The day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we
went westward. We went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air, wondering
more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy of the shops, the
great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the pleasanter weather seemed to
have brought out like many-coloured flowers. By and by we began to leave the
wonderful city and to proceed through suburbs which, of themselves, would have
made a pretty large town in my eyes; and at last we got into a real country road
again, with windmills, rick-yards, milestones, farmers' waggons, scents of old
hay, swinging signs, and horse troughs: trees, fields, and hedge-rows. It was
delightful to see the green landscape before us and the immense metropolis
behind; and when a waggon with a train of beautiful horses, furnished with red
trappings and clear-sounding bells, came by us with its music, I believe we
could all three have sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around.
"The whole road has been reminding me of my name-sake Whittington," said
Richard, "and that waggon is the finishing touch. Halloa! What's the matter?"
We had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. Its music changed as the
horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except when a horse
tossed his head or shook himself and sprinkled off a little shower of
bell-ringing.
"Our postilion is looking after the waggoner," said Richard, "and the
waggoner is coming back after us. Good day, friend!" The waggoner was at our
coach-door. "Why, here's an extraordinary thing!" added Richard, looking closely
at the man. "He has got your name, Ada, in his hat!"
He had all our names in his hat. Tucked within the band were three small
notes--one addressed to Ada, one to Richard, one to me. These the waggoner
delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name aloud first. In answer to
Richard's inquiry from whom they came, he briefly answered, "Master, sir, if you
please"; and putting on his hat again (which was like a soft bowl), cracked his
whip, re-awakened his music, and went melodiously away.
"Is that Mr. Jarndyce's waggon?" said Richard, calling to our post- boy.
"Yes, sir," he replied. "Going to London."
We opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of the other and contained these
words in a solid, plain hand.
"I look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily and without constraint on
either side. I therefore have to propose that we meet as old friends and take
the past for granted. It will be a relief to you possibly, and to me certainly,
and so my love to you.
John Jarndyce"
I had perhaps less reason to be surprised than either of my companions,
having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one who had been my
benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so many years. I had not
considered how I could thank him, my gratitude lying too deep in my heart for
that; but I now began to consider how I could meet him without thanking him, and
felt it would be very difficult indeed.
The notes revived in Richard and Ada a general impression that they both had,
without quite knowing how they came by it, that their cousin Jarndyce could
never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he performed and that sooner than
receive any he would resort to the most singular expedients and evasions or
would even run away. Ada dimly remembered to have heard her mother tell, when
she was a very little child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon
generosity and that on her going to his house to thank him, he happened to see
her through a window coming to the door, and immediately escaped by the back
gate, and was not heard of for three months. This discourse led to a great deal
more on the same theme, and indeed it lasted us all day, and we talked of
scarcely anything else. If we did by any chance diverge into another subject, we
soon returned to this, and wondered what the house would be like, and when we
should get there, and whether we should see Mr. Jarndyce as soon as we arrived
or after a delay, and what he would say to us, and what we should say to him.
All of which we wondered about, over and over again.
The roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was generally good,
so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked it so well that we
prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got to the top. At Barnet there
were other horses waiting for us, but as they had only just been fed, we had to
wait for them too, and got a long fresh walk over a common and an old battle-
field before the carriage came up. These delays so protracted the journey that
the short day was spent and the long night had closed in before we came to St.
Albans, near to which town Bleak House was, we knew.
