“Of—did you say, ma’am?”
“Of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce,” said Miss Donny.
I was so bewildered that Miss Donny thought the cold had been too severe for me and lent me her smelling-bottle.
“Do you know my—guardian, Mr. Jarndyce, ma’am?” I asked after a good deal of hesitation.
“Not personally, Esther,” said Miss Donny; “merely through his solicitors, Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, of London. A very superior gentleman, Mr. Kenge. Truly eloquent indeed. Some of his periods quite majestic!”
I felt this to be very true but was too confused to attend to it. Our speedy arrival at our destination, before I had time to recover myself, increased my confusion, and I never shall forget the uncertain and the unreal air of everything at Greenleaf (Miss Donny’s house) that afternoon!
But I soon became used to it. I was so adapted to the routine of Greenleaf before long that I seemed to have been there a great while and almost to have dreamed rather than really lived my old life at my godmother’s. Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than Greenleaf. There was a time for everything all round the dial of the clock, and everything was done at its appointed moment.
We were twelve boarders, and there were two Miss Donnys, twins. It was understood that I would have to depend, by and by, on my qualifications as a governess, and I was not only instructed in everything that was taught at Greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in helping to instruct others. Although I was treated in every other respect like the rest of the school, this single difference was made in my case from the first. As I began to know more, I taught more, and so in course of time I had plenty to do, which I was very fond of doing because it made the dear girls fond of me. At last, whenever a new pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, she was so sure—indeed I don’t know why—to make a friend of me that all new-comers were confided to my care. They said I was so gentle, but I am sure THEY were! I often thought of the resolution I had made on my birthday to try to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do some good to some one and win some love if I could; and indeed, indeed, I felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so much.
I passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I never saw in any face there, thank heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better if I had never been born. When the day came round, it brought me so many tokens of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful with them from New Year’s Day to Christmas.
In those six years I had never been away except on visits at holiday time in the neighbourhood. After the first six months or so I had taken Miss Donny’s advice in reference to the propriety of writing to Mr. Kenge to say that I was happy and grateful, and with her approval I had written such a letter. I had received a formal answer acknowledging its receipt and saying, “We note the contents thereof, which shall be duly communicated to our client.” After that I sometimes heard Miss Donny and her sister mention how regular my accounts were paid, and about twice a year I ventured to write a similar letter. I always received by return of post exactly the same answer in the same round hand, with the signature of Kenge and Carboy in another writing, which I supposed to be Mr. Kenge’s.
It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about myself! As if this narrative were the narrative of MY life! But my little body will soon fall into the background now.
Six quiet years (I find I am saying it for the second time) I had passed at Greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be in a looking-glass, every stage of my own growth and change there, when, one November morning, I received this letter. I omit the date.
Old Square, Lincoln’s InnMadam,Jarndyce and JarndyceOur clt Mr. Jarndyce being abt to rece into his house, under an Order of the Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this cause, for whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn, directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your serces in the afsd capacity.We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr eight o’clock coach from Reading, on Monday morning next, to White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, London, where one of our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe as above.We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts,Kenge and CarboyMiss Esther Summerson
Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn
Madam,
Jarndyce and Jarndyce
Our clt Mr. Jarndyce being abt to rece into his house, under an Order of the Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this cause, for whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn, directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your serces in the afsd capacity.
We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr eight o’clock coach from Reading, on Monday morning next, to White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, London, where one of our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe as above.
We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts,
Kenge and Carboy
Miss Esther Summerson
Oh, never, never, never shall I forget the emotion this letter caused in the house! It was so tender in them to care so much for me, it was so gracious in that father who had not forgotten me to have made my orphan way so smooth and easy and to have inclined so many youthful natures towards me, that I could hardly bear it. Not that I would have had them less sorry—I am afraid not; but the pleasure of it, and the pain of it, and the pride and joy of it, and the humble regret of it were so blended that my heart seemed almost breaking while it was full of rapture.
The letter gave me only five days’ notice of my removal. When every minute added to the proofs of love and kindness that were given me in those five days, and when at last the morning came and when they took me through all the rooms that I might see them for the last time, and when some cried, “Esther, dear, say good-bye to me here at my bedside, where you first spoke so kindly to me!” and when others asked me only to write their names, “With Esther’s love,” and when they all surrounded me with their parting presents and clung to me weeping and cried, “What shall we do when dear, dear Esther’s gone!” and when I tried to tell them how forbearing and how good they had all been to me and how I blessed and thanked them every one, what a heart I had!
