The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  “And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you once, never to found a hope of expectation on the family curse.”

  “There you come back to John Jarndyce!” said Richard, impatiently. “Well! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of what I have to say; and it’s as well at once. My dear Esther, how can you be so blind? Don’t you see that he is an interested party, and that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the suit and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well for me?”

  “O Richard,” I remonstrated, “is it possible that you can ever have seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this solitary place where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?”

  He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of reproach. He was silent for a little while, before he replied in a subdued voice:

  “Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean fellow, and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being poor qualities in one of my years.”

  “I know it very well,” said I. “I am not more sure of anything.”

  “That’s a dear girl,” retorted Richard, “and like you, because it gives me comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all this business, for it’s a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion to tell you.”

  “I know perfectly,” said I, “I know as well, Richard—what shall I say? as well as you do—that such misconstructions are foreign to your nature. And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it.”

  “Come, sister, come,” said Richard, a little more gaily, “you will be fair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a little twisted him, too. I don’t say that he is not an honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him say so fifty times. Then why should he escape?”

  “Because,” said I, “his is an uncommon character, and he has resolutely kept himself outside the circle, Richard.”

  “Oh, because and because!” replied Richard, in his vivacious way. “I am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things may smoothly happen that are convenient enough.”

  I was so touched with pity for Richard, that I could not reproach him any more, even by a look. I remembered my guardian’s gentleness towards his errors, and with what perfect freedom from resentment he had spoken of them.

  “Esther,” Richard resumed, “you are not to suppose that I have come here to make underhanded charges against John Jarndyce. I have only come to justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well, and we got on very well, while I was a boy, utterly regardless of this same suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it and to look into it, then it was quite another thing. Then John Jarndyce discovers that Ada and I must break off, and that if I don’t amend that very objectionable course, I am not fit for her. Now, Esther, I don’t mean to amend that very objectionable course: I will not hold John Jarndyce’s favour on those unfair terms of compromise, which he has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or displeases him, I must maintain my rights, and Ada’s. I have been thinking about it a good deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to.”

  Poor dear Richard! He had indeed been thinking about it a good deal. His face, his voice, his manner all showed that, too plainly.

  “So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him about all this) that we are at issue, and that we had better be at issue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our roads are not the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I should take much more than he. I don’t mean to say that it is the one to be established; but there it is, and it has its chance.”

  “I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard,” said I, “of your letter. I had heard of it already, without an offended or angry word.”

  “Indeed?” replied Richard, softening. “I am glad I said he was an honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say that, and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you tell her what has passed between us. But if you had gone into the case as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers as I did when I was at Kenge’s, if you only knew what an accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions, they involve, you would think me moderate in comparison.”

  “Perhaps so,” said I. “But do you think that, among those many papers, there is much truth and justice, Richard?”

  “There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther—”

  “Or was once, long ago,” said I.

  “Is—is—must be somewhere,” pursued Richard, impetuously, “and must be brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of, is not the way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me; John Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change, everybody who has any share in it. Then the greater right I have on my side, when I resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end.”

  “All you can, Richard! Do you think that in these many years no others have done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier because of so many failures?”

  “It can’t last for ever,” returned Richard, with a fierceness kindling in him which again presented to me that last sad reminder. “I am young and earnest; and energy and determination have done wonders many a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into it. I devote myself to it. I make it the object of my life.”

  “O, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!”

  “No, no, no, don’t you be afraid for me,” he returned, affectionately. “You’re a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl; but you have your prepossessions. So I come round to John Jarndyce. I tell you, my good Esther, when he and I were on those terms which he found so convenient, we were not on natural terms.”

  “Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?”

  “No, I don’t say that. I mean that all this business puts us on unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible. See another reason for urging it on! I may find out, when it’s over, that I have been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer when I am free of it, and I may then agree with what you say today. Very well. Then I shall acknowledge it, and make him reparation.”

  Everything postponed to that imaginary time! Everything held in confusion and indecision until then!

  “Now, my best of confidantes,” said Richard, “I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful, about John Jarndyce; but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and—and in short,” said Richard, who had been hesitating through these words, “I—I don’t like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious, doubting character, to a confiding girl like Ada.”

  I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words, than in anything he had said yet.

