Signs And Tokens.
don’t how it is, I seem to be always writing about myself. I
mean all the time to write about other people, and I try to
think about myself as little as possible, and I am sure, when I
find myself coming into the story again, I am really vexed and say,
“Dear, dear, you tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn’t!” but
it is all of no use. I hope any one who may read what I write, will
understand that if these pages contain a GREat deal about me, I can
only suppose it must be because I have really something to do with
them, and can’t be kept out.
My darling and I read together, and worked, and practised; and
found so much employment for our time, that the winter days flew
by us like bright-winged birds. Generally in the afternoons, and
always in the evenings, Richard gave us his company. Although he
was one of the most restless creatures in the world, he certainly
was very fond of our society.
He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it, and I had better
say it at once. I had never seen any young people falling in love
before, but I found them out quite soon. I could not say so, of
course, or show that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I
was so demure, and used to seem so unconscious, that sometimes I
considered within myself while I was sitting at work, whether I
was not growing quite deceitful.
But there was no help for it. All I had to do was to be quiet, and
I was as quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice, too, so far
as any words were concerned; but the innocent manner in which
they relied more and more upon me, as they took more and more
to one another, was so charming, that I had GREat difficulty in not
showing how it interested me.
“Our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman,”
Richard would say, coming up to meet me in the garden early,
with his pleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush,
“that I can’t get on without her. Before I begin my harum-scarum
day―grinding away at those books and instruments, and then
galloping up hill and down dale, all the country round, like a
highwayman―it does me so much good to come and have a steady
walk with our comfortable friend, that here I am again.”
“You know, Dame Durden, dear,” Ada would say at night, with
her head upon my shoulder, and the firelight shining in her
thoughtful eyes, “I don’t wont to talk when we come upstairs here.
Only to sit a little while, thinking, with your dear face for
company; and to hear the wind, and remember the poor sailors at
sea―”
Ah! Perhaps Richard was going to be a sailor. We had talked it
over very often, now, and there was some talk of gratifying the
inclination of his childhood for the sea. Mr Jarndyce had written
to a relation of the family, a GREat Sir Leicester Dedlock, for his
interest in Richard’s favour, generally; and Sir Leicester had
replied in a gracious manner, “that he would be happy to advance
the prospects of the young gentleman if it should ever prove to be
within his power, which was not at all probable―and that my
Lady sent her compliments to the young gentleman (to whom she
perfectly remembered that she was allied by remote
consanguinity), and trusted that he would ever do his duty in any
honourable profession to which he might devote himself.”
“So I apprehend it’s pretty clear,” said Richard to me, “that I
shall have to work my own way. Never mind! Plenty of people
have had to do that before now, and have done it. I only wish I had
the command of a clipping privateer, to begin with, and could
carry off the Chancellor and keep him on short allowance until he
gave judgment in our cause. He’d find himself growing thin, if he
didn’t look sharp!”
With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever
flagged, Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite
perplexed me―principally because he mistook it, in such a very
odd way, for prudence. It entered into all his calculations about
money, in a singular manner, which I don’t think I can better
explain than by reverting for a moment to our loan to Mr
Skimpole.
Mr Jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either from Mr
Skimpole himself or from Coavinses, and had placed the money in
my hands with instructions to me to retain my own part of it and
hand the rest to Richard. The number of little acts of thoughtless
expenditure which Richard justified by the recovery of his ten
pounds, and the number of times he talked to me as if he had
saved or realised that amount, would form a sum in simple
addition.
“My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?” he said to me, when
he wanted, without the least consideration, to bestow five pounds
on the brickmaker. “I made ten pounds, clear, out of Coavinses’
business.”
“How was that?” said I.
“Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get
rid of, and never expected to see any more. You don’t deny that?”
“No,” said I.
“Very well, then I came into possession of ten pounds―”
“The same ten pounds,” I hinted.
“That has nothing to do with it!” returned Richard. “I have got
ten pounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can
afford to spend it without being particular.”
In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the
sacrifice of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do
no good, he carried that sum to his credit and drew upon it.
“Let me see!” he would say. “I saved five pounds out of the
brickmaker’s affair; so, if I have a good rattle to London and back
in a post-chaise, and put that down at four pounds, I shall have
saved one. And it’s a very good thing to save one, let me tell you; a
penny saved, is a penny got!”
