CHAPTER XIV

Deportment

Richard left us on the very next evening to begin his new career, and

committed Ada to my charge with great love for her and great trust in

me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more

nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both

thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all

their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write Richard

once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to

him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of

all his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute and

persevering he would be; I was to be Ada’s bridesmaid when they were

married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the

keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.

“And if the suit SHOULD make us rich, Esther—which it may, you

know!” said Richard to crown all.

A shade crossed Ada’s face.

“My dearest Ada,” asked Richard, “why not?”

“It had better declare us poor at once,” said Ada.

“Oh! I don’t know about that,” returned Richard, “but at all events,

it won’t declare anything at once. It hasn’t declared anything in

heaven knows how many years.”

“Too true,” said Ada.

“Yes, but,” urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather

than her words, “the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it

must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that

reasonable?”

“You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will

make us unhappy.”

“But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!” cried Richard gaily.

“We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it SHOULD

make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The

court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we

are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is

our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.”

“No,” said Ada, “but it may be better to forget all about it.”

“Well, well,” cried Richard, “then we will forget all about it! We

consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her

approving face, and it’s done!”

“Dame Durden’s approving face,” said I, looking out of the box in

which I was packing his books, “was not very visible when you called

it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can’t do

better.”

So, Richard said there was an end of it, and immediately began, on no

other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man

the Great Wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I,

prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.

On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs.

Jellyby’s but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It

appeared that she had gone somewhere to a tea-drinking and had taken

Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some

considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits

of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the

Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt,

sufficient active exercise of pen and ink to make her daughter’s part

in the proceedings anything but a holiday.

It being now beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby’s return, we

called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile

End directly after breakfast on some Borrioboolan business, arising

out of a society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I

had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not

to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have

strolled away with the dustman’s cart), I now inquired for him again.

The oyster shells he had been building a house with were still in the

passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that

he had “gone after the sheep.” When we repeated, with some surprise,

“The sheep?” she said, Oh, yes, on market days he sometimes followed

them quite out of town and came back in such a state as never was!

I was sitting at the window with my guardian on the following

morning, and Ada was busy writing—of course to Richard—when Miss

Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom

she had made some endeavours to render presentable by wiping the dirt

into corners of his face and hands and making his hair very wet and

then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear

child wore was either too large for him or too small. Among his other

contradictory decorations he had the hat of a bishop and the little

gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a

ploughman, while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches

that they looked like maps, were bare below a very short pair of

plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different

patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been

supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby’s coats, they were so extremely

brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of

needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been

hastily mended, and I recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby’s. She

was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance and looked

very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a

failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in by

the way in which she glanced first at him and then at us.

“Oh, dear me!” said my guardian. “Due east!”

Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to Mr.

Jarndyce, to whom she said as she sat down, “Ma’s compliments, and

she hopes you’ll excuse her, because she’s correcting proofs of the

plan. She’s going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she

knows you’ll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them

with me. Ma’s compliments.” With which she presented it sulkily

enough.

“Thank you,” said my guardian. “I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby.

Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!”

We were busy with Peepy, taking off his clerical hat, asking him if

he remembered us, and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first,

but relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to take him

on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then

withdrawing into the temporary growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a

conversation with her usual abruptness.

“We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn,” said she. “I

have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn’t be worse off if

I was a what’s-his-name—man and a brother!”

I tried to say something soothing.

“Oh, it’s of no use, Miss Summerson,” exclaimed Miss Jellyby, “though

I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am

used, and I am not to be talked over. YOU wouldn’t be talked over if

you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!”

“I shan’t!” said Peepy.

“Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!” returned Miss

Jellyby with tears in her eyes. “I’ll never take pains to dress you

any more.”

“Yes, I will go, Caddy!” cried Peepy, who was really a good child and

who was so moved by his sister’s vexation that he went at once.

“It seems a little thing to cry about,” said poor Miss Jellyby

apologetically, “but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new

circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so that

that alone makes my head ache till I can’t see out of my eyes. And

look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as

he is!”

Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on

the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of

his den at us while he ate his cake.

“I have sent him to the other end of the room,” observed Miss

Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, “because I don’t want him to

hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going

to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt

before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There’ll be nobody

but Ma to thank for it.”

We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby’s affairs were not in so bad a state as

that.

