BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la sumar

CHAPTER XLIII  

Esther's Narrative

It matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who  had told me evermore to consider her dead.  I could not venture to  approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of  the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by  my fears of increasing it.  Knowing that my mere existence as a  living creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not  always conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I  first knew the secret.  At no time did I dare to utter her name.  I  felt as if I did not even dare to hear it.  If the conversation  anywhere, when I was present, took that direction, as it sometimes  naturally did, I tried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated  something that I knew, or went out of the room.  I am conscious now  that I often did these things when there can have been no danger of  her being spoken of, but I did them in the dread I had of hearing  anything that might lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal  through me. 

It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother's  voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed  to do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should  be so new to me.  It matters little that I watched for every public  mention of my mother's name; that I passed and repassed the door of  her house in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once  sat in the theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we  were so wide asunder before the great company of all degrees that  any link or confidence between us seemed a dream.  It is all, all  over.  My lot has been so blest that I can relate little of myself  which is not a story of goodness and generosity in others.  I may  well pass that little and go on.  When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many  conversations with my guardian of which Richard was the theme.  My  dear girl was deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so  much wrong, but she was so faithful to Richard that she could not  bear to blame him even for that.  My guardian was assured of it,  and never coupled his name with a word of reproof. 

"Rick is  mistaken, my dear," he would say to her. 

"Well, well!  We have all  been mistaken over and over again.  We must trust to you and time  to set him right." 

We knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to  time until he had often tried to open Richard's eyes.  That he had  written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle  and persuasive art his kindness could devise.  Our poor devoted  Richard was deaf and blind to all.  If he were wrong, he would make  amends when the Chancery suit was over.  If he were groping in the  dark, he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those  clouds in which so much was confused and obscured.  Suspicion and  misunderstanding were the fault of the suit?  Then let him work the  suit out and come through it to his right mind. 

This was his  unvarying reply.  Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such  possession of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any  consideration before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of  reason, make a new argument in favour of his doing what he did.   

"So that it is even more mischievous," said my guardian once to me,  "to remonstrate with the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone." 

I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr.  Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard. 

"Adviser!" returned my guardian, laughing, "My dear, who would  advise with Skimpole?" 

"Encourager would perhaps have been a better word," said I. 

"Encourager!" returned my guardian again. 

"Who could be encouraged  by Skimpole?" 

"Not Richard?" I asked.  "No," he replied. 

"Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer  creature is a relief to him and an amusement.  But as to advising  or encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or  anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as  Skimpole." 

"Pray, cousin John," said Ada, who had just joined us and now  looked over my shoulder, "what made him such a child?" 

"What made him such a child?" inquired my guardian, rubbing his  head, a little at a loss. 

"Yes, cousin John." 

"Why," he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, "he is  all sentiment, and--and susceptibility, and--and sensibility, and-- and imagination.  And these qualities are not regulated in him,  somehow.  I suppose the people who admired him for them in his  youth attached too much importance to them and too little to any  training that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he  became what he is.  Hey?" said my guardian, stopping short and  looking at us hopefully. 

"What do you think, you two?"  Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an  expense to Richard.  "So it is, so it is," returned my guardian hurriedly. 

"That must  not be.  We must arrange that.  I must prevent it.  That will never  do."  And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever  introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes for a present of five pounds. 

"Did he?" said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his  face. 

"But there you have the man.  There you have the man!  There  is nothing mercenary in that with him.  He has no idea of the value  of money.  He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr.  Vholes and borrows five pounds of him.  He means nothing by it and  thinks nothing of it.  He told you himself, I'll be bound, my  dear?" 

"Oh, yes!" said I. 

"Exactly!" cried my guardian, quite triumphant. 

"There you have  the man!  If he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any  harm in it, he wouldn't tell it.  He tells it as he does it in mere  simplicity.  But you shall see him in his own home, and then you'll  understand him better.  We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole and  caution him on these points.  Lord bless you, my dears, an infant,  an infant!" 

In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day and  presented ourselves at Mr. Skimpole's door.  He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there  were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about  in cloaks, smoking little paper cigars.  Whether he was a better  tenant than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend  Somebody always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude  for business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I  don't know; but he had occupied the same house some years. 

It was  in a state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation.  Two or  three of the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken,  the knocker was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long  time to judge from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty  footprints on the steps were the only signs of its being inhabited.  A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the  rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe  berry answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and  stopping up the gap with her figure.  As she knew Mr. Jarndyce  (indeed Ada and I both thought that she evidently associated him  with the receipt of her wages), she immediately relented and  allowed us to pass in. 

