Esther's Narrative

Richard had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a
few days with us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs. Woodcourt, who,
having come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Badger and having
written to my guardian, "by her son Allan's desire," to report that
she had heard from him and that he was well "and sent his kind
remembrances to all of us," had been invited by my guardian to make a
visit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly three weeks. She took
very kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that
sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew
very well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt
it was unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite
help it.

She was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands
folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to me
that perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her being
so upright and trim, though I don't think it was that, because I
thought that quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the general
expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty for an
old lady. I don't know what it was. Or at least if I do now, I
thought I did not then. Or at least--but it don't matter.

Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me
into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair;
and, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I
was quite low-spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from
Crumlinwallinwer and the Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right
names, which I dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery
with the sentiments they expressed. Though I never knew what they
were (being in Welsh), further than that they were highly eulogistic
of the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig.

"So, Miss Summerson," she would say to me with stately triumph,
"this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my son
goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have money, but
he always has what is much better--family, my dear."

I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig in
India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used to say
it was a great thing to be so highly connected.

"It IS, my dear, a great thing," Mrs. Woodcourt would reply. "It has
its disadvantages; my son's choice of a wife, for instance, is
limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is
limited in much the same manner."

Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to
assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between us
notwithstanding.

"Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear," she would say, and always with some
emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate
heart, "was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts of
MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the Royal
Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last
representatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he
will set them up again and unite them with another old family."

It was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to try,
only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because--but I need not be so
particular. Mrs. Woodcourt never would let me change it.

"My dear," she said one night, "you have so much sense and you look
at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that
it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of
mine. You don't know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of
him, I dare say, to recollect him?"

"Yes, ma'am. I recollect him."

"Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character,
and I should like to have your opinion of him."

"Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt," said I, "that is so difficult!"

"Why is it so difficult, my dear?" she returned. "I don't see it
myself."

"To give an opinion--"

"On so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT'S true."

I didn't mean that, because Mr. Woodcourt had been at our house a
good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my guardian.
I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his
profession--we thought--and that his kindness and gentleness to Miss
Flite were above all praise.

"You do him justice!" said Mrs. Woodcourt, pressing my hand. "You
define him exactly. Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession
faultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must confess he
is not without faults, love."

"None of us are," said I.

"Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to
correct," returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head. "I
am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear, as a
third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself."

I said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have
been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the
pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.

"You are right again, my dear," the old lady retorted, "but I don't
refer to his profession, look you."

"Oh!" said I.

"No," said she. "I refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is
always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has
been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never really
cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any
harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still,
it's not right, you know; is it?"

"No," said I, as she seemed to wait for me.

"And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear."

I supposed it might.

"Therefore, I have told him many times that he really should be more
careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others. And he
has always said, 'Mother, I will be; but you know me better than
anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm--in short, mean
nothing.' All of which is very true, my dear, but is no
justification. However, as he is now gone so far away and for an
indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and
introductions, we may consider this past and gone. And you, my dear,"
said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, "regarding your
dear self, my love?"

"Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?"

"Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek
his fortune and to find a wife--when do you mean to seek YOUR fortune
and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now you blush!"

I don't think I did blush--at all events, it was not important if I
did--and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had
no wish to change it.

"Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to
come for you, my love?" said Mrs. Woodcourt.

"If you believe you are a good prophet," said I.

"Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very
worthy, much older--five and twenty years, perhaps--than yourself.
And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy."

"That is a good fortune," said I. "But why is it to be mine?"

"My dear," she returned, "there's suitability in it--you are so busy,
and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there's
suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love,
will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I
shall."

It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it
did. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night
uncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to
confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. I
would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright old
lady's confidence if I could have possibly declined it. It gave me
the most inconsistent opinions of her. At one time I thought she was
a story-teller, and at another time that she was the pink of truth.
Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next moment I believed her
honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. And after
all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could
not I, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by
her fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least
as well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless
things she said to me? Impelled towards her, as I certainly was, for
I was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed
that she did, why should I harp afterwards, with actual distress and
pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in
twenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house,
and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was
better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else?
These were perplexities and contradictions that I could not account
for. At least, if I could--but I shall come to all that by and by,
and it is mere idleness to go on about it now.

So when Mrs. Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to lose her but was
relieved too. And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy brought
such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.

First Caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that I
was the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet said, was no
news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then Caddy
told us that she was going to be married in a month and that if Ada
and I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the
world. To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we never
should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to Caddy,
and Caddy had so much to say to us.

It seemed that Caddy's unfortunate papa had got over his
bankruptcy--"gone through the Gazette," was the expression Caddy
used, as if it were a tunnel--with the general clemency and
commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in
some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and had
given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I should
think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had satisfied
every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man. So, he had
been honourably dismissed to "the office" to begin the world again.
What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said he was a
"custom-house and general agent," and the only thing I ever
understood about that business was that when he wanted money more
than usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found
it.

As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this shorn
lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden
(where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting
the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves
with it), Caddy had brought about a meeting between him and old Mr.
Turveydrop; and poor Mr. Jellyby, being very humble and meek, had
deferred to Mr. Turveydrop's deportment so submissively that they had
become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr. Turveydrop, thus
familiarized with the idea of his son's marriage, had worked up his
parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being
near at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple
commencing housekeeping at the academy in Newman Street when they
would.

"And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?"

"Oh! Poor Pa," said Caddy, "only cried and said he hoped we might get
on better than he and Ma had got on. He didn't say so before Prince,
he only said so to me. And he said, 'My poor girl, you have not been
very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you
mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder
him than marry him--if you really love him.'"

"And how did you reassure him, Caddy?"

"Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and
hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn't help crying myself.
But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped
our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in
of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better
daughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned Peepy's coming
to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and said the children
were Indians."

"Indians, Caddy?"

"Yes," said Caddy, "wild Indians. And Pa said"--here she began to
sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world--"that
he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their
being all tomahawked together."

Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Jellyby did
not mean these destructive sentiments.

"No, of course I know Pa wouldn't like his family to be weltering in
their blood," said Caddy, "but he means that they are very
unfortunate in being Ma's children and that he is very unfortunate in
being Ma's husband; and I am sure that's true, though it seems
unnatural to say so."

I asked Caddy if Mrs. Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed.

"Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther," she returned. "It's impossible to
say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough;
and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was
I don't know what--a steeple in the distance," said Caddy with a
sudden idea; "and then she shakes her head and says 'Oh, Caddy,
Caddy, what a tease you are!' and goes on with the Borrioboola
letters."

