While we were in London Mr. Jarndyce was constantly beset by
the crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much
astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our arrival, was in
all such excitements. He seemed to project those two shining knobs of temples of
his into everything that went on and to brush his hair farther and farther back,
until the very roots were almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable
philanthropy. All objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly
ready for anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power
seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit for any length
of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in the light of any
order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly swallowed up in admiration of
Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be the absorbing object of his devotion. I
soon discovered my mistake and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to
a whole procession of people.
Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and with her,
Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to us; and just as
he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew Mrs. Pardiggle out. Mrs. Pardiggle wrote
a letter of introduction to my guardian in behalf of her eloquent friend Mr.
Gusher. With Mr. Gusher appeared Mr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby
gentleman with a moist surface and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face
that they seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at
first sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr. Quale asked Ada
and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature--which he certainly
was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale meant in intellectual beauty-- and
whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of brow. In short, we
heard of a great many missions of various sorts among this set of people, but
nothing respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale's
mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission and that it was the
most popular mission of all.
Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his heart and
his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but that he felt it to be
too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms,
where charity was assumed as a regular uniform by loud professors and
speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in
action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one
another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from
failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise
them up a little way when they were down, he plainly told us. When a testimonial
was originated to Mr. Quale by Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated
by Mr. Quale), and when Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject
to a meeting, including two charity schools of small boys and girls, who were
specially reminded of the widow's mite, and requested to come forward with
halfpence and be acceptable sacrifices, I think the wind was in the east for
three whole weeks.
I mention this because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole again. It seemed to me
that his off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness were a great
relief to my guardian, by contrast with such things, and were the more readily
believed in since to find one perfectly undesigning and candid man among many
opposites could not fail to give him pleasure. I should be sorry to imply that
Mr. Skimpole divined this and was politic; I really never understood him well
enough to know. What he was to my guardian, he certainly was to the rest of the
world.
He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we had seen
nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning in his usual agreeable way and
as full of pleasant spirits as ever.
Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were often
bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he was a man of
property. So he was, in a certain point of view--in his expansive intentions. He
had been enriching his medical attendant in the most lavish manner. He had
always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor,
"Now, my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you
attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money--in my expansive
intentions--if you only knew it!" And really (he said) he meant it to that
degree that he thought it much the same as doing it. If he had had those bits of
metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so much importance to put in the
doctor's hand, he would have put them in the doctor's hand. Not having them, he
substituted the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it--if his will
were genuine and real, which it was--it appeared to him that it was the same as
coin, and cancelled the obligation.
"It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money," said Mr.
Skimpole, "but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My butcher says to me
he wants that little bill. It's a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the
man's nature that he always calls it a 'little' bill--to make the payment appear
easy to both of us. I reply to the butcher, 'My good friend, if you knew it, you
are paid. You haven't had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You
are paid. I mean it.'"
"But, suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "he had meant the meat in the
bill, instead of providing it?"
"My dear Jarndyce," he returned, "you surprise me. You take the butcher's
position. A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very ground. Says he, 'Sir,
why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound?' 'Why did I eat spring
lamb at eighteen-pence a pound, my honest friend?' said I, naturally amazed by
the question. 'I like spring lamb!' This was so far convincing. 'Well, sir,'
says he, 'I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!' 'My good fellow,'
said I, 'pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that be? It was
impossible. You HAD got the lamb, and I have NOT got the money. You couldn't
really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean
the money without paying it!' He had not a word. There was an end of the
subject."
"Did he take no legal proceedings?" inquired my guardian.
"Yes, he took legal proceedings," said Mr. Skimpole. "But in that he was
influenced by passion, not by reason. Passion reminds me of Boythorn. He writes
me that you and the ladies have promised him a short visit at his bachelor-house
in Lincolnshire."
"He is a great favourite with my girls," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and I have
promised for them."
"Nature forgot to shade him off, I think," observed Mr. Skimpole to Ada and
me. "A little too boisterous--like the sea. A little too vehement--like a bull
who has made up his mind to consider every colour scarlet. But I grant a
sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!"
I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very highly of
one another, Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to many things and Mr.
Skimpole caring so little for anything. Besides which, I had noticed Mr.
Boythorn more than once on the point of breaking out into some strong opinion
when Mr. Skimpole was referred to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that
we had been greatly pleased with him.
