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

taken upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of

spoons and professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT

produce that spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says ‘You

really must excuse me if I seize it.’ Now, this appears to me a

case of misdirected energy, which has a certain amount of reason in

it and a certain amount of romance; and I don’t know but what I

should be more interested in our young friend, as an illustration

of such a case, than merely as a poor vagabond—which any one can

be.”

“In the meantime,” I ventured to observe, “he is getting worse.”

“In the meantime,” said Mr. Skimpole cheerfully, “as Miss

Summerson, with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting

worse. Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets

still worse.”

The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never

forget.

“Of course, little woman,” observed my guardian, turning to me, “I

can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going

there to enforce it, though it’s a bad state of things when, in his

condition, that is necessary. But it’s growing late, and is a very

bad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the

wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there

till morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. We’ll do

that.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano

as we moved away. “Are you going back to our young friend?”

“Yes,” said my guardian.

“How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce!” returned Mr. Skimpole

with playful admiration. “You don’t mind these things; neither

does Miss Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywhere,

and do anything. Such is will! I have no will at all—and no

won’t—simply can’t.”

“You can’t recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?” said my

guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half

angrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr. Skimpole an

accountable being.

“My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his

pocket, and it’s impossible for him to do better than take it. You

can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he

sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But

it is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss

Summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for

the administration of detail that she knows all about it.”

We went back into the hall and explained to Jo what we proposed to

do, which Charley explained to him again and which he received with

the languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at

what was done as if it were for somebody else. The servants

compassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help,

we soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the

house carried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up. It was

pleasant to observe how kind they were to him and how there

appeared to be a general impression among them that frequently

calling him “Old Chap” was likely to revive his spirits. Charley

directed the operations and went to and fro between the loft-room

and the house with such little stimulants and comforts as we

thought it safe to give him. My guardian himself saw him before he

was left for the night and reported to me when he returned to the

growlery to write a letter on the boy’s behalf, which a messenger

was charged to deliver at daylight in the morning, that he seemed

easier and inclined to sleep. They had fastened his door on the

outside, he said, in case of his being delirious, but had so

arranged that he could not make any noise without being heard.

Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr. Skimpole was left alone all

this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic

airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with

great expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the drawing-room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come into

his head “apropos of our young friend,” and he sang one about a

peasant boy,

“Thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam,

Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home.”

quite exquisitely. It was a song that always made him cry, he told

us.

He was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely

chirped—those were his delighted words—when he thought by what a

happy talent for business he was surrounded. He gave us, in his

glass of negus, “Better health to our young friend!” and supposed

and gaily pursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington

to become Lord Mayor of London. In that event, no doubt, he would

establish the Jarndyce Institution and the Summerson Almshouses,

and a little annual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. Albans. He had

no doubt, he said, that our young friend was an excellent boy in

his way, but his way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold

Skimpole was, Harold Skimpole had found himself, to his

considerable surprise, when he first made his own acquaintance; he

had accepted himself with all his failings and had thought it sound

philosophy to make the best of the bargain; and he hoped we would

do the same.

Charley’s last report was that the boy was quiet. I could see,

from my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and

I went to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered.

There was more movement and more talking than usual a little before

daybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked out of my

window and asked one of our men who had been among the active

sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the

house. The lantern was still burning in the loft-window.

“It’s the boy, miss,” said he.

“Is he worse?” I inquired.

“Gone, miss.”

“Dead!”

“Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off.”

At what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed

hopeless ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been left,

and the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed

that he had got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with

an empty cart-house below. But he had shut it down again, if that

were so; and it looked as if it had not been raised. Nothing of

any kind was missing. On this fact being clearly ascertained, we

all yielded to the painful belief that delirium had come upon him

in the night and that, allured by some imaginary object or pursued

by some imaginary horror, he had strayed away in that worse than

helpless state; all of us, that is to say, but Mr. Skimpole, who

repeatedly suggested, in his usual easy light style, that it had

occurred to our young friend that he was not a safe inmate, having

a bad kind of fever upon him, and that he had with great natural

politeness taken himself off.

Every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. The

brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women

were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and

nobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had

for some time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to

admit of any tracing by footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and

rick and stack, were examined by our men for a long distance round,

lest the boy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead;

but nothing was seen to indicate that he had ever been near. From

the time when he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.

The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased

even then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current

very memorable to me.

As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and

as I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble.

Looking up, I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.

“Charley,” said I, “are you so cold?”

“I think I am, miss,” she replied. “I don’t know what it is. I

can’t hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same

time, miss. Don’t be uneasy, I think I’m ill.”

I heard Ada’s voice outside, and I hurried to the door of

communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and

locked it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was

yet upon the key.

Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, “Not now, my dearest.

Go away. There’s nothing the matter; I will come to you

presently.” Ah! It was a long, long time before my darling girl

and I were companions again.

Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her

to my room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse

her. I told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was

necessary that I should seclude myself, and my reason for not

seeing my darling above all. At first she came very often to the

door, and called to me, and even reproached me with sobs and tears;

but I wrote her a long letter saying that she made me anxious and

unhappy and imploring her, as she loved me and wished my mind to be

at peace, to come no nearer than the garden. After that she came

beneath the window even oftener than she had come to the door, and

if I had learnt to love her dear sweet voice before when we were

hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love it then, when I stood

behind the window-curtain listening and replying, but not so much

as looking out! How did I learn to love it afterwards, when the

harder time came!

They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door

wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had

vacated that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and

airy. There was not a servant in or about the house but was so

good that they would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of

the day or night without the least fear or unwillingness, but I

thought it best to choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada

and whom I could trust to come and go with all precaution. Through

her means I got out to take the air with my guardian when there was

no fear of meeting Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of

attendance, any more than in any other respect.

And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy

danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day

and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by

such a gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding

her head in my arms—repose would come to her, so, when it would

come to her in no other attitude—I silently prayed to our Father

in heaven that I might not forget the lesson which this little

sister taught me.

I was very sorrowful to think that Charley’s pretty