I believe Richard’s was as frank and generous a nature as there
possibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and, in the midst of all
his wild restlessness, was so gentle, that I knew him like a brother
in a few weeks. His gentleness was natural to him, and would have
shown itself abundantly, even without Ada’s influence; but, with it,
he became one of the most winning of companions, always so
ready to be interested, and always so happy, sanguine, and light-
hearted. I am sure that I, sitting with them, and walking with
them, and talking with them, and noticing from day to day how
they went on, falling deeper and deeper in love, and saying
nothing about it, and each shyly thinking that this love was the
GREatest of secrets, perhaps not yet suspected even by the other―I
am sure that I was scarcely less enchanted than they were, and
scarcely less pleased with the pretty dream.
We were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast
Mr Jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription
said, “From Boythorn? Aye, aye!” and opened and read it with
evident pleasure, announcing to us, in a parenthesis, when he was
about halfway through, that Boythorn was “coming down” on a
visit. Now, who was Boythorn? we all thought. And I dare say we
all thought, too―I am sure I did, for one―would Boythorn at all
interfere with what was going forward?
“I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn,” said Mr
Jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, “more than
five-and-forty years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in
the world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then
the loudest boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He
was then the heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is
now the heartiest and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow.”
“In stature, sir?” asked Richard.
“Pretty well, Rick, in that respect,” said Mr Jarndyce; “being
some ten years older than I, and a couple of inches taller, with his
head thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared,
his hands like a clean blacksmith’s, and his lungs!―there’s no
simile for his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the
beams of the house shake.”
As Mr Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend Boythorn,
we observed the favourable omen that there was not the least
indication of any change in the wind.
“But it’s the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the
passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick―and Ada,
and little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor!―that I
speak of,” he pursued. “His language is as sounding as his voice.
He is always in extremes; perpetually in the superlative deGREe. In
his condemnation he is all ferocity, You might suppose him to be
an OGRE, from what he says; and I believe he has the reputation of
one with some people. There! I tell you no more of him
beforehand. You must not be surprised to see him take me under
his protection; for he has never forgotten that I was a low boy at
school, and that our friendship began in his knocking two of my
head tyrant’s teeth out (he says six) before breakfast. Boythorn
and his man,” to me, “will be here this afternoon, my dear.”
I took care that the necessary preparations were made for Mr
Boythorn’s reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with
some curiosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not
appear. The dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The
dinner was put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire
with no light but the blaze, when the hall-door suddenly burst
open, and the hall resounded with these words, uttered with the
GREatest vehemence and in a stentorian tone:
“We have been misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most abandoned
ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right instead of to
the left. He is the most intolerable scoundrel on the face of the
earth. His father must have been a most consummate villain, ever
to have had such a son. I would have that fellow shot without the
least remorse!”
“Did he do it on purpose?” Mr Jarndyce inquired.
“I have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his
whole existence in misdirecting travellers!” returned the other.
“By my soul, I thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever
beheld, when he was telling me to take the turning to the right.
And yet I stood before that fellow face to face, and didn’t knock his
brains out!”
“Teeth you mean?” said Mr Jarndyce.
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Mr Lawrence Boythorn, really making
the whole house vibrate. “What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha,
ha, ha!―And that was another most consummate vagabond! By
my soul, the countenance of that fellow, when he was a boy, was
the blackest image of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up
as a scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most
unparalleled despot in the streets tomorrow, I would fell him like a
rotten tree!”
“I have no doubt of it,” said Mr Jarndyce. “Now, will you come
upstairs?”
“By my soul, Jarndyce,” returned his guest, who seemed to
refer to his watch, “if you had been married, I would have turned
back at the garden gate, and gone away to the remotest summits of
the Himalaya Mountains, sooner than I would have presented
myself at this unseasonable hour.”
“Not quite so far, I hope?” said Mr Jarndyce.
“By my life and honour, yes!” cried the visitor. “I wouldn’t be
guilty of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house
waiting all this time, for any earthly consideration. I would
infinitely rather destroy myself―infinitely rather!”
Talking thus, they went upstairs; and presently we heard him in
his bedroom thundering “Ha, ha, ha!” and again, “Ha, ha, ha!”
until the flattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the
contagion, and to laugh as enjoyingly as he did, or as we did when
we heard him laugh.