And when the two Miss Donnys grieved as much to part with me as the least among them, and when the maids said, “Bless you, miss, wherever you go!” and when the ugly lame old gardener, who I thought had hardly noticed me in all those years, came panting after the coach to give me a little nosegay of geraniums and told me I had been the light of his eyes—indeed the old man said so!—what a heart I had then!
And could I help it if with all this, and the coming to the little school, and the unexpected sight of the poor children outside waving their hats and bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman and lady whose daughter I had helped to teach and at whose house I had visited (who were said to be the proudest people in all that country), caring for nothing but calling out, “Good-bye, Esther. May you be very happy!”—could I help it if I was quite bowed down in the coach by myself and said “Oh, I am so thankful, I am so thankful!” many times over!
But of course I soon considered that I must not take tears where I was going after all that had been done for me. Therefore, of course, I made myself sob less and persuaded myself to be quiet by saying very often, “Esther, now you really must! This WILL NOT do!” I cheered myself up pretty well at last, though I am afraid I was longer about it than I ought to have been; and when I had cooled my eyes with lavender water, it was time to watch for London.
I was quite persuaded that we were there when we were ten miles off, and when we really were there, that we should never get there. However, when we began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and particularly when every other conveyance seemed to be running into us, and we seemed to be running into every other conveyance, I began to believe that we really were approaching the end of our journey. Very soon afterwards we stopped.
A young gentleman who had inked himself by accident addressed me from the pavement and said, “I am from Kenge and Carboy’s, miss, of Lincoln’s Inn.”
“If you please, sir,” said I.
He was very obliging, and as he handed me into a fly after superintending the removal of my boxes, I asked him whether there was a great fire anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen.
“Oh, dear no, miss,” he said. “This is a London particular.”
I had never heard of such a thing.
“A fog, miss,” said the young gentleman.
“Oh, indeed!” said I.
We drove slowly through the dirtiest and darkest streets that ever were seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distracting state of confusion that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until we passed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through a silent square until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there was an entrance up a steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance to a church. And there really was a churchyard outside under some cloisters, for I saw the gravestones from the staircase window.
This was Kenge and Carboy’s. The young gentleman showed me through an outer office into Mr. Kenge’s room—there was no one in it—and politely put an arm-chair for me by the fire. He then called my attention to a little looking-glass hanging from a nail on one side of the chimney-piece.
“In case you should wish to look at yourself, miss, after the journey, as you’re going before the Chancellor. Not that it’s requisite, I am sure,” said the young gentleman civilly.
“Going before the Chancellor?” I said, startled for a moment.
“Only a matter of form, miss,” returned the young gentleman. “Mr. Kenge is in court now. He left his compliments, and would you partake of some refreshment”—there were biscuits and a decanter of wine on a small table—“and look over the paper,” which the young gentleman gave me as he spoke. He then stirred the fire and left me.
Everything was so strange—the stranger from its being night in the day-time, the candles burning with a white flame, and looking raw and cold—that I read the words in the newspaper without knowing what they meant and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. As it was of no use going on in that way, I put the paper down, took a peep at my bonnet in the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the room, which was not half lighted, and at the shabby, dusty tables, and at the piles of writings, and at a bookcase full of the most inexpressive-looking books that ever had anything to say for themselves. Then I went on, thinking, thinking, thinking; and the fire went on, burning, burning, burning; and the candles went on flickering and guttering, and there were no snuffers—until the young gentleman by and by brought a very dirty pair—for two hours.
At last Mr. Kenge came. HE was not altered, but he was surprised to see how altered I was and appeared quite pleased. “As you are going to be the companion of the young lady who is now in the Chancellor’s private room, Miss Summerson,” he said, “we thought it well that you should be in attendance also. You will not be discomposed by the Lord Chancellor, I dare say?”
“No, sir,” I said, “I don’t think I shall,” really not seeing on consideration why I should be.
So Mr. Kenge gave me his arm and we went round the corner, under a colonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a passage, into a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young gentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was interposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen, talking.
They both looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady, with the fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With such rich golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent, trusting face!