"He has invited me," said Mr. Skimpole; "and if a child may trust himself in
such hands--which the present child is encouraged to do, with the united
tenderness of two angels to guard him--I shall go. He proposes to frank me down
and back again. I suppose it will cost money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or
something of that sort? By the by, Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses,
Miss Summerson?"
He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful, light-hearted
manner and without the least embarrassment.
"Oh, yes!" said I.
"Coavinses has been arrested by the Great Bailiff," said Mr. Skimpole. "He
will never do violence to the sunshine any more."
It quite shocked me to hear it, for I had already recalled with anything but
a serious association the image of the man sitting on the sofa that night wiping
his head.
"His successor informed me of it yesterday," said Mr. Skimpole. "His
successor is in my house now--in possession, I think he calls it. He came
yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birthday. I put it to him, 'This is
unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed daughter you wouldn't like
ME to come, uninvited, on HER birthday?' But he stayed."
Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched the piano
by which he was seated.
"And he told me," he said, playing little chords where I shall put full
stops, "The Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And that Coavinses'
profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses. Were at a considerable
disadvantage."
Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr. Skimpole
played the melody of one of Ada's favourite songs. Ada and I both looked at Mr.
Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing in his mind.
After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his head,
and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and stopped Mr.
Skimpole's playing. "I don't like this, Skimpole," he said thoughtfully.
Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up surprised.
"The man was necessary," pursued my guardian, walking backward and forward in
the very short space between the piano and the end of the room and rubbing his
hair up from the back of his head as if a high east wind had blown it into that
form. "If we make such men necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want
of worldly knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon
them. There was no harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like
to know more about this."
"Oh! Coavinses?" cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he meant.
"Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses' headquarters, and you can know what you
will."
Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal. "Come! We
will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way as soon as another!" We were
quickly ready and went out. Mr. Skimpole went with us and quite enjoyed the
expedition. It was so new and so refreshing, he said, for him to want Coavinses
instead of Coavinses wanting him!
He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was a house
with barred windows, which he called Coavinses' Castle. On our going into the
entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came out of a sort of office and
looked at us over a spiked wicket.
"Who did you want?" said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his chin.
"There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here," said Mr. Jarndyce,
"who is dead."
"Yes?" said the boy. "Well?"
"I want to know his name, if you please?"
"Name of Neckett," said the boy.
"And his address?"
"Bell Yard," said the boy. "Chandler's shop, left hand side, name of
Blinder."
"Was he--I don't know how to shape the question--" murmured my guardian,
"industrious?"
"Was Neckett?" said the boy. "Yes, wery much so. He was never tired of
watching. He'd set upon a post at a street corner eight or ten hours at a
stretch if he undertook to do it."
"He might have done worse," I heard my guardian soliloquize. "He might have
undertaken to do it and not done it. Thank you. That's all I want."
We left the boy, with his head on one side and his arms on the gate, fondling
and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln's Inn, where Mr. Skimpole, who
had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses, awaited us. Then we all went to Bell
Yard, a narrow alley at a very short distance. We soon found the chandler's
shop. In it was a good-natured-looking old woman with a dropsy, or an asthma, or
perhaps both.
"Neckett's children?" said she in reply to my inquiry. "Yes, Surely, miss.
Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the stairs." And she handed me
the key across the counter.
I glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she took it for granted that I
knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the children's door, I
came out without askmg any more questions and led the way up the dark stairs. We
went as quietly as we could, but four of us made some noise on the aged boards,
and when we came to the second story we found we had disturbed a man who was
standing there looking out of his room.
"Is it Gridley that's wanted?" he said, fixing his eyes on me with an angry
stare.
"No, sir," said I; "I am going higher up."
He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole, fixing the same
angry stare on each in succession as they passed and followed me. Mr. Jarndyce
gave him good day. "Good day!" he said abruptly and fiercely. He was a tall,
sallow man with a careworn head on which but little hair remained, a deeply
lined face, and prominent eyes. He had a combative look and a chafing, irritable
manner which, associated with his figure--still large and powerful, though
evidently in its decline--rather alarmed me. He had a pen in his hand, and in
the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I saw that it was covered with a
litter of papers.
Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at the door,
and a little shrill voice inside said, "We are locked in. Mrs. Blinder's got the
key!"
I applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. In a poor room with a
sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture was a mite of a boy, some
five or six years old, nursing and hushing a heavy child of eighteen months.
There was no fire, though the weather was cold; both children were wrapped in
some poor shawls and tippets as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm,
however, but that their noses looked red and pinched and their small figures
shrunken as the boy walked up and down nursing and hushing the child with its
head on his shoulder.
