Tales from Dickens

Esther was a sweet girl who had been brought up by a stern, hard-hearted woman whom she had always called "godmother," in ignorance of her parentage. She had never known who were her mother or father, for from earliest babyhood her godmother had forbidden her to ask questions concerning them, and she would have had a sad and lonely youth but for her sunny disposition.

It was not till her godmother died suddenly that she found she had a guardian, and that he was Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House. How he came to be her guardian was a mystery to her, but she was glad to find herself not altogether friendless. Although he had taken the pains to see her more than once, and had noticed with pleasure what a cheerful, loving nature she had, yet Esther had never, so far as she knew, seen him, so that she received his invitation to come and live at Bleak House with joyful surprise.

She went, on the day appointed, to London, and there she met Ada, whom she began to love at once, and Richard, a handsome, careless young fellow of nineteen. They spent the day together and got well acquainted before they took the morrow's coach to Bleak House.

At the Chancery Court they met poor, crazy little Miss Flite, who insisted on taking them to her room above the rag-and-bottle shop to show them her caged birds. And that night (as they had been directed) they stayed at the house of a Mrs. Jellyby, of whom Mr. Jarndyce had heard as a woman of great charity.

Mrs. Jellyby was a woman with a mission, which mission was the education of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, in Africa, and the cultivation there of the coffee-bean. She thought of nothing else, and was for ever sending out letters or pamphlets about it.

But she seemed unable to see or think of anything nearer home than Africa. The house was unswept, the children dirty and always under foot, and the meals half-cooked. She would sit all day in slipshod slippers and a dress that did not meet in the back, drinking coffee and dictating to her eldest daughter Caddy (who hated Africa and all its natives) letters about coffee cultivation and the uplifting of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.

A very strange sort of philanthropist both Esther and Ada thought Mrs. Jellyby. Perhaps, however, Mr. Jarndyce sent them there for a useful lesson, for he afterward asked them what they thought of her, and he seemed well pleased to learn that they considered her ideas of doing good in the world extremely odd.

Next day they drove to Bleak House. Not one of them had ever seen Mr. Jarndyce, but they found him all they had imagined and more – the kindest, pleasantest and most thoughtful person in the world. Before they had been there two days they felt as if they had known him all their lives.

Bleak House was a building where one went up and down steps from one room to another, and where there were always more rooms when one thought he had seen them all. In the daytime there was horseback riding or walking to amuse them, and in the evenings Ada often sang and played to the rest. Altogether the time flew by most pleasantly, and, judging by Mr. Jarndyce's jollity, the wind seldom showed any signs of coming from the east.

It was soon clear to everybody that Richard was in love with Ada and that Ada was beginning to love him in return. This pleased Mr. Jarndyce, for he was fond of both.

But he was fondest of Esther. He made her his housekeeper and she carried a big bunch of keys and kept the house as clean as a new pin. He used to say she reminded him of:

"Little old woman and whither so high?

To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky."

She was so cheerful, he said, she would sweep the cobwebs out of anybody's sky. And from this they took to calling her "Little Old Woman," and "Cobweb," and "Mother Hubbard," till none of them thought of her real name at all.

Bleak House had a number of visitors who came more or less often. One of these was an old school friend of Mr. Jarndyce's, named Boythorn. He was a big, blustering man with a laugh as big as himself. Wherever he went he carried a tiny tame canary, that used to sit at meal-time perched on the top of his great shaggy head. It was odd to see this wee bird sitting there unafraid, even at one of his "ha-ha-ha's" that shook the whole house.

Mr. Boythorn was exceedingly tender-hearted, but took delight in pretending to be the stubbornest, most cross-grained, worst-tempered individual possible. His neighbor was Sir Leicester Dedlock, a dignified and proud old baronet, and him Mr. Boythorn loved to keep in perpetual anger by bringing against him all manner of lawsuits regarding the boundary between their land.

Another visitor whom Esther found amusing was Harold Skimpole, a light, bright creature of charming manners, with a large head and full of simple gaiety. He was a man who seemed to trifle with everything. He sang a little, composed a little and sketched a little. But his songs were never completed and his sketches never finished.

