CHAPTER XLIII

Esther’s Narrative

It matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who had

told me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to

approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of

the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my

fears of increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living

creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always

conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I first knew

the secret. At no time did I dare to utter her name. I felt as if I

did not even dare to hear it. If the conversation anywhere, when I

was present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, I

tried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated something that I

knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious now that I often did

these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken

of, but I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might

lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me.

It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother’s

voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to

do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so

new to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention

of my mother’s name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house

in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the

theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide

asunder before the great company of all degrees that any link or

confidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all over. My lot has

been so blest that I can relate little of myself which is not a story

of goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that little and

go on.

When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations

with my guardian of which Richard was the theme. My dear girl was

deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, but

she was so faithful to Richard that she could not bear to blame him

even for that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his

name with a word of reproof. “Rick is mistaken, my dear,” he would

say to her. “Well, well! We have all been mistaken over and over

again. We must trust to you and time to set him right.”

We knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to

time until he had often tried to open Richard’s eyes. That he had

written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and

persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard

was deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends

when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark,

he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those

clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and

misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the

suit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his

unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession

of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any consideration

before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of reason, make a

new argument in favour of his doing what he did. “So that it is even

more mischievous,” said my guardian once to me, “to remonstrate with

the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone.”

I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr.

Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard.

“Adviser!” returned my guardian, laughing, “My dear, who would advise

with Skimpole?”

“Encourager would perhaps have been a better word,” said I.

“Encourager!” returned my guardian again. “Who could be encouraged by

Skimpole?”

“Not Richard?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer

creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or

encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or

anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as

Skimpole.”

“Pray, cousin John,” said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked

over my shoulder, “what made him such a child?”

“What made him such a child?” inquired my guardian, rubbing his head,

a little at a loss.

“Yes, cousin John.”

“Why,” he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, “he is

all sentiment, and—and susceptibility, and—and sensibility,

and—and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him,

somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth

attached too much importance to them and too little to any training

that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he

is. Hey?” said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us

hopefully. “What do you think, you two?”

Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an

expense to Richard.

“So it is, so it is,” returned my guardian hurriedly. “That must not

be. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do.”

And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever

introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes for a present of five pounds.

“Did he?” said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his

face. “But there you have the man. There you have the man! There is

nothing mercenary in that with him. He has no idea of the value of

money. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr.

Vholes and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and

thinks nothing of it. He told you himself, I’ll be bound, my dear?”

“Oh, yes!” said I.

“Exactly!” cried my guardian, quite triumphant. “There you have the

man! If he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any harm in

it, he wouldn’t tell it. He tells it as he does it in mere

simplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you’ll

understand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole and

caution him on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an

infant!”

In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day and

presented ourselves at Mr. Skimpole’s door.

He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there

were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in

cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant

than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody

always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for

business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I don’t

know; but he had occupied the same house some years. It was in a

state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. Two or three of

the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the knocker

was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge

from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps

were the only signs of its being inhabited.

A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the

rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry

answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping

up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr. Jarndyce (indeed Ada and

I both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of

her wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The

lock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied

herself to securing it with the chain, which was not in good action

either, and said would we go upstairs?

We went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture

than the dirty footprints. Mr. Jarndyce without further ceremony

entered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy enough and not at

all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a

large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and

plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music,

newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass

in one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over, but there

was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was

another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a

bottle of light wine. Mr. Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in

a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china

cup—it was then about mid-day—and looking at a collection of

wallflowers in the balcony.

He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and

received us in his usual airy manner.

“Here I am, you see!” he said when we were seated, not without some

little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. “Here

I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and

mutton for breakfast; I don’t. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee,

and my claret; I am content. I don’t want them for themselves, but

they remind me of the sun. There’s nothing solar about legs of beef

and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!”

“This is our friend’s consulting-room (or would be, if he ever

prescribed), his sanctum, his studio,” said my guardian to us.

“Yes,” said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, “this is the

bird’s cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his

feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings, he sings!”

He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, “He sings! Not

an ambitious note, but still he sings.”

“These are very fine,” said my guardian. “A present?”

“No,” he answered. “No! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man

wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should

wait for the money. ‘Really, my friend,’ I said, ‘I think not—if

your time is of any value to you.’ I suppose it was, for he went

away.”

My guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, “Is it

possible to be worldly with this baby?”

“This is a day,” said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a

tumbler, “that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it Saint

Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I have a

blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a Sentiment

daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all.

They’ll be enchanted.”

He was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked him

to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. “My dear

Jarndyce,” he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, “as many

moments as you please. Time is no object here. We never know what

o’clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on in life,

you’ll tell me? Certainly. But we DON’T get on in life. We don’t

pretend to do it.”

My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, “You hear him?”

“Now, Harold,” he began, “the word I have to say relates to Rick.”

“The dearest friend I have!” returned Mr. Skimpole cordially. “I

suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms

with you. But he is, I can’t help it; he is full of youthful poetry,

and I love him. If you don’t like it, I can’t help it. I love him.”

The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really had

a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not, for

the moment, Ada too.

“You are welcome to love him as much as you like,” returned Mr.

Jarndyce, “but we must save his pocket, Harold.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Skimpole. “His pocket? Now you are coming to what I

don’t understand.” Taking a little more claret and dipping one of the

cakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with an

ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand.

“If you go with him here or there,” said my guardian plainly, “you

must not let him pay for both.”

“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr. Skimpole, his genial face irradiated

by the comicality of this idea, “what am I to do? If he takes me

anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I

had any money, I don’t know anything about it. Suppose I say to a

man, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know

nothing about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to pursue

the subject with any consideration for the man. I don’t go about

asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in Moorish—which I

don’t understand. Why should I go about asking them what seven and

sixpence is in Money—which I don’t understand?”

“Well,” said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless

reply, “if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must

borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that

circumstance), and leave the calculation to him.”

“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “I will do anything to

give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form—a superstition.

Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I

thought Mr. Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only to

make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a

bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower

of money.”

“Indeed it is not so, sir,” said Ada. “He is poor.”

“No, really?” returned Mr. Skimpole with his bright smile. “You

surprise me.”

“And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed,” said my

guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr.

Skimpole’s dressing-gown, “be you very careful not to encourage him

in that reliance, Harold.”

“My dear good friend,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “and my dear Miss

Simmerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that? It’s business,

and I don’t know business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges

from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before

me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire

them—as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell

him so.”

The helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us,

the light-hearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the

fantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and

argued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease

of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian’s case. The

more I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was

present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and

yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the

less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with any

one for whom I cared.

Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr.

Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters

(his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite

delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish

character. He soon came back, bringing with him the three young

ladies and Mrs. Skimpole, who had once been a beauty but was now a

delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of

disorders.

“This,” said Mr. Skimpole, “is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa—plays

and sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment

daughter, Laura—plays a little but don’t sing. This is my Comedy

daughter, Kitty—sings a little but don’t play. We all draw a little

and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.”

Mrs. Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to

strike out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that

she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she took

every opportunity of throwing in another.

“It is pleasant,” said Mr. Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from

one to the other of us, “and it is whimsically interesting to trace

peculiarities in families. In this family we are all children, and I

am the youngest.”

The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by

this droll fact, particularly the Comedy daughter.

“My dears, it is true,” said Mr. Skimpole, “is it not? So it is, and

so it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, ‘it is our nature

to.’ Now, here is Miss Summerson with a fine administrative capacity

and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. It will sound very

strange in Miss Summerson’s ears, I dare say, that we know nothing

about chops in this house. But we don’t, not the least. We can’t cook

anything whatever. A needle and thread we don’t know how to use. We

admire the people who possess the practical wisdom we want, but we

don’t quarrel with them. Then why should they quarrel with us? Live

and let live, we say to them. Live upon your practical wisdom, and

let us live upon you!”

He laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean what

he said.

“We have sympathy, my roses,” said Mr. Skimpole, “sympathy for

everything. Have we not?”

“Oh, yes, papa!” cried the three daughters.

“In fact, that is our family department,” said Mr. Skimpole, “in this

hurly-burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being

interested, and we DO look on, and we ARE interested. What more can

we do? Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three years. Now I

dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all

wrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable. We

had our little festivities on those occasions and exchanged social

ideas. She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their

young fledglings have their nest upstairs. I dare say at some time or

other Sentiment and Comedy will bring THEIR husbands home and have

THEIR nests upstairs too. So we get on, we don’t know how, but

somehow.”

She looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and I

could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the

three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little

haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father’s

playthings in his idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted,

I observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair, the

Beauty daughter being in the classic manner, the Sentiment daughter

luxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy daughter in the arch style,

with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls

dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dressed to

correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way.

Ada and I conversed with these young ladies and found them

wonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr. Jarndyce (who had

been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in

the wind) talked with Mrs. Skimpole in a corner, where we could not

help hearing the chink of money. Mr. Skimpole had previously

volunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself for

the purpose.

“My roses,” he said when he came back, “take care of mama. She is

poorly to-day. By going home with Mr. Jarndyce for a day or two, I

shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. It has been

tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home.”

“That bad man!” said the Comedy daughter.

“At the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his wallflowers,

looking at the blue sky,” Laura complained.

“And when the smell of hay was in the air!” said Arethusa.

“It showed a want of poetry in the man,” Mr. Skimpole assented, but

with perfect good humour. “It was coarse. There was an absence of the

finer touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great

offence,” he explained to us, “at an honest man—”

“Not honest, papa. Impossible!” they all three protested.

“At a rough kind of fellow—a sort of human hedgehog rolled up,” said

Mr. Skimpole, “who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we

borrowed a couple of arm-chairs. We wanted a couple of arm-chairs,

and we hadn’t got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man

who HAD got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person lent them,

and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back.

He had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He

objected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out

his mistake. I said, ‘Can you, at your time of life, be so

headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to

put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to

survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? Don’t you

KNOW that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?’ He was

unreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language. Being

as patient as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him.

I said, ‘Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary,

we are all children of one great mother, Nature. On this blooming

summer morning here you see me’ (I was on the sofa) ‘with flowers

before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air

full of fragrance, contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by our common

brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime,

the absurd figure of an angry baker!’ But he did,” said Mr. Skimpole,

raising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; “he did interpose

that ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. And therefore

I am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend

Jarndyce.”

It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the

daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old

a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. He took

leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any

other aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with us in

perfect harmony of mind. We had an opportunity of seeing through some

open doors, as we went downstairs, that his own apartment was a

palace to the rest of the house.

I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very

startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what

ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. Our guest was

in such spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but listen to

him and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to

the same fascination. As to my guardian, the wind, which had

threatened to become fixed in the east when we left Somers Town,

veered completely round before we were a couple of miles from it.

Whether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters, Mr.

Skimpole had a child’s enjoyment of change and bright weather. In no

way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room

before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet

looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and

drinking songs, Italian and German, by the score.

We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the

piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music,

and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined

old Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and

had got tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read

aloud in a surprised voice, “Sir Leicester Dedlock!”

The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me

and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have

hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness,

to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know

where it was. I heard my name and found that my guardian was

presenting me before I could move to a chair.

“Pray be seated, Sir Leicester.”

“Mr. Jarndyce,” said Sir Leicester in reply as he bowed and seated

himself, “I do myself the honour of calling here—”

“You do ME the honour, Sir Leicester.”

“Thank you—of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire to express

my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may

have against a gentleman who—who is known to you and has been your

host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference, should

have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge,

from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and

refined taste at my house, Chesney Wold.”

“You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of those

ladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very much.”

“It is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the

reasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making further allusion—it

is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me the

honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to

believe that you would not have been received by my local

establishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy,

which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen

who present themselves at that house. I merely beg to observe, sir,

that the fact is the reverse.”

My guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any

verbal answer.

“It has given me pain, Mr. Jarndyce,” Sir Leicester weightily

proceeded. “I assure you, sir, it has given—me—pain—to learn from

the housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentleman who was in your

company in that part of the county, and who would appear to possess a

cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred by some

such cause from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that

attention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them

and which some of them might possibly have repaid.” Here he produced

a card and read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his

eye-glass, “Mr. Hirrold—Herald—Harold—Skampling—Skumpling—I beg

your pardon—Skimpole.”

“This is Mr. Harold Skimpole,” said my guardian, evidently surprised.

“Oh!” exclaimed Sir Leicester, “I am happy to meet Mr. Skimpole and

to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope,

sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county, you

will be under no similar sense of restraint.”

“You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock. So encouraged, I shall

certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to

your beautiful house. The owners of such places as Chesney Wold,”

said Mr. Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air, “are public

benefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful

objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to

reap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be

ungrateful to our benefactors.”

Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. “An artist,

sir?”

