BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la sumar

CHAPTER XV

Bell Yard

While we were in London Mr. Jarndyce was constantly beset by the  crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so  much astonished us.  Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after  our arrival, was in all such excitements.  He seemed to project  those two shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went  on and to brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very  roots were almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable  philanthropy.  All objects were alike to him, but he was always  particularly ready for anything in the way of a testimonial to any  one.  His great power seemed to be his power of indiscriminate  admiration.  He would sit for any length of time, with the utmost  enjoyment, bathing his temples in the light of any order of  luminary.  Having first seen him perfectly swallowed up in  admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be the absorbing  object of his devotion.  I soon discovered my mistake and found him  to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole procession of  people.  Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and  with her, Mr. Quale.  Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale  repeated to us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew  Mrs. Pardiggle out. 

Mrs. Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction  to my guardian in behalf of her eloquent friend Mr. Gusher.  With  Mr. Gusher appeared Mr. Quale again.  Mr. Gusher, being a flabby  gentleman with a moist surface and eyes so much too small for his  moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for  somebody else, was not at first sight prepossessing; yet he was  scarcely seated before Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly,  whether he was not a great creature--which he certainly was,  flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale meant in intellectual beauty-- and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of  brow. 

In short, we heard of a great many missions of various sorts  among this set of people, but nothing respecting them was half so  clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale's mission to be in ecstasies  with everybody else's mission and that it was the most popular  mission of all.  Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his  heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but  that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where  benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a  regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap  notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action,  servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of  one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to  help the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster  and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were  down, he plainly told us.  When a testimonial was originated to Mr.  Quale by Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr.  Quale), and when Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the  subject to a meeting, including two charity schools of small boys  and girls, who were specially reminded of the widow's mite, and  requested to come forward with halfpence and be acceptable  sacrifices, I think the wind was in the east for three whole weeks.  I mention this because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole again. 

It  seemed to me that his off-hand professions of childishness and  carelessness were a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with  such things, and were the more readily believed in since to find  one perfectly undesigning and candid man among many opposites could  not fail to give him pleasure.  I should be sorry to imply that Mr.  Skimpole divined this and was politic; I really never understood  him well enough to know.  What he was to my guardian, he certainly  was to the rest of the world.  He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we  had seen nothing of him until now.  He appeared one morning in his  usual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.  Well, he said, here he was!  He had been bilious, but rich men were  often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he  was a man of property.  So he was, in a certain point of view--in  his expansive intentions.  He had been enriching his medical  attendant in the most lavish manner.  He had always doubled, and  sometimes quadrupled, his fees.  He had said to the doctor, "Now,  my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that  you attend me for nothing.  I am overwhelming you with money--in my  expansive intentions--if you only knew it!"  And really (he said)  he meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as  doing it.  If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which  mankind attached so much importance to put in the doctor's hand, he  would have put them in the doctor's hand.  Not having them, he  substituted the will for the deed.  Very well!  If he really meant  it--if his will were genuine and real, which it was--it appeared to  him that it was the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation. 

"It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,"  said Mr. Skimpole, "but I often feel this.  It seems so reasonable!   My butcher says to me he wants that little bill. 

It's a part of  the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man's nature that he always  calls it a 'little' bill--to make the payment appear easy to both  of us.  I reply to the butcher, 'My good friend, if you knew it,  you are paid.  You haven't had the trouble of coming to ask for the  little bill.  You are paid.  I mean it.'" 

"But, suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "he had meant the meat  in the bill, instead of providing it?" 

"My dear Jarndyce," he returned, "you surprise me.  You take the  butcher's position.  A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very  ground.  Says he, 'Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen  pence a pound?'  'Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a  pound, my honest friend?' said I, naturally amazed by the question.   'I like spring lamb!'  This was so far convincing.  'Well, sir,'  says he, 'I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!'  'My  good fellow,' said I, 'pray let us reason like intellectual beings.   How could that be?  It was impossible.  You HAD got the lamb, and I  have NOT got the money.  You couldn't really mean the lamb without  sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without  paying it!'  He had not a word.  There was an end of the subject." 

