The Solitary House (97 page)

Ada loved him too well, to mistrust him much in anything he said or did, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of the east wind and read more than usual in the Growlery, preserved a strict silence on the subject. So, I thought, one day when I went to London to meet Caddy Jellyby, at her solicitation, I would ask Richard to 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?”

“O 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.

“O 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.

“O 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?”

“O, 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?”

“O, 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?”

“O you tiresome thing!” said Caddy, laughing, with her pretty face on fire. “My darling child, if you insist upon it!—This has caused him weeks of uneasiness, and has made him delay, from day to day, in a very anxious manner. At last he said to me, ‘Caddy, if Miss Summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be prevailed upon to be present when I broke the subject, I think I could do it.’ So I promised I would ask you. And I made up my mind, besides,” said Caddy, looking at me hopefully but timidly, “that if you consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me to Ma. This is what I meant, when I said in my note that I had a great favour and a great assistance to beg of you. And if you thought you could grant it, Esther, we should both be very grateful.”

“Let me see, Caddy,” said I, pretending to consider. “Really I think I could do a greater thing than that, if the need were pressing. I am at your service and the darling child’s, my dear, whenever you like.”

Caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine; being, I believe, as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as any tender heart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two round the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of gloves, and made herself as resplendent as possible that she might do no avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we went to Newman Street direct.

Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not very hopeful pupil—a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep voice, and an inanimate dissatisfied mamma—whose case was certainly not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as discordantly as possible; and when the little girl had changed her shoes, and had had her white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was taken away. After a few words of preparation, we then went in search of Mr. Turveydrop; whom we found, grouped with his hat and gloves, as a model of Deportment, on the sofa in his private apartment—the only comfortable room in the house. He appeared to have dressed at his leisure, in the intervals of a light collation;
and his dressing-case, brushes, and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about.

“Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby.”

“Charmed! Enchanted!” said Mr. Turveydrop, rising with his high-shouldered bow. “Permit me!” handing chairs. “Be seated!” kissing the tips of his left fingers. “Overjoyed!” shutting his eyes and rolling. “My little retreat is made a paradise.” Recomposing himself on the sofa, like the second gentleman in Europe.

“Again you find us, Miss Summerson,” said he, “using our little arts to polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us, and rewards us, by the condescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these times (and we have made an awfully degenerating business of it since the days of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent—my patron, if I may presume to say so) to experience that deportment is not wholly trodden under foot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in the smile of Beauty, my dear madam.”

I said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a pinch of snuff.

“My dear son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “you have four schools this afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich.”

“Thank you, father,” returned Prince, “I will be sure to be punctual. My dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for what I am going to say?”

“Good Heaven!” exclaimed the model, pale and aghast, as Prince and Caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. “What is this? Is this lunacy! Or what is this?”