'You come as a godsend,' said Richard, 'for I have seen nobody here yet but Vholes. Woodcourt, there is one subject I should like to mention, for once and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. You can hardly make the best of me if I don't. You know, I dare say, that I have an attachment to my cousin Ada?'
Mr. Woodcourt replied that I had hinted as much to him. 'Now pray,' returned Richard, 'don't think me a heap of selfishness.
Don't suppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over this miserable Chancery suit for my own rights and interests alone. Ada's are bound up with mine; they can't be separated; Vholes works for both of us. Do think of that!'
He was so very solicitous on this head that Mr. Woodcourt gave him the strongest assurances that he did him no injustice.
'You see,' said Richard, with something pathetic in his manner of lingering on the point, though it was off- hand and unstudied, 'to an upright fellow like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, I cannot bear the thought of appearing selfish and mean. I want to see Ada righted, Woodcourt, as well as myself; I want to do my utmost to right her, as well as myself; I venture what I can scrape together to extricate her, as well as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!'
Afterwards, when Mr. Woodcourt came to reflect on what had passed, he was so very much impressed by the strength of Richard's anxiety on this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to Symond's Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had had before that my dear girl's little property would be absorbed by Mr. Vholes and that Richard's justification to himself would be sincerely this. It was just as I began to take care of Caddy that the interview took place, and I now return to the time when Caddy had recovered and the shade was still between me and my darling.
I proposed to Ada that morning that we should go and see Richard.
It a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so radiantly willing as I had expected.
'My dear,' said I, 'you have not had any difference with Richard since I have been so much away?'
'No, Esther.'
'Not heard of him, perhaps?' said I.
'Yes, I have heard of him,' said Ada.
Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not make my darling out. Should I go to Richard's by myself? I said.
No, Ada thought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada thought she had better go with me. Should we go now?
Yes, let us go now. Well, I could not understand my darling, with the tears in her eyes and the love in her face!
We were soon equipped and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops of chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless days when everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at us, the dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise about itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl quite out of place in the rugged streets, and I thought there were more funerals passing along the dismal pavements than I had ever seen before.
We had first to find out Symond's Inn. We were going to inquire in a shop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. 'We are not likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction,' said I. So to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it written up. Symond's Inn.
We had next to find out the number. 'Or Mr. Vholes's office will do,' I recollected, 'for Mr. Vholes's office is next door.' Upon which Ada said, perhaps that was Mr. Vholes's office in the corner there. And it really was.
Then came the question, which of the two next doors? I was going for the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to Richard's name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel.
I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the handle and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a table covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the ominous words that ran in it repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
He received us very affectionately, and we sat down. 'If you had come a little earlier,' he said, 'you would have found Woodcourt here. There never was such a good fellow as Woodcourt is. He finds time to look in between-whiles, when anybody else with half his work to do would be thinking about not being able to come. And he is so cheery, so fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so-everything that I am not, that the place brightens whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes again.'
'God bless him,' I thought, 'for his truth to me!'
'He is not so sanguine, Ada,' continued Richard, casting his dejected look over the bundles of papers, 'as Vholes and I are usually, but he is only an outsider and is not in the mysteries.
We have gone into them, and he has not. He can't be expected to know much of such a labyrinth.'
As his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two hands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all bitten away.
'Is this a healthy place to live in, Richard, do you think?' said I.
'Why, my dear Minerva,' answered Richard with his old gay laugh,
'it is neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in an open spot. But it's well enough for the time. It's near the offices and near Vholes.'
'Perhaps,' I hinted, 'a change from both-'
'Might do me good?' said Richard, forcing a laugh as he finished the sentence. 'I shouldn't wonder! But it can only come in one way now-in one of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit must be ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear girl, the suit, my dear girl!'
These latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest to him. Her face being turned away from me and towards him, I could not see it.
'We are doing very well,' pursued Richard. 'Vholes will tell you so. We are really spinning along. Ask Vholes. We are giving them no rest. Vholes knows all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them everywhere. We have astonished them already. We shall rouse up that nest of sleepers, mark my words!'
His hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so conscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched me to the heart. But the commentary upon it now indelibly written in his handsome face made it far more distressing than it used to be. I say indelibly, for I felt persuaded that if the fatal cause could have been for ever terminated, according to his brightest visions, in that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, self-reproach, and disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained upon his features to the hour of his death.
'The sight of our dear little woman,' said Richard, Ada still remaining silent and quiet, 'is so natural to me, and her compassionate face is so like the face of old days-'
Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head.
'-So exactly like the face of old days,' said Richard in his cordial voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing ever changed, 'that I can't make pretences with her. I fluctuate a little; that's the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes I-don't quite despair, but nearly. I get,' said Richard, relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room,
'so tired!'
He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. 'I get,' he repeated gloomily, 'so tired. It is such weary, weary work!'
He was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet, kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to me. Oh, what a loving and devoted face I saw!
'Esther, dear,' she said very quietly, 'I am not going home again.'
A light shone in upon me all at once.
'Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have been married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther;
I shall never go home any more!' With those words my darling drew his head down on her breast and held
