BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la sumar

CHAPTER XXXVII  

Jarndyce and Jarndyce

If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it  to Ada before we had been long together.  But it was not mine, and  I did not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian,  unless some great emergency arose.  It was a weight to bear alone;  still my present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the  attachment of my dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement  to do it.  Though often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the  remembrance of my mother kept me waking and made the night  sorrowful, I did not yield to it at another time; and Ada found me  what I used to be--except, of course, in that particular of which I  have said enough and which I have no intention of mentioning any  more just now, if I can help it.  The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first  evening when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the  house, and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for  Lady Dedlock had spoken to me in the woods the day before  yesterday, was great.  Greater still when Ada asked me what she had  said, and when I replied that she had been kind and interested, and  when Ada, while admitting her beauty and elegance, remarked upon  her proud manner and her imperious chilling air. 

But Charley  helped me through, unconsciously, by telling us that Lady Dedlock  had only stayed at the house two nights on her way from London to  visit at some other great house in the next county and that she had  left early on the morning after we had seen her at our view, as we  called it.  Charley verified the adage about little pitchers, I am  sure, for she heard of more sayings and doings in a day than would  have come to my ears in a month.  We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn's.  My pet had scarcely  been there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening  after we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers,  and just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a  very important air behind Ada's chair, beckoned me mysteriously out  of the room. 

"Oh! If you please, miss," said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes  at their roundest and largest. 

"You're wanted at the Dedlock  Arms." 

"Why, Charley," said I, "who can possibly want me at the public- house?" 

"I don't know, miss," returned Charley, putting her head forward  and folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron,  which she always did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or  confidential, "but it's a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and  will you please to come without saying anything about it." 

"Whose compliments, Charley?" 

"His'n, miss," returned Charley, whose grammatical education was  advancing, but not very rapidly. 

"And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?" 

"I am not the messenger, if you please, miss," returned my little  maid. 

"It was W. Grubble, miss." 

"And who is W. Grubble, Charley?" 

"Mister Grubble, miss," returned Charley. 

"Don't you know, miss?   The Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble," which Charley delivered as if she  were slowly spelling out the sign. 

"Aye?  The landlord, Charley?" 

"Yes, miss.  If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman,  but she broke her ankle, and it never joined.  And her brother's  the sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he'll  drink himself to death entirely on beer," said Charley.  Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive  now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. 

I bade  Charley be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having  put them on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as  much at home as in Mr. Boythorn's garden.  Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his  very clean little tavern waiting for me.  He lifted off his hat  with both hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it  were an iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the  sanded passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more  plants in it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen  Caroline, several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and  dried fish in glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious  pumpkin (but I don't know which, and I doubt if many people did)  hanging from his ceiling.  I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight,  from his often standing at his door.  A pleasant-looking, stoutish,  middle-aged man who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed  for his own fire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never  wore a coat except at church.  He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it  looked, backed out of the room--unexpectedly to me, for I was going  to ask him by whom he had been sent.  The door of the opposite  parlour being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears  I thought, which stopped.  A quick light step approached the room  in which I was, and who should stand before me but Richard! 

"My dear Esther!" he said. 

"My best friend!"  And he really was so  warm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of  his brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him  that Ada was well. 

"Answering my very thoughts--always the same dear girl!" said  Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me.  I put my veil up, but not quite. 

"Always the same dear girl!" said Richard just as heartily as  before.  I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard's sleeve  and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his  kind welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so  because of the determination I had made in my illness, which I now  conveyed to him. 

"My love," said Richard, "there is no one with whom I have a  greater wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me." 

"And I want you, Richard," said I, shaking my head, "to understand  some one else."  "Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce," said Richard, " --I suppose you mean him?" 

"Of course I do." 

"Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that  subject that I am anxious to be understood.  By you, mind--you, my  dear!  I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody."  I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it. 

"Well, well, my dear," said Richard, "we won't go into that now.  I  want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under  my arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise.  I suppose your  loyalty to John Jarndyce will allow that?" 

