When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we werepunctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome.
I was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding myhousekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in asif I had been a new year, with a merry little peal. "Once more,duty, duty, Esther," said I; "and if you are not overjoyed to doit, more than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything andeverything, you ought to be. That's all I have to say to you, mydear!"The first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle andbusiness, devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeatedjourneys to and fro between the growlery and all other parts of thehouse, so many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such ageneral new beginning altogether, that I had not a moment'sleisure. But when these arrangements were completed and everythingwas in order, I paid a visit of a few hours to London, whichsomething in the letter I had destroyed at Chesney Wold had inducedme to decide upon in my own mind.
I made Caddy Jellyby--her maiden name was so natural to me that Ialways called her by it--the pretext for this visit and wrote her anote previously asking the favour of her company on a littlebusiness expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I gotto London by stage-coach in such good time that I got to NewmanStreet with the day before me.
Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad andso affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make herhusband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad--I mean asgood; and in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave meany possibility of doing anything meritorious.
The elder Mr. Turveydrop was in bed, I found, and Caddy was millinghis chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an apprentice--it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the trade ofdancing--was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law wasextremely kind and considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived mosthappily together. (When she spoke of their living together, shemeant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all thegood lodging, while she and her husband had what they could get,and were poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.)"And how is your mama, Caddy?" said I.
"Why, I hear of her, Esther," replied Caddy, "through Pa, but I seevery little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Mathinks there is something absurd in my having married a dancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her."It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own naturalduties and obligations before she swept the horizon with atelescope in search of others, she would have taken the bestprecautions against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observethat I kept this to myself.
"And your papa, Caddy?""He comes here every evening," returned Caddy, "and is so fond ofsitting in the corner there that it's a treat to see him."Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr.
Jellyby's head against the wall. It was consolatory to know thathe had found such a resting-place for it.
"And you, Caddy," said I, "you are always busy, I'll be bound?""Well, my dear," returned Caddy, "I am indeed, for to tell you agrand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince'shealth is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. Whatwith schools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND theapprentices, he really has too much to do, poor fellow!"The notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that I askedCaddy if there were many of them.
"Four," said Caddy. "One in-door, and three out. They are verygood children; only when they get together they WILL play--children-like--instead of attending to their work. So the littleboy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen, andwe distribute the others over the house as well as we can.""That is only for their steps, of course?" said I.
"Only for their steps," said Caddy. "In that way they practise, somany hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. Theydance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures atfive every morning.""Why, what a laborious life!" I exclaimed.
"I assure you, my dear," returned Caddy, smiling, "when the out-door apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into ourroom, not to disturb old Mr. Turveydrop), and when I put up thewindow and see them standing on the door-step with their littlepumps under their arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps."All this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure.
Caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfullyrecounted the particulars of her own studies.
"You see, my dear, to save expense I ought to know something of thepiano, and I ought to know something of the kit too, andconsequently I have to practise those two instruments as well asthe details of our profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, Imight have had some little musical knowledge to begin upon.
However, I hadn't any; and that part of the work is, at first, alittle discouraging, I must allow. But I have a very good ear, andI am used to drudgery--I have to thank Ma for that, at all events--and where there's a will there's a way, you know, Esther, the worldover." Saying these words, Caddy laughingly sat down at a littlejingling square piano and really rattled off a quadrille with greatspirit. Then she good-humouredly and blushingly got up again, andwhile she still laughed herself, said, "Don't laugh at me, please;that's a dear girl!"I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her andpraised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed,dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress thoughin her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out anatural, wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance thatwas quite as good as a mission.
"My dear," said Caddy, delighted, "you can't think how you cheerme. I shall owe you, you don't know how much. What changes,Esther, even in my small world! You recollect that first night,when I was so unpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, ofmy ever teaching people to dance, of all other possibilities andimpossibilities!"Her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now comingback, preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room,Caddy informed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not mytime yet, I was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed totake her away then. Therefore we three adjourned to theapprentices together, and I made one in the dance.
The apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides themelancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzingalone in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirtylittle limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl,with such a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), whobrought her sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule.
Such mean little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, andmarbles, and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legsand feet--and heels particularly.
I asked Caddy what had made their parents choose this professionfor them. Caddy said she didn't know; perhaps they were designedfor teachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people inhumble circumstances, and the melancholy boy's mother kept aginger-beer shop.
We danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy childdoing wonders with his lower extremities, in which there appearedto be some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist.
Caddy, while she was observant of her husband and was evidentlyfounded upon him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of herown, which, united to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonlyagreeable. She already relieved him of much of the instruction ofthese young people, and he seldom interfered except to walk hispart in the figure if he had anything to do in it. He alwaysplayed the tune. The affectation of the gauzy child, and hercondescension to the boys, was a sight. And thus we danced an hourby the clock.
When the practice was concluded, Caddy's husband made himself readyto go out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get ready togo out with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval,contemplating the apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon thestaircase to put on their half-boots and pull the in-door boy'shair, as I judged from the nature of his objections. Returningwith their jackets buttoned and their pumps stuck in them, theythen produced packets of cold bread and meat and bivouacked under apainted lyre on the wall. The little gauzy child, having whiskedher sandals into the reticule and put on a trodden-down pair ofshoes, shook her head into the dowdy bonnet at one shake, andanswering my inquiry whether she liked dancing by replying, "Notwith boys," tied it across her chin, and went home contemptuous.
"Old Mr. Turveydrop is so sorry," said Caddy, "that he has notfinished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing youbefore you go. You are such a favourite of his, Esther."I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think itnecessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention.
"It takes him a long time to dress," said Caddy, "because he isvery much looked up to in such things, you know, and has areputation to support. You can't think how kind he is to Pa. Hetalks to Pa of an evening about the Prince Regent, and I never sawPa so interested."There was something in the picture of Mr. Turveydrop bestowing hisdeportment on Mr. Jellyby that quite took my fancy. I asked Caddyif he brought her papa out much.
"No," said Caddy, "I don't know that he does that, but he talks toPa, and Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Ofcourse I am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportment, butthey get on together delightfully. You can't think what goodcompanions they make. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life,but he takes one pinch out of Mr. Turveydrop's box regularly andkeeps putting it to his nose and taking it away again all theevening."That old Mr. Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes oflife, have come to the rescue of Mr. Jellyby from Borrioboola-Ghaappeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities.
"As to Peepy," said Caddy with a little hesitation, "whom I wasmost afraid of--next to having any family of my own, Esther--as aninconvenience to Mr. Turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentlemanto that child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear!
He lets him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him thecrusts of his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands aboutthe house; he tells him to come to me for sixpences. In short,"said Caddy cheerily, "and not to prose, I am a very fortunate girland ought to be very grateful. Where are we going, Esther?""To the Old Street Road," said I, "where I have a few words to sayto the solicitor's clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on the very day when I came to London and first saw you, mydear. Now I think of it, the gentleman who brought us to yourhouse.""Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you,"returned Caddy.
To the Old Street Road we went and there inquired at Mrs. Guppy'sresidence for Mrs. Guppy. Mrs. Guppy, occupying the parlours andhaving indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nutin the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for,immediately presented herself and requested us to w............