By that time we were so anxious and nervous that even Richard confessed, as
we rattled over the stones of the old street, to feeling an irrational desire to
drive back again. As to Ada and me, whom he had wrapped up with great care, the
night being sharp and frosty, we trembled from head to foot. When we turned out
of the town, round a corner, and Richard told us that the post-boy, who had for
a long time sympathized with our heightened expectation, was looking back and
nodding, we both stood up in the carriage (Richard holding Ada lest she should
be jolted down) and gazed round upon the open country and the starlight night
for our destination. There was a light sparkling on the top of a hill before us,
and the driver, pointing to it with his whip and crying, "That's Bleak House!"
put his horses into a canter and took us forward at such a rate, uphill though
it was, that the wheels sent the road drift flying about our heads like spray
from a water-mill. Presently we lost the light, presently saw it, presently lost
it, presently saw it, and turned into an avenue of trees and cantered up towards
where it was beaming brightly. It was in a window of what seemed to be an
old-fashioned house with three peaks in the roof in front and a circular sweep
leading to the porch. A bell was rung as we drew up, and amidst the sound of its
deep voice in the still air, and the distant barking of some dogs, and a gush of
light from the opened door, and the smoking and steaming of the heated horses,
and the quickened beating of our own hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable
confusion.
"Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome. I rejoice to see you! Rick,
if I had a hand to spare at present, I would give it you!"
The gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable voice had
one of his arms round Ada's waist and the other round mine, and kissed us both
in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall into a ruddy little room, all in
a glow with a blazing fire. Here he kissed us again, and opening his arms, made
us sit down side by side on a sofa ready drawn out near the hearth. I felt that
if we had been at all demonstrative, he would have run away in a moment.
"Now, Rick!" said he. "I have a hand at liberty. A word in earnest is as good
as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you. You are at home. Warm yourself!"
Richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of respect and
frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that rather alarmed me, I
was so afraid of Mr. Jarndyce's suddenly disappearing), "You are very kind, sir!
We are very much obliged to you!" laid aside his hat and coat and came up to the
fire.
"And how did you like the ride? And how did you like Mrs. Jellyby, my dear?"
said Mr. Jarndyce to Ada.
While Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glanced (I need not say with how
much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively, quick face, full of
change and motion; and his hair was a silvered iron-grey. I took him to be
nearer sixty than fifty, but he was upright, hearty, and robust. From the moment
of his first speaking to us his voice had connected itself with an association
in my mind that I could not define; but now, all at once, a something sudden in
his manner and a pleasant expression in his eyes recalled the gentleman in the
stagecoach six years ago on the memorable day of my journey to Reading. I was
certain it was he. I never was so frightened in my life as when I made the
discovery, for he caught my glance, and appearing to read my thoughts, gave such
a look at the door that I thought we had lost him.
However, I am happy to say he remained where he was, and asked me what I
thought of Mrs. Jellyby.
"She exerts herself very much for Africa, sir," I said.
"Nobly!" returned Mr. Jarndyce. "But you answer like Ada." Whom I had not
heard. "You all think something else, I see."
"We rather thought," said I, glancing at Richard and Ada, who entreated me
with their eyes to speak, "that perhaps she was a little unmindful of her home."
"Floored!" cried Mr. Jarndyce.
I was rather alarmed again.
"Well! I want to know your real thoughts, my dear. I may have sent you there
on purpose."
"We thought that, perhaps," said I, hesitating, "it is right to begin with
the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are overlooked and
neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted for them."
"The little Jellybys," said Richard, coming to my relief, "are really--I
can't help expressing myself strongly, sir--in a devil of a state."
"She means well," said Mr. Jarndyce hastily. "The wind's in the east."
"It was in the north, sir, as we came down," observed Richard.
"My dear Rick," said Mr. Jarndyce, poking the fire, "I'll take an oath it's
either in the east or going to be. I am always conscious of an uncomfortable
sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the east."
"Rheumatism, sir?" said Richard.
"I dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is. And so the little Jell --I had my
doubts about 'em--are in a--oh, Lord, yes, it's easterly!" said Mr. Jarndyce.
He had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering these
broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing his hair with the
other, with a good-natured vexation at once so whimsical and so lovable that I
am sure we were more delighted with him than we could possibly have expressed in
any words. He gave an arm to Ada and an arm to me, and bidding Richard bring a
candle, was leading the way out when he suddenly turned us all back again.
"Those little Jellybys. Couldn't you--didn't you--now, if it had rained
sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything of that sort!" said
Mr. Jarndyce.
