Good heaven, my dear little woman,” said he, “how do you come here? Who could have thought of seeing you! Nothing the matter? Ada is well?”
“Quite well. Lovelier than ever, Richard!”
“Ah!” he said, leaning back in his chair. “My poor cousin! I was writing to you, Esther.”
So worn and haggard as he looked, even in the fullness of his handsome youth, leaning back in his chair and crushing the closely written sheet of paper in his hand!
“Have you been at the trouble of writing all that, and am I not to read it after all?” I asked.
“Oh, my dear,” he returned with a hopeless gesture. “You may read it in the whole room. It is all over here.”
I mildly entreated him not to be despondent. I told him that I had heard by chance of his being in difficulty and had come to consult with him what could best be done.
“Like you, Esther, but useless, and so NOT like you!” said he with a melancholy smile. “I am away on leave this day—should have been gone in another hour—and that is to smooth it over, for my selling out. Well! Let bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the rest. I only want to have been in the church to have made the round of all the professions.”
“Richard,” I urged, “it is not so hopeless as that?”
“Esther,” he returned, “it is indeed. I am just so near disgrace as that those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes) would far rather be without me than with me. And they are right. Apart from debts and duns and all such drawbacks, I am not fit even for this employment. I have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but for one thing. Why, if this bubble hadn’t broken now,” he said, tearing the letter he had written into fragments and moodily casting them away, by driblets, “how could I have gone abroad? I must have been ordered abroad, but how could I have gone? How could I, with my experience of that thing, trust even Vholes unless I was at his back!”
I suppose he knew by my face what I was about to say, but he caught the hand I had laid upon his arm and touched my own lips with it to prevent me from going on.
“No, Dame Durden! Two subjects I forbid—must forbid. The first is John Jarndyce. The second, you know what. Call it madness, and I tell you I can’t help it now, and can’t be sane. But it is no such thing; it is the one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever was prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be wisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I have bestowed upon it! Oh, yes, true wisdom. It would be very agreeable, too, to some people; but I never will.”
He was in that mood in which I thought it best not to increase his determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. I took out Ada’s letter and put it in his hand.
“Am I to read it now?” he asked.
As I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and resting his head upon his hand, began. He had not read far when he rested his head upon his two hands—to hide his face from me. In a little while he rose as if the light were bad and went to the window. He finished reading it there, with his back towards me, and after he had finished and had folded it up, stood there for some minutes with the letter in his hand. When he came back to his chair, I saw tears in his eyes.
“Of course, Esther, you know what she says here?” He spoke in a softened voice and kissed the letter as he asked me.
“Yes, Richard.”
“Offers me,” he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, “the little inheritance she is certain of so soon—just as little and as much as I have wasted—and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right with it, and remain in the service.”
“I know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart,” said I. “And, oh, my dear Richard, Ada’s is a noble heart.”
“I am sure it is. I—I wish I was dead!”
He went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his head down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see him so, but I hoped he might become more yielding, and I remained silent. My experience was very limited; I was not at all prepared for his rousing himself out of this emotion to a new sense of injury.
“And this is the heart that the same John Jarndyce, who is not otherwise to be mentioned between us, stepped in to estrange from me,” said he indignantly. “And the dear girl makes me this generous offer from under the same John Jarndyce’s roof, and with the same John Jarndyce’s gracious consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new means of buying me off.”
“Richard!” I cried out, rising hastily. “I will not hear you say such shameful words!” I was very angry with him indeed, for the first time in my life, but it only lasted a moment. When I saw his worn young face looking at me as if he were sorry, I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “If you please, my dear Richard, do not speak in such a tone to me. Consider!”
He blamed himself exceedingly and told me in the most generous manner that he had been very wrong and that he begged my pardon a thousand times. At that I laughed, but trembled a little too, for I was rather fluttered after being so fiery.
“To accept this offer, my dear Esther,” said he, sitting down beside me and resuming our conversation, “—once more, pray, pray forgive me; I am deeply grieved—to accept my dearest cousin’s offer is, I need not say, impossible. Besides, I have letters and papers that I could show you which would convince you it is all over here. I have done with the red coat, believe me. But it is some satisfaction, in the midst of my troubles and perplexities, to know that I am pressing Ada’s interests in pressing my own. Vholes has his shoulder to the wheel, and he cannot help urging it on as much for her as for me, thank God!”