We all conceived a prepossession in his favour; for there was a
sterling quality in his laugh, and in his vigorous healthy voice, and
in the roundness and fulness with which he uttered every word he
spoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go
off like blank cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly
prepared to have it so confirmed by his appearance, when Mr
Jarndyce presented him. He was not only a very handsome old
gentleman―upright and stalwart as he had been described to us―
with a massive GREy head, a fine composure of face when silent, a
figure that might have become corpulent but for his being so
continually in earnest that he gave it no rest, and a chin that might
have subsided into a double chin but for the vehement emphasis
in which it was constantly required to assist; but he was such a
true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously polite, his face was
lighted by a smile of so much sweetness and tenderness, and it
seemed so plain that he had nothing to hide, but showed himself
exactly as he was―incapable (as Richard said) of anything on a
limited scale, and firing away with those blank GREat guns, because
he carried no small arms whatever―that really I could not help
looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat at dinner, whether he
smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led by Mr Jarndyce
into some GREat volley of superlatives, or threw up his head like a
bloodhound, and gave out that tremendous Ha, ha, ha!
“You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?” said Mr
Jarndyce.
“By Heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!” replied
the other. “He is the most wonderful creature! I wouldn’t take ten
thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole
support, in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and
attachment, a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of
the most astonishing birds that ever lived!”
The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was
so tame that he was brought down by Mr Boythorn’s man, on his
forefinger, and, after taking a gentle flight round the room,
alighted on his master’s head. To hear Mr Boythorn presently
expressing the most implacable and passionate sentiments with
this fragile mite of a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was
to have a good illustration of his character, I thought.
“By my soul, Jarndyce,” he said, very gently holding up a bit of
bread to the canary to peck at, “if I were in your place, I would
seize every Master in Chancery by the throat tomorrow morning,
and shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets, and his
bones rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of
somebody, by fair means or by foul. If you would empower me to
do it, I would do it for you with the GREatest satisfaction!” (All this
time the very small canary was eating out of his hand.) “I thank
you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at present,”
returned Mr Jarndyce, laughing, “that it would be GREatly
advanced, even by the legal process of shaking the Bench and the
whole Bar.”
“There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery,
on the face of the earth!” said Mr Boythorn. “Nothing but a mine
below it on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and
precedents collected in it, and every functionary belonging to it
also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the
Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to
atoms with ten thousand hundred-weight of gunpowder, would
reform it in the least!”
It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with
which he recommended this strong measure of reform. When we
laughed, he threw up his head, and shook his broad chest, and
again the whole country seemed to echo to his ha, ha, ha! It had
not the least effect in disturbing the bird, whose sense of security
was complete; and who hopped about the table with its quick head
now on this side and now on that, turning its bright sudden eye on
its master, as if he were no more than another bird.
“But how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed
right of way?” said Mr Jarndyce. “You are not free from the toils
of the law yourself?”
“The fellow has brought actions against me for trespass, and I
have brought actions against him for trespass,” returned Mr
Boythorn. “By Heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is
morally impossible that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be
Sir Lucifer.”
“Complimentary to our distant relation!” said my Guardian
laughingly, to Ada and Richard.
“I would beg Miss Clare’s pardon and Mr Carstone’s pardon,”
resumed our visitor, “if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair
face of the lady, and the smile of the gentleman, that it is quite
unnecessary, and that they keep their distant relation at a
comfortable distance.”
“Or he keeps us,” suggested Richard.
“By my soul!” exclaimed Mr Boythorn, suddenly firing another
volley, “that fellow is and his father was, and his grandfather was,
the most stiff-necked, arrogant, imbecile, pig-headed, numbskull,
ever, by some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station
of life but a walking-stick’s! The whole of that family are the most
solemnly conceited and consummate blockheads!―But it’s no
matter; he should not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets
melted into one, and living in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one
within another, like the ivory balls in a Chinese carving. The
fellow, by his agent, or secretary, or somebody, writes to me ‘Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents his compliments to Mr
Lawrence Boythorn, and has to call his attention to the fact that
the GREen pathway by the old parsonage-house, now the property
of Mr Lawrence Boythorn, is Sir Leicester’s right of way. Being in
fact a portion of the park of Chesney Wold; and that Sir Leicester
finds it convenient to close up the same.’ I write to the fellow, ‘Mr
Lawrence Boythorn presents his compliments to Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, and has to call his attention to the fact that he
totally denies the whole of Sir Leicester Dedlock’s positions on
every possible subject, and has to add, in reference to closing up
the pathway, that he will be glad to see the man who may
undertake to do it.’ The fellow sends a most abandoned villain
with one eye, to construct a gateway. I play upon that execrable
scoundrel with a fire-engine, until the breath is nearly driven out
of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night. I chop it down
and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to come over
the fence, and pass and repass. I catch them in humane mantraps,
fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the engine―
resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the
existence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass;
I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and
battery; I defend them, and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha,
ha!”
