Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖
- Author: Charles Dickens
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The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great
writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not
only very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of
that with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of
hearing, we followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I
think into the back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him.
But what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking
though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting
the feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever
was in such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her
pretty feet, which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin
slippers trodden down at heel, she really seemed to have no article
of dress upon her, from a pin upwards, that was in its proper
condition or its right place.
“You find me, my dears,” said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great
office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste
strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was
nothing in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker),
“you find me, my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will
excuse. The African project at present employs my whole time. It
involves me in correspondence with public bodies and with private
individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over the
country. I am happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time
next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy
families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of
Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger.”
As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very
gratifying.
“It IS gratifying,” said Mrs. Jellyby. “It involves the devotion
of all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that
it succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day. Do you
know, Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your
thoughts to Africa.”
This application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that
I was quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that the
climate—
“The finest climate in the world!” said Mrs. Jellyby.
“Indeed, ma’am?”
“Certainly. With precaution,” said Mrs. Jellyby. “You may go into
Holborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go into
Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with
Africa.”
I said, “No doubt.” I meant as to Holborn.
“If you would like,” said Mrs. Jellyby, putting a number of papers
towards us, “to look over some remarks on that head, and on the
general subject, which have been extensively circulated, while I
finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my
amanuensis—”
The girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to
our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
“—I shall then have finished for the present,” proceeded Mrs.
Jellyby with a sweet smile, “though my work is never done. Where
are you, Caddy?”
“‘Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs—’” said Caddy.
“‘And begs,’” said Mrs. Jellyby, dictating, “‘to inform him, in
reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project—’ No,
Peepy! Not on my account!”
Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen
downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting
himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his
wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity most—
the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the
serene composure with which she said everything, “Go along, you
naughty Peepy!” and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I
interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor
Peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked
very much astonished at it and at Ada’s kissing him, but soon fell
fast asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals,
until he was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the
letter in detail, though I derived such a general impression from
it of the momentous importance of Africa, and the utter
insignificance of all other places and things, that I felt quite
ashamed to have thought so little about it.
“Six o’clock!” said Mrs. Jellyby. “And our dinner hour is
nominally (for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss Clare
and Miss Summerson their rooms. You will like to make some change,
perhaps? You will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh,
that very bad child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!”
I begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at
all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed.
Ada and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between.
They were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my
window was fastened up with a fork.
“You would like some hot water, wouldn’t you?” said Miss Jellyby,
looking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain.
“If it is not being troublesome,” said we.
“Oh, it’s not the trouble,” returned Miss Jellyby; “the question
is, if there IS any.”
The evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell
that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half
crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when
Miss Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot
water, but they couldn’t find the kettle, and the boiler was out of
order.
We begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to
get down to the fire again. But all the little children had come
up to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying
on my bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant
apparition of noses and fingers in situations of danger between the
hinges of the doors. It was impossible to shut the door of either
room, for my lock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be
wound up; and though the handle of Ada’s went round and round with
the greatest smoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on
the door. Therefore I proposed to the children that they should
come in and be very good at my table, and I would tell them the
story of Little Red Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did,
and were as quiet as mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely
before the appearance of the wolf.
When we went downstairs we found a mug with “A Present from
Tunbridge Wells” on it lighted up in the staircase window with a
floating wick, and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a
flannel bandage blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected
by an open door with Mrs. Jellyby’s room) and choking dreadfully.
It smoked to that degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and
crying with the windows open for half an hour, during which Mrs.
Jellyby, with the same sweetness of temper, directed letters about
Africa. Her being so employed was, I must say, a great relief to
me, for Richard told us that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish
and that they had found the kettle on his dressing-table, and he
made Ada laugh so that they made me laugh in the most ridiculous
manner.
Soon after seven o’clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs.
Jellyby’s advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very
deficient in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We
had a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and
a pudding; an excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak
of, but it was almost raw. The young woman with the flannel
bandage waited, and dropped everything on the table wherever it
happened to go, and never moved it again until she put it on the
stairs. The person I had seen in pattens, who I suppose to have
been the cook, frequently came and skirmished with her at the door,
and there appeared to be ill will between them.
All through dinner—which was long, in consequence of such
accidents as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle
and the handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young
woman in the chin—Mrs. Jellyby preserved the evenness of her
disposition. She told us a great deal that was interesting about
Borrioboola-Gha and the natives, and received so many letters that
Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once.
Some of the letters were proceedings of ladies’ committees or
resolutions of ladies’ meetings, which she read to us; others were
applications from people excited in various ways about the
cultivation of coffee, and natives; others required answers, and
these she sent her eldest daughter from the table three or four
times to write. She was full of business and undoubtedly was, as
she had told us, devoted to the cause.
I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in
spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top
or bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed
passively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be
actively interested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word,
he might have been a native but for his complexion. It was not
until we left the table and he remained alone with Richard that the
possibility of his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my head. But he
WAS Mr. Jellyby; and a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with
large shining knobs for temples and his hair all brushed to the
back of his head, who came in the evening, and told Ada he was a
philanthropist, also informed her that he called the matrimonial
alliance of Mrs. Jellyby with Mr. Jellyby the union of mind and
matter.
This young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself
about Africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists
to teach the natives to turn pianoforte legs and establish an
export trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby out by saving, “I
believe now, Mrs. Jellyby, you have received as many as from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa in a
single day, have you not?” or, “If my memory does not deceive me,
Mrs. Jellyby, you once mentioned that you had sent off five
thousand circulars from one post-office at one time?”—always
repeating Mrs. Jellyby’s answer to us like an interpreter. During
the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner with his head
against the wall as if he were subject to low spirits. It seemed
that he had several times opened his mouth when alone with Richard
after dinner, as if he had something on his mind, but had always
shut it again, to Richard’s extreme confusion, without saying
anything.
Mrs. Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee
all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter.
She also held a discussion with Mr. Quale, of which the subject
seemed to be—if I understood it—the brotherhood of humanity, and
gave utterance to some beautiful sentiments. I was
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