It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out ofwindow, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like twobeacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in theindistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when theday came on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself anddisclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark,like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering theunknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first theywere faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the laterstars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture beganto enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could havefound enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candlesbecame the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places inmy room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerfullandscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with itsmassive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view thanseemed compatible with its rugged character. But so from roughoutsides (I hope I have learnt), serene and gentle influences oftenproceed.
Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was soattentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys,though what with trying to remember the contents of each littlestore-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on aslate about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, andglass, and china, and a great many other things; and what withbeing generally a methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish littleperson, I was so busy that I could not believe it was breakfast-time when I heard the bell ring. Away I ran, however, and madetea, as I had already been installed into the responsibility of thetea-pot; and then, as they were all rather late and nobody was downyet, I thought I would take a peep at the garden and get someknowledge of that too. I found it quite a delightful place--infront, the pretty avenue and drive by which we had approached (andwhere, by the by, we had cut up the gravel so terribly with ourwheels that I asked the gardener to roll it); at the back, theflower-garden, with my darling at her window up there, throwing itopen to smile out at me, as if she would have kissed me from thatdistance. Beyond the flower-garden was a kitchen-garden, and thena paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard, and then a dear littlefarm-yard. As to the house itself, with its three peaks in theroof; its various-shaped windows, some so large, some so small, andall so pretty; its trellis-work, against the southfront for rosesand honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable, welcoming look--itwas, as Ada said when she came out to meet me with her arm throughthat of its master, worthy of her cousin John, a bold thing to say,though he only pinched her dear cheek for it.
Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast as he had beenovernight. There was honey on the table, and it led him into adiscourse about bees. He had no objection to honey, he said (and Ishould think he had not, for he seemed to like it), but heprotested against the overweening assumptions of bees. He didn'tat all see why the busy bee should be proposed as a model to him;he supposed the bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it--nobody asked him. It was not necessary for the bee to make such amerit of his tastes. If every confectioner went buzzing about theworld banging against everything that came in his way andegotistically calling upon everybody to take notice that he wasgoing to his work and must not be interrupted, the world would bequite an unsupportable place. Then, after all, it was a ridiculousposition to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone as soon asyou had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of aManchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must sayhe thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea.
The drone said unaffectedly, "You will excuse me; I really cannotattend to the shop! I find myself in a world in which there is somuch to see and so short a time to see it in that I must take theliberty of looking about me and begging to be provided for bysomebody who doesn't want to look about him." This appeared to Mr.
Skimpole to be the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very goodphilosophy, always supposing the drone to be willing to be on goodterms with the bee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellowalways was, if the consequential creature would only let him, andnot be so conceited about his honey!
He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety ofground and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have asserious a meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. Ileft them still listening to him when I withdrew to attend to mynew duties. They had occupied me for some time, and I was passingthrough the passages on my return with my basket of keys on my armwhen Mr. Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber,which I found to be in part a little library of books and papersand in part quite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat-boxes.
"Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce. "This, you must know, isthe growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.""You must be here very seldom, sir," said I.
"Oh, you don't know me!" he returned. "When I am deceived ordisappointed in--the wind, and it's easterly, I take refuge here.
The growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not awareof half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!"I could not help it; I tried very hard, but being alone with thatbenevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling sohappy and so honoured there, and my heart so full--I kissed his hand. I don't know what I said, or even that I spoke.
He was disconcerted and walked to the window; I almost believedwith an intention of jumping out, until he turned and I wasreassured by seeing in his eyes what he had gone there to hide. Hegently patted me on the head, and I sat down.
"There! There!" he said. "That's over. Pooh! Don't be foolish.""It shall not happen again, sir," I returned, "but at first it isdifficult--""Nonsense!" he said. "It's easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a goodlittle orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my headto be that protector. She grows up, and more than justifies mygood opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend. What isthere in all this? So, so! Now, we have cleared off old scores,and I have before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again."I said to myself, "Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This reallyis not what I expected of you!" And it had such a good effect thatI folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. Mr.
Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to meas confidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing withhim every morning for I don't know how long. I almost felt as if Ihad.
"Of course, Esther," he said, "you don't understand this Chancerybusiness?"And of course I shook my head.
"I don't know who does," he returned. "The lawyers have twisted itinto such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of thecase have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It's abouta will and the trusts under a will--or it was once. It's aboutnothing but costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing,and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, andarguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting,and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, andequitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs.
That's the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinarymeans, has melted away.""But it was, sir," said I, to bring him back, for he began to rubhis head, "about a will?""Why, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything," hereturned. "A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a greatfortune, and made a great will. In the question how the trustsunder that will are to be administered, the fortune left by thewill is squandered away; the legatees under the will are reduced tosuch a miserable condition that they would be sufficiently punishedif they had committed an enormous crime in having money left them,and the will itself is made a dead letter. All through thedeplorable cause, everything that everybody in it, except one man,knows already is referred to that only one man who don't know it tofind out--all through the deplorable cause, everybody must havecopies, over and over again, of everything that has accumulatedabout it in the way of cartloads of papers (or must pay for themwithout having them, which is the usual course, for nobody wantsthem) and must go down the middle and up again through such aninfernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense andcorruption as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of awitch's Sabbath. Equity sends questions to law, law sendsquestions back to equity; law finds it can't do this, equity findsit can't do that; neither can so much as say it can't do anything,without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing forA, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for B;and so on through the whole alphabet, like the history of the applepie. And thus, through years and years, and lives and lives,everything goes on, constantly beginning over and over again, andnothing ever ends. And we can't get out of the suit on any terms,for we are made parties to it, and MUST BE parties to it, whetherwe like it or not. But it won't do to think of it! When my greatuncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was thebeginning of the end!""The Mr. Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?"He nodded gravely. "I was his heir, and this was his house,Esther. When I came here, it was bleak indeed. He had left thesigns of his misery upon it.""How changed it must be now!" I said.
"It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it itspresent name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over thewicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope todisentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. Inthe meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistledthrough the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof,the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I broughtwhat remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to havebeen blown out of the house too, it was so shattered and ruined."He walked a little to and fro after saying this to himself with ashudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and satdown again with his hands in his pockets.
"I told you this was the growlery, my dear. Where was I?"I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.
"Bleak House; true. There is, in that city of London there, someproperty of ours which is much at this day what Bleak House wasthen; I say property of ours, meaning of the suit's, but I ought tocall it the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earththat will ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it foranything but an eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street ofperishing blind houses, with their eyes stoned out, without a paneof glass, without so much as a window-frame, with the bare blankshutters tumbling from their hinges and falling asunder, the ironrails peeling away in flakes of rust, the chimneys sinking in, thestone steps to every door (and every door might be death's door)turning stagnant green, the very crutches on which the ruins arepropped decaying. Although Bleak House was not in Chancery, itsmaster was, and it was stamped with the same seal. These are theGreat Seal's impressions, my dear, all over England--the childrenknow them!""How changed it is!" I said again.
"Why, so it is," he answered much more cheerfully; "and it iswisdom in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture." (Theidea of my wisdom!) "These are things I never talk about or eventhink about, excepting in the growlery here. If you consider itright to mention them to Rick and Ada," looking seriously at me,"you can. I leave it to your discretion, Esther.""I hope, sir--" said I.
"I think you had better call me guardian, my dear."I felt that I was choking again--I taxed myself with it, "Esther,now, you know you are!"--when he feigned to say this slightly, asif it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gavethe housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder tomyself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner onthe basket, looked at him quietly.
"I hope, guardian," said I, "that you may not trust too much to mydiscretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will bea disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it reallyis the truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not thehonesty to confess it."He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary. He toldme, with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very wellindeed and that I was quite clever enough for him.
"I hope I may turn out so," said I, "but I am much afraid of it,guardian.""You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our liveshere, my dear," he returned playfully; "the little old woman of thechild's (I don't mean Skimpole's) rhyme:
'Little old woman, and whither so high?'
