BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la sumar

CHAPTER XIII

Esther's Narrative

We held many consultations about what Richard was to be, first  without Mr. Jarndyce, as he had requested, and afterwards with him,  but it was a long time before we seemed to make progress.  Richard  said he was ready for anything.  When Mr. Jarndyce doubted whether  he might not already be too old to enter the Navy, Richard said he  had thought of that, and perhaps he was.  When Mr. Jarndyce asked  him what he thought of the Army, Richard said he had thought of  that, too, and it wasn't a bad idea.  When Mr. Jarndyce advised him  to try and decide within himself whether his old preference for the  sea was an ordinary boyish inclination or a strong impulse, Richard  answered, Well he really HAD tried very often, and he couldn't make  out.  "How much of this indecision of character," Mr. Jarndyce said to me,  "is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and  procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth, I don't  pretend to say; but that Chancery, among its other sins, is  responsible for some of it, I can plainly see. 

It has engendered or  confirmed in him a habit of putting off--and trusting to this, that,  and the other chance, without knowing what chance--and dismissing  everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused.  The character of  much older and steadier people may be even changed by the  circumstances surrounding them.  It would be too much to expect that  a boy's, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences  and escape them."  I felt this to be true; though if I may venture to mention what I  thought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Richard's  education had not counteracted those influences or directed his  character.  He had been eight years at a public school and had  learnt, I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the  most admirable manner.  But I never heard that it had been anybody's  business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his  failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to HIM. 

HE had been  adapted to the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such  perfection that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I  suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again  unless he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it.   Still, although I had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and  very improving, and very sufficient for a great many purposes of  life, and always remembered all through life, I did doubt whether  Richard would not have profited by some one studying him a little,  instead of his studying them quite so much.  To be sure, I knew nothing of the subject and do not even now know  whether the young gentlemen of classic Rome or Greece made verses to  the same extent--or whether the young gentlemen of any country ever  did. 

"I haven't the least idea," said Richard, musing, "what I had better  be.  Except that I am quite sure I don't want to go into the Church,  it's a toss-up." 

"You have no inclination in Mr. Kenge's way?" suggested Mr.  Jarndyce. 

"I don't know that, sir!" replied Richard.  "I am fond of boating.   Articled clerks go a good deal on the water.  It's a capital  profession!"  "Surgeon--" suggested Mr. Jarndyce.  "That's the thing, sir!" cried Richard. 

I doubt if he had ever once thought of it before. 

"That's the thing, sir," repeated Richard with the greatest  enthusiasm. 

"We have got it at last.  M.R.C.S.!" 

He was not to be laughed out of it, though he laughed at it  heartily.  He said he had chosen his profession, and the more he  thought of it, the more he felt that his destiny was clear; the art  of healing was the art of all others for him.  Mistrusting that he  only came to this conclusion because, having never had much chance  of finding out for himself what he was fitted for and having never  been guided to the discovery, he was taken by the newest idea and  was glad to get rid of the trouble of consideration, I wondered  whether the Latin verses often ended in this or whether Richard's  was a solitary case.  Mr. Jarndyce took great pains to talk with him seriously and to put  it to his good sense not to deceive himself in so important a  matter. 

Richard was a little grave after these interviews, but  invariably told Ada and me that it was all right, and then began to  talk about something else. 

"By heaven!" cried Mr. Boythorn, who interested himself strongly in  the subject--though I need not say that, for he could do nothing  weakly;

"I rejoice to find a young gentleman of spirit and gallantry  devoting himself to that noble profession!  The more spirit there is  in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary  task-masters and low tricksters who delight in putting that  illustrious art at a disadvantage in the world.  By all that is base  and despicable," cried Mr. Boythorn, "the treatment of surgeons  aboard ship is such that I would submit the legs--both legs--of  every member of the Admiralty Board to a compound fracture and  render it a transportable offence in any qualified practitioner to  set them if the system were not wholly changed in eight and forty  hours!" 

"Wouldn't you give them a week?" asked Mr. Jarndyce. 

"No!" cried Mr. Boythorn firmly. 

