067 - The Close of Esther's Narrative

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Bleak House by Charles Dickens Chapter 67 The Clothes 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 forever. 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 up hope within her, I felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of God.

They throw, 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 boys, 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 Charlie, round-eyed still, and not at all grammatical, is married to a miller in our neighborhood,

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 Charlie,

but he is very fond of her, and Charlie 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, Charlie's sister,

is exactly what Charlie used to be. As to Tom, Charlie's brother, I am really afraid to say

what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was decimals. He is apprentice to the miller,

whatever it was, and is a good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody, and being ashamed

of it. Cady Jellybee 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. Cady keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and lives two

full 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. Jellybee 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. Jellybee was understood to

suffer great mortification from her daughters in noble marriage and pursuits, but I hope she got

over it in time. She has been disappointed in Boria Bula Ga, which turned out a failure in

the consequence of the king of Boria Bula 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 Cady tells me it

is a mission involving more correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Cady's poor

little girl. She is not such a might now, but she is deafened dumb. I believe there never was a

better mother than Cady, who learns, in her scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deafened

dumb arts, to soften the affliction of her child. As if I were never to have done with Cady,

I am reminded here of Pepe and Old Mr. Turvy Drop. Pepe is in the custom house and doing

extremely well. Old Mr. Turvy Drop, very apoplectic, still exhibits his deportment about town

and still enjoys himself in the old manner, is still believed in in the old way. He is constant

in his patronage of Pepe and is understood to have bequeathed him a favorite French clock in his

dressing room, which is not his property. With the first money we saved at home, we added to a

pretty house by throwing out a little growlery expressly from my guardian, which we inaugurated

with great splendor the next time he came down to see us. I try to write all this slightly,

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 deported 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 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 bends of those who were past recovery, thanks

have often, often gone up in the last hour for his patient administration. Is this not 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 know 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 tomorrow,

I was sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch when Alan came home.

So he said, my precious little woman, what are you doing here? And I said, the moon is shining so

brightly, Alan, and the night is so delicious that I have been sitting here thinking.

What have you been thinking about my dear, said Alan 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 Alan? 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 Alan laughing? Such as they were, of course.

My dear Dame Durden, said Alan, 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.

And of chapter 67.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens was recorded by Cynthia Lyons, Naperville, Illinois, from September

2006 through July 2007.