Bleak House. Charles Dickens
how it is, I seem to be always writing about myself. I mean all the time to write about other people, and I try to think about myself as little as possible, and I am sure, when I find myself coming into the story again, I am really vexed and say, 'Dear, dear, you tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn't!' but it is all of no use. I hope any one who may read what I write, will understand that if these pages contain a great deal about me, I can only suppose it must be because I have really something to do with them, and can't be kept out.
My darling and I read together, and worked, and practised; and found so much employment for our time, that the winter days flew by us like bright-winged birds. Generally in the afternoons, and always in the evenings, Richard gave us his company. Although he was one of the most restless creatures in the world, he certainly was very fond of our society.
He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it, and I had better say it at once. I had never seen any young people falling in love before, but I found them out quite soon. I could not say so, of course, or show that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I was so demure, and used to seem so unconscious, that sometimes I considered within myself while I was sitting at work, whether I was not growing quite deceitful.
But there was no help for it. All I had to do was to be quiet, and I was as quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice, too, so far as any words were concerned; but the innocent manner in which they relied more and more upon me, as they took more and more to one another, was so charming, that I had great difficulty in not showing how it interested me.
'Our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman,' Richard would say, coming up to meet me in the garden early, with his pleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, 'that I can't get on without her. Before I begin my harum-scarum day – grinding away at those books and instruments, and then galloping up hill and down dale, all the country round, like a highwayman – it does me so much good to come and have a steady walk with our comfortable friend, that here I am again!'
'You know, Dame Durden, dear,' Ada would say at night, with her head upon my shoulder, and the firelight shining in her thoughtful eyes, 'I don't want to talk when we come up-stairs here. Only to sit a little while, thinking, with your dear face for company; and to hear the wind, and remember the poor sailors at sea—'
Ah! Perhaps Richard was going to be a sailor. We had talked it over very often, now, and there was some talk of gratifying the inclination of his childhood for the sea. Mr. Jarndyce had written to a relation of the family, a great Sir Leicester Dedlock, for his interest in Richard's favour, generally; and Sir Leicester had replied in a gracious manner, 'that he would be happy to advance the prospects of the young gentleman if it should ever prove to be within his power, which was not at all probable – and that my Lady sent her compliments to the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly remembered that she was allied by remote consanguinity), and trusted that he would ever do his duty in any honourable profession to which he might devote himself.'
'So I apprehend it's pretty clear,' said Richard to me, 'that I shall have to work my own way. Never mind! Plenty of people have had to do that before now, and have done it. I only wish I had the command of a clipping privateer, to begin with, and could carry off the Chancellor and keep him on short allowance until he gave judgment in our cause. He'd find himself growing thin, if he didn't look sharp!'
With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever flagged, Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite perplexed me – principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd way, for prudence. It entered into all his calculations about money, in a singular manner, which I don't think I can better explain than by reverting for a moment to our loan to Mr. Skimpole.
Mr. Jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either from Mr. Skimpole himself or from Coavinses, and had placed the money in my hands with instructions to me to retain my own part of it and hand the rest to Richard. The number of little acts of thoughtless expenditure which Richard justified by the recovery of his ten pounds, and the number of times he talked to me as if he had saved or realised that amount, would form a sum in simple addition.
'My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?' he said to me, when he wanted, without the least consideration, to bestow five pounds on the brickmaker. 'I made ten pounds, clear, out of Coavinses' business.'
'How was that?' said I.
'Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get rid of, and never expected to see any more. You don't deny that?'
'No,' said I.
'Very well! then I came into possession of ten pounds—'
'The same ten pounds,' I hinted.
'That has nothing to do with it!' returned Richard. 'I have got ten pounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can afford to spend it without being particular.'
In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good, he carried that sum to his credit and drew upon it.
'Let me see!' he would say. 'I saved five pounds out of the brickmaker's affair; so, if I have a good rattle to London and back in a post-chaise, and put that down at four pounds, I shall have saved one. And it's a very good thing to save one, let me tell you: a penny saved, is a penny got!'
I believe Richard's was as frank and generous a nature as there possibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and, in the midst of all his wild restlessness, was so gentle, that I knew him like a brother in a few weeks. His gentleness was natural to him, and would have shown itself abundantly, even without Ada's influence; but, with it, he became one of the most winning of companions, always so ready to be interested, and always so happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. I am sure that I, sitting with them, and walking with them, and talking with them, and noticing from day to day how they went on, falling deeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and each shyly thinking that this love was the greatest of secrets, perhaps not yet suspected even by the other – I am sure that I was scarcely less enchanted than they were, and scarcely less pleased with the pretty dream.
We were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast Mr. Jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription said, 'From Boy thorn? Aye, aye!' and opened and read it with evident pleasure, announcing to us, in a parenthesis, when he was about half-way through, that Boy-thorn was 'coming down' on a visit. Now, who was Boythorn? we all thought. And I dare say we all thought, too – I am sure I did, for one – would Boythorn at all interfere with what was going forward?
'I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn,' said Mr. Jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, 'more than five-and-forty years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in the world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then the loudest boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was then the heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow.'
'In stature, sir?' asked Richard.
'Pretty well, Rick, in that respect,' said Mr. Jarndyce; 'being some ten years older than I, and a couple of inches taller, with his head thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his hands like a clean blacksmith's, and his lungs! – there's no simile for his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the house shake.'
As Mr. Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend Boythorn, we observed the favourable omen that there was not the least indication of any change in the wind.
'But it's the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick– and Ada, and little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor! – that I speak of,' he pursued. 'His language is as sounding as his voice. He is always in extremes; perpetually in the superlative degree. In his condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an Ogre, from what he says; and I believe he has the reputation of one with some people. There! I tell you no more of him beforehand. You must not be surprised to see him take me under his protection; for he has never forgotten that I was a low boy at school, and that our friendship began in his knocking two of my head tyrant's teeth out (he says six) before breakfast. Boythorn and his man,' to me, 'will be here this afternoon, my dear.'
I took care