"Did he take no legal proceedings?" inquired my guardian. 

"Yes, he took legal proceedings," said Mr. Skimpole. 

"But in that  he was influenced by passion, not by reason.  Passion reminds me of  Boythorn.  He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a  short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire." 

"He is a great favourite with my girls," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and I  have promised for them." 

"Nature forgot to shade him off, I think," observed Mr. Skimpole to  Ada and me. 

"A little too boisterous--like the sea.  A little too  vehement--like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every  colour scarlet.  But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in  him!"  I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very  highly of one another, Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to  many things and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for anything.   Besides which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the  point of breaking out into some strong opinion when Mr. Skimpole  was referred to.  Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we  had been greatly pleased with him. 

"He has invited me," said Mr. Skimpole; "and if a child may trust  himself in such hands--which the present child is encouraged to do,  with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him--I shall go.   He proposes to frank me down and back again.  I suppose it will  cost money?  Shillings perhaps?  Or pounds?  Or something of that  sort?  By the by, Coavinses.  You remember our friend Coavinses,  Miss Summerson?"  He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful,  light-hearted manner and without the least embarrassment. 

"Oh, yes!" said I. 

"Coavinses has been arrested by the Great Bailiff," said Mr.  Skimpole. 

"He will never do violence to the sunshine any more."  It quite shocked me to hear it, for I had already recalled with  anything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on  the sofa that night wiping his head. 

"His successor informed me of it yesterday," said Mr. Skimpole.   

"His successor is in my house now--in possession, I think he calls  it.  He came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birthday.  I put  it to him, 'This is unreasonable and inconvenient.  If you had a  blue-eyed daughter you wouldn't like ME to come, uninvited, on HER  birthday?'  But he stayed."  Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched  the piano by which he was seated. 

"And he told me," he said, playing little chords where I shall put  full stops, "The Coavinses had left.  Three children.  No mother.   And that Coavinses' profession.  Being unpopular. 

The rising  Coavinses.  Were at a considerable disadvantage." 

Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about.   Mr. Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada's favourite songs.   Ada and I both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what  was passing in his mind.  After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing  his head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the  keys and stopped Mr. Skimpole's playing.  "I don't like this,  Skimpole," he said thoughtfully.  Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up  surprised. 

"The man was necessary," pursued my guardian, walking backward and  forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of  the room and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a  high east wind had blown it into that form. 

"If we make such men  necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly  knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves  upon them.  There was no harm in his trade.  He maintained his  children.  One would like to know more about this."

  "Oh!  Coavinses?" cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he  meant. 

"Nothing easier.  A walk to Coavinses' headquarters, and  you can know what you will."  Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal.   

"Come!  We will walk that way, my dears.  Why not that way as soon  as another!" 

We were quickly ready and went out.  Mr. Skimpole  went with us and quite enjoyed the expedition.  It was so new and  so refreshing, he said, for him to want Coavinses instead of  Coavinses wanting him!  He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there  was a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses' Castle.   On our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy  came out of a sort of office and looked at us over a spiked wicket. 

"Who did you want?" said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into  his chin. 

"There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here," said Mr.  Jarndyce, "who is dead." 

"Yes?" said the boy. 

"Well?"  "I want to know his name, if you please?" 

"Name of Neckett," said the boy. 

"And his address?" 

"Bell Yard," said the boy. 

"Chandler's shop, left hand side, name  of Blinder." 

"Was he--I don't know how to shape the question--" murmured my  guardian, "industrious?" 

"Was Neckett?" said the boy. 

"Yes, wery much so.  He was never  tired of watching.  He'd set upon a post at a street corner eight  or ten hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it." 

"He might have done worse," I heard my guardian soliloquize.  "He  might have undertaken to do it and not done it.  Thank you.  That's  all I want."  We left the boy, with his head on one side and his arms on the  gate, fondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln's  Inn, where Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer  Coavinses, awaited us.  Then we all went to Bell Yard, a narrow  alley at a very short distance.  We soon found the chandler's shop.   In it was a good-natured-looking old woman with a dropsy, or an  asthma, or perhaps both. 

