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

>be in waiting for me at the coach-office, that we might have a

little talk together. I found him there when I arrived, and we

walked away arm in arm.

 

“Well, Richard,” said I as soon as I could begin to be grave with

him, “are you beginning to feel more settled now?”

 

“Oh, yes, my dear!” returned Richard. “I’m all right enough.”

 

“But settled?” said I.

 

“How do you mean, settled?” returned Richard with his gay laugh.

 

“Settled in the law,” said I.

 

“Oh, aye,” replied Richard, “I’m all right enough.”

 

“You said that before, my dear Richard.”

 

“And you don’t think it’s an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it’s not.

Settled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Why, no, I can’t say I am settling down,” said Richard, strongly

emphasizing “down,” as if that expressed the difficulty, “because

one can’t settle down while this business remains in such an

unsettled state. When I say this business, of course I mean the—

forbidden subject.”

 

“Do you think it will ever be in a settled state?” said I.

 

“Not the least doubt of it,” answered Richard.

 

We walked a little way without speaking, and presently Richard

addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus: “My

dear Esther, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more

constant sort of fellow. I don’t mean constant to Ada, for I love

her dearly—better and better every day—but constant to myself.

(Somehow, I mean something that I can’t very well express, but

you’ll make it out.) If I were a more constant sort of fellow, I

should have held on either to Badger or to Kenge and Carboy like

grim death, and should have begun to be steady and systematic by

this time, and shouldn’t be in debt, and—”

 

“ARE you in debt, Richard?”

 

“Yes,” said Richard, “I am a little so, my dear. Also, I have

taken rather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. Now the

murder’s out; you despise me, Esther, don’t you?”

 

“You know I don’t,” said I.

 

“You are kinder to me than I often am to myself,” he returned. “My

dear Esther, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled,

but how CAN I be more settled? If you lived in an unfinished

house, you couldn’t settle down in it; if you were condemned to

leave everything you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard

to apply yourself to anything; and yet that’s my unhappy case. I

was born into this unfinished contention with all its chances and

changes, and it began to unsettle me before I quite knew the

difference between a suit at law and a suit of clothes; and it has

gone on unsettling me ever since; and here I am now, conscious

sometimes that I am but a worthless fellow to love my confiding

cousin Ada.”

 

We were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes

and sobbed as he said the words.

 

“Oh, Richard!” said I. “Do not be so moved. You have a noble

nature, and Ada’s love may make you worthier every day.”

 

“I know, my dear,” he replied, pressing my arm, “I know all that.

You mustn’t mind my being a little soft now, for I have had all

this upon my mind for a long time, and have often meant to speak to

you, and have sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes courage.

I know what the thought of Ada ought to do for me, but it doesn’t

do it. I am too unsettled even for that. I love her most

devotedly, and yet I do her wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day

and hour. But it can’t last for ever. We shall come on for a

final hearing and get judgment in our favour, and then you and Ada

shall see what I can really be!”

 

It had given me a pang to hear him sob and see the tears start out

between his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting to me

than the hopeful animation with which he said these words.

 

“I have looked well into the papers, Esther. I have been deep in

them for months,” he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a

moment, “and you may rely upon it that we shall come out

triumphant. As to years of delay, there has been no want of them,

heaven knows! And there is the greater probability of our bringing

the matter to a speedy close; in fact, it’s on the paper now. It

will be all right at last, and then you shall see!”

 

Recalling how he had just now placed Messrs. Kenge and Carboy in

the same category with Mr. Badger, I asked him when he intended to

be articled in Lincoln’s Inn.

 

“There again! I think not at all, Esther,” he returned with an

effort. “I fancy I have had enough of it. Having worked at

Jarndyce and Jarndyce like a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst

for the law and satisfied myself that I shouldn’t like it.

Besides, I find it unsettles me more and more to be so constantly

upon the scene of action. So what,” continued Richard, confident

again by this time, “do I naturally turn my thoughts to?”

 

“I can’t imagine,” said I.

 

“Don’t look so serious,” returned Richard, “because it’s the best

thing I can do, my dear Esther, I am certain. It’s not as if I

wanted a profession for life. These proceedings will come to a

termination, and then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a

pursuit which is in its nature more or less unsettled, and

therefore suited to my temporary condition—I may say, precisely

suited. What is it that I naturally turn my thoughts to?”

 

I looked at him and shook my head.

 

“What,” said Richard, in a tone of perfect conviction, “but the

army!”