“It’s of no use hoping, though it’s very kind of you,” returned Miss

Jellyby, shaking her head. “Pa told me only yesterday morning (and

dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn’t weather the storm. I

should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our

house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with

it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don’t

care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather

the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I’d run away.”

“My dear!” said I, smiling. “Your papa, no doubt, considers his

family.”

“Oh, yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson,” replied Miss

Jellyby; “but what comfort is his family to him? His family is

nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion,

and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week’s end to week’s end,

is like one great washing-day—only nothing’s washed!”

Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor and wiped her eyes.

“I am sure I pity Pa to that degree,” she said, “and am so angry with

Ma that I can’t find words to express myself! However, I am not going

to bear it, I am determined. I won’t be a slave all my life, and I

won’t submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed,

to marry a philanthropist. As if I hadn’t had enough of THAT!” said

poor Miss Jellyby.

I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs.

Jellyby myself, seeing and hearing this neglected girl and knowing

how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.

“If it wasn’t that we had been intimate when you stopped at our

house,” pursued Miss Jellyby, “I should have been ashamed to come

here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But as

it is, I made up my mind to call, especially as I am not likely to

see you again the next time you come to town.”

She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at

one another, foreseeing something more.

“No!” said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. “Not at all likely! I know

I may trust you two. I am sure you won’t betray me. I am engaged.”

“Without their knowledge at home?” said I.

“Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson,” she returned, justifying

herself in a fretful but not angry manner, “how can it be otherwise?

You know what Ma is—and I needn’t make poor Pa more miserable by

telling HIM.”

“But would it not be adding to his unhappiness to marry without his

knowledge or consent, my dear?” said I.

“No,” said Miss Jellyby, softening. “I hope not. I should try to make

him happy and comfortable when he came to see me, and Peepy and the

others should take it in turns to come and stay with me, and they

should have some care taken of them then.”

There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more

and more while saying this and cried so much over the unwonted little

home-picture she had raised in her mind that Peepy, in his cave under

the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud

lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister,

and had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that

Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we

could recall his peace of mind; even then it was for some time

conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin and smoothing our

faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not equal

to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss

Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.

“It began in your coming to our house,” she said.

We naturally asked how.

“I felt I was so awkward,” she replied, “that I made up my mind to be

improved in that respect at all events and to learn to dance. I told

Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked

at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn’t in sight, but I

was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr.

Turveydrop’s Academy in Newman Street.”

“And was it there, my dear—” I began.

“Yes, it was there,” said Caddy, “and I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop.

There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is

the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up and was

likely to make him a better wife, for I am very fond of him.”

“I am sorry to hear this,” said I, “I must confess.”

“I don’t know why you should be sorry,” she retorted a little

anxiously, “but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he

is very fond of me. It’s a secret as yet, even on his side, because

old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connexion and it might break

his heart or give him some other shock if he was told of it abruptly.

Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed—very

gentlemanly.”

“Does his wife know of it?” asked Ada.

“Old Mr. Turveydrop’s wife, Miss Clare?” returned Miss Jellyby,

opening her eyes. “There’s no such person. He is a widower.”

We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on

account of his sister’s unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope

whenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now bemoaned his

sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for

compassion, and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him.

Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging Peepy’s pardon with a kiss and

assuring him that she hadn’t meant to do it.

“That’s the state of the case,” said Caddy. “If I ever blame myself,

I still think it’s Ma’s fault. We are to be married whenever we can,

and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won’t

much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is,”

said Caddy with a sob, “that I shall never hear of Africa after I am

married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if old Mr.

Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it’s as much as he does.”

“It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!” said I.

“Very gentlemanly indeed,” said Caddy. “He is celebrated almost

everywhere for his deportment.”

“Does he teach?” asked Ada.

“No, he don’t teach anything in particular,” replied Caddy. “But his

deportment is beautiful.”

Caddy went on to say with considerable hesitation and reluctance that

there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to

know, and which she hoped would not offend us. It was that she had

improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady,

and that she frequently went there early in the morning and met her

lover for a few minutes before breakfast—only for a few minutes. “I

go there at other times,” said Caddy, “but Prince does not come then.

Young Mr. Turveydrop’s name is Prince; I wish it wasn’t, because it

sounds like a dog, but of course he didn’t christen himself. Old Mr.