The lock of the door being in a disabled  condition, she then applied herself to securing it with the chain,  which was not in good action either, and said would we go upstairs?  We went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other  furniture than the dirty footprints. 

Mr. Jarndyce without further  ceremony entered a room there, and we followed.  It was dingy  enough and not at all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of  shabby luxury, with a large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of  cushions, an easy-chair, and plenty of pillows, a piano, books,  drawing materials, music, newspapers, and a few sketches and  pictures.  A broken pane of glass in one of the dirty windows was  papered and wafered over, but there was a little plate of hothouse  nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and  another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine. 

Mr.  Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in a dressing-gown,  drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china cup--it was then  about mid-day--and looking at a collection of wallflowers in the  balcony.  He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose  and received us in his usual airy manner. 

"Here I am, you see!" he said when we were seated, not without some  little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken.   

"Here I am!  This is my frugal breakfast.  Some men want legs of  beef and mutton for breakfast; I don't.  Give me my peach, my cup  of coffee, and my claret; I am content.  I don't want them for  themselves, but they remind me of the sun.  There's nothing solar  about legs of beef and mutton.  Mere animal satisfaction!" 

"This is our friend's consulting-room (or would be, if he ever  prescribed), his sanctum, his studio," said my guardian to us. 

"Yes," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, "this is  the bird's cage.  This is where the bird lives and sings.  They  pluck his feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings,  he sings!" 

He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, "He sings!   Not an ambitious note, but still he sings." 

"These are very fine," said my guardian. 

"A present?" 

"No," he answered. 

"No! Some amiable gardener sells them.  His man  wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he  should wait for the money.  'Really, my friend,' I said, 'I think  not--if your time is of any value to you.'  I suppose it was, for  he went away." 

My guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, "Is  it possible to be worldly with this baby?" 

"This is a day," said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in  a tumbler, "that will ever be remembered here.  We shall call it  Saint Clare and Saint Summerson day. 

You must see my daughters.  I  have a blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a  Sentiment daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter.  You must see  them all.  They'll be enchanted."  He was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked  him to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first.   

"My dear Jarndyce," he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa,  "as many moments as you please.  Time is no object here.  We never  know what o'clock it is, and we never care.  Not the way to get on  in life, you'll tell me?  Certainly.  But we DON'T get on in life.   We don't pretend to do it." 

My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, "You hear him?" 

"Now, Harold," he began, "the word I have to say relates to Rick." 

"The dearest friend I have!" returned Mr. Skimpole cordially. 

"I  suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms  with you.  But he is, I can't help it; he is full of youthful  poetry, and I love him.  If you don't like it, I can't help it.  I  love him."  The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really  had a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not,  for the moment, Ada too. 

"You are welcome to love him as much as you like," returned Mr.  Jarndyce, "but we must save his pocket, Harold." 

"Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole. 

"His pocket?  Now you are coming to what  I don't understand." 

Taking a little more claret and dipping one  of the cakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with  an ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand. 

"If you go with him here or there," said my guardian plainly, "you  must not let him pay for both." 

"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, his genial face  irradiated by the comicality of this idea, "what am I to do?  If he  takes me anywhere, I must go.  And how can I pay?  I never have any  money.  If I had any money, I don't know anything about it.   Suppose I say to a man, how much?  Suppose the man says to me seven  and sixpence?  I know nothing about seven and sixpence.  It is  impossible for me to pursue the subject with any consideration for  the man.  I don't go about asking busy people what seven and  sixpence is in Moorish--which I don't understand.  Why should I go  about asking them what seven and sixpence is in Money--which I  don't understand?" 

"Well," said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless  reply, "if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must  borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that  circumstance), and leave the calculation to him." 

"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "I will do anything to  give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form--a superstition.   Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson,  I thought Mr. Carstone was immensely rich.  I thought he had only  to make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque,  or a bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a  shower of money."  "Indeed it is not so, sir," said Ada. 

"He is poor." 

"No, really?" returned Mr. Skimpole with his bright smile. 

"You  surprise me. 

"And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed," said my  guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr.  Skimpole's dressing-gown, "be you very careful not to encourage him  in that reliance, Harold." 

"My dear good friend," returned Mr. Skimpole, "and my dear Miss  Siunmerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that?  It's  business, and I don't know business.  It is he who encourages me.   He emerges from great feats of business, presents the brightest  prospects before me as their result, and calls upon me to admire  them.  I do admire them--as bright prospects.  But I know no more  about them, and I tell him so." 

The helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before  us, the light-hearted manner in which he was amused by his  innocence, the fantastic way in which he took himself under his own  protection and argued about that curious person, combined with the  delightful ease of everything he said exactly to make out my  guardian's case. 

The more I saw of him, the more unlikely it  seemed to me, when he was present, that he could design, conceal,  or influence anything; and yet the less likely that appeared when  he was not present, and the less agreeable it was to think of his  having anything to do with any one for whom I cared.  Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr.  Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters  (his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite  delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish  character.  He soon came back, bringing with him the three young  ladies and Mrs. Skimpole, who had once been a beauty but was now a  delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of  disorders. 

"This," said Mr. Skimpole, "is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa--plays  and sings odds and ends like her father.  This is my Sentiment  daughter, Laura--plays a little but don't sing.  This is my Comedy  daughter, Kitty--sings a little but don't play.  We all draw a  little and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time  or money."  Mrs. Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to  strike out this item in the family attainments.  I also thought  that she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she  took every opportunity of throwing in another. 

"It is pleasant," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes  from one to the other of us, "and it is whimsically interesting to  trace peculiarities in families.  In this family we are all  children, and I am the youngest."  The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by  this droll fact, particularly the Comedy daughter. 

"My dears, it is true," said Mr. Skimpole, "is it not?  So it is,  and so it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, 'it is our  nature to.'  Now, here is Miss Summerson with a fine administrative  capacity and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising.  It will  sound very strange in Miss Summerson's ears, I dare say, that we  know nothing about chops in this house.  But we don't, not the  least.  We can't cook anything whatever.  A needle and thread we  don't know how to use.  We admire the people who possess the  practical wisdom we want, but we don't quarrel with them.  Then why  should they quarrel with us?  Live and let live, we say to them.   Live upon your practical wisdom, and let us live upon you!" 

He laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean  what he said. 

"We have sympathy, my roses," said Mr. Skimpole, "sympathy for  everything.  Have we not?" 

"Oh, yes, papa!" cried the three daughters. 

"In fact, that is our family department," said Mr. Skimpole, "in  this hurly-burly of life.  We are capable of looking on and of  being interested, and we DO look on, and we ARE interested.  What  more can we do?  Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three  years.  Now I dare say her marrying another child, and having two  more, was all wrong in point of political economy, but it was very  agreeable.  We had our little festivities on those occasions and  exchanged social ideas.  She brought her young husband home one  day, and they and their young fledglings have their nest upstairs.   I dare say at some time or other Sentiment and Comedy will bring  THEIR husbands home and have THEIR nests upstairs too.  So we get  on, we don't know how, but somehow."  She looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and  I could not help pitying both her and them.  It was evident that  the three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as  little haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father's  playthings in his idlest hours.  His pictorial tastes were  consulted, I observed, in their respective styles of wearing their  hair, the Beauty daughter being in the classic manner, the  Sentiment daughter luxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy daughter  in the arch style, with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and  vivacious little curls dotted about the corners of her eyes. 

They  were dressed to correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent  way.  Ada and I conversed with these young ladies and found them  wonderfully like their father.  In the meanwhile Mr. Jarndyce (who  had been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change  in the wind) talked with Mrs. Skimpole in a corner, where we could  not help hearing the chink of money.  Mr. Skimpole had previously  volunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself  for the purpose. 

"My roses," he said when he came back, "take care of mama.  She is  poorly to-day.  By going home with Mr. Jarndyce for a day or two, I  shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability.  It has been  tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home." 

"That bad man!" said the Comedy daughter. 

"At the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his  wallflowers, looking at the blue sky," Laura complained. 

"And when the smell of hay was in the air!" said Arethusa. 

"It showed a want of poetry in the man," Mr. Skimpole assented, but  with perfect good humour. 

"It was coarse.  There was an absence of  the finer touches of humanity in it!  My daughters have taken great  offence," he explained to us, "at an honest man--" 

"Not honest, papa.  Impossible!" they all three protested. 

"At a rough kind of fellow--a sort of human hedgehog rolled up,"  said Mr. Skimpole, "who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from  whom we borrowed a couple of armchairs.  We wanted a couple of arm- chairs, and we hadn't got them, and therefore of course we looked  to a man who HAD got them, to lend them.  Well! This morose person  lent them, and we wore them out.  When they were worn out, he  wanted them back.  He had them back.  He was contented, you will  say.  Not at all.  He objected to their being worn.  I reasoned  with him, and pointed out his mistake. 

