Bleak House
amuse our little party. Ve-ry friendly little party, are we not?”
It was miserable to hear this from her poor mad lips, though it was
no surprise.
“In short, my valued friend,” pursued Miss Flite, advancing her lips
to my ear with an air of equal patronage and mystery, “I must tell
you a secret. I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted,
and appointed him. In my will. Ye-es.”
“Indeed?” said I.
“Ye-es,” repeated Miss Flite in her most genteel accents, “my
executor, administrator, and assign. (Our Chancery phrases, my love.)
I have reflected that if I should wear out, he will be able to watch
that judgment. Being so very regular in his attendance.”
It made me sigh to think of him.
“I did at one time mean,” said Miss Flite, echoing the sigh, “to
nominate, constitute, and appoint poor Gridley. Also very regular, my
charming girl. I assure you, most exemplary! But he wore out, poor
man, so I have appointed his successor. Don’t mention it. This is in
confidence.”
She carefully opened her reticule a little way and showed me a folded
piece of paper inside as the appointment of which she spoke.
“Another secret, my dear. I have added to my collection of birds.”
“Really, Miss Flite?” said I, knowing how it pleased her to have her
confidence received with an appearance of interest.
She nodded several times, and her face became overcast and gloomy.
“Two more. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with
all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust,
Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly,
Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and
Spinach!”
The poor soul kissed me with the most troubled look I had ever seen
in her and went her way. Her manner of running over the names of her
birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips,
quite chilled me.
This was not a cheering preparation for my visit, and I could have
dispensed with the company of Mr. Vholes, when Richard (who arrived
within a minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner.
Although it was a very plain one, Ada and Richard were for some
minutes both out of the room together helping to get ready what we
were to eat and drink. Mr. Vholes took that opportunity of holding a
little conversation in a low voice with me. He came to the window
where I was sitting and began upon Symond’s Inn.
“A dull place, Miss Summerson, for a life that is not an official
one,” said Mr. Vholes, smearing the glass with his black glove to
make it clearer for me.
“There is not much to see here,” said I.
“Nor to hear, miss,” returned Mr. Vholes. “A little music does
occasionally stray in, but we are not musical in the law and soon
eject it. I hope Mr. Jarndyce is as well as his friends could wish
him?”
I thanked Mr. Vholes and said he was quite well.
“I have not the pleasure to be admitted among the number of his
friends myself,” said Mr. Vholes, “and I am aware that the gentlemen
of our profession are sometimes regarded in such quarters with an
unfavourable eye. Our plain course, however, under good report and
evil report, and all kinds of prejudice (we are the victims of
prejudice), is to have everything openly carried on. How do you find
Mr. C. looking, Miss Summerson?”
“He looks very ill. Dreadfully anxious.”
“Just so,” said Mr. Vholes.
He stood behind me with his long black figure reaching nearly to the
ceiling of those low rooms, feeling the pimples on his face as if
they were ornaments and speaking inwardly and evenly as though there
were not a human passion or emotion in his nature.
“Mr. Woodcourt is in attendance upon Mr. C., I believe?” he resumed.
“Mr. Woodcourt is his disinterested friend,” I answered.
“But I mean in professional attendance, medical attendance.”
“That can do little for an unhappy mind,” said I.
“Just so,” said Mr. Vholes.
So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were
wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser and there were
something of the vampire in him.
“Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Vholes, very slowly rubbing his gloved
hands, as if, to his cold sense of touch, they were much the same in
black kid or out of it, “this was an ill-advised marriage of Mr.
C.’s.”
I begged he would excuse me from discussing it. They had been engaged
when they were both very young, I told him (a little indignantly) and
when the prospect before them was much fairer and brighter. When
Richard had not yielded himself to the unhappy influence which now
darkened his life.
“Just so,” assented Mr. Vholes again. “Still, with a view to
everything being openly carried on, I will, with your permission,
Miss Summerson, observe to you that I consider this a very
ill-advised marriage indeed. I owe the opinion not only to Mr. C.’s
connexions, against whom I should naturally wish to protect myself,
but also to my own reputation—dear to myself as a professional man
aiming to keep respectable; dear to my three girls at home, for whom
I am striving to realize some little independence; dear, I will even
say, to my aged father, whom it is my privilege to support.”
“It would become a very different marriage, a much happier and better
marriage, another marriage altogether, Mr. Vholes,” said I, “if
Richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which
you are engaged with him.”
Mr. Vholes, with a noiseless cough—or rather gasp—into one of his
black gloves, inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even
that.