Turveydrop had him christened Prince in remembrance of the Prince

Regent. Old Mr. Turveydrop adored the Prince Regent on account of his

deportment. I hope you won’t think the worse of me for having made

these little appointments at Miss Flite’s, where I first went with

you, because I like the poor thing for her own sake and I believe she

likes me. If you could see young Mr. Turveydrop, I am sure you would

think well of him—at least, I am sure you couldn’t possibly think

any ill of him. I am going there now for my lesson. I couldn’t ask

you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would,” said Caddy, who

had said all this earnestly and tremblingly, “I should be very

glad—very glad.”

It happened that we had arranged with my guardian to go to Miss

Flite’s that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our

account had interested him; but something had always happened to

prevent our going there again. As I trusted that I might have

sufficient influence with Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very

rash step if I fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to

place in me, poor girl, I proposed that she and I and Peepy should go

to the academy and afterwards meet my guardian and Ada at Miss

Flite’s, whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was on

condition that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back with us to

dinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to

by both, we smartened Peepy up a little with the assistance of a few

pins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush, and went out, bending

our steps towards Newman Street, which was very near.

I found the academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the

corner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the

same house there were also established, as I gathered from the plates

on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly,

no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate

which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I

read, MR. TURVEYDROP. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up

by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in

cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the

daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent,

last night, for a concert.

We went upstairs—it had been quite a fine house once, when it was

anybody’s business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody’s business

to smoke in it all day—and into Mr. Turveydrop’s great room, which

was built out into a mews at the back and was lighted by a skylight.

It was a bare, resounding room smelling of stables, with cane forms

along the walls, and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with

painted lyres and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed

to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed

autumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or

fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and

I was looking among them for their instructor when Caddy, pinching my

arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. “Miss Summerson, Mr.

Prince Turveydrop!”

I curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance with

flaxen hair parted in the middle and curling at the ends all round

his head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a

kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His

little dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a

little innocent, feminine manner which not only appealed to me in an

amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me, that I received

the impression that he was like his mother and that his mother had

not been much considered or well used.

“I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby’s friend,” he said, bowing low

to me. “I began to fear,” with timid tenderness, “as it was past the

usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming.”

“I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have

detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir,” said I.

“Oh, dear!” said he.

“And pray,” I entreated, “do not allow me to be the cause of any more

delay.”

With that apology I withdrew to a seat between Peepy (who, being well

used to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady

of a censorious countenance whose two nieces were in the class and

who was very indignant with Peepy’s boots. Prince Turveydrop then

tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies

stood up to dance. Just then there appeared from a side-door old Mr.

Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his deportment.

He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth,

false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded

breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon

to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and

strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a

neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and

his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though

he must inevitably double up if it were cast loose. He had under his

arm a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown

to the brim, and in his hand a pair of white gloves with which he

flapped it as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered,

round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane,

he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had

wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not

like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the

world but a model of deportment.

“Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby’s friend, Miss Summerson.”

“Distinguished,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “by Miss Summerson’s presence.”

As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases

come into the whites of his eyes.

“My father,” said the son, aside, to me with quite an affecting

belief in him, “is a celebrated character. My father is greatly

admired.”

“Go on, Prince! Go on!” said Mr. Turveydrop, standing with his back

to the fire and waving his gloves condescendingly. “Go on, my son!”

At this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on.

Prince Turveydrop sometimes played the kit, dancing; sometimes played

the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little

breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always

conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step

and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His

distinguished father did nothing whatever but stand before the fire,

a model of deportment.

“And he never does anything else,” said the old lady of the

censorious countenance. “Yet would you believe that it’s HIS name on

the door-plate?”

“His son’s name is the same, you know,” said I.

“He wouldn’t let his son have any name if he could take it from him,”

returned the old lady. “Look at the son’s dress!” It certainly was

plain—threadbare—almost shabby. “Yet the father must be garnished

and tricked out,” said the old lady, “because of his deportment. I’d

deport him! Transport him would be better!”

I felt curious to know more concerning this person. I asked, “Does he

give lessons in deportment now?”

“Now!” returned the old lady shortly. “Never did.”

After a moment’s consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had

been his accomplishment.

“I don’t believe he can fence at all, ma’am,” said the old lady.

I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and

more incensed against the master of deportment as she dwelt upon the

subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong

assurances that they were mildly stated.