"Who has locked you up here alone?" we naturally asked.
"Charley," said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.
"Is Charley your brother?"
"No. She's my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley."
"Are there any more of you besides Charley?"
"Me," said the boy, "and Emma," patting the limp bonnet of the child he was
nursing. "And Charley."
"Where is Charley now?"
"Out a-washing," said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again and taking
the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to gaze at us at the
same time.
We were looking at one another and at these two children when there came into
the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-looking in
the face--pretty-faced too--wearing a womanly sort of bonnet much too large for
her and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white
and wrinkled with washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped
off her arms. But for this, she might have been a child playing at washing and
imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the truth.
She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had made all
the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very light, she was out of
breath and could not speak at first, as she stood panting, and wiping her arms,
and looking quietly at us.
"Oh, here's Charley!" said the boy.
The child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to be taken
by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of manner belonging to
the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us over the burden that clung to
her most affectionately.
"Is it possible," whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the little
creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy keeping close to her,
holding to her apron, "that this child works for the rest? Look at this! For
God's sake, look at this!"
It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two of them
relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet with an air of age
and steadiness that sat so strangely on the childish figure.
"Charley, Charley!" said my guardian. "How old are you?"
"Over thirteen, sir," replied the child.
"Oh! What a great age," said my guardian. "What a great age, Charley!"
I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half playfully
yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.
"And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?" said my guardian.
"Yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect
confidence, "since father died."
"And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley," said my guardian, turning his
face away for a moment, "how do you live?"
"Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work. I'm out washing to-day."
"God help you, Charley!" said my guardian. "You're not tall enough to reach
the tub!"
"In pattens I am, sir," she said quickly. "I've got a high pair as belonged
to mother."
"And when did mother die? Poor mother!"
"Mother died just after Emma was born," said the child, glancing at the face
upon her bosom. "Then father said I was to be as good a mother to her as I
could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home and did cleaning and nursing and
washing for a long time before I began to go out. And that's how I know how;
don't you see, sir?"
"And do you often go out?"
"As often as I can," said Charley, opening her eyes and smiling, "because of
earning sixpences and shillings!"
"And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?"
'To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said Charley. "Mrs. Blinder comes up
now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and perhaps I can run in
sometimes, and they can play you know, and Tom an't afraid of being locked up,
are you, Tom?"
'"No-o!" said Tom stoutly.
"When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and they
show up here quite bright--almost quite bright. Don't they, Tom?"
"Yes, Charley," said Tom, "almost quite bright."
"Then he's as good as gold," said the little creature--Oh, in such a
motherly, womanly way! "And when Emma's tired, he puts her to bed. And when he's
tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and light the candle and has
a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it with me. Don't you, Tom?"
"Oh, yes, Charley!" said Tom. "That I do!" And either in this glimpse of the
great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love for Charley, who was all in
all to him, he laid his face among the scanty folds of her frock and passed from
laughing into crying.
It was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed among these
children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father and their mother as
if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of taking courage, and by her
childish importance in being able to work, and by her bustling busy way. But
now, when Tom cried, although she sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and
did not by any movement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little
charges, I saw two silent tears fall down her face.
I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops, and the
blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the birds in little cages
belonging to the neighbours, when I found that Mrs. Blinder, from the shop
below, had come in (perhaps it had taken her all this time to get upstairs) and
was talking to my guardian.
"It's not much to forgive 'em the rent, sir," she said; "who could take it
from them!"
'"Well, well!" said my guardian to us two. "It is enough that the time will
come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and that forasmuch as she
did it unto the least of these--This child," he added after a few moments,
"could she possibly continue this?"
"Really, sir, I think she might," said Mrs. Blinder, getting her heavy breath
by painful degrees. "She's as handy as it's possible to be. Bless you, sir, the
way she tended them two children after the mother died was the talk of the yard!
And it was a wonder to see her with him after he was took ill, it really was!
'Mrs. Blinder,' he said to me the very last he spoke--he was lying there --'Mrs.
Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel sitting in this room
last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our Father!'"
"He had no other calling?" said my guardian.
"No, sir," returned Mrs. Blinder, "he was nothing but a follerers. When he
first came to lodge here, I didn't know what he was, and I confess that when I
found out I gave him notice. It wasn't liked in the yard. It wasn't approved by
the other lodgers. It is NOT a genteel calling," said Mrs. Blinder, "and most
people do object to it. Mr. Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good
lodger, though his temper has been hard tried."
