The Solitary House (129 page)

I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words, than in anything he had said yet.

“Why,” acknowledged Richard, “that may be true enough, my love. I rather feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-play by and by. I shall come all right again, then, don’t you be afraid.”

I asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada?

“Not quite,” said Richard. “I am bound not to withhold from her that John Jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner, addressing me as ‘My dear Rick,’ trying to argue me out of my opinions, and telling me that they should make no difference in him. (All very well of course, but not altering the case.) I also want Ada to know, that if I see her seldom just now, I am looking after her interests as well as my own—we two being in the same boat exactly—and that I hope she will not suppose, from any flying rumours she may hear, that I am at all light-headed or imprudent; on the contrary, I am always looking forward to the termination of the suit, and always planning in that direction. Being of age now, and having taken the step I have taken, I consider myself free from any accountability to John Jarndyce; but Ada being still a ward of the Court, I don’t yet ask her to renew our engagement. When she is free to act for herself, I shall be myself once more, and we shall both be in very different worldly circumstances, I believe. If you tell her all this with the advantage of your considerate way, you will do me a very great and a very kind service, my dear Esther; and I shall knock
Jarndyce and Jarndyce on the head with greater vigour. Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak House.”

“Richard,” said I, “you place great confidence in me, but I fear you will not take advice from me?”

“It’s impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any other, readily.”

As if there were any other in his life! As if his whole career and character were not being dyed one colour!

“But I may ask you a question, Richard?”

“I think so,” said he, laughing. “I don’t know who may not, if you may not.”

“You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life.”

“How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled!”

“Are you in debt again?”

“Why of course I am,” said Richard, astonished at my simplicity.

“Is it of course?”

“My dear child, certainly. I can’t throw myself into an object so completely, without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don’t know, that under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It’s only a question between the larger sums and the smaller. I shall be within the mark any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl,” said Richard, quite amused with me, “I shall be all right! I shall pull through, my dear!”

I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood, that I tried, in Ada’s name, in my guardian’s, in my own, by every fervent means that I could think of, to warn him of it, and to show him some of his mistakes. He received everything I said, with patience and gentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least effect. I could not wonder at this, after the reception his preoccupied mind had given to my guardian’s letter; but I determined to try Ada’s influence yet.

So, when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went home to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to give her, and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that Richard was losing himself, and scattering his whole life to the winds. It made her very unhappy, of course; though she had a far, far greater reliance on his correcting his errors
than I could have—which was so natural and loving in my dear!—and she presently wrote him this little letter:

My Dearest Cousin
,

Esther has told me all you said to her this morning. I write this, to repeat most earnestly for myself all that she said to you, and to let you know how sure I am that you will sooner or later find our cousin John a pattern of truth, sincerity and goodness, when you will deeply deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so much wrong
.

I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next, but I trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have some fears, my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for yourself—and, if for yourself, for me. In case this should be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat and beg you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake that will make me half so happy, as for ever turning your back upon the shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry with me for saying this. Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for that source of trouble which had its share in making us both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it go for ever. We have reason to know, by this time, that there is no good in it, and no hope; that there is nothing to be got from it but sorrow
.

My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you are quite free, and that it is very likely you may find some one whom you will love much better than your first fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen way; than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very rich with you (if such a thing were possible), at the cost of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety, and of your indifference to other aims. You may wonder at my saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own heart
.

Ever, my dearest cousin, Your most affectionate

Ada

This note brought Richard to us very soon; but it made little change in him, if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who was wrong—he would show us—we should see! He was animated and glowing, as if Ada’s tenderness had gratified him; but I could only hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect upon his mind on re-perusal, than it assuredly had then.

As they were to remain with us that day, and had taken their places to return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking to Mr. Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way; and I delicately said, that there was a responsibility in encouraging Richard.

“Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?” he repeated, catching at the word with the pleasantest smile. “I am the last man in the world for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life—I can’t be.”

“I am afraid everybody is obliged to be,” said I, timidly enough: he being so much older and more clever than I.

“No, really?” said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most agreeable jocularity of surprise. “But every man’s not obliged to be solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson,” he took a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, “there’s so much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of counting. Call it four and ninepence—call it four pound nine. They tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as much as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don’t stop, why should I? There you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that’s responsibility, I am responsible.”