  “Why,” acknowledged Richard, “that may be true enough, my love. I rather feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-play by and by. I shall come all right again, then, don’t you be afraid.”

  I asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada?

  “Not quite,” said Richard. “I am bound not to withhold from her that John Jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner, addressing me as ‘My dear Rick,’ trying to argue me out of my opinions, and telling me that they shou
ld make no difference in him. (All very well of course, but not altering the case.) I also want Ada to know, that if I see her seldom just now, I am looking after her interests as well as my own—we two being in the same boat exactly—and that I hope she will not suppose, from any flying rumours she may hear, that I am at all light-headed or imprudent; on the contrary, I am always looking forward to the termination of the suit, and always planning in that direction. Being of age now, and having taken the step I have taken, I consider myself free from any accountability to John Jarndyce; but Ada being still a ward of the Court, I don’t yet ask her to renew our engagement. When she is free to act for herself, I shall be myself once more, and we shall both be in very different worldly circumstances, I believe. If you tell her all this with the advantage of your considerate way, you will do me a very great and a very kind service, my dear Esther; and I shall knock Jarndyce and Jarndyce on the head with greater vigour. Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak House.”

  “Richard,” said I, “you place great confidence in me, but I fear you will not take advice from me?”

  “It’s impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any other, readily.”

  As if there were any other in his life! As if his whole career and character were not being dyed one colour!

  “But I may ask you a question, Richard?”

  “I think so,” said he, laughing. “I don’t know who may not, if you may not.”

  “You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life.”

  “How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled!”

  “Are you in debt again?”

  “Why of course I am,” said Richard, astonished at my simplicity.

  “Is it of course?”

  “My dear child, certainly. I can’t throw myself into an object so completely, without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don’t know, that under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It’s only a question between the larger sums and the smaller. I shall be within the mark any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl,” said Richard, quite amused with me, “I shall be all right! I shall pull through, my dear!”

  I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood, that I tried, in Ada’s name, in my guardian’s, in my own, by every fervent means that I could think of, to warn him of it, and to show him some of his mistakes. He received everything I said, with patience and gentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least effect. I could not wonder at this, after the reception his preoccupied mind had given to my guardian’s letter; but I determined to try Ada’s influence yet.

  So, when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went home to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to give her, and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that Richard was losing himself, and scattering his whole life to the winds. It made her very unhappy, of course; though she had a far, far greater reliance on his correcting his errors than I could have—which was so natural and loving in my dear!—and she presently wrote him this little letter:

  My Dearest Cousin,

  Esther has told me all you said to her this morning. I write this, to repeat most earnestly for myself all that she said to you, and to let you know how sure I am that you will sooner or later find our cousin John a pattern of truth, sincerity and goodness, when you will deeply deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so much wrong.

  I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next, but I trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have some fears, my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for yourself—and, if for yourself, for me. In case this should be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat and beg you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake that will make me half so happy, as for ever turning your back upon the shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry with me for saying this. Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for that source of trouble which had its share in making us both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it go for ever. We have reason to know, by this time, that there is no good in it, and no hope; that there is nothing to be got from it but sorrow.

  My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you are quite free, and that it is very likely you may find some one whom you will love much better than your first fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen way; than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very rich with you (if such a thing were possible), at the cost of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety, and of your indifference to other aims. You may wonder at my saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own heart.

  Ever, my dearest cousin, Your most affectionate

  Ada

  This note brought Richard to us very soon; but it made little change in him, if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who was wrong—he would show us—we should see! He was animated and glowing, as if Ada’s tenderness had gratified him; but I could only hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect upon his mind on re-perusal, than it assuredly had then.

  As they were to remain with us that day, and had taken their places to return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking to Mr. Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way; and I delicately said, that there was a responsibility in encouraging Richard.

  “Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?” he repeated, catching at the word with the pleasantest smile. “I am the last man in the world for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life—I can’t be.”

  “I am afraid everybody is obliged to be,” said I, timidly enough: he being so much older and more clever than I.

  “No, really?” said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most agreeable jocularity of surprise. “But every man’s not obliged to be solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson,” he took a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, “there’s so much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of counting. Call it four and ninepence—call it four pound nine. They tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as much as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don’t stop, why should I? There you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that’s responsibility, I am responsible.”

  The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again, and looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made 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 C
ommon 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.