Bleak House, No. V: Electronic Edition.

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.


Funding from the E. S. P. Das Educational Foundation supported the electronic publication of this title.


Illustrated by  Browne, H. K. (Hablot Knight), 1815-1882.
Text transcribed by Apex Data Services, Inc.
Images scanned by Maura McKee
Text encoded by  Apex Data Services, Inc., Matthew Kern and Jill Kuhn Sexton

First edition, 2002
ca. 250K
Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.


Source Description

Title (from title page): Bleak House
Author: Charles Dickens
Extent: 69 p., ill.
London
Bradbury & Evans
1852
Call number RBC Dickens 21 c. 2 (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

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No. V.

JULY.

Price 1s.

BLEAK
HOUSE

BY

CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. K. BROWNE.

LONDON:

BRADBURY & EVANS, BOUVERIE STREET.


AGENTS: J. MENZIES, EDINBURGH; MURRAY AND SON, GLASGOW; J. M'GLASHAN, DUBLIN.
The Author of this Work notifies that it is his intention to reserve the
right of translating it.



page ii

          


The Dancing-School.



page iii

          


Consecrated ground.




page 129

CHAPTER XIV.
DEPORTMENT.

           RICHARD left us on the very next evening, to begin his new career, and committed Ada to my charge with great love for her, and great trust in me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write to Richard once a week, making my faithful report of Ada who was to write to him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of all his labors and successes; I was to observe how resolute and persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's bridesmaid when they were married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.

           “And if the suit should make us rich, Esther—which it may, you know!” said Richard, to crown all.

           A shade crossed Ada's face.

           “My dearest Ada,” asked Richard, pausing, “why not?”

           “It had better declare us poor at once,” said Ada.

           “O! I don't know about that,” returned Richard; “but, at all events, it won't declare anything at once. It hasn't declared anything in Heaven knows how many years.”

           “Too true,” said Ada.

           “Yes, but,” urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather than her words, “the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that reasonable?”

           “You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will make us unhappy.”

           “But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!” cried Richard gaily. “We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it should make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The Court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.”

           “No,” said Ada,” “but it may be better to forget all about it.”

           “Well, well!” cried Richard, “then we will forget all about it! We consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her approving face, and it's done!”

           “Dame Durden's approving face,” said I, looking out of the box in which I was packing his books, “was not very visible when you called it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do better.”

           So, Richard said there was an end of it,—and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the great wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.



page 130

           On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs. Jellyby's, but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It appeared that she had gone somewhere, to a tea-drinking, and had taken Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the Settlement of Borrioboola Gha. All this involved, no doubt, sufficient active exercise of pen and ink, to make her daughter's part in the proceedings, anything but a holiday.

           It being, now, beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby's return, we called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile End, directly after breakfast, on some Borrioboolan business, arising out of a Society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have strolled away with the dustman's cart), I now enquired for him again. The oyster shells he had been building a house with, were still in the passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had “gone after the sheep.” When we repeated, with some surprise, “The sheep?” she said, O yes, on market days he sometimes followed them quite out of town, and came back in such a state as never was!

           I was sitting at the window with my Guardian, on the following morning, and Ada was busy writing—of course to Richard—when Miss Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom she had made some endeavours to render presentable, by wiping the dirt into corners of his face and hands, and making his hair very wet and then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear child wore, was either too large for him or too small. Among his other contradictory decorations he had the hat of a Bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a ploughman: while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare, below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been hastily mended; and I recognised the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance, and looked very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in, by the way in which she glanced, first at him and then at us.

           “O dear me!” said my Guardian, “Due East!”

           Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome, and presented her to Mr. Jarndyce; to whom she said, as she sat down:

           “Ma's compliments, and she hopes you'll excuse her, because she's correcting proofs of the plan. She's going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she knows you'll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them with me. Ma's compliments.” With which she presented it sulkily enough.

           “Thank you,” said my Guardian. “I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby. O dear me! This is a very trying wind!”



page 131

           We were busy with Peepy; taking off his clerical hat; asking him if he remembered us; and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first, but relented at the sight of sponge-cake, and allowed me to take him on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then withdrawing into the temporary Growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a conversation with her usual abruptness.

           “We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn,” said she. “I have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn't be worse off if I was a what's-his-name—man and a brother!”

           I tried to say something soothing.

           “O, it's of no use, Miss Summerson,” exclaimed Miss Jellyby, “though I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am used, and I am not to be talked over. You wouldn't be talked over, if you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!”

           “I shan't!” said Peepy.

           “Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!” returned Miss Jellyby, with tears in her eyes. “I'll never take pains to dress you any more.”

           “Yes, I will go, Caddy!” cried Peepy, who was really a good child, and who was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once.

           “It seems a little thing to cry about,” said poor Miss Jellyby, apologetically, “but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so, that that alone makes my head ache till I can't see out of my eyes. And look at that poor unfortunate child. Was there ever such a fright as he is!”

           Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of his den at us, while he ate his cake.

           “I have sent him to the other end of the room,” observed Miss Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, “because I don't want him to hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There'll be nobody but Ma to thank for it.”

           We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby's affairs were not in so bad a state as that.

           “It's of no use hoping, though it's very kind of you!” returned Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. “Pa told me, only yesterday morning, (and dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn't weather the storm. I should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don't care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I'd run away!”

           “My dear!” said I, smiling. “Your papa, no doubt, considers his family.”

           “O yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson,” replied Miss Jellyby; “but what comfort is his family to him? His family is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles down stairs, confusion, and



page 132 wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week's-end to week's-end, is like one great washing-day—only nothing's washed!”

           Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor, and wiped her eyes.

           “I am sure I pity Pa to that degree,” she said, “and am so angry with Ma, that I can't find words to express myself! However, I am not going to bear it, I am determined. I won't be a slave all my life, and I won't submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed, to marry a Philanthropist. As if I hadn't had enough of that!” said poor Miss Jellyby.

           I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs. Jellyby, myself; seeing and hearing this neglected girl, and knowing how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.

           “If it wasn't that we had been intimate when you stopped at our house,” pursued Miss Jellyby, “I should have been ashamed to come here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But, as it is, I made up my mind to call: especially as I am not likely to see you again, the next time you come to town.”

           She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at one another, foreseeing something more.

           “No!” said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. “Not at all likely! I know I may trust you two. I am sure you won't betray me. I am engaged.”

           “Without their knowledge at home?” said I.

           “Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson,” she returned, justifying herself in a fretful but not angry manner, “how can it be otherwise? You know what Ma is—and I needn't make poor Pa more miserable by telling him.

           “But would it not be adding to his unhappiness, to marry without his knowledge or consent, my dear?” said I.

           “No,” said Miss Jellyby, softening. “I hope not. I should try to make him happy and comfortable when he came to see me; and Peepy and the others should take it in turns to come and stay with me; and they should have some care taken of them, then.”

           There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more and more while saying this, and cried so much over the unwonted little home-picture she had raised in her mind, that Peepy, in his cave under the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister, and had restored him to his place in my lap, and had shewn him that Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we could recal his peace of mind; even then, it was for some time conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin, and smoothing our faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not yet equal to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.