"Not on any consideration!  Eight  and forty hours!  As to corporations, parishes, vestry-boards, and  similar gatherings of jolter-headed clods who assemble to exchange  such speeches that, by heaven, they ought to be worked in  quicksilver mines for the short remainder of their miserable  existence, if it were only to prevent their detestable English from  contaminating a language spoken in the presence of the sun--as to  those fellows, who meanly take advantage of the ardour of gentlemen  in the pursuit of knowledge to recompense the inestimable services  of the best years of their lives, their long study, and their  expensive education with pittances too small for the acceptance of  clerks, I would have the necks of every one of them wrung and their  skulls arranged in Surgeons' Hall for the contemplation of the whole  profession in order that its younger members might understand from  actual measurement, in early life, HOW thick skulls may become!"  He wound up this vehement declaration by looking round upon us with  a most agreeable smile and suddenly thundering, "Ha, ha, ha!" over  and over again, until anybody else might have been expected to be  quite subdued by the exertion.  As Richard still continued to say that he was fixed in his choice  after repeated periods for consideration had been recommended by Mr.  Jarndyce and had expired, and he still continued to assure Ada and  me in the same final manner that it was "all right," it became  advisable to take Mr. Kenge into council.  Mr. Kenge, therefore,  came down to dinner one day, and leaned back in his chair, and  turned his eye-glasses over and over, and spoke in a sonorous voice,  and did exactly what I remembered to have seen him do when I was a  little girl. 

"Ah!" said Mr. Kenge. 

"Yes.  Well!  A very good profession, Mr.  Jarndyce, a very good profession." 

"The course of study and preparation requires to be diligently  pursued," observed my guardian with a glance at Richard. 

"Oh, no doubt," said Mr. Kenge. 

"Diligently." 

"But that being the case, more or less, with all pursuits that are  worth much," said Mr. Jarndyce, "it is not a special consideration  which another choice would be likely to escape." 

"Truly," said Mr. Kenge. 

"And Mr. Richard Carstone, who has so  meritoriously acquitted himself in the--shall I say the classic  shades?--in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply  the habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in  that tongue in which a poet was said (unless I mistake) to be born,  not made, to the more eminently practical field of action on which  he enters." 

"You may rely upon it," said Richard in his off-hand manner, "that I  shall go at it and do my best." 

"Very well, Mr. Jarndyce!" said Mr. Kenge, gently nodding his head.   

"Really, when we are assured by Mr. Richard that he means to go at  it and to do his best," nodding feelingly and smoothly over those  expressions, "I would submit to you that we have only to inquire  into the best mode of carrying out the object of his ambition.  Now,  with reference to placing Mr. Richard with some sufficiently eminent  practitioner.  Is there any one in view at present?" 

"No one, Rick, I think?" said my guardian. 

"No one, sir," said Richard. 

"Quite so!" observed Mr. Kenge. 

"As to situation, now.  Is there  any particular feeling on that head?" 

"N--no," said Richard. 

"Quite so!" observed Mr. Kenge again. 

"I should like a little variety," said Richard; "I mean a good range  of experience." 

"Very requisite, no doubt," returned Mr. Kenge. 

"I think this may  be easily arranged, Mr. Jarndyce?  We have only, in the first place,  to discover a sufficiently eligible practitioner; and as soon as we  make our want--and shall I add, our ability to pay a premium?-- known, our only difficulty will be in the selection of one from a  large number.  We have only, in the second place, to observe those  little formalities which are rendered necessary by our time of life  and our being under the guardianship of the court.  We shall soon  be--shall I say, in Mr. Richard's own light-hearted manner, 'going  at it'--to our heart's content.  It is a coincidence," said Mr.  Kenge with a tinge of melancholy in his smile, "one of those  coincidences which may or may not require an explanation beyond our  present limited faculties, that I have a cousin in the medical  profession.  He might be deemed eligible by you and might be  disposed to respond to this proposal.  I can answer for him as  little as for you, but he MIGHT!" 

