everything the sound of his own voice. I couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full, and gave great importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with obvious satisfaction, and sometimes gently beat time to his own music with his head, or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much impressed by him– even then, before I knew that he formed himself on the model of a great lord who was his client, and that he was generally called Conversation Kenge.
'Mr. Jarndyce,' he pursued, 'being aware of the – I would say, desolate – position of our young friend, offers to place her at a first-rate establishment; where her education shall be completed, where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge her duty in that station of life unto which it has pleased – shall I say Providence? – to call her.'
My heart was filled so full, both by what he said, and by his affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though I tried.
'Mr. Jarndyce,' he went on, 'makes no condition, beyond expressing his expectation that our young friend will not at any time remove herself from the establishment in question without his knowledge and concurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she will be ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths of virtue and honour, and– the – a – so forth.'
I was still less able to speak than before.
'Now, what does our young friend say?' proceeded Mr. Kenge. 'Take time, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!'
What the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need not repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were worth the telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I could never relate.
This interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as I knew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all necessaries, I left it, inside the stage-coach, for Reading.
Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known her better after so many years, and ought to have made myself enough of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone porch – it was a very frosty day – I felt so miserable and self-reproachful, that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I knew, that she could say good-bye so easily!
'No, Esther!' she returned. 'It is your misfortune!'
The coach was at the little lawn-gate – we had not come out until we heard the wheels – and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart. She went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof, and shut the door. As long as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the window, through my tears. My godmother had left Mrs. Rachael all the little property she possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old hearthrug with roses on it, which always seemed to me the first thing in the world I had ever seen, was hanging outside in the frost and snow. A day or two before, I had wrapped the dear old doll in her own shawl, and quietly laid her – I am half ashamed to tell it – in the garden-earth, under the tree that shaded my old window. I had no companion left but my bird, and him I carried with me in his cage.
When the house was out of sight, I sat, with my bird-cage in the straw at my feet, forward on the low seat, to look out of the high window; watching the frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of spar; and the fields all smooth and white with last night's snow; and the sun, so red but yielding so little heat; and the ice, dark like metal, where the skaters and sliders had brushed the snow away. There was a gentleman in the coach who sat on the opposite seat, and looked very large in a quantity of wrappings; but he sat gazing out of the other window, and took no notice of me.
I thought of my dead godmother; of the night when I read to her; of her frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed; of the strange place I was going to; of the people I should find there, and what they would be like, and what they would say to me; when a voice in the coach gave me a terrible start.
It said, 'What the devil are you crying for?'
I was so frightened that I lost my voice, and could only answer in a whisper. 'Me, sir?' For of course I knew it must have been the gentleman in the quantity of wrappings, though he was still looking out of his window.
'Yes, you,' he said, turning round.
'I didn't know I was crying, sir,' I faltered.
'But you are!' said the gentleman. 'Look here!' He came quite opposite to me from the other corner of the coach, brushed one of his large furry cuffs across my eyes (but without hurting me), and showed me that it was wet.
'There! Now you know you are,' he said. 'Don't you?'
'Yes, sir,' I said.
'And what are you crying for?' said the gentleman. 'Don't you want to go there?'
'Where, sir?'
'Where? Why, wherever you are going,' said the gentleman.
'I am very glad to go there, sir,' I answered.
'Well then! Look glad!' said the gentleman.
I thought he was very strange; or at least that what I could see of him was very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin, and his face was almost hidden in a fur cap, with broad fur straps at the side of his head, fastened under his chin; but I was composed again, and not afraid of him. So I told him that I thought I must have been crying, because of my godmother's death, and because of Mrs. Rachael's not being sorry to part with me.
'Confound Mrs. Rachael!' said the gentleman, 'Let her fly away in a high wind on a broomstick!'
I began to be really afraid of him now, and looked at him with the greatest astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant eyes, although he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner, and calling Mrs. Rachael names.
After a little while, he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to me large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm down into a deep pocket in the side.
'Now, look here!' he said. 'In this paper,' which was nicely folded, 'is a piece of the best plum-cake that can be got for money – sugar on the outside an inch thick, like fat on mutton chops. Here's a little pie (a gem this is, both for size and quality), made in France. And what do you suppose it's made of? Livers of fat geese. There's a pie! Now let's see you eat 'em.'
'Thank you, sir,' I replied, 'thank you very much indeed, but I hope you won't be offended; they are too rich for me.'
'Floored again!' said the gentleman, which I didn't at all understand, and threw them both out of window.
He did not speak to me any more, until he got out of the coach a little way short of Reading, when he advised me to be a good girl, and to be studious; and shook hands with me. I must say I was relieved by his departure. We left him at a milestone. I often walked past it afterwards, and never for a long time, without thinking of him, and half expecting to meet him. But I never did; and so, as time went on, he passed out of my mind.
When the coach stopped, a very neat lady looked up at the window, and said:
'Miss Donny.'
'No, ma'am, Esther Summerson.'
'That is quite right,' said the lady, 'Miss Donny.'
I now understood that she introduced herself by that name, and begged Miss Donny's