His sanguine hopes were rising within him and lighting up his features, but they made his face more sad to me than it had been before.
“No, no!” cried Richard exultingly. “If every farthing of Ada’s little fortune were mine, no part of it should be spent in retaining me in what I am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary of. It should be devoted to what promises a better return, and should be used where she has a larger stake. Don’t be uneasy for me! I shall now have only one thing on my mind, and Vholes and I will work it. I shall not be without means. Free of my commission, I shall be able to compound with some small usurers who will hear of nothing but their bond now—Vholes says so. I should have a balance in my favour anyway, but that would swell it. Come, come! You shall carry a letter to Ada from me, Esther, and you must both of you be more hopeful of me and not believe that I am quite cast away just yet, my dear.”
I will not repeat what I said to Richard. I know it was tiresome, and nobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all wise. It only came from my heart. He heard it patiently and feelingly, but I saw that on the two subjects he had reserved it was at present hopeless to make any representation to him. I saw too, and had experienced in this very interview, the sense of my guardian’s remark that it was even more mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as he was.
Therefore I was driven at last to asking Richard if he would mind convincing me that it really was all over there, as he had said, and that it was not his mere impression. He showed me without hesitation a correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was arranged. I found, from what he told me, that Mr. Vholes had copies of these papers and had been in consultation with him throughout. Beyond ascertaining this, and having been the bearer of Ada’s letter, and being (as I was going to be) Richard’s companion back to London, I had done no good by coming down. Admitting this to myself with a reluctant heart, I said I would return to the hotel and wait until he joined me there, so he threw a cloak over his shoulders and saw me to the gate, and Charley and I went back along the beach.
There was a concourse of people in one spot, surrounding some naval officers who were landing from a boat, and pressing about them with unusual interest. I said to Charley this would be one of the great Indiaman’s boats now, and we stopped to look.
The gentlemen came slowly up from the waterside, speaking good-humouredly to each other and to the people around and glancing about them as if they were glad to be in England again. “Charley, Charley,” said I, “come away!” And I hurried on so swiftly that my little maid was surprised.
It was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room and I had had time to take breath that I began to think why I had made such haste. In one of the sunburnt faces I had recognized Mr. Allan Woodcourt, and I had been afraid of his recognizing me. I had been unwilling that he should see my altered looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my courage had quite failed me.
But I knew this would not do, and I now said to myself, “My dear, there is no reason—there is and there can be no reason at all—why it should be worse for you now than it ever has been. What you were last month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better. This is not your resolution; call it up, Esther, call it up!” I was in a great tremble—with running—and at first was quite unable to calm myself; but I got better, and I was very glad to know it.
The party came to the hotel. I heard them speaking on the staircase. I was sure it was the same gentlemen because I knew their voices again—I mean I knew Mr. Woodcourt’s. It would still have been a great relief to me to have gone away without making myself known, but I was determined not to do so. “No, my dear, no. No, no, no!”
I untied my bonnet and put my veil half up—I think I mean half down, but it matters very little—and wrote on one of my cards that I happened to be there with Mr. Richard Carstone, and I sent it in to Mr. Woodcourt. He came immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be by chance among the first to welcome him home to England. And I saw that he was very sorry for me.
“You have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “but we can hardly call that a misfortune which enabled you to be so useful and so brave. We read of it with the truest interest. It first came to my knowledge through your old patient, poor Miss Flite, when I was recovering from my severe illness.”
“Ah! Little Miss Flite!” he said. “She lives the same life yet?”
“Just the same.”
I was so comfortable with myself now as not to mind the veil and to be able to put it aside.
“Her gratitude to you, Mr. Woodcourt, is delightful. She is a most affectionate creature, as I have reason to say.”
“You—you have found her so?” he returned. “I—I am glad of that.” He was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak.
“I assure you,” said I, “that I was deeply touched by her sympathy and pleasure at the time I have referred to.”
“I was grieved to hear that you had been very ill.”
“I was very ill.”
