It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out
of window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like two beacons,
and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the indistinctness of last night, to
watch how it turned out when the day came on. As the prospect gradually revealed
itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark,
like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects
that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in
the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval
over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I
could have found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became
the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted
away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the
old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the
view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. But so from rough
outsides (I hope I have learnt), serene and gentle influences often proceed.
Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so attentive to
me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys, though what with trying
to remember the contents of each little store-room drawer and cupboard; and what
with making notes on a slate about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and
bottles, and glass, and china, and a great many other things; and what with
being generally a methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little person, I was
so busy that I could not believe it was breakfast- time when I heard the bell
ring. Away I ran, however, and made tea, as I had already been installed into
the responsibility of the tea-pot; and then, as they were all rather late and
nobody was down yet, I thought I would take a peep at the garden and get some
knowledge of that too. I found it quite a delightful place--in front, the pretty
avenue and drive by which we had approached (and where, by the by, we had cut up
the gravel so terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll it); at
the back, the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up there, throwing it
open to smile out at me, as if she would have kissed me from that distance.
Beyond the flower-garden was a kitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a
snug little rick-yard, and then a dear little farm-yard. As to the house itself,
with its three peaks in the roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large,
some so small, and all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the southfront for
roses and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable, welcoming look--it was, as
Ada said when she came out to meet me with her arm through that of its master,
worthy of her cousin John, a bold thing to say, though he only pinched her dear
cheek for it.
Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast as he had been overnight. There
was honey on the table, and it led him into a discourse about bees. He had no
objection to honey, he said (and I should think he had not, for he seemed to
like it), but he protested against the overweening assumptions of bees. He
didn't at all see why the busy bee should be proposed as a model to him; he
supposed the bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it-- nobody asked him.
It was not necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. If every
confectioner went buzzing about the world banging against everything that came
in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to take notice that he was
going to his work and must not be interrupted, the world would be quite an
unsupportable place. Then, after all, it was a ridiculous position to be smoked
out of your fortune with brimstone as soon as you had made it. You would have a
very mean opinion of a Manchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He
must say he thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The
drone said unaffectedly, "You will excuse me; I really cannot attend to the
shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so much to see and so short a
time to see it in that I must take the liberty of looking about me and begging
to be provided for by somebody who doesn't want to look about him." This
appeared to Mr. Skimpole to be the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very
good philosophy, always supposing the drone to be willing to be on good terms
with the bee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow always was, if the
consequential creature would only let him, and not be so conceited about his
honey!
He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground and
made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as serious a meaning in what
he said as he was capable of having. I left them still listening to him when I
withdrew to attend to my new duties. They had occupied me for some time, and I
was passing through the passages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm
when Mr. Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber, which I
found to be in part a little library of books and papers and in part quite a
little museum of his boots and shoes and hat- boxes.
"Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce. "This, you must know, is the
growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here."
"You must be here very seldom, sir," said I.
"Oh, you don't know me!" he returned. "When I am deceived or disappointed
in--the wind, and it's easterly, I take refuge here. The growlery is the
best-used room in the house. You are not aware of half my humours yet. My dear,
how you are trembling!"
I could not help it; I tried very hard, but being alone with that benevolent
presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so happy and so honoured there,
and my heart so full--
I kissed his hand. I don't know what I said, or even that I spoke. He was
disconcerted and walked to the window; I almost believed with an intention of
jumping out, until he turned and I was reassured by seeing in his eyes what he
had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on the head, and I sat down.
"There! There!" he said. "That's over. Pooh! Don't be foolish."
"It shall not happen again, sir," I returned, "but at first it is
difficult--"
"Nonsense!" he said. "It's easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good little
orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head to be that
protector. She grows up, and more than justifies my good opinion, and I remain
her guardian and her friend. What is there in all this? So, so! Now, we have
cleared off old scores, and I have before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face
again."
I said to myself, "Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is not what
I expected of you!" And it had such a good effect that I folded my hands upon my
basket and quite recovered myself. Mr. Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his
face, began to talk to me as confidentially as if I had been in the habit of
conversing with him every morning for I don't know how long. I almost felt as if
I had.
"Of course, Esther," he said, "you don't understand this Chancery business?"
And of course I shook my head.
