CHAPTER LXVII

The Close of Esther’s Narrative

Full seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House. The

few words that I have to add to what I have written are soon penned;

then I and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. Not

without much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope,

on his or hers.

They gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I never

left her. The little child who was to have done so much was born

before the turf was planted on its father’s grave. It was a boy; and

I, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father’s name.

The help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it came, in

the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore

his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power

was mighty to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand

and how its touch could heal my darling’s heart and raised hope

within her, I felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of

God.

They throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my country

garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married

then. I was the happiest of the happy.

It was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked Ada when she

would come home.

“Both houses are your home, my dear,” said he, “but the older Bleak

House claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do

it, come and take possession of your home.”

Ada called him “her dearest cousin, John.” But he said, no, it must

be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the boy’s; and

he had an old association with the name. So she called him guardian,

and has called him guardian ever since. The children know him by no

other name. I say the children; I have two little daughters.

It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and not at

all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so

it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write early in the

morning at my summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go

round. I hope the miller will not spoil Charley; but he is very fond

of her, and Charley is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to

do and was in great request. So far as my small maid is concerned, I

might suppose time to have stood for seven years as still as the mill

did half an hour ago, since little Emma, Charley’s sister, is exactly

what Charley used to be. As to Tom, Charley’s brother, I am really

afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was

decimals. He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a

good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being

ashamed of it.

Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a dearer

creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with

the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life.

Caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and

lives full two miles further westward than Newman Street. She works

very hard, her husband (an excellent one) being lame and able to do

very little. Still, she is more than contented and does all she has

to do with all her heart. Mr. Jellyby spends his evenings at her new

house with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one.

I have heard that Mrs. Jellyby was understood to suffer great

mortification from her daughter’s ignoble marriage and pursuits, but

I hope she got over it in time. She has been disappointed in

Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence of the

king of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody—who survived the

climate—for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to

sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more

correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Caddy’s poor

little girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I

believe there never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in

her scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to

soften the affliction of her child.

As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of

Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and doing

extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits

his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is

still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of

Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a favourite French

clock in his dressing-room—which is not his property.

With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house

by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we

inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see

us. I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in

drawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have their

way.

I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a

good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me

he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is

my husband’s best and dearest friend, he is our children’s darling,

he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel

towards him as if he were a superior being, I am so familiar with him

and so easy with him that I almost wonder at myself. I have never

lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do I ever, when he is

with us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his side,

Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman—all just the same as ever; and

I answer, “Yes, dear guardian!” just the same.

I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment

since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I

remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and

he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that

very day.

I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow that

has been in her face—for it is not there now—seems to have purified

even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality.

Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that

she still wears, teaching my Richard, I feel—it is difficult to

express—as if it were so good to know that she remembers her dear

Esther in her prayers.

I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am

one.

We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we

have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the

people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear

his praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night

but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and

soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know that from

the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have often, often

gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is not this

to be rich?

The people even praise me as the doctor’s wife. The people even like

me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I

owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I

do everything I do in life for his sake.

A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and

my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was

sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch,

when Allan came home. So he said, “My precious little woman, what are

you doing here?” And I said, “The moon is shining so brightly, Allan,

and the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here

thinking.”

“What have you been thinking about, my dear?” said Allan then.

“How curious you are!” said I. “I am almost ashamed to tell you, but

I will. I have been thinking about my old looks—such as they were.”

“And what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?” said

Allan.

“I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you COULD

have loved me any better, even if I had retained them.”

“‘Such as they were’?” said Allan, laughing.

“Such as they were, of course.”

“My dear Dame Durden,” said Allan, drawing my arm through his, “do

you ever look in the glass?”

“You know I do; you see me do it.”

“And don’t you know that you are prettier than you ever were?”

I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know

that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is

very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my

guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was

seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me—even

supposing—.