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

to me, “he is the finest fellow in the

world, Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for

his satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular

wind-up of this business now.”

 

The idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing

face and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could

catch and nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However,

he told us between-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent

that he wondered his hair didn’t turn grey. His regular wind-up of

the business was (as I have said) that he went to Mr. Kenge’s about

midsummer to try how he liked it.

 

All this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him

in a former illustration—generous, profuse, wildly careless, but

fully persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I

happened to say to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half

seriously, about the time of his going to Mr. Kenge’s, that he

needed to have Fortunatus’ purse, he made so light of money, which

he answered in this way, “My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this

old woman! Why does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd

(or whatever it was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few

days ago. Now, if I had stayed at Badger’s I should have been

obliged to spend twelve pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking

lecture-fees. So I make four pounds—in a lump—by the

transaction!”

 

It was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what

arrangements should be made for his living in London while he

experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak

House, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener

than once a week. My guardian told me that if Richard were to

settle down at Mr. Kenge’s he would take some apartments or

chambers where we too could occasionally stay for a few days at a

time; “but, little woman,” he added, rubbing his head very

significantly, “he hasn’t settled down there yet!” The discussions

ended in our hiring for him, by the month, a neat little furnished

lodging in a quiet old house near Queen Square. He immediately

began to spend all the money he had in buying the oddest little

ornaments and luxuries for this lodging; and so often as Ada and I

dissuaded him from making any purchase that he had in contemplation

which was particularly unnecessary and expensive, he took credit

for what it would have cost and made out that to spend anything

less on something else was to save the difference.

 

While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn’s

was postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his

lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have

gone with us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the

full novelty of his new position and was making most energetic

attempts to unravel the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently

we went without him, and my darling was delighted to praise him for

being so busy.

 

We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach and

had an entertaining companion in Mr. Skimpole. His furniture had

been all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took

possession of it on his blue-eyed daughter’s birthday, but he

seemed quite relieved to think that it was gone. Chairs and table,

he said, were wearisome objects; they were monotonous ideas, they

had no variety of expression, they looked you out of countenance,

and you looked them out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be

bound to no particular chairs and tables, but to sport like a

butterfly among all the furniture on hire, and to flit from

rosewood to mahogany, and from mahogany to walnut, and from this

shape to that, as the humour took one!

 

“The oddity of the thing is,” said Mr. Skimpole with a quickened

sense of the ludicrous, “that my chairs and tables were not paid

for, and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as

possible. Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in

it. The chair and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord

my rent. Why should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a

pimple on my nose which is disagreeable to my landlord’s peculiar

ideas of beauty, my landlord has no business to scratch my chair

and table merchant’s nose, which has no pimple on it. His

reasoning seems defective!”

 

“Well,” said my guardian good-humouredly, “it’s pretty clear that

whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to

pay for them.”

 

“Exactly!” returned Mr. Skimpole. “That’s the crowning point of

unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, ‘My good man, you

are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay

for those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate

manner. Have you no consideration for HIS property?’ He hadn’t the

least.”

 

“And refused all proposals,” said my guardian.

 

“Refused all proposals,” returned Mr. Skimpole. “I made him

business proposals. I had him into my room. I said, ‘You are a

man of business, I believe?’ He replied, ‘I am,’ ‘Very well,’

said I, ‘now let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here

are pens and paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have

occupied your house for a considerable period, I believe to our

mutual satisfaction until this unpleasant misunderstanding arose;

let us be at once friendly and business-like. What do you want?’

In reply to this, he made use of the figurative expression—which

has something Eastern about it—that he had never seen the colour

of my money. ‘My amiable friend,’ said I, ‘I never have any money.

I never know anything about money.’ ‘Well, sir,’ said he, ‘what do

you offer if I give you time?’ ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘I have

no idea of time; but you say you are a man of business, and

whatever you can suggest to be done in a business-like way with

pen, and ink, and paper—and wafers—I am ready to do. Don’t pay

yourself at another man’s expense (which is foolish), but be

business-like!’ However, he wouldn’t be, and there was an end of

it.”

 

If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole’s

childhood, it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the

journey he had a very good appetite for such refreshment as came in

our way (including a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never

thought of paying for anything. So when the coachman came round

for his fee, he pleasantly asked him what he considered a very good

fee indeed, now—a liberal one—and on his replying half a crown

for a single passenger, said it was little enough too, all things

considered, and left Mr. Jarndyce to give it him.

 

It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully,

the larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild

flowers, the trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields,

with a light wind blowing over them, filled the air with such a

delicious fragrance! Late in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to alight from the coach—a dull little town

with a church-spire, and a marketplace, and a market-cross, and one

intensely sunny street, and a pond with an old horse cooling his

legs in it, and a very few men sleepily lying and standing about in

narrow little bits of shade. After the rustling of the leaves and

the waving of the corn all along the road, it looked as still, as

hot, as motionless a little town as England could produce.

 

At the inn we found Mr. Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open

carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He

was overjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity.

 

“By heaven!” said he after giving us a courteous greeting. “This a

most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an

abominable public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the

earth. It is twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon.

The coachman ought to be put to death!”

 

“IS he after his time?” said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to

address himself. “You know my infirmity.”

 

“Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!” replied Mr. Boythorn,

referring to his watch. “With two ladies in the coach, this

scoundrel has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty

minutes. Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be

accidental! But his father—and his uncle—were the most

profligate coachmen that ever sat upon a box.”

 

While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed

us into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all

smiles and pleasure.

 

“I am sorry, ladies,” he said, standing bare-headed at the

carriage-door when all was ready, “that I am obliged to conduct you

nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through

Sir Leicester Dedlock’s park, and in that fellow’s property I have

sworn never to set foot of mine, or horse’s foot of mine, pending

the present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of

life!” And here, catching my guardian’s eye, he broke into one of

his tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless

little market-town.

 

“Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?” said my guardian as we

drove along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the

roadside.

 

“Sir Arrogant Numskull is here,” replied Mr. Boythorn. “Ha ha ha!

Sir Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the

heels here. My Lady,” in naming whom he always made a courtly

gesture as if particularly to exclude her from any part in the

quarrel, “is expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least

surprised that she postpones her appearance as long as possible.

Whatever can have induced that transcendent woman to marry that

effigy and figure-head of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable

mysteries that ever baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!”

 

“I suppose,” said my guardian, laughing, “WE may set foot in the

park while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us,

does it?”

 

“I can lay no prohibition on my guests,” he said, bending his head

to Ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully

upon him, “except in the matter of their departure. I am only

sorry that I cannot have the happiness of being their escort about

Chesney Wold, which is a very fine place! But by the light of this

summer day, Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay

with me, you are likely to have but a cool reception. He carries

himself like an eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of

eight-day clocks in gorgeous cases that never go and never went—Ha

ha ha!—but he will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you,

for the friends of his friend and neighbour Boythorn!”

 

“I shall not put him to the proof,” said my guardian. “He is as

indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the

honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a

view of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough

for me.”

 

“Well!” said Mr. Boythorn. “I am glad of it on the whole. It’s in

better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax

defying the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our