To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might
have thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him, at the very
same time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb, and
softly smoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have
thought him the gentlest. To hear him laugh, and see the broad
good nature of his face then, one might have supposed that he had
not a care in the world, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole
existence was a summer joke.
“No, no,” he said, “no closing up of my paths by any Dedlock!
Though I willingly confess,” here he softened in a moment, “that
Lady Dedlock is the most accomplished lady in the world, to
whom I would do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no
baronet, with a head seven hundred years thick, may. A man who
joined his regiment at twenty, and within a week, challenged the
most imperious and presumptuous coxcomb of a commanding
officer that ever drew the breath of life through a tight waist―and
got broke for it―is not the man to be walked over, by all the Sir
Lucifers dead or alive, locked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!”
“Nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over, either?”
said my Guardian.
“Most assuredly not!” said Mr Boythorn, clapping him on the
shoulder with an air of protection, that had something serious in
it, though he laughed. “He will stand by the low boy, always.
Jarndyce, you may rely upon him! But, speaking of this trespass―
with apologies to Miss Clare and Miss Summerson for the length
at which I have pursued so dry a subject―is there nothing for me
from your men, Kenge and Carboy?”
“I think not, Esther?” said Mr Jarndyce.
“Nothing, Guardian.”
“Much obliged!” said Mr Boythorn. “Had no need to ask, after
even my slight experience of Miss Summerson’s forethought for
every one about her.” (They all encouraged me; they were
determined to do it.) “I inquired because, coming from
Lincolnshire, I of course have not yet been in town, and I thought
some letters might have been sent down here. I dare say they will
report proGREss tomorrow morning.”
I saw him so often, in the course of the evening, which passed
very pleasantly, contemplate Richard and Ada with an interest
and a satisfaction that made his fine face remarkably aGREeable as
he sat at a little distance from the piano listening to the music―
and he had small occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond
of music, for his face showed it―that I asked my Guardian, as we
sat at the backgammon board, whether Mr Boythorn had ever
been married.
“No,” said he. “No.”
“But he meant to be!” said I.
“How did you find out that?” he returned with a smile.
“Why, Guardian,” I explained, not without reddening a little at
hazarding what was in my thoughts, “there is something so tender
in his manner, after all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us,
and―”
Mr Jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was sitting, as I have
just described him.
I said no more.
“You are right, little woman,” he answered. “He was all but
married, once. Long ago. And once.”
“Did the lady die?”
“No―but she died to him. That time has had its influence on all
his later life. Would you suppose him to have a head and a heart
full of romance yet?”
“I think, Guardian, I might have supposed so. But it is easy to
say that, when you have told me so.”
“He has never since been what he might have been,” said Mr
Jarndyce, “and now you see him in his age with no one near him
but his servant, and his little yellow friend.―It’s your throw, my
dear!”
I felt, from my Guardian’s manner, that beyond this point I
could not pursue the subject without changing the wind. I
therefore forebore to ask any further questions. I was interested
but not curious. I thought a little while about this old love story in
the night, when I was awakened by Mr Boythorn’s lusty snoring;
and I tried to do that very difficult thing―imagine old people
young again, and invested with the graces of youth. But I fell
asleep before I had succeeded, and dreamed of the days when I
lived in my godmother’s house. I am not sufficiently acquainted
with such subjects to know whether it is at all remarkable, that I
almost always dreamed of that period of my life.
With the morning, there came a letter from Messrs. Kenge and
Carboy to Mr Boythorn, informing him that one of their clerks
would wait upon him at noon. As it was the day of the week on
which I paid the bills, and added up my books, and made all the
household affairs as compact as possible, I remained at home
while Mr Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard, took advantage of a very
fine day to make a little excursion. Mr Boythorn was to wait for
Kenge and Carboy’s clerk, and then was to go on foot to meet
them on their return.