“Miss Ada,” said Mr. Kenge, “this is Miss Summerson.”
She came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended, but seemed to change her mind in a moment and kissed me. In short, she had such a natural, captivating, winning manner that in a few minutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the fire upon us, talking together as free and happy as could be.
What a load off my mind! It was so delightful to know that she could confide in me and like me! It was so good of her, and so encouraging to me!
The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name Richard Carstone. He was a handsome youth with an ingenuous face and a most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we sat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire, talking gaily, like a light-hearted boy. He was very young, not more than nineteen then, if quite so much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were both orphans and (what was very unexpected and curious to me) had never met before that day. Our all three coming together for the first time in such an unusual place was a thing to talk about, and we talked about it; and the fire, which had left off roaring, winked its red eyes at us—as Richard said—like a drowsy old Chancery lion.
We conversed in a low tone because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a drawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel in our case addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr. Kenge that the Chancellor would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a bustle and a tread of feet, and Mr. Kenge said that the Court had risen and his lordship was in the next room.
The gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly and requested Mr. Kenge to come in. Upon that, we all went into the next room, Mr. Kenge first, with my darling—it is so natural to me now that I can’t help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black and sitting in an arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship, whose robe, trimmed with beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another chair. He gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was both courtly and kind.
The gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship’s table, and his lordship silently selected one and turned over the leaves.
“Miss Clare,” said the Lord Chancellor. “Miss Ada Clare?”
Mr. Kenge presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near him. That he admired her and was interested by her even I could see in a moment. It touched me that the home of such a beautiful young creature should be represented by that dry, official place. The Lord High Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the love and pride of parents.
“The Jarndyce in question,” said the Lord Chancellor, still turning over leaves, “is Jarndyce of Bleak House.”
“Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord,” said Mr. Kenge.
“A dreary name,” said the Lord Chancellor.
“But not a dreary place at present, my lord,” said Mr. Kenge.
“And Bleak House,” said his lordship, “is in—”
“Hertfordshire, my lord.”
“Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House is not married?” said his lordship.
“He is not, my lord,” said Mr. Kenge.
A pause.
“Young Mr. Richard Carstone is present?” said the Lord Chancellor, glancing towards him.
Richard bowed and stepped forward.
“Hum!” said the Lord Chancellor, turning over more leaves.
“Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord,” Mr. Kenge observed in a low voice, “if I may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable companionfor—”
“For Mr. Richard Carstone?” I thought (but I am not quite sure) I heard his lordship say in an equally low voice and with a smile.
“For Miss Ada Clare. This is the young lady. Miss Summerson.”
His lordship gave me an indulgent look and acknowledged my curtsy very graciously.
“Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the cause, I think?”
“No, my lord.”
Mr. Kenge leant over before it was quite said and whispered. His lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or thrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again until we were going away.
Mr. Kenge now retired, and Richard with him, to where I was, near the door, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again I can’t help it!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor, with whom his lordship spoke a little part, asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had well reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she would be happy under the roof of Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, and why she thought so? Presently he rose courteously and released her, and then he spoke for a minute or two with Richard Carstone, not seated, but standing, and altogether with more ease and less ceremony, as if he still knew, though he WAS Lord Chancellor, how to go straight to the candour of a boy.
“Very well!” said his lordship aloud. “I shall make the order. Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may judge,” and this was when he looked at me, “a very good companion for the young lady, and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the circumstances admit.”
He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to him for being so affable and polite, by which he had certainly lost no dignity but seemed to us to have gained some.
When we got under the colonnade, Mr. Kenge remembered that he must go back for a moment to ask a question and left us in the fog, with the Lord Chancellor’s carriage and servants waiting for him to come out.
“Well!” said Richard Carstone. “THAT’S over! And where do we go next, Miss Summerson?”
“Don’t you know?” I said.
“Not in the least,” said he.
“And don’t YOU know, my love?” I asked Ada.
“No!” said she. “Don’t you?”
“Not at all!” said I.
We looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the children in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed bonnet and carrying a reticule came curtsying and smiling up to us with an air of great ceremony.
“Oh!” said she. “The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to have the honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty when they find themselves in this place, and don’t know what’s to come of it.”
“Mad!” whispered Richard, not thinking she could hear him.
