Bleak House. Charles Dickens

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      'My dear boy,' returned his father, 'you must be very quick. You will find the cold mutton on the table.'

      'Thank you, father. Are you off now, father?'

      'Yes, my dear. I suppose,' said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and lifting up his shoulders, with modest consciousness, 'that I must show myself, as usual, about town.'

      'You had better dine out comfortably, somewhere,' said his son.

      'My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at the French house, in the Opera Colonnade.'

      'That's right. Good-bye, father!' said Prince, shaking hands.

      'Good-bye, my son. Bless you!'

      Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do his son good; who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so dutiful to him, and so proud of him, that I almost felt as if it were an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish character. I felt a liking for him, and a compassion for him, as he put his little kit in his pocket – and with it his desire to stay a little while with Caddy – and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with his father than the censorious old lady.

      The father opened the room-door for us, and bowed us out, in a manner, I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost in reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street, that I was quite unable to talk to Caddy, or even to fix my attention on what she said to me: especially when I began to inquire in my mind whether there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their Deportment. This became so bewildering, and suggested the possibility of so many Mr. Turveydrops that I said, 'Esther, you must make up your mind to abandon this subject altogether, and attend to Caddy.' I accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to Lincoln's Inn.

      Caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected, that it was not always easy to read his notes. She said, if he were not so anxious about his spelling, and took less pains to make it clear, he would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short words, that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. 'He does it with the best intention,' observed Caddy, 'but it hasn't the effect he means, poor fellow!' Caddy then went on to reason, how could he be expected to be a scholar, when he had passed his whole life in the dancing-school, and had done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable than learned. 'Besides, it's not as if I was an accomplished girl, who had any right to give herself airs,' said Caddy. 'I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!'

      'There's another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,' continued Caddy, 'which I should not have liked to mention unless you had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It's of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for Prince's wife to know, in our house. We live in such a state of muddle that it's impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever I have tried. So I get a little practice with – who do you think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the morning, I help her to tidy her room, and clean her birds; and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am not clever at my needle, yet,' said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on Peepy's frock, 'but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been engaged to Prince, and have been doing all this, I have felt better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me out, at first this morning, to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat and pretty, and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too; but, on the whole, I hope I am better-tempered than I was, and more forgiving to Ma.'

      The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched mine. 'Caddy, my love,' I replied, 'I begin to have a great affection for you, and I hope we shall become friends.' 'Oh, do you?' cried Caddy; 'how happy that would make me!' 'My dear Caddy,' said I, 'let us be friends from this time, and let us often have a chat about these matters, and try to find the right way through them.' Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could, in my old-fashioned way, to comfort and encourage her; and I would not have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop, that day, for any smaller consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.

      By this time, we were come to Mr. Krook's, whose private door stood open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded up-stairs, that there had been a sudden death there, and an inquest; and that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room with the dark door, to which Miss Flite had secretly directed my attention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it was; a gloomy, sorrowful place, that gave me a strange sensation of mournfulness and even dread. 'You look pale,' said Caddy, when we came out, 'and cold!' I felt as if the room had chilled me.

      We had walked slowly, while we were talking; and my guardian and Ada were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite's garret. They were looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion, spoke with her cheerfully by the fire.

      'I have finished my professional visit,' he said, coming forward. 'Miss Flite is much better, and may appear in Court (as her mind is set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I understand.'

      Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency, and dropped a general curtsey to us.

      'Honoured, indeed,' said she, 'by another visit from the wards in Jarndyce! Very happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my humble roof!' with a special curtsey. 'Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear;' she had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always called her by it; 'a double welcome!'

      'Has she been very ill?' asked Mr. Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we had found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly, though he had put the question in a whisper.

      'O decidedly unwell! O very unwell indeed,' she said, confidentially. 'Not pain, you know – trouble. Not bodily so much as nervous, nervous! The truth is,' in a subdued voice and trembling, 'we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr. Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr. Woodcourt!' with great stateliness. 'The wards in Jarndyce – Jarndyce of Bleak House – Fitz-Jarndyce!'

      'Miss Flite,' said Mr. Woodcourt, in a grave kind of voice, as if he were appealing to her while speaking to us; and laying his hand gently on her arm; 'Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and agitation. She brought me here, in the first hurry of the discovery, though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since, and being of some small use to her.'

      'The kindest physician in the college,' whispered Miss Flite to me. 'I expect a Judgment. On the day of Judgment. And shall then confer estates.'

      'She will be as well, in a day СКАЧАТЬ