Bleak House, Charles Dickens [the beginning after the end novel read .txt] 📗

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 lawsuits 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