"So you gave him notice?" said my guardian.
"So I gave him notice," said Mrs. Blinder. "But really when the time came,
and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was punctual and diligent;
he did what he had to do, sir," said Mrs. Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr.
Skimpole with her eye, "and it's something in this world even to do that."
"So you kept him after all?"
"Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could arrange it
with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its being liked or disliked
in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent gruff--but gave it. He was always
gruff with him, but he has been kind to the children since. A person is never
known till a person is proved."
"Have many people been kind to the children?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
"Upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said Mrs. Blinder; "but certainly not so
many as would have been if their father's calling had been different. Mr.
Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a little purse. Some neighbours
in the yard that had always joked and tapped their shoulders when he went by
came forward with a little subscription, and--in general--not so bad. Similarly
with Charlotte. Some people won't employ her because she was a follerer's child;
some people that do employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having her
to work for them, with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and perhaps pay her
less and put upon her more. But she's patienter than others would be, and is
clever too, and always willing, up to the full mark of her strength and over. So
I should say, in general, not so bad, sir, but might be better."
Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity of
recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it was fully
restored. Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak to us when his attention was
attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the Mr. Gridley who had been
mentioned and whom we had seen on our way up.
"I don't know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen," he said, as
if he resented our presence, "but you'll excuse my coming in. I don't come in to
stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom! Well, little one! How is it with us
all to-day?"
He bent over the group in a caressing way and clearly was regarded as a
friend by the children, though his face retained its stern character and his
manner to us was as rude as it could be. My guardian noticed it and respected
it.
"No one, surely, would come here to stare about him," he said mildly.
"May be so, sir, may be so," returned the other, taking Tom upon his knee and
waving him off impatiently. "I don't want to argue with ladies and gentlemen. I
have had enough of arguing to last one man his life."
"You have sufficient reason, I dare say," said Mr. Jarndyce, "for being
chafed and irritated--"
"There again!" exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. "I am of a
quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!"
"Not very, I think."
"Sir," said Gridley, putting down the child and going up to him as if he
meant to strike him, "do you know anything of Courts of Equity?"
"Perhaps I do, to my sorrow."
"To your sorrow?" said the man, pausing in his wrath. "if so, I beg your
pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir," with renewed violence,
"I have been dragged for five and twenty years over burning iron, and I have
lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go into the Court of Chancery yonder and
ask what is one of the standing jokes that brighten up their business sometimes,
and they will tell you that the best joke they have is the man from Shropshire.
I," he said, beating one hand on the other passionately, "am the man from
Shropshire."
"I believe I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing some
entertainment in the same grave place," said my guardian composedly. "You may
have heard my name--Jarndyce."
"Mr. Jarndyce," said Gridley with a rough sort of salutation, "you bear your
wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I tell you--and I tell
this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they are friends of yours--that if I
took my wrongs in any other way, I should be driven mad! It is only by resenting
them, and by revenging them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I
never get, that I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that!" he said,
speaking in a homely, rustic way and with great vehemence. "You may tell me that
I over-excite myself. I answer that it's in my nature to do it, under wrong, and
I must do it. There's nothing between doing it, and sinking into the smiling
state of the poor little mad woman that haunts the court. If I was once to sit
down under it, I should become imbecile."
The passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his face
worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what he said, were
most painful to see.
"Mr. Jarndyce," he said, "consider my case. As true as there is a heaven
above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father (a farmer) made a
will and left his farm and stock and so forth to my mother for her life. After
my mother's death, all was to come to me except a legacy of three hundred pounds
that I was then to pay my brother. My mother died. My brother some time
afterwards claimed his legacy. I and some of my relations said that he had had a
part of it already in board and lodging and some other things. Now mind! That
was the question, and nothing else. No one disputed the will; no one disputed
anything but whether part of that three hundred pounds had been already paid or
not. To settle that question, my brother filing a bill, I was obliged to go into
this accursed Chancery; I was forced there because the law forced me and would
let me go nowhere else. Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple
suit! It first came on after two years. It was then stopped for another two
years while the master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my
father's son, about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal creature.
He then found out that there were not defendants enough--remember, there were
only seventeen as yet!--but that we must have another who had been left out and
must begin all over again. The costs at that time--before the thing was
begun!--were three times the legacy. My brother would have given up the legacy,
and joyful, to escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my
father's, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, has fallen into rack,
and ruin, and despair, with everything else--and here I stand, this day! Now,
Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands and thousands involved, where in
mine there are hundreds. Is mine less hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when
my whole living was in it and has been thus shamefully sucked away?"