"And about your wardrobe, Caddy?" said I. For she was under no
restraint with us.

"Well, my dear Esther," she returned, drying her eyes, "I must do the
best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind
remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question
concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and
would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor
cares."

Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother,
but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am
afraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so much
to admire in the good disposition which had survived under such
discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a
little scheme that made her perfectly joyful. This was her staying
with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one, and our all
three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and sewing, and
saving, and doing the very best we could think of to make the most of
her stock. My guardian being as pleased with the idea as Caddy was,
we took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out
again in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be
squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr. Jellyby had found in the
docks I suppose, but which he at all events gave her. What my
guardian would not have given her if we had encouraged him, it would
be difficult to say, but we thought it right to compound for no more
than her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise, and
if Caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat
down to work.

She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her
fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help
reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly
with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over
that and began to improve rapidly. So day after day she, and my
darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of the town,
and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.

Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious "to learn housekeeping,"
as she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her learning
housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke that I
laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she
proposed it. However, I said, "Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome
to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my dear," and I showed
her all my books and methods and all my fidgety ways. You would have
supposed that I was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her
study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I jingled my
housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have
thought that there never was a greater imposter than I with a blinder
follower than Caddy Jellyby.

So what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and
backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the
three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy to see
what could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to take
care of my guardian.

When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging in
Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where
preparations were in progress too--a good many, I observed, for
enhancing the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop, and a few for putting
the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the house--but
our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the
wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Jellyby beforehand with some
faint sense of the occasion.

The latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs.
Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the
back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with
waste-paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be
littered with straw. Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking strong
coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by
appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a
decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr. Jellyby came home,
he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got
something to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then,
feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton
Garden in the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down
the house as they had always been accustomed to do.

The production of these devoted little sacrifices in any presentable
condition being quite out of the question at a week's notice, I
proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could on
her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should
confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama's room, and a
clean breakfast. In truth Mrs. Jellyby required a good deal of
attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably
since I first knew her and her hair looking like the mane of a
dustman's horse.

Thinking that the display of Caddy's wardrobe would be the best means
of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Jellyby to come and look
at it spread out on Caddy's bed in the evening after the unwholesome
boy was gone.

"My dear Miss Summerson," said she, rising from her desk with her
usual sweetness of temper, "these are really ridiculous preparations,
though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is
something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of Caddy being
married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!"

She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes
in her customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea to
her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head, "My
good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have
been equipped for Africa!"

On our going downstairs again, Mrs. Jellyby asked me whether this
troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday. And on
my replying yes, she said, "Will my room be required, my dear Miss
Summerson? For it's quite impossible that I can put my papers away."

I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted
and that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere. "Well, my
dear Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby, "you know best, I dare say.
But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that
extent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don't know
which way to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday
afternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious."

"It is not likely to occur again," said I, smiling. "Caddy will be
married but once, probably."

"That's true," Mrs. Jellyby replied; "that's true, my dear. I suppose
we must make the best of it!"

The next question was how Mrs. Jellyby should be dressed on the
occasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely
from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally
shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior
spirit who could just bear with our trifling.

The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion
in which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at
length we devised something not very unlike what a common-place
mother might wear on such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which
Mrs. Jellyby would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on
by the dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then
observe to me how sorry she was that I had not turned my thoughts to
Africa, were consistent with the rest of her behaviour.

The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if
Mrs. Jellyby's household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul's or
Saint Peter's, the sole advantage they would have found in the size
of the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to
be dirty in. I believe that nothing belonging to the family which it
had been possible to break was unbroken at the time of those
preparations for Caddy's marriage, that nothing which it had been
possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no domestic
object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear child's knee
to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well accumulate
upon it.

Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he
was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he
saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among
all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such
wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were
opened--bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby's caps,
letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood,
wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags,
footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby's bonnets, books
with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out
by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells,
heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds,
umbrellas--that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came
regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head
against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known
how.

"Poor Pa!" said Caddy to me on the night before the great day, when
we really had got things a little to rights. "It seems unkind to
leave him, Esther. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I first
knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it's
useless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We
never have a servant who don't drink. Ma's ruinous to everything."

Mr. Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low
indeed and shed tears, I thought.

"My heart aches for him; that it does!" sobbed Caddy. "I can't help
thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with Prince,
and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a
disappointed life!"

"My dear Caddy!" said Mr. Jellyby, looking slowly round from the
wail. It was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three
words together.

"Yes, Pa!" cried Caddy, going to him and embracing him
affectionately.

"My dear Caddy," said Mr. Jellyby. "Never have--"

"Not Prince, Pa?" faltered Caddy. "Not have Prince?"

"Yes, my dear," said Mr. Jellyby. "Have him, certainly. But, never
have--"

I mentioned in my account of our first visit in Thavies Inn that
Richard described Mr. Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after
dinner without saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his
mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy
manner.

"What do you wish me not to have? Don't have what, dear Pa?" asked
Caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck.

"Never have a mission, my dear child."

Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and
this was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to
expressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he
had been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been
completely exhausted long before I knew him.

I thought Mrs. Jellyby never would have left off serenely looking
over her papers and drinking coffee that night. It was twelve o'clock
before we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it
required then was so discouraging that Caddy, who was almost tired
out, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried. But she soon
cheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went to bed.

In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity
of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay. The plain
breakfast made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly charming. But
when my darling came, I thought--and I think now--that I never had
seen such a dear face as my beautiful pet's.

We made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Peepy at
the head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her bridal dress,
and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried to think
that she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again
until we brought Prince up to fetch her away--when, I am sorry to
say, Peepy bit him. Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop downstairs, in
a state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly blessing Caddy
and giving my guardian to understand that his son's happiness was his
own parental work and that he sacrificed personal considerations to
ensure it. "My dear sir," said Mr. Turveydrop, "these young people
will live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation,
and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have
wished--you will understand the allusion, Mr. Jarndyce, for you
remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent--I could have
wished that my son had married into a family where there was more
deportment, but the will of heaven be done!"

Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party--Mr. Pardiggle, an
obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who
was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs.
Pardiggle's mite, or their five boys' mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair
brushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very much, was
also there, not in the character of a disappointed lover, but as the
accepted of a young--at least, an unmarried--lady, a Miss Wisk, who
was also there. Miss Wisk's mission, my guardian said, was to show
the world that woman's mission was man's mission and that the only
genuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving
declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings.
The guests were few, but were, as one might expect at Mrs. Jellyby's,
all devoted to public objects only. Besides those I have mentioned,
there was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the
ticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected
home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church
was like a fancy fair. A very contentious gentleman, who said it was
his mission to be everybody's brother but who appeared to be on terms
of coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party.

A party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly
have been got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the
domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them;
indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat
down to breakfast, that the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in
the narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of
her tyrant, man. One other singularity was that nobody with a
mission--except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly
said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody's mission--cared at all
for anybody's mission. Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear that the only
one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor and
applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk
was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation
of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. Mrs. Jellyby, all the
while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but
Borrioboola-Gha.

But I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride
home instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went to church, and Mr.
Jellyby gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr. Turveydrop, with
his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman
like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig,
stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the
ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say enough to do
it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as prepossessing in
appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the proceedings,
as part of woman's wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs. Jellyby, with
her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerned of all
the company.

We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs. Jellyby sat at the head of
the table and Mr. Jellyby at the foot. Caddy had previously stolen
upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was
Turveydrop. But this piece of information, instead of being an
agreeable surprise to Peepy, threw him on his back in such transports
of kicking grief that I could do nothing on being sent for but accede
to the proposal that he should be admitted to the breakfast table. So
he came down and sat in my lap; and Mrs. Jellyby, after saying, in
reference to the state of his pinafore, "Oh, you naughty Peepy, what
a shocking little pig you are!" was not at all discomposed. He was
very good except that he brought down Noah with him (out of an ark I
had given him before we went to church) and WOULD dip him head first
into the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth.

My guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his
amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial
company. None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, or
her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even
that as part of a world in which there was anything else; but my
guardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of Caddy and the
honour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast nobly.
What we should have done without him, I am afraid to think, for all
the company despising the bride and bridegroom and old Mr.
Turveydrop--and old Mr. Thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment,
considering himself vastly superior to all the company--it was a very
unpromising case.

At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go and when all her
property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her
and her husband to Gravesend. It affected us to see Caddy clinging,
then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother's neck with
the greatest tenderness.

"I am very sorry I couldn't go on writing from dictation, Ma," sobbed
Caddy. "I hope you forgive me now."

"Oh, Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "I have told you over and over
again that I have engaged a boy, and there's an end of it."

"You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are
sure before I go away, Ma?"

"You foolish Caddy," returned Mrs. Jellyby, "do I look angry, or have
I inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How CAN you?"

"Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!"

Mrs. Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. "You romantic child,"
said she, lightly patting Caddy's back. "Go along. I am excellent
friends with you. Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very happy!"

Then Caddy hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers as
if he were some poor dull child in pain. All this took place in the
hall. Her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchief, and
sat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. I hope he
found some consolation in walls. I almost think he did.

And then Prince took her arm in his and turned with great emotion and
respect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was
overwhelming.

"Thank you over and over again, father!" said Prince, kissing his
hand. "I am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration
regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy."

"Very," sobbed Caddy. "Ve-ry!"

"My dear son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "and dear daughter, I have done
my duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks
down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my
recompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I
believe?"

"Dear father, never!" cried Prince.

"Never, never, dear Mr. Turveydrop!" said Caddy.

"This," returned Mr. Turveydrop, "is as it should be. My children, my
home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave
you; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an
absence of a week, I think?"

"A week, dear father. We shall return home this day week."

"My dear child," said Mr. Turveydrop, "let me, even under the present
exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly
important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all
neglected, are apt to take offence."

"This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner."

"Good!" said Mr. Turveydrop. "You will find fires, my dear Caroline,
in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes,
Prince!" anticipating some self-denying objection on his son's part
with a great air. "You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper
part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my
apartment. Now, bless ye!"

They drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Jellyby or at
Mr. Turveydrop, I did not know. Ada and my guardian were in the same
condition when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away too,
I received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr.
Jellyby. He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed
them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice. I was so sure of his
meaning that I said, quite flurried, "You are very welcome, sir. Pray
don't mention it!"

"I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian," said I when we
three were on our road home.

"I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see."

"Is the wind in the east to-day?" I ventured to ask him.

He laughed heartily and answered, "No."

"But it must have been this morning, I think," said I.

He answered "No" again, and this time my dear girl confidently
answered "No" too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming
flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring. "Much YOU
know of east winds, my ugly darling," said I, kissing her in my
admiration--I couldn't help it.

Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a
long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it
gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind
where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there
was sunshine and summer air.

Nurse and Patient

I had not been at home again many days when one evening I went
upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley's shoulder and
see how she was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying
business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen,
but in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated,
and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into
corners like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters
Charley's young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and
tottering, it so plump and round. Yet Charley was uncommonly expert
at other things and had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.

"Well, Charley," said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in which
it was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed
in all kinds of ways, "we are improving. If we only get to make it
round, we shall be perfect, Charley."

Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen wouldn't join
Charley's neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.

"Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time."

Charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished, opened and shut
her cramped little hand, looked gravely at the page, half in pride
and half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy.

"Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor person of
the name of Jenny?"

"A brickmaker's wife, Charley? Yes."

"She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and said
you knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn't the young lady's little
maid--meaning you for the young lady, miss--and I said yes, miss."

"I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Charley."

"So she had, miss, but she's come back again to where she used to
live--she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the name of
Liz, miss?"

"I think I do, Charley, though not by name."

"That's what she said!" returned Charley. "They have both come back,
miss, and have been tramping high and low."

"Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?"

"Yes, miss." If Charley could only have made the letters in her copy
as round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they would
have been excellent. "And this poor person came about the house three
or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss--all she wanted,
she said--but you were away. That was when she saw me. She saw me
a-going about, miss," said Charley with a short laugh of the greatest
delight and pride, "and she thought I looked like your maid!"

"Did she though, really, Charley?"

"Yes, miss!" said Charley. "Really and truly." And Charley, with
another short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round
again and looked as serious as became my maid. I was never tired of
seeing Charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity, standing
before me with her youthful face and figure, and her steady manner,
and her childish exultation breaking through it now and then in the
pleasantest way.

"And where did you see her, Charley?" said I.

My little maid's countenance fell as she replied, "By the doctor's
shop, miss." For Charley wore her black frock yet.