“Right! Mad, young gentleman,” she returned so quickly that he was quite abashed. “I was a ward myself. I was not mad at that time,” curtsying low and smiling between every little sentence. “I had youth and hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of the three served or saved me. I have the honour to attend court regularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the Day of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in the Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray accept my blessing.”
As Ada was a little frightened, I said, to humour the poor old lady, that we were much obliged to her.
“Ye-es!” she said mincingly. “I imagine so. And here is Conversation Kenge. With HIS documents! How does your honourable worship do?”
“Quite well, quite well! Now don’t be troublesome, that’s a good soul!” said Mr. Kenge, leading the way back.
“By no means,” said the poor old lady, keeping up with Ada and me. “Anything but troublesome. I shall confer estates on both—which is not being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the Day of Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my blessing!”
She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but we looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still with a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, “Youth. And hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray accept my blessing!”
We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when we arrived in his room, at Mrs. Jellyby’s; and then he turned to me and said he took it for granted I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was.
“I really don’t, sir,” I returned. “Perhaps Mr. Carstone—or MissClare—”
But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby. “In-deed! Mrs. Jellyby,” said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs. Jellyby’s biography, “is a lady of very remarkable strength of character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry—AND the natives—and the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr. Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely to be a good work and who is much sought after by philanthropists, has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby.”
Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us.
“And Mr. Jellyby, sir?” suggested Richard.
“Ah! Mr. Jellyby,” said Mr. Kenge, “is—a—I don’t know that I can describe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of Mrs. Jellyby.”
“A nonentity, sir?” said Richard with a droll look.
“I don’t say that,” returned Mr. Kenge gravely. “I can’t say that, indeed, for I know nothing whatever OF Mr. Jellyby. I never, to my knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jellyby. He may be a very superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged—merged—in the more shining qualities of his wife.” Mr. Kenge proceeded to tell us that as the road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark, and tedious on such an evening, and as we had been travelling already, Mr. Jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement. A carriage would be at Mrs. Jellyby’s to convey us out of town early in the forenoon of to-morrow.
He then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in. Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr. Kenge inquired whether Miss Summerson’s boxes and the rest of the baggage had been “sent round.” Mr. Guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was waiting to take us round too as soon as we pleased.
“Then it only remains,” said Mr. Kenge, shaking hands with us, “for me to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Clare!) the arrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to you, Miss Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the (glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr. Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there.”
“Where IS ‘there,’ Mr. Guppy?” said Richard as we went downstairs.
“No distance,” said Mr. Guppy; “round in Thavies Inn, you know.”
“I can’t say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester and am strange in London.”
“Only round the corner,” said Mr. Guppy. “We just twist up Chancery Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes’ time, as near as a toucher. This is about a London particular NOW, ain’t it, miss?” He seemed quite delighted with it on my account.
“The fog is very dense indeed!” said I.
“Not that it affects you, though, I’m sure,” said Mr. Guppy, putting up the steps. “On the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss, judging from your appearance.”
I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our destination—a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription JELLYBY.
“Don’t be frightened!” said Mr. Guppy, looking in at the coach-window. “One of the young Jellybys been and got his head through the area railings!”
“Oh, poor child,” said I; “let me out, if you please!”
“Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up to something,” said Mr. Guppy.
I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression that his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after pacifying him) that he was a little boy with a naturally large head, I thought that perhaps where his head could go, his body could follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to push him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and beadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the area if I had not held his pinafore while Richard and Mr. Guppy ran down through the kitchen to catch him when he should be released. At last he was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to beat Mr. Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.
Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I don’t know with what object, and I don’t think she did. I therefore supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home, and was quite surprised when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and going up to the back room on the first floor before Ada and me, announced us as, “Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby!” We passed several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid treading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs. Jellyby’s presence, one of the poor little things fell downstairs—down a whole flight (as it sounded to me), with a great noise.
Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child’s head recorded its passage with a bump on every stair—Richard afterwards said he counted seven, besides one for the landing—received us with perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am quoting Richard again—they could see nothing nearer than Africa!
“I am very glad indeed,” said Mrs. Jellyby in an agreeable voice, “to have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr. Jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of indifference to me.”
We expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door, where there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good hair but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we could not help noticing that her dress didn’t nearly meet up the back and that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of stay-lace—like a summer-house.
The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him.
But what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting the feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was in such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her, from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right place.
