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

I have

discovered,” whispering mysteriously, “that her natural cruelty is

sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In

consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is

sly and full of malice. I half believe, sometimes, that she is no

cat, but the wolf of the old saying. It is so very difficult to

keep her from the door.”

 

Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was half-past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to an

end than we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly

took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the

table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court. On

our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she

opened the door to attend us downstairs.

 

“With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I

should be there before the Chancellor comes in,” said she, “for he

might mention my case the first thing. I have a presentiment that

he WILL mention it the first thing this morning.”

 

She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the

whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had

bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a

little M. This was on the first floor. But she had made a

previous stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a

dark door there.

 

“The only other lodger,” she now whispered in explanation, “a law-writer. The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to

the devil. I don’t know what he can have done with the money.

Hush!”

 

She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there,

and repeating “Hush!” went before us on tiptoe as though even the

sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.

 

Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through

it on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of

packets of waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed

to be working hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead,

and had a piece of chalk by him, with which, as he put each

separate package or bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the

panelling of the wall.

 

Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone

by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me,

and chalked the letter J upon the wall—in a very curious manner,

beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It

was a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as

any clerk in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy’s office would have made.

 

“Can you read it?” he asked me with a keen glance.

 

“Surely,” said I. “It’s very plain.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“J.”

 

With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it

out and turned an “a” in its place (not a capital letter this

time), and said, “What’s that?”

 

I told him. He then rubbed that out and turned the letter “r,” and

asked me the same question. He went on quickly until he had formed

in the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of

the letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on

the wall together.

 

“What does that spell?” he asked me.

 

When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the

same rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the

letters forming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment,

I also read; and he laughed again.

 

“Hi!” said the old man, laying aside the chalk. “I have a turn for

copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor

write.”

 

He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as

if I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite

relieved by Richard’s appearing at the door and saying, “Miss

Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair.

Don’t be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Krook!”

 

I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good morning and joining my

friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave

us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of

yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada

and me. Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked

back and saw Mr. Krook standing at his shop-door, in his

spectacles, looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and

her tail sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall

feather.

 

“Quite an adventure for a morning in London!” said Richard with a

sigh. “Ah, cousin, cousin, it’s a weary word this Chancery!”

 

“It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember,” returned

Ada. “I am grieved that I should be the enemy—as I suppose I am

—of a great number of relations and others, and that they should be

my enemies—as I suppose they are—and that we should all be

ruining one another without knowing how or why and be in constant

doubt and discord all our lives. It seems very strange, as there

must be right somewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has

not been able to find out through all these years where it is.”

 

“Ah, cousin!” said Richard. “Strange, indeed! All this wasteful,

wanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that composed court

yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness

of the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache

both together. My head ached with wondering how it happened, if

men were neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think

they could possibly be either. But at all events, Ada—I may call

you Ada?”

 

“Of course you may, cousin Richard.”

 

“At all events, Chancery will work none of its bad influences on

US. We have happily been brought together, thanks to our good

kinsman, and it can’t divide us now!”

 

“Never, I hope, cousin Richard!” said Ada gently.

 

Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look.

I smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very

pleasantly.

 

In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Jellyby appeared; and in

the course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast

straggled one by one into the dining-room. I do not doubt that

Mrs. Jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but

she presented no appearance of having changed her dress. She was

greatly occupied during breakfast, for the morning’s post brought a

heavy correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would

occasion her (she said) to pass a busy day. The children tumbled

about, and notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs,

which were perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost

for an hour and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a

policeman. The equable manner in which Mrs. Jellyby sustained both

his absence and his restoration to the family circle surprised us

all.

 

She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy

was fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found

her. At one o’clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart

for our luggage. Mrs. Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to

her good friend Mr. Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart,

kissed me in the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on

the steps; Peepy, I am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain

of separation (I was not without misgivings that he had gone to

Newgate market in search of me); and all the other children got up

behind the barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great

concern, scattered over the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out

of its precincts.