"My dear Richard," I returned, "you know you would be heartily  welcome at his house--your home, if you will but consider it so;  and you are as heartily welcome here!" 

"Spoken like the best of little women!" cried Richard gaily.  I asked him how he liked his profession. 

"Oh, I like it well enough!" said Richard. 

"It's all right.  It  does as well as anything else, for a time.  I don't know that I  shall care about it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out  then and--however, never mind all that botheration at present."  So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the  opposite of Miss Flite!  And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking  look that passed over him, so dreadfully like her! 

"I am in town on leave just now," said Richard. 

"Indeed?" 

"Yes.  I have run over to look after my--my Chancery interests  before the long vacation," said Richard, forcing a careless laugh.   

"We are beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I  promise you." 

No wonder that I shook my head! 

"As you say, it's not a pleasant subject." 

Richard spoke with the  same shade crossing his face as before. 

"Let it go to the four  winds for to-night.  Puff!  Gone!  Who do you suppose is with me?" 

"Was it Mr. Skimpole's voice I heard?" 

"That's the man!  He does me more good than anybody.  What a  fascinating child it is!" 

I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming down together.  He  answered, no, nobody.  He had been to call upon the dear old  infant--so he called Mr. Skimpole--and the dear old infant had told  him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent  on coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to  come too; and so he had brought him. 

"And he is worth--not to say  his sordid expenses--but thrice his weight in gold," said Richard.   

"He is such a cheery fellow.  No worldliness about him.  Fresh and  green-hearted!"  I certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Skimpole's worldliness in  his having his expenses paid by Richard, but I made no remark about  that.  Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation.  He was  charmed to see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy  and sympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never  been so happy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the  mixture of good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated  health the more when somebody else was ill, didn't know but what it  might be in the scheme of things that A should squint to make B  happier in looking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to  make D better satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk  stocking. 

"My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard," said Mr.  Skimpole, "full of the brightest visions of the future, which he  evokes out of the darkness of Chancery.  Now that's delightful,  that's inspiriting, that's full of poetry!  In old times the woods  and solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary  piping and dancing of Pan and the nymphs.  This present shepherd,  our pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making  Fortune and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of  a judgment from the bench.  That's very pleasant, you know!  Some  ill-conditioned growling fellow may say to me, 'What's the use of  these legal and equitable abuses?  How do you defend them?'  I  reply, 'My growling friend, I DON'T defend them, but they are very  agreeable to me.  There is a shepherd--youth, a friend of mine, who  transmutes them into something highly fascinating to my simplicity.   I don't say it is for this that they exist--for I am a child among  you worldly grumblers, and not called upon to account to you or  myself for anything--but it may be so.'" 

I began seriously to think that Richard could scarcely have found a  worse friend than this.  It made me uneasy that at such a time when  he most required some right principle and purpose he should have  this captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy  dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow.  I thought  I could understand how such a nature as my guardian's, experienced  in the world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and  contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in  Mr. Skimpole's avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless  candour; but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as  it seemed or that it did not serve Mr. Skimpole's idle turn quite  as well as any other part, and with less trouble.  They both walked back with me, and Mr. Skimpole leaving us at the  gate, I walked softly in with Richard and said, "Ada, my love, I  have brought a gentleman to visit you." 

It was not difficult to  read the blushing, startled face.  She loved him dearly, and he  knew it, and I knew it.  It was a very transparent business, that  meeting as cousins only.  I almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wicked in my  suspicions, but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly.   He admired her very much--any one must have done that--and I dare  say would have renewed their youthful engagement with great pride  and ardour but that he knew how she would respect her promise to my  guardian.  Still I had a tormenting idea that the influence upon  him extended even here, that he was postponing his best truth and  earnestness in this as in all things until Jarndyce and Jarndyce  should be off his mind.  Ah me!  What Richard would have been  without that blight, I never shall know now!  He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to  make any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too  implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Jarndyce, that he  had come openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for  the present terms on which he stood with Mr. Jarndyce. 