“You find me, my dears,” said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), “you find me, my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in correspondence with public bodies and with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger.”
As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very gratifying.
“It IS gratifying,” said Mrs. Jellyby. “It involves the devotion of all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day. Do you know, Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your thoughts to Africa.”
This application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that I was quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that theclimate—
“The finest climate in the world!” said Mrs. Jellyby.
“Indeed, ma’am?”
“Certainly. With precaution,” said Mrs. Jellyby. “You may go into Holborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go into Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with Africa.”
I said, “No doubt.” I meant as to Holborn.
“If you would like,” said Mrs. Jellyby, putting a number of papers towards us, “to look over some remarks on that head, and on the general subject, which have been extensively circulated, while I finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is myamanuensis—”
The girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
“—I shall then have finished for the present,” proceeded Mrs. Jellyby with a sweet smile, “though my work is never done. Where are you, Caddy?”
“‘Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs—’” said Caddy.
“‘And begs,’” said Mrs. Jellyby, dictating, “‘to inform him, in reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project—’ No, Peepy! Not on my account!”
Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity most—the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the serene composure with which she said everything, “Go along, you naughty Peepy!” and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor Peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked very much astonished at it and at Ada’s kissing him, but soon fell fast asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in detail, though I derived such a general impression from it of the momentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to have thought so little about it.
“Six o’clock!” said Mrs. Jellyby. “And our dinner hour is nominally (for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss Clare and Miss Summerson their rooms. You will like to make some change, perhaps? You will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh, that very bad child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!”
I begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. They were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window was fastened up with a fork.
“You would like some hot water, wouldn’t you?” said Miss Jellyby, looking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain.
“If it is not being troublesome,” said we.
“Oh, it’s not the trouble,” returned Miss Jellyby; “the question is, if there IS any.”
The evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water, but they couldn’t find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order.
We begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to get down to the fire again. But all the little children had come up to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying on my bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of noses and fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the doors. It was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my lock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and though the handle of Ada’s went round and round with the greatest smoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on the door. Therefore I proposed to the children that they should come in and be very good at my table, and I would tell them the story of Little Red Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of the wolf.
When we went downstairs we found a mug with “A Present from Tunbridge Wells” on it lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick, and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door with Mrs. Jellyby’s room) and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the windows open for half an hour, during which Mrs. Jellyby, with the same sweetness of temper, directed letters about Africa. Her being so employed was, I must say, a great relief to me, for Richard told us that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that they had found the kettle on his dressing-table, and he made Ada laugh so that they made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner.
Soon after seven o’clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs. Jellyby’s advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was almost raw. The young woman with the flannel bandage waited, and dropped everything on the table wherever it happened to go, and never moved it again until she put it on the stairs. The person I had seen in pattens, who I suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will between them.
All through dinner—which was long, in consequence of such accidents as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle and the handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in the chin—Mrs. Jellyby preserved the evenness of her disposition. She told us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and the natives, and received so many letters that Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once. Some of the letters were proceedings of ladies’ committees or resolutions of ladies’ meetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people excited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives; others required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from the table three or four times to write. She was full of business and undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.
I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed passively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be actively interested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he might have been a native but for his complexion. It was not until we left the table and he remained alone with Richard that the possibility of his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my head. But he WAS Mr. Jellyby; and a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with large shining knobs for temples and his hair all brushed to the back of his head, who came in the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthropist, also informed her that he called the matrimonial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby with Mr. Jellyby the union of mind and matter.
This young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself about Africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists to teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby out by saying, “I believe now, Mrs. Jellyby, you have received as many as from one hundred and fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa in a single day, have you not?” or, “If my memory does not deceive me, Mrs. Jellyby, you once mentioned that you had sent off five thousand circulars from one post-office at one time?”—always repeating Mrs. Jellyby’s answer to us like an interpreter. During the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against the wall as if he were subject to low spirits. It seemed that he had several times opened his mouth when alone with Richard after dinner, as if he had something on his mind, but had always shut it again, to Richard’s extreme confusion, without saying anything.