"Neckett's children?" said she in reply to my inquiry. 

"Yes,  Surely, miss.  Three pair, if you please.  Door right opposite the  stairs."  And she handed me the key across the counter.  I glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she took it for  granted that I knew what to do with it.  As it could only be  intended for the children's door, I came out without askmg any more  questions and led the way up the dark stairs.  We went as quietly  as we could, but four of us made some noise on the aged boards, and  when we came to the second story we found we had disturbed a man  who was standing there looking out of his room. 

"Is it Gridley that's wanted?" he said, fixing his eyes on me with  an angry stare. 

"No, sir," said I; "I am going higher up." 

He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole, fixing  the same angry stare on each in succession as they passed and  followed me.  Mr. Jarndyce gave him good day. 

"Good day!" he said  abruptly and fiercely.  He was a tall, sallow man with a careworn  head on which but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and  prominent eyes.  He had a combative look and a chafing, irritable  manner which, associated with his figure--still large and powerful,  though evidently in its decline--rather alarmed me.  He had a pen  in his hand, and in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I  saw that it was covered with a litter of papers.  Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room.  I tapped  at the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, "We are locked  in.  Mrs. Blinder's got the key!"  I applied the key on hearing this and opened the door.  In a poor  room with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture  was a mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and  hushing a heavy child of eighteen months.  There was no fire,  though the weather was cold; both children were wrapped in some  poor shawls and tippets as a substitute.  Their clothing was not so  warm, however, but that their noses looked red and pinched and  their small figures shrunken as the boy walked up and down nursing  and hushing the child with its head on his shoulder. 

"Who has locked you up here alone?" we naturally asked. 

"Charley," said the boy, standing still to gaze at us. 

"Is Charley your brother?" 

"No.  She's my sister, Charlotte.  Father called her Charley." 

"Are there any more of you besides Charley?" 

"Me," said the boy, "and Emma," patting the limp bonnet of the  child he was nursing. 

"And Charley." 

"Where is Charley now?" 

"Out a-washing," said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again  and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying  to gaze at us at the same time.  We were looking at one another and at these two children when there  came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but  shrewd and older-looking in the face--pretty-faced too--wearing a  womanly sort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare  arms on a womanly sort of apron.  Her fingers were white and  wrinkled with washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she  wiped off her arms.  But for this, she might have been a child  playing at washing and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick  observation of the truth.  She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had  made all the haste she could.  Consequently, though she was very  light, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she  stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us. 

"Oh, here's Charley!" said the boy.  The child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to  be taken by Charley.  The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of  manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at  us over the burden that clung to her most affectionately. 

"Is it possible," whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the  little creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy  keeping close to her, holding to her apron, "that this child works  for the rest?  Look at this!  For God's sake, look at this!"  It was a thing to look at.  The three children close together, and  two of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and  yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the  childish figure.  "Charley, Charley!" said my guardian. 

"How old are you?" 

"Over thirteen, sir," replied the child. 

"Oh! What a great age," said my guardian. 

"What a great age,  Charley!" 

I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half  playfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfully. 

"And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?" said my  guardian. 

"Yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into his face with  perfect confidence, "since father died." 

"And how do you live, Charley?  Oh! Charley," said my guardian,  turning his face away for a moment, "how do you live?" 

"Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work.  I'm out washing  to-day." 

"God help you, Charley!" said my guardian. 

"You're not tall enough  to reach the tub!" 

"In pattens I am, sir," she said quickly. 

"I've got a high pair as  belonged to mother." 

"And when did mother die?  Poor mother!" 

"Mother died just after Emma was born," said the child, glancing at  the face upon her bosom. 

"Then father said I was to be as good a  mother to her as I could.  And so I tried.  And so I worked at home  and did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I  began to go out.  And that's how I know how; don't you see, sir?" 

"And do you often go out?" 

"As often as I can," said Charley, opening her eyes and smiling,  "because of earning sixpences and shillings!" 

"And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?"  'To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said Charley. 