I asked if the brickmaker's wife were ill, but Charley said no. It
was some one else. Some one in her cottage who had tramped down to
Saint Albans and was tramping he didn't know where. A poor boy,
Charley said. No father, no mother, no any one. "Like as Tom might
have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father," said Charley,
her round eyes filling with tears.

"And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?"

"She said, miss," returned Charley, "how that he had once done as
much for her."

My little maid's face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so
closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great
difficulty in reading her thoughts. "Well, Charley," said I, "it
appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to
Jenny's and see what's the matter."

The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and
having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and
made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her
readiness. So Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went
out.

It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. The
rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission
for many days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had
partly cleared, but was very gloomy--even above us, where a few stars
were shining. In the north and north-west, where the sun had set
three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and
awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea
stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards London a lurid glare
overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two
lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an
unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and
on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was
as solemn as might be.

I had no thought that night--none, I am quite sure--of what was soon
to happen to me. But I have always remembered since that when we had
stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went
upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself
as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then
and there that I had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with
that spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and
time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and
the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.

It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place
where we were going were drinking elsewhere. We found it quieter than
I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable. The kilns were
burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare.

We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the
patched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the
little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the
poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported
by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his
arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried
to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. The
place was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar
smell.

I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was
at the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly and
stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.

His action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident
that I stood still instead of advancing nearer.

"I won't go no more to the berryin ground," muttered the boy; "I
ain't a-going there, so I tell you!"

I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low
voice, "Don't mind him, ma'am. He'll soon come back to his head," and
said to him, "Jo, Jo, what's the matter?"

"I know wot she's come for!" cried the boy.

"Who?"

"The lady there. She's come to get me to go along with her to the
berryin ground. I won't go to the berryin ground. I don't like the
name on it. She might go a-berryin ME." His shivering came on again,
and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel.

"He has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma'am," said
Jenny softly. "Why, how you stare! This is MY lady, Jo."

"Is it?" returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm
held out above his burning eyes. "She looks to me the t'other one. It
ain't the bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but she looks to me the
t'other one."

My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and
trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly up
to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurse.
Except that no such attendant could have shown him Charley's youthful
face, which seemed to engage his confidence.

"I say!" said the boy. "YOU tell me. Ain't the lady the t'other
lady?"

Charley shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him
and made him as warm as she could.

"Oh!" the boy muttered. "Then I s'pose she ain't."

"I came to see if I could do you any good," said I. "What is the
matter with you?"

"I'm a-being froze," returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze
wandering about me, "and then burnt up, and then froze, and then
burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my head's all sleepy, and
all a-going mad-like--and I'm so dry--and my bones isn't half so much
bones as pain.

"When did he come here?" I asked the woman.

"This morning, ma'am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had
known him up in London yonder. Hadn't I, Jo?"

"Tom-all-Alone's," the boy replied.

Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very
little while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it
heavily, and speak as if he were half awake.

"When did he come from London?" I asked.

"I come from London yes'day," said the boy himself, now flushed and
hot. "I'm a-going somewheres."

"Where is he going?" I asked.

"Somewheres," repeated the boy in a louder tone. "I have been moved
on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t'other one
give me the sov'ring. Mrs. Snagsby, she's always a-watching, and
a-driving of me--what have I done to her?--and they're all a-watching
and a-driving of me. Every one of 'em's doing of it, from the time
when I don't get up, to the time when I don't go to bed. And I'm
a-going somewheres. That's where I'm a-going. She told me, down in
Tom-all-Alone's, as she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the
Stolbuns Road. It's as good as another."

He always concluded by addressing Charley.

"What is to be done with him?" said I, taking the woman aside. "He
could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew
where he was going!"

"I know no more, ma'am, than the dead," she replied, glancing
compassionately at him. "Perhaps the dead know better, if they could
only tell us. I've kept him here all day for pity's sake, and I've
given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will
take him in (here's my pretty in the bed--her child, but I call it
mine); but I can't keep him long, for if my husband was to come home
and find him here, he'd be rough in putting him out and might do him
a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!"

The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up
with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going. When the
little child awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it out
of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don't know. There she
was, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living
in Mrs. Blinder's attic with Tom and Emma again.

The friend had been here and there, and had been played about from
hand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was too
early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last
it was too late. One official sent her to another, and the other sent
her back again to the first, and so backward and forward, until it
appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in
evading their duties instead of performing them. And now, after all,
she said, breathing quickly, for she had been running and was
frightened too, "Jenny, your master's on the road home, and mine's
not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no more for
him!" They put a few halfpence together and hurried them into his
hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he
shuffled out of the house.

"Give me the child, my dear," said its mother to Charley, "and thank
you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good night! Young lady, if my
master don't fall out with me, I'll look down by the kiln by and by,
where the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!" She
hurried off, and presently we passed her hushing and singing to her
child at her own door and looking anxiously along the road for her
drunken husband.

I was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I should
bring her into trouble. But I said to Charley that we must not leave
the boy to die. Charley, who knew what to do much better than I did,
and whose quickness equalled her presence of mind, glided on before
me, and presently we came up with Jo, just short of the brick-kiln.

I think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under
his arm and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he still carried
his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went
bare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. He stopped when we
called to him and again showed a dread of me when I came up, standing
with his lustrous eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his
shivering fit.

I asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some
shelter for the night.

"I don't want no shelter," he said; "I can lay amongst the warm
bricks."

"But don't you know that people die there?" replied Charley.

"They dies everywheres," said the boy. "They dies in their
lodgings--she knows where; I showed her--and they dies down in
Tom-all-Alone's in heaps. They dies more than they lives, according
to what I see." Then he hoarsely whispered Charley, "If she ain't the
t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. Is there THREE of 'em then?"

Charley looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at
myself when the boy glared on me so.

But he turned and followed when I beckoned to him, and finding that
he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home. It
was not far, only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man. I
doubted if we should have got home without assistance, the boy's
steps were so uncertain and tremulous. He made no complaint, however,
and was strangely unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange
a thing.

Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the
window-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely could be
called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into
the drawing-room to speak to my guardian. There I found Mr. Skimpole,
who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice,
and never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing
everything he wanted.

They came out with me directly to look at the boy. The servants had
gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat with
Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found
in a ditch.

"This is a sorrowful case," said my guardian after asking him a
question or two and touching him and examining his eyes. "What do you
say, Harold?"

"You had better turn him out," said Mr. Skimpole.

"What do you mean?" inquired my guardian, almost sternly.

