Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) đź“–
- Author: Charles Dickens
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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.
A Morning Adventure
Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed
heavy—I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt
that they would have made midsummer sunshine dim—I was
sufficiently forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that
early hour and sufficiently curious about London to think it a good
idea on the part of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should
go out for a walk.
“Ma won’t be down for ever so long,” she said, “and then it’s a
chance if breakfast’s ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so.
As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. He never has
what you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out
the loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes
there isn’t any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I’m
afraid you must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would
rather go to bed.”
“I am not at all tired, my dear,” said I, “and would much prefer to
go out.”
“If you’re sure you would,” returned Miss Jellyby, “I’ll get my
things on.”
Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal
to Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him,
that he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my
bed again. To this he submitted with the best grace possible,
staring at me during the whole operation as if he never had been,
and never could again be, so astonished in his life—looking very
miserable also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going
snugly to sleep as soon as it was over. At first I was in two
minds about taking such a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody
in the house was likely to notice it.
What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting
myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found
Miss Jellyby trying to warm
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