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seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at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 asking 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.