His aim in life seemed to be to avoid all responsibility, and to find some one else to pay his debts. He always spoke of himself as a "child," though he was middle-aged. He claimed to have no idea whatever of the value of money. He would take a handful of coins from his pocket and say laughing, "Now, there's some money. I have no idea how much. I don't know how to count it. I dare say I owe more than that. If good-natured people don't stop letting me owe them, why should I? There you have Harold Skimpole." Mr. Jarndyce was far too honest and innocent himself to see through the man's hollow selfishness and was continually paying his debts, as they soon learned.

Most of all Bleak House's visitors, Esther came to like Allan Woodcourt, a handsome dark-haired young surgeon, and before long she found herself unconsciously looking and longing for his coming. Woodcourt was poor, however, and although he was in love with Esther he did not tell her, but soon sailed away on a long voyage as a ship's doctor.

II

LADY DEDLOCK'S SECRET

Sir Leicester Dedlock, whom Mr. Boythorn so loved to torment, was seventy years old. His wife, many years younger than himself, he had married for love. Lady Dedlock was not noble by birth – no one, indeed, knew who she had been before her marriage – but she was very beautiful. She was as proud and haughty, too, as she was lovely, and was much sought after. But with all her popularity she had few close friends, and no one in whom she confided.

Even her housekeeper, Mrs. Rouncewell, a fine, handsome old woman who had been Sir Leicester's servant for fifty years, thought her cold and reserved. Mrs. Rouncewell herself had had a son George, who many years before had gone off to be a soldier and had never come back; and, looking at her mistress's face, she often wondered if the shadow of pain there was the mark of some old grief or loss of which no one knew. However that may have been, the old baronet loved his wife and was very proud of her.

Sir Leicester's family lawyer was named Tulkinghorn. He was a dull, dignified man who always dressed in black and seldom spoke unless he had to. His one passion was the discovery of other people's secrets. He knew more family secrets than any one else in London, and to discover a new one he would have risked all his fortune.

Now, among the very many persons connected in some way or other with the famous Jarndyce case, which seemed destined never to end, was Sir Leicester Dedlock, and one day (the Chancery Court having actually made a little progress) Mr. Tulkinghorn brought the baronet some legal papers to read to him.

As the lawyer held one in his hand, Lady Dedlock, seeing the handwriting, asked in an agitated voice who had written it. He answered that it was the work of one of his copyists. A moment later, as he went on reading, they found that Lady Dedlock had fainted away.

Her husband did not connect her faintness with the paper, but Mr. Tulkinghorn did, and that instant he determined that Lady Dedlock had a secret, that this secret had something to do with the copyist, and that what this secret was, he, Tulkinghorn, would discover.

He easily found that the writing had been done by a man who called himself "Nemo," and who lived above Krook's rag-and-bottle shop, a neighbor to crazy little Miss Flite of the Chancery Court and the many bird-cages.

Krook himself was an ignorant, spectacled old rascal, whose sole occupations seemed to be to sleep and to drink gin, a bottle of which stood always near him. His only intimate was a big, gray, evil-tempered cat called "Lady Jane," who, when not lying in wait for Miss Flite's birds, used to sit on his shoulder with her tail sticking straight up like a hairy feather. People in the neighborhood called his dirty shop the "Court of Chancery," because, like that other court, it had so many old things in it and whatever its owner once got into it never got out again.

In return for Mr. Tulkinghorn's money Krook told him all he knew about his lodger. Nemo, it seemed, was surly and dissipated and did what legal copying he could get to do in order to buy opium with which he drugged himself daily. So far as was known, he had but one friend – Joe, a wretched crossing sweeper, to whom, when he had it, he often gave a coin.

Thus much the lawyer learned, but from the strange lodger himself he learned nothing. For when Krook took him to the room Nemo occupied, they found the latter stretched on his couch, dead (whether by accident or design no one could tell) of an overdose of opium.

Curious to see how Lady Dedlock would receive this news, Mr. Tulkinghorn called on her and told her of the unknown man's death. She pretended to listen with little interest, but his trained eye saw that she was deeply moved by it, and he became more anxious than ever to find out what connection there could be between this proud and titled woman and the miserable copyist who had lived and died in squalor.

