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

The oyster shells he had been

building a house with were still in the passage, but he was nowhere

discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had “gone after the

sheep.” When we repeated, with some surprise, “The sheep?” she

said, Oh, yes, on market days he sometimes followed them quite out

of town and came back in such a state as never was!

 

I was sitting at the window with my guardian on the following

morning, and Ada was busy writing—of course to Richard—when Miss

Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy,

whom she had made some endeavours to render presentable by wiping

the dirt into corners of his face and hands and making his hair

very wet and then violently frizzling it with her fingers.

Everything the dear child wore was either too large for him or too

small. Among his other contradictory decorations he had the hat of

a bishop and the little gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a

small scale, the boots of a ploughman, while his legs, so crossed

and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare

below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two

frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient buttons on

his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr.

Jellyby’s coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too

large. Most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared on

several parts of his dress, where it had been hastily mended, and I

recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby’s. She was, however,

unaccountably improved in her appearance and looked very pretty.

She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure after

all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in by the way in

which she glanced first at him and then at us.

 

“Oh, dear me!” said my guardian. “Due east!”

 

Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to Mr.

Jarndyce, to whom she said as she sat down, “Ma’s compliments, and

she hopes you’ll excuse her, because she’s correcting proofs of the

plan. She’s going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she

knows you’ll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of

them with me. Ma’s compliments.” With which she presented it

sulkily enough.

 

“Thank you,” said my guardian. “I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby.

Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!”

 

We were busy with Peepy, taking off his clerical hat, asking him if

he remembered us, and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at

first, but relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to

take him on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce

then withdrawing into the temporary growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a

conversation with her usual abruptness.

 

“We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn,” said she. “I

have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn’t be worse off

if I was a what’s-his-name—man and a brother!”

 

I tried to say something soothing.

 

“Oh, it’s of no use, Miss Summerson,” exclaimed Miss Jellyby,

“though I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know

how I am used, and I am not to be talked over. YOU wouldn’t be

talked over if you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts

under the piano!”

 

“I shan’t!” said Peepy.

 

“Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!” returned

Miss Jellyby with tears in her eyes. “I’ll never take pains to

dress you any more.”

 

“Yes, I will go, Caddy!” cried Peepy, who was really a good child

and who was so moved by his sister’s vexation that he went at once.

 

“It seems a little thing to cry about,” said poor Miss Jellyby

apologetically, “but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new

circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so that

that alone makes my head ache till I can’t see out of my eyes. And

look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright

as he is!”

 

Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on

the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out

of his den at us while he ate his cake.

 

“I have sent him to the other end of the room,” observed Miss

Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, “because I don’t want him

to hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was

going to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a

bankrupt before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied.

There’ll he nobody but Ma to thank for it.”

 

We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby’s affairs were not in so bad a state

as that.

 

“It’s of no use hoping, though it’s very kind of you,” returned

Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. “Pa told me only yesterday morning

(and dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn’t weather the storm.

I should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send

into our house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they

like with it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how,

and Ma don’t care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa

is to weather the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I’d run away.”

 

“My dear!” said I, smiling. “Your papa, no doubt, considers his

family.”

 

“Oh, yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson,” replied

Miss Jellyby; “but what comfort is his family to him? His family

is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs,

confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week’s end

to week’s end, is like one great washing-day—only nothing’s

washed!”

 

Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor and wiped her eyes.

 

“I am sure I pity Pa to that degree,” she said, “and am so angry

with Ma that I can’t find words to express myself! However, I am

not going to bear it, I am determined. I won’t be a slave all my

life, and I won’t submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty

thing, indeed, to marry a philanthropist. As if I hadn’t had enough

of THAT!” said poor Miss Jellyby.

 

I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs.

Jellyby myself, seeing and hearing this neglected girl and knowing

how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.

 

“If it wasn’t that we had been intimate when you stopped at our

house,” pursued Miss Jellyby, “I should have been ashamed to come

here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But

as it is, I made up my mind to call, especially as I am not likely

to see you again the next time you come to town.”

 

She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced

at one another, foreseeing something more.

 

“No!” said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. “Not at all likely! I

know I may trust you two. I am sure you won’t betray me. I am

engaged.”

 

“Without their knowledge at home?” said I.

 

“Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson,” she returned, justifying

herself in a fretful but not angry manner, “how can it be

otherwise? You know what Ma is—and I needn’t make poor Pa more

miserable by telling HIM.”

 

“But would it not he adding to his unhappiness to marry without his

knowledge or consent, my dear?” said I.

 

“No,” said Miss Jellyby, softening. “I hope not. I should try to

make him happy and comfortable when he came to see me, and Peepy

and the others should take it in turns to come and stay with me,

and they should have some care taken of them then.”

 

There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened

more and more while saying this and cried so much over the unwonted

little home-picture she had raised in her mind that Peepy, in his

cave under the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his

back with loud lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to

kiss his sister, and had restored him to his place on my lap, and

had shown him that Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for

the purpose), that we could recall his peace of mind; even then it

was for some time conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin

and smoothing our faces all over with his hand. At last, as his

spirits were not equal to the piano, we put him on a chair to look

out of window; and Miss Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed

her confidence.

 

“It began in your coming to our house,” she said.

 

We naturally asked how.

 

“I felt I was so awkward,” she replied, “that I made up my mind to

be improved in that respect at all events and to learn to dance. I

told Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma

looked at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn’t in sight,

but I was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to

Mr. Turveydrop’s Academy in Newman Street.”

 

“And was it there, my dear—” I began.

 

“Yes, it was there,” said Caddy, “and I am engaged to Mr.

Turveydrop. There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr.

Turveydrop is the son, of course. I only wish I had been better

brought up and was likely to make him a better wife, for I am very

fond of him.”

 

“I am sorry to hear this,” said I, “I must confess.”

 

“I don’t know why you should be sorry,” she retorted a little

anxiously, “but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and

he is very fond of me. It’s a secret as yet, even on his side,

because old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connexion and it

might break his heart or give him some other shock if he was told

of it abruptly. Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man

indeed—very gentlemanly.”

 

“Does his wife know of it?” asked Ada.

 

“Old Mr. Turveydrop’s wife, Miss Clare?” returned Miss Jellyby,

opening her eyes. “There’s no such person. He is a widower.”

 

We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much

on account of his sister’s unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope whenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now

bemoaned his sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he

appealed to me for compassion, and as I was only a listener, I

undertook to hold him. Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging

Peepy’s pardon with a kiss and assuring him that she hadn’t meant

to do it.

 

“That’s the state of the case,” said Caddy. “If I ever blame

myself, I still think it’s Ma’s fault. We are to be married

whenever we can, and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write

to Ma. It won’t much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER.

One great comfort is,” said Caddy with a sob, “that I shall never

hear of Africa after I am married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it

for my sake, and if old Mr. Turveydrop knows there is such a place,

it’s as much as he does.”

 

“It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!” said I.

 

“Very gentlemanly indeed,” said Caddy. “He is celebrated almost

everywhere for his deportment.”