Full seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House.
The few words that I have to add to what I have written are soon penned; then I
and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. Not without much dear
remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope, on his or hers.
They gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I
never left her. The little child who was to have done so much was born before
the turf was planted on its father's grave. It was a boy; and I, my husband, and
my guardian gave him his father's name.
The help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it
came, in the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore
his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power was mighty to
do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand and how its touch could
heal my darling's heart and raised hope within her, I felt a new sense of the
goodness and the tenderness of God.
They throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my
country garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married then. I
was the happiest of the happy.
It was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked Ada
when she would come home.
"Both houses are your home, my dear," said he, "but the older
Bleak House claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do it,
come and take possession of your home."
Ada called him "her dearest cousin, John." But he said, no, it
must be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the boy's; and he had
an old association with the name. So she called him guardian, and has called him
guardian ever since. The children know him by no other name. I say the children;
I have two little daughters.
It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and
not at all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so it
is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write early in the morning at my
summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go round. I hope the miller will
not spoil Charley; but he is very fond of her, and Charley is rather vain of
such a match, for he is well to do and was in great request. So far as my small
maid is concerned, I might suppose time to have stood for seven years as still
as the mill did half an hour ago, since little Emma, Charley's sister, is
exactly what Charley used to be. As to Tom, Charley's brother, I am really
afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was decimals.
He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a good bashful fellow,
always falling in love with somebody and being ashamed of it.
Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a
dearer creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with the
children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life. Caddy keeps her
own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and lives full two miles further
westward than Newman Street. She works very hard, her husband (an excellent one)
being lame and able to do very little. Still, she is more than contented and
does all she has to do with all her heart. Mr. Jellyby spends his evenings at
her new house with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one. I
have heard that Mrs. Jellyby was understood to suffer great mortification from
her daughter's ignoble marriage and pursuits, but I hope she got over it in
time. She has been disappointed in Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure
in consequence of the king of Boorioboola wanting to sell everybody--who
survived the climate--for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to
sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more
correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Caddy's poor little
girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I believe there
never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in her scanty intervals of
leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to soften the affliction of her child.
As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here
of Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and doing
extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits his
deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is still believed
in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of Peepy and is understood to
have bequeathed him a favourite French clock in his dressing-room--which is not
his property.
With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty
house by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we
inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see us. I try to
write all this lightly, because my heart is full in drawing to an end, but when
I write of him, my tears will have their way.
I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling
him a good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me he is
what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is my husband's best
and dearest friend, he is our children's darling, he is the object of our
deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel towards him as if he were a
superior being, I am so familiar with him and so easy with him that I almost
wonder at myself. I have never lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do I
ever, when he is with us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his
side, Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman--all just the same as ever; and I
answer, "Yes, dear guardian!" just the same.
I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single
moment since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I remarked
to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and he said, no, truly;
it had finally departed from that quarter on that very day.
I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The
sorrow that has been in her face--for it is not there now--seems to have
purified even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality.
Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that she still
wears, teaching my Richard, I feel--it is difficult to express--as if it were so
good to know that she remembers her dear Esther in her prayers.
I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and
I am one.
We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and
we have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the people
bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear his praises or see
them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night but I know that in the course
of that day he has alleviated pain and soothed some fellow-creature in the time
of need. I know that from the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have
often, often gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is not
this to be rich?
The people even praise me as the doctor's wife. The people
even like me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I
owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I do
everything I do in life for his sake.
A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my
darling and my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was
sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch, when Allan
came home. So he said, "My precious little woman, what are you doing here?" And
I said, "The moon is shining so brightly, Allan, and the night is so delicious,
that I have been sitting here thinking."
"What have you been thinking about, my dear?" said Allan then.
"How curious you are!" said I. "I am almost ashamed to tell
you, but I will. I have been thinking about my old looks--such as they were."
"And what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?"
said Allan.
"I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that
you COULD have loved me any better, even if I had retained them."
"'Such as they were'?" said Allan, laughing.
"Such as they were, of course."
"My dear Dame Durden," said Allan, drawing my arm through his,
"do you ever look in the glass?"
"You know I do; you see me do it."
"And don't you know that you are prettier than you ever were?"
"I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But
I know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is very
beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my guardian has the
brightest and most benevolent face that ever was seen, and that they can very
well do without much
beauty in me--even supposing--.
End
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