'No, I will not!'
'So much the poorer you; so much the richer I! Look, mistress, this is the key of my wine-cellar. It is a large key, but the keys of prisons are larger. In this city there are houses of correction (where the treadmills are, for women), the gates of which are very strong and heavy, and no doubt the keys too. I am afraid a lady of your spirit and activity would find it an inconvenience to have one of those keys turned upon her for any length of time. What do you think?'
'I think,' mademoiselle replies without any action and in a clear, obliging voice, 'that you are a miserable wretch.'
'Probably,' returns Mr. Tulkinghorn, quietly blowing his nose.
'But I don't ask what you think of myself; I ask what you think of the prison.'
'Nothing. What does it matter to me?'
'Why, it matters this much, mistress,' says the lawyer, deliberately putting away his handkerchief and adjusting his frill;
'the law is so despotic here that it interferes to prevent any of our good English citizens from being troubled, even by a lady's visits against his desire. And on his complaining that he is so troubled, it takes hold of the troublesome lady and shuts her up in prison under hard discipline. Turns the key upon her, mistress.'
Illustrating with the cellar-key.
'Truly?' returns mademoiselle in the same pleasant voice. 'That is droll! But-my faith!-still what does it matter to me?'
'My fair friend,' says Mr. Tulkinghorn, 'make another visit here, or at Mr. Snagsby's, and you shall learn.'
'In that case you will send me to the prison, perhaps?'
'Perhaps.'
It would be contradictory for one in mademoiselle's state of agreeable jocularity to foam at the mouth, otherwise a tigerish expansion thereabouts might look as if a very little more would make her do it.
'In a word, mistress,' says Mr. Tulkinghorn, 'I am sorry to be unpolite, but if you ever present yourself uninvited here-or there-again, I will give you over to the police. Their gallantry is great, but they carry troublesome people through the streets in an ignominious manner, strapped down on a board, my good wench.'
'I will prove you,' whispers mademoiselle, stretching out her hand,
'I will try if you dare to do it!'
'And if,' pursues the lawyer without minding her, 'I place you in that good condition of being locked up in jail, it will be some time before you find yourself at liberty again.'
'I will prove you,' repeats mademoiselle in her former whisper.
'And now,' proceeds the lawyer, still without minding her, 'you had better go. Think twice before you come here again.'
'Think you,' she answers, 'twice two hundred times!'
'You were dismissed by your lady, you know,' Mr. Tulkinghorn observes, following her out upon the staircase, 'as the most implacable and unmanageable of women. Now turn over a new leaf and take warning by what I say to you. For what I say, I mean; and what I threaten, I will do, mistress.'
She goes down without answering or looking behind her. When she is gone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle, devotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and then, as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the pertinacious Roman pointing from the ceiling.
CHAPTER XLIII
Esther's Narrative
It matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who had told me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my fears of increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I first knew the secret. At no time did I dare to utter her name. I felt as if I did not even dare to hear it. If the conversation anywhere, when I was present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, I tried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated something that I knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious now that I often did these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken of, but I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me.
It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother's voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so new to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention of my mother's name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide asunder before the great company of all degrees that any link or confidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all over. My lot has been so blest that I can relate little of myself which is not a story of goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that little and go on.
When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations with my guardian of which Richard was the theme. My dear girl was deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, but she was so faithful to Richard that she could not bear to blame him even for that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his name with a word of reproof. 'Rick is mistaken, my dear,' he would say to her. 'Well, well! We have all been mistaken over and over again. We must trust to you and time to set him right.'
We knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to time until he had often tried to open Richard's eyes. That he had written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard was deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark, he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the suit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any consideration before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of reason, make a new argument in favour of his doing what he did.
'So that it is even more mischievous,' said my guardian once to me,
'to remonstrate with the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone.'
I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr.
Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard.
'Adviser!' returned my guardian, laughing, 'My dear, who would advise with Skimpole?'
'Encourager would perhaps have been a better word,' said I.
'Encourager!' returned my guardian again. 'Who could be encouraged by Skimpole?'
'Not Richard?' I asked.
'No,' he replied. 'Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as Skimpole.'
'Pray, cousin John,' said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked over my shoulder, 'what made him such a child?'
'What made him such a child?' inquired my guardian, rubbing his head, a little at a loss.
'Yes, cousin John.'
'Why,' he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, 'he is all sentiment, and-and susceptibility, and-and sensibility, and-and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him, somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth attached too much importance to them and too little to any training that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he is. Hey?' said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us hopefully. 'What do you think, you two?'
Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an expense to Richard.