"I don't know who does," he returned. "The lawyers have twisted it into such
a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long
disappeared from the face of the earth. It's about a will and the trusts under a
will--or it was once. It's about nothing but costs now. We are always appearing,
and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing,
and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and
revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably
waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. That's the great question.
All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away."
"But it was, sir," said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub his head,
"about a will?"
"Why, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything," he returned. "A
certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune, and made a great will.
In the question how the trusts under that will are to be administered, the
fortune left by the will is squandered away; the legatees under the will are
reduced to such a miserable condition that they would be sufficiently punished
if they had committed an enormous crime in having money left them, and the will
itself is made a dead letter. All through the deplorable cause, everything that
everybody in it, except one man, knows already is referred to that only one man
who don't know it to find out--all through the deplorable cause, everybody must
have copies, over and over again, of everything that has accumulated about it in
the way of cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which
is the usual course, for nobody wants them) and must go down the middle and up
again through such an infernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense and
corruption as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a witch's Sabbath.
Equity sends questions to law, law sends questions back to equity; law finds it
can't do this, equity finds it can't do that; neither can so much as say it
can't do anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing
for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for B; and so
on through the whole alphabet, like the history of the apple pie. And thus,
through years and years, and lives and lives, everything goes on, constantly
beginning over and over again, and nothing ever ends. And we can't get out of
the suit on any terms, for we are made parties to it, and MUST BE parties to it,
whether we like it or not. But it won't do to think of it! When my great uncle,
poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the beginning of the end!"
"The Mr. Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?"
He nodded gravely. "I was his heir, and this was his house, Esther. When I
came here, it was bleak indeed. He had left the signs of his misery upon it."
"How changed it must be now!" I said.
"It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its present name
and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in
the suit and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and
bring it to a close. In the meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind
whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the
weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of
him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of the house too,
it was so shattered and ruined."
He walked a little to and fro after saying this to himself with a shudder,
and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat down again with his
hands in his pockets.
"I told you this was the growlery, my dear. Where was I?"
I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.
"Bleak House; true. There is, in that city of London there, some property of
ours which is much at this day what Bleak House was then; I say property of
ours, meaning of the suit's, but I ought to call it the property of costs, for
costs is the only power on earth that will ever get anything out of it now or
will ever know it for anything but an eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of
perishing blind houses, with their eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass,
without so much as a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from
their hinges and falling asunder, the iron
rails peeling away in flakes of rust, the chimneys sinking in, the stone
steps to every door (and every door might be death's door) turning stagnant
green, the very crutches on which the ruins are propped decaying. Although Bleak
House was not in Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped with the same
seal. These are the Great Seal's impressions, my dear, all over England--the
children know them!"
"How changed it is!" I said again.
"Why, so it is," he answered much more cheerfully; "and it is wisdom in you
to keep me to the bright side of the picture." (The idea of my wisdom!) "These
are things I never talk about or even think about, excepting in the growlery
here. If you consider it right to mention them to Rick and Ada," looking
seriously at me, "you can. I leave it to your discretion, Esther."
"I hope, sir--" said I.
"I think you had better call me guardian, my dear."
I felt that I was choking again--I taxed myself with it, "Esther, now, you
know you are!"--when he feigned to say this slightly, as if it were a whim
instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gave the housekeeping keys the least
shake in the world as a reminder to myself, and folding my hands in a still more
determined manner on the basket, looked at him quietly.
"I hope, guardian," said I, "that you may not trust too much to my
discretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will be a
disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it really is the truth,
and you would soon find it out if I had not the honesty to confess it."
He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary. He told me, with a
smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed and that I was quite
clever enough for him.
"I hope I may turn out so," said I, "but I am much afraid of it, guardian."
"You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here, my
dear," he returned playfully; "the little old woman of the child's (I don't mean
Skimpole's) rhyme:
'Little old woman, and whither so high?' 'To sweep the cobwebs out of the
sky.'
You will sweep them so neatly out of OUR sky in the course of your
housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we shall have to abandon the
growlery and nail up the door."
This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old Woman,
and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame Durden, and so many
names of that sort that my own name soon became quite lost among them.
"However," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to return to our gossip. Here's Rick, a fine
young fellow full of promise. What's to be done with him?"
Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!
"Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his hands into
his pockets and stretching out his legs. "He must have a profession; he must
make some choice for himself. There will be a world more wiglomeration about it,
I suppose, but it must be done."
