Bleak House
sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for
that source of trouble which had its share in making us
both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it
go for ever. We have reason to know by this time that
there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing
to be got from it but sorrow.
My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you
are quite free and that it is very likely you may find
some one whom you will love much better than your first
fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that
the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow
your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and
see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen
way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very
rich with you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost
of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety and of
your indifference to other aims. You may wonder at my
saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or
experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own
heart.
Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate
Ada
This note brought Richard to us very soon, but it made little change
in him if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who
was wrong—he would show us—we should see! He was animated and
glowing, as if Ada’s tenderness had gratified him; but I could only
hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect
upon his mind on re-perusal than it assuredly had then.
As they were to remain with us that day and had taken their places to
return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking
to Mr. Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way, and
I delicately said that there was a responsibility in encouraging
Richard.
“Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?” he repeated, catching at
the word with the pleasantest smile. “I am the last man in the world
for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life—I can’t be.”
“I am afraid everybody is obliged to be,” said I timidly enough, he
being so much older and more clever than I.
“No, really?” said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most
agreeable jocularity of surprise. “But every man’s not obliged to be
solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson,” he took
a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, “there’s so
much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of
counting. Call it four and ninepence—call it four pound nine. They
tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as
much as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don’t stop, why
should I? There you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that’s
responsibility, I am responsible.”
The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again and
looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been
mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me
feel as if he really had nothing to do with it.
“Now, when you mention responsibility,” he resumed, “I am disposed to
say that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I should
consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. You appear to me
to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my
dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole
little orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel inclined
to say to myself—in fact I do say to myself very often—THAT’S
responsibility!”
It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I
persisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and not
confirm Richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then.
“Most willingly,” he retorted, “if I could. But, my dear Miss
Summerson, I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand and
leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after
fortune, I must go. If he says, ‘Skimpole, join the dance!’ I must
join it. Common sense wouldn’t, I know, but I have NO common sense.”
It was very unfortunate for Richard, I said.
“Do you think so!” returned Mr. Skimpole. “Don’t say that, don’t say
that. Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense—an
excellent man—a good deal wrinkled—dreadfully practical—change for
a ten-pound note in every pocket—ruled account-book in his
hand—say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear
Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with
poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion,
‘I see a golden prospect before me; it’s very bright, it’s very
beautiful, it’s very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape
to come at it!’ The respectable companion instantly knocks him down
with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic way that
he sees no such thing; shows him it’s nothing but fees, fraud,
horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that’s a painful
change—sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but
disagreeable. I can’t do it. I haven’t got the ruled account-book, I
have none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition, I am not
at all respectable, and I don’t want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it
is!”
It was idle to say more, so I proposed that we should join Ada and
Richard, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr. Skimpole in
despair. He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning and
whimsically described the family pictures as we walked. There were
such portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead and gone,
he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their
hands. They tended their flocks severely in buckram and powder and
put their sticking-plaster patches on to terrify commoners as the
chiefs of some other tribes put on their war-paint. There was a Sir
Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke,
flashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort, all in full
action between his horse’s two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how
little a Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race he represented
as having evidently been, in life, what he called “stuffed people”—a
large collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on
their various twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from
animation, and always in glass cases.
I was not so easy now during any reference to the name but that I
felt it a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surprise,
hurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming slowly
towards us.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Skimpole. “Vholes!”
We asked if that were a friend of Richard’s.
“Friend and legal adviser,” said Mr. Skimpole. “Now, my dear Miss
Summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and
respectability, all united—if you want an exemplary man—Vholes is
THE man.”
We had not known, we said, that Richard was assisted by any gentleman
of that name.
“When he emerged from legal infancy,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “he
parted from our conversational friend Kenge and took up, I believe,
with Vholes. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to
Vholes.”
“Had you known him long?” asked Ada.
“Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance with
him which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession. He had
done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner—taken
proceedings, I think, is the expression—which ended in the
proceeding of his taking ME. Somebody was so good as to step in and
pay the money—something and fourpence was the amount; I forget the
pounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence, because it
struck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe anybody
fourpence—and after that I brought them together. Vholes asked me
for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of it,” he
looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the
discovery, “Vholes bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something and
called it commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do you know, I think
it MUST have been a five-pound note!”
His further consideration of the point was prevented by Richard’s
coming back to us in an excited state and hastily representing Mr.
Vholes—a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were
cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin,
about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in
black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so
remarkable in him as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he had
of looking at Richard.
“I hope I don’t disturb you, ladies,” said Mr. Vholes, and now I
observed that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of
speaking. “I arranged with Mr. Carstone that he should always know
when his cause was in the Chancellor’s paper, and being informed by
one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather
unexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the coach
early this morning and came down to confer with him.”
“Yes,” said Richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and me,
“we don’t do these things in the old slow way now. We spin along now!
Mr. Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the post town in,
and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!”
“Anything you please, sir,” returned Mr. Vholes. “I am quite at your
service.”
“Let me see,” said Richard, looking at his watch. “If I run down to
the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or
a chaise, or whatever’s to be got, we shall have an hour then before
starting. I’ll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Esther take
care of Mr. Vholes when I am gone?”
He was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in the
dusk of evening. We who were left walked on towards the house.
“Is Mr. Carstone’s presence necessary to-morrow, Sir?” said I. “Can
it do any good?”
“No, miss,” Mr. Vholes replied. “I am not aware that it can.”
Both Ada and I expressed our regret that he should go, then, only to
be disappointed.
“Mr. Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own
interests,” said Mr. Vholes, “and when a client lays down his own
principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it
out. I wish in business to be exact and open. I am a widower with
three daughters—Emma, Jane, and Caroline—and my desire is so to
discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name. This
appears to be a pleasant spot, miss.”
The remark being made to me in consequence of my being next him as we
walked, I assented and enumerated its chief attractions.
“Indeed?” said Mr. Vholes. “I have the privilege of supporting an
aged father in the Vale of Taunton—his native place—and I admire
that country very much. I had no idea there was anything so
attractive here.”
To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr. Vholes if he would like to
live altogether in the country.
“There, miss,” said he, “you touch me on a tender string. My health
is not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had only
myself to consider, I should take refuge in rural habits, especially
as the cares of business have prevented me from ever coming much into
contact with general society, and particularly with ladies’ society,
which I have most wished to mix in. But with my three daughters,
Emma, Jane, and Caroline—and my aged father—I cannot afford to be
selfish. It is true I have no longer to maintain a dear grandmother
who died in her hundred and second year, but enough remains to render
it indispensable that the mill should be always going.”
It required some attention to hear him on account of his inward
speaking and his lifeless manner.
“You will excuse my having mentioned my daughters,” he said. “They