CHAPTER XVIII

Lady Dedlock

It was not so easy as it had appeared at first to arrange for

Richard’s making a trial of Mr. Kenge’s office. Richard himself was

the chief impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to leave Mr.

Badger at any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave

him at all. He didn’t know, he said, really. It wasn’t a bad

profession; he couldn’t assert that he disliked it; perhaps he liked

it as well as he liked any other—suppose he gave it one more chance!

Upon that, he shut himself up for a few weeks with some books and

some bones and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of information

with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about a month, began

to cool, and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm again. His

vacillations between law and medicine lasted so long that midsummer

arrived before he finally separated from Mr. Badger and entered on an

experimental course of Messrs. Kenge and Carboy. For all his

waywardness, he took great credit to himself as being determined to

be in earnest “this time.” And he was so good-natured throughout, and

in such high spirits, and so fond of Ada, that it was very difficult

indeed to be otherwise than pleased with him.

“As to Mr. Jarndyce,” who, I may mention, found the wind much given,

during this period, to stick in the east; “As to Mr. Jarndyce,”

Richard would say to me, “he is the finest fellow in the world,

Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for his

satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular wind-up

of this business now.”

The idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing face

and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could catch and

nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However, he told us

between-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent that he

wondered his hair didn’t turn grey. His regular wind-up of the

business was (as I have said) that he went to Mr. Kenge’s about

midsummer to try how he liked it.

All this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him in

a former illustration—generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully

persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I happened to

say to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, about

the time of his going to Mr. Kenge’s, that he needed to have

Fortunatus’ purse, he made so light of money, which he answered in

this way, “My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why

does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it

was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if

I had stayed at Badger’s I should have been obliged to spend twelve

pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I make four

pounds—in a lump—by the transaction!”

It was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what

arrangements should be made for his living in London while he

experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak

House, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener

than once a week. My guardian told me that if Richard were to settle

down at Mr. Kenge’s he would take some apartments or chambers where

we too could occasionally stay for a few days at a time; “but, little

woman,” he added, rubbing his head very significantly, “he hasn’t

settled down there yet!” The discussions ended in our hiring for him,

by the month, a neat little furnished lodging in a quiet old house

near Queen Square. He immediately began to spend all the money he had

in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging;

and so often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purchase that

he had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and

expensive, he took credit for what it would have cost and made out

that to spend anything less on something else was to save the

difference.

While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn’s was

postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his lodging,

there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with

us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty

of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel

the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him,

and my darling was delighted to praise him for being so busy.

We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach and

had an entertaining companion in Mr. Skimpole. His furniture had been

all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of it

on his blue-eyed daughter’s birthday, but he seemed quite relieved to

think that it was gone. Chairs and table, he said, were wearisome

objects; they were monotonous ideas, they had no variety of

expression, they looked you out of countenance, and you looked them

out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be bound to no particular

chairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly among all the

furniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from

mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took

one!

“The oddity of the thing is,” said Mr. Skimpole with a quickened

sense of the ludicrous, “that my chairs and tables were not paid for,

and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible.

Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair

and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why

should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a pimple on my nose

which is disagreeable to my landlord’s peculiar ideas of beauty, my

landlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant’s

nose, which has no pimple on it. His reasoning seems defective!”

“Well,” said my guardian good-humouredly, “it’s pretty clear that

whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay

for them.”

“Exactly!” returned Mr. Skimpole. “That’s the crowning point of

unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, ‘My good man, you

are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay for

those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner.

Have you no consideration for HIS property?’ He hadn’t the least.”

“And refused all proposals,” said my guardian.

“Refused all proposals,” returned Mr. Skimpole. “I made him business

proposals. I had him into my room. I said, ‘You are a man of

business, I believe?’ He replied, ‘I am.’ ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘now

let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and

paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have occupied your house

for a considerable period, I believe to our mutual satisfaction until

this unpleasant misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly

and business-like. What do you want?’ In reply to this, he made use

of the figurative expression—which has something Eastern about

it—that he had never seen the colour of my money. ‘My amiable

friend,’ said I, ‘I never have any money. I never know anything about

money.’ ‘Well, sir,’ said he, ‘what do you offer if I give you time?’

‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘I have no idea of time; but you say you

are a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a

business-like way with pen, and ink, and paper—and wafers—I am

ready to do. Don’t pay yourself at another man’s expense (which is

foolish), but be business-like!’ However, he wouldn’t be, and there

was an end of it.”

