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

by Lynn Shepherd

  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 realized 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 the 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 Boythorn? Aye, aye!” and opened and read it with evident pleasure, announcing to us, in a parenthesis, when he was about half-way through, that Boythorn 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 that the necessary preparations were made for Mr. Boythorn’s reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with some curiosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear. The dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The dinner was put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light but the blaze when the hall-door suddenly burst open, and the hall resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and in a stentorian tone:

  “We have been misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right instead of to the left. He is the most intolerable scoundrel on the face of the earth. His father must have been a most consummate villain, ever to have such a son. I would have had that fellow shot without the least remorse!”

  “Did he do it on purpose?” Mr. Jarndyce inquired.

  “I have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his whole existence in misdirecting travellers!” returned the other. “By my soul, I thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever beheld, when he was telling me to take the turning to the right. And yet I stood before that fellow face to face, and didn’t knock his brains out!”

  “Teeth, you mean?” said Mr. Jarndyce.

  “Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, really making the whole house vibrate. “What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha!—And that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the countenance of that fellow, when he was a boy was the blackest image of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled despot in the streets tomorrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree!”

  “I have no doubt of it,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “Now, will you come upstairs?”

  “By my soul, Jarndyce,” returned his guest, who seemed to refer to his watch, “if you had been married, I would have turned back at the garden-gate, and gone away to the remotest summits of the Himalaya Mountains, sooner than I would have presented myself at this unseasonable hour.”

  “Not quite so far, I hope?” said Mr. Jarndyce.

  “By my life and honour, yes!” cried the visitor. “I wouldn’t be guilty of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house waiting all this time, for any earthly consideration. I would infinitely rather destroy myself—infinitely rather!”

  Talking thus, they went upstairs; and presently we heard him in his bedroom thundering “Ha, ha, ha!” and again “Ha, ha, ha!” until the flattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the contagion, and to laugh as enjoyingly as he did, or as we did when we heard him laugh.

  We all conceived a prepossession in his favour; for there was a sterling quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous healthy voice, and in the roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word he spoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go off like blank cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly prepared to have it so confirmed by his appearance, when Mr. Jarndyce presented him. He was not only a very han
dsome old gentleman—upright and stalwart as he had been described to us—with a massive grey head, a fine composure of face when silent, a figure that might have become corpulent but for his being so continually in earnest that he gave it no rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double chin but for the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to assist; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain that he had nothing to hide, but showed himself exactly as he was—incapable (as Richard said) of anything on a limited scale, and firing away with those blank great guns, because he carried no small arms whatever—that really I could not help looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led by Mr. Jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up his head like a bloodhound, and gave out that tremendous Ha, ha, ha!

  “You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?” said Mr. Jarndyce.

  “By Heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!” replied the other. “He is the most wonderful creature! I wouldn’t take ten thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole support, in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment, a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most astonishing birds that ever lived!”

  The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so tame that he was brought down by Mr. Boythorn’s man, on his forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted on his master’s head. To hear Mr. Boythorn presently expressing the most implacable and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to have a good illustration of his character, I thought.

  “By my soul, Jarndyce,” he said, very gently holding up a bit of bread to the canary to peck at, “if I were in your place, I would seize every Master in Chancery by the throat tomorrow morning, and shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets, and his bones rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by fair means or by foul. If you would empower me to do it, I would do it for you with the greatest satisfaction!” (All this time the very small canary was eating out of his hand.)

  “I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at present,” returned Mr. Jarndyce, laughing, “that it would be greatly advanced even by the legal process of shaking the Bench and the whole Bar.”

  “There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery, on the face of the earth!” said Mr. Boythorn. “Nothing but a mine below it on a busy day in term-time, with all its records, rules, and precedents collected in it, and every functionary belonging to it also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it in the least!”

  It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he recommended this strong measure of reform. When we laughed, he threw up his head, and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country seemed to echo to his Ha, ha, ha! It had not the least effect in disturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete; and who hopped about the table with its quick head now on this side and now on that, turning its bright sudden eye on its master, as if he were no more than another bird.

  “But how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right of way?” said Mr. Jarndyce. “You are not free from the toils of the law yourself!”

  “The fellow has brought actions against me for trespass, and I have brought actions against him for trespass,” returned Mr. Boythorn. “By Heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally impossible that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir Lucifer.”

  “Complimentary to our distant relation!” said my Guardian laughingly, to Ada and Richard.