"Oh, cousin--" Ada hastily began.
"Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin John, perhaps, is better."
"Then, cousin John--" Ada laughingly began again.
"Ha, ha! Very good indeed!" said Mr. Jarndyce with great enjoyment. "Sounds
uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?"
"It did better than that. It rained Esther."
"Aye?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "What did Esther do?"
"Why, cousin John," said Ada, clasping her hands upon his arm and shaking her
head at me across him--for I wanted her to be quiet-- "Esther was their friend
directly. Esther nursed them, coaxed them to sleep, washed and dressed them,
told them stories, kept them quiet, bought them keepsakes"--My dear girl! I had
only gone out with Peepy after he was found and given him a little, tiny
horse!-- "and, cousin John, she softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so much
and was so thoughtful for me and so amiable! No, no, I won't be contradicted,
Esther dear! You know, you know, it's true!"
The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin John and kissed me, and
then looking up in his face, boldly said, "At all events, cousin John, I WILL
thank you for the companion you have given me." I felt as if she challenged him
to run away. But he didn't.
"Where did you say the wind was, Rick?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
"In the north as we came down, sir."
"You are right. There's no east in it. A mistake of mine. Come, girls, come
and see your home!"
It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and down
steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more rooms when you
think you have seen all there are, and where there is a bountiful provision of
little halls and passages, and where you find still older cottage-rooms in
unexpected places with lattice windows and green growth pressing through them.
Mine, which we entered first, was of this kind, with an up-and-down roof that
had more corners in it than I ever counted afterwards and a chimney (there was a
wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with pure white tiles, in every one of
which a bright miniature of the fire was blazing. Out of this room, you went
down two steps into a charming little sitting-room looking down upon a
flower-garden, which room was henceforth to belong to Ada and me. Out of this
you went up three steps into Ada's bedroom, which had a fine broad window
commanding a beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying underneath
the stars), to which there was a hollow window-seat, in which, with a
spring-lock, three dear Adas might have been lost at once. Out of this room you
passed into a little gallery, with which the other best rooms (only two)
communicated, and so, by a little staircase of shallow steps with a number of
corner stairs in it, considering its length, down into the hall. But if instead
of going out at Ada's door you came back into my room, and went out at the door
by which you had entered it, and turned up a few crooked steps that branched off
in an unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages, with
mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native Hindu chair, which was
also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in every form something between a
bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, and had been brought from India nobody
knew by whom or when. From these you came on Richard's room, which was part
library, part sitting- room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable
compound of many rooms. Out of that you went straight, with a little interval of
passage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce slept, all the year round, with
his window open, his bedstead without any furniture standing in the middle of
the floor for more air, and his cold bath gaping for him in a smaller room
adjoining. Out of that you came into another passage, where there were
back-stairs and where you could hear the horses being rubbed down outside the
stable and being told to "Hold up" and "Get over," as they slipped about very
much on the uneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another door (every
room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by half-a-dozen
steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back there or had ever got out of
it.
The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as
pleasantly irregular. Ada's sleeping-room was all flowers--in chintz and paper,
in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff courtly chairs which
stood, each attended by a little page of a stool for greater state, on either
side of the fire-place. Our sitting-room was green and had framed and glazed
upon the walls numbers of surprising and surprised birds, staring out of
pictures at a real trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been
served with gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of
preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists. In my room there were
oval engravings of the months--ladies haymaking in short waists and large hats
tied under the chin, for June; smooth-legged noblemen pointing with cocked-hats
to village steeples, for October. Half-length portraits in crayons abounded all
through the house, but were so dispersed that I found the brother of a youthful
officer of mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young
bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As substitutes, I had
four angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a complacent gentleman to heaven, in
festoons, with some difficulty; and a composition in needlework representing
fruit, a kettle, and an alphabet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to the
chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to the pincushions and scent-bottles
on the dressing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. They agreed in
nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of the whitest linen, and
their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a drawer, small or large,
rendered it possible, of quantities of rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such,
with its illuminated windows, softened here and there by shadows of curtains,
shining out upon the starlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort;
with its hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with the
face of its generous master brightening everything we saw; and just wind enough
without to sound a low accompaniment to everything we heard, were our first
impressions of Bleak House.