As the dear  old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make  an appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right  through the means of an unreserved conversation with me.  I  proposed to walk with him in the park at seven o'clock, and this  was arranged.  Mr. Skimpole soon afterwards appeared and made us  merry for an hour.  He particularly requested to see little  Coavinses (meaning Charley) and told her, with a patriarchal air,  that he had given her late father all the business in his power and  that if one of her little brothers would make haste to get set up  in the same profession, he hoped he should still be able to put a  good deal of employment in his way.  "For I am constantly being taken in these nets," said Mr. Skimpole,  looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, "and am  constantly being bailed out--like a boat.  Or paid off--like a  ship's company.  Somebody always does it for me. 

I can't do it,  you know, for I never have any money.  But somebody does it.  I get  out by somebody's means; I am not like the starling; I get out.  If  you were to ask me who somebody is, upon my word I couldn't tell  you.  Let us drink to somebody.  God bless him!"  Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for  him long, and we turned into the park.  The air was bright and dewy  and the sky without a cloud.  The birds sang delightfully; the  sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see;  the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold  since yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so  massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details  of every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the  glory of that day. 

"This is a lovely place," said Richard, looking round. 

"None of  the jar and discord of law-suits here!"  But there was other trouble. 

"I tell you what, my dear girl," said Richard, "when I get affairs  in general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest." 

"Would it not be better to rest now?" I asked. 

"Oh, as to resting NOW," said Richard, "or as to doing anything  very definite NOW, that's not easy.  In short, it can't be done; I  can't do it at least." 

"Why not?" said I. 

"You know why not, Esther.  If you were living in an unfinished  house, liable to have the roof put on or taken off--to be from top  to bottom pulled down or built up--to-morrow, next day, next week,  next month, next year--you would find it hard to rest or settle.   So do I.  Now?  There's no now for us suitors."  I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor  little wandering friend had expatiated when I saw again the  darkened look of last night.  Terrible to think it bad in it also a  shade of that unfortunate man who had died. 

"My dear Richard," said I, "this is a bad beginning of our  conversation." 

"I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden." 

"And not I alone, dear Richard.  It was not I who cautioned you  once never to found a hope or expectation on the family curse." 

"There you come back to John Jarndyce!" said Richard impatiently.   

"Well! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple  of what I have to say, and it's as well at once.  My dear Esther,  how can you be so blind?  Don't you see that he is an interested  party and that it may be very well for him to wish me to know  nothing of the suit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not  be quite so well for me?" 

"Oh, Richard," I remonstrated, "is it possible that you can ever  have seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his  roof and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this  solitary place where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy  suspicions?" 

He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of  reproach.  He was silent for a little while before he replied in a  subdued voice, "Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean  fellow and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being  poor qualities in one of my years." 

"I know it very well," said I. 

"I am not more sure of anything." 

"That's a dear girl," retorted Richard, "and like you, because it  gives me comfort.  I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of  all this business, for it's a bad one at the best, as I have no  occasion to tell you." 

"I know perfectly," said I. 

"I know as well, Richard--what shall I  say? as well as you do--that such misconstructions are foreign to  your nature.  And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it." 

"Come, sister, come," said Richard a little more gaily, "you will  be fair with me at all events.  If I have the misfortune to be  under that influence, so has he.  If it has a little twisted me, it  may have a little twisted him too.  I don't say that he is not an  honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am  sure he is.  But it taints everybody.  You know it taints  everybody.  You have heard him say so fifty times.  Then why should  HE escape?" 

"Because," said I, "his is an uncommon character, and he has  resolutely kept himself outside the circle, Richard." 

"Oh, because and because!" replied Richard in his vivacious way.   

"I am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious  to preserve that outward indifference.  It may cause other parties  interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die  off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things  may smoothly happen that are convenient enough." 

I was so touched with pity for Richard that I could not reproach  him any more, even by a look.  I remembered my guardian's  gentleness towards his errors and with what perfect freedom from  resentment he had spoken of them. 

"Esther," Richard resumed, "you are not to suppose that I have come  here to make underhanded charges against John Jarndyce.  I have  only come to justify myself.  What I say is, it was all very well  and we got on very well while I was a boy, utterly regardless of  this same suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it  and to look into it, then it was quite another thing.  Then John  Jarndyce discovers that Ada and I must break off and that if I  don't amend that very objectionable course, I am not fit for her.   

