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

say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved

it. You have no young child?”

 

The woman shakes her head. “One as I calls mine, sir, but it’s

Liz’s.”

 

“Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!”

 

By this time he has finished and is putting up his case. “I

suppose you have some settled home. Is it far from here?” he asks,

good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and

curtsys.

 

“It’s a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint

Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start

like, as if you did.”

 

“Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in

return. Have you money for your lodging?”

 

“Yes, sir,” she says, “really and truly.” And she shows it. He

tells her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she

is very welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone’s is still asleep, and nothing is astir.

 

Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which

he descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a

ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the

soiled walls—which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid—and

furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth

whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is

so intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a

stranger in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He

shades his face with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other

side of the way, and goes shrinking and creeping on with his

anxious hand before him and his shapeless clothes hanging in

shreds. Clothes made for what purpose, or of what material, it

would be impossible to say. They look, in colour and in substance,

like a bundle of rank leaves of swampy growth that rotted long ago.

 

Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a

shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall

how or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a

form. He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or

refuge, still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force

on his remembrance.

 

He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone’s in the morning light,

thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and

looking round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed,

followed by the woman.

 

“Stop him, stop him!” cries the woman, almost breathless. “Stop

him, sir!”

 

He darts across the road into the boy’s path, but the boy is

quicker than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes

up half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the

woman follows, crying, “Stop him, sir, pray stop him!” Allan, not

knowing but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in

chase and runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but

each time he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away

again. To strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell

and disable him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so

the grimly ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive,

hard-pressed, takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no

thoroughfare. Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is

brought to bay and tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who

stands and gasps at him until the woman comes up.

 

“Oh, you, Jo!” cries the woman. “What? I have found you at last!”

 

“Jo,” repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, “Jo! Stay. To

be sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before

the coroner.”

 

“Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich,” whimpers Jo. “What of

that? Can’t you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An’t I

unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to

be? I’ve been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt

by another on you, till I’m worritted to skins and bones. The

inkwhich warn’t MY fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me,

he wos; he wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come

across my crossing. It ain’t wery likely I should want him to be

inkwhiched. I only wish I wos, myself. I don’t know why I don’t

go and make a hole in the water, I’m sure I don’t.”

 

He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so

real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a

growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in

neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him.

He says to the woman, “Miserable creature, what has he done?”

 

To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure

more amazedly than angrily, “Oh, you Jo, you Jo. I have found you

at last!”

 

“What has he done?” says Allan. “Has he robbed you?”

 

“No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted

by me, and that’s the wonder of it.”

 

Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting

for one of them to unravel the riddle.

 

“But he was along with me, sir,” says the woman. “Oh, you Jo! He

was along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young

lady, Lord bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when

I durstn’t, and took him home—”

 

Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror.

 

“Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like

a thankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been

seen or heard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that

young lady that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her

beautiful looks, and wouldn’t hardly be known for the same young

lady now if it wasn’t for her angel temper, and her pretty shape,

and her sweet voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do

you know that this is all along of you and of her goodness to you?”

demands the woman, beginning to rage at him as she recalls it and

breaking into passionate tears.

 

The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing

his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the

ground, and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding

against which he leans rattles.

 

Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but

effectually.

 

“Richard told me—” He falters. “I mean, I have heard of this—

don’t mind me for a moment, I will speak presently.”

 

He turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered

passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure,

except that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is

so very remarkable that it absorbs the woman’s attention.

 

“You hear what she says. But get up, get up!”

 

Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the

manner of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding,

resting one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing

his right hand over his left and his left foot over his right.

 

“You hear what she says, and I know it’s true. Have you been here

ever since?”

 

“Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone’s till this blessed morning,”

replies Jo hoarsely.

 

“Why have you come here now?”

 

Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no

higher than the knees, and finally answers, “I don’t know how to do

nothink, and I can’t get nothink to do. I’m wery poor and ill, and

I thought I’d come back here when there warn’t nobody about, and

lay down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and

then go and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur

to give me somethink he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby she was allus a-chivying on me—like everybody everywheres.”

 

“Where have you come from?”

 

Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner’s knees

again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in

a sort of resignation.

 

“Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?”

 

“Tramp then,” says Jo.

 

“Now tell me,” proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome

his repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with

an expression of confidence, “tell me how it came about that you

left that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as

to pity you and take you home.”

 

Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares,

addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady,

that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her,

that he would sooner have hurt his own self, that he’d sooner have

had his unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and

that she wos wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself

throughout as if in his poor fashion he really meant it, and

winding up with some very miserable sobs.

 

Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains

himself to touch him. “Come, Jo. Tell me.”

 

“No. I dustn’t,” says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. “I

dustn’t, or I would.”

 

“But I must know,” returns the other, “all the same. Come, Jo.”

 

After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again,

looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, “Well, I’ll

tell you something. I was took away. There!”

 

“Took away? In the night?”

 

“Ah!” Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him and

even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and

through the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be

looking over or hidden on the other side.

 

“Who took you away?”

 

“I dustn’t name him,” says Jo. “I dustn’t do it, sir.”

 

“But I want, in the young lady’s name, to know. You may trust me.

No one else shall hear.”

 

“Ah, but I don’t know,” replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, “as

he DON’T hear.”

 

“Why, he is not in this place.”

 

“Oh, ain’t he though?” says Jo. “He’s in all manner of places, all

at wanst.”

 

Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning

and good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He

patiently awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his

patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name

in his ear.

 

“Aye!” says Allan. “Why, what had you been doing?”

 

“Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble,

‘sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I’m a-moving on now.

I’m a-moving on to the berryin ground—that’s the move as I’m up

to.”

 

“No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with

you?”

 

“Put me in a horsepittle,” replied Jo, whispering, “till I was

discharged, then giv me a little money—four half-bulls, wot you

may call half-crowns—and ses ‘Hook it! Nobody wants you here,’ he

ses. ‘You