 

“The army?” said I.

 

“The army, of course. What I have to do is to get a commission;

and—there I am, you know!” said Richard.

 

And then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his

pocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two hundred

pounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he

contracted no debt at all within a corresponding period in the

army—as to which he had quite made up his mind; this step must

involve a saving of four hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand

pounds in five years, which was a considerable sum. And then he

spoke so ingenuously and sincerely of the sacrifice he made in

withdrawing himself for a time from Ada, and of the earnestness

with which he aspired—as in thought he always did, I know full

well—to repay her love, and to ensure her happiness, and to

conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire the very soul of

decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely. For, I

thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon and

so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal blight

that ruined everything it rested on!

 

I spoke to Richard with all the earnestness I felt, and all the

hope I could not quite feel then, and implored him for Ada’s sake

not to put any trust in Chancery. To all I said, Richard readily

assented, riding over the court and everything else in his easy way

and drawing the brightest pictures of the character he was to

settle into—alas, when the grievous suit should loose its hold

upon him! We had a long talk, but it always came back to that, in

substance.

 

At last we came to Soho Square, where Caddy Jellyby had appointed

to wait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of Newman

Street. Caddy was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as

soon as I appeared. After a few cheerful words, Richard left us

together.

 

“Prince has a pupil over the way, Esther,” said Caddy, “and got the

key for us. So if you will walk round and round here with me, we

can lock ourselves in and I can tell you comfortably what I wanted

to see your dear good face about.”

 

“Very well, my dear,” said I. “Nothing could be better.” So

Caddy, after affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she

called it, locked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk

round the garden very cosily.

 

“You see, Esther,” said Caddy, who thoroughly enjoyed a little

confidence, “after you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry

without Ma’s knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the dark

respecting our engagement—though I don’t believe Ma cares much for

me, I must say—I thought it right to mention your opinions to

Prince. In the first place because I want to profit by everything

you tell me, and in the second place because I have no secrets from

Prince.”

 

“I hope he approved, Caddy?”

 

“Oh, my dear! I assure you he would approve of anything you could

say. You have no idea what an opinion he has of you!”

 

“Indeed!”

 

“Esther, it’s enough to make anybody but me jealous,” said Caddy,

laughing and shaking her head; “but it only makes me joyful, for

you are the first friend I ever had, and the best friend I ever can

have, and nobody can respect and love you too much to please me.”

 

“Upon my word, Caddy,” said I, “you are in the general conspiracy

to keep me in a good humour. Well, my dear?”

 

“Well! I am going to tell you,” replied Caddy, crossing her hands

confidentially upon my arm. “So we talked a good deal about it,

and so I said to Prince, ‘Prince, as Miss Summerson—’”

 

“I hope you didn’t say ‘Miss Summerson’?”

 

“No. I didn’t!” cried Caddy, greatly pleased and with the

brightest of faces. “I said, ‘Esther.’ I said to Prince, ‘As

Esther is decidedly of that opinion, Prince, and has expressed it

to me, and always hints it when she writes those kind notes, which

you are so fond of hearing me read to you, I am prepared to

disclose the truth to Ma whenever you think proper. And I think,

Prince,’ said I, ‘that Esther thinks that I should be in a better,

and truer, and more honourable position altogether if you did the

same to your papa.’”

 

“Yes, my dear,” said I. “Esther certainly does think so.”

 

“So I was right, you see!” exclaimed Caddy. “Well! This troubled

Prince a good deal, not because he had the least doubt about it,

but because he is so considerate of the feelings of old Mr.

Turveydrop; and he had his apprehensions that old Mr. Turveydrop

might break his heart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in

some affecting manner or other if he made such an announcement. He

feared old Mr. Turveydrop might consider it undutiful and might

receive too great a shock. For old Mr. Turveydrop’s deportment is

very beautiful, you know, Esther,” said Caddy, “and his feelings

are extremely sensitive.”

 

“Are they, my dear?”

 

“Oh, extremely sensitive. Prince says so. Now, this has caused my

darling child—I didn’t mean to use the expression to you, Esther,”

Caddy apologized, her face suffused with blushes, “but I generally

call Prince my darling child.”

 

I laughed; and Caddy laughed and blushed, and went on.

 

“This has caused him, Esther—”

 

“Caused whom, my dear?”

 

“Oh, you tiresome thing!” said Caddy, laughing, with her pretty

face on fire. “My darling child,