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

An Appeal Case

As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have

given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr.

Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise

when he received the representation, though it caused him much

uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted

together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole

days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge,

and laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While

they were thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent

considerable inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed

his head so constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested

in its right place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other

time, but maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our

utmost endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping

assurances that everything was going on capitally and that it

really was all right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by

him.

We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was

made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard’s behalf as an infant and a

ward, and I don’t know what, and that there was a quantity of

talking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court

as a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was

adjourned and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and

petitioned about until Richard began to doubt (as he told us)

whether, if he entered the army at all, it would not be as a

veteran of seventy or eighty years of age. At last an appointment

was made for him to see the Lord Chancellor again in his private

room, and there the Lord Chancellor very seriously reproved him for

trifling with time and not knowing his mind—“a pretty good joke, I

think,” said Richard, “from that quarter!”—and at last it was

settled that his application should be granted. His name was

entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for an ensign’s

commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an agent’s; and

Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a violent

course of military study and got up at five o’clock every morning

to practise the broadsword exercise.

Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We

sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper or

out of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be

spoken to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now

in a professor’s house in London, was able to be with us less

frequently than before; my guardian still maintained the same

reserve; and so time passed until the commission was obtained and

Richard received directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland.

He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a

long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed

before my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were

sitting and said, “Come in, my dears!” We went in and found

Richard, whom we had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the

chimney-piece looking mortified and angry.

“Rick and I, Ada,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “are not quite of one mind.

Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!”

“You are very hard with me, sir,” said Richard. “The harder

because you have been so considerate to me in all other respects

and have done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never

could have been set right without you, sir.”

“Well, well!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “I want to set you more right

yet. I want to set you more right with yourself.”

“I hope you will excuse my saying, sir,” returned Richard in a

fiery way, but yet respectfully, “that I think I am the best judge

about myself.”

“I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick,” observed Mr.

Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, “that

it’s quite natural in you to think so, but I don’t think so. I

must do my duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool

blood; and I hope you will always care for me, cool and hot.”

Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-chair and sat beside her.

“It’s nothing, my dear,” he said, “it’s nothing. Rick and I have

only had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you

are the theme. Now you are afraid of what’s coming.”

“I am not indeed, cousin John,” replied Ada with a smile, “if it is

to come from you.”

“Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute’s calm attention,

without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My

dear girl,” putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the

easy-chair, “you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little

woman told me of a little love affair?”

“It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your

kindness that day, cousin John.”

“I can never forget it,” said Richard.

“And I can never forget it,” said Ada.

“So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for

us to agree,” returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the

gentleness and honour of his heart. “Ada, my bird, you should know

that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All

that he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully

equipped. He has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward

to the tree he has planted.”

“Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am

quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir,” said

Richard, “is not all I have.”

“Rick, Rick!” cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner,

and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would

have stopped his ears. “For the love of God, don’t found a hope or

expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the

grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom

that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to

beg, better to die!”

We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit

his lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and

knew that I felt too, how much he needed it.

“Ada, my dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness,

“these are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and

have seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had to start

him in the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you,

for his sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the

understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I

must go further. I will be plain with you both. You were to

confide freely in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you

wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but your

relationship.”

“Better to say at once, sir,” returned Richard, “that you renounce

all confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same.”

“Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don’t mean it.”

“You think I have begun ill, sir,” retorted Richard. “I HAVE, I

know.”

“How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we

spoke of these things last,” said Mr. Jarndyce in a cordial and

encouraging manner. “You have not made that beginning yet, but

there is a time for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather,

it is just now fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You

two (very young, my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing

more. What more may come must come of being worked out, Rick, and

no sooner.”

“You are very hard with me, sir,” said Richard. “Harder than I

could have supposed you would be.”

“My dear boy,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I am harder with myself when I

do anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own

hands. Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that

there should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is

better for her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you

will do what is best for the other, if not what is best for

yourselves.”

“Why is it best, sir?” returned Richard hastily. “It was not when

we opened our hearts to you. You did not say so then.”

“I have had experience since. I don’t blame you, Rick, but I have

had experience since.”

“You mean of me, sir.”

“Well! Yes, of both of you,” said Mr. Jarndyce kindly. “The time

is not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not

right, and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins,

begin afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for

you to write your lives in.”

Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing.

“I have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Esther,”

said Mr. Jarndyce, “until now, in order that we might be open as

the day, and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I

now most earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here.

Leave all else to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do

otherwise, you will do wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in

ever bringing you together.”

A long silence succeeded.

“Cousin Richard,” said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to

his face, “after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice

is left us. Your mind may be quite at ease about me, for you will

leave me here under his care and will be sure that I can have

nothing to wish for—quite sure if I guide myself by his advice.

I—I don’t doubt, cousin Richard,” said Ada, a little confused,

“that you are very fond of me, and I—I don’t think you will fall

in love with anybody else. But I should like you to consider well

about it too, as I should like you to be in all things very happy.

You may trust in me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable;

but I am not unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even

cousins may be sorry to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry,

Richard, though I know it’s for your welfare. I shall always think

of you affectionately, and often talk of you with Esther, and—and

perhaps you will sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard.

So now,” said Ada, going up to him and giving him her trembling

hand, “we are only cousins again, Richard—for the time perhaps—

and I pray for a blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!”

It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my

guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he

himself had expressed of