Well! I was full of business, examining tradesmen’s books,
adding up columns, paying money, filing receipts, and I daresay
making a GREat bustle about it, when Mr Guppy was announced
and shown in. I had had some idea that the clerk who was to be
sent down, might be the young gentleman who had met me at the
coach-office; and I was glad to see him, because he was associated
with my present happiness.
I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He
had an entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-
kid gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house
flower in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little finger.
Besides which, he quite scented the dining-room with bear’s
GREase and other perfumery. He looked at me with an attention
that quite confused me, when I begged him to take a seat until the
servant should return; and as he sat there, crossing and
uncrossing his legs in a corner, and I asked him if he had had a
pleasant ride, and hoped that Mr Kenge was well, I never looked
at him, but I found him looking at me, in the same scrutinising and
curious way.
When the request was brought to him that he would go upstairs
to Mr Boythorn’s room, I mentioned that he would find lunch
prepared for him when he came down, of which Mr Jarndyce
hoped he would partake. He said with some embarrassment,
holding the handle of the door, “Shall I have the honour of finding
you here, miss?” I replied yes, I should be there; and he went out
with a bow and another look.
I thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently
much embarrassed; and I fancied that the best thing I could do,
would be to wait until I saw that he had everything he wanted, and
then to leave him to himself. The lunch was soon brought, but it
remained for some time on the table. The interview with Mr
Boythorn was a long one―and a stormy one too, I should think;
for although his room was at some distance, I heard his loud voice
rising every now and then like a high wind, and evidently blowing
perfect broadsides of denunciation.
At last Mr Guppy came back, looking something the worse for
the conference. “My eye, miss,” he said in a low voice, “he’s a
Tartar!”
“Pray take some refreshment, sir,” said I.
Mr Guppy sat down at the table, and began nervously
sharpening the carving-knife on the carving-fork; still looking at
me (as I felt quite sure without looking at him), in the same
unusual manner. The sharpening lasted so long, that at last I felt a
kind of obligation on me to raise my eyes, in order that I might
break the spell under which he seemed to labour, of not being able
to leave off.
He immediately looked at the dish, and began to carve.
“What will you take yourself, miss? You’ll take a morsel of
something?”
“No, thank you,” said I.
“Shan’t I give you a piece of anything at all, miss?” said Mr
Guppy, hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine.
“Nothing, thank you,” said I. “I have only waited to see that you
have everything you want. Is there anything I can order for you?”
“No, I am much obliged to you, miss, I’m sure. I’ve every thing I
can require to make me comfortable―at least I―not
comfortable―I’m never that:” he drank off two more glasses of
wine, one after another.
I thought I had better go.
“I beg your pardon, miss!” said Mr Guppy, rising, when he saw
me rise. “But would you allow me the favour of a minute’s private
conversation?”
Not knowing what to say, I sat down again.
“What follows is without prejudice, miss?” said Mr Guppy,
anxiously bringing a chair towards my table.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” said I, wondering.
“It’s one of our law terms, miss. You won’t make any use of it to
my detriment, at Kenge and Carboy’s, or elsewhere. If our
conversation shouldn’t lead to anything, I am to be as I was, and
am not to be prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In
short, it’s in total confidence.”
“I am at a loss, sir,” said I, “to imagine what you can have to
communicate in total confidence to me, whom you have never
seen but once; but I should be very sorry to do you any injury.”
“Thank you, miss. I’m sure of it―that’s quite sufficient.” All this
time Mr Guppy was either planing his forehead with his
handkerchief, or tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the
palm of his right. “If you would excuse my taking another glass of
wine, miss, I think it might assist me in getting on, without a
continual choke that cannot fail to be mutually unpleasant.”
He did so, and came back again. I took the opportunity of
moving well behind my table.
“You wouldn’t allow me to offer you one, would you, miss?”
said Mr Guppy, apparently refreshed.
“Not any,” said I.
