Bleak House

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Well, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But
to wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was
such bad preparation that I resolved to go along the road again and
meet her.

So I said to Charley, '"Charley, I will go by myself and walk along
the road until she comes." Charley highly approving of anything
that pleased me, I went and left her at home.

But before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many
palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was
not, and could not, be the coach yet) that I resolved to turn back
and go home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of
the coach coming up behind me (though I still knew that it neither
would, nor could, do any such thing) that I ran the greater part of
the way to avoid being overtaken.

Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice
thing to have done! Now I was hot and had made the worst of it
instead of the best.

At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour
more yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in
the garden, "Here she comes, miss! Here she is!"

I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room and hid
myself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when I heard
my darling calling as she came upstairs, "Esther, my dear, my love,
where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!"

She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my
angel girl! The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all
affection. Nothing else in it--no, nothing, nothing!

Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful
girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely
cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like
a child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of,
and pressing me to her faithful heart.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Jarndyce and Jarndyce

If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it
to Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mine, and
I did not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian,
unless some great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone;
still my present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the
attachment of my dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement
to do it. Though often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the
remembrance of my mother kept me waking and made the night
sorrowful, I did not yield to it at another time; and Ada found me
what I used to be--except, of course, in that particular of which I
have said enough and which I have no intention of mentioning any
more just now, if I can help it.

The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first
evening when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the
house, and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for
Lady Dedlock had spoken to me in the woods the day before
yesterday, was great. Greater still when Ada asked me what she had
said, and when I replied that she had been kind and interested, and
when Ada, while admitting her beauty and elegance, remarked upon
her proud manner and her imperious chilling air. But Charley
helped me through, unconsciously, by telling us that Lady Dedlock
had only stayed at the house two nights on her way from London to
visit at some other great house in the next county and that she had
left early on the morning after we had seen her at our view, as we
called it. Charley verified the adage about little pitchers, I am
sure, for she heard of more sayings and doings in a day than would
have come to my ears in a month.

We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn's. My pet had scarcely
been there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening
after we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers,
and just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a
very important air behind Ada's chair, beckoned me mysteriously out
of the room.

"Oh! If you please, miss," said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes
at their roundest and largest. "You're wanted at the Dedlock
Arms."

"Why, Charley," said I, "who can possibly want me at the public-
house?"

"I don't know, miss," returned Charley, putting her head forward
and folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron,
which she always did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or
confidential, "but it's a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and
will you please to come without saying anything about it."

"Whose compliments, Charley?"

"His'n, miss," returned Charley, whose grammatical education was
advancing, but not very rapidly.

"And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?"

"I am not the messenger, if you please, miss," returned my little
maid. "It was W. Grubble, miss."

"And who is W. Grubble, Charley?"

"Mister Grubble, miss," returned Charley. "Don't you know, miss?
The Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble," which Charley delivered as if she
were slowly spelling out the sign.

"Aye? The landlord, Charley?"

"Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman,
but she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother's
the sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he'll
drink himself to death entirely on beer," said Charley.

Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive
now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade
Charley be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having
put them on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as
much at home as in Mr. Boythorn's garden.

Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his
very clean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his hat
with both hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it
were an iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the
sanded passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more
plants in it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen
Caroline, several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and
dried fish in glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious
pumpkin (but I don't know which, and I doubt if many people did)
hanging from his ceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight,
from his often standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish,
middle-aged man who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed
for his own fire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never
wore a coat except at church.

He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it
looked, backed out of the room--unexpectedly to me, for I was going
to ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite
parlour being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears
I thought, which stopped. A quick light step approached the room
in which I was, and who should stand before me but Richard!

"My dear Esther!" he said. "My best friend!" And he really was so
warm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of
his brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him
that Ada was well.

"Answering my very thoughts--always the same dear girl!" said
Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me.

I put my veil up, but not quite.

"Always the same dear girl!" said Richard just as heartily as
before.

