Bleak House by Charles Dickens (best ebook reader for laptop .txt) 📕

were often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view⁠—in his expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, “Now, my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money⁠—in my expansive intentions⁠—if you only knew it!” And really (he said) he meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as doing it. If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so much importance to put in the doctor’s hand, he would have put them in the doctor’s hand. Not having them, he substituted the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it⁠—if his will were genuine and real, which it was⁠—it appeared to him that it was the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation.

“It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,” said Mr. Skimpole, “but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My butcher says to me he wants that little bill. It’s a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man’s nature that he always calls it a ‘little’ bill⁠—to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I reply to the butcher, ‘My good friend, if you knew it, you are paid. You haven’t had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You are paid. I mean it.’ ”

“But, suppose,” said my guardian, laughing, “he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of providing it?”

“My dear Jarndyce,” he returned, “you surprise me. You take the butcher’s position. A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very ground. Says he, ‘Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound?’ ‘Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my honest friend?’ said I, naturally amazed by the question. ‘I like spring lamb!’ This was so far convincing. ‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!’ ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You had got the lamb, and I have not got the money. You couldn’t really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!’ He had not a word. There was an end of the subject.”

“Did he take no legal proceedings?” inquired my guardian.

“Yes, he took legal proceedings,” said Mr. Skimpole. “But in that he was influenced by passion, not by reason. Passion reminds me of Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire.”

“He is a great favourite with my girls,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “and I have promised for them.”

“Nature forgot to shade him off, I think,” observed Mr. Skimpole to Ada and me. “A little too boisterous⁠—like the sea. A little too vehement⁠—like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every colour scarlet. But I grant a sledgehammering sort of merit in him!”

I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very highly of one another, Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to many things and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for anything. Besides which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the point of breaking out into some strong opinion when Mr. Skimpole was referred to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly pleased with him.

“He has invited me,” said Mr. Skimpole; “and if a child may trust himself in such hands⁠—which the present child is encouraged to do, with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him⁠—I shall go. He proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By the by, Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss Summerson?”

He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful, lighthearted manner and without the least embarrassment.

“Oh, yes!” said I.

“Coavinses has been arrested by the Great Bailiff,” said Mr. Skimpole. “He will never do violence to the sunshine any more.”

It quite shocked me to hear it, for I had already recalled with anything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on the sofa that night wiping his head.

“His successor informed me of it yesterday,” said Mr. Skimpole. “His successor is in my house now⁠—in possession, I think he calls it. He came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter’s birthday. I put it to him, ‘This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed daughter you wouldn’t like me to come, uninvited, on her birthday?’ But he stayed.”

Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched the piano by which he was seated.

“And he told me,” he said, playing little chords where I shall put full stops, “The Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And that Coavinses’ profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses. Were at a considerable disadvantage.”

Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr. Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada’s favourite songs. Ada and I both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing in his mind.

After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and stopped Mr. Skimpole’s playing. “I don’t like this, Skimpole,” he said thoughtfully.

Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up surprised.

“The man was necessary,” pursued my guardian, walking backward and forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the room and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high east wind had blown it into that form. “If