“Not half a glass?” said Mr Guppy; “quarter? No! Then to
proceed. My present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and
Carboy’s, is two pound a-week. When I first had the happiness of
looking upon you, it was one-fifteen, and had stood at that figure
for a lengthened period. A rise of five has since taken place, and a
further rise of five is guaranteed at the expiration of a term not
exceeding twelve months from the present date. My mother has a
little property, which takes the form of a small life annuity; upon
which she lives in an independent though unassuming manner, in
the Old Street Road. She is eminently calculated for a mother-in-
law. She never interferes, is all for peace, and her disposition easy.
She has her failings―as who has not?―but I never knew her do it
when company was present; at which time you may freely trust
her with wines, spirits, or malt liquors. My own abode is lodgings
at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is lowly, but airy, open at the back,
and considered one of the ’ealthiest outlets. Miss Summerson! In
the mildest language, I adore you. Would you be so kind as to
allow me (as I may say) to file a declaration―to make an offer!”
Mr Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table,
and not much frightened. I said, “Get up from that ridiculous
position immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my
implied promise and ring the bell!”
“Hear me out, miss!” said Mr Guppy, folding his hands.
“I cannot consent to hear another word, sir,” I returned,
“unless you get up from the carpet directly, and go and sit down at
the table, as you ought to do if you have any sense at all.”
He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so.
“Yet what a mockery it is, miss,” he said, with his hand upon his
heart, and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over
the tray, “to be stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul
recoils from food at such a moment, miss.”
“I beg you to conclude,” said I; “you have asked me to hear you
out, and I beg you to conclude.”
“I will, miss,” said Mr Guppy. “As I love and honour, so likewise
I obey. Would that I could make Thee the subject of that vow,
before the shrine!”
“That is quite impossible,” said I, “and entirely out of the
question.”
“I am aware,” said Mr Guppy, leaning forward over the tray,
and regarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were
not directed to him, with his late intent look, “I am aware that in a
worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a
poor one. But, Miss Summerson! Angel!―No, don’t ring―I have
been brought up in a sharp school, and am accustomed to a
variety of general practice. Though a young man, I have ferreted
out evidence, got up cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your
hand, what means might I not find of advancing your interests,
and pushing your fortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly
concerning you? I know nothing now, certainly; but what might I
not, if I had your confidence, and you set me on?”
I told him that he addressed my interest, or what he supposed
to be my interest, quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my
inclination; and he would now understand that I requested him, if
he pleased, to go away immediately.
“Cruel miss,” said Mr Guppy, “hear but another word! I think
you must have seen that I was struck with those charms, on the
day when I waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have
remarked that I could not forbear a tribute to those charms when I
put up the steps of the ’ackney coach. It was a feeble tribute to
Thee, but it was well meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed
in my breast. I have walked up and down, of an evening, opposite
Jellyby’s house, only to look upon the bricks that once contained
Thee. This out of today, quite an unnecessary out so far as the
attendance, which was its pretended object, went, was planned by
me alone for Thee alone. If I speak of interest, it is only to
recommend myself and my respectful wretchedness. Love was
before it, and is before it.”
“I should be pained, Mr Guppy,” said I, rising and putting my
hand upon the bell-rope, “to do you or any one who was sincere,
the injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disaGREeably
expressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your good
opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to
thank you. I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not
proud, I hope,” I think I added, without very well knowing what I
said, “that you will now go away as if you had never been so
exceedingly foolish, and attend to Messrs. Kenge and Carboy’s
business.”
“Half a minute, miss!” cried Mr Guppy, checking me as I was
about to ring. “This has been without prejudice?”
“I will never mention it,” said I, “unless you should give me
future occasion to do so.”
“A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better―
at any time, however distant, that’s no consequence, for my
feelings can never alter―of anything I have said, particularly what
might I not do―Mr William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place,
or, if removed, or dead (of blighted hopes or anything of that sort),
care of Mrs Guppy, three hundred and two, Old Street Road, will
be sufficient.”
I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr Guppy, laying his
written card upon the table, and making a dejected bow, departed.
Raising my eyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at
me after he had passed the door.
I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and
payments, and getting through plenty of business. Then, I
arranged my desk, and put everything away, and was so composed
and cheerful that I thought I had quite dismissed this unexpected
incident. But, when I went upstairs to my own room, I surprised
myself by beginning to laugh about it, and then surprised myself
still more by beginning to cry about it. In short, I was in a flutter
for a little while; and felt as if an old chord had been more coarsely
touched than it ever had been since the days of the dear old doll,
long buried in the garden.