"My dear Jarndyce," said Mr. Skimpole, "you know what I am: I am a
child. Be cross to me if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional
objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical
man. He's not safe, you know. There's a very bad sort of fever about
him."

Mr. Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again
and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood
by.

"You'll say it's childish," observed Mr. Skimpole, looking gaily at
us. "Well, I dare say it may be; but I AM a child, and I never
pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only
put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you
know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or
five shillings, or five pound ten--you are arithmeticians, and I am
not--and get rid of him!"

"And what is he to do then?" asked my guardian.

"Upon my life," said Mr. Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his
engaging smile, "I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But
I have no doubt he'll do it."

"Now, is it not a horrible reflection," said my guardian, to whom I
had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, "is it
not a horrible reflection," walking up and down and rumpling his
hair, "that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his
hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well taken
care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?"

"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "you'll pardon the
simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is
perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why ISN'T he a prisoner
then?"

My guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of
amusement and indignation in his face.

"Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should
imagine," said Mr. Skimpole, unabashed and candid. "It seems to me
that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more
respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into
prison. There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and
consequently more of a certain sort of poetry."

"I believe," returned my guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, "that
there is not such another child on earth as yourself."

"Do you really?" said Mr. Skimpole. "I dare say! But I confess I
don't see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to
invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt
born with an appetite--probably, when he is in a safer state of
health, he has an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young
friend's natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young
friend says in effect to society, 'I am hungry; will you have the
goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?' Society, which has taken
upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and
professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce that
spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says 'You really must excuse
me if I seize it.' Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected
energy, which has a certain amount of reason in it and a certain
amount of romance; and I don't know but what I should be more
interested in our young friend, as an illustration of such a case,
than merely as a poor vagabond--which any one can be."

"In the meantime," I ventured to observe, "he is getting worse."

"In the meantime," said Mr. Skimpole cheerfully, "as Miss Summerson,
with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse.
Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets still
worse."

The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never forget.

"Of course, little woman," observed my guardian, turning to me, "I
can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there
to enforce it, though it's a bad state of things when, in his
condition, that is necessary. But it's growing late, and is a very
bad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the
wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till
morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. We'll do that."

"Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano as
we moved away. "Are you going back to our young friend?"

"Yes," said my guardian.

"How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce!" returned Mr. Skimpole
with playful admiration. "You don't mind these things; neither does
Miss Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do
anything. Such is will! I have no will at all--and no won't--simply
can't."

"You can't recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?" said my
guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half
angrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr. Skimpole an accountable
being.

"My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his
pocket, and it's impossible for him to do better than take it. You
can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he
sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But it
is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss
Summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the
administration of detail that she knows all about it."

We went back into the hall and explained to Jo what we proposed to
do, which Charley explained to him again and which he received with
the languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at
what was done as if it were for somebody else. The servants
compassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help,
we soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the house
carried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up. It was pleasant to
observe how kind they were to him and how there appeared to be a
general impression among them that frequently calling him "Old Chap"
was likely to revive his spirits. Charley directed the operations and
went to and fro between the loft-room and the house with such little
stimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. My
guardian himself saw him before he was left for the night and
reported to me when he returned to the growlery to write a letter on
the boy's behalf, which a messenger was charged to deliver at
day-light in the morning, that he seemed easier and inclined to
sleep. They had fastened his door on the outside, he said, in case of
his being delirious, but had so arranged that he could not make any
noise without being heard.

Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr. Skimpole was left alone all
this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic
airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with
great expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the
drawing-room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come
into his head "apropos of our young friend," and he sang one about a
peasant boy,

   "Thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam,
    Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home."

quite exquisitely. It was a song that always made him cry, he told
us.

He was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely
chirped--those were his delighted words--when he thought by what a
happy talent for business he was surrounded. He gave us, in his glass
of negus, "Better health to our young friend!" and supposed and gaily
pursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington to become
Lord Mayor of London. In that event, no doubt, he would establish the
Jarndyce Institution and the Summerson Almshouses, and a little
annual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. Albans. He had no doubt, he
said, that our young friend was an excellent boy in his way, but his
way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold Skimpole was, Harold
Skimpole had found himself, to his considerable surprise, when he
first made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself with all his
failings and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the
bargain; and he hoped we would do the same.

Charley's last report was that the boy was quiet. I could see, from
my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and I went
to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered.

There was more movement and more talking than usual a little before
daybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked out of my
window and asked one of our men who had been among the active
sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the
house. The lantern was still burning in the loft-window.

"It's the boy, miss," said he.

"Is he worse?" I inquired.

"Gone, miss.

"Dead!"

"Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off."

At what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed
hopeless ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been left, and
the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he
had got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with an empty
cart-house below. But he had shut it down again, if that were so; and
it looked as if it had not been raised. Nothing of any kind was
missing. On this fact being clearly ascertained, we all yielded to
the painful belief that delirium had come upon him in the night and
that, allured by some imaginary object or pursued by some imaginary
horror, he had strayed away in that worse than helpless state; all of
us, that is to say, but Mr. Skimpole, who repeatedly suggested, in
his usual easy light style, that it had occurred to our young friend
that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him,
and that he had with great natural politeness taken himself off.

Every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. The
brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women
were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and
nobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had for
some time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to admit
of any tracing by footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and
stack, were examined by our men for a long distance round, lest the
boy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead; but nothing
was seen to indicate that he had ever been near. From the time when
he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.

The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased even
then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current very
memorable to me.

As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as
I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble. Looking up,
I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.

"Charley," said I, "are you so cold?"

"I think I am, miss," she replied. "I don't know what it is. I can't
hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss.
Don't be uneasy, I think I'm ill."

I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to the door of
communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked
it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the
key.

Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, "Not now, my dearest. Go
away. There's nothing the matter; I will come to you presently." Ah!
It was a long, long time before my darling girl and I were companions
again.

Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her to my
room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. I
told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary that I
should seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above
all. At first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and
even reproached me with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter
saying that she made me anxious and unhappy and imploring her, as she
loved me and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than
the garden. After that she came beneath the window even oftener than
she had come to the door, and if I had learnt to love her dear sweet
voice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love
it then, when I stood behind the window-curtain listening and
replying, but not so much as looking out! How did I learn to love it
afterwards, when the harder time came!

They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door
wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had vacated
that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There
was not a servant in or about the house but was so good that they
would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night
without the least fear or unwillingness, but I thought it best to
choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada and whom I could
trust to come and go with all precaution. Through her means I got out
to take the air with my guardian when there was no fear of meeting
Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any more than
in any other respect.

