Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

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

are my weak point. I wish to leave the poor girls some little

independence, as well as a good name.”

We now arrived at Mr. Boythorn’s house, where the tea-table, all

prepared, was awaiting us. Richard came in restless and hurried

shortly afterwards, and leaning over Mr. Vholes’s chair, whispered

something in his ear. Mr. Vholes replied aloud—or as nearly aloud

I suppose as he had ever replied to anything—“You will drive me,

will you, sir? It is all the same to me, sir. Anything you

please. I am quite at your service.”

We understood from what followed that Mr. Skimpole was to be left

until the morning to occupy the two places which had been already

paid for. As Ada and I were both in low spirits concerning Richard

and very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we

politely could that we should leave Mr. Skimpole to the Dedlock

Arms and retire when the night-travellers were gone.

Richard’s high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went

out together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had

ordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern

standing at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been

harnessed to it.

I never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern’s

light, Richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in

his hand; Mr. Vholes quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up,

looking at him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it.

I have before me the whole picture of the warm dark night, the

summer lightning, the dusty track of road closed in by hedgerows

and high trees, the gaunt pale horse with his ears pricked up, and

the driving away at speed to Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

My dear girl told me that night how Richard’s being thereafter

prosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this

difference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging

heart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him;

how he thought of her through his present errors, and she would

think of him at all times—never of herself if she could devote

herself to him, never of her own delights if she could minister to

his.

And she kept her word?

I look along the road