"I am glad you like it," said Mr. Jarndyce when he had brought us round again
to Ada's sitting-room. "It makes no pretensions, but it is a comfortable little
place, I hope, and will be more so with such bright young looks in it. You have
barely half an hour before dinner. There's no one here but the finest creature
upon earth--a child."
"More children, Esther!" said Ada.
"I don't mean literally a child," pursued Mr. Jarndyce; "not a child in
years. He is grown up--he is at least as old as I am--but in simplicity, and
freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless inaptitude for all worldly
affairs, he is a perfect child."
We felt that he must be very interesting.
"He knows Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Jarndyce. "He is a musical man, an amateur,
but might have been a professional. He is an artist too, an amateur, but might
have been a professional. He is a man of attainments and of captivating manners.
He has been unfortunate in his affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and
unfortunate in his family; but he don't care--he's a child!"
"Did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?" inquired Richard.
"Yes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But he has
never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to look after HIM. He
is a child, you know!" said Mr. Jarndyce.
"And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?" inquired
Richard.
"Why, just as you may suppose," said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance suddenly
falling. "It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but
dragged up. Harold Skimpole's children have tumbled up somehow or other. The
wind's getting round again, I am afraid. I feel it rather!"
Richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night.
"It IS exposed," said Mr. Jarndyce. "No doubt that's the cause. Bleak House
has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come along!"
Our luggage having arrived and being all at hand, I was dressed in a few
minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away when a maid (not the one in
attendance upon Ada, but another, whom I had not seen) brought a basket into my
room with two bunches of keys in it, all labelled.
"For you, miss, if you please," said she.
"For me?" said I.
"The housekeeping keys, miss."
I showed my surprise, for she added with some little surprise on her own
part, "I was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss. Miss Summerson,
if I don't deceive myself?"
"Yes," said I. "That is my name."
"The large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the cellars,
miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint tomorrow morning, I was to show you
the presses and things they belong to."
I said I would be ready at half-past six, and after she was gone, stood
looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust. Ada found me
thus and had such a delightful confidence in me when I showed her the keys and
told her about them that it would have been insensibility and ingratitude not to
feel encouraged. I knew, to be sure, that it was the dear girl's kindness, but I
liked to be so pleasantly cheated.
When we went downstairs, we were presented to Mr. Skimpole, who was standing
before the fire telling Richard how fond he used to be, in his school-time, of
football. He was a little bright creature with a rather large head, but a
delicate face and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm in him. All he
said was so free from effort and spontaneous and was said with such a
captivating gaiety that it was fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more
slender figure than Mr. Jarndyce and having a richer complexion, with browner
hair, he looked younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance in all respects of a
damaged young man than a well- preserved elderly one. There was an easy
negligence in his manner and even in his dress (his hair carelessly disposed,
and his neckkerchief loose and flowing, as I have seen artists paint their own
portraits) which I could not separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had
undergone some unique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all
like the manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the usual
road of years, cares, and experiences.
I gathered from the conversation that Mr. Skimpole had been educated for the
medical profession and had once lived, in his professional capacity, in the
household of a German prince. He told us, however, that as he had always been a
mere child in point of weights and measures and had never known anything about
them (except that they disgusted him), he had never been able to prescribe with
the requisite accuracy of detail. In fact, he said, he had no head for detail.
And he told us, with great humour, that when he was wanted to bleed the prince
or physic any of his people, he was generally found lying on his back in bed,
reading the newspapers or making fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn't come.
The prince, at last, objecting to this, "in which," said Mr. Skimpole, in the
frankest manner, "he was perfectly right," the engagement terminated, and Mr.
