The Solitary House (128 page)

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

“My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard,” said Mr. Skimpole, “full of the brightest visions of the future, which he evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that’s delightful, that’s inspiriting, that’s full of poetry! In old times, the woods and solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the
imaginary piping and dancing of Pan and the nymphs. This present shepherd, our pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making Fortune and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of a judgment from the bench. That’s very pleasant you know! Some ill-conditioned growling fellow may say to me, ‘What’s the use of these legal and equitable abuses? How do you defend them?’ I reply, ‘My growling friend, I
don’t
defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There is a shepherd-youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into something highly fascinating to my simplicity. I don’t say it is for this that they exist—for I am a child among you worldly grumblers, and not called upon to account to you or myself for anything—but it may be so.’ ”

I began seriously to think that Richard could scarcely have found a worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time, when he most required some right principle and purpose, he should have this captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I could understand how such a nature as my guardian’s, experienced in the world, and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr. Skimpole’s avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour; but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed; or that it did not serve Mr. Skimpole’s idle turn quite as well as any other part, and with less trouble.

They both walked back with me; and Mr. Skimpole leaving us at the gate, I walked softly in with Richard, and said, “Ada, my love, I have brought a gentleman to visit you.” It was not difficult to read the blushing startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, and I knew it. It was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins only.

I almost mistrusted myself, as growing quite wicked in my suspicions, but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly. He admired her very much—any one must have done that—and I dare say, would have renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour, but that he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still, I had a tormenting idea
that the influence upon him extended even here: that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness, in this as in all things, until Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be off his mind. Ah me! what Richard would have been without that blight, I never shall know now!

He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Jarndyce; that he had come openly to see her, and to see me, and to justify himself for the present terms on which he stood with Mr. Jarndyce. As the dear old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make an appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right, through the means of an unreserved conversation with me. I proposed to walk with him in the park at seven o’clock, and this was arranged. Mr. Skimpole soon afterwards appeared, and made us merry for an hour. He particularly requested to see Little Coavinses (meaning Charley), and told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father all the business in his power; and that if one of her little brothers would make haste to get set up in the same profession, he hoped he should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way.

“For I am constantly being taken in these nets,” said Mr. Skimpole, looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, “and am constantly being bailed out—like a boat. Or paid off—like a ship’s company. Somebody always does it for me.
I
can’t do it, you know, for I never have any money. But Somebody does it. I get out by Somebody’s means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me who Somebody is, upon my word I couldn’t tell you. Let us drink to Somebody. God bless him!”

Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for him long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy, and the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see; the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all
the minute details of every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory of that day.

“This is a lovely place,” said Richard, looking round. “None of the jar and discord of law-suits here!”

But there was other trouble.

“I tell you what, my dear girl,” said Richard, “when I get affairs in general settled, I shall come down here, I think; and rest.”

“Would it not be better to rest now?” I asked.

“Oh, as to resting
now
,” said Richard, “or as to doing anything very definite
now
, that’s not easy. In short, it can’t be done;
I
can’t do it at least.”

“Why not?” said I.

“You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished house, liable to have the roof put on or taken off—to be from top to bottom pulled down or built up—tomorrow, next day, next week, next month, next year—you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. Now? There’s no now for us suitors.”

I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor little wandering friend had expatiated, when I saw again the darkened look of last night. Terrible to think, it had in it also, a shade of that unfortunate man who had died.

“My dear Richard,” said I, “this is a bad beginning of our conversation.”

“I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden.”

“And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you once, never to found a hope of expectation on the family curse.”

“There you come back to John Jarndyce!” said Richard, impatiently. “Well! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of what I have to say; and it’s as well at once. My dear Esther, how can you be so blind? Don’t you see that he is an interested party, and that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the suit and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well for me?”

“O Richard,” I remonstrated, “is it possible that you can ever have seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in
this solitary place where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?”

He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of reproach. He was silent for a little while, before he replied in a subdued voice:

“Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean fellow, and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being poor qualities in one of my years.”

“I know it very well,” said I. “I am not more sure of anything.”

“That’s a dear girl,” retorted Richard, “and like you, because it gives me comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all this business, for it’s a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion to tell you.”

“I know perfectly,” said I, “I know as well, Richard—what shall I say? as well as you do—that such misconstructions are foreign to your nature. And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it.”

“Come, sister, come,” said Richard, a little more gaily, “you will be fair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a little twisted him, too. I don’t say that he is not an honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him say so fifty times. Then why should
he
escape?”

“Because,” said I, “his is an uncommon character, and he has resolutely kept himself outside the circle, Richard.”

“Oh, because and because!” replied Richard, in his vivacious way. “I am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things may smoothly happen that are convenient enough.”

I was so touched with pity for Richard, that I could not reproach him any more, even by a look. I remembered my guardian’s gentleness
towards his errors, and with what perfect freedom from resentment he had spoken of them.

“Esther,” Richard resumed, “you are not to suppose that I have come here to make underhanded charges against John Jarndyce. I have only come to justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well, and we got on very well, while I was a boy, utterly regardless of this same suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it and to look into it, then it was quite another thing. Then John Jarndyce discovers that Ada and I must break off, and that if I don’t amend that very objectionable course, I am not fit for her. Now, Esther, I don’t mean to amend that very objectionable course: I will not hold John Jarndyce’s favour on those unfair terms of compromise, which he has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or displeases him, I must maintain my rights, and Ada’s. I have been thinking about it a good deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to.”

Poor dear Richard! He had indeed been thinking about it a good deal. His face, his voice, his manner all showed that, too plainly.

“So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him about all this) that we are at issue, and that we had better be at issue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our roads are not the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I should take much more than he. I don’t mean to say that it is the one to be established; but there it is, and it has its chance.”

“I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard,” said I, “of your letter. I had heard of it already, without an offended or angry word.”

“Indeed?” replied Richard, softening. “I am glad I said he was an honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say that, and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you tell her what has passed between us. But if you had gone into the case as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers as I did when I was at Kenge’s, if you only knew what an accumulation of charges and counter-charges,
and suspicions and cross-suspicions, they involve, you would think me moderate in comparison.”

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

“There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther—”

“Or was once, long ago,” said I.

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

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

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

“O, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!”

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

“Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?”

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

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

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