The term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation
from Mr. Kenge that the cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient
hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to go down to
the court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated and was so weak and low,
though his illness was still of the mind, that my dear girl indeed had sore
occasion to be supported. But she looked forward--a very little way now--to the
help that was to come to her, and never drooped.
It was at Westminster that the cause was to come on. It had come on there, I
dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest myself of an idea that
it MIGHT lead to some result now. We left home directly after breakfast to be at
Westminster Hall in good time and walked down there through the lively
streets--so happily and strangely it seemed!--together.
As we were going along, planning what we should do for Richard and Ada, I
heard somebody calling "Esther! My dear Esther! Esther!" And there was Caddy
Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little carriage which she hired
now to go about in to her pupils (she had so many), as if she wanted to embrace
me at a hundred yards' distance. I had written her a note to tell her of all
that my guardian had done, but had not had a moment to go and see her. Of course
we turned back, and the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was
so overjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers, and was so
determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her hands, and go on in a
wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of precious names, and telling
Allan I had done I don't know what for her, that I was just obliged to get into
the little carriage and caln her down by letting her say and do exactly what she
liked. Allan, standing at the window, was as pleased as Caddy; and I was as
pleased as either of them; and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than
that I came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking after
Caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as she could see us.
This made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to Westminster
Hall we found that the day's business was begun. Worse than that, we found such
an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery that it was full to the door, and we
could neither see nor hear what was passing within. It appeared to be something
droll, for occasionally there was a laugh and a cry of "Silence!" It appeared to
be something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to get nearer.
It appeared to be something that made the professional gentlemen very merry, for
there were several young counsellors in wigs and whiskers on the outside of the
crowd, and when one of them told the others about it, they put their hands in
their pockets, and quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping
about the pavement of the Hall.
We asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. He told us Jarndyce
and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it. He said really, no
he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he could make out, it was over. Over
for the day? we asked him. No, he said, over for good.
Over for good!
When we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another quite lost
in amazement. Could it be possible that the will had set things right at last
and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich? It seemed too good to be true.
Alas it was!
Our suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd, and the
people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and bringing a quantity of bad
air with them. Still they were all exceedingly amused and were more like people
coming out from a farce or a juggler than from a court of justice. We stood
aside, watching for any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of
paper began to be carried out--bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got into
any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes, which the
bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being, anyhow, on the Hall
pavement, while they went back to bring out more. Even these clerks were
laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere,
asked an official-looking person who was standing in the midst of them whether
the cause was over. Yes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out
laughing too.
At this juncture we perceived Mr. Kenge coming out of court with an affable
dignity upon him, listening to Mr. Vholes, who was deferential and carried his
own bag. Mr. Vholes was the first to see us. "Here is Miss Summerson, sir," he
said. "And Mr. Woodcourt."
"Oh, indeed! Yes. Truly!" said Mr. Kenge, raising his hat to me with polished
politeness. "How do you do? Glad to see you. Mr. Jarndyce is not here?"
No. He never came there, I reminded him.
"Really," returned Mr. Kenge, "it is as well that he is NOT here to-day, for
his--shall I say, in my good friend's absence, his indomitable singularity of
opinion?--might have been strengthened, perhaps; not reasonably, but might have
been strengthened."
"Pray what has been done to-day?" asked Allan.
"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Kenge with excessive urbanity.
"What has been done to-day?"
"What has been done," repeated Mr. Kenge. "Quite so. Yes. Why, not much has
been done; not much. We have been checked--brought up suddenly, I would
say--upon the--shall I term it threshold?"
"Is this will considered a genuine document, sir?" said Allan. "Will you tell
us that?"
"Most certainly, if I could," said Mr. Kenge; "but we have not gone into
that, we have not gone into that."
"We have not gone into that," repeated Mr. Vholes as if his low inward voice
were an echo.
"You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," observed Mr. Kenge, using his silver
trowel persuasively and smoothingly, "that this has been a great cause, that
this has been a protracted cause, that this has been a complex cause. Jarndyce
and Jarndyce has been termed, not inaptly, a monument of Chancery practice."
"And patience has sat upon it a long time," said Allan.
"Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr. Kenge with a certain condeseending
laugh he had. "Very well! You are further to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," becoming
dignified almost to severity, "that on the numerous difficulties, contingencies,
masterly fictions, and forms of procedure in this great cause, there has been
expended study, ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high
intellect. For many years, the--a--I would say the flower of the bar, and
the--a--I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of the
woolsack--have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce. If the public have the
benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of this great grasp, it must be
paid for in money or money's worth, sir."
"Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. "Excuse me,
our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have been
absorbed in costs?"
"Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes, what do YOU say?"
"I believe so," said Mr. Vholes.
"And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?"
"Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes?"
"Probably," said Mr. Vholes.
