Bleak House. Charles Dickens

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СКАЧАТЬ the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my little perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly affairs, when it leads to such pleasant consequences? I don't regret it therefore.'

      Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what they expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr. Jarndyce than this. I had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether it was really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was probably the most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should so desire to escape the gratitude of others.

      We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging qualities of Ada and Richard, that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the first time, should be so unreserved, and should lay himself out to be so exquisitely agreeable. They (and especially Richard) were naturally pleased for similar reasons, and considered it no common privilege to be so freely confided in by such an attractive man. The more we listened, the more gaily Mr. Skimpole talked. And what with his fine hilarious manner, and his engaging candour, and his genial way of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, 'I am a child, you know! You are designing people compared with me;' (he really made me consider myself in that light;) 'but I am gay and innocent; forget your worldly arts and play with me!'—the effect was absolutely dazzling.

      He was so full of feeling too, and had such a delicate sentiment for what was beautiful or tender, that he could have won a heart by that alone. In the evening, when I was preparing to make tea, and Ada was touching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a tune to her cousin Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and sat down on the sofa near me, and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved him.

      'She is like the morning,' he said. 'With that golden hair, those blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is the child of the universe.'

      Mr. Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us, with his hands behind him, and an attentive smile upon his face.

      'The universe,' he observed, 'makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.'

      'O! I don't know!' cried Mr. Skimpole, buoyantly.

      'I think I do know,' said Mr. Jarndyce.

      'Well!' cried Mr. Skimpole, 'you know the world (which in your sense is the universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your way. But if I had mine,' glancing at the cousins, 'there should be no brambles of sordid realities in such a path as that. It should be strewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change should never wither it. The base word money should never be breathed near it!'

      Mr. Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been really a child; and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment, glanced at the young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a benignant expression in it which I often (how often!) saw again: which has long been engraven on my heart. The room in which they were, communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted by the fire. Ada sat at the piano; Richard stood beside her, bending down. Upon the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady fire, though reflecting from motionless objects. Ada touched the notes so softly, and sang so low, that the wind, sighing away to the distant hills, was as audible as the music. The mystery of the future, and the little clue afforded to it by the voice of the present, seemed expressed in the whole picture.

      But it is not to recall this fancy, well as I remember it, that I recall the scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of the contrast in respect of meaning and intention, between the silent look directed that way, and the flow of words that had preceded it. Secondly, though Mr. Jarndyce's glance, as he withdrew it, rested for but a moment on me, I felt as if, in that moment, he confided to me – and knew that he confided to me, and that I received the confidence – his hope that Ada and Richard might one day enter on a dearer relationship.

      Mr. Skimpole could play on the piano and the violoncello; and he was a composer – had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it – and played what he composed with taste. After tea we had quite a little concert, in which Richard– who was enthralled by Ada's singing, and told me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were written – and Mr. Jarndyce, and I, were the audience. After a little while I missed, first Mr. Skimpole, and afterwards Richard; and while I was thinking how could Richard stay away so long, and lose so much, the maid who had given me the keys looked in at the door, saying, ' If you please, miss, could you spare a minute?'

      When I was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her hands, 'Oh if you please, miss, Mr. Carstone says would you come up-stairs to Mr. Skimpole's room. He has been took, miss!'

      'Took?' said I.

      'Took, miss. Sudden,' said the maid.

      I was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind; but of course, I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one; and collected myself, as I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to consider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove to be a fit. She threw open a door, and I went into a chamber; where, to my unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr. Skimpole stretched upon the bed, or prostrate on the floor, I found him standing before the fire smiling at Richard, while Richard, with a face of great embarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa, in a white great-coat, with smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, which he was wiping smoother, and making less of, with a pocket-handkerchief.

      'Miss Summerson,' said Richard, hurriedly, 'I am glad you are come. You will be able to advise us. Our friend, Mr. Skimpole – don't be alarmed! – is arrested for debt.'

      'And, really, my dear Miss Summerson,' said Mr. Skimpole, with his agreeable candour, 'I never was in a situation, in which that excellent sense, and quiet habit of method and usefulness, which anybody must observe in you who has the happiness of being a quarter of an hour in your society, was more needed.'

      The person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave such a very loud snort, that he startled me.

      'Are you arrested for much, sir?' I inquired of Mr. Skimpole.

      'My dear Miss Summerson,' said he, shaking his head pleasantly, 'I don't know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and half-pence, I think, were mentioned.'

      'It's twenty-four pound, sixteen, and seven-pence ha'penny,' observed the stranger. 'That's wot it is.'

      'And it sounds – somehow it sounds,' said Mr. Skimpole, 'like a small sum?'

      The strange man said nothing, but made another snort. It was such a powerful one, that it seemed quite to lift him out of his seat.

      'Mr. Skimpole,' said Richard to me, 'has a delicacy in applying to my cousin Jarndyce, because he has lately – I think, sir, I understood you that you had lately—'

      'Oh, yes!' returned Mr. Skimpole, smiling. 'Though I forgot how much it was, and when it was. Jarndyce would readily do it again; but I have the epicure-like feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help; that I would rather,' and he looked at Richard and me, 'develop generosity in a new soil, and in a new form of flower.'

      'What do you think will be best, Miss Summerson?' said Richard, aside.

      I ventured to inquire, generally, before replying, what would happen if the money were not produced.

      'Jail,' СКАЧАТЬ