If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole’s childhood,

it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the journey he had a

very good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including

a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never thought of paying for

anything. So when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly

asked him what he considered a very good fee indeed, now—a liberal

one—and on his replying half a crown for a single passenger, said it

was little enough too, all things considered, and left Mr. Jarndyce

to give it him.

It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the

larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the

trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind

blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance!

Late in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to

alight from the coach—a dull little town with a church-spire, and a

marketplace, and a market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and

a pond with an old horse cooling his legs in it, and a very few men

sleepily lying and standing about in narrow little bits of shade.

After the rustling of the leaves and the waving of the corn all along

the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a little town as

England could produce.

At the inn we found Mr. Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open

carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He was

overjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity.

“By heaven!” said he after giving us a courteous greeting. “This a

most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an abominable

public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. It is

twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon. The coachman ought

to be put to death!”

“IS he after his time?” said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to

address himself. “You know my infirmity.”

“Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!” replied Mr. Boythorn,

referring to his watch. “With two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel

has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty minutes.

Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be accidental! But his

father—and his uncle—were the most profligate coachmen that ever

sat upon a box.”

While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed us

into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all smiles

and pleasure.

“I am sorry, ladies,” he said, standing bare-headed at the

carriage-door when all was ready, “that I am obliged to conduct you

nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through Sir

Leicester Dedlock’s park, and in that fellow’s property I have sworn

never to set foot of mine, or horse’s foot of mine, pending the

present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!”

And here, catching my guardian’s eye, he broke into one of his

tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless little

market-town.

“Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?” said my guardian as we drove

along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the roadside.

“Sir Arrogant Numskull is here,” replied Mr. Boythorn. “Ha ha ha! Sir

Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels

here. My Lady,” in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if

particularly to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, “is

expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least surprised that she

postpones her appearance as long as possible. Whatever can have

induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head

of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever

baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!”

“I suppose,” said my guardian, laughing, “WE may set foot in the park

while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us, does it?”

“I can lay no prohibition on my guests,” he said, bending his head to

Ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully upon

him, “except in the matter of their departure. I am only sorry that I

cannot have the happiness of being their escort about Chesney Wold,

which is a very fine place! But by the light of this summer day,

Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are

likely to have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an

eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks

in gorgeous cases that never go and never went—Ha ha ha!—but he

will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the friends of

his friend and neighbour Boythorn!”

“I shall not put him to the proof,” said my guardian. “He is as

indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the

honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a view

of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough for

me.”

“Well!” said Mr. Boythorn. “I am glad of it on the whole. It’s in

better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax defying

the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a

Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect

to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the

Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised

that I don’t. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the

shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!”

Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our

friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and diverted his

attention from its master.

It was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. Among

the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire of

the little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods over

which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly wings

were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth

green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were

so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how

beautiful they looked! The house, with gable and chimney, and tower,

and turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among

the balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was

one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity

and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around it. To

Ada and to me, that above all appeared the pervading influence. On

everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks,

fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the

prospect to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom

upon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose.

When we came into the little village and passed a small inn with the

sign of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr.

Boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a

bench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside

him.

“That’s the housekeeper’s grandson, Mr. Rouncewell by name,” said,

he, “and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady

Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her

about her own fair person—an honour which my young friend himself

does not at all appreciate. However, he can’t marry just yet, even if

his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In

the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time

to—fish. Ha ha ha ha!”

“Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?” asked Ada.

“Why, my dear Miss Clare,” he returned, “I think they may perhaps

understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and I

must learn from you on such a point—not you from me.”

Ada blushed, and Mr. Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey

horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm

and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.

He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a lawn

in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked

orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable

wall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But, indeed, everything

about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old

lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the

cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the

gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested

on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like

profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled

about among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and

winking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping pods, and

marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a

vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of

wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meadows where

the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. Such

stillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the

old red wall that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the

birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripening influence that

where, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still

clung to it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed with the

changing seasons and that they had rusted and decayed according to

the common fate.

The house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the garden,

was a real old house with settles in the chimney of the brick-floored

kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one side of it was

the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr. Boythorn

maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose duty was

supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to ring a large

bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog

established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal

destruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr.

Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to

which his name was attached in large letters, the following solemn

warnings: “Beware of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence

Boythorn.” “The blunderbus is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Boythorn.”

“Man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and

night. Lawrence Boythorn.” “Take notice. That any person or persons

audaciously presuming to trespass on this property will be punished

with the utmost severity of private chastisement and prosecuted with

the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence Boythorn.” These he showed us

from the drawing-room window, while his bird was hopping about his

head, and he laughed, “Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!” to that extent as

he pointed them out that I really thought he would have hurt himself.

“But this is taking a good deal of trouble,” said Mr. Skimpole in his

light way, “when you are not in earnest after all.”

“Not in earnest!” returned Mr. Boythorn with unspeakable warmth. “Not

in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have bought a

lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose upon the

first intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on

my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to come out and decide

this question by single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon

known to mankind in any age or country. I am that much in earnest.

Not more!”

We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we all

set forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering the

park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a

pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful

trees until it brought us to the church-porch.

The congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with the

exception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of whom

were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in. There

were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect picture of an old

coachman, who looked as if he were the official representative of all

the pomps and vanities that had ever been put into his coach. There

was a very pretty show of young women, and above them, the handsome

old face and fine responsible portly figure of the housekeeper

towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of whom Mr. Boythorn had told us

was close by her. She was so very pretty that I might have known her

by her beauty even if I had not seen how blushingly conscious she was

of the eyes of the young fisherman, whom I discovered not far off.

One face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed

maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and

everything there. It was a Frenchwoman’s.

As the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come, I

had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a

grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it

was. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light

that made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in

the pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the

sunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous ringer was working

at the bell, inestimably bright. But a stir in that direction, a

gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces, and a blandly

ferocious assumption on the part of Mr. Boythorn of being resolutely

unconscious of somebody’s existence forewarned me that the great

people were come and that the service was going to begin.

“‘Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy

sight—’”

Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the

look I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which

those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and

to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down—released

again, if I may say so—on my book; but I knew the beautiful face

quite well in that short space of time.

And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me,

associated with the lonely days at my godmother’s; yes, away even to

the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little

glass after dressing my doll. And this, although I had never seen

this lady’s face before in all my life—I was quite sure of

it—absolutely certain.

It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired

gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir

Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her

face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in

which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so

fluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having casually met her

eyes, I could not think.

I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome it

by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I seemed to

hear them, not in the reader’s voice, but in the well-remembered

voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock’s face

accidentally resemble my godmother’s? It might be that it did, a

little; but the expression was so different, and the stern decision

which had worn into my godmother’s face, like weather into rocks, was

so completely wanting in the face before me that it could not be that

resemblance which had struck me. Neither did I know the loftiness and

haughtiness of Lady Dedlock’s face, at all, in any one. And yet I—I,

little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on

whose birthday there was no rejoicing—seemed to arise before my own

eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady,

whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I

perfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour.

It made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation

that I was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of

the French maid, though I knew she had been looking watchfully here,

and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the

church. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last overcame my strange

emotion. After a long time, I looked towards Lady Dedlock again. It

was while they were preparing to sing, before the sermon. She took no

heed of me, and the beating at my heart was gone. Neither did it

revive for more than a few moments when she once or twice afterwards

glanced at Ada or at me through her glass.

The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave his arm with much

taste and gallantry to Lady Dedlock—though he was obliged to walk by

the help of a thick stick—and escorted her out of church to the pony

carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed, and so

did the congregation, whom Sir Leicester had contemplated all along

(Mr. Skimpole said to Mr. Boythorn’s infinite delight) as if he were

a considerable landed proprietor in heaven.

“He believes he is!” said Mr. Boythorn. “He firmly believes it. So

did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!”

“Do you know,” pursued Mr. Skimpole very unexpectedly to Mr.

Boythorn, “it’s agreeable to me to see a man of that sort.”

“IS it!” said Mr. Boythorn.

“Say that he wants to patronize me,” pursued Mr. Skimpole. “Very

well! I don’t object.”

“I do,” said Mr. Boythorn with great vigour.