Mr. Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart and that he
set up no monopoly himself in being unjustly treated by this monstrous system.
"There again!" said Mr. Gridley with no diminution of his rage. "The system!
I am told on all hands, it's the system. I mustn't look to individuals. It's the
system. I mustn't go into court and say, 'My Lord, I beg to know this from
you--is this right or wrong? Have you the face to tell me I have received
justice and therefore am dismissed?' My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there
to administer the system. I mustn't go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by being so cool
and satisfied--as they all do, for I know they gain by it while I lose, don't
I?--I mustn't say to him, 'I will have something out of some one for my ruin, by
fair means or foul!' HE is not responsible. It's the system. But, if I do no
violence to any of them, here--I may! I don't know what may happen if I am
carried beyond myself at last! I will accuse the individual workers of that
system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!"
His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage without
seeing it.
"I have done!" he said, sitting down and wiping his face. "Mr. Jarndyce, I
have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I have been in prison for
contempt of court. I have been in prison for threatening the solicitor. I have
been in this trouble, and that trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from
Shropshire, and I sometimes go beyond amusing them, though they have found it
amusing, too, to see me committed into custody and brought up in custody and all
that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained myself. I tell
them that if I did restrain myself I should become imbecile. I was a
good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in my part of the country say
they remember me so, but now I must have this vent under my sense of injury or
nothing could hold my wits together. It would be far better for you, Mr.
Gridley,' the Lord Chancellor told me last week, 'not to waste your time here,
and to stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.' 'My Lord, my Lord, I know
it would,' said I to him, 'and it would have been far better for me never to
have heard the name of your high office, but unhappily for me, I can't undo the
past, and the past drives me here!' Besides," he added, breaking fiercely out,
"I'll shame them. To the last, I'll show myself in that court to its shame. If I
knew when I was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to
speak with, I would die there, saying, 'You have brought me here and sent me
from here many and many a time. Now send me out feet foremost!'"
His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its contentious
expression that it did not soften, even now when he was quiet.
"I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour," he said, going to
them again, "and let them play about. I didn't mean to say all this, but it
don't much signify. You're not afraid of me, Tom, are you?"
"No!" said Tom. "You ain't angry with ME."
"You are right, my child. You're going back, Charley? Aye? Come then, little
one!" He took the youngest child on his arm, where she was willing enough to be
carried. "I shouldn't wonder if we found a ginger-bread soldier downstairs.
Let's go and look for him!"
He made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a certain
respect, to Mr. Jarndyce, and bowing slightly to us, went downstairs to his
room.
Upon that, Mr. Skimpole began to talk, for the first time since our arrival,
in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was really very pleasant to see how
things lazily adapted themselves to purposes. Here was this Mr. Gridley, a man
of a robust will and surprising energy--intellectually speaking, a sort of
inharmonious blacksmith--and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was,
years ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous
combativeness upon--a sort of Young Love among the thorns--when the Court of
Chancery came in his way and accommodated him with the exact thing he wanted.
There they were, matched, ever afterwards! Otherwise he might have been a great
general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or he might have been a great
politician, dealing in all sorts of parliamentary rhetoric; but as it was, he
and the Court of Chancery had fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and
nobody was much the worse, and Gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided
for. Then look at Coavinses! How delightfully poor Coavinses (father of these
charming children) illustrated the same principle! He, Mr. Skimpole, himself,
had sometimes repined at the existence of Coavinses. He had found Coavinses in
his way. He could had dispensed with Coavinses. There had been times when, if he
had been a sultan, and his grand vizier had said one morning, "What does the
Commander of the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?" he might have even
gone so far as to reply, "The head of Coavinses!" But what turned out to be the
case? That, all that time, he had been giving employment to a most deserving
man, that he had been a benefactor to Coavinses, that he had actually been
enabling Coavinses to bring up these charming children in this agreeable way,
developing these social virtues! Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled
and the tears had come into his eyes when he had looked round the room and
thought, "I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little comforts were MY
work!"
There was something so captivating in his light way of touching these
fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of the graver
childhood we had seen, that he made my guardian smile even as he turned towards
us from a little private talk with Mrs. Blinder. We kissed Charley, and took her
downstairs with us, and stopped outside the house to see her run away to her
work. I don't know where she was going, but we saw her run, such a little,
little creature in her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the
bottom of the court and melt into the city's strife and sound like a dewdrop in
an ocean.
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