"Mrs.  Blinder comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes,  and perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and  Tom an't afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?" 

'"No-o!" said Tom stoutly. 

"When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court,  and they show up here quite bright--almost quite bright.  Don't  they, Tom?" 

"Yes, Charley," said Tom, "almost quite bright." 

"Then he's as good as gold," said the little creature--Oh, in such  a motherly, womanly way! 

"And when Emma's tired, he puts her to  bed.  And when he's tired he goes to bed himself.  And when I come  home and light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again  and has it with me.  Don't you, Tom?"  "Oh, yes, Charley!" said Tom. 

"That I do!"  And either in this  glimpse of the great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love  for Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the  scanty folds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying.  It was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed  among these children.  The little orphan girl had spoken of their  father and their mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the  necessity of taking courage, and by her childish importance in  being able to work, and by her bustling busy way.  But now, when  Tom cried, although she sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us,  and did not by any movement disturb a hair of the head of either of  her little charges, I saw two silent tears fall down her face.  I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the  housetops, and the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor  plants, and the birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours,  when I found that Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in  (perhaps it had taken her all this time to get upstairs) and was  talking to my guardian.  "It's not much to forgive 'em the rent, sir," she said; "who could  take it from them!" 

'"Well, well!" said my guardian to us two. 

"It is enough that the  time will come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and  that forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these--This child,"  he added after a few moments, "could she possibly continue this?" 

"Really, sir, I think she might," said Mrs. Blinder, getting her  heavy breath by painful degrees. 

"She's as handy as it's possible  to be.  Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after  the mother died was the talk of the yard!  And it was a wonder to  see her with him after he was took ill, it really was!  'Mrs.  Blinder,' he said to me the very last he spoke--he was lying there --'Mrs. Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel  sitting in this room last night along with my child, and I trust  her to Our Father!'" 

"He had no other calling?" said my guardian. 

"No, sir," returned Mrs. Blinder, "he was nothing but a follerers.   When he first came to lodge here, I didn't know what he was, and I  confess that when I found out I gave him notice.  It wasn't liked  in the yard.  It wasn't approved by the other lodgers.  It is NOT a  genteel calling," said Mrs. Blinder, "and most people do object to  it.  Mr. Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good  lodger, though his temper has been hard tried." 

"So you gave him notice?" said my guardian. 

"So I gave him notice," said Mrs. Blinder. 

"But really when the  time came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts.  He was  punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir," said Mrs.  Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole with her eye, "and it's  something in this world even to do that." 

"So you kept him after all?" 

"Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could  arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its  being liked or disliked in the yard.  Mr. Gridley gave his consent  gruff--but gave it.  He was always gruff with him, but he has been  kind to the children since.  A person is never known till a person  is proved." 

"Have many people been kind to the children?" asked Mr. Jarndyce. 

"Upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said Mrs. Blinder; "but  certainly not so many as would have been if their father's calling  had been different.  Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers  made up a little purse. 

Some neighbours in the yard that had  always joked and tapped their shoulders when he went by came  forward with a little subscription, and--in general--not so bad.   Similarly with Charlotte.  Some people won't employ her because she  was a follerer's child; some people that do employ her cast it at  her; some make a merit of having her to work for them, with that  and all her draw-backs upon her, and perhaps pay her less and put  upon her more.  But she's patienter than others would be, and is  clever too, and always willing, up to the full mark of her strength  and over.  So I should say, in general, not so bad, sir, but might  be better." 

Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity  of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before  it was fully restored.  Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak to us  when his attention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the  room of the Mr. Gridley who had been mentioned and whom we had seen  on our way up. 

"I don't know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen," he  said, as if he resented our presence, "but you'll excuse my coming  in.  I don't come in to stare about me.  Well, Charley!  Well, Tom!   Well, little one!  How is it with us all to-day?" 

He bent over the group in a caressing way and clearly was regarded  as a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern  character and his manner to us was as rude as it could be.  My  guardian noticed it and respected it. 

"No one, surely, would come here to stare about him," he said  mildly. 