Chance favored Mr. Tulkinghorn's object. One night he saw Joe, the ragged crossing sweeper pointing out to a woman whose face was hidden by a veil, and whose form was closely wrapped in a French shawl, the gate of the cemetery where Nemo had been buried. Later, at Sir Leicester's, he saw Lady Dedlock's maid, Hortense – a black-haired, jealous French woman, with wolf-like ways – wearing the same shawl.

He cunningly entrapped the maid into coming to his house one night wearing both veil and shawl, and there brought her unexpectedly face to face with Joe. By the boy's actions Mr. Tulkinghorn decided at once that Joe had never seen Hortense before, and that instant, he guessed the truth – that the veiled woman who had gone to the cemetery was really Lady Dedlock herself, and that she had worn her maid's clothes to mislead any observer.

This was a clever trick in the lawyer, but it proved too clever for his own good, for, finding she had been enticed there for some deeper purpose, Hortense flew into a passion with him. He sneered at her and turned her out into the street, threatening if she troubled him to have her put into prison. Because of this she began to hate him with a fierceness which he did not guess.

Mr. Tulkinghorn felt himself getting nearer to his goal. But he now had to find out who Nemo really had been.

If he had only known it, Krook could have aided him. The old man had found a bundle of old letters in Nemo's room after his death, and these were all addressed to "Captain Hawdon."

Krook himself could not read, except enough to spell out an address, and he had no idea what the letters contained. But he was quick to think the bundle might be worth some money. So he put it carefully away.

But Mr. Tulkinghorn found out nothing from Krook, for one day a strange thing happened. Krook had drunk so much gin in his life that he had become perfectly soaked with alcohol, so that he was just like a big spongeful of it. Now, it is a curious fact that when a great mass of inflammable material is heaped together, sometimes it will suddenly burst into flame and burn up all in a minute, without anything or anybody setting fire to it. This is just what happened to Krook. As he stood in the middle of the dirty shop, without any warning, all in a twinkling, he blazed up and burned, clothes and all, and in less time than it takes to tell it, there was nothing left but a little pile of ashes, a burnt mark in the floor and a sticky smoke that stuck to the window-panes and hung in the air like soot. And this was all the neighbors found when they came to search for him.

This was the end of Krook, and the rag-and-bottle shop was taken possession of by Grandfather Smallweed, a hideous, crippled money-lender, who had been his brother-in-law, and who at once went to work ransacking all the papers he could find on the premises.

Grandfather Smallweed was a thin, toothless, wheezy, green-eyed old miser, who was so nearly dead from age and asthma that he had to be wheeled about by his granddaughter Judy.

He had a wife who was out of her mind. Everything said in her hearing she connected with the idea of money. If one said, for example, "It's twenty minutes past noon," Mrs. Smallweed would at once begin to gabble: "Twenty pence! Twenty pounds! Twenty thousand millions of bank-notes locked up in a black box!" and she would not stop till her husband threw a cushion at her (which he kept beside him for that very purpose) and knocked her mouth shut.

Grandfather Smallweed soon discovered the bundle of letters hidden back of the shelf where Lady Jane, Krook's big cat, slept.

The name they bore, "Captain Hawdon," was familiar enough to the money-lender. Long ago, when Hawdon was living a dissipated life in London, he had borrowed money from Grandfather Smallweed, and this money was still unpaid when he had disappeared. It was said that he had fallen overboard from a vessel and had been drowned.

To think now that the captain had been living as a copyist all these years in London, free from arrest for the debt, filled the wizened soul of the old man with rage. He was ready enough to talk when Mr. Tulkinghorn questioned him, and finally sold him the bundle of letters.

The lawyer saw that they were in Lady Dedlock's penmanship; it remained to prove that the dead Nemo had really been Captain Hawdon.

Mr. Tulkinghorn, of course, had many specimens of the copyist's hand, and after much search he found a man who had once been a fellow soldier of the captain's. He was called "Mr. George," and kept a shooting-gallery. Mr. George had among his papers a letter once written him by Captain Hawdon, and not knowing the purpose for which it was to be used, loaned it to the lawyer. The handwriting was the same! And thus Mr. Tulkinghorn knew that the copyist had really been Captain Hawdon and that the letters in the bundle had once been written to him by the woman who was now the haughty Lady Dedlock.