I said, 'Can you, at your  time of life, be so headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an  arm-chair is a thing to put upon a shelf and look at?  That it is  an object to contemplate, to survey from a distance, to consider  from a point of sight?  Don't you KNOW that these arm-chairs were  borrowed to be sat upon?'  He was unreasonable and unpersuadable  and used intemperate language.  Being as patient as I am at this  minute, I addressed another appeal to him. 

I said, 'Now, my good  man, however our business capacities may vary, we are all children  of one great mother, Nature.  On this blooming summer morning here  you see me' (I was on the sofa) 'with flowers before me, fruit upon  the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air full of fragrance,  contemplating Nature.  I entreat you, by our common brotherhood,  not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime, the absurd  figure of an angry baker!'  But he did," said Mr. Skimpole, raising  his laughing eyes in playful astonishinent; "he did interpose that  ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. 

And therefore I  am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend  Jarndyce."  It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the  daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so  old a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course.   

He took leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful  as any other aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with  us in perfect harmony of mind.  We had an opportunity of seeing  through some open doors, as we went downstairs, that his own  apartment was a palace to the rest of the house.  I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very  startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what  ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out.  Our guest  was in such spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but  listen to him and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada  yielded to the same fascination. 

As to my guardian, the wind,  which had threatened to become fixed in the east when we left  Somers Town, veered completely round before we were a couple of  miles from it.  Whether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters,  Mr. Skimpole had a child's enjoyment of change and bright weather.   In no way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the  drawing-room before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I  was yet looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of  barcaroles and drinking songs, Italian and German, by the score.  We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at  the piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of  music, and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the  ruined old Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two  ago and had got tired of, when a card was brought in and my  guardian read aloud in a surprised voice, "Sir Leicester Dedlock!" 

The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me  and before I had the power to stir.  If I had had it, I should have  hurried away.  I had not even the presence of mind, in my  giddiness, to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or  to know where it was.  I heard my name and found that my guardian  was presenting me before I could move to a chair. 

"Pray be seated, Sir Leicester." 

"Mr. Jarndyce," said Sir Leicester in reply as he bowed and seated  himself, "I do myself the honour of calling here--" 

"You do ME the honour, Sir Leicester." 

"Thank you--of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire to express  my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may  have against a gentleman who--who is known to you and has been your  host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference,  should have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and  charge, from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a  polite and refined taste at my house, Chesney Wold." 

"You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of  those ladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very  much." 

"It is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the  reasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making further allusion-- it is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me  the honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to  believe that you would not have been received by my local  establishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy,  which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and  gentlemen who present themselves at that house.  I merely beg to  observe, sir, that the fact is the reverse."  My guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any  verbal answer. 

"It has given me pain, Mr. Jarndyce," Sir Leicester weightily  proceeded. 

"I assure you, sir, it has given--me--pain--to learn  from the housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentleman who was in  your company in that part of the county, and who would appear to  possess a cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred  by some such cause from examining the family pictures with that  leisure, that attention, that care, which he might have desired to  bestow upon them and which some of them might possibly have  repaid." 

Here he produced a card and read, with much gravity and a  little trouble, through his eye-glass, "Mr. Hirrold--Herald-- Harold--Skampling--Skumpling--I beg your pardon--Skimpole." 

"This is Mr. Harold Skimpole," said my guardian, evidently  surprised. 

"Oh!" exclaimed Sir Leicester, "I am happy to meet Mr. Skimpole and  to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets.  I hope,  sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county,  you will be under no similar sense of restraint." 

"You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock.  So encouraged, I  shall certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another  visit to your beautiful house.  The owners of such places as  Chesney Wold," said Mr. Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air,  "are public benefactors.  They are good enough to maintain a number  of delightful objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor  men; and not to reap all the admiration and pleasure that they  yield is to be ungrateful to our benefactors." 

Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. 

"An  artist, sir?" 

"No," returned Mr. Skimpole. 

"A perfectly idle man.  A mere  amateur." 

Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even more.  He hoped he  might have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Skimpole  next came down into Lincolnshire.  Mr. Skimpole professed himself  much flattered and honoured. 

"Mr. Skimpole mentioned," pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself  again to my guardian, "mentioned to the house-keeper, who, as he  may have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family--"  ("That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the  occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare,"  Mr. Skimpole airily explained to us.) 

"--That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was  Mr. Jarndyce."  Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of that name.   

"And hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have  professed my regret.  That this should have occurred to any  gentleman, Mr. Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known  to Lady Dedlock, and indeed claiming some distant connexion with  her, and for whom (as I learn from my Lady herself) she entertains  a high respect, does, I assure you, give--me--pain." 

"Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester," returned my guardian.   

