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

class="calibre1">“Greatly surprised.”

 

He thought about it for a little while with a highly agreeable and

whimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and said in his

most engaging manner, “You know what a child I am. Why surprised?”

 

I was reluctant to enter minutely into that question, but as he

begged I would, for he was really curious to know, I gave him to

understand in the gentlest words I could use that his conduct

seemed to involve a disregard of several moral obligations. He was

much amused and interested when he heard this and said, “No,

really?” with ingenuous simplicity.

 

“You know I don’t intend to be responsible. I never could do it.

Responsibility is a thing that has always been above me—or below

me,” said Mr. Skimpole. “I don’t even know which; but as I

understand the way in which my dear Miss Summerson (always

remarkable for her practical good sense and clearness) puts this

case, I should imagine it was chiefly a question of money, do you

know?”

 

I incautiously gave a qualified assent to this.

 

“Ah! Then you see,” said Mr. Skimpole, shaking his head, “I am

hopeless of understanding it.”

 

I suggested, as I rose to go, that it was not right to betray my

guardian’s confidence for a bribe.

 

“My dear Miss Summerson,” he returned with a candid hilarity that

was all his own, “I can’t be bribed.”

 

“Not by Mr. Bucket?” said I.

 

“No,” said he. “Not by anybody. I don’t attach any value to

money. I don’t care about it, I don’t know about it, I don’t want

it, I don’t keep it—it goes away from me directly. How can I be

bribed?”

 

I showed that I was of a different opinion, though I had not the

capacity for arguing the question.

 

“On the contrary,” said Mr. Skimpole, “I am exactly the man to be

placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above

the rest of mankind in such a case as that. I can act with

philosophy in such a case as that. I am not warped by prejudices,

as an Italian baby is by bandages. I am as free as the air. I

feel myself as far above suspicion as Caesar’s wife.”

 

Anything to equal the lightness of his manner and the playful

impartiality with which he seemed to convince himself, as he tossed

the matter about like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in

anybody else!

 

“Observe the case, my dear Miss Summerson. Here is a boy received

into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.

The boy being in bed, a man arrives—like the house that Jack

built. Here is the man who demands the boy who is received into

the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.

Here is a bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is

received into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly

object to. Here is the Skimpole who accepts the bank-note produced

by the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and

put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Those are the

facts. Very well. Should the Skimpole have refused the note? WHY

should the Skimpole have refused the note? Skimpole protests to

Bucket, ‘What’s this for? I don’t understand it, it is of no use

to me, take it away.’ Bucket still entreats Skimpole to accept it.

Are there reasons why Skimpole, not being warped by prejudices,

should accept it? Yes. Skimpole perceives them. What are they?

Skimpole reasons with himself, this is a tamed lynx, an active

police-officer, an intelligent man, a person of a peculiarly

directed energy and great subtlety both of conception and

execution, who discovers our friends and enemies for us when they

run away, recovers our property for us when we are robbed, avenges

us comfortably when we are murdered. This active police-officer

and intelligent man has acquired, in the exercise of his art, a

strong faith in money; he finds it very useful to him, and he makes

it very useful to society. Shall I shake that faith in Bucket

because I want it myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of

Bucket’s weapons; shall I positively paralyse Bucket in his next

detective operation? And again. If it is blameable in Skimpole to

take the note, it is blameable in Bucket to offer the note—much

more blameable in Bucket, because he is the knowing man. Now,

Skimpole wishes to think well of Bucket; Skimpole deems it

essential, in its little place, to the general cohesion of things,

that he SHOULD think well of Bucket. The state expressly asks him

to trust to Bucket. And he does. And that’s all he does!”

 

I had nothing to offer in reply to this exposition and therefore

took my leave. Mr. Skimpole, however, who was in excellent

spirits, would not hear of my returning home attended only by

“Little Coavinses,” and accompanied me himself. He entertained me

on the way with a variety of delightful conversation and assured

me, at parting, that he should never forget the fine tact with

which I had found that out for him about our young friends.