"More what, guardian?" said I.
"More wiglomeration," said he. "It's the only name I know for the thing. He
is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will have something to say
about it; Master Somebody--a sort of ridiculous sexton, digging graves for the
merits of causes in a back room at the end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane--will
have something to say about it; counsel will have something to say about it; the
Chancellor will have something to say about it; the satellites will have
something to say about it; they will all have to be handsomely feed, all round,
about it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and
expensive, and I call it, in general, wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be
afflicted with wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell
into a pit of it, I don't know; so it is."
He began to rub his head again and to hint that he felt the wind. But it was
a delightful instance of his kindness towards me that whether he rubbed his
head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure to recover its benignant
expression as it looked at mine; and he was sure to turn comfortable again and
put his hands in his pockets and stretch out his legs.
"Perhaps it would be best, first of all," said I, "to ask Mr. Richard what he
inclines to himself."
"Exactly so," he returned. "That's what I mean! You know, just accustom
yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet way, with him and
Ada, and see what you all make of it. We are sure to come at the heart of the
matter by your means, little woman."
I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was attaining and
the number of things that were being confided to me. I had not meant this at
all; I had meant that he should speak to Richard. But of course I said nothing
in reply except that I would do my best, though I feared (I realty felt it
necessary to repeat this) that he thought me much more sagacious than I was. At
which my guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard.
"Come!" he said, rising and pushing back his chair. "I think we may have done
with the growlery for one day! Only a concluding word. Esther, my dear, do you
wish to ask me anything?"
He looked so attentively at me that I looked attentively at him and felt sure
I understood him.
"About myself, sir?" said I.
"Yes."
"Guardian," said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly colder than
I could have wished, in his, "nothing! I am quite sure that if there were
anything I ought to know or had any need to know, I should not have to ask you
to tell it to me. If my whole reliance and confidence were not placed in you, I
must have a hard heart indeed. I have nothing to ask you, nothing in the world."
He drew my hand through his arm and we went away to look for Ada. From that
hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quite content to know no
more, quite happy.
We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House, for we had to become
acquainted with many residents in and out of the neighbourhood who knew Mr.
Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and me that everybody knew him who wanted to do
anything with anybody else's money. It amazed us when we began to sort his
letters and to answer some of them for him in the growlery of a morning to find
how the great object of the lives of nearly all his correspondents appeared to
be to form themselves into committees for getting in and laying out money. The
ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, I think they were even more
so. They threw themselves into committees in the most impassioned manner and
collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite extraordinary. It appeared to us
that some of them must pass their whole lives in dealing out subscription-cards
to the whole post-office directory-- shilling cards, half-crown cards,
half-sovereign cards, penny cards. They wanted everything. They wanted wearing
apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money, they wanted coals, they
wanted soup, they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, they wanted flannel,
they wanted whatever Mr. Jarndyce had--or had not. Their objects were as various
as their demands. They were going to raise new buildings, they were going to pay
off debts on old buildings, they were going to establish in a picturesque
building (engraving of proposed west elevation attached) the Sisterhood of
Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a testimonial to Mrs. Jellyby, they
were going to have their secretary's portrait painted and presented to his
mother-in-law, whose deep devotion to him was well known, they were going to get
up everything, I really believe, from five hundred thousand tracts to an annuity
and from a marble monument to a silver tea-pot. They took a multitude of titles.
They were the Women of England, the Daughters of Britain, the Sisters of all the
cardinal virtues separately, the Females of America, the Ladies of a hundred
denominations. They appeared to be always excited about canvassing and electing.
They seemed to our poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to be
constantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringing their
candidates in for anything. It made our heads ache to think, on the whole, what
feverish lives they must lead.
Among the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapacious benevolence
(if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Pardiggle, who seemed, as I judged from
the number of her letters to Mr. Jarndyce, to be almost as powerful a
correspondent as Mrs. Jellyby herself. We observed that the wind always changed
when Mrs. Pardiggle became the subject of conversation and that it invariably
interrupted Mr. Jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, when he had
remarked that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who
did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a
great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore curious to see Mrs.
Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the former class, and were glad when
she called one day with her five young sons.
She was a formidable style of lady with spectacles, a prominent nose, and a
loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great deal of room. And she really
did, for she knocked down little chairs with her skirts that were quite a great
way off. As only Ada and I were at home, we received her timidly, for she seemed
to come in like cold weather and to make the little Pardiggles blue as they
followed.
