BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la Sumar

CHAPTER XLIV  

The Letter and the Answer

My guardian called me into his room next morning, and then I told  him what had been left untold on the previous night.  There was  nothing to be done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid  another such encounter as that of yesterday.  He understood my  feeling and entirely shared it.  He charged himself even with  restraining Mr. Skimpole from improving his opportunity.  One  person whom he need not name to me, it was not now possible for him  to advise or help.  He wished it were, but no such thing could be.   If her mistrust of the lawyer whom she had mentioned were well- founded, which he scarcely doubted, he dreaded discovery.  He knew  something of him, both by sight and by reputation, and it was  certain that he was a dangerous man.  Whatever happened, he  repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and kindness, I  was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence. 

"Nor do I understand," said he, "that any doubts tend towards you,  my dear.  Much suspicion may exist without that connexion." 

"With the lawyer," I returned. 

"But two other persons have come  into my mind since I have been anxious.  Then I told him all about  Mr. Guppy, who I feared might have had his vague surmises when I  little understood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last  interview I expressed perfect confidence. 

"Well," said my guardian. 

"Then we may dismiss him for the  present.  Who is the other?"  I called to his recollection the French maid and the eager offer of  herself she had made to me. 

"Ha!" he returned thoughtfully. 

"That is a more alarming person  than the clerk.  But after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a  new service.  She had seen you and Ada a little while before, and  it was natural that you should come into her head.  She merely  proposed herself for your maid, you know.  She did nothing more." 

"Her manner was strange," said I. 

"Yes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and  showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her  death-bed," said my guardian. 

"It would be useless self-distress  and torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities.  There are  very few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of  perilous meaning, so considered.  Be hopeful, little woman.  You  can be nothing better than yourself; be that, through this  knowledge, as you were before you had it.  It is the best you can  do for everybody's sake.  I, sharing the secret with you--" 

"And lightening it, guardian, so much," said I. 

"--will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can  observe it from my distance.  And if the time should come when I  can stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it  is better not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her  dear daughter's sake." 

I thanked him with my whole heart.  What could I ever do but thank  him!  I was going out at the door when he asked me to stay a  moment.  Quickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his  face again; and all at once, I don't know how, it flashed upon me  as a new and far-off possibility that I understood it. 

"My dear Esther," said my guardian, "I have long had something in  my thoughts that I have wished to say to you." 

"Indeed?"  "I have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have.  I  should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately  considered.  Would you object to my writing it?" 

"Dear guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for ME  to read?" 

"Then see, my love," said he with his cheery smile, "am I at this  moment quite as plain and easy--do I seem as open, as honest and  old-fashioned--as I am at any time?"  I answered in all earnestness, "Quite."  With the strictest truth,  for his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute),  and his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored. 

"Do I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I  said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?" said he with his  bright clear eyes on mine.  I answered, most assuredly he did not. 

"Can you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what I profess,  Esther?" 

"Most thoroughly," said I with my whole heart. 

"My dear girl," returned my guardian, "give me your hand." 

He took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and looking  down into my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness  of manner--the old protecting manner which had made that house my  home in a moment--said, "You have wrought changes in me, little  woman, since the winter day in the stage-coach.  First and last you  have done me a world of good since that time." 

"Ah, guardian, what have you done for me since that time!" 

"But," said he, "that is not to be remembered now." 

"It never can be forgotten." 

"Yes, Esther," said he with a gentle seriousness, "it is to be  forgotten now, to be forgotten for a while.  You are only to  remember now that nothing can change me as you know me.  Can you  feel quite assured of that, my dear?"  "I can, and I do," I said. 

"That's much," he answered. 

"That's everything.  But I must not  take that at a word.  I will not write this something in my  thoughts until you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing  can change me as you know me.  If you doubt that in the least  degree, I will never write it.  If you are sure of that, on good  consideration, send Charley to me this night week--'for the  letter.'  But if you are not quite certain, never send.  Mind, I  trust to your truth, in this thing as in everything.  If you are  not quite certain on that one point, never send!" 

"Guardian," said I, "I am already certain, I can no more be changed  in that conviction than you can be changed towards me.  I shall  send Charley for the letter."  He shook my hand and said no more.  Nor was any more said in  reference to this conversation, either by him or me, through the  whole week.  When the appointed night came, I said to Charley as  soon as I was alone, "Go and knock at Mr. Jarndyce's door, Charley,  and say you have come from me--'for the letter.'" 

Charley went up  the stairs, and down the stairs, and along the passages--the zig- zag way about the old-fashioned house seemed very long in my  listening ears that night--and so came back, along the passages,  and down the stairs, and up the stairs, and brought the letter.   

"Lay it on the table, Charley," said I.  So Charley laid it on the  table and went to bed, and I sat looking at it without taking it  up, thinking of many things.  I began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those  timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her  resolute face so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with  Mrs. Rachael than if I had had no one in the world to speak to or  to look at.  I passed to the altered days when I was so blest as to  find friends in all around me, and to be beloved.  I came to the  time when I first saw my dear girl and was received into that  sisterly affection which was the grace and beauty of my life.  I  recalled the first bright gleam of welcome which had shone out of  those very windows upon our expectant faces on that cold bright  night, and which had never paled. 

