“In reference,” proceeds the Chancellor,
still on Jarndyce and Jarndyce, “to the young
girl—”
“Begludship’s pardon—boy,”
says Mr. Tangle prematurely. “In reference,”
proceeds the Chancellor with extra distinctness, “to
the young girl and boy, the two young people”—Mr.
Tangle crushed— “whom I directed
to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private
room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the
expediency of making the order for their residing with
their uncle.”
Mr. Tangle on his legs again. “Begludship’s
pardon—dead.”
“With their”—Chancellor looking
through his double eye-glass at the papers on his
desk—“grandfather.”
“Begludship’s pardon—victim
of rash action—brains.”
Suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass
voice arises, fully inflated, in the back settlements
of the fog, and says, “Will your lordship allow
me? I appear for him. He is a cousin, several
times removed. I am not at the moment prepared
to inform the court in what exact remove he is a cousin,
but he is a cousin.”
Leaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral
message) ringing in the rafters of the roof, the very
little counsel drops, and the fog knows him no more.
Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him.
“I will speak with both the young people,”
says the Chancellor anew, “and satisfy myself
on the subject of their residing with their cousin.
I will mention the matter to-morrow morning when I
take my seat.”
The Chancellor is about to bow to the bar when the
prisoner is presented. Nothing can possibly
come of the prisoner’s conglomeration but his
being sent back to prison, which is soon done.
The man from Shropshire ventures another remonstrative
“My lord!” but the Chancellor, being aware
of him, has dexterously vanished. Everybody
else quickly vanishes too. A battery of blue
bags is loaded with heavy charges of papers and carried
off by clerks; the little mad old woman marches off
with her documents; the empty court is locked up.
If all the injustice it has committed and all the
misery it has caused could only be locked up with
it, and the whole burnt away in a great funeral pyre—why
so much the better for other parties than the parties
in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!
In Fashion
It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we
want on this same miry afternoon. It is not
so unlike the Court of Chancery but that we may pass
from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies.
Both the world of fashion and the Court of Chancery
are things of precedent and usage: oversleeping
Rip Van Winkles who have played at strange games through
a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom
the knight will wake one day, when all the stopped
spits in the kitchen shall begin to turn prodigiously!