As this was an opening in the prospect, it was arranged that Mr.  Kenge should see his cousin.  And as Mr. Jarndyce had before  proposed to take us to London for a few weeks, it was settled next  day that we should make our visit at once and combine Richard's  business with it.  Mr. Boythorn leaving us within a week, we took up our abode at a  cheerful lodging near Oxford Street over an upholsterer's shop.   London was a great wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours  at a time, seeing the sights, which appeared to be less capable of  exhaustion than we were.  We made the round of the principal  theatres, too, with great delight, and saw all the plays that were  worth seeing.  I mention this because it was at the theatre that I  began to be made uncomfortable again by Mr. Guppy.  I was sitting in front of the box one night with Ada, and Richard  was in the place he liked best, behind Ada's chair, when, happening  to look down into the pit, I saw Mr. Guppy, with his hair flattened  down upon his head and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me.   I felt all through the performance that he never looked at the  actors but constantly looked at me, and always with a carefully  prepared expression of the deepest misery and the profoundest  dejection.  It quite spoiled my pleasure for that night because it was so very  embarrassing and so very ridiculous.  But from that time forth, we  never went to the play without my seeing Mr. Guppy in the pit,  always with his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned  down, and a general feebleness about him. 

If he were not there when  we went in, and I began to hope he would not come and yielded myself  for a little while to the interest of the scene, I was certain to  encounter his languishing eyes when I least expected it and, from  that time, to be quite sure that they were fixed upon me all the  evening.  I really cannot express how uneasy this made me.  If he would only  have brushed up his hair or turned up his collar, it would have been  bad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at  me, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such  a constraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to  cry at it, or to move, or to speak.  I seemed able to do nothing  naturally.  As to escaping Mr. Guppy by going to the back of the  box, I could not bear to do that because I knew Richard and Ada  relied on having me next them and that they could never have talked  together so happily if anybody else had been in my place.  So there  I sat, not knowing where to look--for wherever I looked, I knew Mr.  Guppy's eyes were following me--and thinking of the dreadful expense  to which this young man was putting himself on my account.  Sometimes I thought of telling Mr. Jarndyce. 

Then I feared that the  young man would lose his situation and that I might ruin him.   Sometimes I thought of confiding in Richard, but was deterred by the  possibility of his fighting Mr. Guppy and giving him black eyes.   Sometimes I thought, should I frown at him or shake my head.  Then I  felt I could not do it.  Sometimes I considered whether I should  write to his mother, but that ended in my being convinced that to  open a correspondence would he to make the matter worse.  I always  came to the conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing.  Mr.  Guppy's perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly  at any theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the  crowd as we were coming out, and even to get up behind our fly-- where I am sure I saw him, two or three times, struggling among the  most dreadful spikes. 

After we got home, he haunted a post opposite  our house.  The upholsterer's where we lodged being at the corner of  two streets, and my bedroom window being opposite the post, I was  afraid to go near the window when I went upstairs, lest I should see  him (as I did one moonlight night) leaning against the post and  evidenfly catching cold.  If Mr. Guppy had not been, fortunately for  me, engaged in the daytime, I really should have had no rest from  him.  While we were making this round of gaieties, in which Mr. Guppy so  extraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring  us to town was not neglected.  Mr. Kenge's cousin was a Mr. Bayham  Badger, who had a good practice at Chelsea and attended a large  public institution besides.  He was quite willing to receive Richard  into his house and to superintend his studies, and as it seemed that  those could be pursued advantageously under Mr. Badger's roof, and  Mr. Badger liked Richard, and as Richard said he liked Mr. Badger  "well enough," an agreement was made, the Lord Chancellor's consent  was obtained, and it was all settled.  On the day when matters were concluded between Richard and Mr.  Badger, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr. Badger's house.   We were to be "merely a family party," Mrs. Badger's note said; and  we found no lady there but Mrs. Badger herself.  She was surrounded  in the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a  little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little,  playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little,  reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little.   She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed,  and of a very fine complexion.  If I add to the little list of her  accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there  was any harm in it.  Mr. Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking  gentleman with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised  eyes, some years younger, I should say, than Mrs. Bayham Badger.  He  admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the  curious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three  husbands.  We had barely taken our seats when he said to Mr.  Jarndyce quite triumphantly, "You would hardly suppose that I am  Mrs. Bayham Badger's third!" 

"Indeed?" said Mr. Jarndyce.  "Her third!" said Mr. Badger. 

"Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the  appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former  husbands?"  I said "Not at all!"  "And most remarkable men!" said Mr. Badger in a tone of confidence.   "Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Badger's first  husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed.  The name of  Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European  reputation."  Mrs. Badger overheard him and smiled. 

"Yes, my dear!" Mr. Badger replied to the smile, "I was observing to  Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson that you had had two former  husbands--both very distinguished men.  And they found it, as people  generally do, difficult to believe." 

"I was barely twenty," said Mrs. Badger, "when I married Captain  Swosser of the Royal Navy.  I was in the Mediterranean with him; I  am quite a sailor.  On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I  became the wife of Professor Dingo." 

"Of European reputation," added Mr. Badger in an undertone. 

"And when Mr. Badger and myself were married," pursued Mrs. Badger,  "we were married on the same day of the year.  I had become attached  to the day." 

"So that Mrs. Badger has been married to three husbands--two of them  highly distinguished men," said Mr. Badger, summing up the facts,  "and each time upon the twenty-first of March at eleven in the  forenoon!"  We all expressed our admiration. 

"But for Mr. Badger's modesty," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I would take  leave to correct him and say three distinguished men." 

"Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce!  What I always tell him!" observed Mrs.  Badger. 

"And, my dear," said Mr. Badger, "what do I always tell you?  That  without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction  as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many  opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak--no, really," said  Mr. Badger to us generally, "so unreasonable--as to put my  reputation on the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain  Swosser and Professor Dingo.  Perhaps you may be interested, Mr.  Jarndyce," continued Mr. Bayham Badger, leading the way into the  next drawing-room, "in this portrait of Captain Swosser.  It was  taken on his return home from the African station, where he had  suffered from the fever of the country.  Mrs. Badger considers it  too yellow.  But it's a very fine head.  A very fine head!"  We all echoed, "A very fine head!"  "I feel when I look at it," said Mr. Badger, "'That's a man I should  like to have seen!'  It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that  Captain Swosser pre-eminently was.  On the other side, Professor  Dingo.  I knew him well--attended him in his last illness--a  speaking likeness!  Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs.  Swosser.  Over the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo.  Of  Mrs. Bayham Badger IN ESSE, I possess the original and have no  copy."  Dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs.  It was a very  genteel entertainment, very handsomely served.  But the captain and  the professor still ran in Mr. Badger's head, and as Ada and I had  the honour of being under his particular care, we had the full  benefit of them. 

"Water, Miss Summerson?  Allow me!  Not in that tumbler, pray.   Bring me the professor's goblet, James!"  Ada very much admired some artificial flowers under a glass. 

"Astonishing how they keep!" said Mr. Badger. 

"They were presented  to Mrs. Bayham Badger when she was in the Mediterranean."  He invited Mr. Jarndyce to take a glass of claret. 

"Not that claret!" he said.  "Excuse me!  This is an occasion, and  ON an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have.   (James, Captain Swosser's wine!)  Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that  was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago.   You will find it very curious.  My dear, I shall he happy to take  some of this wine with you.  (Captain Swosser's claret to your  mistress, James!)  My love, your health!"  After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs. Badger's first  and second husband with us.  Mrs. Badger gave us in the drawing-room  a biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser  before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the  time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler,  given to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour. 

"The dear old Crippler!" said Mrs. Badger, shaking her head. 

"She  was a noble vessel.  Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain  Swosser used to say.  You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce  a nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once.  Captain Swosser  loved that craft for my sake.  When she was no longer in commission,  he frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk,  he would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter- deck where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where  he fell--raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the  fire from my tops.  It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes."  Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass. 

"It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo," she  resumed with a plaintive smile. 

"I felt it a good deal at first.   Such an entire revolution in my mode of life!  But custom, combined  with science--particularly science--inured me to it.  Being the  professor's sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost  forgot that I had ever been afloat, and became quite learned.  It is  singular that the professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and  that Mr. Badger is not in the least like either!"  We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and  Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints.   In the course of it, Mrs. Badger signified to us that she had never  madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection,  never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser.   The professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and  Mrs. Badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with  great difficulty, "Where is Laura?  Let Laura give me my toast and  water!" when the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the  tomb.  Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past,  that Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to each other's  society, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be  separated so soon.  I was therefore not very much surprised when we  got home, and Ada and I retired upstairs, to find Ada more silent  than usual, though I was not quite prepared for her coming into my  arms and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden. 