 

As it so happened that I never saw Mr. Skimpole again, I may at

once finish what I know of his history. A coolness arose between

him and my guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds and

on his having heartlessly disregarded my guardian’s entreaties (as

we afterwards learned from Ada) in reference to Richard. His being

heavily in my guardian’s debt had nothing to do with their

separation. He died some five years afterwards and left a diary

behind him, with letters and other materials towards his life,

which was published and which showed him to have been the victim of

a combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. It

was considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it

myself than the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the

book. It was this: “Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have

known, is the incarnation of selfishness.”

 

And now I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly

indeed, and for which I was quite unprepared when the circumstance

occurred. Whatever little lingerings may have now and then revived

in my mind associated with my poor old face had only revived as

belonging to a part of my life that was gone—gone like my infancy

or my childhood. I have suppressed none of my many weaknesses on

that subject, but have written them as faithfully as my memory has

recalled them. And I hope to do, and mean to do, the same down to

the last words of these pages, which I see now not so very far

before me.

 

The months were gliding away, and my dear girl, sustained by the

hopes she had confided in me, was the same beautiful star in the

miserable corner. Richard, more worn and haggard, haunted the

court day after day, listlessly sat there the whole day long when

he knew there was no remote chance of the suit being mentioned, and

became one of the stock sights of the place. I wonder whether any

of the gentlemen remembered him as he was when he first went there.

 

So completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea that he used to

avow in his cheerful moments that he should never have breathed the

fresh air now “but for Woodcourt.” It was only Mr. Woodcourt who

could occasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time

and rouse him, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body

that alarmed us greatly, and the returns of which became more

frequent as the months went on. My dear girl was right in saying

that he only pursued his errors the more desperately for her sake.

I have no doubt that his desire to retrieve what he had lost was

rendered the more intense by his grief for his young wife, and

became like the madness of a gamester.

 

I was there, as I have mentioned, at all hours. When I was there

at night, I generally went home with Charley in a coach; sometimes

my guardian would meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk

home together. One evening he had arranged to meet me at eight

o’clock. I could not leave, as I usually did, quite punctually at

the time, for I was working for my dear girl and had a few stitches

more to do to finish what I was about; but it was within a few

minutes of the hour when I bundled up my little work-basket, gave

my darling my last kiss for the night, and hurried downstairs. Mr.

Woodcourt went with me, as it was dusk.

 

When we came to the usual place of meeting—it was close by, and

Mr. Woodcourt had often accompanied me before—my guardian was not

there. We waited half an hour, walking up and down, but there were

no signs of him. We agreed that he was either prevented from

coming or that he had come and gone away, and Mr. Woodcourt

proposed to walk home with me.

 

It was the first walk we had ever taken together, except that very

short one to the usual place of meeting. We spoke of Richard and

Ada the whole way. I did not thank him in words for what he had

done—my appreciation of it had risen above all words then—but I

hoped he might not be without some understanding of what I felt so

strongly.

 

Arriving at home and going upstairs, we found that my guardian was

out and that Mrs. Woodcourt was out too. We were in the very same

room into which I had brought my blushing girl when her youthful

lover, now her so altered husband, was the choice of her young

heart, the very same room from which my guardian and I had watched

them going away through the sunlight in the fresh bloom of their

hope and promise.

 

We were standing by the opened window looking down into the street

when Mr. Woodcourt spoke to me. I learned in a moment that he

loved me. I learned in a moment that my scarred face was all

unchanged to him. I learned in a moment that what I had thought

was pity and compassion was devoted, generous, faithful love. Oh,

too late to know it now, too late, too late. That was the first

ungrateful thought I had. Too late.

 

“When I returned,” he told me, “when I came back, no richer than

when I went away, and found you newly risen from a sick bed, yet so

inspired by sweet consideration for others and so free from a

selfish thought—”

 

“Oh, Mr. Woodcourt, forbear, forbear!” I entreated him. “I do not

deserve your high praise. I had many selfish thoughts at that

time, many!”

 

“Heaven knows, beloved of my life,” said he, “that my praise is not

a lover’s praise, but the truth. You do not know what all around

you see in Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and

awakens, what sacred admiration and what love she wins.”

 

“Oh, Mr. Woodcourt,” cried I, “it is a great thing to win love, it

is a great thing to win love! I am proud of it, and honoured by

it; and the hearing of it causes me to shed these tears of mingled

joy and sorrow—joy that I have won it, sorrow that I have not

deserved it better; but I am not free