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

and put her poor head

upon my shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and

burst into tears.

 

“My poor girl,” said I, laying my face against her forehead, for

indeed I was crying too, and trembling, “it seems cruel to trouble

you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this

letter than I could tell you in an hour.”

 

She began piteously declaring that she didn’t mean any harm, she

didn’t mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby!

 

“We are all sure of that,” said I. “But pray tell me how you got

it.”

 

“Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I’ll tell true,

indeed, Mrs. Snagsby.”

 

“I am sure of that,” said I. “And how was it?”

 

“I had been out on an errand, dear lady—long after it was dark—

quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking person,

all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me coming

in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here. And I

said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about here,

but had lost her way and couldn’t find them. Oh, what shall I do,

what shall I do! They won’t believe me! She didn’t say any harm

to me, and I didn’t say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!”

 

It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her—which she did, I

must say, with a good deal of contrition—before she could be got

beyond this.

 

“She could not find those places,” said I.

 

“No!” cried the girl, shaking her head. “No! Couldn’t find them.

And she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that

if you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you’d have given her half a

crown, I know!”

 

“Well, Guster, my girl,” said he, at first not knowing what to say.

“I hope I should.”

 

“And yet she was so well spoken,” said the girl, looking at me with

wide open eyes, “that it made a person’s heart bleed. And so she

said to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked

her which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground.

And so I told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was

according to parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying

ground not very far from here, where there was an archway, and a

step, and an iron gate.”

 

As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr.

Bucket received this with a look which I could not separate from

one of alarm.

 

“Oh, dear, dear!” cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her

hands. “What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying

ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff—that

you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby—that frightened me so,

Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!”

 

“You are so much better now,” sald I. “Pray, pray tell me more.”

 

“Yes I will, yes I will! But don’t be angry with me, that’s a dear

lady, because I have been so ill.”

 

Angry with her, poor soul!

 

“There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how

to find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me

with eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving

back. And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said

if she was to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out

and not minded and never sent; and would I take it from her, and

send it, and the messenger would be paid at the house. And so I

said yes, if it was no harm, and she said no—no harm. And so I

took it from her, and she said she had nothing to give me, and I

said I was poor myself and consequently wanted nothing. And so she

said God bless you, and went.”

 

“And did she go—”

 

“Yes,” cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. “Yes! She went

the way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came

behind me from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was

frightened.”

 

Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up,

and immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated,

but I said, “Don’t leave me now!” and Mr. Bucket added, “You’ll be

better with us, we may want you; don’t lose time!”

 

I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect

that it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the

street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling

and that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled

people passing in the streets. I recollect the wet housetops, the

clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of

blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the

courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor

girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my

hearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained

house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great

water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the

air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the

real.

 

At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one

lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly

struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground

—a dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but

where I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones,

hemmed in by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows

and on whose walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On

the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place,

which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity

and horror, a woman lying—Jenny, the mother of the dead child.

 

I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me

with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to

the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did

so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.

 

“Miss Summerson, you’ll understand me, if you think a moment. They

changed clothes at the cottage.”

 

They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in

my mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached

no meaning to them in any other connexion.

 

“And one returned,” said Mr. Bucket, “and one went on. And the one

that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and

then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!”

 

I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea

what it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of

the dead child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of

the iron gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so

lately spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed,

unsheltered, senseless creature. She who had brought my mother’s

letter, who could give me the only clue to where my mother was;

she, who was to guide us to rescue and save her whom we had sought

so far, who had come to this condition by some means connected with

my mother that I could not follow, and might be passing beyond our

reach and help at that moment; she lay there, and they stopped me!

I saw but did not comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in

Mr. Woodcourt’s face. I saw but did not comprehend his touching

the other on the breast to keep him back. I saw him stand

uncovered in the bitter air, with a reverence for something. But

my understanding for all this was gone.

 

I even heard it said between them, “Shall she go?”

 

“She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her.

They have a higher right than ours.”

 

I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head,

put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my

mother, cold and dead.