He seemed so rapt all in a moment, and looked so curiously at us, that Richard said :
“Why you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other Chancellor !”
“Yes,” said the old man abstractedly. “Sure ! Your name now will be”
“Richard Carstone.”
“Carstone,” he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his forefinger ; and each of the others he went on to mention, upon a separate finger. “Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think.”
“He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!” said Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.
“Ay!” said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. “Yes ! Tom Jarndyce—you′ll excuse me, being related ; but he was never known about court by any other name, and was as well known there, as—she is now;” nodding slightly at his lodger; “Tom Jarndyce was often in here. He got into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause was on, or expected, talking to the little shopkeepers, and telling ′em to keep out of Chancery, whatever they did. ‘For,’ says he, ‘it′s being ground to bits in a slow mill ; it's being roasted at a slow fire ; it′s being stung to death by single bees ; it′s being drowned by drops ; it′s going mad by grains.’ He was as near making away with himself, just where the young lady stands, as near could be.”
We listened with horror.
“He come in at the door,” said the old man, slowly pointing an imaginary track along the shop, “on the day he did it—the whole neighbourhood had said for months before, that he would do it, of a certainty, sooner or later—he come in at the door that day, and walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there, and asked me (you'll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to fetch him a pint of wine. ‘For,’ says he, ‘Krook, I am much depressed ; my cause is on again, and I think I′m nearer Judgment than I ever was.’ I hadn′t a mind to leave him alone ; and I persuaded him to go to the tavern over the way there, t′other side my lane (I mean Chancery-lane) ; and I followed and looked in at the window, and saw him, comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by the fire, and company with him. I hadn′t hardly got back here, when I heard a shot go echoing and rattling right away into the inn. I ran out—neighbours ran out—twenty of us cried at once, ‘Tom Jarndyce !’ ”
The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern, blew the light out, and shut the lantern up.
“We were right, I needn′t tell the present hearers. Hi ! To be sure, how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the cause was on ! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of ′em, grubbed and muddled away as usual, and tried to look as if they hadn′t heard a word of the last fact in the case ; or as if they had—O dear me ! nothing at all to do with it, if they had heard of it by any chance !”
Ada′s color had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less pale. Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no party, in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh, it was a shock to come