"May be so, sir, may be so," returned the other, taking Tom upon  his knee and waving him off impatiently. 

"I don't want to argue  with ladies and gentlemen.  I have had enough of arguing to last  one man his life." 

"You have sufficient reason, I dare say," said Mr. Jarndyce, "for  being chafed and irritated--" 

"There again!" exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. 

"I am  of a quarrelsome temper.  I am irascible.  I am not polite!" 

"Not very, I think." 

"Sir," said Gridley, putting down the child and going up to him as  if he meant to strike him, "do you know anything of Courts of  Equity?" 

"Perhaps I do, to my sorrow." 

"To your sorrow?" said the man, pausing in his wrath.  "if so, I  beg your pardon.  I am not polite, I know.  I beg your pardon!   Sir," with renewed violence, "I have been dragged for five and  twenty years over burning iron, and I have lost the habit of  treading upon velvet.  Go into the Court of Chancery yonder and ask  what is one of the standing jokes that brighten up their business  sometimes, and they will tell you that the best joke they have is  the man from Shropshire.  I," he said, beating one hand on the  other passionately, "am the man from Shropshire." 

"I believe I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing  some entertainment in the same grave place," said my guardian  composedly. 

"You may have heard my name--Jarndyce." 

"Mr. Jarndyce," said Gridley with a rough sort of salutation, "you  bear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine.  More than  that, I tell you--and I tell this gentleman, and these young  ladies, if they are friends of yours--that if I took my wrongs in  any other way, I should be driven mad!  It is only by resenting  them, and by revenging them in my mind, and by angrily demanding  the justice I never get, that I am able to keep my wits together.   It is only that!" he said, speaking in a homely, rustic way and  with great vehemence. 

"You may tell me that I over-excite myself.   I answer that it's in my nature to do it, under wrong, and I must  do it.  There's nothing between doing it, and sinking into the  smiling state of the poor little mad woman that haunts the court.   If I was once to sit down under it, I should become imbecile."  The passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his  face worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied  what he said, were most painful to see. 

"Mr. Jarndyce," he said, "consider my case.  As true as there is a  heaven above us, this is my case.  I am one of two brothers.  My  father (a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock and so  forth to my mother for her life.  After my mother's death, all was  to come to me except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was  then to pay my brother.  My mother died.  My brother some time  afterwards claimed his legacy.  I and some of my relations said  that he had had a part of it already in board and lodging and some  other things.  Now mind!  That was the question, and nothing else.   No one disputed the will; no one disputed anything but whether part  of that three hundred pounds had been already paid or not.  To  settle that question, my brother filing a bill, I was obliged to go  into this accursed Chancery; I was forced there because the law  forced me and would let me go nowhere else.  Seventeen people were  made defendants to that simple suit!  It first came on after two  years.  It was then stopped for another two years while the master  (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my father's son,  about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal creature.   He then found out that there were not defendants enough--remember,  there were only seventeen as yet!--but that we must have another  who had been left out and must begin all over again.  The costs at  that time--before the thing was begun!--were three times the  legacy. 

My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to  escape more costs.  My whole estate, left to me in that will of my  father's, has gone in costs.  The suit, still undecided, has fallen  into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else--and here I  stand, this day!  Now, Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are  thousands and thousands involved, where in mine there are hundreds.   Is mine less hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when my whole  living was in it and has been thus shamefully sucked away?"  Mr. Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart and  that he set up no monopoly himself in being unjustly treated by  this monstrous system.  "There again!" said Mr. Gridley with no diminution of his rage.   

"The system!  I am told on all hands, it's the system.  I mustn't  look to individuals.  It's the system.  I mustn't go into court and  say, 'My Lord, I beg to know this from you--is this right or wrong?   Have you the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore  am dismissed?'  My Lord knows nothing of it.  He sits there to  administer the system.  I mustn't go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the  solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me  furious by being so cool and satisfied--as they all do, for I know  they gain by it while I lose, don't I?--I mustn't say to him, 'I  will have something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or  foul!'  HE is not responsible.  It's the system.  But, if I do no  violence to any of them, here--I may!  I don't know what may happen  if I am carried beyond myself at last!  I will accuse the  individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before  the great eternal bar!" 

