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

I watched for every public

mention of my mother’s name; that I passed and repassed the door of

her house in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once

sat in the theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we

were so wide asunder before the great company of all degrees that

any link or confidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all

over. My lot has been so blest that I can relate little of myself

which is not a story of goodness and generosity in others. I may

well pass that little and go on.

 

When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many

conversations with my guardian of which Richard was the theme. My

dear girl was deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so

much wrong, but she was so faithful to Richard that she could not

bear to blame him even for that. My guardian was assured of it,

and never coupled his name with a word of reproof. “Rick is

mistaken, my dear,” he would say to her. “Well, well! We have all

been mistaken over and over again. We must trust to you and time

to set him right.”

 

We knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to

time until he had often tried to open Richard’s eyes. That he had

written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle

and persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted

Richard was deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make

amends when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the

dark, he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those

clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and

misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the

suit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his

unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such

possession of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any

consideration before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of

reason, make a new argument in favour of his doing what he did.

“So that it is even more mischievous,” said my guardian once to me,

“to remonstrate with the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone.”

 

I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr.

Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard.

 

“Adviser!” returned my guardian, laughing, “My dear, who would

advise with Skimpole?”

 

“Encourager would perhaps have been a better word,” said I.

 

“Encourager!” returned my guardian again. “Who could be encouraged

by Skimpole?”

 

“Not Richard?” I asked.

 

“No,” he replied. “Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer

creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising

or encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or

anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as

Skimpole.”

 

“Pray, cousin John,” said Ada, who had just joined us and now

looked over my shoulder, “what made him such a child?”

 

“What made him such a child?” inquired my guardian, rubbing his

head, a little at a loss.

 

“Yes, cousin John.”

 

“Why,” he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, “he is

all sentiment, and—and susceptibility, and—and sensibility, and—

and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him,

somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his

youth attached too much importance to them and too little to any

training that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he

became what he is. Hey?” said my guardian, stopping short and

looking at us hopefully. “What do you think, you two?”

 

Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an

expense to Richard.

 

“So it is, so it is,” returned my guardian hurriedly. “That must

not be. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never

do.”

 

And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever

introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes for a present of five pounds.

 

“Did he?” said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his

face. “But there you have the man. There you have the man! There

is nothing mercenary in that with him. He has no idea of the value

of money. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr.

Vholes and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and

thinks nothing of it. He told you himself, I’ll be bound, my

dear?”

 

“Oh, yes!” said I.

 

“Exactly!” cried my guardian, quite triumphant. “There you have

the man! If he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any

harm in it, he wouldn’t tell it. He tells it as he does it in mere

simplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you’ll

understand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole and

caution him on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant,

an infant!”

 

In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day and

presented ourselves at Mr. Skimpole’s door.

 

He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there

were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about

in cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better

tenant than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend

Somebody always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude

for business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I

don’t know; but he had occupied the same house some years. It was

in a state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. Two or

three of the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken,

the knocker was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long

time to judge from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty

footprints on the steps were the only signs of its being inhabited.

 

A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the

rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe

berry answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and

stopping up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr. Jarndyce

(indeed Ada and I both thought that she evidently associated him

with the receipt of her wages), she immediately relented and

allowed us to pass in. The lock of the door being in a disabled

condition, she then applied herself to securing it with the chain,

which was not in good action either, and said would we go upstairs?

 

We went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other

furniture than the dirty footprints. Mr. Jarndyce without further

ceremony entered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy

enough and not at all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of

shabby luxury, with a large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of

cushions, an easy-chair, and plenty of pillows, a piano, books,

drawing materials, music, newspapers, and a few sketches and

pictures. A broken pane of glass in one of the dirty windows was

papered and wafered over, but there was a little plate of hothouse

nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and

another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine. Mr.

Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in a dressing-gown,

drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china cup—it was then

about mid-day—and looking at a collection of wallflowers in the

balcony.

 

He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose

and received us in his usual airy manner.

 

“Here I am, you see!” he said when we were seated, not without some

little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken.

“Here I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of

beef and mutton for breakfast; I don’t. Give me my peach, my cup

of coffee, and my claret; I am content. I don’t want them for

themselves, but they remind me of the sun. There’s nothing solar

about legs of beef and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!”

 

“This is our friend’s consulting-room (or would be, if he ever

prescribed), his sanctum, his studio,” said my guardian to us.

 

“Yes,” said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, “this is

the bird’s cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They

pluck his feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings,

he sings!”

 

He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, “He sings!

Not an ambitious note, but still he sings.”

 

“These are very fine,” said my guardian. “A present?”

 

“No,” he answered. “No! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man

wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he

should wait for the money. ‘Really, my friend,’ I said, ‘I think

not—if your time is of any value to you.’ I suppose it was, for

he went away.”

 

My guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, “Is

it possible to be worldly with this baby?”

 

“This is a day,” said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in

a tumbler, “that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it

Saint Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I

have a blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a

Sentiment daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see

them all. They’ll be enchanted.”

 

He was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked

him to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first.

“My dear Jarndyce,” he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa,

“as many moments as you please. Time is no object here. We never

know what o’clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on

in life, you’ll tell me? Certainly. But we DON’T get on in life.

We don’t pretend to do it.”

 

My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, “You hear him?”

 

“Now, Harold,” he began, “the word I have to say relates to Rick.”

 

“The dearest friend I have!” returned Mr. Skimpole cordially. “I

suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms

with you. But he is, I can’t help it; he is full of youthful

poetry, and I love him. If you don’t like it, I can’t help it. I

love him.”

 

The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really

had a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not,

for the moment, Ada too.

 

“You are welcome to love him as much as you like,” returned Mr.

Jarndyce, “but we must save his pocket, Harold.”

 

“Oh!” said Mr. Skimpole. “His pocket? Now you are coming to what

I don’t understand.” Taking a little more claret and dipping one

of the cakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with

an ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand.

 

“If you go with him here or there,” said my guardian plainly, “you

must not let him pay for both.”

 

“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr. Skimpole, his genial face

irradiated by the comicality of this idea, “what am I to do? If he

takes me anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any

money. If I had any money, I don’t know anything about it.

Suppose I say to a man, how much? Suppose the man