He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable

connexion (having never in his life before done anything but deport

himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered

her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which

were indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his deportment

to the best models and to keep the best models constantly before

himself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of

fashionable and lounging resort, to be seen at Brighton and elsewhere

at fashionable times, and to lead an idle life in the very best

clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little

dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured and would have toiled and

laboured to that hour if her strength had lasted so long. For the

mainspring of the story was that in spite of the man’s absorbing

selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his deportment) had, to the

last, believed in him and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving

terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable

claim upon him and whom he could never regard with too much pride and

deference. The son, inheriting his mother’s belief, and having the

deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith,

and now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a

day and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary

pinnacle.

“The airs the fellow gives himself!” said my informant, shaking her

head at old Mr. Turveydrop with speechless indignation as he drew on

his tight gloves, of course unconscious of the homage she was

rendering. “He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is

so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes that you might

suppose him the most virtuous of parents. Oh!” said the old lady,

apostrophizing him with infinite vehemence. “I could bite you!”

I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with

feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her with the

father and son before me. What I might have thought of them without

the old lady’s account, or what I might have thought of the old

lady’s account without them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of

things in the whole that carried conviction with it.

My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Turveydrop working so

hard, to old Mr. Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when

the latter came ambling up to me and entered into conversation.

He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a

distinction on London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary

to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any

case, but merely told him where I did reside.

“A lady so graceful and accomplished,” he said, kissing his

right glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils,

“will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to

polish—polish—polish!”

He sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit on the form, I

thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the

sofa. And really he did look very like it.

“To polish—polish—polish!” he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and

gently fluttering his fingers. “But we are not, if I may say so to

one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art—” with the

high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make

without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes “—we are not

what we used to be in point of deportment.”

“Are we not, sir?” said I.

“We have degenerated,” he returned, shaking his head, which he could

do to a very limited extent in his cravat. “A levelling age is not

favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with

some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been

called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop, or that his Royal

Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my

removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that

fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don’t I know

him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little

matters of anecdote—the general property, ma’am—still repeated

occasionally among the upper classes.”

“Indeed?” said I.

He replied with the high-shouldered bow. “Where what is left among us

of deportment,” he added, “still lingers. England—alas, my

country!—has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day.

She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed

us but a race of weavers.”

“One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated

here,” said I.

“You are very good.” He smiled with a high-shouldered bow again. “You

flatter me. But, no—no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy

with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my

dear child, but he has—no deportment.”

“He appears to be an excellent master,” I observed.

“Understand me, my dear madam, he IS an excellent master. All that

can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can

impart. But there ARE things—” He took another pinch of snuff and

made the bow again, as if to add, “This kind of thing, for instance.”

I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby’s lover,

now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than

ever.

“My amiable child,” murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.

“Your son is indefatigable,” said I.

“It is my reward,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “to hear you say so. In some

respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a

devoted creature. But wooman, lovely wooman,” said Mr. Turveydrop

with very disagreeable gallantry, “what a sex you are!”

I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was by this time putting on her

bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was

a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the

unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don’t

know, but they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a

dozen words.

“My dear,” said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, “do you know the

hour?”

“No, father.” The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold

one, which he pulled out with an air that was an example to mankind.

“My son,” said he, “it’s two o’clock. Recollect your school at

Kensington at three.”

“That’s time enough for me, father,” said Prince. “I can take a

morsel of dinner standing and be off.”

“My dear boy,” returned his father, “you must be very quick. You will

find the cold mutton on the table.”

“Thank you, father. Are YOU off now, father?”

“Yes, my dear. I suppose,” said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and

lifting up his shoulders with modest consciousness, “that I must show

myself, as usual, about town.”

“You had better dine out comfortably somewhere,” said his son.

“My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at

the French house, in the Opera Colonnade.”

“That’s right. Good-bye, father!” said Prince, shaking hands.

“Good-bye, my son. Bless you!”

Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do

his son good, who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so

dutiful to him, and so proud of him that I almost felt as if it were

an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly

in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking

leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the

secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish

character. I felt a liking for him and a compassion for him as he put

his little kit in his pocket—and with it his desire to stay a little

while with Caddy—and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton

and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with

his father than the censorious old lady.

The father opened the room door for us and bowed us out in a manner,

I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style

he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to

the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself

among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost

in reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street that I

was quite unable to talk to Caddy or even to fix my attention on what

she said to me, especially when I began to inquire in my mind whether

there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing

profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their

deportment. This became so bewildering and suggested the possibility

of so many Mr. Turveydrops that I said, “Esther, you must make up

your mind to abandon this subject altogether and attend to Caddy.” I

accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to

Lincoln’s Inn.