It was a strange, sad story that the letters disclosed, as Mr. Tulkinghorn, gloating over his success, read them, line by line. The man who had fallen so low as to drag out a wretched existence by copying law papers – whom, until she saw the handwriting in the lawyer's hands, she had believed to be dead – was a man Lady Dedlock had once loved.

Many years before, when a young woman, she had run away from home with him. A little child was born to them whom she named Esther. When she and Hawdon had separated, her sister, to hide from the world the knowledge of the elopement, had told her the baby Esther was dead, had taken the child to another part of the country, given her the name of Summerson, and, calling herself her godmother instead of her aunt, brought her up in ignorance of the truth. Years had gone by and Captain Hawdon was reported drowned. At length the little Esther's mother had met and married Sir Leicester Dedlock, and in his love and protection had thought her dark past buried from view for ever.

All this the pitiless lawyer read in the letters, and knew that Lady Dedlock's happiness was now in his hands. And as he thought how, with this knowledge, he could torture her with the fear of discovery, his face took on the look of a cat's when it plays with a mouse it has caught.

Meanwhile Lady Dedlock had suffered much. The knowledge that Hawdon had not been drowned as she had supposed, had come to her like a thunderclap. And the news of his death, following so soon after this discovery, had unnerved her. She felt Mr. Tulkinghorn's suspicious eyes watching her always and began to tremble in dread of what he might know.

In the midst of these fears, she accidentally discovered one day that the baby name of Esther Summerson of Bleak House had been, not Summerson, but Hawdon.

This made Lady Dedlock guess the whole truth – that Esther was in reality her own daughter. As soon as she was alone, she threw herself on her knees in the empty room with sobs, crying:

"Oh, my child! My child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! Oh, my child! My child!"

III

LITTLE JOE PLAYS A PART

While these events, which so closely concerned Esther, were occurring in London, life at Bleak House went quietly on. Ada and Esther had become bosom friends, and both loved and respected Mr. Jarndyce above every one. Harold Skimpole, as charming and careless as ever, and as willing as ever that some one else should pay his debts for him, was often there, and whenever they went to the city they saw Miss Flite and Mrs. Jellyby, the latter still busily sending letters about the growing of coffee and the education of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.

Esther grew especially to like Caddy, the slipshod daughter to whom Mrs. Jellyby dictated her letters. The poor girl had much good in her, and Esther encouraged and helped her all she could. Caddy finally fell in love with Prince Turveydrop, a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired young man whose father kept a dancing school.

Old Mr. Turveydrop, his father, was a fat man with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, a wig and a padded chest. He always carried a cane, eye-glass and snuff-box and was so tightly buttoned up that when he bowed you could almost see creases come into the whites of his eyes. He thought himself a model of politeness and stood about to show off his clothes while he made his son, Prince, do all the teaching.

Caddy was so tired of hearing about Africa that at last she married Prince and moved into the Turveydrop dancing school, and Mrs. Jellyby had to hire a boy to help her with her great plans for the education of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.

Once Esther and Ada went with Mr. Jarndyce to visit Mr. Boythorn – the man with the tremendous laugh and the pet canary – at his country house where he lived in one perpetual quarrel with his neighbor, Sir Leicester Dedlock. Esther had often heard of the beauty of Lady Dedlock, and one Sunday in the village church she saw her. There was something strangely familiar in her look that reminded Esther of her godmother. An odd sensation came over her then and she felt her heart beat quickly. But this was before Lady Dedlock had guessed the truth, and Esther and she did not meet.

Richard Carstone had soon begun to be a source of great anxiety to all at Bleak House. It was plainly to be seen that he loved Ada dearly, and that she loved him as well, but to Mr. Jarndyce's regret he had begun to think and dream of the famous chancery suit and of the fortune that would be his when it ended. Mr. Jarndyce, from his own bitter experience, hated the Chancery Court and everything connected with it, and saw with grief that Richard was growing to be a ne'er-do-well, who found it easier to trust in the future than to labor in the present.