I lived my happy life there over  again, I went through my illness and recovery, I thought of myself  so altered and of those around me so unchanged; and all this  happiness shone like a light from one central figure, represented  before me by the letter on the table.  I opened it and read it.  It was so impressive in its love for me,  and in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it  showed for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to  read much at a time.  But I read it through three times before I  laid it down.  I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport,  and I did.  It asked me, would I be the mistress of Bleak House.  It was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was  written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. 

I saw his  face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind  protecting manner in every line.  It addressed me as if our places  were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the  feelings they had awakened his.  It dwelt on my being young, and he  past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I  was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing  all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature  deliberation.  It told me that I would gain nothing by such a  marriage and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation  could enhance the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my  decision was, he was certain it would be right.  But he had  considered this step anew since our late confidence and had decided  on taking it, if it only served to show me through one poor  instance that the whole world would readily unite to falsify the  stern prediction of my childhood.  I was the last to know what  happiness I could bestow upon him, but of that he said no more, for  I was always to remember that I owed him nothing and that he was my  debtor, and for very much.  He had often thought of our future, and  foreseeing that the time must come, and fearing that it might come  soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age) would leave us, and when  our present mode of life must be broken up, had become accustomed  to reflect on this proposal. 

Thus he made it.  If I felt that I  could ever give him the best right he could have to be my  protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become the  dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter  chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind  myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even  then I must have ample time for reconsideration.  In that case, or  in the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in  his old manner, in the old name by which I called him.  And as to  his bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be  the same, he knew.  This was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a  justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian  impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in  his integrity he stated the full case.  But he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he  had had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from  it.  That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no  attractions, he could love me just as well as in my fairer days.   

That the discovery of my birth gave him no shock.  That his  generosity rose above my disfigurement and my inheritance of shame.   That the more I stood in need of such fidelity, the more firmly I  might trust in him to the last.  But I knew it, I knew it well now.  It came upon me as the close of  the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had  but one thing to do.  To devote my life to his happiness was to  thank him poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but  some new means of thanking him? 

Still I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after  reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect-- for it was strange though I had expected the contents--but as if  something for which there was no name or distinct idea were  indefinitely lost to me.  I was very happy, very thankful, very  hopeful; but I cried very much.  By and by I went to my old glass.  My eyes were red and swollen,  and I said, "Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!"  I am afraid the  face in the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I  held up my finger at it, and it stopped. 

"That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my  dear, when you showed me such a change!" said I, beginning to let  down my hair. 

"When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be  as cheerful as a bird.  In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so  let us begin for once and for all." 

I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably.  I sobbed a little  still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was  crying then. 

"And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life.  Happy with your  best friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a  great deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of  men."  I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else,  how should I have felt, and what should I have done!  That would  have been a change indeed.  It presented my life in such a new and  blank form that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss  before I laid them down in their basket again. 

Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how  often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my  illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why  I should be busy, busy, busy--useful, amiable, serviceable, in all  honest, unpretending ways.  This was a good time, to be sure, to  sit down morbidly and cry!  As to its seeming at all strange to me  at first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not)  that I was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it  seem strange?  Other people had thought of such things, if I had  not. 

"Don't you remember, my plain dear," I asked myself, looking  at the glass, "what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were  there about your marrying--"  Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance.  The dried remains  of the flowers.  It would be better not to keep them now.  They had  only been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone,  but it would be better not to keep them now. 

They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room--our  sitting-room, dividing Ada's chamber from mine.  I took a candle  and went softly in to fetch it from its shelf.  After I had it in  my hand, I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying  asleep, and I stole in to kiss her.  It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying;  but I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another.   Weaker than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for  a moment to her lips.  I thought about her love for Richard,  though, indeed, the flowers had nothing to do with that. 

Then I  took them into my own room and burned them at the candle, and they  were dust in an instant.  On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian  just as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free.  There being not  the least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think  there was none) in mine.  I was with him several times in the  course of the morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and  I thought it not unlikely that he might speak to me about the  letter, but he did not say a word.  So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week,  over which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay.  I expected, every  day, that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he  never did. 

I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer.  I  tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not  write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought  each night I would wait one more day.  And I waited seven more  days, and he never said a word.  At last, Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon  going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going  down, came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at  the drawing-room window looking out.  He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, "Aye, it's you, little  woman, is it?" and looked out again.  I had made up my mind to speak to him now.  In short, I had come  down on purpose. 

"Guardian," I said, rather hesitating and  trembling, "when would you like to have the answer to the letter  Charley came for?" 

"When it's ready, my dear," he replied. 

"I think it is ready," said I. 

"Is Charley to bring it?" he asked pleasantly. 

"No.  I have brought it myself, guardian," I returned.  I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was  this the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no  difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said  nothing to my precious pet about it.

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