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

that down at four pounds, I shall have

saved one. And it’s a very good thing to save one, let me tell

you: a penny saved is a penny got!”

 

I believe Richard’s was as frank and generous a nature as there

possibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and in the midst of all

his wild restlessness, was so gentle that I knew him like a brother

in a few weeks. His gentleness was natural to him and would have

shown itself abundantly even without Ada’s influence; but with it,

he became one of the most winning of companions, always so ready to

be interested and always so happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. I

am sure that I, sitting with them, and walking with them, and

talking with them, and noticing from day to day how they went on,

falling deeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and

each shyly thinking that this love was the greatest of secrets,

perhaps not yet suspected even by the other—I am sure that I was

scarcely less enchanted than they were and scarcely less pleased

with the pretty dream.

 

We were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast Mr.

Jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription,

said, “From Boythorn? Aye, aye!” and opened and read it with

evident pleasure, announcing to us in a parenthesis when he was

about half-way through, that Boythorn was “coming down” on a visit.

Now who was Boythorn, we all thought. And I dare say we all

thought too—I am sure I did, for one—would Boythorn at all

interfere with what was going forward?

 

“I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn,” said Mr.

Jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, “more than

five and forty years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in

the world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then the

loudest boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was

then the heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now

the heartiest and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow.”

 

“In stature, sir?” asked Richard.

 

“Pretty well, Rick, in that respect,” said Mr. Jarndyce; “being

some ten years older than I and a couple of inches taller, with his

head thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared,

his hands like a clean blacksmith’s, and his lungs! There’s no

simile for his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the

beams of the house shake.”

 

As Mr. Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend Boythorn, we

observed the favourable omen that there was not the least

indication of any change in the wind.

 

“But it’s the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the

passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick—and Ada, and

little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor—that I

speak of,” he pursued. “His language is as sounding as his voice.

He is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree.

In his condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to

be an ogre from what he says, and I believe he has the reputation

of one with some people. There! I tell you no more of him

beforehand. You must not be surprised to see him take me under his

protection, for he has never forgotten that I was a low boy at

school and that our friendship began in his knocking two of my head

tyrant’s teeth out (he says six) before breakfast. Boythorn and

his man,” to me, “will be here this afternoon, my dear.”

 

I took care that the necessary preparations were made for Mr.

Boythorn’s reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with

some curiosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not

appear. The dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The

dinner was put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire

with no light but the blaze when the hall-door suddenly burst open

and the hall resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest

vehemence and in a stentorian tone: “We have been misdirected,

Jarndyce, by a most abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the

turning to the right instead of to the left. He is the most

intolerable scoundrel on the face of the earth. His father must

have been a most consummate villain, ever to have such a son. I

would have had that fellow shot without the least remorse!”

 

“Did he do it on purpose?” Mr. Jarndyce inquired.

 

“I have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his

whole existence in misdirecting travellers!” returned the other.

“By my soul, I thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever beheld

when he was telling me to take the turning to the right. And yet I

stood before that fellow face to face and didn’t knock his brains

out!”

 

“Teeth, you mean?” said Mr. Jarndyce.

 

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, really making the

whole house vibrate. “What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha,

ha, ha! And that was another most consummate vagabond! By my

soul, the countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the

blackest image of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a

scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most

unparalleled despot in the streets to-morrow, I would fell him like

a rotten tree!”

 

“I have no doubt of it,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “Now, will you come

upstairs?”

 

“By my soul, Jarndyce,” returned his guest, who seemed to refer to

his watch, “if you had been married, I would have turned back at

the garden-gate and gone away to the remotest summits of the

Himalaya Mountains sooner than I would have presented myself at

this unseasonable hour.”

 

“Not quite so far, I hope?” said Mr. Jarndyce.

 

“By my life and honour, yes!” cried the visitor. “I wouldn’t be

guilty of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house

waiting all this time for any earthly consideration. I would

infinitely rather destroy myself—infinitely rather!”

 

Talking thus, they went upstairs, and presently we heard him in his

bedroom thundering “Ha, ha, ha!” and again “Ha, ha, ha!” until the

flattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the contagion

and to laugh as enjoyingly as he did or as we did when we heard him

laugh.

 

We all conceived a prepossession in his favour, for there was a

sterling quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous, healthy voice,

and in the roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word

he spoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to

go off like blank cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly

prepared to have it so confirmed by his appearance when Mr.

Jarndyce presented him. He was not only a very handsome old

gentleman—upright and stalwart as he had been described to us—

with a massive grey head, a fine composure of face when silent, a

figure that might have become corpulent but for his being so

continually in earnest that he gave it no rest, and a chin that

might have subsided into a double chin but for the vehement

emphasis in which it was constantly required to assist; but he was

such a true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously polite, his

face was lighted by a smile of so much sweetness and tenderness,

and it seemed so plain that he had nothing to hide, but showed

himself exactly as he was—incapable, as Richard said, of anything

on a limited scale, and firing away with those blank great guns

because he carried no small arms whatever—that really I could not

help looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat at dinner,

whether he smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led by Mr.

Jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up his

head like a bloodhound and gave out that tremendous “Ha, ha, ha!”

 

“You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?” said Mr.

Jarndyce.

 

“By heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!” replied the

other. “He IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn’t take ten

thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his

sole support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and

attachment, a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the

most astonishing birds that ever lived!”

 

The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so

tame that he was brought down by Mr. Boythorn’s man, on his

forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room,

alighted on his master’s head. To hear Mr. Boythorn presently

expressing the most implacable and passionate sentiments, with this

fragile mite of a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to

have a good illustration of his character, I thought.

 

“By my soul, Jarndyce,” he said, very gently holding up a bit of

bread to the canary to peck at, “if I were in your place I would

seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and

shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones

rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by

fair means or by foul. If you would empower me to do it, I would

do it for you with the greatest satisfaction!” (All this time the

very small canary was eating out of his hand.)

 

“I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at

present,” returned Mr. Jarndyce, laughing, “that it would be

greatly advanced even by the legal process of shaking the bench and

the whole bar.”

 

“There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery on the

face of the earth!” said Mr. Boythorn. “Nothing but a mine below

it on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and

precedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it

also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the

Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to

atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it

in the least!”

 

It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which

he recommended this strong measure of reform. When we laughed, he

threw up his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole

country seemed to echo to his “Ha, ha, ha!” It had not the least

effect in disturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete

and who hopped about the table with its quick head now on this side

and now on that, turning its bright sudden eye on its master as if

he were no more than another bird.

 

“But how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right

of way?” said Mr. Jarndyce. “You are not free from the toils of

the law yourself!”

 

“The fellow has brought actions against ME for trespass, and I have

brought actions against HIM for trespass,” returned Mr. Boythorn.

“By heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally

impossible that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir

Lucifer.”

 

“Complimentary to our distant relation!” said my guardian

laughingly to Ada and Richard.

 

“I would beg Miss Clare’s pardon and Mr. Carstone’s pardon,”

resumed our visitor, “if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair

face of the lady and the smile of the gentleman that it is quite

unnecessary and that they keep their distant relation at a

comfortable distance.”

 

“Or he keeps us,” suggested