           “It began in your coming to our house,” she said.

           We naturally asked how?

           “I felt I was so awkward,” she replied, “that I made up my mind to be improved in that respect, at all events, and to learn to dance. I told Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn't in sight; but, I was



page 133 quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr. Turveydrop's Academy in Newman Street.

           “And was it there, my dear —” I began.

           “Yes, it was there,” said Caddy, “and I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop. There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up, and was likely to make him a better wife; for I am very fond of him.”

           “I am sorry to hear this,” said I, “I must confess.”

           “I don't know why you should be sorry,” she retorted a little anxiously, “but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he is very fond of me. It's a secret as yet, even on his side, because old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connexion, and it might break his heart, or give him some other shock, if he was told of it abruptly. Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed—very gentlemanly.”

           “Does his wife know of it?” asked Ada.

           “Old Mr. Turveydrop's wife, Miss Clare?” returned Miss Jellyby, opening her eyes. “There's no such person. He is a widower.”

           We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on account of his sister's unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope whenever she was emphatic, that the afflicted child now bemoaned his sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for compassion, and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him. Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging Peepy's pardon with a kiss, and assuring him that she hadn't meant to do it.

           “That's the state of the case,” said Caddy. “If I ever blame myself, I still think it's Ma's fault. We are to be married whenever we can, and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won't much agitate Ma: I am only pen and ink to her. One great comfort is,” said Caddy, with a sob, “that I shall never hear of Africa after I am married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake; and if old Mr. Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it's as much as he does.”

           “It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think?” said I.

           “Very gentlemanly, indeed,” said Caddy. “He is celebrated, almost everywhere, for his Deportment.”

           “Does he teach?” asked Ada.

           “No, he don't teach anything in particular,” replied Caddy. “But his Deportment is beautiful.”

           Caddy went on to say, with considerable hesitation and reluctance, that there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to know, and which she hoped would not offend us. It was, that she had improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady; and that she frequently went there early in the morning, and met her lover for a few minutes before breakfast—only for a few minutes. “I go there, at other times,” said Caddy, “but Prince does not come then. Young Mr. Turveydrop's name is Prince; I wish it wasn't, because it sounds like a dog, but of course he didn't christen himself. Old Mr. Turveydrop had him christened Prince, in remembrance of the Prince Regent. Old Mr. Turveydrop adored the Prince Regent on account of his Deportment. I hope you won't think the worse of me for having made these little appointments at Miss Flite's, where I first went with you; because I like the poor thing for her own sake and I believe she likes



page 134 me. If you could see young Mr. Turveydrop, I am sure you would think well of him—at least, I am sure you couldn't possibly think any ill of him. I am going there now, for my lesson. I couldn't ask you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would,” said Caddy, who had said all this, earnestly and tremblingly, “I should be very glad—very glad.”

           It happened that we had arranged with my Guardian to go to Miss Flite's that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our account had interested him; but something had always happened to prevent our going there again. As I trusted that I might have sufficient influence with Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very rash step, if I fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to place in me, poor girl, I proposed that she and I and Peepy should go to the Academy, and afterwards meet my guardian and Ada at Miss Flite's—whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was on condition that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back with us to dinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to by both, we smartened Peepy up a little, with the assistance of a few pins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush; and went out: bending our steps towards Newman Street, which was very near.

           I found the academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the corner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the same house there were also established, as I gathered from the plates on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly, no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I read MR. TURVEYDROP. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent, last night, for a concert.

           We went up-stairs—it had been quite a fine house once, when it was anybody's business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody's business to smoke in it all day—and into Mr. Turveydrop's great room, which was built out into a mews at the back, and was lighted by a skylight. It was a bare, resounding room, smelling of stables; with cane forms along the walls; and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with painted lyres, and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed autumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and I was looking among them for their instructor, when Caddy, pinching my arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. “Miss Summerson, Mr. Prince Turveydrop!”

           I curtseyed to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance, with flaxen hair parted in the middle, and curling at the ends all round his head. He had a little fiddle which we used to call at school a kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His little dancing shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a little innocent, feminine manner, which not only appealed to me in an amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me: that I received the impression that he was like his mother, and that his mother had not been much considered or well used.

           “I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby's friend,” he said, bowing low



page 135 to me. “I began to fear,” with timid tenderness, “as it was past the usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming.”

           “I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir,” said I.

           “O dear!” said he.

           “And pray,” I entreated, “do not allow me to be the cause of any more delay.”

           With that apology I withdrew to a seat between Peepy (who, being well used to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady of a censorious countenance, whose two nieces were in the class, and who was very indignant with Peepy's boots. Prince Turveydrop then tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies stood up to dance. Just then, there appeared from a side-door, old Mr. Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his Deportment.

           He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a neck-cloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though he must inevitably double up, if it were cast loose. He had, under his arm, a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown to the brim; and in his hand a pair of white gloves, with which he flapped it, as he stood poised on one leg, in a high-shouldered round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was like nothing in the world but a model of Deportment.

           “Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend, Miss Summerson.”

           “Distinguished,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “by Miss Summerson's presence.” As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believed I saw creases come into the whites of his eyes.

           “My father,” said the son, aside, to me, with quite an affecting belief in him, “is a celebrated character. My father is greatly admired.”

           “Go on, Prince! Go on!” said Mr. Turveydrop, standing with his back to the fire, and waving his gloves condescendingly. “Go on, my son!”

           At this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on. Prince Turveydrop, sometimes, played the kit, dancing; sometimes played the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His distinguished father did nothing whatever, but stand before the fire, a model of Deportment.

           “And he never does anything else,” said the old lady of the censorious countenance. “Yet would you believe that it's his name on the doorplate?”

           “His son's name is the same, you know,” said I.

           “He wouldn't let his son have any name, if he could take it from



page 136 him,” returned the old lady. “Look at the son's dress!” It certainly was plain—threadbare—almost shabby. “Yet the father must be garnished and tricked out,” said the old lady, “because of his Deportment. I'd deport him! Transport him would be better!”

           I felt curious to know more, concerning this person. I asked, “Does he give lessons in Deportment, now?”

           “Now!” returned the old lady, shortly. “Never did.”

           After a moment's consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had been his accomplishment?

           “I don't believe he can fence at all, ma'am,” said the old lady.

           I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and more incensed against the Master of Deportment as she dwelt upon the subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong assurances that they were mildly stated.

           He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable connexion, (having never in his life before done anything but deport himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which were indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his Deportment to the best models, and to keep the best models constantly before himself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of fashionable and lounging resort; to be seen at Brighton and elsewhere at fashionable times; and to lead an idle life in the very best clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little dancing-mistress had toiled and labored, and would have toiled and labored to that hour, if her strength had lasted so long. For, the mainspring of the story was, that, in spite of the man's absorbing selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his Deportment) had, to the last, believed in him, and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable claim upon him, and whom he could never regard with too much pride and deference. The son, inheriting his mother's belief, and having the Deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith, and now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a-day, and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary pinnacle.