Now, Esther, I don't mean to amend that very objectionable course:  I will not hold John Jarndyce's favour on those unfair terms of  compromise, which he has no right to dictate.  Whether it pleases  him or displeases him, I must maintain my rights and Ada's.  I have  been thinking about it a good deal, and this is the conclusion I  have come to." 

Poor dear Richard!  He had indeed been thinking about it a good  deal.  His face, his voice, his manner, all showed that too  plainly. 

"So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him  about all this) that we are at issue and that we had better be at  issue openly than covertly.  I thank him for his goodwill and his  protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine.  The fact is, our  roads are not the same.  Under one of the wills in dispute, I  should take much more than he.  I don't mean to say that it is the  one to be established, but there it is, and it has its chance." 

"I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard," said I, "of your  letter.  I had heard of it already without an offended or angry  word." 

"Indeed?" replied Richard, softening. 

"I am glad I said he was an  honourable man, out of all this wretched affair.  But I always say  that and have never doubted it.  Now, my dear Esther, I know these  views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when  you tell her what has passed between us.  But if you had gone into  the case as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers  as I did when I was at Kenge's, if you only knew what an  accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and  cross-suspicions, they involve, you would think me moderate in  comparison." 

"Perhaps so," said I. 

"But do you think that, among those many  papers, there is much truth and justice, Richard?" 

"There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther--" 

"Or was once, long ago," said I. 

"Is--is--must be somewhere," pursued Richard impetuously, "and must  be brought out.  To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of  is not the way to bring it out.  You say the suit is changing me;  John Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change  everybody who has any share in it.  Then the greater right I have  on my side when I resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end." 

"All you can, Richard!  Do you think that in these many years no  others have done all they could?  Has the difficulty grown easier  because of so many failures?" 

"It can't last for ever," returned Richard with a fierceness  kindling in him which again presented to me that last sad reminder.   

"I am young and earnest, and energy and determination have done  wonders many a time.  Others have only half thrown themselves into  it.  I devote myself to it.  I make it the object of my life." 

"Oh, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!" 

"No, no, no, don't you be afraid for me," he returned  affectionately. 

"You're a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl;  but you have your prepossessions.  So I come round to John  Jarndyce.  I tell you, my good Esther, when he and I were on those  terms which he found so convenient, we were not on natural terms." 

"Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?" 

"No, I don't say that.  I mean that all this business puts us on  unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible.   See another reason for urging it on!  I may find out when it's over  that I have been mistaken in John Jarndyce.  My head may be clearer  when I am free of it, and I may then agree with what you say to- day.  Very well.  Then I shall acknowledge it and make him  reparation."  Everything postponed to that imaginary time!  Everything held in  confusion and indecision until then! 

"Now, my best of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada  to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John  Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back.  I  wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a  great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will  soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and-- and in short," said Richard, who had been hesitating through these  words, "I--I don't like to represent myself in this litigious,  contentious, doubting character to a confiding girl like Ada,"  I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words than  in anything he had said yet. 

"Why," acknowledged Richard, "that may be true enough, my love.  I  rather feel it to be so.  But I shall be able to give myself fair- play by and by.  I shall come all right again, then, don't you be  afraid."  I asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada.  "Not quite," said Richard. 

"I am bound not to withhold from her  that John Jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner,  addressing me as 'My dear Rick,' trying to argue me out of my  opinions, and telling me that they should make no difference in  him.  (All very well of course, but not altering the case.)  I also  want Ada to know that if I see her seldom just now, I am looking  after her interests as well as my own--we two being in the same  boat exactly--and that I hope she will not suppose from any flying  rumours she may hear that I am at all light-headed or imprudent; on  the contrary, I am always looking forward to the termination of the  suit, and always planning in that direction.  Being of age now and  having taken the step I have taken, I consider myself free from any  accountability to John Jarndyce; but Ada being still a ward of the  court, I don't yet ask her to renew our engagement.  When she is  free to act for herself, I shall be myself once more and we shall  both be in very different worldly circumstances, I believe.  If you  tell her all this with the advantage of your considerate way, you  will do me a very great and a very kind service, my dear Esther;  and I shall knock Jarndyce and Jarndyce on the head with greater  vigour.  Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak House." 