“But you have quite recovered?”
“I have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness,” said I. “You know how good my guardian is and what a happy life we lead, and I have everything to be thankful for and nothing in the world to desire.”
I felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than I had ever had for myself. It inspired me with new fortitude and new calmness to find that it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring him. I spoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and of his probable return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He had not found himself more favoured by fortune there than here. He had gone out a poor ship’s surgeon and had come home nothing better. While we were talking, and when I was glad to believe that I had alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock he had had in seeing me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs who was with me, and they met with cordial pleasure.
I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke of Richard’s career, Mr. Woodcourt had a perception that all was not going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as if there were something in it that gave him pain, and more than once he looked towards me as though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the truth was. Yet Richard was in one of his sanguine states and in good spirits and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr. Woodcourt again, whom he had always liked.
Richard proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr. Woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became so much more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace to think I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not relieved of Richard. When the coach was almost ready and Richard ran down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about him.
I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open, but I referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Jarndyce and to his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr. Woodcourt listened with interest and expressed his regret.
“I saw you observe him rather closely,” said I, “Do you think him so changed?”
“He is changed,” he returned, shaking his head.
I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was gone.
“It is not,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “his being so much younger or older, or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his face such a singular expression. I never saw so remarkable a look in a young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety or all weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair.”
“You do not think he is ill?” said I.
No. He looked robust in body.
“That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to know,” I proceeded. “Mr. Woodcourt, you are going to London?”
“To-morrow or the next day.”
“There is nothing Richard wants so much as a friend. He always liked you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him sometimes with your companionship if you can. You do not know of what service it might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr. Jarndyce, and even I—how we should all thank you, Mr. Woodcourt!”
“Miss Summerson,” he said, more moved than he had been from the first, “before heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!”
“God bless you!” said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought they might, when it was not for myself. “Ada loves him—we all love him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say. Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!”
Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and gave me his arm to take me to the coach.
“Woodcourt,” he said, unconscious with what application, “pray let us meet in London!”
“Meet?” returned the other. “I have scarcely a friend there now but you. Where shall I find you?”
“Why, I must get a lodging of some sort,” said Richard, pondering. “Say at Vholes’s, Symond’s Inn.”
“Good! Without loss of time.”
They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and Richard was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his friendly hand on Richard’s shoulder and looked at me. I understood him and waved mine in thanks.
And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten.
Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone’s. Dilating and dilating since the sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone’s, heavily, heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking—as that lamp, too, winks in Tom-all-Alone’s—at many horrible things. But they are blotted out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alone’s, and Tom is fast asleep.
Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody’s theory but nobody’s practice. And in the hopeful meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit.
But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom’s corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tom’s slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has his revenge.
It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone’s be uglier by day or by night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it. The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the British dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder as Tom.
A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there, he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it before.
On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street of Tom-all-Alone’s, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in one direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her.
The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her. Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.
“What is the matter?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Can’t you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?”
“I’m waiting till they get up at another house—a lodging-house—not here,” the woman patiently returns. “I’m waiting here because there will be sun here presently to warm me.”
“I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the street.”
“Thank you, sir. It don’t matter.”
A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily.
“Let me look at your forehead,” he says, bending down. “I am a doctor. Don’t be afraid. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”
He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection, saying, “It’s nothing”; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the wounded place when she lifts it up to the light.
“Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very sore.”
“It do ache a little, sir,” returns the woman with a started tear upon her cheek.
“Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won’t hurt you.”
“Oh, dear no, sir, I’m sure of that!”
He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery in the street, “And so your husband is a brickmaker?”
“How do you know that, sir?” asks the woman, astonished.
“Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to their wives too.”
The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops them again.
“Where is he now?” asks the surgeon.
“He got into trouble last night, sir; but he’ll look for me at the lodging-house.”
“He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it. You have no young child?”
The woman shakes her head. “One as I calls mine, sir, but it’s Liz’s.”
“Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!”
By this time he has finished and is putting up his case. “I suppose you have some settled home. Is it far from here?” he asks, good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and curtsys.
“It’s a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like, as if you did.”
“Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in return. Have you money for your lodging?”