“Miss Summerson,” he said, “it may be so; and I freely admit that the
young lady who has taken Mr. C.’s name upon herself in so ill-advised
a manner—you will I am sure not quarrel with me for throwing out
that remark again, as a duty I owe to Mr. C.’s connexions—is a
highly genteel young lady. Business has prevented me from mixing much
with general society in any but a professional character; still I
trust I am competent to perceive that she is a highly genteel young
lady. As to beauty, I am not a judge of that myself, and I never did
give much attention to it from a boy, but I dare say the young lady
is equally eligible in that point of view. She is considered so (I
have heard) among the clerks in the Inn, and it is a point more in
their way than in mine. In reference to Mr. C.’s pursuit of his
interests—”
“Oh! His interests, Mr. Vholes!”
“Pardon me,” returned Mr. Vholes, going on in exactly the same inward
and dispassionate manner. “Mr. C. takes certain interests under
certain wills disputed in the suit. It is a term we use. In reference
to Mr. C,’s pursuit of his interests, I mentioned to you, Miss
Summerson, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, in my
desire that everything should be openly carried on—I used those
words, for I happened afterwards to note them in my diary, which is
producible at any time—I mentioned to you that Mr. C. had laid down
the principle of watching his own interests, and that when a client
of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to
say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I HAVE
carried it out; I do carry it out. But I will not smooth things over
to any connexion of Mr. C.’s on any account. As open as I was to Mr.
Jarndyce, I am to you. I regard it in the light of a professional
duty to be so, though it can be charged to no one. I openly say,
unpalatable as it may be, that I consider Mr. C.’s affairs in a very
bad way, that I consider Mr. C. himself in a very bad way, and that I
regard this as an exceedingly ill-advised marriage. Am I here, sir?
Yes, I thank you; I am here, Mr. C., and enjoying the pleasure of
some agreeable conversation with Miss Summerson, for which I have to
thank you very much, sir!”
He broke off thus in answer to Richard, who addressed him as he came
into the room. By this time I too well understood Mr. Vholes’s
scrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability not to feel
that our worst fears did but keep pace with his client’s progress.
We sat down to dinner, and I had an opportunity of observing Richard,
anxiously. I was not disturbed by Mr. Vholes (who took off his gloves
to dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table, for I
doubt if, looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host’s
face. I found Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress,
abstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at
other intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. About his large
bright eyes that used to be so merry there was a wanness and a
restlessness that changed them altogether. I cannot use the
expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not
like age, and into such a ruin Richard’s youth and youthful beauty
had all fallen away.
He ate little and seemed indifferent what it was, showed himself to
be much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick even with
Ada. I thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all
gone, but it shone out of him sometimes as I had occasionally known
little momentary glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from
the glass. His laugh had not quite left him either, but it was like
the echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful.
Yet he was as glad as ever, in his old affectionate way, to have me
there, and we talked of the old times pleasantly. These did not
appear to be interesting to Mr. Vholes, though he occasionally made a
gasp which I believe was his smile. He rose shortly after dinner and
said that with the permission of the ladies he would retire to his
office.
“Always devoted to business, Vholes!” cried Richard.
“Yes, Mr. C.,” he returned, “the interests of clients are never to be
neglected, sir. They are paramount in the thoughts of a professional
man like myself, who wishes to preserve a good name among his
fellow-practitioners and society at large. My denying myself the
pleasure of the present agreeable conversation may not be wholly
irrespective of your own interests, Mr. C.”
Richard expressed himself quite sure of that and lighted Mr. Vholes
out. On his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes was a good
fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very
good fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it that it struck me he
had begun to doubt Mr. Vholes.
Then he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; and Ada and I put
things to rights, for they had no other servant than the woman who
attended to the chambers. My dear girl had a cottage piano there and
quietly sat down to sing some of Richard’s favourites, the lamp being
first removed into the next room, as he complained of its hurting his
eyes.
I sat between them, at my dear girl’s side, and felt very melancholy
listening to her sweet voice. I think Richard did too; I think he
darkened the room for that reason. She had been singing some time,
rising between whiles to bend over him and speak to him, when Mr.
Woodcourt came in. Then he sat down by Richard and half playfully,
half earnestly, quite naturally and easily, found out how he felt and
where he had been all day. Presently he proposed to accompany him in
a short walk on one of the bridges, as it was a moonlight airy night;
and Richard readily consenting, they went out together.
They left my dear girl still sitting at the piano and me still
sitting beside her. When they were gone out, I drew my arm round her
waist. She put her left hand in mine (I was sitting on that side),
but kept her right upon the keys, going over and over them without
striking any note.
“Esther, my dearest,” she said, breaking silence, “Richard is never
so well and I am never so easy about him as when he is with Allan
Woodcourt. We have to thank you for that.”