Caddy told me that her lover’s education had been so neglected that

it was not always easy to read his notes. She said if he were not so

anxious about his spelling and took less pains to make it clear, he

would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short

words that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. “He

does it with the best intention,” observed Caddy, “but it hasn’t the

effect he means, poor fellow!” Caddy then went on to reason, how

could he be expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole

life in the dancing-school and had done nothing but teach and fag,

fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She

could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it

was far better for him to be amiable than learned. “Besides, it’s not

as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself

airs,” said Caddy. “I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!”

“There’s another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,”

continued Caddy, “which I should not have liked to mention unless you

had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It’s

of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for

Prince’s wife to know in OUR house. We live in such a state of muddle

that it’s impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever

I have tried. So I get a little practice with—who do you think? Poor

Miss Flite! Early in the morning I help her to tidy her room and

clean her birds, and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she

taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says

it’s the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old

Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can

make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and

tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am

not clever at my needle, yet,” said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on

Peepy’s frock, “but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been

engaged to Prince and have been doing all this, I have felt

better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me

out at first this morning to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat

and pretty and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too, but on the

whole I hope I am better-tempered than I was and more forgiving to

Ma.”

The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched

mine. “Caddy, my love,” I replied, “I begin to have a great affection

for you, and I hope we shall become friends.”

“Oh, do you?” cried Caddy. “How happy that would make me!”

“My dear Caddy,” said I, “let us be friends from this time, and let

us often have a chat about these matters and try to find the right

way through them.” Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could in

my old-fashioned way to comfort and encourage her, and I would not

have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop that day for any smaller

consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.

By this time we were come to Mr. Krook’s, whose private door stood

open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to

let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded

upstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an inquest and

that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and

window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room

with the dark door to which Miss Flite had secretly directed my

attention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it

was, a gloomy, sorrowful place that gave me a strange sensation of

mournfulness and even dread. “You look pale,” said Caddy when we came

out, “and cold!” I felt as if the room had chilled me.

We had walked slowly while we were talking, and my guardian and Ada

were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite’s garret. They were

looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to

attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion spoke with her

cheerfully by the fire.

“I have finished my professional visit,” he said, coming forward.

“Miss Flite is much better and may appear in court (as her mind is

set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I

understand.”

Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency and dropped a

general curtsy to us.

“Honoured, indeed,” said she, “by another visit from the wards in

Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my

humble roof!” with a special curtsy. “Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear”—she

had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always called her

by it—“a double welcome!”

“Has she been very ill?” asked Mr. Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we

had found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly,

though he had put the question in a whisper.

“Oh, decidedly unwell! Oh, very unwell indeed,” she said

confidentially. “Not pain, you know—trouble. Not bodily so much as

nervous, nervous! The truth is,” in a subdued voice and trembling,

“we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very

susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr.

Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr. Woodcourt!” with

great stateliness. “The wards in Jarndyce—Jarndyce of Bleak

House—Fitz-Jarndyce!”

“Miss Flite,” said Mr. Woodcourt in a grave kind of voice, as if he

were appealing to her while speaking to us, and laying his hand

gently on her arm, “Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual

accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might

have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and

agitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery,

though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I

have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since

and being of some small use to her.”

“The kindest physician in the college,” whispered Miss Flite to me.

“I expect a judgment. On the day of judgment. And shall then confer

estates.”

“She will be as well in a day or two,” said Mr. Woodcourt, looking at

her with an observant smile, “as she ever will be. In other words,

quite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?”

“Most extraordinary!” said Miss Flite, smiling brightly. “You never

heard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge or

Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.) places in my hand a paper of

shillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the

paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So

well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you

say? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I

think? I think,” said Miss Flite, drawing herself back with a very

shrewd look and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant

manner, “that the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during

which the Great Seal has been open (for it has been open a long

time!), forwards them. Until the judgment I expect is given. Now

that’s very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he IS a

little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending court the other

day—I attend it regularly, with my documents—I taxed him with it,

and he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and

HE smiled at me from his bench. But it’s great good fortune, is it

not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage.

Oh, I assure you to the greatest advantage!”

I congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this

fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of

it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder

whose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me,

contemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him.

“And what do you call these little fellows, ma’am?” said he in his

pleasant voice. “Have they any names?”