“Do you really?” returned Mr. Skimpole in his easy light vein. “But

that’s taking trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here

am I, content to receive things childishly as they fall out, and I

never take trouble! I come down here, for instance, and I find a

mighty potentate exacting homage. Very well! I say ‘Mighty potentate,

here IS my homage! It’s easier to give it than to withhold it. Here

it is. If you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I

shall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature

to give me, I shall be happy to accept it.’ Mighty potentate replies

in effect, ‘This is a sensible fellow. I find him accord with my

digestion and my bilious system. He doesn’t impose upon me the

necessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points

outward. I expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like

Milton’s cloud, and it’s more agreeable to both of us.’ That’s my

view of such things, speaking as a child!”

“But suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow,” said Mr.

Boythorn, “where there was the opposite of that fellow—or of this

fellow. How then?”

“How then?” said Mr. Skimpole with an appearance of the utmost

simplicity and candour. “Just the same then! I should say, ‘My

esteemed Boythorn’—to make you the personification of our imaginary

friend—‘my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate?

Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the social system

is to be agreeable; I take it that everybody’s business in the social

system is to be agreeable. It’s a system of harmony, in short.

Therefore if you object, I object. Now, excellent Boythorn, let us go

to dinner!’”

“But excellent Boythorn might say,” returned our host, swelling and

growing very red, “I’ll be—”

“I understand,” said Mr. Skimpole. “Very likely he would.”

“—if I WILL go to dinner!” cried Mr. Boythorn in a violent burst and

stopping to strike his stick upon the ground. “And he would probably

add, ‘Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold Skimpole?’”

“To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you know,” he returned in his

gayest manner and with his most ingenuous smile, “‘Upon my life I

have not the least idea! I don’t know what it is you call by that

name, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess it and find

it comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you heartily.

But I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a mere child, and

I lay no claim to it, and I don’t want it!’ So, you see, excellent

Boythorn and I would go to dinner after all!”

This was one of many little dialogues between them which I always

expected to end, and which I dare say would have ended under other

circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host. But

he had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible position as

our entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely at and with Mr.

Skimpole, as a child who blew bubbles and broke them all day long,

that matters never went beyond this point. Mr. Skimpole, who always

seemed quite unconscious of having been on delicate ground, then

betook himself to beginning some sketch in the park which he never

finished, or to playing fragments of airs on the piano, or to singing

scraps of songs, or to lying down on his back under a tree and

looking at the sky—which he couldn’t help thinking, he said, was

what he was meant for; it suited him so exactly.

“Enterprise and effort,” he would say to us (on his back), “are

delightful to me. I believe I am truly cosmopolitan. I have the

deepest sympathy with them. I lie in a shady place like this and

think of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or penetrating

to the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration. Mercenary creatures

ask, ‘What is the use of a man’s going to the North Pole? What good

does it do?’ I can’t say; but, for anything I CAN say, he may go for

the purpose—though he don’t know it—of employing my thoughts as I

lie here. Take an extreme case. Take the case of the slaves on

American plantations. I dare say they are worked hard, I dare say

they don’t altogether like it. I dare say theirs is an unpleasant

experience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they

give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter

objects of their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I

shouldn’t wonder if it were!”

I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs.

Skimpole and the children, and in what point of view they presented

themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand,

they rarely presented themselves at all.

The week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of my

heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue that

to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the

transparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the

shadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs and the

air was drowsy with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. We

had one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year’s leaves, where

there were some felled trees from which the bark was all stripped

off. Seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by

thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a

distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade in

which we sat and made so precious by the arched perspective through

which we saw it that it was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon

the Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard

thunder muttering in the distance and felt the large raindrops rattle

through the leaves.

The weather had been all the week extremely sultry, but the storm

broke so suddenly—upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot—that

before we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and lightning

were frequent and the rain came plunging through the leaves as if

every drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a time for

standing among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the

moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like two

broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a keeper’s

lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the dark beauty

of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the ivy

clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we

had once seen the keeper’s dog dive down into the fern as if it were

water.

The lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we only

clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter there

and put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were all

thrown open, and we sat just within the doorway watching the storm.

It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove

the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn

thunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the

tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to

consider how beneficent they are and how upon the smallest flower and

leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage

which seemed to make creation new again.

“Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?”

“Oh, no, Esther dear!” said Ada quietly.

Ada said it to me, but I had not spoken.

The beating of my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice,

as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange

way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable

pictures of myself.

Lady Dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge before our arrival there

and had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my chair with

her hand upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my shoulder when I

turned my head.

“I have frightened you?” she said.

No. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened!

“I believe,” said Lady Dedlock to my guardian, “I have the pleasure

of speaking to Mr. Jarndyce.”