Skimpole having (as he added with delightful gaiety) "nothing to live upon but
love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks." His
good friend Jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him, in
quicker or slower succession, to several openings in life, but to no purpose,
for he must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was that
he had no idea of time, the other that he had no idea of money. In consequence
of which he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and
never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and here he
was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of making fancy-sketches
with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of art. All he asked of society
was to let him live. THAT wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the papers,
conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few
sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a
mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to the world,
"Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves; put
pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade,
any object you prefer; only--let Harold Skimpole live!"
All this and a great deal more he told us, not only with the utmost
brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious candour-- speaking of
himself as if he were not at all his own affair, as if Skimpole were a third
person, as if he knew that Skimpole had his singularities but still had his
claims too, which were the general business of the community and must not be
slighted. He was quite enchanting. If I felt at all confused at that early time
in endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything I had thought about
the duties and accountabilities of life (which I am far from sure of), I was
confused by not exactly understanding why he was free of them. That he WAS free
of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so very clear about it himself.
"I covet nothing," said Mr. Skimpole in the same light way. "Possession is
nothing to me. Here is my friend Jarndyce's excellent house. I feel obliged to
him for possessing it. I can sketch it and alter it. I can set it to music. When
I am here, I have sufficient possession of it and have neither trouble, cost,
nor responsibility. My steward's name, in short, is Jarndyce, and he can't cheat
me. We have been mentioning Mrs. Jellyby. There is a bright-eyed woman, of a
strong will and immense power of business detail, who throws herself into
objects with surprising ardour! I don't regret that I have not a strong will and
an immense power of business detail to throw myself into objects with surprising
ardour. I can admire her without envy. I can sympathize with the objects. I can
dream of them. I can lie down on the grass--in fine weather--and float along an
African river, embracing all the natives I meet, as sensible of the deep silence
and sketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if I were
there. I don't know that it's of any direct use my doing so, but it's all I can
do, and I do it thoroughly. Then, for heaven's sake, having Harold Skimpole, a
confiding child, petitioning you, the world, an agglomeration of practical
people of business habits, to let him live and admire the human family, do it
somehow or other, like good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking-horse!"
It was plain enough that Mr. Jarndyce had not been neglectful of the
adjuration. Mr. Skimpole's general position there would have rendered it so
without the addition of what he presently said.
"It's only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy," said Mr. Skimpole,
addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. "I envy you your power
of doing what you do. It is what I should revel in myself. I don't feel any
vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if YOU ought to be grateful to ME for
giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like
it. For anything I can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the
purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a
benefactor to you by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my
little perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly
affairs when it leads to such pleasant consequences? I don't regret it
therefore."
Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what they
expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr. Jarndyce than this. I had
often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether it was really singular, or
only singular to me, that he, who was probably the most grateful of mankind upon
the least occasion, should so desire to escape the gratitude of others.
We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging qualities
of Ada and Richard that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the first time, should he
so unreserved and should lay himself out to be so exquisitely agreeable. They
(and especially Richard) were naturally pleased; for similar reasons, and
considered it no common privilege to be so freely confided in by such an
attractive man. The more we listened, the more gaily Mr. Skimpole talked. And
what with his fine hilarious manner and his engaging candour and his genial way
of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, "I am a child,
you know! You are designing people compared with me" (he really made me consider
myself in that light) "but I am gay and innocent; forget your worldly arts and
play with me!" the effect was absolutely dazzling.
He was so full of feeling too and had such a delicate sentiment for what was
beautiful or tender that he could have won a heart by that alone. In the
evening, when I was preparing to make tea and Ada was touching the piano in the
adjoining room and softly humming a tune to her cousin Richard, which they had
happened to mention, he came and sat down on the sofa near me and so spoke of
Ada that I almost loved him.
"She is like the morning," he said. "With that golden hair, those blue eyes,
and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer morning. The birds
here will mistake her for it. We will not call such a lovely young creature as
that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is the child of the universe."