"My dearest life," whispered Allan, "this will break Richard's heart!"
There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew Richard so
perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual decay, that what my dear
girl had said to me in the fullness of her foreboding love sounded like a knell
in my ears.
"In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir," said Mr. Vholes, coming after
us, "you'll find him in court. I left him there resting himself a little. Good
day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson." As he gave me that slowly devouring look of
his, while twisting up the strings of his bag before he hastened with it after
Mr. Kenge, the benignant shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed
afraid to leave, he gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his
client, and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low door
at the end of the Hall.
"My dear love," said Allan, "leave to me, for a little while, the charge you
gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada's by and by!"
I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to Richard
without a moment's delay and leave me to do as he wished. Hurrying home, I found
my guardian and told him gradually with what news I had returned. "Little
woman," said he, quite unmoved for himself, "to have done with the suit on any
terms is a greater blessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!"
We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was possible to
do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to Symond's Inn and left me at
the door. I went upstairs. When my darling heard my footsteps, she came out into
the small passage and threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself
direcfly and said that Richard had asked for me several times. Allan had found
him sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure. On
being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have spoken in a fierce
voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth being full of blood, and Allan
had brought him home.
He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There were
restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as possible, and was
darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan stood behind him watching him
gravely. His face appeared to me to be quite destitute of colour, and now that I
saw him without his seeing me, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he
was. But he looked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day.
I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he said in a
weak voice, but with his old smile, "Dame Durden, kiss me, my dear!"
It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low state
cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our intended marriage
than he could find words to tell me. My husband had been a guardian angel to him
and Ada, and he blessed us both and wished us all the joy that life could yield
us. I almost felt as if my own heart would have broken when I saw him take my
husband's hand and hold it to his breast.
We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times that he
must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his feet. Ada would
contrive to take him, somehow, he said. "Yes, surely, dearest Richard!" But as
my darling answered him thus hopefully, so serene and beautiful, with the help
that was to come to her so near--I knew--I knew!
It was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we were
silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for my dear, as he
had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada leaned upon his pillow,
holding his head upon her arm. He dozed often, and whenever he awoke without
seeing him, said first of all, "Where is Woodcourt?"
Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian standing in
the little hall. "Who is that, Dame Durden?" Richard asked me. The door was
behind him, but he had observed in my face that some one was there.
I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded "Yes," bent over Richard and
told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me in a moment, and laid
his hand on Richard's. "Oh, sir," said Richard, "you are a good man, you are a
good man!" and burst into tears for the first time.
My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping his
hand on Richard's.
"My dear Rick," said he, "the clouds have cleared away, and it is bright now.
We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or less. What matters! And
how are you, my dear boy?"
"I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin the
world."
"Aye, truly; well said!" cried my guardian.
"I will not begin it in the old way now," said Richard with a sad smile. "I
have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you shall be assured,
indeed, that I have learned it."
"Well, well," said my guardian, comforting him; "well, well, well, dear boy!"
"I was thinking, sir," resumed Richard, "that there is nothing on earth I
should so much like to see as their house--Dame Durden's and Woodcourt's house.
If I could be removed there when I begin to recover my strength, I feel as if I
should get well there sooner than anywhere."
"Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick," said my guardian, "and our little
woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very day. I dare say her
husband won't object. What do you think?"
Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind the head
of the couch.
"I say nothing of Ada," said Richard, "but I think of her, and have thought
of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending over this pillow when
she has so much need to rest upon it herself, my dear love, my poor girl!"
He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually released her,
and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and moved her lips.
"When I get down to Bleak House," said Richard, "I shall have much to tell
you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won't you?"
"Undoubtedly, dear Rick."
"Thank you; like you, like you," said Richard. "But it's all like you. They
have been telling me how you planned it and how you remembered all Esther's
familiar tastes and ways. It will be like coming to the old Bleak House again."
"And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now, you
know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come to me, my love!"
he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over her golden hair and put a
lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed within himself to cherish her if she
were left alone.)
"It was a troubled dream?" said Richard, clasping both my guardian's hands
eagerly.
"Nothing more, Rick; nothing more."
"And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity the
dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?"
"Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?"
"I will begin the world!" said Richard with a light in his eyes.
My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly lift up
his hand to warn my guardian.
"When shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the old times
are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been to me, where I shall
be able to recall my many faults and blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself
to be a guide to my unborn child?" said Richard. "When shall I go?"
"Dear Rick, when you are strong enough," returned my guardian.
"Ada, my darling!"
He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she could hold
him on her bosom, which was what he wanted.
"I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray shadow
on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have scattered your
means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my Ada, before I begin the
world?"
A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid his face
down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck, and with one parting
sob began the world. Not this world,
oh, not this! The world that sets this right.
When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came weeping to me
and told me she had given her birds their liberty.
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