Mrs. Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter. She also held a discussion with Mr. Quale, of which the subject seemed to be—if I understood it—the brotherhood of humanity, and gave utterance to some beautiful sentiments. I was not so attentive an auditor as I might have wished to be, however, for Peepy and the other children came flocking about Ada and me in a corner of the drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down among them and told them in whispers “Puss in Boots” and I don’t know what else until Mrs. Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed. As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs, where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of the little family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs.
After that I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and in coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which at last it did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt that Mrs. Jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous, and I was sorry for it, though at the same time I knew that I had no higher pretensions.
It was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to bed, and even then we left Mrs. Jellyby among her papers drinking coffee and Miss Jellyby biting the feather of her pen.
“What a strange house!” said Ada when we got upstairs. “How curious of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!”
“My love,” said I, “it quite confuses me. I want to understand it, and I can’t understand it at all.”
“What?” asked Ada with her pretty smile.
“All this, my dear,” said I. “It MUST be very good of Mrs. Jellyby to take such pains about a scheme for the benefit of natives—and yet—Peepy and the housekeeping!”
Ada laughed and put her arm about my neck as I stood looking at the fire, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature and had won her heart. “You are so thoughtful, Esther,” she said, “and yet so cheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a home out of even this house.”
My simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she made so much of me!
“May I ask you a question?” said I when we had sat before the fire a little while.
“Five hundred,” said Ada.
“Your cousin, Mr. Jarndyce. I owe so much to him. Would you mind describing him to me?”
Shaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such laughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her beauty, partly at her surprise.
“Esther!” she cried.
“My dear!”
“You want a description of my cousin Jarndyce?”
“My dear, I never saw him.”
“And I never saw him!” returned Ada.
Well, to be sure!
No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died, she remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she spoke of him and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had said was to be trusted above all earthly things; and Ada trusted it. Her cousin Jarndyce had written to her a few months ago—“a plain, honest letter,” Ada said—proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on and telling her that “in time it might heal some of the wounds made by the miserable Chancery suit.” She had replied, gratefully accepting his proposal. Richard had received a similar letter and had made a similar response. He HAD seen Mr. Jarndyce once, but only once, five years ago, at Winchester school. He had told Ada, when they were leaning on the screen before the fire where I found them, that he recollected him as “a bluff, rosy fellow.” This was the utmost description Ada could give me.
It set me thinking so that when Ada was asleep, I still remained before the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, and wondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long ago. I don’t know where my thoughts had wandered when they were recalled by a tap at the door.
I opened it softly and found Miss Jellyby shivering there with a broken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand and an egg-cup in the other.
“Good night!” she said very sulkily.
“Good night!” said I.
“May I come in?” she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same sulky way.
“Certainly,” said I. “Don’t wake Miss Clare.”
She would not sit down, but stood by the fire dipping her inky middle finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and looking very gloomy.
“I wish Africa was dead!” she said on a sudden.
I was going to remonstrate.
“I do!” she said “Don’t talk to me, Miss Summerson. I hate it and detest it. It’s a beast!”
I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her head, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but would be cool to-morrow. She still stood pouting and frowning at me, but presently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed where Ada lay.
“She is very pretty!” she said with the same knitted brow and in the same uncivil manner.
I assented with a smile.
“An orphan. Ain’t she?”
“Yes.”
“But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and sing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and globes, and needlework, and everything?”
“No doubt,” said I.
“I can’t,” she returned. “I can’t do anything hardly, except write. I’m always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not ashamed of yourselves to come in this afternoon and see me able to do nothing else. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think yourselves very fine, I dare say!”
I could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I resumed my chair without speaking and looked at her (I hope) as mildly as I felt towards her.
“It’s disgraceful,” she said. “You know it is. The whole house is disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I’M disgraceful. Pa’s miserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks—she’s always drinking. It’s a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn’t smell her to-day. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner; you know it was!”
“My dear, I don’t know it,” said I.
“You do,” she said very shortly. “You shan’t say you don’t. You do!”
“Oh, my dear!” said I. “If you won’t let me speak—”
“You’re speaking now. You know you are. Don’t tell stories, Miss Summerson.”
“My dear,” said I, “as long as you won’t hear me out—”
“I don’t want to hear you out.”
“Oh, yes, I think you do,” said I, “because that would be so very unreasonable. I did not know what you tell me because the servant did not come near me at dinner; but I don’t doubt what you tell me, and I am sorry to hear it.”
“You needn’t make a merit of that,” said she.