           “The airs the fellow gives himself!” said my informant, shaking her head at old Mr. Turveydrop with speechless indignation as he drew on his tight gloves: of course unconscious of the homage she was rendering. “He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes, that you might suppose him the most virtuous of parents. O!” said the old lady, apostrophising him with infinite vehemence, “I could bite you!”

           I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her, with the father and son before me. What I might have thought of them without the old lady's account, or what I might have thought of the old lady's account without them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of things in the whole that carried conviction with it.

           My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Turveydrop working so hard to old Mr. Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when the latter came ambling up to me, and entered into conversation.

           He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a distinction



page 137 on London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any case, but merely told him where I did reside.

           “A lady so graceful and accomplished,” he said, kissing his right glove, and afterwards extending it towards the pupils, “will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to polish—polish—polish!”

           He sat down beside me; taking some pains to sit on the form, I thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the sofa. And really he did look very like it.

           “To polish—polish—polish!” he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and gently fluttering his fingers. “But we are not—if I may say so, to one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art;” with the high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes—“we are not what we used to be in point of Deportment.”

           “Are we not, sir?” said I.

           “We have degenerated,” he returned, shaking his head, which he could do, to a very limited extent, in his cravat. “A levelling age is not favorable to Deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness the Prince Regent did me the honor to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the Devil is he? Why don't I know him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little matters of anecdote—the general property, ma'am,—still repeated, occasionally, among the upper classes.”

           “Indeed?” said I.

           He replied with the high-shouldered bow. “Where what is left among us of Deportment,” he added, “still lingers. England—alas, my country!—has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day. She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed us, but a race of weavers.”

           “One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated here,” said I.

           “You are very good,” he smiled, with the high-shouldered bow again. “You flatter me. But, no—no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my dear child, but he has—no Deportment.”

           “He appears to be an excellent master,” I observed.

           “Understand me, my dear madam, he is an excellent master. All that can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can impart. But there are things”—he took another pinch of snuff and made the bow again, as if to add, “this kind of thing, for instance.”

           I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby's lover, now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than ever.

           “My amiable child,” murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.

           “Your son is indefatigable,” said I.

           “It is my reward,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “to hear you say so. In



page 138 some respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a devoted creature. But Wooman, lovely Wooman,” said Mr. Turveydrop, with very disagreeable gallantry, “what a sex you are!”

           I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was, by this time, putting on her bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don't know, but they certainly found none, on this occasion, to exchange a dozen words.

           “My dear,” said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, “do you know the hour?”

           “No, father.” The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold one, which he pulled out, with an air that was an example to mankind.

           “My son,” said he, “it's two o'clock. Recollect your school at Kensington at three.”

           “That's time enough for me, father,” said Prince. “I can take a morsel of dinner, standing, and be off.”

           “My dear boy,” returned his father, “you must be very quick. You will find the cold mutton on the table.”

           “Thank you, father. Are you off now, father?”

           “Yes, my dear. I suppose,” said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and lifting up his shoulders, with modest consciousness, “that I must show myself, as usual, about town.”

           “You had better dine out comfortably, somewhere,” said his son.

           “My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at the French house, in the Opera Colonnade.”

           “That's right. Good bye, father!” said Prince, shaking hands.

           “Good bye, my son. Bless you!”

           Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do his son good; who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so dutiful to him, and so proud of him, that I almost felt as if it were an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the secret), enhanced my favorable impression of his almost childish character. I felt a liking for him, and a compassion for him, as he put his little kit in his pocket—and with it his desire to stay a little while with Caddy—and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with his father than the censorious old lady.

           The father opened the room door for us, and bowed us out, in a manner, I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost in considering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street, that I was quite unable to talk to Caddy, or even to fix my attention on what she said to me: especially, when I began to inquire in my mind whether there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their Deportment. This became so bewildering, and suggested the possibility of so many



page 139 Mr. Turveydrops, that I said, “Esther, you must make up your mind to abandon this subject altogether, and attend to Caddy.” I accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to Lincoln's Inn.

           Caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected, that it was not always easy to read his notes. She said, if he were not so anxious about his spelling, and took less pains to make it clear, he would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short words, that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. “He does it with the best intentions,” observed Caddy, “but it hasn't the effect he means, poor fellow!” Caddy then went on to reason, how could he be expected to be a scholar, when he had passed his whole life in the dancing-school, and had done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable than learned. “Besides, it's not as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself airs,” said Caddy. “I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!”

           “There's another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,” continued Caddy, “which I should not have liked to mention unless you had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It's of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for Prince's wife to know, in our house. We live in such a state of muddle that it's impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever I have tried. So, I get a little practice with—who do you think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the morning, I help her to tidy her room, and clean her birds; and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am not clever at my needle, yet,” said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on Peepy's frock, “but perhaps I shall improve. And since I have been engaged to Prince, and have been doing all this, I have felt better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me out, at first this morning, to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat and pretty, and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too; but, on the whole, I hope I am better-tempered than I was, and more forgiving to Ma.”

           The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched mine. “Caddy, my love,” I replied, “I begin to have a great affection for you, and I hope we shall become friends.” “Oh, do you?” cried Caddy; “how happy that would make me!” “My dear Caddy,” said I, “let us be friends from this time, and let us often have a chat about these matters, and try to find the right way through them.” Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could, in my old-fashioned way, to comfort and encourage her; and I would not have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop, that day, for any smaller consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.

           By this time, we were come to Mr. Krook's, whose private door stood open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded



page 140 up-stairs, that there had been a sudden death there, and an inquest; and that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room with the dark door, to which Miss Flite had secretly directed my attention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it was; a gloomy, sorrowful place, that gave me a strange sensation of mournfulness and even dread. “You look pale,” said Caddy, when we came out, “and cold!” I felt as if the room had chilled me.

           We had walked slowly, while we were talking; and my guardian and Ada were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite's garret. They were looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion, spoke with her cheerfully by the fire.

           “I have finished my professional visit,” he said, coming forward. “Miss Flite is much better, and may appear in court (as her mind is set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I understand.”

           Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency, and dropped a general curtsey to us.

           “Honored, indeed,” said she, “by another visit from the Wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my humble roof!” with a special curtsey. “Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear;” she had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always called her by it; “a double welcome!”

           “Has she been very ill?” asked Mr. Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we had found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly, though he had put the question in a whisper.

           “O decidedly unwell! O very unwell indeed,” she said, confidentially. “Not pain, you know—trouble. Not bodily so much as nervous, nervous! The truth is,” in a subdued voice and trembling, “we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr. Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr. Woodcourt!” with great stateliness. “The Wards in Jarndyce—Jarndyce of Bleak House—Fitz-Jarndyce!”

           “Miss Flite,” said Mr. Woodcourt, in a grave kind voice as if he were appealing to her while speaking to us; and laying his hand gently on her arm; “Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and agitation. She brought me here, in the first hurry of the discovery, though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since, and being of some small use to her.”

           “The kindest physician in the college,” whispered Miss Flite to me. “I expect a Judgment. On the day of Judgment. And shall then confer estates.”

           “She will be as well, in a day or two,” said Mr. Woodcourt, looking at her with an observant smile, “as she ever will be. In other words, quite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?”

