Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
- Performer: 0141439726
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astonishment and then burst into tears.
Presently I took the light burden from her lap, did what I could to
make the baby’s rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf,
and covered it with my own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the
mother, and we whispered to her what Our Saviour said of children.
She answered nothing, but sat weeping—weeping very much.
When I turned, I found that the young man had taken out the dog and
was standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but
quiet. The girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the
ground. The man had risen. He still smoked his pipe with an air
of defiance, but he was silent.
An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing
at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, “Jenny!
Jenny!” The mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the
woman’s neck.
She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. She
had no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when
she condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no
beauty. I say condoled, but her only words were “Jenny! Jenny!”
All the rest was in the tone in which she said them.
I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and
shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one
another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of
each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I
think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What
the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves
and God.
We felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted. We
stole out quietly and without notice from any one except the man.
He was leaning against the wall near the door, and finding that
there was scarcely room for us to pass, went out before us. He
seemed to want to hide that he did this on our account, but we
perceived that he did, and thanked him. He made no answer.
Ada was so full of grief all the way home, and Richard, whom we
found at home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he
said to me, when she was not present, how beautiful it was too!),
that we arranged to return at night with some little comforts and
repeat our visit at the brickmaker’s house. We said as little as
we could to Mr. Jarndyce, but the wind changed directly.
Richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning
expedition. On our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking-house, where a number of men were flocking about the door. Among
them, and prominent in some dispute, was the father of the little
child. At a short distance, we passed the young man and the dog,
in congenial company. The sister was standing laughing and talking
with some other young women at the corner of the row of cottages,
but she seemed ashamed and turned away as we went by.
We left our escort within sight of the brickmaker’s dwelling and
proceeded by ourselves. When we came to the door, we found the
woman who had brought such consolation with her standing there
looking anxiously out.
“It’s you, young ladies, is it?” she said in a whisper. “I’m a-watching for my master. My heart’s in my mouth. If he was to
catch me away from home, he’d pretty near murder me.”
“Do you mean your husband?” said I.
“Yes, miss, my master. Jenny’s asleep, quite worn out. She’s
scarcely had the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days
and nights, except when I’ve been able to take it for a minute or
two.”
As she gave way for us, she went softly in and put what we had
brought near the miserable bed on which the mother slept. No
effort had been made to clean the room—it seemed in its nature
almost hopeless of being clean; but the small waxen form from which
so much solemnity diffused itself had been composed afresh, and
washed, and neatly dressed in some fragments of white linen; and on
my handkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a little bunch
of sweet herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred hands, so
lightly, so tenderly!
“May heaven reward you!” we said to her. “You are a good woman.”
“Me, young ladies?” she returned with surprise. “Hush! Jenny,
Jenny!”
The mother had moaned in her sleep and moved. The sound of the
familiar voice seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once more.
How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon
the tiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around
the child through Ada’s drooping hair as her pity bent her head—
how little I thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would
come to lie after covering the motionless and peaceful breast! I
only thought that perhaps the Angel of the child might not be all
unconscious of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate a
hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when we had taken
leave, and left her at the door, by turns looking, and listening in
terror for herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, “Jenny,
Jenny!”
Signs and Tokens
I don’t know how it is I seem to be always writing about myself. I
mean all the time to write about other people, and I try to think
about myself as little as possible, and I am sure, when I find
myself coming into the story again, I am really vexed and say,
“Dear, dear, you tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn’t!”
but it is all of no use. I hope any one who may read what I write
will understand that if these pages contain a great deal about me,
I can only suppose it must be because I have really something to do
with them and can’t be kept out.
My darling and I read together, and worked, and practised, and
found so much employment for our time that the winter days flew by
us like bright-winged birds. Generally in the afternoons, and
always in the evenings, Richard gave us his company. Although he
was one of the most restless creatures in the world, he certainly
was very fond of our society.
He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it, and I had better
say it at once. I had never seen any young people falling in love
before, but I found them out quite soon. I could not say so, of
course, or show that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I
was so demure and used to seem so unconscious that sometimes I
considered within myself while I was sitting at work whether I was
not growing quite deceitful.
But there was no help for it. All I had to do was to be quiet, and
I was as quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice too, so far
as any words were concerned, but the innocent manner in which they
relied more and more upon me as they took more and more to one
another was so charming that I had great difficulty in not showing
how it interested me.
“Our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman,” Richard
would say, coming up to meet me in the garden early, with his
pleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, “that I
can’t get on without her. Before I begin my harum-scarum day—
grinding away at those books and instruments and then galloping up
hill and down dale, all the country round, like a highwayman—it
does me so much good to come and have a steady walk with our
comfortable friend, that here I am again!”
“You know, Dame Durden, dear,” Ada would say at night, with her
head upon my shoulder and the firelight shining in her thoughtful
eyes, “I don’t want to talk when we come upstairs here. Only to
sit a little while thinking, with your dear face for company, and
to hear the wind and remember the poor sailors at sea—”
Ah! Perhaps Richard was going to be a sailor. We had talked it
over very often now, and there was some talk of gratifying the
inclination of his childhood for the sea. Mr. Jarndyce had written
to a relation of the family, a great Sir Leicester Dedlock, for his
interest in Richard’s favour, generally; and Sir Leicester had
replied in a gracious manner that he would be happy to advance the
prospects of the young gentleman if it should ever prove to be
within his power, which was not at all probable, and that my Lady
sent her compliments to the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly
remembered that she was allied by remote consanguinity) and trusted
that he would ever do his duty in any honourable profession to
which he might devote himself.
“So I apprehend it’s pretty clear,” said Richard to me, “that I
shall have to work my own way. Never mind! Plenty of people have
had to do that before now, and have done it. I only wish I had the
command of a clipping privateer to begin with and could carry off
the Chancellor and keep him on short allowance until he gave
judgment in our cause. He’d find himself growing thin, if he
didn’t look sharp!”
With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever
flagged, Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite
perplexed me, principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd
way, for prudence. It entered into all his calculations about
money in a singular manner which I don’t think I can better explain
than by reverting for a moment to our loan to Mr. Skimpole.
Mr. Jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either from Mr. Skimpole
himself or from Coavinses, and had placed the money in my hands
with instructions to me to retain my own part of it and hand the
rest to Richard. The number of little acts of thoughtless
expenditure which Richard justified by the recovery of his ten
pounds, and the number of times he talked to me as if he had saved
or realized that amount, would form a sum in simple addition.
“My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?” he said to me when he wanted,
without the least consideration, to bestow five pounds on the
brickmaker. “I made ten pounds, clear, out of Coavinses’
business.”
“How was that?” said I.
“Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get rid
of and never expected to see any more. You don’t deny that?”
“No,” said I.
“Very well! Then I came into possession of ten pounds—”
“The same ten pounds,” I hinted.
“That has nothing to do with it!” returned Richard. “I have got
ten pounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can
afford to spend it without being particular.”
In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice
of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good,
he carried that sum to his credit and drew upon it.
“Let me see!” he would say. “I saved five pounds out of the
brickmaker’s affair, so if I have a good rattle to London and back
in a post-chaise and put
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