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

and I can quite understand that to your

excited feelings I may appear, at such times as the present,

insensible. My daughters may know me better; my aged father may

know me better. But they have known me much longer than you have,

and the confiding eye of affection is not the distrustful eye of

business. Not that I complain, sir, of the eye of business being

distrustful; quite the contrary. In attending to your interests, I

wish to have all possible checks upon me; it is right that I should

have them; I court inquiry. But your interests demand that I

should be cool and methodical, Mr. Carstone; and I cannot be

otherwise—no, sir, not even to please you.”

 

Mr. Vholes, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently

watching a mouse’s hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young

client and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if

there were an unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor

speak out, “What are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the

vacation. I should hope you gentlemen of the army may find many

means of amusing yourselves if you give your minds to it. If you

had asked me what I was to do during the vacation, I could have

answered you more readily. I am to attend to your interests. I am

to be found here, day by day, attending to your interests. That is

my duty, Mr. C., and term-time or vacation makes no difference to

me. If you wish to consult me as to your interests, you will find

me here at all times alike. Other professional men go out of town.

I don’t. Not that I blame them for going; I merely say I don’t go.

This desk is your rock, sir!”

 

Mr. Vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin.

Not to Richard, though. There is encouragement in the sound to

him. Perhaps Mr. Vholes knows there is.

 

“I am perfectly aware, Mr. Vholes,” says Richard, more familiarly

and good-humouredly, “that you are the most reliable fellow in the

world and that to have to do with you is to have to do with a man

of business who is not to be hoodwinked. But put yourself in my

case, dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper

into difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually

disappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in

myself, and of no change for the better in anything else, and you

will find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as I do.”

 

“You know,” says Mr. Vholes, “that I never give hopes, sir. I told

you from the first, Mr. C., that I never give hopes. Particularly

in a case like this, where the greater part of the costs comes out

of the estate, I should not be considerate of my good name if I

gave hopes. It might seem as if costs were my object. Still, when

you say there is no change for the better, I must, as a bare matter

of fact, deny that.”

 

“Aye?” returns Richard, brightening. “But how do you make it out?”

 

“Mr. Carstone, you are represented by—”

 

“You said just now—a rock.”

 

“Yes, sir,” says Mr. Vholes, gently shaking his head and rapping

the hollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes,

and dust on dust, “a rock. That’s something. You are separately

represented, and no longer hidden and lost in the interests of

others. THAT’S something. The suit does not sleep; we wake it up,

we air it, we walk it about. THAT’S something. It’s not all

Jarndyce, in fact as well as in name. THAT’S something. Nobody

has it all his own way now, sir. And THAT’S something, surely.”

 

Richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his

clenched hand.

 

“Mr. Vholes! If any man had told me when I first went to John

Jarndyce’s house that he was anything but the disinterested friend

he seemed—that he was what he has gradually turned out to be—I

could have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I

could not have defended him too ardently. So little did I know of

the world! Whereas now I do declare to you that he becomes to me

the embodiment of the suit; that in place of its being an

abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more

indignant I am with him; that every new delay and every new

disappointment is only a new injury from John Jarndyce’s hand.”

 

“No, no,” says Vholes. “Don’t say so. We ought to have patience,

all of us. Besides, I never disparage, sir. I never disparage.”

 

“Mr. Vholes,” returns the angry client. “You know as well as I

that he would have strangled the suit if he could.”

 

“He was not active in it,” Mr. Vholes admits with an appearance of

reluctance. “He certainly was not active in it. But however, but

however, he might have had amiable intentions. Who can read the

heart, Mr. C.!”

 

“You can,” returns Richard.

 

“I, Mr. C.?”

 

“Well enough to know what his intentions were. Are or are not our

interests conflicting? Tell—me—that!” says Richard, accompanying

his last three words with three raps on his rock of trust.

 

“Mr. C.,” returns Vholes, immovable in attitude and never winking

his hungry eyes, “I should be wanting in my duty as your

professional adviser, I should be departing from my fidelity to

your interests, if I represented those interests as identical with

the interests of Mr. Jarndyce. They are no such thing, sir. I

never impute motives; I both have and am a father, and I never

impute motives. But I must not shrink from a professional duty,

even if it sows dissensions in families. I understand you to be

now consulting me professionally as to your interests? You are so?

I reply, then, they are not identical with those of Mr. Jarndyce.”

