Page:Bleak House.djvu/576

Let bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the rest. I only want to have been in the church, to have made the round of all the professions.”

“Richard,” I urged, “it is not so hopeless as that?”

“Esther,” he returned, “it he returned, “it is indeed. I am just so near disgrace as that those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes) would far rather be without me than with me. And they are right. Apart from debts and duns, and all such drawbacks, I am not fit even for this employment. I have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but for one thing. Why, if this bubble hadn't broken now,” he said, tearing the letter he had written into fragments, and moodily casting them away, by driblets, “how could I have gone abroad? I must have been ordered abroad; but how could I have gone. How could I, with my experience of that thing, trust even Vholes unless I was at his back!”

I suppose he knew by my face what I was about to say, but he caught the hand I had laid upon his arm, and touched my own lips with it to prevent me from going on.

“No, Dame Durden! Two subjects I forbid—must forbid. The first is John Jarndyce. The second, you know what. Call it madness, and I tell you I can't help it now, and can't be sane. But it is no such thing; it is the one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever was prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be wisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I have bestowed upon it! O yes, true wisdom. It would be very agreeable, too, to some people; but I never will.”

He was in that mood in which I thought it best not to increase his determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. I took out Ada's letter, and put it in his hand.

“Am I to read it now?” he asked.

As I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and, resting his head upon his hand, began. He had not read far, when he rested his head upon his two hands—to hide his face from me. In a little while he rose as if the light were bad, and went to the window. He finished reading it there, with his back towards me; and, after he had finished and had folded it up, stood there for some minutes with the letter in his hand. When he came back to his chair, I saw tears in his eyes.

“Of course, Esther, you know what she says here?” He spoke in a softened voice, and kissed the letter as he asked me.

“Yes, Richard.”

“Offers me,” he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, “the little inheritance she is certain of so soon—just as little and as much as I have wasted—and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right with it, and remain in the service.”

“I know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart,” said I. “And O, my dear Richard, Ada's is a noble heart!”

“I am sure it is. I—I wish I was dead!”

He went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his head down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see him so; but I hoped he might become more yielding, and I remained silent. My experience was very limited; I was not at all prepared for his rousing himself out of this emotion to a new sense of injury.

“And this is the heart that the same John Jarndyce, who is not other--