Mr. Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us with his hands behind him and an
attentive smile upon his face.
"The universe," he observed, "makes rather an indifferent parent, I am
afraid."
"Oh! I don't know!" cried Mr. Skimpole buoyantly.
"I think I do know," said Mr. Jarndyce.
"Well!" cried Mr. Skimpole. "You know the world (which in your sense is the
universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your way. But if I had
mine," glancing at the cousins, "there should be no brambles of sordid realities
in such a path as that. It should be strewn with roses; it should lie through
bowers, where there was no spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age
or change should never wither it. The base word money should never be breathed
near it!"
Mr. Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been really a
child, and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment, glanced at the young
cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a benignant expression in it which I
often (how often!) saw again, which has long been engraven on my heart. The room
in which they were, communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted
by the fire. Ada sat at the piano; Richard stood beside her, bending down. Upon
the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by strange forms, not
without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady fire, though reflecting from
motionless objects. Ada touched the notes so softly and sang so low that the
wind, sighing away to the distant hills, was as audible as the music. The
mystery of the future and the little clue afforded to it by the voice of the
present seemed expressed in the whole picture.
But it is not to recall this fancy, well as I remember it, that I recall the
scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of the contrast in respect of meaning
and intention between the silent look directed that way and the flow of words
that had preceded it. Secondly, though Mr. Jarndyce's glance as he withdrew it
rested for but a moment on me, I felt as if in that moment he confided to me--
and knew that he confided to me and that I received the confidence --his hope
that Ada and Richard might one day enter on a dearer relationship.
Mr. Skimpole could play on the piano and the violoncello, and he was a
composer--had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it--and played what
he composed with taste. After tea we had quite a little concert, in which
Richard--who was enthralled by Ada's singing and told me that she seemed to know
all the songs that ever were written--and Mr. Jarndyce, and I were the audience.
After a little while I missed first Mr. Skimpole and afterwards Richard, and
while I was thinking how could Richard stay away so long and lose so much, the
maid who had given me the keys looked in at the door, saying, "If you please,
miss, could you spare a minute?"
When I was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her hands,
"Oh, if you please, miss, Mr. Carstone says would you come upstairs to Mr.
Skimpole's room. He has been took, miss!"
"Took?" said I.
"Took, miss. Sudden," said the maid.
I was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind, but of
course I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one and collected myself, as
I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to consider what were the best
remedies to be applied if it should prove to be a fit. She threw open a door and
I went into a chamber, where, to my unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr.
Skimpole stretched upon the bed or prostrate on the floor, I found him standing
before the fire smiling at Richard, while Richard, with a face of great
embarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa, in a white great-coat, with
smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, which he was wiping smoother and
making less of with a pocket-handkerchief.
"Miss Summerson," said Richard hurriedly, "I am glad you are come. You will
be able to advise us. Our friend Mr. Skimpole--don't be alarmed!--is arrested
for debt."
"And really, my dear Miss Summerson," said Mr. Skimpole with his agreeable
candour, "I never was in a situation in which that excellent sense and quiet
habit of method and usefulness, which anybody must observe in you who has the
happiness of being a quarter of an hour in your society, was more needed."
The person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave such a
very loud snort that he startled me.
"Are you arrested for much, sir?" I inquired of Mr. Skimpole.
"My dear Miss Summerson," said he, shaking his head pleasantly, "I don't
know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and halfpence, I think, were mentioned."
"It's twenty-four pound, sixteen, and sevenpence ha'penny," observed the
stranger. "That's wot it is."
"And it sounds--somehow it sounds," said Mr. Skimpole, "like a small sum?"
The strange man said nothing but made another snort. It was such a powerful
one that it seemed quite to lift him out of his seat.