“No,” returned Mr. Skimpole. “A perfectly idle man. A mere amateur.”

Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even more. He hoped he might

have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Skimpole next

came down into Lincolnshire. Mr. Skimpole professed himself much

flattered and honoured.

“Mr. Skimpole mentioned,” pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself

again to my guardian, “mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may

have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family—”

(“That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the

occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare,”

Mr. Skimpole airily explained to us.)

“—That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was

Mr. Jarndyce.” Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of that name. “And

hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have professed

my regret. That this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr.

Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known to Lady Dedlock,

and indeed claiming some distant connexion with her, and for whom (as

I learn from my Lady herself) she entertains a high respect, does, I

assure you, give—me—pain.”

“Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester,” returned my guardian. “I

am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration.

Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologize for it.”

I had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor and had not even

appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me to find

that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it

passed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused and my

instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so

distressing to me that I thought I understood nothing, through the

rushing in my head and the beating of my heart.

“I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock,” said Sir Leicester,

rising, “and my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of

exchanging a few words with Mr. Jarndyce and his wards on the

occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the

vicinity. Permit me, Mr. Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to

these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr. Skimpole.

Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford me

any gratification to hear that Mr. Boythorn had favoured my house

with his presence, but those circumstances are confined to that

gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him.”

“You know my old opinion of him,” said Mr. Skimpole, lightly

appealing to us. “An amiable bull who is determined to make every

colour scarlet!”

Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed as if he could not possibly hear

another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave

with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all

possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my

self-command. It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to

find when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for

having been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet.

By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I

must tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being

brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house,

even of Mr. Skimpole’s, however distantly associated with me,

receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so painful

that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his assistance.

When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual

talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and sought my

guardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour, and as

I drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from his

reading-lamp.

“May I come in, guardian?”

“Surely, little woman. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet

time of saying a word to you about myself.”

He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his

kind attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it

wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before—on

that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could

readily understand.

“What concerns you, my dear Esther,” said he, “concerns us all. You

cannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear.”

“I know that, guardian. But I have such need of your advice and

support. Oh! You don’t know how much need I have to-night.”

He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little

alarmed.

“Or how anxious I have been to speak to you,” said I, “ever since the

visitor was here to-day.”

“The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester Dedlock?”

“Yes.”

He folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the

profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did not

know how to prepare him.

“Why, Esther,” said he, breaking into a smile, “our visitor and you

are the two last persons on earth I should have thought of connecting

together!”

“Oh, yes, guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago.”

The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. He

crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to that)

and resumed his seat before me.

“Guardian,” said I, “do you remember, when we were overtaken by the

thunder-storm, Lady Dedlock’s speaking to you of her sister?”

“Of course. Of course I do.”

“And reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone

their several ways?”

“Of course.”

“Why did they separate, guardian?”

His face quite altered as he looked at me. “My child, what questions

are these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did know, I

believe. Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and

proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen

her sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty

as she.”

“Oh, guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!”

“Seen her?”

He paused a little, biting his lip. “Then, Esther, when you spoke to

me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but

married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and

that that time had had its influence on his later life—did you know

it all, and know who the lady was?”

“No, guardian,” I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke

upon me. “Nor do I know yet.”

“Lady Dedlock’s sister.”

“And why,” I could scarcely ask him, “why, guardian, pray tell me why

were THEY parted?”

“It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. He

afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some

injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel

with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she wrote him

that from the date of that letter she died to him—as in literal

truth she did—and that the resolution was exacted from her by her

knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which

were both her nature too. In consideration for those master points in

him, and even in consideration for them in herself, she made the

sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. She did

both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from

that hour. Nor did any one.”

“Oh, guardian, what have I done!” I cried, giving way to my grief;

“what sorrow have I innocently caused!”

“You caused, Esther?”

“Yes, guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister is

my first remembrance.”

“No, no!” he cried, starting.

“Yes, guardian, yes! And HER sister is my mother!”

I would have told him all my mother’s letter, but he would not hear

it then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly

before me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better

state of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude

towards him through so many years, I believed I had never loved him

so dearly, never thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that

night. And when he had taken me to my room and kissed me at the door,

and when at last I lay down to sleep, my thought was how could I ever

be busy enough, how could I ever be good enough, how in my little way

could I ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself, devoted enough to

him, and useful enough to others, to show him how I blessed and

honoured him.