"Richard," said I, "you place great confidence in me, but I fear  you will not take advice from me?" 

"It's impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl.  On any  other, readily." 

As if there were any other in his life!  As if his whole career and  character were not being dyed one colour! 

"But I may ask you a question, Richard?" 

"I think so," said he, laughing. 

"I don't know who may not, if you  may not." 

"You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life." 

"How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled!" 

"Are you in debt again?" 

"Why, of course I am," said Richard, astonished at my simplicity.  "Is it of course?" 

"My dear child, certainly.  I can't throw myself into an object so  completely without expense.  You forget, or perhaps you don't know,  that under either of the wills Ada and I take something.  It's only  a question between the larger sum and the smaller.  I shall be  within the mark any way.  Bless your heart, my excellent girl,"  said Richard, quite amused with me, "I shall be all right!  I shall  pull through, my dear!" 

I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood that I  tried, in Ada's name, in my guardian's, in my own, by every fervent  means that I could think of, to warn him of it and to show him some  of his mistakes.  He received everything I said with patience and  gentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least  effect.  I could not wonder at this after the reception his  preoccupied mind had given to my guardian's letter, but I  determined to try Ada's influence yet.  So when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went  home to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to  give her and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that  Richard was losing himself and scattering his whole life to the  winds.  It made her very unhappy, of course, though she had a far,  far greater reliance on his correcting his errors than I could  have--which was so natural and loving in my dear!--and she  presently wrote him this little letter:   My dearest cousin,  Esther has told me all you said to her this morning.  I write this  to repeat most earnestly for myself all that she said to you and to  let you know how sure I am that you will sooner or later find our  cousin John a pattern of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you  will deeply, deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it)  so much wrong.  I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next, but I  trust you will understand it as I mean it. 

I have some fears, my  dearest cousin, that it may be partly for my sake you are now  laying up so much unhappiness for yourself--and if for yourself,  for me.  In case this should be so, or in case you should entertain  much thought of me in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat  and beg you to desist.  You can do nothing for my sake that will  make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon the shadow  in which we both were born.  Do not be angry with me for saying  this.  Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my sake, and for your own, and  in a natural repugnance for that source of trouble which had its  share in making us both orphans when we were very young, pray,  pray, let it go for ever.  We have reason to know by this time that  there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing to be got  from it but sorrow.  My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you are quite  free and that it is very likely you may find some one whom you will  love much better than your first fancy.  I am quite sure, if you  will let me say so, that the object of your choice would greatly  prefer to follow your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or  poor, and see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen  way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very rich with  you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost of dragging years  of procrastination and anxiety and of your indifference to other  aims.  You may wonder at my saying this so confidently with so  little knowledge or experience, but I know it for a certainty from  my own heart.  Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate  Ada   This note brought Richard to us very soon, but it made little  change in him if any.  We would fairly try, he said, who was right  and who was wrong--he would show us--we should see!  He was  animated and glowing, as if Ada's tenderness had gratified him; but  I could only hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some  stronger effect upon his mind on re-perusal than it assuredly had  then.  As they were to remain with us that day and had taken their places  to return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of  speaking to Mr. Skimpole.  Our out-of-door life easily threw one in  my way, and I delicately said that there was a responsibility in  encouraging Richard. 

"Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?" he repeated, catching at  the word with the pleasantest smile. 

"I am the last man in the  world for such a thing.  I never was responsible in my life--I  can't be." 

"I am afraid everybody is obliged to be," said I timidly enough, he  being so much older and more clever than I. 

"No, really?" said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a  most agreeable jocularity of surprise. 

