Bleak House

'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!'

'O, 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.'

'O 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 curtseying 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 bedgown and cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them all.

Chapter V

A morning adventure

Although the morning was raw, and although the fog A 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, over-night. 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 despatching 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 herself at the fire in the writing-room, which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick – throwing the candle in to make it burn better. Everything was just as we had left it last night, and was evidently intended to remain so. Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been left ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste paper were all over the house. Some pewter-pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings; the door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us, that she had been to see what o'clock it was.

But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and down Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see us stirring so soon, and said he would gladly share our walk. So he took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner, and that I really should not have thought she liked me much, unless she had told me so.

'Where would you wish to go?' she asked.

'Anywhere, my dear!' I replied.

'Anywhere's nowhere,' said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.

'Let us go somewhere at any rate,' said I.

She then walked me on very fast.

'I don't care!' she said. 'Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I say I don't care – but if he was to come to our house, with his great shining lumpy forehead, night after night, till he was as old as Methuselah, I wouldn't have anything to say to him. Such ASSES as he and Ma make of themselves!'

'My dear!' I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet, and the vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. 'Your duty as a child—'

'O! don't talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where's Ma's duty as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it's much more their affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there's an end of it!'

She walked me on faster yet.

'But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and I won't have anything to say to him. I can't bear him. If there's any stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it's the stuff he and Ma talk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the patience to stay there, and be a witness of such inconsistencies and contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma's management!'

I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject, by Richard and Ada coming up at a round pace, laughing, and asking us if we meant to run a race? Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent, and walked moodily on at my side; while I admired the long successions and varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags, secretly groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.