“Yes, sir,” she says, “really and truly.” And she shows it. He tells her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone’s is still asleep, and nothing is astir.
Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the soiled walls—which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid—and furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of swampy growth that rotted long ago.
Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form. He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge, still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his remembrance.
He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone’s in the morning light, thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by the woman.
“Stop him, stop him!” cries the woman, almost breathless. “Stop him, sir!”
He darts across the road into the boy’s path, but the boy is quicker than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman follows, crying, “Stop him, sir, pray stop him!” Allan, not knowing but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed, takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare. Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at him until the woman comes up.
“Oh, you, Jo!” cries the woman. “What? I have found you at last!”
“Jo,” repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, “Jo! Stay. To be sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the coroner.”
“Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich,” whimpers Jo. “What of that? Can’t you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An’t I unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be? I’ve been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by another on you, till I’m worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich warn’t MY fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my crossing. It ain’t wery likely I should want him to be inkwhiched. I only wish I wos, myself. I don’t know why I don’t go and make a hole in the water, I’m sure I don’t.”
He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him. He says to the woman, “Miserable creature, what has he done?”
To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure more amazedly than angrily, “Oh, you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at last!”
“What has he done?” says Allan. “Has he robbed you?”
“No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by me, and that’s the wonder of it.”
Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting for one of them to unravel the riddle.
“But he was along with me, sir,” says the woman. “Oh, you Jo! He was along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady, Lord bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when I durstn’t, and took himhome—”
Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror.
“Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a thankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been seen or heard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful looks, and wouldn’t hardly be known for the same young lady now if it wasn’t for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this is all along of you and of her goodness to you?” demands the woman, beginning to rage at him as she recalls it and breaking into passionate tears.
The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against which he leans rattles.
Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but effectually.
“Richard told me—” He falters. “I mean, I have heard of this—don’t mind me for a moment, I will speak presently.”
He turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure, except that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very remarkable that it absorbs the woman’s attention.
“You hear what she says. But get up, get up!”
Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the manner of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing his right hand over his left and his left foot over his right.
“You hear what she says, and I know it’s true. Have you been here ever since?”
“Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone’s till this blessed morning,” replies Jo hoarsely.
“Why have you come here now?”
Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no higher than the knees, and finally answers, “I don’t know how to do nothink, and I can’t get nothink to do. I’m wery poor and ill, and I thought I’d come back here when there warn’t nobody about, and lay down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me somethink he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby she was allus a-chivying on me—like everybody everywheres.”
“Where have you come from?”
Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner’s knees again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a sort of resignation.
“Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?”
“Tramp then,” says Jo.
“Now tell me,” proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an expression of confidence, “tell me how it came about that you left that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to pity you and take you home.”
Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares, addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he would sooner have hurt his own self, that he’d sooner have had his unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very miserable sobs.
Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself to touch him. “Come, Jo. Tell me.”
“No. I dustn’t,” says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. “I dustn’t, or I would.”
“But I must know,” returns the other, “all the same. Come, Jo.”
After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again, looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, “Well, I’ll tell you something. I was took away. There!”
“Took away? In the night?”
“Ah!” Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him and even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and through the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be looking over or hidden on the other side.
“Who took you away?”
“I dustn’t name him,” says Jo. “I dustn’t do it, sir.”
“But I want, in the young lady’s name, to know. You may trust me. No one else shall hear.”
“Ah, but I don’t know,” replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, “as he DON’T hear.”
“Why, he is not in this place.”
“Oh, ain’t he though?” says Jo. “He’s in all manner of places, all at wanst.”
Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.
“Aye!” says Allan. “Why, what had you been doing?”
“Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble, ’sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I’m a-moving on now. I’m a-moving on to the berryin ground—that’s the move as I’m up to.”
“No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?”
“Put me in a horsepittle,” replied Jo, whispering, “till I was discharged, then giv me a little money—four half-bulls, wot you may call half-crowns—and ses ‘Hook it! Nobody wants you here,’ he ses. ‘You hook it. You go and tramp,’ he ses. ‘You move on,’ he ses. ‘Don’t let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or you’ll repent it.’ So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he’ll see me if I’m above ground,” concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his former precautions and investigations.