"My darling Esther!" murmured Ada. 

"I have a great secret to tell  you!"  A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!  "What is it, Ada?" 

"Oh, Esther, you would never guess!" 

"Shall I try to guess?" said I. 

"Oh, no!  Don't!  Pray don't!" cried Ada, very much startled by the  idea of my doing so. 

"Now, I wonder who it can be about?" said I, pretending to consider. 

"It's about--" said Ada in a whisper. 

"It's about--my cousin  Richard!" 

"Well, my own!" said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I  could see. 

"And what about him?" 

"Oh, Esther, you would never guess!"  It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her  face, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow but in a little  glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just  yet. 

"He says--I know it's very foolish, we are both so young--but he  says," with a burst of tears, "that he loves me dearly, Esther." 

"Does he indeed?" said I. 

"I never heard of such a thing!  Why, my  pet of pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!"  To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me  round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so pleasant! 

"Why, my darling," said I, "what a goose you must take me for!  Your  cousin Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could for I  don't know how long!"  "And yet you never said a word about it!" cried Ada, kissing me. 

"No, my love," said I. 

"I waited to be told." 

"But now I have told you, you don't think it wrong of me, do you?"  returned Ada.  She might have coaxed me to say no if I had been the  hardest-hearted duenna in the world.  Not being that yet, I said no  very freely. 

"And now," said I, "I know the worst of it." 

"Oh, that's not quite the worst of it, Esther dear!" cried Ada,  holding me tighter and laying down her face again upon my breast. 

"No?" said I. 

"Not even that?" 

"No, not even that!" said Ada, shaking her head. 

"Why, you never mean to say--" I was beginning in joke.  But Ada, looking up and smiling through her tear's, cried, "Yes, I  do!  You know, you know I do!"

And then sobbed out, "With all my  heart I do!  With all my whole heart, Esther!"  I told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I  had known the other!  And we sat before the fire, and I had all the  talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of  it); and Ada was soon quiet and happy.  "Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?" she asked. 

"Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet," said I, "I should think my  cousin John knows pretty well as much as we know." 

"We want to speak to him before Richard goes," said Ada timidly,  "and we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so.  Perhaps you  wouldn't mind Richard's coming in, Dame Durden?" 

"Oh!  Richard is outside, is he, my dear?" said I.  "I am not quite certain," returned Ada with a bashful simplicity  that would have won my heart if she had not won it long before, "but  I think he's waiting at the door."  There he was, of course.  They brought a chair on either side of me,  and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love  with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so  trustful, and so fond of me.  They went on in their own wild way for  a little while--I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself-- and then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and  how there must be a lapse of several years before this early love  could come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if  it were real and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution  to do their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and  perseverance, each always for the other's sake.  Well!  Richard said  that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said  that she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they  called me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat  there, advising and talking, half the night.  Finally, before we  parted, I gave them my promise to speak to their cousin John to- morrow.  So, when tomorrow came, I went to my guardian after breakfast, in  the room that was our town-substitute for the growlery, and told him  that I had it in trust to tell him something. 

"Well, little woman," said he, shutting up his book, "if you have  accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it." 

"I hope not, guardian," said I. 

"I can guarantee that there is no  secrecy in it.  For it only happened yesterday." 

"Aye?  And what is it, Esther?" 

"Guardian," said I, "you remember the happy night when first we came  down to Bleak House?  When Ada was singing in the dark room?" 

I wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then.   Unless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so. 

"Because--" said I with a little hesitation. 

"Yes, my dear!" said he. 

"Don't hurry." 

"Because," said I, "Ada and Richard have fallen in love.  And have  told each other so." 

"Already!" cried my guardian, quite astonished. 

"Yes!" said I. 

"And to tell you the truth, guardian, I rather  expected it." 

"The deuce you did!" said he.  He sat considering for a minute or two, with his smile, at once so  handsome and so kind, upon his changing face, and then requested me  to let them know that he wished to see them.  When they came, he  encircled Ada with one arm in his fatherly way and addressed himself  to Richard with a cheerful gravity. 