"But every man's not  obliged to be solvent?  I am not.  I never was.  See, my dear Miss  Summerson," he took a handful of loose silver and halfpence from  his pocket, "there's so much money.  I have not an idea how much.   I have not the power of counting.  Call it four and ninepence--call  it four pound nine.  They tell me I owe more than that.  I dare say  I do.  I dare say I owe as much as good-natured people will let me  owe.  If they don't stop, why should I?  There you have Harold  Skimpole in little.  If that's responsibility, I am responsible." 

The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again and  looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been  mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made  me feel as if he really had nothing to do with it. 

"Now, when you mention responsibility," he resumed, "I am disposed  to say that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I  should consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself.  You  appear to me to be the very touchstone of responsibility.  When I  see you, my dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of  the whole little orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel  inclined to say to myself--in fact I do say to myself very often-- THAT'S responsibility!" 

It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I  persisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and not  confirm Richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then.  "Most willingly," he retorted, "if I could.  But, my dear Miss  Summerson, I have no art, no disguise.  If he takes me by the hand  and leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after  fortune, I must go.  If he says, 'Skimpole, join the dance!'  I  must join it.  Common sense wouldn't, I know, but I have NO common  sense."  It was very unfortunate for Richard, I said. 

"Do you think so!" returned Mr. Skimpole. 

"Don't say that, don't  say that.  Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense--an  excellent man--a good deal wrinkled--dreadfully practical--change  for a ten-pound note in every pocket--ruled account-book in his  hand--say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer.  Our dear  Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with  poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion,  'I see a golden prospect before me; it's very bright, it's very  beautiful, it's very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape  to come at it!'  The respectable companion instantly knocks him  down with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic  way that he sees no such thing; shows him it's nothing but fees,  fraud, horsehair wigs, and black gowns.  Now you know that's a  painful change--sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but  disagreeable.  I can't do it.  I haven't got the ruled account- book, I have none of the tax-gatherlng elements in my composition,  I am not at all respectable, and I don't want to be. 

Odd perhaps,  but so it is!"  It was idle to say more, so I proposed that we should join Ada and  Richard, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr. Skimpole  in despair.  He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning  and whimsically described the family pictures as we walked.  There  were such portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead  and gone, he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of  assault in their hands.  They tended their flocks severely in  buckram and powder and put their sticking-plaster patches on to  terrify commoners as the chiefs of some other tribes put on their  war-paint.  There was a Sir Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a  sprung-mine, volumes of smoke, flashes of lightning, a town on  fire, and a stormed fort, all in full action between his horse's  two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how little a Dedlock made of  such trifles.  The whole race he represented as having evidently  been, in life, what he called "stuffed people"--a large collection,  glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on their various  twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from animation, and  always in glass cases.  I was not so easy now during any reference to the name but that I  felt it a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surprise,  hurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming  slowly towards us. 

"Dear me!" said Mr. Skimpole. 

"Vholes!" 

We asked if that were a friend of Richard's. 

"Friend and legal adviser," said Mr. Skimpole. 

"Now, my dear Miss  Summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and  respectability, all united--if you want an exemplary man--Vholes is  THE man."  We had not known, we said, that Richard was assisted by any  gentleman of that name. 

"When he emerged from legal infancy," returned Mr. Skimpole, "he  parted from our conversational friend Kenge and took up, I believe,  with Vholes.  Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to  Vholes." 

"Had you known him long?" asked Ada. 

"Vholes?  My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance  with him which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession.   He had done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner-- taken proceedings, I think, is the expression--which ended in the  proceeding of his taking ME.  Somebody was so good as to step in  and pay the money--something and fourpence was the amount; I forget  the pounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence,  because it struck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe  anybody fourpence--and after that I brought them together.  Vholes  asked me for the introduction, and I gave it.  Now I come to think  of it," he looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he  made the discovery,

"Vholes bribed me, perhaps?  He gave me  something and called it commission.  Was it a five-pound note?  Do  you know, I think it MUST have been a five-pound note!"  His further consideration of the point was prevented by Richard's  coming back to us in an excited state and hastily representing Mr.  Vholes--a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were  cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin,  about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping.  Dressed  in black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing  so remarkable in him as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he  had of looking at Richard.  "I hope I don't disturb you, ladies," said Mr. Vholes, and now I  observed that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of  speaking. 

"I arranged with Mr. Carstone that he should always know  when his cause was in the Chancelor's paper, and being informed by  one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather  unexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the  coach early this morning and came down to confer with him." 

"Yes," said Richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and  me, "we don't do these things in the old slow way now.  We spin  along now!  Mr. Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the  post town in, and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!"  "Anything you please, sir," returned Mr. Vholes. 

"I am quite at  your service."  "Let me see," said Richard, looking at his watch. 

"If I run down  to the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a  gig, or a chaise, or whatever's to be got, we shall have an hour  then before starting.  I'll come back to tea.  Cousin Ada, will you  and Esther take care of Mr. Vholes when I am gone?" 

He was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in  the dusk of evening.  We who were left walked on towards the house. 

"Is Mr. Carstone's presence necessary to-morrow, Sir?" said I.   

"Can it do any good?" 

"No, miss," Mr. Vholes replied. 

"I am not aware that it can."  Both Ada and I expressed our regret that he should go, then, only  to be disappointed. 

"Mr. Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own  interests," said Mr. Vholes, "and when a client lays down his own  principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it  out.  I wish in business to be exact and open.  I am a widower with  three daughters--Emma, Jane, and Caroline--and my desire is so to  discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name.  This  appears to be a pleasant spot, miss." 

The remark being made to me in consequence of my being next him as  we walked, I assented and enumerated its chief attractions.  "Indeed?" said Mr. Vholes.  "I have the privilege of supporting an  aged father in the Vale of Taunton--his native place--and I admire  that country very much.  I had no idea there was anything so  attractive here."  To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr. Vholes if he would like to  live altogether in the country. 

"There, miss," said he, "you touch me on a tender string.  My  health is not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had  only myself to consider, I should take refuge in rural habits,  especially as the cares of business have prevented me from ever  coming much into contact with general society, and particularly  with ladies' society, which I have most wished to mix in.  But with  my three daughters, Emma, Jane, and Caroline--and my aged father--I  cannot afford to be selfish.  It is true I have no longer to  maintain a dear grandmother who died in her hundred and second  year, but enough remains to render it indispensable that the mill  should be always going."  It required some attention to hear him on account of his inward  speaking and his lifeless manner. 

"You will excuse my having mentioned my daughters," he said. 

"They  are my weak point.  I wish to leave the poor girls some little  independence, as well as a good name."  We now arrived at Mr. Boythorn's house, where the tea-table, all  prepared, was awaiting us.  Richard came in restless and hurried  shortly afterwards, and leaning over Mr. Vholes's chair, whispered  something in his ear.  Mr. Vholes replied aloud--or as nearly aloud  I suppose as he had ever replied to anything--"You will drive me,  will you, sir?  It is all the same to me, sir.  Anything you  please.  I am quite at your service." 

We understood from what followed that Mr. Skimpole was to be left  until the morning to occupy the two places which had been already  paid for.  As Ada and I were both in low spirits concerning Richard  and very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we  politely could that we should leave Mr. Skimpole to the Dedlock  Arms and retire when the night-travellers were gone.  Richard's high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went  out together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had  ordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern  standing at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been  harnessed to it.  I never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern's  light, Richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in  his hand; Mr. Vholes quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up,  looking at him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it.   

I have before me the whole picture of the warm dark night, the  summer lightning, the dusty track of road closed in by hedgerows  and high trees, the gaunt pale horse with his ears pricked up, and  the driving away at speed to Jarndyce and Jarndyce.  My dear girl told me that night how Richard's being thereafter  prosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this  difference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging  heart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him;  how he thought of her through his present errors, and she would  think of him at all times--never of herself if she could devote  herself to him, never of her own delights if she could minister to  his.  And she kept her word?  I look along the road before me, where the distance already  shortens and the journey's end is growing visible; and true and  good above the dead sea of the Chancery suit and all the ashy fruit  it cast ashore, I think I see my darling.

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