“No, my dear,” said I. “That would be very foolish.”
She was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still with the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done, she came softly back and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving in a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I thought it better not to speak.
“I wish I was dead!” she broke out. “I wish we were all dead. It would be a great deal better for us.”
In a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she wanted to stay there!
“You used to teach girls,” she said, “If you could only have taught me, I could have learnt from you! I am so very miserable, and I like you so much!”
I could not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold my dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl fell asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and all night long she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. At first I was painfully awake and vainly tried to lose myself, with my eyes closed, among the scenes of the day. At length, by slow degrees, they became indistinct and mingled. I began to lose the identity of the sleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada, now one of my old Reading friends from whom I could not believe I had so recently parted. Now it was the little mad woman worn out with curtsying and smiling, now some one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I was no one.
The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them all.
Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed heavy—I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt that they would have made midsummer sunshine dim—I was sufficiently forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and sufficiently curious about London to think it a good idea on the part of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should go out for a walk.
“Ma won’t be down for ever so long,” she said, “and then it’s a chance if breakfast’s ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so. As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. He never has what you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes there isn’t any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I’m afraid you must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would rather go to bed.”
“I am not at all tired, my dear,” said I, “and would much prefer to go out.”
“If you’re sure you would,” returned Miss Jellyby, “I’ll get my things on.”
Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him, that he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed again. To this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at me during the whole operation as if he never had been, and never could again be, so astonished in his life—looking very miserable also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep as soon as it was over. At first I was in two minds about taking such a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody in the house was likely to notice it.
What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room, which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick, throwing the candle in to make it burn better. Everything was just as we had left it last night and was evidently intended to remain so. Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been left ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over the house. Some pewter pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings; the door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us, that she had been to see what o’clock it was.
But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and down Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk. So he took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and that I really should not have thought she liked me much unless she had told me so.
“Where would you wish to go?” she asked.
“Anywhere, my dear,” I replied.
“Anywhere’s nowhere,” said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.
“Let us go somewhere at any rate,” said I.
She then walked me on very fast.
“I don’t care!” she said. “Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I say I don’t care—but if he was to come to our house with his great, shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as Methuselah, I wouldn’t have anything to say to him. Such ASSES as he and Ma make of themselves!”
“My dear!” I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. “Your duty as achild—”
“Oh! Don’t talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where’s Ma’s duty as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it’s much more their affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there’s an end of it!”
She walked me on faster yet.
“But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and I won’t have anything to say to him. I can’t bear him. If there’s any stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it’s the stuff he and Ma talk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the patience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma’s management!”
I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run a race. Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and walked moodily on at my side while I admired the long successions and varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.
“So, cousin,” said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada behind me. “We are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to our place of meeting yesterday, and—by the Great Seal, here’s the old lady again!”
Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and smiling, and saying with her yesterday’s air of patronage, “The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!”
“You are out early, ma’am,” said I as she curtsied to me.
“Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before the court sits. It’s retired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,” said the old lady mincingly. “The business of the day requires a great deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to follow.”
“Who’s this, Miss Summerson?” whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm tighter through her own.
The little old lady’s hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for herself directly.
“A suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honour to attend court regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?” said the old lady, recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low curtsy.
Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday, good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with the suit.
“Ha!” said the old lady. “She does not expect a judgment? She will still grow old. But not so old. Oh, dear, no! This is the garden of Lincoln’s Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the summer-time. Where the birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater part of the long vacation here. In contemplation. You find the long vacation exceedingly long, don’t you?”
We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.
“When the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor’s court,” said the old lady, “the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see my lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and beauty are very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a visit from either.”
She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Jellyby away, beckoned Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself and looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half curious and all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she continued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow, our strange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling condescension, that she lived close by.
It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by that we had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before she was at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said, “This is my lodging. Pray walk up!”
