her happy, why should you pursue her?'
'I wouldn't make her unhappy – no, not even for her love,' retorted Richard, proudly.
'Well said!' cried Mr. Jarndyce; 'that's well said! She remains here, in her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well. Otherwise, all will go ill. That's the end of my preaching. I think you and Ada had better take a walk.'
Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily shook hands with him, and then the cousins went out of the room – looking back again directly, though, to say that they would wait for me.
The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes, as they passed down the adjoining room on which the sun was shining, and out at its farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through the sunlight, as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the years to come, and making them all years of brightness. So they passed away into the shadow, and were gone. It was only a burst of light that had been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun was clouded over.
'Am I right, Esther?' said my Guardian, when they were gone.
He who was so good and wise, to ask me whether he was right!
'Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core of so much that is good!' said Mr. Jarndyce, shaking his head. 'I have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor always near.' And he laid his hand lovingly upon my head.
I could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did all I could to conceal it.
'Tut, tut!' said he. 'But we must take care, too, that our little woman's life is not all consumed in care for others.'
'Care? My dear Guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the world!'
'I believe so, too,' said he. 'But some one may find out, what Esther never will, – that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above all other people!'
I have omitted to mention in its place, that there was some one else at the family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a gentleman. It was a gentleman of a dark complexion – a young surgeon. He was rather reserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least, Ada asked me if I did not, and I said yes.
Chapter XIV
Deportment
Richard left us on the very next evening, to begin his new career, and committed Ada to my charge with great love for her, and great trust in me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write to Richard once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of all his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute and persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's bridesmaid when they were married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.
'And if the suit should make us rich, Esther – which it may, you know!' said Richard, to crown all.
A shade crossed Ada's face.
'My dearest Ada,' asked Richard, 'why not?'
'It had better declare us poor at once,' said Ada.
'O! I don't know about that,' returned Richard; 'but, at all events, it won't declare anything at once. It hasn't declared anything in Heaven knows how many years.'
'Too true,' said Ada.
'Yes, but,' urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather than her words, 'the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that reasonable?'
'You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will make us unhappy.'
'But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!' cried Richard. 'We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it should make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The Court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.'
'No,' said Ada, 'but it may be better to forget all about it.'
'Well, well!' cried Richard, 'then we will forget all about it! We consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her approving face, and it's done!'
'Dame Durden's approving face,' said I, looking out of the box in which I was packing his books, 'was not very visible when you called it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do better.'
So Richard said there was an end of it, – and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the great wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.
On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs. Jellyby's, but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It appeared that she had gone somewhere, to a tea-drinking, and had taken Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt, sufficient active exercise of pen and ink, to make her daughter's part in the proceedings anything but a holiday.
It being, now, beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby's return, we called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile End, directly after breakfast, on some Borrioboolan business, arising out of a Society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have strolled away with the dustman's cart), I now inquired for him again. The oyster-shells he had been building a house with, were still in the passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had 'gone after the sheep.' When we repeated, with some surprise, 'The sheep?' she said, O yes, on market days he sometimes followed them quite out of town, and came back in such a state as never was!
I was sitting at the window with my guardian, on the following morning, and Ada was busy writing – of course to Richard – when Miss Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom she had made some endeavours to render presentable, by wiping the dirt into corners of his face and hands, and making his hair very wet and then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear child wore, was either too large for him or too small. Among his other contradictory decorations he had the hat of a Bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a ploughman: while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare, below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been hastily mended; and I recognised the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance, and looked very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure after all her trouble, and she