"I am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your  consideration.  Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to  apologize for it." 

I had not once looked up.  I had not seen the visitor and had not  even appeared to myself to hear the conversation.  It surprises me  to find that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression  on me as it passed.  I heard them speaking, but my mind was so  confused and my instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his  presence so distressing to me that I thought I understood nothing,  through the rushing in my head and the beating of my heart. 

"I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock," said Sir Leicester,  rising, "and my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of  exchanging a few words with Mr. Jarndyce and his wards on the  occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the  vicinity.  Permit me, Mr. Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to  these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr.  Skimpole.  Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it  would afford me any gratification to hear that Mr. Boythorn had  favoured my house with his presence, but those circumstances are  confined to that gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him." 

"You know my old opinion of him," said Mr. Skimpole, lightly  appealing to us. 

"An amiable bull who is detenined to make every  colour scarlet!"  Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed as if he could not possibly hear  another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave  with great ceremony and politeness.  I got to my own room with all  possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my self- command.  It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to  find when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for  having been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet.  By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I  must tell my guardian what I knew. 

The possibility of my being  brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her  house, even of Mr. Skimpole's, however distantly associated with  me, receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so  painful that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his  assistance.  When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual  talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and sought my  guardian among his books.  I knew he always read at that hour, and  as I drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from  his reading-lamp. 

"May I come in, guardian?"  "Surely, little woman.  What's the matter?" 

"Nothing is the matter.  I thought I would like to take this quiet  time of saying a word to you about myself." 

He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his  kind attentive face towards me.  I could not help observing that it  wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before--on  that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could  readily understand. 

"What concerns you, my dear Esther," said he, "concerns us all.   You cannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear." 

"I know that, guardian.  But I have such need of your advice and  support.  Oh! You don't know how much need I have to-night."  He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little  alarmed. 

"Or how anxious I have been to speak to you," said I, "ever since  the visitor was here to-day." 

"The visitor, my dear!  Sir Leicester Dedlock?" 

"Yes."  He folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the  profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next.  I did  not know how to prepare him. 

"Why, Esther," said he, breaking into a smile, "our visitor and you  are the two last persons on earth I should have thought of  connecting together!" 

"Oh, yes, guardian, I know it.  And I too, but a little while ago."  The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before.   He crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to  that) and resumed his seat before me. 

"Guardian," said I, "do you remensher, when we were overtaken by  the thunder-storm, Lady Dedlock's speaking to you of her sister?" 

"Of course.  Of course I do." 

"And reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone  their several ways?" 

"Of course." 

"Why did they separate, guardian?"  His face quite altered as he looked at me. 

"My child, what  questions are these!  I never knew.  No one but themselves ever did  know, I believe.  Who could tell what the secrets of those two  handsome and proud women were!  You have seen Lady Dedlock.  If you  had ever seen her sister, you would know her to have been as  resolute and haughty as she." 

"Oh, guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!" 

"Seen her?"  He paused a little, biting his lip. 

"Then, Esther, when you spoke  to me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but  married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and  that that time had had its influence on his later life--did you  know it all, and know who the lady was?" 

"No, guardian," I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke  upon me. 

"Nor do I know yet." 

"Lady Dedlock's sister." 

"And why," I could scarcely ask him, "why, guardian, pray tell me  why were THEY parted?" 

"It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart.   He afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some  injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of  quarrel with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she  wrote him that from the date of that letter she died to him--as in  literal truth she did--and that the resolution was exacted from her  by her knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of  honour, which were both her nature too.  In consideration for those  master points in him, and even in consideration for them in  herself, she made the sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and  die in it.  She did both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never  heard of her from that hour.  Nor did any one." 

"Oh, guardian, what have I done!" I cried, giving way to my grief;  "what sorrow have I innocently caused!" 

"You caused, Esther?" 

"Yes, guardian.  Innocently, but most surely.  That secluded sister  is my first remembrance." 

"No, no!" he cried, starting. 

"Yes, guardian, yes!  And HER sister is my mother!"  I would have told him all my mother's letter, but he would not hear  it then.  He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so  plainly before me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in  my better state of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with  fervent gratitude towards him through so many years, I believed I  had never loved him so dearly, never thanked him in my heart so  fully, as I did that night.  And when he had taken me to my room  and kissed me at the door, and when at last I lay down to sleep, my  thought was how could I ever be busy enough, how could I ever be  good enough, how in my little way could I ever hope to be forgetful  enough of myself, devoted enough to him, and useful enough to  others, to show him how I blessed and honoured him.

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