 His passion was fearful.  I could not have believed in such rage  without seeing it. 

"I have done!" he said, sitting down and wiping his face. 

"Mr.  Jarndyce, I have done!  I am violent, I know.  I ought to know it.   I have been in prison for contempt of court.  I have been in prison  for threatening the solicitor.  I have been in this trouble, and  that trouble, and shall be again.  I am the man from Shropshire,  and I sometimes go beyond amusing them, though they have found it  amusing, too, to see me committed into custody and brought up in  custody and all that.  It would be better for me, they tell me, if  I restrained myself.  I tell them that if I did restrain myself I  should become imbecile.  I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I  believe.  People in my part of the country say they remember me so,  but now I must have this vent under my sense of injury or nothing  could hold my wits together.  It would be far better for you, Mr.  Gridley,' the Lord Chancellor told me last week, 'not to waste your  time here, and to stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.'   'My Lord, my Lord, I know it would,' said I to him, 'and it would  have been far better for me never to have heard the name of your  high office, but unhappily for me, I can't undo the past, and the  past drives me here!'  Besides," he added, breaking fiercely out,  "I'll shame them.  To the last, I'll show myself in that court to  its shame. 

If I knew when I was going to die, and could be carried  there, and had a voice to speak with, I would die there, saying,  'You have brought me here and sent me from here many and many a  time.  Now send me out feet foremost!'"  His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its  contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was  quiet. 

"I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour," he said,  going to them again, "and let them play about.  I didn't mean to  say all this, but it don't much signify.  You're not afraid of me,  Tom, are you?" 

"No!" said Tom. 

"You ain't angry with ME." 

"You are right, my child.  You're going back, Charley?  Aye?  Come  then, little one!" 

He took the youngest child on his arm, where  she was willing enough to be carried. 

"I shouldn't wonder if we  found a ginger-bread soldier downstairs.  Let's go and look for  him!" 

 He made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a  certain respect, to Mr. Jarndyce, and bowing slightly to us, went  downstairs to his room.  Upon that, Mr. Skimpole began to talk, for the first time since our  arrival, in his usual gay strain.  He said, Well, it was really  very pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to  purposes.  Here was this Mr. Gridley, a man of a robust will and  surprising energy--intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious  blacksmith--and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was,  years ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his  superfluous combativeness upon--a sort of Young Love among the  thorns--when the Court of Chancery came in his way and accommodated  him with the exact thing he wanted. 

There they were, matched, ever  afterwards!  Otherwise he might have been a great general, blowing  up all sorts of towns, or he might have been a great politician,  dealing in all sorts of parliamentary rhetoric; but as it was, he  and the Court of Chancery had fallen upon each other in the  pleasantest way, and nobody was much the worse, and Gridley was, so  to speak, from that hour provided for.  Then look at Coavinses!   How delightfully poor Coavinses (father of these charming children)  illustrated the same principle!  He, Mr. Skimpole, himself, had  sometimes repined at the existence of Coavinses.  He had found  Coavinses in his way.  He could had dispensed with Coavinses.   There had been times when, if he had been a sultan, and his grand  vizier had said one morning, "What does the Commander of the  Faithful require at the hands of his slave?" he might have even  gone so far as to reply, "The head of Coavinses!" 

But what turned  out to be the case?  That, all that time, he had been giving  employment to a most deserving man, that he had been a benefactor  to Coavinses, that he had actually been enabling Coavinses to bring  up these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these  social virtues!  Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled and  the tears had come into his eyes when he had looked round the room  and thought, "I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little  comforts were MY work!" 

There was something so captivating in his light way of touching  these fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the  side of the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my guardian  smile even as he turned towards us from a little private talk with  Mrs. Blinder.  We kissed Charley, and took her downstairs with us,  and stopped outside the house to see her run away to her work.  I  don't know where she was going, but we saw her run, such a little,  little creature in her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered  way at the bottom of the court and melt into the city's strife and  sound like a dewdrop in an ocean.

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