           “Most extraordinary!” said Miss Flite, smiling brightly. “You never heard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge, or Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.), places in my hand a paper of shillings.



page 141 Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you say? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I think? I think,” said Miss Flite, drawing herself back with a very shrewd look, and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant manner, “that the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during which the Great Seal has been open, (for it has been open a long time!) forwards them. Until the Judgment I expect, is given. Now that's very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he is a little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending Court the other day—I attend it regularly—with my documents—I taxed him with it, and he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and he smiled at me from his bench. But it's great good fortune, is it not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage. O, I assure you to the greatest advantage!”

           I congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this fortunate addition to her income, and wished her a long continuance of it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came, or wonder whose humanity was so considerate. My Guardian stood before me, contemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him.

           “And what do you call these little fellows, ma'am?” said he in his pleasant voice. “Have they any names?”

           “I can answer for Miss Flite that they have,” said I, “for she promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?”

           Ada remembered very well.

           “Did I?” said Miss Flite.—“Who's that at my door? What are you listening at my door for, Krook?”

           The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there with his fur-cap in his hand, and his cat at his heels.

           “I warn't listening, Miss Flite,” he said. “I was going to give a rap with my knuckles, only you're so quick!”

           “Make your cat go down. Drive her away!” the old lady angrily exclaimed.

           “Bah bah!—There ain't no danger, gentlefolks,” said Mr. Krook, looking slowly and sharply from one to another, until he had looked at all of us; “she'd never offer at the birds when I was here, unless I told her to it.”

           “You will excuse my landlord,” said the old lady with a dignified air. “M, quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?”

           “Hi!” said the old man. “You know I am the Chancellor.”

           “Well?” returned Miss Flite. “What of that?”

           “For the Chancellor,” said the old man, with a chuckle, “not to be acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain't it, Miss Flite? Mightn't I take the liberty?—Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce a'most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one day with another.”

           “I never go there,” said Mr. Jarndyce (which he never did on any consideration). “I would sooner go—somewhere else.”

           “Would you though?” returned Krook, grinning. “You're bearing



page 142 hard upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir; though, perhaps, it is but nat'ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What, you're looking at my lodger's birds, Mr. Jarndyce?” The old man had come by little and little into the room, until he now touched my Guardian with his elbow, and looked close up into his face with his spectacled eyes. “It's one of her strange ways, that she'll never tell the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named 'em all.” This was in a whisper. “Shall I run 'em over, Flite?” he asked aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away, affecting to sweep the grate.”

           “If you like,” she answered hurriedly.

           The old man, looking up at the cages, after another look at us, went through the list.

           “Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That's the whole collection,” said the old man, “all cooped up together, by my noble and learned brother.”

           “This is a bitter wind!” muttered my Guardian.

           “When my noble and learned brother gives his Judgment, they're to be let go free,” said Krook, winking at us again. “And then,” he added, whispering and grinning, “if that ever was to happen—which it won't—the birds that have never been caged would kill 'em.”

           “If ever the wind was in the east,” said my Guardian, pretending to look out of the window for a weathercock, “I think it's there to-day!”

           We found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not Miss Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature in consulting the convenience of others, as there possibly could be. It was Mr. Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr. Jarndyce. If he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended him more closely. He proposed to show us his Court of Chancery, and all the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to Mr. Jarndyce, and sometimes detained him, under one pretence or other, until we had passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon some secret subject, which he could not make up his mind to approach. I cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he could not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook's was, that day. His watchfulness of my Guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face.

           At last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house, and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here, on the head of an empty barrel stood on end, were an ink-bottle, some old stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and, against the wall, were pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands.



page 143

           “What are you doing here?” asked my Guardian.

           “Trying to learn myself to read and write,” said Krook.

           “And how do you get on?”

           “Slow. Bad,” returned the old man, impatiently. “It's hard at my time of life.”

           “It would be easier to be taught by some one,” said my Guardian.

           “Aye, but they might teach me wrong!” returned the old man, with a wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. “I don't know what I may have lost, by not being learnd afore. I wouldn't like to lose anything by being learnd wrong now.”

           “Wrong?” said my Guardian, with his good-humoured smile. “Who do you suppose would teach you wrong?”

           “I don't know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House!” replied the old man, turning up his spectacles on his forehead, and rubbing his hands. “I don't suppose as anybody would—but I'd rather trust my own self than another!”

           These answers, and his manner, were strange enough to cause my Guardian to enquire of Mr. Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln's Inn together, whether Mr. Krook were really, as his lodger represented him, deranged? The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason to think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin: of which he drank great quantities, and of which he and his back-shop, as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him mad, as yet.

           On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy's affections by buying him a windmill and two flour-sacks, that he would suffer nobody else to take off his hat and gloves, and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my side. Caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back. We made much of Caddy, and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened exceedingly; and my Guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all very happy indeed; until Caddy went home at night in a hackney-coach, with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.

           I have forgotten to mention—at least I have not mentioned—that Mr. Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr. Badger's. Or, that Mr. Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or, that he came. Or, that when they were all gone, and I said to Ada, “Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!” Ada laughed and said—

           But, I don't think it matters what my darling said. She was always merry.



page 144

CHAPTER XV.
BELL YARD.

           WHILE we were in London, Mr. Jarndyce was constantly beset by the crowd of exciteable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our arrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went on, and to brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit, for any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in the light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly swallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be the absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake, and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole procession of people.

           Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something—and with her, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew Mrs. Pardiggle out. Mrs. Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my Guardian, in behalf of her eloquent friend, Mr. Gusher. With Mr. Gusher, appeared Mr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist surface, and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at first sight prepossessing; yet, he was scarcely seated, before Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature—which he certainly was, flabbily speaking; though Mr Quale meant in intellectual beauty—and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration o brow? In short, we heard of a great many Missions of various sorts, among this set of people; but, nothing respecting them was half so clear to us, as that it was Mr. Quale's mission to be in ecstacies with everybody else's mission, and that it was the most popular mission of all.

           Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company, in the tenderness of his heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but, that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms; where charity was assumed, as a regular uniform, by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from falling, rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down; he plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr. Quale, by Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr. Quale), and when Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a



page 145 meeting, including two charity schools of small boys and girls, who were specially reminded of the widow's mite, and requested to come forward with half-pence and be acceptable sacrifices; I think the wind was in the east for three whole weeks.

           I mention this, because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole again. It seemed to me, that his off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness were a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with such things, and were the more readily believed in; since, to find one perfectly undesigning and candid man, among many opposites, could not fail to give him pleasure. I should be sorry to imply that Mr. Skimpole divined this, and was politic: I really never understood him well enough to know. What he was to my Guardian, he certainly was to the rest of the world.

           He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we had seen nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning, in his usual agreeable way, and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.

           Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view—in his expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, “Now, my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money—in my expansive intentions—if you only knew it!” And really (he said) he meant it to that degree, that he thought it much the same as doing it. If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so much importance, to put in the doctor's hand, he would have put them in the doctor's hand. Not having them, he substituted the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it—if his will were genuine and real: which it was—it appeared to him that it was the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation.