"These, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle with great volubility after the
first salutations, "are my five boys. You may have seen their names in a printed
subscription list (perhaps more than one) in the possession of our esteemed
friend Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his
pocket-money, to the amount of five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians.
Oswald, my second (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and
nine-pence to the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine),
one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to the
Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled
himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never, through life, to use
tobacco in any form."
We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that they
were weazened and shrivelled--though they were certainly that to--but they
looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the mention of the Tockahoopo
Indians, I could really have supposed Eghert to be one of the most baleful
members of that tribe, he gave me such a savage frown. The face of each child,
as the amount of his contribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly
vindictive manner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however, the
little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and evenly
miserable.
"You have been visiting, I understand," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "at Mrs.
Jellyby's?"
We said yes, we had passed one night there.
"Mrs. Jellyby," pursued the lady, always speaking in the same demonstrative,
loud, hard tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy as if it had a sort of
spectacles on too--and I may take the opportunity of remarking that her
spectacles were made the less engaging by her eyes being what Ada called
"choking eyes," meaning very prominent--"Mrs. Jellyby is a benefactor to society
and deserves a helping hand. My boys have contributed to the African
project--Egbert, one and six, being the entire allowance of nine weeks; Oswald,
one and a penny halfpenny, being the same; the rest, according to their little
means. Nevertheless, I do not go with Mrs. Jellyby in all things. I do not go
with Mrs. Jellyby in her treatment of her young family. It has been noticed. It
has been observed that her young family are excluded from participation in the
objects to which she is devoted. She may be right, she may be wrong; but, right
or wrong, this is not my course with MY young family. I take them everywhere."
I was afterwards convinced (and so was Ada) that from the ill- conditioned
eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell. He turned it off into a yawn,
but it began as a yell.
"They attend matins with me (very prettily done) at half-past six o'clock in
the morning all the year round, including of course the depth of winter," said
Mrs. Pardiggle rapidly, "and they are with me during the revolving duties of the
day. I am a School lady, I am a Visiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a
Distributing lady; I am on the local Linen Box Committee and many general
committees; and my canvassing alone is very extensive--perhaps no one's more so.
But they are my companions everywhere; and by these means they acquire that
knowledge of the poor, and that capacity of doing charitable business in
general--in short, that taste for the sort of thing--which will render them in
after life a service to their neighbours and a satisfaction to themselves. My
young family are not frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance
in subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many public
meetings and listened to as many lectures, orations, and discussions as
generally fall to the lot of few grown people. Alfred (five), who, as I
mentioned, has of his own election joined the Infant Bonds of Joy, was one of
the very few children who manifested consciousness on that occasion after a
fervid address of two hours from the chairman of the evening."
Alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the injury of
that night.
"You may have observed, Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "in some of the
lists to which I have referred, in the possession of our esteemed friend Mr.
Jarndyce, that the names of my young family are concluded with the name of O. A.
Pardiggle, F.R.S., one pound. That is their father. We usually observe the same
routine. I put down my mite first; then my young family enrol their
contributions, according to their ages and their little means; and then Mr.
Pardiggle brings up the rear. Mr. Pardiggle is happy to throw in his limited
donation, under my direction; and thus things are made not only pleasant to
ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others."
Suppose Mr. Pardiggle were to dine with Mr. Jellyby, and suppose Mr. Jellyby
were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr. Pardiggle, would Mr. Pardiggle, in
return, make any confidential communication to Mr. Jellyby? I was quite confused
to find myself thinking this, but it came into my head.
"You are very pleasantly situated here!" said Mrs. Pardiggle.
We were glad to change the subject, and going to the window, pointed out the
beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles appeared to me to rest with
curious indifference.
"You know Mr. Gusher?" said our visitor.
We were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr. Gusher's
acquaintance.
"The loss is yours, I assure you," said Mrs. Pardiggle with her commanding
deportment. "He is a very fervid, impassioned speaker- full of fire! Stationed
in a waggon on this lawn, now, which, from the shape of the land, is naturally
adapted to a public meeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could
mention for hours and hours! By this time, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle,
moving back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency, a little
round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket on it, "by this time
you have found me out, I dare say?"
This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in perfect
dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness after what I had been
thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour of my cheeks.