“Your remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would,

Lady Dedlock,” he returned.

“I recognized you in church on Sunday. I am sorry that any local

disputes of Sir Leicester’s—they are not of his seeking, however, I

believe—should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to show

you any attention here.”

“I am aware of the circumstances,” returned my guardian with a smile,

“and am sufficiently obliged.”

She had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed habitual

to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a

very pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful,

perfectly self-possessed, and had the air, I thought, of being able

to attract and interest any one if she had thought it worth her

while. The keeper had brought her a chair on which she sat in the

middle of the porch between us.

“Is the young gentleman disposed of whom you wrote to Sir Leicester

about and whose wishes Sir Leicester was sorry not to have it in his

power to advance in any way?” she said over her shoulder to my

guardian.

“I hope so,” said he.

She seemed to respect him and even to wish to conciliate him. There

was something very winning in her haughty manner, and it became more

familiar—I was going to say more easy, but that could hardly be—as

she spoke to him over her shoulder.

“I presume this is your other ward, Miss Clare?”

He presented Ada, in form.

“You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character,”

said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce over her shoulder again, “if you

only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. But present me,” and she

turned full upon me, “to this young lady too!”

“Miss Summerson really is my ward,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “I am

responsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case.”

“Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?” said my Lady.

“Yes.”

“She is very fortunate in her guardian.”

Lady Dedlock looked at me, and I looked at her and said I was indeed.

All at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost expressive of

displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder again.

“Ages have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, Mr.

Jarndyce.”

“A long time. At least I thought it was a long time, until I saw you

last Sunday,” he returned.

“What! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one

to me!” she said with some disdain. “I have achieved that reputation,

I suppose.”

“You have achieved so much, Lady Dedlock,” said my guardian, “that

you pay some little penalty, I dare say. But none to me.”

“So much!” she repeated, slightly laughing. “Yes!”

With her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and I know

not what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than

children. So, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking at

the rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy herself

with her own thoughts as if she had been alone.

“I think you knew my sister when we were abroad together better than

you know me?” she said, looking at him again.

“Yes, we happened to meet oftener,” he returned.

“We went our several ways,” said Lady Dedlock, “and had little in

common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I

suppose, but it could not be helped.”

Lady Dedlock again sat looking at the rain. The storm soon began to

pass upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the lightning ceased,

the thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to

glisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. As we sat there,

silently, we saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry

pace.

“The messenger is coming back, my Lady,” said the keeper, “with the

carriage.”

As it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. There

alighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the

Frenchwoman whom I had seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl,

the Frenchwoman with a defiant confidence, the pretty girl confused

and hesitating.

“What now?” said Lady Dedlock. “Two!”

“I am your maid, my Lady, at the present,” said the Frenchwoman. “The

message was for the attendant.”

“I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady,” said the pretty girl.

“I did mean you, child,” replied her mistress calmly. “Put that shawl

on me.”

She slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty girl

lightly dropped it in its place. The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed,

looking on with her lips very tightly set.

“I am sorry,” said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce, “that we are not

likely to renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send

the carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly.”

But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful

leave of Ada—none of me—and put her hand upon his proffered arm,

and got into the carriage, which was a little, low, park carriage

with a hood.

“Come in, child,” she said to the pretty girl; “I shall want you. Go

on!”

The carriage rolled away, and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers she

had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she had

alighted.

I suppose there is nothing pride can so little bear with as pride

itself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner. Her

retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She remained

perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and

then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her

shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same

direction through the wettest of the wet grass.

“Is that young woman mad?” said my guardian.

“Oh, no, sir!” said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking after

her. “Hortense is not one of that sort. She has as good a head-piece

as the best. But she’s mortal high and passionate—powerful high and

passionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others

put above her, she don’t take kindly to it.”

“But why should she walk shoeless through all that water?” said my

guardian.

“Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!” said the man.

“Or unless she fancies it’s blood,” said the woman. “She’d as soon

walk through that as anything else, I think, when her own’s up!”

We passed not far from the house a few minutes afterwards. Peaceful

as it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more so now,

with a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing,

the birds no longer hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed

by the late rain, and the little carriage shining at the doorway like

a fairy carriage made of silver. Still, very steadfastly and quietly

walking towards it, a peaceful figure too in the landscape, went

Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless, through the wet grass.