I almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wicked in my suspicions, but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly.
He admired her very much-any one must have done that-and I dare say would have renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour but that he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still I had a tormenting idea that the influence upon him extended even here, that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness in this as in all things until Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be off his mind. Ah me! What Richard would have been without that blight, I never shall know now!
He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Jarndyce, that he had come openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for the present terms on which he stood with Mr. Jarndyce. As the dear old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make an appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right through the means of an unreserved conversation with me. I proposed to walk with him in the park at seven o'clock, and this was arranged. Mr. Skimpole soon afterwards appeared and made us merry for an hour. He particularly requested to see little Coavinses (meaning Charley) and told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father all the business in his power and that if one of her little brothers would make haste to get set up in the same profession, he hoped he should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way.
'For I am constantly being taken in these nets,' said Mr. Skimpole, looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, 'and am constantly being bailed out-like a boat. Or paid off-like a ship's company. Somebody always does it for me. I can't do it, you know, for I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by somebody's means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me who somebody is, upon my word I couldn't tell you. Let us drink to somebody. God bless him!'
Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for him long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy and the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see; the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details of every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory of that day.
'This is a lovely place,' said Richard, looking round. 'None of the jar and discord of law-suits here!'
But there was other trouble.
'I tell you what, my dear girl,' said Richard, 'when I get affairs in general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest.'
'Would it not be better to rest now?' I asked.
'Oh, as to resting NOW,' said Richard, 'or as to doing anything very definite NOW, that's not easy. In short, it can't be done; I can't do it at least.'
'Why not?' said I.
'You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished house, liable to have the roof put on or taken off-to be from top to bottom pulled down or built up-to-morrow, next day, next week, next month, next year-you would find it hard to rest or settle.
So do I. Now? There's no now for us suitors.'
I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor little wandering friend had expatiated when I saw again the darkened look of last night. Terrible to think it had in it also a shade of that unfortunate man who had died.
'My dear Richard,' said I, 'this is a bad beginning of our conversation.'
'I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden.'
'And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you once never to found a hope or 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?'
'Oh, 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?'