I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard's sleeve
and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his
kind welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so
because of the determination I had made in my illness, which I now
conveyed to him.

"My love," said Richard, "there is no one with whom I have a
greater wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me."

"And I want you, Richard," said I, shaking my head, "to understand
some one else."

"Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce," said Richard, "
--I suppose you mean him?"

"Of course I do."

"Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that
subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind--you, my
dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody."

I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.

"Well, well, my dear," said Richard, "we won't go into that now. I
want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under
my arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your
loyalty to John Jarndyce will allow that?"

"My dear Richard," I returned, "you know you would be heartily
welcome at his house--your home, if you will but consider it so;
and you are as heartily welcome here!"

"Spoken like the best of little women!" cried Richard gaily.

I asked him how he liked his profession.

"Oh, I like it well enough!" said Richard. "It's all right. It
does as well as anything else, for a time. I don't know that I
shall care about it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out
then and--however, never mind all that botheration at present."

So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the
opposite of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking
look that passed over him, so dreadfully like her!

"I am in town on leave just now," said Richard.

"Indeed?"

"Yes. I have run over to look after my--my Chancery interests
before the long vacation," said Richard, forcing a careless laugh.
"We are beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I
promise you."

No wonder that I shook my head!

"As you say, it's not a pleasant subject." Richard spoke with the
same shade crossing his face as before. "Let it go to the four
winds for to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?"

"Was it Mr. Skimpole's voice I heard?"

"That's the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a
fascinating child it is!"

I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming down together. He
answered, no, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old
infant--so he called Mr. Skimpole--and the dear old infant had told
him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent
on coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to
come too; and so he had brought him. "And he is worth--not to say
his sordid expenses--but thrice his weight in gold," said Richard.
"He is such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and
green-hearted!"

I certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Skimpole's worldliness in
his having his expenses paid by Richard, but I made no remark about
that. Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. He was
charmed to see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy
and sympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never
been so happy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the
mixture of good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated
health the more when somebody else was ill, didn't know but what it
might be in the scheme of things that A should squint to make B
happier in looking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to
make D better satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk
stocking.

"My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard," said Mr.
Skimpole, "full of the brightest visions of the future, which he
evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that's delightful,
that's inspiriting, that's full of poetry! In old times the woods
and solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary
piping 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 law-suits 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 bad 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 the papers
as I did when I was at Kenge's, if you only knew what an
accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and
cross-suspicions, they involve, you would think me moderate in
comparison."

"Perhaps so," said I. "But do you think that, among those many
papers, there is much truth and justice, Richard?"

"There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther--"

"Or was once, long ago," said I.

"Is--is--must be somewhere," pursued Richard impetuously, "and must
be brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of
is not the way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me;
John Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change
everybody who has any share in it. Then the greater right I have
on my side when I resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end."

"All you can, Richard! Do you think that in these many years no
others have done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier
because of so many failures?"

"It can't last for ever," returned Richard with a fierceness
kindling in him which again presented to me that last sad reminder.
"I am young and earnest, and energy and determination have done
wonders many a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into
it. I devote myself to it. I make it the object of my life."

"Oh, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!"

"No, no, no, don't you be afraid for me," he returned
affectionately. "You're a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl;
but you have your prepossessions. So I come round to John
Jarndyce. I tell you, my good Esther, when he and I were on those
terms which he found so convenient, we were not on natural terms."

"Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?"

"No, I don't say that. I mean that all this business puts us on
unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible.
See another reason for urging it on! I may find out when it's over
that I have been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer
when I am free of it, and I may then agree with what you say to-
day. Very well. Then I shall acknowledge it and make him
reparation."

Everything postponed to that imaginary time! Everything held in
confusion and indecision until then!

"Now, my best of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada
to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John
Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I
wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a
great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will
soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and--
and in short," said Richard, who had been hesitating through these
words, "I--I don't like to represent myself in this litigious,
contentious, doubting character to a confiding girl like Ada,"