"Found out, I mean," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "the prominent point in my
character. I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable immediately.
I lay myself open to detection, I know. Well! I freely admit, I am a woman of
business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work. The excitement does me good. I am
so accustomed and inured to hard work that I don't know what fatigue is."
We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or something to
that effect. I don't think we knew what it was either, but this is what our
politeness expressed.
"I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if you try!"
said Mrs. Pardiggle. "The quantity of exertion (which is no exertion to me), the
amount of business (which I regard as nothing), that I go through sometimes
astonishes myself. I have seen my young family, and Mr. Pardiggle, quite worn
out with witnessing it, when I may truly say I have been as fresh as a lark!"
If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had already
looked, this was the time when he did it. I observed that he doubled his right
fist and delivered a secret blow into the crown of his cap, which was under his
left arm.
"This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds," said Mrs.
Pardiggle. "If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to say, I tell that
person directly, 'I am incapable of fatigue, my good friend, I am never tired,
and I mean to go on until I have done.' It answers admirably! Miss Summerson, I
hope I shall have your assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss
Clare's very soon."
At first I tried to excuse myself for the present on the general ground of
having occupations to attend to which I must not neglect. But as this was an
ineffectual protest, I then said, more particularly, that I was not sure of my
qualifications. That I was inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds
very differently situated, and addressing them from suitable points of view.
That I had not that delicate knowledge of the heart which must be essential to
such a work. That I had much to learn, myself, before I could teach others, and
that I could not confide in my good intentions alone. For these reasons I
thought it best to be as useful as I could, and to render what kind services I
could to those immediately about me, and to try to let that circle of duty
gradually and naturally expand itself. All this I said with anything but
confidence, because Mrs. Pardiggle was much older than I, and had great
experience, and was so very military in her manners.
"You are wrong, Miss Summerson," said she, "but perhaps you are not equal to
hard work or the excitement of it, and that makes a vast difference. If you
would like to see how I go through my work, I am now about--with my young
family--to visit a brickmaker in the neighbourhood (a very bad character) and
shall be glad to take you with me. Miss Clare also, if she will do me the
favour."
Ada and I interchanged looks, and as we were going out in any case, accepted
the offer. When we hastily returned from putting on our bonnets, we found the
young family languishing in a corner and Mrs. Pardiggle sweeping about the room,
knocking down nearly all the light objects it contained. Mrs. Pardiggle took
possession of Ada, and I followed with the family.
Ada told me afterwards that Mrs. Pardiggle talked in the same loud tone
(that, indeed, I overheard) all the way to the brickmaker's about an exciting
contest which she had for two or three years waged against another lady relative
to the bringing in of their rival candidates for a pension somewhere. There had
been a quantity of printing, and promising, and proxying, and polling, and it
appeared to have imparted great liveliness to all concerned, except the
pensioners--who were not elected yet.
I am very fond of being confided in by children and am happy in being usually
favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it gave me great uneasiness. As
soon as we were out of doors, Egbert, with the manner of a little footpad,
demanded a shilling of me on the ground that his pocket-money was "boned" from
him. On my pointing out the great impropriety of the word, especially in
connexion with his parent (for he added sulkily "By her!"), he pinched me and
said, "Oh, then! Now! Who are you! YOU wouldn't like it, I think? What does she
make a sham for, and pretend to give me money, and take it away again? Why do
you call it my allowance, and never let me spend it?" These exasperating
questions so inflamed his mind and the minds of Oswald and Francis that they all
pinched me at once, and in a dreadfully expert way-- screwing up such little
pieces of my arms that I could hardly forbear crying out. Felix, at the same
time, stamped upon my toes. And the Bond of Joy, who on account of always having
the whole of his little income anticipated stood in fact pledged to abstain from
cakes as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage when we passed a
pastry-cook's shop that he terrified me by becoming purple. I never underwent so
much, both in body and mind, in the course of a walk with young people as from
these unnaturally constrained children when they paid me the compliment of being
natural.
I was glad when we came to the brickmaker's house, though it was one of a
cluster of wretched hovels in a brick-field, with pigsties close to the broken
windows and miserable little gardens before the doors growing nothing but
stagnant pools. Here and there an old tub was put to catch the droppings of
rain-water from a roof, or they were banked up with mud into a little pond like
a large dirt- pie. At the doors and windows some men and women lounged or
prowled about, and took little notice of us except to laugh to one another or to
say something as we passed about gentlefolks minding their own business and not
troubling their heads and muddying their shoes with coming to look after other
people's.