She had stopped at a shop over which was written KROOK, RAG AND BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN MARINE STORES. In one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In another was the inscription BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN-STUFF BOUGHT. In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another, WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT. In another, LADIES’ AND GENTLEMEN’S WARDROBES BOUGHT. Everything seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the window were quantities of dirty bottles—blacking bottles, medicine bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles; I am reminded by mentioning the latter that the shop had in several little particulars the air of being in a legal neighbourhood and of being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the law. There were a great many ink bottles. There was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the door, labelled “Law Books, all at 9d.” Some of the inscriptions I have enumerated were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen in Kenge and Carboy’s office and the letters I had so long received from the firm. Among them was one, in the same writing, having nothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to execute with neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr. Krook, within. There were several second-hand bags, blue and red, hanging up. A little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old crackled parchment scrolls and discoloured and dog’s-eared law-papers. I could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which there must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once belonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers’ offices. The litter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged wooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might have been counsellors’ bands and gowns torn up. One had only to fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.
As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides by the wall of Lincoln’s Inn, intercepting the light within a couple of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in the shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. He was short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk sideways between his shoulders and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth as if he were on fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows were so frosted with white hairs and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin that he looked from his breast upward like some old root in a fall of snow.
“Hi, hi!” said the old man, coming to the door. “Have you anything to sell?”
We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been trying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her pocket, and to whom Richard now said that as we had had the pleasure of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for time. But she was not to be so easily left. She became so fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties that we would walk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was so bent, in her harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good omen she desired, that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to comply. I suppose we were all more or less curious; at any rate, when the old man added his persuasions to hers and said, “Aye, aye! Please her! It won’t take a minute! Come in, come in! Come in through the shop if t’other door’s out of order!” we all went in, stimulated by Richard’s laughing encouragement and relying on his protection.
“My landlord, Krook,” said the little old lady, condescending to him from her lofty station as she presented him to us. “He is called among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the Court of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh, I assure you he is very odd!”
She shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse him, “For he is a little—you know—M!” said the old lady with great stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.
“It’s true enough,” he said, going before us with the lantern, “that they call me the Lord Chancellor and call my shop Chancery. And why do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop Chancery?”
“I don’t know, I am sure!” said Richard rather carelessly.
“You see,” said the old man, stopping and turning round, “they—Hi! Here’s lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies’ hair below, but none so beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what texture!”
“That’ll do, my good friend!” said Richard, strongly disapproving of his having drawn one of Ada’s tresses through his yellow hand. “You can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty.”
The old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the little old lady herself. But as Ada interposed and laughingly said she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.
“You see, I have so many things here,” he resumed, holding up the lantern, “of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but THEY know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that’s why they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust and must and cobwebs. And all’s fish that comes to my net. And I can’t abear to part with anything I once lay hold of (or so my neighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter anything, or to have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor repairing going on about me. That’s the way I’ve got the ill name of Chancery. I don’t mind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day, when he sits in the Inn. He don’t notice me, but I notice him. There’s no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi, Lady Jane!”
A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his shoulder and startled us all.
“Hi! Show ’em how you scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!” said her master.
The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.
“She’d do as much for any one I was to set her on,” said the old man. “I deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was offered to me. It’s a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn’t have it stripped off! THAT warn’t like Chancery practice though, says you!”
He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him before passing out, “That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare myself, having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the wards in Jarndyce.”
“Jarndyce!” said the old man with a start.
“Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook,” returned his lodger.
“Hi!” exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and with a wider stare than before. “Think of it!”
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 willbe—”
“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.
“Aye!” 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—Oh, dear me!—nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of it by any chance!”
Ada’s colour 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 into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the minds of many people with such dreadful recollections. I had another uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to the poor half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my surprise, she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the way upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord was “a little—M—, you know!”
She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which she had a glimpse of Lincoln’s Inn Hall. This seemed to have been her principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there. She could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the moonshine. Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and some half-dozen reticles and work-bags, “containing documents,” as she informed us. There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and I saw no articles of clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a shelf in an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth, but all dry and empty. There was a more affecting meaning in her pinched appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had understood before.
“Extremely honoured, I am sure,” said our poor hostess with the greatest suavity, “by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And very much indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering. I am limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity of attending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my days in court, my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights long, for I sleep but little and think much. That is, of course, unavoidable, being in Chancery. I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate. I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on a superior footing. At present, I don’t mind confessing to the wards in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I sometimes find it difficult to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse the introduction of such mean topics.”
She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches—I should think at least twenty.
“I began to keep the little creatures,” she said, “with an object that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es! They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know, whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?”
Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so when no one but herself was present.
“Indeed,” she pursued, “I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark and senseless here, as I have found so many birds!”