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 had 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-gathering 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 Chancellor’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.