In spite of all advice Richard went from bad to worse. He began the study of medicine, soon changed this for law, and lastly decided to enter the army. He was naturally a spendthrift, and as long as his money lasted Harold Skimpole found him a very fine friend and helped him spend it.

Skimpole also introduced to him a knavish lawyer named Vholes, who made him believe the great chancery suit must soon end in his favor, and who (when Richard had put the case in his hands) proceeded to rob him of all he had. He poisoned his mind, too, against Mr. Jarndyce, so that Richard began to think his truest friend deceitful.

Ada saw this with pain, but she loved Richard above all else, and the more so when she saw him so wretched and deceived; and at last, without telling either Mr. Jarndyce or Esther what she was going to do, she went to Richard one day and married him, so that, as her husband, he could take the little fortune she possessed to pay Vholes to go on with the chancery suit.

A great misfortune befell Esther about this time – a misfortune that came to her, strangely enough, through little Joe, the crossing sweeper.

Half-starved, ragged and homeless all his life, Joe had never known kindness save that given to him by the poor copyist who had lived above Krook's rag-and-bottle shop. He lived (if having a corner to sleep in can be called living) in a filthy alley called "Tom-all-Alone's." It seemed to him that every one he met told him to "move on." The policeman, the shopkeepers at whose doors he stopped for warmth, all told him to "move on," till the wretched lad wondered if there was any spot in London where he could rest undisturbed.

Mr. Tulkinghorn, in his search to find out the woman who had hired Joe to show her the cemetery, had dogged him so with his detective that at length the lad had become frightened and left London for the open country. There he was taken very ill, and on the highway near Bleak House one evening Esther found him helpless and delirious with fever.

Touched by his condition she had him taken at once to Bleak House and put to bed, intending when morning came to send for a doctor.

But in the morning little Joe was missing. Though they searched high and low he was not to be found, and they decided that in his delirium he had taken to the road again. It was not till long after that Esther found his leaving had been brought about by Harold Skimpole, who was then visiting Bleak House, and who, in his selfishness, feared the boy might be the bearer of some contagious disease.

This unfortunately proved to be the case. Joe's illness was smallpox, and a few days later a maid of Esther's fell ill with it. Esther nursed her day and night, and just as she was recovering was stricken with it herself.

In her unselfishness and love for the rest, before unconsciousness came, she made the maid promise faithfully to allow no one (particularly neither Mr. Jarndyce nor her beloved Ada) to enter the room till all danger was past.

For many days Esther hovered between life and death and all the time the maid kept her word. Caddy came from the Turveydrop dancing school early and late, and little Miss Flite walked the twenty miles from London in thin shoes to inquire for her. And at length, slowly, she began to grow well again.

But the disease had left its terrible mark. When she first looked in a mirror she found that her beauty was gone and her face strangely altered.

This was a great grief to her at first, but on the day when Mr. Jarndyce came into her sick-room and held her in his arms and said, "My dear, dear girl!" she thought, "He has seen me and is fonder of me than before. So what have I to mourn for?" She thought of Allan Woodcourt, too, the young surgeon somewhere on the sea, and she was glad that, if he had loved her before he sailed away, he had not told her so. Now, she told herself, when they met again and he saw her so sadly changed he would have given her no promise he need regret.

When she was able to travel, Esther went for a short stay at the house of Mr. Boythorn, and there, walking under the trees she grew stronger.

One day, as she sat in the park that surrounded the house, she saw Lady Dedlock coming toward her, and seeing how pale and agitated she was, Esther felt the same odd sensation she had felt in the church. Lady Dedlock threw herself sobbing at her feet, and put her arms around her and kissed her, as she told her that she was her unhappy mother, who must keep her secret for the sake of her husband, Sir Leicester.

Esther thought her heart must break with both grief and joy at once. But she comforted Lady Dedlock, and told her nothing would ever change her love for her, and they parted with tears and kisses.

Another surprise of a different sort awaited Esther on her return to Bleak House. Mr. Jarndyce told her that he loved her and asked her if she would marry him. And, remembering how tender he had always been, and knowing that he loved her in spite of her disfigured face, she said yes.