           “It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,” said Mr. Skimpole, “but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My butcher says to me, he wants that little bill. It's a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man's nature, that he always calls it a ‘little’ bill—to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I reply to the butcher, My good friend, if you knew it you are paid. You haven't had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You are paid. I mean it.”

           “But, suppose,” said my Guardian, laughing, “he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of providing it?”

           “My dear Jarndyce,” he returned, “you surprise me. You take the butcher's position. A butcher I once dealt with, occupied that very ground. Says he, ‘Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound?’ ‘Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound, my honest friend?’ said I, naturally amazed by the question. ‘I like spring lamb!’ This was so far convincing. ‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!’ ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You had got the lamb, and I have not got the money. You couldn't really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can,



page 146 and do, really mean the money without paying it!’ He had not a word. There was an end of the subject.”

           “Did he take no legal proceedings?” inquired my Guardian.

           “Yes, he took legal proceedings,” said Mr. Skimpole. “But, in that, he was influenced by passion; not by reason. Passion reminds me of Boythron. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire.”

           “He is a great favorite with my girls,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “and I have promised for them.”

           “Nature forgot to shade him off, I think?” observed Mr. Skimpole to Ada and me. “A little too boisterous—like the sea? A little too vehement—like a bull, who has made up his mind to consider every color scarlet? But, I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!”

           I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very highly of one another; Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to many things, and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for anything. Besides which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the point of breaking out into some strong opinion, when Mr. Skimpole was referred to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly pleased with him.

           “He has invited me,” said Mr. Skimpole; “and if a child may trust himself in such hands: which the present child is encouraged to do, with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him: I shall go. He proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By the bye. Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss Summerson?”

           He asked me, as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful light-hearted manner, and without the least embarrassment.

           “O yes!” said I.

           “Coavinses has been arrested by the great Bailiff,” said Mr. Skimpole. “He will never do violence to the sunshine any more.”

           It quite shocked me to hear it; for, I had already recalled, with anything but a serious association, the image of the man sitting on the sofa that night, wiping his head.

           “His successor informed me of it yesterday,” said Mr. Skimpole, “His successor is in my house now—in possession, I think he calls it. He came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birthday. I put it to him, ‘This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed daughter you wouldn't like me to come, uninvited, on her birthday?’ But, he stayed.”

           Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity, and lightly touched the piano by which he was seated.

           “And he told me,” he said, playing little chords where I shall put full stops, “That Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And that Coavinses profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses. Were at a considerable disadvantage.”

           Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr. Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada's favorite songs. Ada and I both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing in his mind.

           After walking, and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his head, and beginning again, my Guardian put his hand upon the keys and



page 147 stopped Mr. Skimpole's playing. “I don't like this, Skimpole,” he said, thoughtfully.

           Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up surprised.

           “The man was necessary,” pursued my Guardian, walking backward and forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the room, and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high east wind had blown it into that form. “If we make such men necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was no harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to know more about this.”

           “O! Coavinses?” cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he meant. “Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses head-quarters, and you can know what you will.”

           Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal. “Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way, as soon as another!” We were quickly ready, and went out. Mr. Skimpole went with us, and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing, he said, for him to want Coavinses, instead of Coavinses wanting him!

           He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses Castle. On our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came out of a sort of office, and looked at us over a spiked wicket.

           “Who did you want?” said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his chin.

           “There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “who is dead.”

           “Yes?” said the boy. “Well?”

           “I want to know his name, if you please?”

           “Name of Neckett,” said the boy.

           “And his address?”

           “Bell Yard,” said the boy. “Chandler's shop, left hand side, name of Blinder.”

           “Was he—I don't know how to shape the question,” murmured my guardian—“industrious?”

           “Was Neckett?” said the boy. “Yes, wery much so. He was never tired of watching. He'd set upon a post at a street corner, eight or ten hours at a stretch, if he undertook to do it.”

           “He might have done worse,” I heard my Guardian soliloquize. “He might have undertaken to do it, and not done it. Thank you. That's all I want.”

           We left the boy, with his head on one side, and his arms on the gate, fondling and sucking the spikes; and went back to Lincoln's Inn, where Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses, awaited us. Then, we all went to Bell Yard: a narrow alley, at a very short distance. We soon found the chandler's shop. In it, was a good-natured-looking old woman, with a dropsy, or an asthma, or perhaps both.

           “Neckett's children?” said she, in reply to my inquiry. “Yes, surely, miss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the top of the stairs.” And she handed me a key across the counter.



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           I glanced at the key, and glanced at her; but, she took it for granted that I knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the children's door, I came out, without asking any more questions, and led the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could; but, four of us made some noise on the aged boards; and, when we came to the second story, we found we had disturbed a man who was standing there, looking out of his room.

           “Is it Gridley that's wanted?” he said, fixing his eyes on me with an angry stare.

           “No, sir,” said I, “I am going higher up.”

           He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole: fixing the same angry stare on each in succession, as they passed and followed me. Mr. Jarndyce gave him good day. “Good day!” he said, abruptly, and fiercely. He was a tall sallow man, with a care-worn head, on which but little hair remained, a deeply-lined face, and prominent eyes. He had a combative look; and a chafing, irritable manner, which, associated with his figure—still large and powerful, though evidently in its decline—rather alarmed me. He had a pen in his hand, and, in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I saw that it was covered with a litter of papers.

           Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, “We are locked in. Mrs. Blinder's got the key!”

           I applied the key on hearing this, and opened the door. In a poor room with a sloping ceiling, and containing very little furniture, was a mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets, as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that their noses looked red and pinched, and their small figures shrunken, as the boy walked up and down, nursing and hushing the child with its head on his shoulder.

           “Who has locked you up here alone?” we naturally asked.

           “Charley,” said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.

           “Is Charley your brother?”

           “No. She's my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley.”

           “Are there any more of you besides Charley?”

           “Me,” said the boy, “and Emma,” patting the limp bonnet of the child he was nursing. “And Charley.”

           “Where is Charley now?”

           “Out a washing,” said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again, and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead, by trying to gaze at us at the same time.

           We were looking at one another, and at these two children, when there came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-looking in the face—pretty-faced too—wearing a womanly sort of bonnet much too large for her, and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. But for this, she might have been a child, playing at washing, and imitating a poor working woman with a quick observation of the truth.

           She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood, and had



page 149 made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very light, she was out of breath, and could not speak at first, as she stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.

           “O, here's Charley!” said the boy.

           The child he was nursing, stretched forth its arms, and cried out to be taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us over the burden that clung to her most affectionately.

           “Is it possible,” whispered my Guardian, as we put a chair for the little creature, and got her to sit down with her load: the boy keeping close to her, holding to her apron, “that this child works for the rest? Look at this! For God's sake look at this!”

           It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the childish figure.

           “Charley, Charley!” said my Guardian. “How old are you?”

           “Over thirteen, sir,” replied the child.

           “O! What a great age,” said my Guardian. “What a great age, Charley!”

           I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her; half playfully, yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.

           “And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?” said my Guardian.

           “Yes, sir,” returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect confidence, “since father died.”

           “And how do you live, Charley? O! Charley,” said my Guardian, turning his face away for a moment, “how do you live?”

           “Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work. I'm out washing to-day.”