"Mr. Skimpole," said Richard to me, "has a delicacy in applying to my cousin
Jarndyce because he has lately--I think, sir, I understood you that you had
lately--"
"Oh, yes!" returned Mr. Skimpole, smiling. "Though I forgot how much it was
and when it was. Jarndyce would readily do it again, but I have the epicure-like
feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help, that I would rather," and he
looked at Richard and me, "develop generosity in a new soil and in a new form of
flower."
"What do you think will be best, Miss Summerson?" said Richard, aside.
I ventured to inquire, generally, before replying, what would happen if the
money were not produced.
"Jail," said the strange man, coolly putting his handkerchief into his hat,
which was on the floor at his feet. "Or Coavinses."
"May I ask, sir, what is--"
"Coavinses?" said the strange man. "A 'ouse."
Richard and I looked at one another again. It was a most singular thing that
the arrest was our embarrassment and not Mr. Skimpole's. He observed us with a
genial interest, but there seemed, if I may venture on such a contradiction,
nothing selfish in it. He had entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and
it had become ours.
"I thought," he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, "that being
parties in a Chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large amount of
property, Mr. Richard or his beautiful cousin, or both, could sign something, or
make over something, or give some sort of undertaking, or pledge, or bond? I
don't know what the business name of it may be, but I suppose there is some
instrument within their power that would settle this?"
"Not a bit on it," said the strange man.
"Really?" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That seems odd, now, to one who is no judge
of these things!"
"Odd or even," said the stranger gruffly, "I tell you, not a bit on it!"
"Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!" Mr. Skimpole gently
reasoned with him as he made a little drawing of his head on the fly-leaf of a
book. "Don't be ruffled by your occupation. We can separate you from your
office; we can separate the individual from the pursuit. We are not so
prejudiced as to suppose that in private life you are otherwise than a very
estimable man, with a great deal of poetry in your nature, of which you may not
be conscious.
The stranger only answered with another violent snort, whether in acceptance
of the poetry-tribute or in disdainful rejection of it, he did not express to
me.
"Now, my dear Miss Summerson, and my dear Mr. Richard," said Mr. Skimpole
gaily, innocently, and confidingly as he looked at his drawing with his head on
one side, "here you see me utterly incapable of helping myself, and entirely in
your hands! I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely
not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!"
"My dear Miss Summerson," said Richard in a whisper, "I have ten pounds that
I received from Mr. Kenge. I must try what that will do."
I possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, which I had saved from my
quarterly allowance during several years. I had always thought that some
accident might happen which would throw me suddenly, without any relation or any
property, on the world and had always tried to keep some little money by me that
I might not be quite penniless. I told Richard of my having this little store
and having no present need of it, and I asked him delicately to inform Mr.
Skimpole, while I should be gone to fetch it, that we would have the pleasure of
paying his debt.
When I came back, Mr. Skimpole kissed my hand and seemed quite touched. Not
on his own account (I was again aware of that perplexing and extraordinary
contradiction), but on ours, as if personal considerations were impossible with
him and the contemplation of our happiness alone affected him. Richard, begging
me, for the greater grace of the transaction, as he said, to settle with
Coavinses (as Mr. Skimpole now jocularly called him), I counted out the money
and received the necessary acknowledgment. This, too, delighted Mr. Skimpole.
His compliments were so delicately administered that I blushed less than I
might have done and settled with the stranger in the white coat without making
any mistakes. He put the money in his pocket and shortly said, "Well, then, I'll
wish you a good evening, miss.
"My friend," said Mr. Skimpole, standing with his back to the fire after
giving up the sketch when it was half finished, "I should like to ask you
something, without offence."
I think the reply was, "Cut away, then!"
"Did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this errand?"
said Mr. Skimpole.
"Know'd it yes'day aft'noon at tea-time," said Coavinses.
"It didn't affect your appetite? Didn't make you at all uneasy?"
"Not a hit," said Coavinses. "I know'd if you wos missed to-day, you wouldn't
be missed to-morrow. A day makes no such odds."
"But when you came down here," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "it was a fine day.
The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights and shadows were passing
across the fields, the birds were singing."
