Poor Miss Finch - Wilkie Collins (best books to read for beginners txt) 📗

THERE walked in, at the open door of the room—softly, suddenly, and composedly—a chubby female child, who could not possibly have been more than three years old. She had no hat or cap on her head. A dirty pinafore covered her from her chin to her feet. This amazing apparition advanced into the middle of the room, holding hugged under one arm a ragged and disreputable-looking doll; stared hard, first at Oscar, then at me; advanced to my knees; laid the disreputable doll on my lap; and, pointing to a vacant chair at my side, claimed the rights of hospitality in these words:

“Jicks will sit down.”

How was it possible, under these circumstances, to attack the infamous system of modern society? It was only possible to kiss “Jicks.”

“Do you know who this is?” I inquired, as I lifted our visitor on to the chair.

Oscar burst out laughing. Like me, he now saw this mysterious young lady for the first time. Like me, he wondered what the extraordinary nickname under which she had presented herself could possibly mean.

We looked at the child. The child—with its legs stretched out straight before it, terminating in a pair of little dusty boots with holes in them—lifted its large round eyes, overshadowed by a penthouse of unbrushed flaxen hair; looked gravely at us in return; and made a second call on our hospitality, as follows:

“Jicks will have something to drink.”

While Oscar ran into the kitchen for some milk, I succeeded in discovering the identity of “Jicks.”

Something—I cannot well explain what—in the manner in which the child had drifted into the room with her doll, reminded me of the lymphatic lady of the rectory, drifting backwards and forwards with the baby in one hand and the novel in the other. I took the liberty of examining “Jicks’s” pinafore, and discovered the mark in one corner:—“Selina Finch.” Exactly as I had supposed, here was a member of Mrs. Finch’s numerous family. Rather a young member, as it struck me, to be wandering hatless round the environs of Dimchurch, all by herself.

Oscar returned with the milk in a mug. The child—insisting on taking the mug into her own hands—steadily emptied it to the last drop—recovered her breath with a gasp—looked at me with a white mustache of milk on her upper lip—and announced the conclusion of her visit, in these terms:

“Jicks will get down again.”

I deposited our young friend on the floor. She took her doll, and stood for a moment deep in thought. What was she going to do next? We were not kept long in suspense. She suddenly put her little hot fat hand into mine, and tried to pull me after her out of the room.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Jicks answered in one untranslatable compound word:

“Man-Gee-gee.”

I suffered myself to be pulled out of the room—to see “Man-Gee-gee,” to play “Man-Gee-gee,” or to eat “Man-Gee-gee,” it was impossible to tell which. I was pulled along the passage—I was pulled out to the front door. There—having approached the house inaudibly to us, over the grass—stood the horse, cart, and man, waiting to take the case of gold and silver plates back to London. I looked at Oscar, who had followed me. We now understood, not only the masterly compound word of Jicks (signifying man and horse, and passing over cart as unimportant), but the polite attention of Jicks in entering the house to inform us, after a rest and a drink, of a circumstance which had escaped our notice. The driver of the cart had, on his own acknowledgment, been investigated and questioned by this extraordinary child; strolling up to the door of Browndown to see what he was doing there. Jicks was a public character at Dimchurch. The driver knew all about her. She had been nicknamed “Gipsy” from her wandering habits, and had shortened the name in her own dialect, into “Jicks.” There was no keeping her in at the rectory, try how you might: they had long since abandoned the effort in despair. Sooner or later, she turned up again—or somebody brought her back—or one of the sheep-dogs found her asleep under a bush, and gave the alarm. “What goes on in that child’s head,” said the driver, regarding Jicks with a sort of superstitious admiration, “the Lord only knows. She has a will of her own, and a way of her own. She is a child; and she aint a child. At three years of age, she’s a riddle none of us can guess. And that’s the long and the short of what I know about her.”

While this explanation was in progress, the carpenter who had nailed up the case, and the carpenter’s son, accompanying him, joined us in front of the house. They followed Oscar in, and came out again, bearing the heavy burden of precious metal—more than one man could conveniently lift—between them.

The case deposited in the cart, carpenter senior and carpenter junior got in after it, wanting “a lift” to Brighton.

Carpenter senior, a big burly man, made a joke. “It’s a lonely country between this and Brighton, sir,” he said to Oscar. Three of us will be none too many to see your precious packing-case safe into the railway station.” Oscar took it seriously. “Are there any robbers in this neighborhood?” he asked. “Lord love you, sir!” said the driver, “robbers would starve in these parts; we have got nothing worth thieving here.” Jicks—still watching the proceedings with an interest which allowed no detail to escape unnoticed—assumed the responsibility of starting the men on their journey. The odd child waved her chubby hand imperiously to her friend the driver, and cried in her loudest voice, “Away!” The driver touched his hat with comic respect. “All right, miss—time’s money, aint it?” He cracked his whip, and the cart rolled off noiselessly over the thick close turf of the South Downs.

It was time for me to go back to the rectory, and to restore the wandering Jicks, for the time being, to the protection of home. I returned to Oscar, to say goodbye.

“I wish I was going back with you,” he said.

“You will be as free as I am to come and to go at the rectory,” I answered, “when they know what has passed this morning between you and me. In your own interests, I am determined to tell them who you are. You have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, by my speaking out. Clear your mind of fancies and suspicions that are unworthy of you. By tomorrow we shall be good neighbors; by the end of the week we shall be good friends. For the present, as we say in France, au revoir!”

I turned to take Jicks