 

“Of course they are not!” cries Richard. “You found that out long

ago.”

 

“Mr. C.,” returns Vholes, “I wish to say no more of any third party

than is necessary. I wish to leave my good name unsullied,

together with any little property of which I may become possessed

through industry and perseverance, to my daughters Emma, Jane, and

Caroline. I also desire to live in amity with my professional

brethren. When Mr. Skimpole did me the honour, sir—I will not say

the very high honour, for I never stoop to flattery—of bringing us

together in this room, I mentioned to you that I could offer no

opinion or advice as to your interests while those interests were

entrusted to another member of the profession. And I spoke in such

terms as I was bound to speak of Kenge and Carboy’s office, which

stands high. You, sir, thought fit to withdraw your interests from

that keeping nevertheless and to offer them to me. You brought

them with clean hands, sir, and I accepted them with clean hands.

Those interests are now paramount in this office. My digestive

functions, as you may have heard me mention, are not in a good

state, and rest might improve them; but I shall not rest, sir,

while I am your representative. Whenever you want me, you will

find me here. Summon me anywhere, and I will come. During the

long vacation, sir, I shall devote my leisure to studying your

interests more and more closely and to making arrangements for

moving heaven and earth (including, of course, the Chancellor)

after Michaelmas term; and when I ultimately congratulate you,

sir,” says Mr. Vholes with the severity of a determined man, “when

I ultimately congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your

accession to fortune—which, but that I never give hopes, I might

say something further about—you will owe me nothing beyond

whatever little balance may be then outstanding of the costs as

between solicitor and client not included in the taxed costs

allowed out of the estate. I pretend to no claim upon you, Mr. C.,

but for the zealous and active discharge—not the languid and

routine discharge, sir: that much credit I stipulate for—of my

professional duty. My duty prosperously ended, all between us is

ended.”

 

Vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his

principles, that as Mr. Carstone is about to rejoin his regiment,

perhaps Mr. C. will favour him with an order on his agent for

twenty pounds on account.

 

“For there have been many little consultations and attendances of

late, sir,” observes Vholes, turning over the leaves of his diary,

“and these things mount up, and I don’t profess to be a man of

capital. When we first entered on our present relations I stated

to you openly—it is a principle of mine that there never can be

too much openness between solicitor and client—that I was not a

man of capital and that if capital was your object you had better

leave your papers in Kenge’s office. No, Mr. C., you will find

none of the advantages or disadvantages of capital here, sir.

This,” Vholes gives the desk one hollow blow again, “is your rock;

it pretends to be nothing more.”

 

The client, with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague

hopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not

without perplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may

bear, implying scant effects in the agent’s hands. All the while,

Vholes, buttoned up in body and mind, looks at him attentively.

All the while, Vholes’s official cat watches the mouse’s hole.

 

Lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr. Vholes, for

heaven’s sake and earth’s sake, to do his utmost to “pull him

through” the Court of Chancery. Mr. Vholes, who never gives hopes,

lays his palm upon the client’s shoulder and answers with a smile,

“Always here, sir. Personally, or by letter, you will always find

me here, sir, with my shoulder to the wheel.” Thus they part, and

Vholes, left alone, employs himself in carrying sundry little

matters out of his diary into his draft bill book for the ultimate

behoof of his three daughters. So might an industrious fox or bear

make up his account of chickens or stray travellers with an eye to

his cubs, not to disparage by that word the three raw-visaged,

lank, and buttoned-up maidens who dwell with the parent Vholes in

an earthy cottage situated in a damp garden at Kennington.

 

Richard, emerging from the heavy shade of Symond’s Inn into the

sunshine of Chancery Lane—for there happens to be sunshine there

to-day—walks thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln’s Inn, and

passes under the shadow of the Lincoln’s Inn trees. On many such

loungers have the speckled shadows of those trees often fallen; on

the like bent head, the bitten nail, the lowering eye, the

lingering step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good consuming

and consumed, the life turned sour. This lounger is not shabby

yet, but that may come. Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in

precedent, is very rich in such precedents; and why should one be

different from ten thousand?

 

Yet the time is so short since his depreciation began that as he

saunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months

together, though he hates it, Richard himself may feel his own case

as if it were a startling one. While his heart is heavy with

corroding care, suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for

some sorrowful wonder when he recalls how different his first visit

there, how different he, how different all the colours of his mind.

But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being

defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances