Bleak House
replied that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science. The
principle is the same, I think?”
“Precisely the same,” said Mr. Badger. “Finely expressed! The
professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last illness,
when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer
under the pillow and chipping at the countenances of the attendants.
The ruling passion!”
Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and
Mrs. Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was
disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to
us and that there was a great probability of its being sound. We
agreed to say nothing to Mr. Jarndyce until we had spoken to Richard;
and as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious
talk with him.
So after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found my
darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly
right in whatever he said.
“And how do you get on, Richard?” said I. I always sat down on the
other side of him. He made quite a sister of me.
“Oh! Well enough!” said Richard.
“He can’t say better than that, Esther, can he?” cried my pet
triumphantly.
I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I
couldn’t.
“Well enough?” I repeated.
“Yes,” said Richard, “well enough. It’s rather jog-trotty and
humdrum. But it’ll do as well as anything else!”
“Oh! My dear Richard!” I remonstrated.
“What’s the matter?” said Richard.
“Do as well as anything else!”
“I don’t think there’s any harm in that, Dame Durden,” said Ada,
looking so confidingly at me across him; “because if it will do as
well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope.”
“Oh, yes, I hope so,” returned Richard, carelessly tossing his hair
from his forehead. “After all, it may be only a kind of probation
till our suit is—I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit.
Forbidden ground! Oh, yes, it’s all right enough. Let us talk about
something else.”
Ada would have done so willingly, and with a full persuasion that we
had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I thought
it would be useless to stop there, so I began again.
“No, but Richard,” said I, “and my dear Ada! Consider how important
it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your
cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in earnest without any
reservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It
will be too late very soon.”
“Oh, yes! We must talk about it!” said Ada. “But I think Richard is
right.”
What was the use of my trying to look wise when she was so pretty,
and so engaging, and so fond of him!
“Mr. and Mrs. Badger were here yesterday, Richard,” said I, “and they
seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the
profession.”
“Did they though?” said Richard. “Oh! Well, that rather alters the
case, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not
have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don’t
care much about it. But, oh, it don’t matter! It’ll do as well as
anything else!”
“You hear him, Ada!” said I.
“The fact is,” Richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half
jocosely, “it is not quite in my way. I don’t take to it. And I get
too much of Mrs. Bayham Badger’s first and second.”
“I am sure THAT’S very natural!” cried Ada, quite delighted. “The
very thing we both said yesterday, Esther!”
“Then,” pursued Richard, “it’s monotonous, and to-day is too like
yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day.”
“But I am afraid,” said I, “this is an objection to all kinds of
application—to life itself, except under some very uncommon
circumstances.”
“Do you think so?” returned Richard, still considering. “Perhaps! Ha!
Why, then, you know,” he added, suddenly becoming gay again, “we
travel outside a circle to what I said just now. It’ll do as well as
anything else. Oh, it’s all right enough! Let us talk about something
else.”
But even Ada, with her loving face—and if it had seemed innocent and
trusting when I first saw it in that memorable November fog, how much
more did it seem now when I knew her innocent and trusting
heart—even Ada shook her head at this and looked serious. So I
thought it a good opportunity to hint to Richard that if he were
sometimes a little careless of himself, I was very sure he never
meant to be careless of Ada, and that it was a part of his
affectionate consideration for her not to slight the importance of a
step that might influence both their lives. This made him almost
grave.
“My dear Mother Hubbard,” he said, “that’s the very thing! I have
thought of that several times and have been quite angry with myself
for meaning to be so much in earnest and—somehow—not exactly being
so. I don’t know how it is; I seem to want something or other to
stand by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling
cousin, I love you, so much!), but I don’t settle down to constancy
in other things. It’s such uphill work, and it takes such a time!”
said Richard with an air of vexation.
“That may be,” I suggested, “because you don’t like what you have
chosen.”
“Poor fellow!” said Ada. “I am sure I don’t wonder at it!”
No. It was not of the least use my trying to look wise. I tried
again, but how could I do it, or how could it have any effect if I
could, while Ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder and while
he looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him!
“You see, my precious girl,” said Richard, passing her golden curls
through and through his hand, “I was a little hasty perhaps; or I
misunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. They don’t seem to lie in
that direction. I couldn’t tell till I tried. Now the question is
whether it’s worth-while to undo all that has been done. It seems
like making a great disturbance about nothing particular.”
“My dear Richard,” said I, “how CAN you say about nothing
particular?”
“I don’t mean absolutely that,” he returned. “I mean that it MAY be
nothing particular because I may never want it.”
Both Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly
worth-while to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone. I
then asked Richard whether he had thought of any more congenial
pursuit.
“There, my dear Mrs. Shipton,” said Richard, “you touch me home. Yes,
I have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me.”
“The law!” repeated Ada as if she were afraid of the name.
“If I went into Kenge’s office,” said Richard, “and if I were placed
under articles to Kenge, I should have my eye on the—hum!—the
forbidden ground—and should be able to study it, and master it, and
to satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being properly
conducted. I should be able to look after Ada’s interests and my own
interests (the same thing!); and I should peg away at Blackstone and
all those fellows with the most tremendous ardour.”
I was not by any means so sure of that, and I saw how his hankering
after the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes cast
a shade on Ada’s face. But I thought it best to encourage him in any
project of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure
that his mind was made up now.
“My dear Minerva,” said Richard, “I am as steady as you are. I made a
mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won’t do so any more, and
I’ll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is, you know,”
said Richard, relapsing into doubt, “if it really is worth-while,
after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular!”
This led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all that
we had said already and to our coming to much the same conclusion
afterwards. But we so strongly advised Richard to be frank and open
with Mr. Jarndyce, without a moment’s delay, and his disposition was
naturally so opposed to concealment that he sought him out at once
(taking us with him) and made a full avowal. “Rick,” said my
guardian, after hearing him attentively, “we can retreat with honour,
and we will. But we must be careful—for our cousin’s sake, Rick, for
our cousin’s sake—that we make no more such mistakes. Therefore, in
the matter of the law, we will have a good trial before we decide. We
will look before we leap, and take plenty of time about it.”
Richard’s energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind that he
would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr. Kenge’s
office in that hour and to have entered into articles with him on the
spot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution that we
had shown to be so necessary, he contented himself with sitting down
among us in his lightest spirits and talking as if his one unvarying
purpose in life from childhood had been that one which now held
possession of him. My guardian was very kind and cordial with him,
but rather grave, enough so to cause Ada, when he had departed and we
were going upstairs to bed, to say, “Cousin John, I hope you don’t
think the worse of Richard?”
“No, my love,” said he.
“Because it was very natural that Richard should be mistaken in such
a difficult case. It is not uncommon.”
“No, no, my love,” said he. “Don’t look unhappy.”
“Oh, I am not unhappy, cousin John!” said Ada, smiling cheerfully,
with her hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding him
good night. “But I should be a little so if you thought at all the
worse of Richard.”
“My dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I should think the worse of him only
if you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should be
more disposed to quarrel with myself even then, than with poor Rick,
for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing! He has
time before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of him? Not
I, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!”
“No, indeed, cousin John,” said Ada, “I am sure I could not—I am
sure I would not—think any ill of Richard if the whole world did. I
could, and I would, think better of him then than at any other time!”
So quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his
shoulders—both hands now—and looking up into his face, like the
picture of truth!
“I think,” said my guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, “I think it
must be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall
occasionally be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the
father. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little woman. Pleasant
slumbers! Happy dreams!”
This was the first time I ever saw him follow Ada with his eyes with
something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I well
remembered the look with which he had contemplated her and Richard
when she was singing in the firelight; it was but a very little while
since he had watched them passing down the room in which the sun was
shining, and away into the shade; but his glance was changed, and
even the silent look of confidence in me which now followed it once
more was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it had originally
been.
Ada praised Richard more to me that night than ever she had praised
him yet. She went to sleep with a little bracelet he had given her
clasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I kissed
her cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil and happy
she looked.
For I was so little inclined to sleep myself that night that I sat up
working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but I was
wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don’t know why. At least I don’t
think I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don’t think it
matters.
At any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that I
would leave myself not a moment’s leisure to be low-spirited. For I