Allan considers a little, then remarks, turning to the woman but keeping an encouraging eye on Jo, “He is not so ungrateful as you supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an insufficient one.”
“Thankee, sir, thankee!” exclaims Jo. “There now! See how hard you wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and it’s all right. For YOU wos wery good to me too, and I knows it.”
“Now, Jo,” says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, “come with me and I will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I take one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise.”
“I won’t, not unless I wos to see HIM a-coming, sir.”
“Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come along. Good day again, my good woman.”
“Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again.”
She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and takes it up. Jo, repeating, “Ony you tell the young lady as I never went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!” nods and shambles and shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone’s into the broad rays of the sunlight and the purer air.
As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along the streets where the high church spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning light that the city itself seems renewed by rest, Allan revolves in his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. “It surely is a strange fact,” he considers, “that in the heart of a civilized world this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of than an unowned dog.” But it is none the less a fact because of its strangeness, and the difficulty remains.
At first he looks behind him often to assure himself that Jo is still really following. But look where he will, he still beholds him close to the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick to brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along, glancing over at him watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing in his thoughts is to give him the slip, Allan goes on, considering with a less divided attention what he shall do.
A breakfast-stall at a street-corner suggests the first thing to be done. He stops there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses and comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his right hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading dirt with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo is then set before him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw the bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions as he eats and drinks, like a scared animal.
But he is so sick and miserable that even hunger has abandoned him. “I thought I was amost a-starvin, sir,” says Jo, soon putting down his food, “but I don’t know nothink—not even that. I don’t care for eating wittles nor yet for drinking on ’em.” And Jo stands shivering and looking at the breakfast wonderingly.
Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse and on his chest. “Draw breath, Jo!” “It draws,” says Jo, “as heavy as a cart.” He might add, “And rattles like it,” but he only mutters, “I’m a-moving on, sir.”
Allan looks about for an apothecary’s shop. There is none at hand, but a tavern does as well or better. He obtains a little measure of wine and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. He begins to revive almost as soon as it passes his lips. “We may repeat that dose, Jo,” observes Allan after watching him with his attentive face. “So! Now we will take five minutes’ rest, and then go on again.”
Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the breakfast-stall, with his back against an iron railing, Allan Woodcourt paces up and down in the early sunshine, casting an occasional look towards him without appearing to watch him. It requires no discernment to perceive that he is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded can brighten, his face brightens somewhat; and by little and little he eats the slice of bread he had so hopelessly laid down. Observant of these signs of improvement, Allan engages him in conversation and elicits to his no small wonder the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its consequences. Jo slowly munches as he slowly tells it. When he has finished his story and his bread, they go on again.
Intending to refer his difficulty in finding a temporary place of refuge for the boy to his old patient, zealous little Miss Flite, Allan leads the way to the court where he and Jo first foregathered. But all is changed at the rag and bottle shop; Miss Flite no longer lodges there; it is shut up; and a hard-featured female, much obscured by dust, whose age is a problem, but who is indeed no other than the interesting Judy, is tart and spare in her replies. These sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that Miss Flite and her birds are domiciled with a Mrs. Blinder, in Bell Yard, he repairs to that neighbouring place, where Miss Flite (who rises early that she may be punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend the Chancellor) comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and with open arms.
“My dear physician!” cries Miss Flite. “My meritorious, distinguished, honourable officer!” She uses some odd expressions, but is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can be—more so than it often is. Allan, very patient with her, waits until she has no more raptures to express, then points out Jo, trembling in a doorway, and tells her how he comes there.
“Where can I lodge him hereabouts for the present? Now, you have a fund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me.”
Miss Flite, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider; but it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. Mrs. Blinder is entirely let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley’s room. “Gridley!” exclaims Miss Flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth repetition of this remark. “Gridley! To be sure! Of course! My dear physician! General George will help us out.”
It is hopeless to ask for any information about General George, and would be, though Miss Flite had not already run upstairs to put on her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with her reticule of documents. But as she informs her physician in her disjointed manner on coming down in full array that General George, whom she often calls upon, knows her dear Fitz Jarndyce and takes a great interest in all connected with her, Allan is induced to think that they may be in the right way. So he tells Jo, for his encouragement, that this walking about will soon be over now; and they repair to the general’s. Fortunately it is not far.
