Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗

class="calibre1">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 bit,” 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. Jarndyce, “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 weathercock. 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