           “God help you, Charley!” said my Guardian. “You're not tall enough to reach the tub!”

           “In pattens I am, sir,” she said quickly. “I've got a high pair as belonged to mother.”

           “And when did mother die? Poor mother!”

           “Mother died, just after Emma was born,” said the child, glancing at the face upon her bosom. “Then, father said I was to be as good a mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home, and did cleaning and nursing and washing, for a long time before I began to go out. And that's how I know how; don't you see, sir?”

           “And do you often go out?”

           “As often as I can,” said Charley, opening her eyes, and smiling, “because of earning sixpences and shillings!”

           “And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?”

           “To keep'em safe, sir, don't you see?” said Charley. “Mrs. Blinder comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and Tom an't afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?”

           “No-o!” said Tom, stoutly.

           “When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and they show up here quite bright—almost quite bright. Don't they, Tom?”



page 150

           “Yes, Charley,” said Tom, “almost quite bright.”

           “Then he's as good as gold,” said the little creature—O! in such a motherly, womanly way! “And when Emma's tired, he puts her to bed. And when he's tired, he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and light the candle, and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it with me. Don't you, Tom?”

           “O yes, Charley!” said Tom. “That I do!” And either in this glimpse of the great pleasure of his life, or in gratitude and love for Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the seanty folds of her frock, and passed from laughing into crying.

           It was the first time since our entry, that a tear had been shed among these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father, and their mother, as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of taking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work, and by her bustling busy way. But, now, when Tom cried; although she sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any movement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little charges; I saw two silent tears fall down her face.

           I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops, and the blackened stacks of chimnies, and the poor plants, and the birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours, when I found that Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken her all this time to get up stairs) and was talking to my Guardian.

           “It's not much to forgive 'em the rent, sir,” she said: “who could take it from them!”

           “Well, well!” said my Guardian to us two. “It is enough that the time will come when this good woman will find that it was much, and that forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these—! This child,” he added, after a few moments, “could she possibly continue this?”

           “Really, sir, I think she might,” said Mrs. Blinder, getting her heavy breath by painful degrees. “She's as handy as it's possible to be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children, after the mother died, was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her with him after he was took ill, it really was! ‘Mrs. Blinder,’ he said to me the very last he spoke—he was lying there—‘Mrs. Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a Angel sitting in this room last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our Father!’ ”

           “He had no other calling?” said my Guardina.

           “No, sir,” returned Mrs. Blinder, “he was nothing but a follerer. When he first came to lodge here, I didn't know what he was, and I confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn't liked in the yard. It wasn't approved by the other lodgers. It is not a genteel calling,” said Mrs. Blinder, “and most people do object to it. Mr. Gridley objected to it, very strong; and he is a good lodger, though his temper has been hard tried.”

           “So you gave him notice?” said my Guardian.

           “So I gave him notice,” said Mrs. Blinder. “But really when the time came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir,” said Mrs. Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole with her eye; “and it's something, in this world, even to do that.”



page 151

           “So you kept him after all?”

           “Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could arrange it with the other lodgers, and should not so much mind its being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent gruff—but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been kind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is proved.”

           “Have many people been kind to the children?” asked Mr. Jarndyce.

           “Upon the whole, not so bad, sir,” said Mrs. Blinder, “but, certainly not so many as would have been, if their father's calling had been different. Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a little purse. Some neighbours in the yard, that had always joked and tapped their shoulders when he went by, came forward with a little subscription, and—in general—not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte. Some people won't employ her, because she was a follerer's child; some people that do employ her, cast it at her; some make a merit of having her to work for them, with that and all her drawbacks upon her; and perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But she's patienter than others would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the full mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, not so bad, sir, but might be better.”

           Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favorable opportunity of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it was fully restored. Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak to us, when his attention was attracted, by the abrupt entrance into the room of the Mr. Gridley who had been mentioned, and whom we had seen on our way up.

           “I don't know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, as if he resented our presence, “but you'll excuse my coming in. I don't come in, to stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom! Well, little one! How is it with us all to-day?”

           He bent over the group, in a caressing way, and clearly was regarded as a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern character, and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My Guardian noticed it, and respected it.

           “No one, surely, would come here to stare about him,” he said mildly.

           “May be so, sir, may be so,” returned the other, taking Tom upon his knee, and waving him off impatiently. “I don't want to argue with ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing, to last one man his life.”

           “You have sufficient reason, I dare say,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “for being chafed and irritated—”

           “There again!” exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. “I am of a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!”

           “Not very, I think.”

           “Sir,” said Gridley, putting down the child, and going up to him as if he meant to strike him. “Do you know anything of Courts of Equity?”

           “Perhaps I do, to my sorrow.”

           “To your sorrow?” said the man, pausing in his wrath. “If so, I beg your pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir,” with renewed violence, “I have been dragged for five-and-twenty years over burning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go into



page 152 the Court of Chancery yonder, and ask what is one of the standing jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell you that the best joke they have, is the man from Shropshire. I,” he said, beating one hand on the other passionately, “am the man from Shropshire.”

           “I believe, I and my family have also had the honor of furnishing some entertainment in the same grave place,” said my Guardian, composedly. “You may have heard my name—Jarndyce.”

           “Mr. Jarndyce,” said Gridley, with a rough sort of salutation, “you bear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I tell you—and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they are friends of yours—that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I should be driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and by revenging them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get, that I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that!” he said, speaking in a homely, rustic way, and with great vehemence. “You may tell me that I over-excite myself. I answer that it's in my nature to do it, under wrong, and I must do it. There's nothing between doing it, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor little mad woman that haunts the Court. If I was once to sit down under it, I should become imbecile.”

           The passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his face worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what he said, were most painful to see.

           “Mr. Jarndyce,” he said, “consider my case. As true as there is a Heaven above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father (a farmer) made a will, and left his farm and stock, and so forth, to my mother, for her life. After my mother's death, all was to come to me, except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my brother. My mother died. My brother, some time afterwards, claimed his legacy. I, and some of my relations, said that he had had a part of it already, in board and lodging, and some other things. Now, mind! That was the question, and nothing else. No one disputed the will; no one disputed anything but whether part of that three hundred pounds had been already paid or not. To settle that question, my brother filing a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; I was forced there, because the law forced me, and would let me go nowhere else. Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first came on, after two years. It was then stopped for another two years, while the Master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my father's son—about which, there was no dispute at all with any mortal creature. He then found out, that there were not defendants enough—remember, there were only seventeen as yet!—but, that we must have another who had been left out; and must begin all over again. The costs at that time—before the thing was begun!—were three times the legacy. My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my father's, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, has fallen into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else—and here I stand, this day! Now, Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands and thousands involved where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine less hard to bear, or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was in it, and has been thus shamefully sucked away?”

           Mr. Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart, and



page 153 that he set up no monopoly, himself, in being unjustly treated by this monstrous system.

