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

said Mr.

Jarndyce, “who is dead.”

 

“Yes?” said the boy. “Well?”

 

“I want to know his name, if you please?”

 

“Name of Neckett,” said the boy.

 

“And his address?”

 

“Bell Yard,” said the boy. “Chandler’s shop, left hand side, name

of Blinder.”

 

“Was he—I don’t know how to shape the question—” murmured my

guardian, “industrious?”

 

“Was Neckett?” said the boy. “Yes, wery much so. He was never

tired of watching. He’d set upon a post at a street corner eight

or ten hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it.”

 

“He might have done worse,” I heard my guardian soliloquize. “He

might have undertaken to do it and not done it. Thank you. That’s

all I want.”

 

We left the boy, with his head on one side and his arms on the

gate, fondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln’s

Inn, where Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer

Coavinses, awaited us. Then we all went to Bell Yard, a narrow

alley at a very short distance. We soon found the chandler’s shop.

In it was a good-natured-looking old woman with a dropsy, or an

asthma, or perhaps both.

 

“Neckett’s children?” said she in reply to my inquiry. “Yes,

Surely, miss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the

stairs.” And she handed me the key across the counter.

 

I glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she took it for

granted that I knew what to do with it. As it could only be

intended for the children’s door, I came out without asking any more

questions and led the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly

as we could, but four of us made some noise on the aged boards, and

when we came to the second story we found we had disturbed a man

who was standing there looking out of his room.

 

“Is it Gridley that’s wanted?” he said, fixing his eyes on me with

an angry stare.

 

“No, sir,” said I; “I am going higher up.”

 

He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole, fixing

the same angry stare on each in succession as they passed and

followed me. Mr. Jarndyce gave him good day. “Good day!” he said

abruptly and fiercely. He was a tall, sallow man with a careworn

head on which but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and

prominent eyes. He had a combative look and a chafing, irritable

manner which, associated with his figure—still large and powerful,

though evidently in its decline—rather alarmed me. He had a pen

in his hand, and in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I

saw that it was covered with a litter of papers.

 

Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped

at the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, “We are locked

in. Mrs. Blinder’s got the key!”

 

I applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. In a poor

room with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture

was a mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and

hushing a heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire,

though the weather was cold; both children were wrapped in some

poor shawls and tippets as a substitute. Their clothing was not so

warm, however, but that their noses looked red and pinched and

their small figures shrunken as the boy walked up and down nursing

and hushing the child with its head on his shoulder.

 

“Who has locked you up here alone?” we naturally asked.

 

“Charley,” said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.

 

“Is Charley your brother?”

 

“No. She’s my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley.”

 

“Are there any more of you besides Charley?”

 

“Me,” said the boy, “and Emma,” patting the limp bonnet of the

child he was nursing. “And Charley.”

 

“Where is Charley now?”

 

“Out a-washing,” said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again

and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying

to gaze at us at the same time.

 

We were looking at one another and at these two children when there

came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but

shrewd and older-looking in the face—pretty-faced too—wearing a

womanly sort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare

arms on a womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and

wrinkled with washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she

wiped off her arms. But for this, she might have been a child

playing at washing and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick

observation of the truth.

 

She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had

made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very

light, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she

stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.

 

“Oh, here’s Charley!” said the boy.

 

The child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to

be taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of

manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at

us over the burden that clung to her most affectionately.

 

“Is it possible,” whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the

little creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy

keeping close to her, holding to her apron, “that this child works

for the rest? Look at this! For God’s sake, look at this!”

 

It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and

two of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and

yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the

childish figure.

 

“Charley, Charley!” said my guardian. “How old are you?”

 

“Over thirteen, sir,” replied the child.

 

“Oh! What a great age,” said my guardian. “What a great age,

Charley!”

 

I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half

playfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.

 

“And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?” said my

guardian.

 

“Yes, sir,” returned the child, looking up into his face with

perfect confidence, “since father died.”

 

“And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley,” said my guardian,

turning his face away for a moment, “how do you live?”

 

“Since father died, sir, I’ve gone out to work. I’m out washing

to-day.”

 

“God help you, Charley!” said my guardian. “You’re not tall enough

to reach the tub!”

 

“In pattens I am, sir,” she said quickly. “I’ve got a high pair as

belonged to mother.”

 

“And when did mother die? Poor mother!”

 

“Mother died just after Emma was born,” said the child, glancing at

the face upon her bosom. “Then father said I was to be as good a

mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home

and did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I

began to go out. And that’s how I know how; don’t you see, sir?”

 

“And do you often go out?”

 

“As often as I can,” said Charley, opening her eyes and smiling,

“because of earning sixpences and shillings!”

 

“And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?”

 

“To keep ‘em safe, sir, don’t you see?” said Charley. “Mrs.

Blinder comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes,

and perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and

Tom an’t afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?”

 

“No-o!” said Tom stoutly.

 

“When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court,

and they show up here quite bright—almost quite bright. Don’t

they, Tom?”

 

“Yes, Charley,” said Tom, “almost quite bright.”

 

“Then he’s as good as gold,” said the little creature—Oh, in such

a motherly, womanly way! “And when Emma’s tired, he puts her to

bed. And when he’s tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come

home and light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again

and has it with me. Don’t you, Tom?”

 

“Oh, yes, Charley!” said Tom. “That I do!” And either in this

glimpse of the great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love

for Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the

scanty folds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying.

 

It was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed

among these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their

father and their mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the

necessity of taking courage, and by her childish importance in

being able to work, and by her bustling busy way. But now, when

Tom cried, although she sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us,

and did not by any movement disturb a hair of the head of either of

her little charges, I saw two silent tears fall down her face.

 

I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the

housetops, and the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor

plants, and the birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours,

when I found that Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in

(perhaps it had taken her all this time to get upstairs) and was

talking to my guardian.

 

“It’s not much to forgive ‘em the rent, sir,” she said; “who could

take it from them!”

 

“Well, well!” said my guardian to us two. “It is enough that the

time will come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and

that forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these—This child,”

he added after a few moments, “could she possibly continue this?”

 

“Really, sir, I think she might,” said Mrs. Blinder, getting her

heavy breath by painful degrees. “She’s as handy as it’s possible

to be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after

the mother died was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to

see her with him after he was took ill, it really was! ‘Mrs.

Blinder,’ he said to me the very last he spoke—he was lying there

—‘Mrs. Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel

sitting in this room last night along with my child, and I trust

her to Our Father!’”

 

“He had no other calling?” said my guardian.

 

“No, sir,” returned Mrs. Blinder, “he was nothing but a follerers.

When he first came to lodge here, I didn’t know what he was, and I

confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn’t liked

in the yard. It wasn’t approved by the other lodgers. It is NOT a

genteel calling,” said Mrs. Blinder, “and most people do object to

it. Mr. Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good

lodger, though his temper has been hard tried.”

 

“So you gave him notice?” said my guardian.

 

“So I gave him notice,” said Mrs. Blinder. “But really when the

time came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was

punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir,” said Mrs.

Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole with her eye, “and it’s

something in this world even to do that.”

 

“So you kept him after all?”

 

“Why,