And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy
danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day
and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such
a gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding her
head in my arms--repose would come to her, so, when it would come to
her in no other attitude--I silently prayed to our Father in heaven
that I might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught
me.

I was very sorrowful to think that Charley's pretty looks would
change and be disfigured, even if she recovered--she was such a child
with her dimpled face--but that thought was, for the greater part,
lost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind
rambled again to the cares of her father's sick bed and the little
children, she still knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my
arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur out the
wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At those times I used to
think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that the baby
who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them in their
need was dead!

There were other times when Charley knew me well and talked to me,
telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma and that she was
sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley would
speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could
to comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried who was
the only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the ruler's
daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of death. And
Charley told me that when her father died she had kneeled down and
prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be raised up and
given back to his poor children, and that if she should never get
better and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come
into Tom's mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show
Tom how these people of old days had been brought back to life on
earth, only that we might know our hope to be restored to heaven!

But of all the various times there were in Charley's illness, there
was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of. And
there were many, many when I thought in the night of the last high
belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in God, on
the part of her poor despised father.

And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the
dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend.
The hope that never had been given, from the first, of Charley being
in outward appearance Charley any more soon began to be encouraged;
and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish
likeness again.

It was a great morning when I could tell Ada all this as she stood
out in the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley and I at
last took tea together in the next room. But on that same evening, I
felt that I was stricken cold.

Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed
again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of her
illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at
tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was
rapidly following in Charley's steps.

I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to
return my darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk
with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that
I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside
myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at
times--with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too
large altogether.

In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare
Charley, with which view I said, "You're getting quite strong,
Charley, are you not?'

"Oh, quite!" said Charley.

"Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?"

"Quite strong enough for that, miss!" cried Charley. But Charley's
face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in MY
face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom,
and said "Oh, miss, it's my doing! It's my doing!" and a great deal
more out of the fullness of her grateful heart.

"Now, Charley," said I after letting her go on for a little while,
"if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And
unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were for
yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley."

"If you'll let me cry a little longer, miss," said Charley. "Oh, my
dear, my dear! If you'll only let me cry a little longer. Oh, my
dear!"--how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as she
clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears--"I'll be good."

So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good.

"Trust in me now, if you please, miss," said Charley quietly. "I am
listening to everything you say."

"It's very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor
to-night that I don't think I am well and that you are going to nurse
me."

For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. "And in the
morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be
quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley,
and say I am asleep--that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep.
At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one
come."

Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the
doctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask
relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I
have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day,
and of day melting into night again; but I was just able on the first
morning to get to the window and speak to my darling.

On the second morning I heard her dear voice--Oh, how dear
now!--outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech
being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer
softly, "Don't disturb her, Charley, for the world!"

"How does my own Pride look, Charley?" I inquired.

"Disappointed, miss," said Charley, peeping through the curtain.

"But I know she is very beautiful this morning."

"She is indeed, miss," answered Charley, peeping. "Still looking up
at the window."

With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when
raised like that!

I called Charley to me and gave her her last charge.

"Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way
into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the
last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for
one moment as I lie here, I shall die."

"I never will! I never will!" she promised me.

"I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a
little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you,
Charley; I am blind."

The Appointed Time

It is night in Lincoln's Inn--perplexed and troublous valley of the
shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day--and
fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down
the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine
o'clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are
shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of
sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows
clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a
fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at
the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little
patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and
conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes
of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an
acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their
species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give,
for every day, some good account at last.

In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and
bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and
supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged
with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been
lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and
scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of
passengers--Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged
congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on
a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and
the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in liquor," and the
testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of
their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the
Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where the sound of the piano
through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and
where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar
like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a
concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to
"Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!" Mrs. Perkins and Mrs.
Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of
professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who
has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window,
Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year
and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren,
and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's Arms every
night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments.
"Sooner than which, myself," says Mrs. Perkins, "I would get my
living by selling lucifers." Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the
same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public
applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs.
Perkins') respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms
appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that
tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs.
Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was
fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to
bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court
and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen
in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too,
the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be
suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis
that every one is either robbing or being robbed.

It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there
is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming
night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the
sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the
registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the
air--there is plenty in it--or it may be something in himself that is
in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He
comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty
times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since
the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night,
Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight
velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all
proportion), oftener than before.

It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for
he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the
secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a
partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what
seems to be its fountain-head--the rag and bottle shop in the court.
It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by
the Sol's Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out
at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated
after-supper stroll of ten minutes' long from his own door and back
again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.

"What, Mr. Weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. "Are YOU
there?"

"Aye!" says Weevle, "Here I am, Mr. Snagsby."

"Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?" the stationer
inquires.

"Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not
very freshening," Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.

"Very true, sir. Don't you observe," says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to
sniff and taste the air a little, "don't you observe, Mr. Weevle,
that you're--not to put too fine a point upon it--that you're rather
greasy here, sir?"

"Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in
the place to-night," Mr. Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops at the
Sol's Arms."

"Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?" Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes
again. "Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at
the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning 'em, sir!
And I don't think"--Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then
spits and wipes his mouth--"I don't think--not to put too fine a
point upon it--that they were quite fresh when they were shown the
gridiron."

"That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather."

"It IS a tainting sort of weather," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I find it
sinking to the spirits."

"By George! I find it gives me the horrors," returns Mr. Weevle.

"Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,
with a black circumstance hanging over it," says Mr. Snagsby, looking
in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and then falling
back a step to look up at the house. "I couldn't live in that room
alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an
evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and
stand here sooner than sit there. But then it's very true that you
didn't see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference."

"I know quite enough about it," returns Tony.

"It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough
of mild persuasion behind his hand. "Mr. Krook ought to consider it
in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure."

"I hope he does," says Tony. "But I doubt it."

"You find the rent too high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer.
"Rents ARE high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but the
law seems to put things up in price. Not," adds Mr. Snagsby with his
apologetic cough, "that I mean to say a word against the profession I
get my living by."

Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the
stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a
star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his
way out of this conversation.

"It's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,
"that he should have been--"

"Who's he?" interrupts Mr. Weevle.

"The deceased, you know," says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and
right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on
the button.

"Ah, to be sure!" returns the other as if he were not over-fond of
the subject. "I thought we had done with him."