"Nobody said they warn't, in MY hearing," returned Coavinses.
"No," observed Mr. Skimpole. "But what did you think upon the road?"
"Wot do you mean?" growled Coavinses with an appearance of strong resentment.
"Think! I've got enough to do, and little enough to get for it without thinking.
Thinking!" (with profound contempt).
"Then you didn't think, at all events," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "to this
effect: 'Harold Skimpole loves to see the sun shine, loves to hear the wind
blow, loves to watch the changing lights and shadows, loves to hear the birds,
those choristers in Nature's great cathedral. And does it seem to me that I am
about to deprive Harold Skimpole of his share in such possessions, which are his
only birthright!' You thought nothing to that effect?"
"I--certainly--did--NOT," said Coavinses, whose doggedness in utterly
renouncing the idea was of that intense kind that he could only give adequate
expression to it by putting a long interval between each word, and accompanying
the last with a jerk that might have dislocated his neck.
"Very odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of business!"
said Mr. Skimpole thoughtfully. "Thank you, my friend. Good night."
As our absence had been long enough already to seem strange downstairs, I
returned at once and found Ada sitting at work by the fireside talking to her
cousin John. Mr. Skimpole presently appeared, and Richard shortly after him. I
was sufficiently engaged during the remainder of the evening in taking my first
lesson in backgammon from Mr. Jarndyce, who was very fond of the game and from
whom I wished of course to learn it as quickly as I could in order that I might
be of the very small use of being able to play when he had no better adversary.
But I thought, occasionally, when Mr. Skimpole played some fragments of his own
compositions or when, both at the piano and the violoncello, and at our table,
he preserved with an absence of all effort his delightful spirits and his easy
flow of conversation, that Richard and I seemed to retain the transferred
impression of having been arrested since dinner and that it was very curious
altogether.
It was late before we separated, for when Ada was going at eleven o'clock,
Mr. Skimpole went to the piano and rattled hilariously that the best of all ways
to lengthen our days was to steal a few hours from night, my dear! It was past
twelve before he took his candle and his radiant face out of the room, and I
think he might have kept us there, if he had seen fit, until daybreak. Ada and
Richard were lingering for a few moments by the fire, wondering whether Mrs.
Jellyby had yet finished her dictation for the day, when Mr. Jarndyce, who had
been out of the room, returned.
"Oh, dear me, what's this, what's this!" he said, rubbing his head and
walking about with his good-humoured vexation. "What's this they tell me? Rick,
my boy, Esther, my dear, what have you been doing? Why did you do it? How could
you do it? How much apiece was it? The wind's round again. I feel it all over
me!"
We neither of us quite knew what to answer.
"Come, Rick, come! I must settle this before I sleep. How much are you out of
pocket? You two made the money up, you know! Why did you? How could you? Oh,
Lord, yes, it's due east--must be!"
"Really, sir," said Richard, "I don't think it would be honourable in me to
tell you. Mr. Skimpole relied upon us--"
"Lord bless you, my dear boy! He relies upon everybody!" said Mr. Jarndyce,
giving his head a great rub and stopping short.
"Indeed, sir?"
"Everybody! And he'll be in the same scrape again next week!" said Mr.
Jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, with a candle in his hand that had gone
out. "He's always in the same scrape. He was born in the same scrape. I verily
believe that the announcement in the newspapers when his mother was confined was
'On Tuesday last, at her residence in Botheration Buildings, Mrs. Skimpole of a
son in difficulties.'"
Richard laughed heartily but added, "Still, sir, I don't want to shake his
confidence or to break his confidence, and if I submit to your better knowledge
again, that I ought to keep his secret, I hope you will consider before you
press me any more. Of course, if you do press me, sir, I shall know I am wrong
and will tell you."
"Well!" cried Mr. Jarndyce, stopping again, and making several absent
endeavours to put his candlestick in his pocket. "I--here! Take it 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. Jarodyce, "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 any one, 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 weather-cock. 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 any one. 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.
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