  “I would beg Miss Clare’s pardon and Mr. Carstone’s pardon,” resumed our visitor, “if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of the lady, and the smile of the gentleman, that it is quite unnecessary, and that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance.”

  “Or he keeps us,” suggested Richard.

  “By my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, “that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but a walking-stick’s! The whole of that family are the most solemnly conceited and consummate blockheads!—But it’s no matter; he should not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets melted into one, and living in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory balls in a Chinese carving. The fellow, by his agent, or secretary, or somebody, writes to me “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents his compliments to Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, and has to call his attention to the fact that the green pathway by the old parsonage-house, now the property of Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, is Sir Leicester’s right of way, being in fact a portion of the park of Chesney Wold; and that Sir Leicester finds it convenient to close up the same.” I write to the fellow, “Mr. Lawrence Boythorn presents his compliments to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and has to call his attention to the fact that he totally denies the whole of Sir Leicester Dedlock’s positions on every possible subject, and has to add, in reference to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to see the man who may undertake to do it.” The fellow sends a most abandoned villain with one eye, to construct a gateway. I play upon that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine, until the breath is nearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night. I chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to come over the fence, and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man traps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the engine—resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the existence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass; I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and battery; I defend them, and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha, ha!”

  To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him at the very same time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb, and softly smoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought him the gentlest. To hear him laugh, and see the broad good nature of his face then, one might have supposed that he had not a care in the world, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole existence was a summer joke.

  “No, no,” he said, “no closing up of my paths, by any Dedlock! Though I willingly confess,” here he softened in a moment, “that Lady Dedlock is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I would do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet with a head seven hundred years thick, may. A man who joined his regiment at twenty, and, within a week, challenged the most imperious and presumptuous coxcomb of a commanding officer that ever drew the breath of life through a tight waist—and got broke for it—is not the man to be walked over, by all the Sir Lucifers, dead or alive, locked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!”

  “Nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over either?” said my Guardian.

  “Most assuredly not!” said Mr. Boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder with an air of protection, that had something serious in it, though he laughed. “He will stand by the low boy, always. Jarndyce, you may rely upon him! But, speaking of this trespass—with apologies to Miss Clare and Miss Summerson for the length at which I have pursued so dry a subject—is there nothing for me from your men, Kenge and Carboy?”

  “I think not, Esther?” said Mr. Jarndyce.

  “Nothing, Guardian.”

  “Much obliged!” said Mr. Boythorn. “Had no need to ask, after even my slight experience of Miss Summerson’s forethought for every one about her.” (They all encouraged me; they were determined to do it.) “I inquired because, coming from Lincolnshire, I of course have not yet been in to
wn, and I thought some letters might have been sent down here. I dare say they will report progress tomorrow morning.”

  I saw him so often in the course of the evening, which passed very pleasantly, contemplate Richard and Ada with an interest and a satisfaction that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat at a little distance from the piano listening to the music—and he had small occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond of music, for his face showed it—that I asked my Guardian, as we sat at the backgammon board, whether Mr. Boythorn had ever been married.

  “No,” said he. “No.”

  “But he meant to be!” said I.

  “How did you find out that?” he returned, with a smile.

  “Why, Guardian,” I explained, not without reddening a little at hazarding what was in my thoughts, “there is something so tender in his manner, after all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us, and—”

  Mr. Jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was sitting, as I have just described him.

  I said no more.

  “You are right, little woman,” he answered. “He was all but married once. Long ago. And once.”

  “Did the lady die?”

  “No—but she died to him. That time has had its influence on all his later life. Would you suppose him to have a head and a heart full of romance yet?”

  “I think, Guardian, I might have supposed so. But it is easy to say that, when you have told me so.”

  “He has never since been what he might have been,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “and now you see him in his age with no one near him but his servant, and his little yellow friend.—It’s your throw, my dear!”

  I felt, from my Guardian’s manner, that beyond this point I could not pursue the subject without changing the wind. I therefore forbore to ask any further questions. I was interested, but not curious. I thought a little while about this old love story in the night, when I was awakened by Mr. Boythorn’s lusty snoring; and I tried to do that very difficult thing, imagine old people young again, and invested with the graces of youth. But I fell asleep before I had succeeded, and dreamed of the days when I lived in my godmother’s house. I am not sufficiently acquainted with such subjects, to know whether it is at all remarkable that I almost always dreamed of that period of my life.