Mrs. Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral determination and
talking with much volubility about the untidy habits of the people (though I
doubted if the best of us could have been tidy in such a place), conducted us
into a cottage at the farthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly
filled. Besides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman with
a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a man, all stained
with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying at full length on the
ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man fastening a collar on a dog; and a
bold girl doing some kind of washing in very dirty water. They all looked up at
us as we came in, and the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire as if
to hide her bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome.
"Well, my friends," said Mrs. Pardiggle, but her voice had not a friendly
sound, I thought; it was much too businesslike and systematic. "How do you do,
all of you? I am here again. I told you, you couldn't tire me, you know. I am
fond of hard work, and am true to my word."
"There an't," growled the man on the floor, whose head rested on his hand as
he stared at us, "any more on you to come in, is there?"
"No, my friend," said Mrs. Pardiggle, seating herself on one stool and
knocking down another. "We are all here."
"Because I thought there warn't enough of you, perhaps?" said the man, with
his pipe between his lips as he looked round upon us.
The young man and the girl both laughed. Two friends of the young man, whom
we had attracted to the doorway and who stood there with their hands in their
pockets, echoed the laugh noisily.
"You can't tire me, good people," said Mrs. Pardiggle to these latter. "I
enjoy hard work, and the harder you make mine, the better I like it."
"Then make it easy for her!" growled the man upon the floor. "I wants it
done, and over. I wants a end of these liberties took with my place. I wants an
end of being drawed like a badger. Now you're a-going to poll-pry and question
according to custom--I know what you're a-going to be up to. Well! You haven't
got no occasion to be up to it. I'll save you the trouble. Is my daughter
a-washin? Yes, she IS a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That's wot we
drinks. How do you like it, and what do you think of gin instead! An't my place
dirty? Yes, it is dirty-- it's nat'rally dirty, and it's nat'rally onwholesome;
and we've had five dirty and onwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and
so much the better for them, and for us besides. Have I read the little book wot
you left? No, I an't read the little book wot you left. There an't nobody here
as knows how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn't be suitable to me. It's a
book fit for a babby, and I'm not a babby. If you was to leave me a doll, I
shouldn't nuss it. How have I been conducting of myself? Why, I've been drunk
for three days; and I'da been drunk four if I'da had the money. Don't I never
mean for to go to church? No, I don't never mean for to go to church. I
shouldn't be expected there, if I did; the beadle's too gen-teel for me. And how
did my wife get that black eye? Why, I give it her; and if she says I didn't,
she's a lie!"
He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say all this, and he now turned
over on his other side and smoked again. Mrs. Pardiggle, who had been regarding
him through her spectacles with a forcible composure, calculated, I could not
help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were
a constable's staff and took the whole family into custody. I mean into
religious custody, of course; but she really did it as if she were an inexorable
moral policeman carrying them all off to a station- house.
Ada and I were very uncomfortable. We both felt intrusive and out of place,
and we both thought that Mrs. Pardiggle would have got on infinitely better if
she had not had such a mechanical way of taking possession of people. The
children sulked and stared; the family took no notice of us whatever, except
when the young man made the dog bark, which he usually did when Mrs. Pardiggle
was most emphatic. We both felt painfully sensible that between us and these
people there was an iron barrier which could not be removed by our new friend.
By whom or how it could be removed, we did not know, but we knew that. Even what
she read and said seemed to us to be ill-chosen for such auditors, if it had
been imparted ever so modestly and with ever so much tact. As to the little book
to which the man on the floor had referred, we acqulred a knowledge of it
afterwards, and Mr. Jarndyce said he doubted if Robinson Crusoe could have read
it, though he had had no other on his desolate island.
We were much relieved, under these circumstances, when Mrs. Pardiggle left
off.
The man on the floor, then turning his bead round again, said morosely,
"Well! You've done, have you?"
"For to-day, I have, my friend. But I am never fatigued. I shall come to you
again in your regular order," returned Mrs. Pardiggle with demonstrative
cheerfulness.
"So long as you goes now," said he, folding his arms and shutting his eyes
with an oath, "you may do wot you like!"
