Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗

shop Chancery.

And why do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop

Chancery?”

 

“I don’t know, I am sure!” said Richard rather carelessly.

 

“You see,” said the old man, stopping and turning round, “they—Hi!

Here’s lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies’ hair below,

but none so beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what

texture!”

 

“That’ll do, my good friend!” said Richard, strongly disapproving

of his having drawn one of Ada’s tresses through his yellow hand.

“You can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty.”

 

The old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my

attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably

beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the

little old lady herself. But as Ada interposed and laughingly said

she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook

shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.

 

“You see, I have so many things here,” he resumed, holding up the

lantern, “of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but

THEY know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that

that’s why they have given me and my place a christening. And I

have so many old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a

liking for rust and must and cobwebs. And all’s fish that comes to

my net. And I can’t abear to part with anything I once lay hold of

(or so my neighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter

anything, or to have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor

repairing going on about me. That’s the way I’ve got the ill name

of Chancery. I don’t mind. I go to see my noble and learned

brother pretty well every day, when he sits in the Inn. He don’t

notice me, but I notice him. There’s no great odds betwixt us. We

both grub on in a muddle. Hi, Lady Jane!”

 

A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his

shoulder and startled us all.

 

“Hi! Show ‘em how you scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!” said her

master.

 

The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her

tigerish claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.

 

“She’d do as much for any one I was to set her on,” said the old

man. “I deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers

was offered to me. It’s a very fine skin, as you may see, but I

didn’t have it stripped off! THAT warn’t like Chancery practice

though, says you!”

 

He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door

in the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood

with his hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously

observed to him before passing out, “That will do, Krook. You mean

well, but are tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I

have none to spare myself, having to attend court very soon. My

young friends are the wards in Jarndyce.”

 

“Jarndyce!” said the old man with a start.

 

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook,” returned his

lodger.

 

“Hi!” exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and

with a wider stare than before. “Think of it!”

 

He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us

that Richard said, “Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal

about the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other

Chancellor!”

 

“Yes,” said the old man abstractedly. “Sure! YOUR name now will

be—”

 

“Richard Carstone.”

 

“Carstone,” he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his

forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a

separate finger. “Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the

name of Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think.”

 

“He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!”

said Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.

 

“Aye!” said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction.

“Yes! Tom Jarndyce—you’ll excuse me, being related; but he was

never known about court by any other name, and was as well known

there as—she is now,” nodding slightly at his lodger. “Tom

Jarndyce was often in here. He got into a restless habit of

strolling about when the cause was on, or expected, talking to the

little shopkeepers and telling ‘em to keep out of Chancery,

whatever they did. ‘For,’ says he, ‘it’s being ground to bits in a

slow mill; it’s being roasted at a slow fire; it’s being stung to

death by single bees; it’s being drowned by drops; it’s going mad

by grains.’ He was as near making away with himself, just where

the young lady stands, as near could be.”

 

We listened with horror.

 

“He come in at the door,” said the old man, slowly pointing an

imaginary track along the shop, “on the day he did it—the whole

neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a

certainty sooner or later—he come in at the door that day, and

walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there,

and asked me (you’ll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to

fetch him a pint of wine. ‘For,’ says he, ‘Krook, I am much

depressed; my cause is on again, and I think I’m nearer judgment

than I ever was.’ I hadn’t a mind to leave him alone; and I

persuaded him to go to the tavern over the way there, t’other side

my lane (I mean Chancery Lane); and I followed and looked in at the

window, and saw him, comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by

the fire, and company with him. I hadn’t hardly got back here when

I heard a shot go echoing and rattling right away into the inn. I

ran out—neighbours ran out—twenty of us cried at once, ‘Tom

Jarndyce!’”

 

The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the

lantern, blew the light out, and shut the lantern up.

 

“We were right, I needn’t tell the present hearers. Hi! To be

sure, how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while

the cause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the

rest of ‘em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as

if they hadn’t heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if

they had—Oh, dear me!—nothing at all to do with it if they had

heard of it by any chance!”

 

Ada’s colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less

pale. Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was

no party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a

shock to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended

in the minds of many people with such dreadful recollections. I

had another uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to

the poor half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my

surprise, she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the

way upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior

creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord

was “a little M, you know!”

 

She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from

which she had a glimpse of Lincoln’s Inn Hall. This seemed to have

been her principal inducement, originally, for taking up her

residence there. She could look at it, she said, in the night,

especially in the moonshine. Her room was clean, but very, very

bare. I noticed the scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture;

a few old prints from books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered

against the wall; and some half-dozen reticles and work-bags,

“containing documents,” as she informed us. There were neither

coals nor ashes in the grate, and I saw no articles of clothing

anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a shelf in an open cupboard

were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth, but all dry and

empty. There was a more affecting meaning in her pinched

appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had understood

before.

 

“Extremely honoured, I am sure,” said our poor hostess with the

greatest suavity, “by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And

very much indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation.

Considering. I am limited as to situation. In consequence of the

necessity of attending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many

years. I pass my days in court, my evenings and my nights here. I

find the nights long, for I sleep but little and think much. That

is, of course, unavoidable, being in Chancery. I am sorry I cannot

offer chocolate. I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place

my establishment on a superior footing. At present, I don’t mind

confessing to the wards in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I

sometimes find it difficult to keep up a genteel appearance. I

have felt the cold here. I have felt something sharper than cold.

It matters very little. Pray excuse the introduction of such mean

topics.”

 

She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window

and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there,

some containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and

goldfinches—I should think at least twenty.

 

“I began to keep the little creatures,” she said, “with an object

that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of

restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es! They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things,

are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by

one, the whole collection has died over and over again. I doubt,

do you know, whether one of these, though they are all young, will

live to be free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?”

 

Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect

a reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so

when no one but herself was present.

 

“Indeed,” she pursued, “I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure

you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or

Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark

and senseless here, as I have found so many birds!”

 

Richard, answering what he saw in Ada’s compassionate eyes, took

the opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the

chimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to

examine the birds.

 

“I can’t allow them to sing much,” said the little old lady, “for

(you’ll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea

that they are singing while I am following the arguments in court.

And my mind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time,

I’ll tell you their names. Not at present. On a day of such good

omen, they shall sing as much as they like. In honour of youth,” a

smile and curtsy, “hope,” a smile and curtsy, “and beauty,” a smile

and curtsy. “There! We’ll let in the full light.”

 

The birds began to stir and chirp.

 

“I cannot admit the air freely,” said the little old lady—the room

was close, and would have been the better for it—“because the cat

you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives.

She crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours.