Bleak House, Charles Dickens [early reader books TXT] 📗

away, my dear. I don’t know what I am about with it; it’s all the wind⁠—invariably has that effect⁠—I won’t press you, Rick; you may be right. But really⁠—to get hold of you and Esther⁠—and to squeeze you like a couple of tender young Saint Michael’s oranges! It’ll blow a gale in the course of the night!”

He was now alternately putting his hands into his pockets as if he were going to keep them there a long time, and taking them out again and vehemently rubbing them all over his head.

I ventured to take this opportunity of hinting that Mr. Skimpole, being in all such matters quite a child⁠—

“Eh, my dear?” said Mr. Jarndyce, catching at the word.

“Being quite a child, sir,” said I, “and so different from other people⁠—”

“You are right!” said Mr. Jarndyce, brightening. “Your woman’s wit hits the mark. He is a child⁠—an absolute child. I told you he was a child, you know, when I first mentioned him.”

Certainly! Certainly! we said.

“And he is a child. Now, isn’t he?” asked Mr. Jarndyce, brightening more and more.

He was indeed, we said.

“When you come to think of it, it’s the height of childishness in you⁠—I mean me⁠—” said Mr. Jarndyce, “to regard him for a moment as a man. You can’t make him responsible. The idea of Harold Skimpole with designs or plans, or knowledge of consequences! Ha, ha, ha!”

It was so delicious to see the clouds about his bright face clearing, and to see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it was impossible not to know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness which was tortured by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing anyone, that I saw the tears in Ada’s eyes, while she echoed his laugh, and felt them in my own.

“Why, what a cod’s head and shoulders I am,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “to require reminding of it! The whole business shows the child from beginning to end. Nobody but a child would have thought of singling you two out for parties in the affair! Nobody but a child would have thought of your having the money! If it had been a thousand pounds, it would have been just the same!” said Mr. Jarndyce with his whole face in a glow.

We all confirmed it from our night’s experience.

“To be sure, to be sure!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “However, Rick, Esther, and you too, Ada, for I don’t know that even your little purse is safe from his inexperience⁠—I must have a promise all round that nothing of this sort shall ever be done any more. No advances! Not even sixpences.”

We all promised faithfully, Richard with a merry glance at me touching his pocket as if to remind me that there was no danger of our transgressing.

“As to Skimpole,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “a habitable doll’s house with good board and a few tin people to get into debt with and borrow money of would set the boy up in life. He is in a child’s sleep by this time, I suppose; it’s time I should take my craftier head to my more worldly pillow. Good night, my dears. God bless you!”

He peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our candles, and said, “Oh! I have been looking at the weathercock. I find it was a false alarm about the wind. It’s in the south!” And went away singing to himself.

Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs, that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal, rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or depreciate anyone. We thought this very characteristic of his eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.

Indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening to my gratitude that I hoped I already began to understand him through that mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr. Skimpole or in Mrs. Jellyby I could not expect to be able to reconcile, having so little experience or practical knowledge. Neither did I try, for my thoughts were busy when I was alone, with Ada and Richard and with the confidence I had seemed to receive concerning them. My fancy, made a little wild by the wind perhaps, would not consent to be all unselfish, either, though I would have persuaded it to be so if I could. It wandered back to my godmother’s house and came along the intervening track, raising up shadowy speculations which had sometimes trembled there in the dark as to what knowledge Mr. Jarndyce had of my earliest history⁠—even as to the possibility of his being my father, though that idle dream was quite gone now.

It was all gone now, I remembered, getting up from the fire. It was not for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit and a grateful heart. So I said to myself, “Esther, Esther, Esther! Duty, my dear!” and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a shake that they sounded like little bells and rang me hopefully to bed.

VII The Ghost’s Walk

While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it is still wet weather down at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling⁠—drip, drip, drip⁠—by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement, the Ghost’s Walk. The weather is so very bad down in Lincolnshire that the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being fine again. Not that there is any superabundant life of imagination on the spot, for Sir Leicester is not here (and, truly, even if he were, would not do much for it in that particular), but is in Paris with my Lady; and solitude, with dusky wings, sits brooding upon Chesney Wold.

There