           “There again!” said Mr. Gridley, with no diminution of his rage. “The system! I am told, on all hands, it's the system. I mustn't look to individuals. It's the system. I mustn't go into Court, and say, ‘My Lord, I beg to know this from you—is this right or wrong? Have you the face to tell me I have received justice, and therefore am dismissed?’ My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there, to administer the system. I mustn't go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious, by being so cool and satisfied—as they all do; for I know they gain by it while I lose, don't I?—I mustn't say to him, I will have something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul! He is not responsible. It's the system. But, if I do no violence to any of them, here—I may! I don't know what may happen if I am carried beyond myself at last!—I will accuse the individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!”

           His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage without seeing it.

           “I have done!” he said, sitting down and wiping his face. “Mr. Jarndyce, I have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I have been in prison for contempt of Court. I have been in prison for threatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I sometimes go beyond amusing them—though they have found it amusing, too, to see me committed into custody, and brought up in custody, and all that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained myself. I tell them, that if I did restrain myself, I should become imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in my part of the country, say, they remember me so; but, now, I must have this vent under my sense of injury, or nothing could hold my wits together. ‘It would be far better for you, Mr. Gridley,’ the Lord Chancellor told me last week, ‘not to waste your time here, and to stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.’ ‘My Lord, my Lord, I know it would,’ said I to him, ‘and it would have been far better for me never to have heard the name of your high office; but, unhappily for me, I can't undo the past, and the past drives me here!’—Besides,” he added, breaking fiercely out, “I'll shame them. To the last, I'll shew myself in that court to its shame. If I knew when I was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to speak with, I would die there, saying, ‘You have brought me here, and sent me from here, many and many a time. Now send me out, feet foremost!’ ”

           His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was quiet.

           “I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour,” he said, going to them again, “and let them play about. I didn't mean to say all this, but it don't much signify. You're not afraid of me, Tom; are you?”

           “No!” said Tom. “You ain't angry with me.

           “You are right, my child. You're going back, Charley? Aye? Come then, little one!” He took the youngest child on his arm, where she



page 154 was willing enough to be carried. “I shouldn't wonder if we found a gingerbread soldier downstairs. Let's go and look for him!”

           He made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a certain respect, to Mr. Jarndyee; and bowing slightly to us, went downstairs to his room.

           Upon that, Mr. Skimpole began to talk, for the first time since our arrival, in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was really very pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes. Here was this Mr. Gridley, a man of a robust will, and surprising energy—intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious blacksmith—and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous combativeness upon—a sort of Young Love among the thorns—when the Court of Chancery came in his way, and accommodated him with the exact thing he wanted. There they were, matched, ever afterwards! Otherwise he might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or he might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of parliamentary rhetoric; but, as it was, he and the Court of Chancery had fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was much the worse, and Gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided for. Then look at Coavinses! How delightfully poor Coavinses (father of these charming children) illustrated the same principle! He, Mr. Skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined at the existence of Coavinses. He had found Coavinses in his way. He could have dispensed with Coavinses. There had been times, when, if he had been a Sultan, and his Grand Vizier had said one morning, “What does the Commander of the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?” he might have even gone so far as to reply, “The head of Coavinses!” But what turned out to be the case? That, all that time, he had been giving employment to a most deserving man; that he had been a benefactor to Coavinses; that he had actually been enabling Coavinses to bring up these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these social virtues! Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled, and the tears had come into his eyes, when he had looked round the room, and thought, “I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little comforts were my work!”

           There was something so captivating in his light way of touching these fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my Guardian smile even as he turned towards us from a little private talk with Mrs. Blinder. We kissed Charley, and took her down stairs with us, and stopped outside the house to see her run away to her work. I don't know where she was going, but we saw her run, such a little, little creature, in her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the bottom of the court; and melt into the city's strife and sound, like a dewdrop in an ocean.



page 155

CHAPTER XVI.
TOM-ALL-ALONE'S.

           MY Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The astonished fashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. To-day, she is at Chesney Wold; yesterday, she was at her house in town; to-morrow, she may be abroad, for anything the fashionable intelligence can with confidence predict. Even Sir Leicester's gallantry has some trouble to keep pace with her. It would have more, but that his other faithful ally, for better and for worse—the gout—darts into the old oak bed-chamber at Chesney Wold, and grips him by both legs.

           Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still a demon of the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male line, through a course of time during and beyond which the memory of man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved, sir. Other men's fathers may have died of the rheumatism, or may have taken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar; but, the Dedlock family have communicated something exclusive, even to the levelling process of dying, by dying of their own family gout. It has come down, through the illustrious line, like the plate, or the pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities. Sir Leicester is, perhaps, not wholly without an impression, though he has never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the aristocracy, “My lords and gentlemen, I have the honor to present to you another Dedlock certified to have arrived per the family gout.”

           Hence, Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder, as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels, that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically twitched and stabbed in his extremities, is a liberty taken somewhere; but, he thinks, “We have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has, for some hundreds of years, been understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise.”

           And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold, in the midst of the great drawing-room, before his favorite picture of my Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long perspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with soft reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in the green ground which has never known ploughshare, but was still a Chase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield, and rode a hunting with bow and arrow; bear witness to his greatness. Inside, his forefathers, looking on him from the walls, say, “Each of us was a passing reality here, and left this colored shadow of himself, and melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voices of the rooks now lulling you to rest;” and bear their testimony to his greatness too. And he is very great, this day. And woe to Boythorn, or other daring wight, who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him!

           My Lady is at present represented, near Sir Leicester, by her portrait.



page 156 She has flitted away to town, with no intention of remaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of the fashionable intelligence. The house in town is not prepared for her reception. It is muffled and dreary. Only one Mercury in powder, gapes disconsolate at the hall-window; and he mentioned last night to another Mercury of his acquaintance, also accustomed to good society, that if that sort of thing was to last—which it couldn't, for a man of his spirits couldn't bear it, and a man of his figure couldn't be expected to bear it—there would be no resource for him, upon his honor, but to cut his throat!

           What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!

           Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any link there be. He sums up his mental condition, when asked a question, by replying that he “don't know nothink.” He knows that it's hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to live by doing it. Nobody taught him, even that much; he found it out.

           Jo lives—that is to say, Jo has not yet died—in a ruinous place, known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-alone's. It is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people; where the crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, who, after establishing their own possession, took to letting them out in lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so, these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle, and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years—though born expressly to do it.

           Twice, lately, there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the springing of a mine, in Tom-all-alone's; and, each time, a house has fallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers, and have filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gaps remain, and there are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. As several more houses are nearly ready to go, the next crash in Tom-all-alone's may be expected to be a good one.

           This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye, to tell him so. Whether “Tom” is the popular representative of the original plaintiff or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; or, whether Tom lived here when the suit had laid the street waste all alone, until other settlers came to join him; or, whether the traditional title is a comprehensive name for a retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the pale of hope; perhaps nobody knows. Certainly, Jo don't know.

           “For I don't,” says Jo, “I don't know nothink.”

           It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the



page 157 streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that language—to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps Jo does think, at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would appear to be perfectly true that I have no business, here, or there, or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I am here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me until I became the creature that I am! It must be a strange state, not merely to be told that I am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a witness), but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the horses, dogs, and cattle, go by me, and to know that in ignorance I belong to them, and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose delicacy I offend! Jo's ideas of a Criminal Trial, or a Judge, or a Bishop, or a Government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only knew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole material and immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest thing of all.