"I was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should
have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that
you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which
there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,"
says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have
unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, "because
I have known writers that have gone into brewers' houses and done
really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir," adds Mr.
Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.

"It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, once more
glancing up and down the court.

"Seems a fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer.

"There does."

"Just so," observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. "Quite
a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid
you good night"--Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go,
though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since
he stopped to speak--"my little woman will be looking for me else.
Good night, sir!"

If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of
looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His
little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this
time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over
her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching
glance as she goes past.

"You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr. Weevle to
himself; "and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever you
are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER
coming!"

This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his
finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door.
Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is
he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they
speak low.

"I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here,"
says Tony.

"Why, I said about ten."

"You said about ten," Tony repeats. "Yes, so you did say about ten.
But according to my count, it's ten times ten--it's a hundred
o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!"

"What has been the matter?"

"That's it!" says Tony. "Nothing has been the matter. But here have I
been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the
horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE'S a blessed-looking
candle!" says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his
table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.

"That's easily improved," Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the snuffers
in hand.

"IS it?" returns his friend. "Not so easily as you think. It has been
smouldering like that ever since it was lighted."

"Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr. Guppy, looking
at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the
table.

"William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the downs. It's this
unbearably dull, suicidal room--and old Boguey downstairs, I
suppose." Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with
his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender,
and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his
head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy
attitude.

"Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?"

"Yes, and he--yes, it was Snagsby," said Mr. Weevle, altering the
construction of his sentence.

"On business?"

"No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose."

"I thought it was Snagsby," says Mr. Guppy, "and thought it as well
that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone."

"There we go again, William G.!" cried Tony, looking up for an
instant. "So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to
commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!"

Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the
conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the
room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey
with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she
is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a
vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious
piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of
fur, and a bracelet on her arm.

"That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Guppy. "It's a speaking
likeness."

"I wish it was," growls Tony, without changing his position. "I
should have some fashionable conversation, here, then."

Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a
more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and
remonstrates with him.

"Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for
no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I
do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who
has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. But there are bounds
to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will
acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner on the
present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly."

"This is strong language, William Guppy," returns Mr. Weevle.

"Sir, it may be," retorts Mr. William Guppy, "but I feel strongly
when I use it."

Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy
to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the
advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured
remonstrance.

"No! Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be
careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited
image imprinted on his 'eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those
chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in
yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the
taste. It is not--happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I
could say the same--it is not your character to hover around one
flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry
you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound
even your feelings without a cause!"

Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying
emphatically, "William Guppy, drop it!" Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with
the reply, "I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord."

"And now," says Tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle
of letters. Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have
appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?"

"Very. What did he do it for?"

"What does he do anything for? HE don't know. Said to-day was his
birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock. He'll
have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day."

"He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?"

"Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him
to-night, about eight--helped him to shut up his shop--and he had got
the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed 'em
me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his
cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I
heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming
like the wind, the only song he knows--about Bibo, and old Charon,
and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been
as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole."

"And you are to go down at twelve?"

"At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a
hundred."

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs
crossed, "he can't read yet, can he?"

"Read! He'll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and
he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on
that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too old to
acquire the knack of it now--and too drunk."

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, "how do
you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?"

"He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has
and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye
alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and
asked me what it meant."

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again,
"should you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?"

"A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's--slopes a good deal, and the end of
the letter 'n,' long and hasty."

Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue,
generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he
is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It
takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.

"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is
there a chimney on fire?"

"Chimney on fire!"

"Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. "See how the soot's falling. See here, on my
arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow
off--smears like black fat!"

They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a
little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says
it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to
Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.

"And it was then," resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable
aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before
the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads
very near together, "that he told you of his having taken the bundle
of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?"

"That was the time, sir," answers Tony, faintly adjusting his
whiskers. "Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable
William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and
advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots."

The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed
by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and
his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears
to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.

"You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and
to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's
the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting
his thumb-nail.

"You can't speak too low. Yes. That's what he and I agreed."

"I tell you what, Tony--"

"You can't speak too low," says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his
sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.

"I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another
packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one
while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy."

"And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with
his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely
than not," suggests Tony.

"Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never
did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands--a legal friend
of yours--for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be producible,
won't they?"

"Ye-es," is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission.

"Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look! You don't doubt
William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?"

"I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returns the
other gravely.

"And what do you know?" urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little;
but on his friend's once more warning him, "I tell you, you can't
speak too low," he repeats his question without any sound at all,
forming with his lips only the words, "What do you know?"

"I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in
secrecy, a pair of conspirators."

"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "And we had better be that than a pair of
noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it's
the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?"

"Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be profitable,
after all."

Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the
mantelshelf and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to the
honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that
friend in those chords of the human mind which--which need not be
called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion--your friend
is no fool. What's that?"

"It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen and
you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."

Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant,
resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than
their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more
mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of
whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence,
haunted by the ghosts of sound--strange cracks and tickings, the
rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of
dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter
snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full
of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one
consent to see that the door is shut.

"Yes, Tony?" says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting
his unsteady thumb-nail. "You were going to say, thirdly?"

"It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in
the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it."

"But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony."

"May be not, still I don't like it. Live here by yourself and see how
YOU like it."

"As to dead men, Tony," proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal,
"there have been dead men in most rooms."

"I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and--and
they let you alone," Tony answers.

The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to
the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he
hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by stirring
the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been
stirred instead.

"Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he. "Let
us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It's too close."

He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in
and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to
admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking
up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of
distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir
of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping
on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy
tone.

"By the by, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed," meaning the younger of
that name. "I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather
of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family."

"I remember," says Tony. "I am up to all that."

"And as to Krook," resumes Mr. Guppy. "Now, do you suppose he really
has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to
you, since you have been such allies?"

Tony shakes his head. "I don't know. Can't Imagine. If we get through
this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better
informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don't
know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking
them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and
what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be
the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It's a
monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been
going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should
judge, from what he tells me."

"How did he first come by that idea, though? That's the question,"
Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic
meditation. "He may have found papers in something he bought, where
papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd
head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are
worth something."

"Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may
have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got,
and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's Court and
hearing of documents for ever," returns Mr. Weevle.

Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing
all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap
it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily
draws his hand away.

"What, in the devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my fingers!"

A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch
and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil
with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.

"What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of
window?"

"I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been
here!" cries the lodger.

And yet look here--and look here! When he brings the candle here,
from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away
down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.