Mrs. Pardiggle accordingly rose and made a little vortex in the confined room
from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped. Taking one of her young family
in each hand, and telling the others to follow closely, and expressing her hope
that the brickmaker and all his house would be improved when she saw them next,
she then proceeded to another cottage. I hope it is not unkind in me to say that
she certainly did make, in this as in everything else, a show that was not
conciliatory of doing charity by wholesale and of dealing in it to a large
extent.
She supposed that we were following her, but as soon as the space was left
clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fire to ask if the baby were ill.
She only looked at it as it lay on her lap. We had observed before that when
she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her hand, as though she
wished to separate any association with noise and violence and ill treatment
from the poor little child.
Ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to touch its
little face. As she did so, I saw what happened and drew her back. The child
died.
"Oh, Esther!" cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside it. "Look here! Oh,
Esther, my love, the little thing! The suffering, quiet, pretty little thing! I
am so sorry for it. I am so sorry for the mother. I never saw a sight so pitiful
as this before! Oh, baby, baby!"
Such compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down weeping
and put her hand upon the mother's might have softened any mother's heart that
ever beat. The woman at first gazed at her in astonishment and then burst into
tears.
Presently I took the light burden from her lap, did what I could to make the
baby's rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf, and covered it with my
own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the mother, and we whispered to her what
Our Saviour said of children. She answered nothing, but sat weeping--weeping
very much.
When I turned, I found that the young man had taken out the dog and was
standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but quiet. The girl was
quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the ground. The man had risen. He still
smoked his pipe with an air of defiance, but he was silent.
An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing at them,
and coming straight up to the mother, said, "Jenny! Jenny!" The mother rose on
being so addressed and fell upon the woman's neck.
She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. She had no kind
of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she condoled with the
woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no beauty. I say condoled, but her
only words were "Jenny! Jenny!" All the rest was in the tone in which she said
them.
I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and
beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they
felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard
trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden
from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves
and God.
We felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted. We stole out
quietly and without notice from any one except the man. He was leaning against
the wall near the door, and finding that there was scarcely room for us to pass,
went out before us. He seemed to want to hide that he did this on our account,
but we perceived that be did, and thanked him. He made no answer.
Ada was so full of grief all the way home, and Richard, whom we found at
home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he said to me, when she was
not present, how beautiful it was too!), that we arranged to return at night
with some little comforts and repeat our visit at the brick-maker's house. We
said as little as we could to Mr. Jarndyce, but the wind changed directly.
Richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning expedition. On
our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking- house, where a number of men
were flocking about the door. Among them, and prominent in some dispute, was the
father of the little child. At a short distance, we passed the young man and the
dog, in congenial company. The sister was standing laughing and talking with
some other young women at the corner of the row of cottages, but she seemed
ashamed and turned away as we went by.
We left our escort within sight of the brickmaker's dwelling and proceeded by
ourselves. When we came to the door, we found the woman who had brought such
consolation with her standing there looking anxiously out.
"It's you, young ladies, is it?" she said in a whisper. "I'm a- watching for
my master. My heart's in my mouth. If he was to catch me away from home, he'd
pretty near murder me."
"Do you mean your husband?" said I.
"Yes, miss, my master. Jennys asleep, quite worn out. She's scarcely had the
child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days and nights, except when I've
been able to take it for a minute or two."
As she gave way for us, she went softly in and put what we had brought near
the miserable bed on which the mother slept. No effort had been made to clean
the room--it seemed in its nature almost hopeless of being clean; but the small
waxen form from which so much solemnity diffused itself had been composed
afresh, and washed, and neatly dressed in some fragments of white linen; and on
my handkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a little bunch of sweet
herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred hands, so lightly, so tenderly!
"May heaven reward you!" we said to her. "You are a good woman."
"Me, young ladies?" she returned with surprise. "Hush! Jenny, Jenny!"
The mother had moaned in her sleep and moved. The sound of the familiar voice
seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once more.
How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon the tiny
sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around the child through Ada's
drooping hair as her pity bent her head-- how little I thought in whose unquiet
bosom that handkerchief would come to lie after covering the motionless and
peaceful breast! I only thought that perhaps the Angel of the child might not be
all unconscious of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate a hand; not
all unconscious of her presently, when we had taken leave, and left her at the
door, by turns looking, and listening in terror for herself, and saying in her
old soothing manner, "Jenny, Jenny!"
|