           Jo comes out of Tom-all-alone's, meeting the tardy morning which is always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-step of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and gives it a brush when he has finished, as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice, and wonders what it's all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific, or what it costs to look up the precious souls among the cocoanuts and bread-fruit.

           He goes to his crossing, and begins to lay it out for the day. The town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo, and the other lower animals, get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is market-day. The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, never guided, run into wrong places and are beaten out; and plunge, red-eyed and foaming, at stone walls; and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; very, very like!

           A band of music comes, and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog—a drover's dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher's shop, and evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for some hours, and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three or four; can't remember where he left them; looks up and down the street, as half expecting to see them astray; suddenly pricks up his ears and remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog, accustomed to low company and public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep; ready at a whistle to scamper over their backs, and tear out mouthfuls of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog, who has been taught his duties and knows how



page 158 to discharge them. He and Jo listen to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal satisfaction; likewise, as to awakened association, aspiration or regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses, they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human listener is the brute!

           Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark—but not their bite.

           The day changes as it wears itself away, and becomes dark and drizzly. Jo fights it out, at his crossing, among the mud and wheels, the horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay for the unsavory shelter of Tom-all-alone's. Twilight comes on; gas begins to start up in the shops; the lamplighter, with his ladder, runs along the margin of the pavement. A wretched evening is beginning to close in.

           In his chambers, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to the nearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. Gridley, a disappointed suitor, has been here to-day, and has been alarming. We are not to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow shall be held to bail again. From the ceiling, foreshortened allegory, in the person of one impossible Roman upside down, points with the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively toward the window. Why should Mr. Tulkinghorn, for such no-reason, look out of window? Is the hand not always pointing there? So he does not look out of window.

           And if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are women enough in the world, Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks—too many; they are at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter of that, they create business for lawyers. What would it be to see a woman going by, even though she were going secretly? They are all secret. Mr. Tulkinghorn knows that, very well.

           But they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his house behind; between whose plain dress, and her refined manner, there is something exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an upper servant by her attire, yet, in her air and step, though both are hurried and assumed—as far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she treads with an unaccustomed foot—she is a lady. Her face is veiled, and still she sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of those who pass her look round sharply.

           She never turns her head. Lady or servant, she has a purpose in her, and can follow it. She never turns her head, until she comes to the crossing where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her, and begs. Still, she does not turn her head until she has landed on the other side. Then, she slightly beckons to him, and says “Come here!”

           Jo follows her, a pace or two, into a quiet court.

           “Are you the boy I have read of in the papers?” she asks behind her veil.

           “I don't know,” says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, “nothink about no papers. I don't know nothink about nothink at all.”

           “Were you examined at an Inquest?”

           “I dont know nothink about no—where I was took by the beadle, do you mean?” says Jo. “Was the boy's name at the Inkwhich, Jo?”

           “Yes.”

           “That's me!” says Jo.



page 159

           “Come farther up.”

           “You mean about the man?” says Jo, following. “Him as wos dead?”

           “Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living, so very ill and poor?”

           “O jist!” says Jo.

           “Did he look like—not like you?” says the woman with abhorrence.

           “O not so bad as me,” says Jo. “I'm a reg'lar one, I am! You didn't know him, did you?”

           “How dare you ask me if I knew him?”

           “No offence, my lady,” says Jo, with much humility; for even he has got at the suspicion of her being a lady.

           “I am not a lady. I am a servant.”

           “You are a jolly servant!” says Jo; without the least idea of saying anything offensive; merely as a tribute of admiration.

           “Listen and be silent. Don't talk to me, and stand farther from me! Can you shew me all those places that were spoken of in the account I read? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where you were taken to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the place where he was buried?”

           Jo answers with a nod; having also nodded as each other place was mentioned.

           “Go before me, and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite to each, and don't speak to me unless I speak to you. Don't look back. Do what I want, and I will pay you well.”

           Jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off on his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider their meaning; considers it satisfactory, and nods his ragged head.

           “I am fly,” says Jo. “But fen larks, you know! Stow hooking it!”

           “What does the horrible creature mean?” exclaims the servant, recoiling from him.

           “Stow cutting away, you know!” says Jo.

           “I don't understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money than you ever had in your life.”

           Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub, takes his broom under his arm, and leads the way; passing deftly, with his bare feet, over the hard stones, and through the mud and mire.

           Cook's Court. Jo stops. A pause.

           “Who lives here?”

           “Him wot give him his writing, and give me half a bull,” says Jo, in a whisper, without looking over his shoulder.

           “Go on to the next.”

           Krook's house. Jo stops again. A longer pause.

           “Who lives here?”

           “He lived here,” Jo answers as before.

           After a silence, he is asked “In which room?”

           “In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this corner. Up there! That's where I see him stritched out. This is the public ouse where I was took to.”

           “Go on to the next!”

           It is a longer walk to the next; but, Jo, relieved of his first suspicions, sticks to the terms imposed upon him, and does not look round. By many devious ways, reeking with offence of many kinds, they come to the



page 160 little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp (lighted now), and to the iron gate.

           “He was put there,” says Jo, holding to the bars and looking in.

           “Where? O, what a scene of horror!”

           “There!” says Jo, pointing. “Over yinder. Among them piles of bones, and close to that there kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver it for you, with my broom, if the gate was open. That's why they locks it, I s'pose,” giving it a shake. “It's always locked. Look at the rat!” cries Jo, excited. “Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into the ground!”

           The servant shrinks into a corner—into a corner of that hideous archway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and putting out her two hands, and passionately telling him to keep away from her, for he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands staring, and is still staring when she recovers herself.

           “Is this place of abomination, consecrated ground?”

           “I don't know nothink of consequential ground,” says Jo, still staring.

           “Is it blessed?”

           “WHICH?” says Jo, in the last degree amazed.

           “Is it blessed?”

           “I'm blest if I know,” says Jo, staring more than ever; “but I shouldn't think it warn't. Blest?” repeats Jo, something troubled in his mind. “It an't done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think it was t'othered myself. But I don't know nothink!”

           The servant takes as little heed of what he says, as she seems to take of what she has said herself. She draws off her glove, to get some money from her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small her hand is, and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling rings.

           She drops a piece of money in his hand, without touching it, and shuddering as their hands approach. “Now,” she adds, “show me the spot again!”

           Joe thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate, and, with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At length, looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds that he is alone.

           His first proceeding, is, to hold the piece of money to the gas-light, and to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow—gold. His next, is, to give it a one-sided bite at the edge, as a test of its quality. His next, to put it in his mouth for safety, and to sweep the step and passage with great care. His job done, he sets off for Tom-all-alone's; stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps to produce the piece of gold, and give it another one-sided bite, as a re-assurance of its being genuine.

           The Mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my Lady goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir Leicester is fidgetty, down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the gout; he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous pattering on the terrace, that he can't read the paper, even by the fireside in his own snug dressing-room.

           “Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the house, my dear,” says Mrs. Rouncewell to Rosa. “His dressing-room is on my Lady's side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon the Ghost's Walk, more distinct than it is to-night!”