"This is a horrible house," says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window.
"Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off."

He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he
has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood
silently before the fire when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and
all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various
heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet
again, the lodger says, "It's the appointed time at last. Shall I
go?"

Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back, but not
with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.

He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before the
fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the
stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.

"Have you got them?"

"Got them! No. The old man's not there."

He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his
terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly,
"What's the matter?"

"I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked
in. And the burning smell is there--and the soot is there, and the
oil is there--and he is not there!" Tony ends this with a groan.

Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and
holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has
retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something
on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in
the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room
and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and
table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as
usual. On one chair-back hang the old man's hairy cap and coat.

"Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to these
objects with a trembling finger. "I told you so. When I saw him last,
he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung
his cap on the back of the chair--his coat was there already, for he
had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up--and I left
him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that
crumbled black thing is upon the floor."

Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.

"See!" whispers Tony. "At the foot of the same chair there lies a
dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went
round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me,
before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it
fall."

"What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr. Guppy. "Look at her!"

"Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place."

They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains
where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground
before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the
light.

Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a
little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to
be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small
charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it
coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away,
striking out the light and overturning one another into the street,
is all that represents him.

Help, help, help! Come into this house for heaven's sake! Plenty will
come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court, true
to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord
chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under
all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice
is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute
it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you
will, it is the same death eternally--inborn, inbred, engendered
in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that
only--spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that
can be died.

Mrs. Woodcourt comes to stay at Bleak House for three weeks. Esther has a troubling encounter with her: she is rather insulted, though she pretends not to be, by the old lady's insinuation that Mr. Woodcourt pays attention to girls that he's not really interested in for marriage . This is insulting to both Woodcourt and to Esther, and Esther hopes that it isn't true. Esther helps Caddy with her trouseau, and helps dress her mother appropriately for Caddy's wedding to Prince. Mr. Jellyby has made it through his bankruptcy as well as could be done, and is back at the office to "begin the world anew." The Jellyby family has survived. The happy day arrives for the young Caddy and Prince. They marry in church, and Ada and Esther attend as bridesmaids. The two are off to the seaside for a short week-long honeymoon, which must seem to the overworked pair like an enternity of happiness. There is general rejoicing at their union. The parents of the pair are not changed, but all seem at least accepting of the marriage. Esther and Jarndyce hope and expect that the two will find happiness in marriage. Chapter 31 opens back at Bleak House. Esther has been teaching Charley reading and writing, and, though she tries gamely, Charley is not particularly good with the pen. Charley tells Esther that the brickmaker's wife, Jenny, is back in St Alban's, and that she has a sick orphan boy with her. The city officials will not help him. Esther and Charley go immediately to help, and see Jo in a state of delirium. He seems to recognize Esther, and think that she is the veiled lady. Charley carefully tends him, and Esther and Charley manage to get Jo to come with him. He tries to leave them and to go lie down by the warm bricks by the kiln, but they persuade him to come with them to a loft on the Jarndyce property. Mr. Skimpole, who once was a trained doctor, tells Jarndyce that Jo has a terribly contagious disease, probably smallpox. Charley nurses the boy, but he soon runs away, though not before spreading the disease to Charley. She is nursed faithfully back to health by Esther, and Ada and the rest of the household are kept strictly away to avoid contagion. Just when Charley is getting better, Esther falls seriously ill with the same disease, and goes temporarily blind. Back in London, in Chapter 32, Mr. Snagsby is still hounded by the suspicions of his wife. Mr. Weevle and he meet, and they enter Krook's shop together, which has more than the usual fetid odor about it -- in fact this time it is so offensive that Mr. Snagsby leaves. Weevle and Guppy meet later, and go up to his room. At the appointed hour of midnight they are to meet Krook, who would bring the letters written by Captain Hawdon. After admiring some of the engravings of British Beauties, including a likeness of Lady Dedlock, that Weevle has, they go down to meet Krook. They find a singularly offensive odor an a strange black soot. They eventually discover the remains of Krook, who has apparently died of spontaneous combustion.

The old and strange Mrs. Woodcourt, with her long tales in Welsh, give us a look at some of the prejudices of the English toward the Welsh in Victorian times.  Mr. Woodcourt, though of this line, does not seem to be very Welsh other than his dark complexion, but his mother is immersed in the history and her imagined royal lineage.  This contrast between the Welshness of the mother and the Engishness of the son makes the son attractive to Esther, though she may worry that she would have an enemy of a mother-in-law if she married Woodcourt.  But that possibility seems remote, since not only does Mrs. Woodcourt imply that Woodcourt has trifled with Esther, but also she predicts that Esther will marry someone rich, respectable and older .  This troubles Esther. Some of the disarray of the Jellyby and Turveydrop households has been assuaged by the marriage of young Caddy and Prince.  The older characters haven't changed, but they've accepted that their children will be married and they endeavor, as best they can, to make them happy.  The pathetic and comic are juxtaposed here, with the wild untended Jellyby children wreaking havoc and the old Mr. Turveydrop being so insufferably dignified.  The wedding is a foreshadowing of the happy end for Woodcourt and Esther. Another episode of melodrama is the illnesses of Jo, Esther, and Charley.  The mission of mercy which brings the contagion to Bleak House is only visited on Esther and Charley, so the reader is saved from reproaching Esther for her kindness to Jo.  Jo inexplicably runs away, making it impossible for Esther to understand his role in the secret of her parentage being slowly found out.   The appearance of the two brickmakers' abused wives in this episode only adds to the tragedy. The disease itself is one of the most obvious metaphors in the book for the illness of poverty that afflicts the English "body."  Jo, the lowest of the low, contracts the disease and, untrained to trust anyone, fails to receive proper treatment.  He spreads the illness up the social ladder, from the low-class but well-intentioned Charley and then on to Esther.  In like way, Dickens suggests, the economic and social problems rife in England affect all of society, not only those who "have" the disease -- that is, not only the very poor.  The whole body politic is infected in attempting, ineffectually, to treat the disease of poverty. The completely fantastic and unbelievable ending of Krook was probably accepted by many of the readers of the time -- although Dickens was plagued by skeptics enough that he provided Bleak House with a "scientific" preface defending the existence of spontaneous combustion for the three-volume edition of the work.  The social criticism implied by Krook's combustion is sharp and apt -- the  "Lord Chancellor" is consumed in his own internal fire, and dies in a way unlike the rest of humanity, for the legal system is such a far remove from real human life that it renders its adherents into something less than human.