“I can answer for Miss Flite that they have,” said I, “for she

promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?”

Ada remembered very well.

“Did I?” said Miss Flite. “Who’s that at my door? What are you

listening at my door for, Krook?”

The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there

with his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels.

“I warn’t listening, Miss Flite,” he said, “I was going to give a rap

with my knuckles, only you’re so quick!”

“Make your cat go down. Drive her away!” the old lady angrily

exclaimed.

“Bah, bah! There ain’t no danger, gentlefolks,” said Mr. Krook,

looking slowly and sharply from one to another until he had looked at

all of us; “she’d never offer at the birds when I was here unless I

told her to it.”

“You will excuse my landlord,” said the old lady with a dignified

air. “M, quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?”

“Hi!” said the old man. “You know I am the Chancellor.”

“Well?” returned Miss Flite. “What of that?”

“For the Chancellor,” said the old man with a chuckle, “not to be

acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain’t it, Miss Flite? Mightn’t I

take the liberty? Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce

a’most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never

to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go

there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one

day with another.”

“I never go there,” said Mr. Jarndyce (which he never did on any

consideration). “I would sooner go—somewhere else.”

“Would you though?” returned Krook, grinning. “You’re bearing hard

upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though

perhaps it is but nat’ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What,

you’re looking at my lodger’s birds, Mr. Jarndyce?” The old man had

come by little and little into the room until he now touched my

guardian with his elbow and looked close up into his face with his

spectacled eyes. “It’s one of her strange ways that she’ll never tell

the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named ’em

all.” This was in a whisper. “Shall I run ’em over, Flite?” he asked

aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away,

affecting to sweep the grate.

“If you like,” she answered hurriedly.

The old man, looking up at the cages after another look at us, went

through the list.

“Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin,

Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags,

Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That’s

the whole collection,” said the old man, “all cooped up together, by

my noble and learned brother.”

“This is a bitter wind!” muttered my guardian.

“When my noble and learned brother gives his judgment, they’re to be

let go free,” said Krook, winking at us again. “And then,” he added,

whispering and grinning, “if that ever was to happen—which it

won’t—the birds that have never been caged would kill ’em.”

“If ever the wind was in the east,” said my guardian, pretending to

look out of the window for a weathercock, “I think it’s there

to-day!”

We found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not

Miss Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature

in consulting the convenience of others as there possibly could be.

It was Mr. Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr.

Jarndyce. If he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended

him more closely. He proposed to show us his Court of Chancery and

all the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our

inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to Mr. Jarndyce and

sometimes detained him under one pretence or other until we had

passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon

some secret subject which he could not make up his mind to approach.

I cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive

of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he

could not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook’s was that day. His

watchfulness of my guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes

from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the

slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When

we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across

and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of

power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until

they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face.

At last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house

and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was

certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here on

the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old

stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were

pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands.

“What are you doing here?” asked my guardian.

“Trying to learn myself to read and write,” said Krook.

“And how do you get on?”

“Slow. Bad,” returned the old man impatiently. “It’s hard at my time

of life.”

“It would be easier to be taught by some one,” said my guardian.

“Aye, but they might teach me wrong!” returned the old man with a

wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. “I don’t know what I may

have lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn’t like to lose

anything by being learned wrong now.”

“Wrong?” said my guardian with his good-humoured smile. “Who do you

suppose would teach you wrong?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House!” replied the old man,

turning up his spectacles on his forehead and rubbing his hands. “I

don’t suppose as anybody would, but I’d rather trust my own self than

another!”

These answers and his manner were strange enough to cause my guardian

to inquire of Mr. Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln’s Inn

together, whether Mr. Krook were really, as his lodger represented

him, deranged. The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason

to think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually

was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin,

of which he drank great quantities and of which he and his back-shop,

as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him

mad as yet.

On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy’s affections by buying him a

windmill and two flour-sacks that he would suffer nobody else to take

off his hat and gloves and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my

side. Caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we

imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back.

We made much of Caddy, and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened

exceedingly; and my guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all

very happy indeed until Caddy went home at night in a hackney-coach,

with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.

I have forgotten to mention—at least I have not mentioned—that Mr.

Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr.

Badger’s. Or that Mr. Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or

that he came. Or that when they were all gone and I said to Ada,

“Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!” Ada

laughed and said—

But I don’t think it matters what my darling said. She was always

merry.