Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

attentive an auditor as I might have wished to be, however, for

Peepy and the other children came flocking about Ada and me in a

corner of the drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down

among them and told them in whispers “Puss in Boots” and I don’t

know what else until Mrs. Jellyby, accidentally remembering them,

sent them to bed. As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I

carried him upstairs, where the young woman with the flannel

bandage charged into the midst of the little family like a dragon

and overturned them into cribs.

After that I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and

in coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which

at last it did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt

that Mrs. Jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so

frivolous, and I was sorry for it, though at the same time I knew

that I had no higher pretensions.

It was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to

bed, and even then we left Mrs. Jellyby among her papers drinking

coffee and Miss Jellyby biting the feather of her pen.

“What a strange house!” said Ada when we got upstairs. “How

curious of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!”

“My love,” said I, “it quite confuses me. I want to understand it,

and I can’t understand it at all.”

“What?” asked Ada with her pretty smile.

“All this, my dear,” said I. “It MUST be very good of Mrs. Jellyby

to take such pains about a scheme for the benefit of natives—and

yet—Peepy and the housekeeping!”

Ada laughed and put her arm about my neck as I stood looking at the

fire, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature and had won

her heart. “You are so thoughtful, Esther,” she said, “and yet so

cheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a

home out of even this house.”

My simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised

herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she

made so much of me!

“May I ask you a question?” said I when we had sat before the fire

a little while.

“Five hundred,” said Ada.

“Your cousin, Mr. Jarndyce. I owe so much to him. Would you mind

describing him to me?”

Shaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such

laughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her

beauty, partly at her surprise.

“Esther!” she cried.

“My dear!”

“You want a description of my cousin Jarndyce?”

“My dear, I never saw him.”

“And I never saw him!” returned Ada.

Well, to be sure!

No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died,

she remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she

spoke of him and of the noble generosity of his character, which

she had said was to be trusted above all earthly things; and Ada

trusted it. Her cousin Jarndyce had written to her a few months

ago—“a plain, honest letter,” Ada said—proposing the arrangement

we were now to enter on and telling her that “in time it might heal

some of the wounds made by the miserable Chancery suit.” She had

replied, gratefully accepting his proposal. Richard had received a

similar letter and had made a similar response. He HAD seen Mr.

Jarndyce once, but only once, five years ago, at Winchester school.

He had told Ada, when they were leaning on the screen before the

fire where I found them, that he recollected him as “a bluff, rosy

fellow.” This was the utmost description Ada could give me.

It set me thinking so that when Ada was asleep, I still remained

before the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, and

wondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long

ago. I don’t know where my thoughts had wandered when they were

recalled by a tap at the door.

I opened it softly and found Miss Jellyby shivering there with a

broken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand and an egg-cup in

the other.

“Good night!” she said very sulkily.

“Good night!” said I.

“May I come in?” she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same

sulky way.

“Certainly,” said I. “Don’t wake Miss Clare.”

She would not sit down, but stood by the fire dipping her inky

middle finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing

it over the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and

looking very gloomy.

“I wish Africa was dead!” she said on a sudden.

I was going to remonstrate.

“I do!” she said “Don’t talk to me, Miss Summerson. I hate it and

detest it. It’s a beast!”

I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her

head, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but would

be cool to-morrow. She still stood pouting and frowning at me, but

presently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed

where Ada lay.

“She is very pretty!” she said with the same knitted brow and in

the same uncivil manner.

I assented with a smile.

“An orphan. Ain’t she?”

“Yes.”

“But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and

sing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and

globes, and needlework, and everything?”

“No doubt,” said I.

“I can’t,” she returned. “I can’t do anything hardly, except

write. I’m always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not

ashamed of yourselves to come in this afternoon and see me able to

do nothing else. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think

yourselves very fine, I dare say!”

I could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I resumed my

chair without speaking and looked at her (I hope) as mildly as I

felt towards her.

“It’s disgraceful,” she said. “You know it is. The whole house is

disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I’M disgraceful. Pa’s

miserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks—she’s always drinking.

It’s a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn’t

smell her to-day. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at

dinner; you know it was!”

“My dear, I don’t know it,” said I.

“You do,” she said very shortly. “You shan’t say you don’t. You

do!”

“Oh, my dear!” said I. “If you won’t let me speak—”

“You’re speaking now. You know you are. Don’t tell stories, Miss

Summerson.”

“My dear,” said I, “as long as you won’t hear me out—”

“I don’t want to hear you out.”

“Oh, yes, I think you do,” said I, “because that would be so very

unreasonable. I did not know what you tell me because the servant

did not come near me at dinner; but I don’t doubt what you tell me,

and I am sorry to hear it.”

“You needn’t make a merit of that,” said she.

“No, my dear,” said I. “That would be very foolish.”

She was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still

with the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done, she

came softly back and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was

heaving in a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I

thought it better not to speak.

“I wish I was dead!” she broke out. “I wish we were all dead. It

would be a great deal better for us.”

In a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her

face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I

comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she

wanted to stay there!

“You used to teach girls,” she said, “If you could only have taught

me, I could have learnt from you! I am so very miserable, and I

like you so much!”

I could not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a

ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still

hold my dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl

fell asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it

should rest on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire

went out, and all night long she slumbered thus before the ashy

grate. At first I was painfully awake and vainly tried to lose

myself, with my eyes closed, among the scenes of the day. At

length, by slow degrees, they became indistinct and mingled. I

began to lose the identity of the sleeper resting on me. Now it

was Ada, now one of my old Reading friends from whom I could not

believe I had so recently parted. Now it was the little mad woman

worn out with curtsying and smiling, now some one in authority at

Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I was no one.

The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened

my eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed

upon me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown

and cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he

had cut them all.