The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up
again, and looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me feel as if he really had nothing to do with it.

“Now when you mention responsibility,” he resumed, “I am disposed to say, that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I should consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. You appear to me to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole little orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel inclined to say to myself—in fact I do say to myself, very often
—that
’s responsibility!”

It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I persisted so far as to say, that we all hoped he would check and not confirm Richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then.

“Most willingly,” he retorted, “if I could. But, my dear Miss Summerson, I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand, and leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after Fortune, I must go. If he says, ‘Skimpole, join the dance!’ I must join it. Common sense wouldn’t, I know; but I have
no
common sense.”

“It was very unfortunate for Richard,” I said.

“Do you think so?” returned Mr. Skimpole. “Don’t say that, don’t say that. Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense—an excellent man—a good deal wrinkled—dreadfully practical—change for a ten-pound note in every pocket—ruled account-book in his hand—say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion, ‘I see a golden prospect before me; it’s very bright, it’s very beautiful, it’s very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape to come at it!’ The respectable companion instantly knocks him down with the ruled account-book; tells him, in a literal, prosaic way, that he sees no such thing; shows him it’s nothing but fees, fraud, horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that’s a painful change—sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but disagreeable.
I
can’t do it. I haven’t got the ruled account-book, I have none of the tax-gathering elements in my
composition, I am not at all respectable, and I don’t want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it is!”

It was idle to say more; so I proposed that we should join Ada and Richard, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr. Skimpole in despair. He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning and whimsically described the family pictures as we walked. There were such portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead and gone, he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their hands. They tended their flocks severely in buckram and powder, and put their sticking-plaster patches on to terrify commoners, as the chiefs of some other tribes put on their war-paint. There was a Sir Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke, flashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort, all in full action between his horse’s two hind legs: showing, he supposed, how little a Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race he represented, as having evidently been, in life, what he called “stuffed people,”—a large collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on their various twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from animation, and always in glass cases.

I was not so easy now, during any reference to the name, but that I felt it a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surprise, hurried away to meet a stranger, whom he first descried coming slowly towards us.

“Dear me!” said Mr. Skimpole. “Vholes!”

We asked if that were a friend of Richard’s?

“Friend and legal adviser,” said Mr. Skimpole. “Now, my dear Miss Summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and respectability, all united—if you want an exemplary man—Vholes is
the
man.”

We had not known, we said, that Richard was assisted by any gentleman of that name.

“When he emerged from legal infancy,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “he parted from our conventional friend Kenge, and took up, I believe, with Vholes. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to Vholes.”

“Had you known him long?” asked Ada.

“Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance with him which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession. He had done something or other, in a very agreeable, civil manner—taken proceedings, I think, is the expression—which ended in the proceeding of his taking
me
. Somebody was so good as to step in and pay the money—something and fourpence was the amount; I forget the pounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence, because it struck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe anybody fourpence—and after that, I brought them together. Vholes asked me for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of it,” he looks inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the discovery, “Vholes bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something, and called it commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do you know, I think it
must
have been a five-pound note!”

His further consideration of the point was prevented by Richard’s coming back to us in an excited state, and hastily representing Mr. Vholes—a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin, about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so remarkable in him as a lifeless manner, and a slow fixed way he had of looking at Richard.

“I hope I don’t disturb you, ladies,” said Mr. Vholes; and now I observed that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of speaking. “I arranged with Mr. Carstone that he should always know when his cause was in the Chancellor’s paper, and being informed by one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather unexpectedly, in the paper for tomorrow, I put myself into the coach early this morning and came down to confer with him.”

“Yes,” said Richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and me, “we don’t do these things in the old slow way, now. We spin along, now! Mr. Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the post town in, and catch the mail tonight, and go up by it!”

“Anything you please, sir,” returned Mr. Vholes. “I am quite at your service.”

“Let me see,” said Richard, looking at his watch. “If I run down to the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or a chaise, or whatever’s to be got, we shall have an hour then before starting. I’ll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Esther take care of Mr. Vholes when I am gone?”