Mr. Jarndyce is not here?"
No.
He never came there, I reminded him.
"Really," returned Mr. Kenge, "it is as well that he is NOT here to-day, for his--shall I say, in my good friend's absence, his indomitable singularity of opinion?--might have been strengthened, perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened."
"Pray what has been done to-day?" asked Allan.
"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Kenge with excessive urbanity.
"What has been done to-day?"
"What has been done," repeated Mr. Kenge.
"Quite so. Yes.
Why, not much has been done; not much.
We have been checked--brought up suddenly, I would say--upon the--shall I term it threshold?"
"Is this will considered a genuine document, sir?" said Allan.
"Will you tell us that?"
"Most certainly, if I could," said Mr. Kenge; "but we have not gone into that, we have not gone into that."
"We have not gone into that," repeated Mr. Vholes as if his low inward voice were an echo.
"You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," observed Mr. Kenge, using his silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, "that this has been a great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has been a complex cause.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not inaptly, a monument of Chancery practice."
"And patience has sat upon it a long time," said Allan.
"Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr. Kenge with a certain condeseending laugh he had. "Very well!
You are further to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," becoming dignified almost to severity, "that on the numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study, ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high intellect.
For many years, the--a--I would say the flower of the bar, and the--a--I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of the woolsack--have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
If the public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's worth, sir."
"Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. "Excuse me, our time presses.
Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in costs?"
"Hem!
I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge.
"Mr. Vholes, what do YOU say?"
"I believe so," said Mr. Vholes.
"And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?"
"Probably," returned Mr. Kenge.
"Mr. Vholes?"
"Probably," said Mr. Vholes.
"My dearest life," whispered Allan, "this will break Richard's heart!"
There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears.
"In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir," said Mr. Vholes, coming after us, "you'll find him in court.
I left him there resting himself a little.
Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson."
As he gave me that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of his bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Kenge, the benignant shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client, and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low door at the end of the Hall.
"My dear love," said Allan, "leave to me, for a little while, the charge you gave me.
Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada's by and by!"
I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to Richard without a moment's delay and leave me to do as he wished.
Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what news I had returned.
"Little woman," said he, quite unmoved for himself, "to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater blessing than I had looked for.
But my poor young cousins!"
We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was possible to do.
In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to Symond's Inn and left me at the door.
I went upstairs.
When my darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and said that Richard had asked for me several times.
Allan had found him sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure.
On being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have spoken in a fierce voice to the judge.