From the exterior of George’s Shooting Gallery, and the long entry, and the bare perspective beyond it, Allan Woodcourt augurs well. He also descries promise in the figure of Mr. George himself, striding towards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no stock on, and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and dumbbell, weightily asserting themselves through his light shirt-sleeves.
“Your servant, sir,” says Mr. George with a military salute. Good-humouredly smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp hair, he then defers to Miss Flite, as, with great stateliness, and at some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. He winds it up with another “Your servant, sir!” and another salute.
“Excuse me, sir. A sailor, I believe?” says Mr. George.
“I am proud to find I have the air of one,” returns Allan; “but I am only a sea-going doctor.”
“Indeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket myself.”
Allan hopes Mr. George will forgive his intrusion the more readily on that account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe, which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing. “You are very good, sir,” returns the trooper. “As I know by experience that it’s not disagreeable to Miss Flite, and since it’s equally agreeable toyourself—”and finishes the sentence by putting it between his lips again. Allan proceeds to tell him all he knows about Jo, unto which the trooper listens with a grave face.
“And that’s the lad, sir, is it?” he inquires, looking along the entry to where Jo stands staring up at the great letters on the whitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes.
“That’s he,” says Allan. “And, Mr. George, I am in this difficulty about him. I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. The same objection applies to a workhouse, supposing I had the patience to be evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to get him into one, which is a system that I don’t take kindly to.”
“No man does, sir,” returns Mr. George.
“I am convinced that he would not remain in either place, because he is possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered him to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person to be everywhere, and cognizant of everything.”
“I ask your pardon, sir,” says Mr. George. “But you have not mentioned that party’s name. Is it a secret, sir?”
“The boy makes it one. But his name is Bucket.”
“Bucket the detective, sir?”
“The same man.”
“The man is known to me, sir,” returns the trooper after blowing out a cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, “and the boy is so far correct that he undoubtedly is a—rum customer.” Mr. George smokes with a profound meaning after this and surveys Miss Flite in silence.
“Now, I wish Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson at least to know that this Jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared, and to have it in their power to speak with him if they should desire to do so. Therefore I want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor lodging kept by decent people where he would be admitted. Decent people and Jo, Mr. George,” says Allan, following the direction of the trooper’s eyes along the entry, “have not been much acquainted, as you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to know any one in this neighbourhood who would receive him for a while on my paying for him beforehand?”
As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man standing at the trooper’s elbow and looking up, with an oddly twisted figure and countenance, into the trooper’s face. After a few more puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man, and the little man winks up at the trooper.
“Well, sir,” says Mr. George, “I can assure you that I would willingly be knocked on the head at any time if it would be at all agreeable to Miss Summerson, and consequently I esteem it a privilege to do that young lady any service, however small. We are naturally in the vagabond way here, sir, both myself and Phil. You see what the place is. You are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the same would meet your views. No charge made, except for rations. We are not in a flourishing state of circumstances here, sir. We are liable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a moment’s notice. However, sir, such as the place is, and so long as it lasts, here it is at your service.”
With a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr. George places the whole building at his visitor’s disposal.
“I take it for granted, sir,” he adds, “you being one of the medical staff, that there is no present infection about this unfortunate subject?”
Allan is quite sure of it.
“Because, sir,” says Mr. George, shaking his head sorrowfully, “we have had enough of that.”
His tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance. “Still I am bound to tell you,” observes Allan after repeating his former assurance, “that the boy is deplorably low and reduced and that he may be—I do not say that he is—too far gone to recover.”
“Do you consider him in present danger, sir?” inquires the trooper.
“Yes, I fear so.”
“Then, sir,” returns the trooper in a decisive manner, “it appears to me—being naturally in the vagabond way myself—that the sooner he comes out of the street, the better. You, Phil! Bring him in!”
Mr. Squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command; and the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle’s Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs. Jellyby’s lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing interesting about thee.
He shuffles slowly into Mr. George’s gallery and stands huddled together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he is and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in creation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor of humanity.