"Rick," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am glad to have won your confidence.   I hope to preserve it.  When I contemplated these relations between  us four which have so brightened my life and so invested it with new  interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the  possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don't be shy, Ada,  don't be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together.   I saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable.  But that was  afar off, Rick, afar off!" 

"We look afar off, sir," returned Richard. 

"Well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. 

"That's rational.  Now, hear me, my  dears!  I might tell you that you don't know your own minds yet,  that a thousand things may happen to divert you from one another,  that it is well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very  easily broken, or it might become a chain of lead.  But I will not  do that.  Such wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to  come at all.  I will assume that a few years hence you will be in  your hearts to one another what you are to-day. 

All I say before  speaking to you according to that assumption is, if you DO change-- if you DO come to find that you are more commonplace cousins to each  other as man and woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood  will excuse me, Rick!)--don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for  there will be nothing monstrous or uncommon in it.  I am only your  friend and distant kinsman.  I have no power over you whatever.  But  I wish and hope to retain your confidence if I do nothing to forfeit  it." 

"I am very sure, sir," returned Richard, "that I speak for Ada too  when I say that you have the strongest power over us both--rooted in  respect, gratitude, and affection--strengthening every day." 

"Dear cousin John," said Ada, on his shoulder, "my father's place  can never be empty again.  All the love and duty I could ever have  rendered to him is transferred to you." 

"Come!" said Mr. Jarndyce. 

"Now for our assumption.  Now we lift  our eyes up and look hopefully at the distance!  Rick, the world is  before you; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will  receive you.  Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own  efforts.  Never separate the two, like the heathen waggoner.   Constancy in love is a good thing, but it means nothing, and is  nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.  If you had the  abilities of all the great men, past and present, you could do  nothing well without sincerely meaning it and setting about it.  If  you entertain the supposition that any real success, in great things  or in small, ever was or could be, ever will or can be, wrested from  Fortune by fits and starts, leave that wrong idea here or leave your  cousin Ada here." 

"I will leave IT here, sir," replied Richard smiling, "if I brought  it here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to  my cousin Ada in the hopeful distance." 

"Right!" said Mr. Jarndyce. 

"If you are not to make her happy, why  should you pursue her?" 

"I wouldn't make her unhappy--no, not even for her love," retorted  Richard proudly. 

"Well said!" cried Mr. Jarndyce. 

"That's well said!  She remains  here, in her home with me.  Love her, Rick, in your active life, no  less than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well.   Otherwise, all will go ill.  That's the end of my preaching.  I  think you and Ada had better take a walk." 

Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily shook hands with  him, and then the cousins went out of the room, looking back again  directly, though, to say that they would wait for me.  The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes as  they passed down the adjoining room, on which the sun was shining,  and out at its farther end.  Richard with his head bent, and her  hand drawn through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and  she looked up in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing  else.  So young, so beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they  went on lightly through the sunlight as their own happy thoughts  might then be traversing the years to come and making them all  years of brightness.  So they passed away into the shadow and were  gone.  It was only a burst of light that had been so radiant.  The  room darkened as they went out, and the sun was clouded over. 

"Am I right, Esther?" said my guardian when they were gone.  He was so good and wise to ask ME whether he was right!  "Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants.  Wants, at the  core of so much that is good!" said Mr. Jarndyce, shaking his head.   

"I have said nothing to Ada, Esther.  She has her friend and  counsellor always near." 

And he laid his hand lovingly upon my  head.  I could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did  all I could to conceal it. 

"Tut tut!" said he. 

"But we must take care, too, that our little  woman's life is not all consumed in care for others." 

"Care?  My dear guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in  the world!" 

"I believe so, too," said he. 

"But some one may find out what  Esther never will--that the little woman is to be held in  remembrance above all other people!" 

I have omitted to mention in its place that there was some one else  at the family dinner party.  It was not a lady.  It was a  gentleman.  It was a gentleman of a dark complexion--a young  surgeon.  He was rather reserved, but I thought him very sensible  and agreeable.  At least, Ada asked me if I did not, and I said  yes.

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