'To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.'
You will sweep them so neatly out of OUR sky in the course of yourhousekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we shall have toabandon the growlery and nail up the door."This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little OldWoman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and DameDurden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon becamequite lost among them.
"However," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to return to our gossip. Here'sRick, a fine young fellow full of promise. What's to be done withhim?"Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!
"Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting hishands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. "He must havea profession; he must make some choice for himself. There will bea world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must bedone.""More what, guardian?" said I.
"More wiglomeration," said he. "It's the only name I know for thething. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy willhave something to say about it; Master Somebody--a sort ofridiculous sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in aback room at the end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane--will havesomething to say about it; counsel will have something to say aboutit; the Chancellor will have something to say about it; thesatellites will have something to say about it; they will all haveto be handsomely feed, all round, about it; the whole thing will bevastly ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, and Icall it, in general, wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to beafflicted with wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young peopleever fell into a pit of it, I don't know; so it is."He began to rub his head again and to hint that he felt the wind.
But it was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me thatwhether he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his facewas sure to recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine;and he was sure to turn comfortable again and put his hands in hispockets and stretch out his legs.
"Perhaps it would be best, first of all," said I, "to ask Mr.
Richard what he inclines to himself.""Exactly so," he returned. "That's what I mean! You know, justaccustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quietway, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We aresure to come at the heart of the matter by your means, littlewoman."I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I wasattaining and the number of things that were being confided to me.
I had not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak toRichard. But of course I said nothing in reply except that I woulddo my best, though I feared (I realty felt it necessary to repeatthis) that he thought me much more sagacious than I was. At whichmy guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard.
"Come!" he said, rising and pushing back his chair. "I think wemay have done with the growlery for one day! Only a concludingword. Esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?"He looked so attentively at me that I looked attentively at him andfelt sure I understood him.
"About myself, sir?" said I.
"Yes.""Guardian," said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenlycolder than I could have wished, in his, "nothing! I am quite surethat if there were anything I ought to know or had any need toknow, I should not have to ask you to tell it to me. If my wholereliance and confidence were not placed in you, I must have a hardheart indeed. I have nothing to ask you, nothing in the world."He drew my hand through his arm and we went away to look for Ada.
From that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quitecontent to know no more, quite happy.
We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House, for we hadto become acquainted with many residents in and out of theneighbourhood who knew Mr. Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and me thateverybody knew him who wanted to do anything with anybody else'smoney. It amazed us when we began to sort his letters and toanswer some of them for him in the growlery of a morning to findhow the great object of the lives of nearly all his correspondentsappeared to be to form themselves into committees for getting inand laying out money. The ladies were as desperate as thegentlemen; indeed, I think they were even more so. They threwthemselves into committees in the most impassioned manner andcollected subscriptions with a vehemence quite extraordinary. Itappeared to us that some of them must pass their whole lives indealing out subscription-cards to the whole post-office directory--shilling cards, half-crown cards, half-sovereign cards, pennycards. They wanted everything. They wanted wearing apparel, theywanted linen rags, they wanted money, they wanted coals, theywanted soup, they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, theywanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr. Jarndyce had--or had not.
Their objects were as various as their demands. They were going toraise new buildings, they were going to pay off debts on oldbuildings, they were going to establish in a picturesque building(engraving of proposed west elevation attached) the Sisterhood ofMediaeval Marys, they were going to give a testimonial to Mrs.
Jellyby, they were going to have their secretary's portrait paintedand presented to his mother-in-law, whose deep devotion to him waswell known, they were going to get up everything, I really believe,from five hundred thousand tracts to an annuity and from a marblemonument to a silver tea-pot. They took a multitude of titles.
They were the Women of England, the Daughters of Britain, theSisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, the Females ofAmerica, the Ladies of a hundred denominations. They appeared tobe always excited about canvassing and electing. They seemed toour poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to beconstantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringingtheir candidates in for anything. It made our heads ache to think,on the whole, what feverish lives they must lead.
Among the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapaciousbenevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Pardiggle, whoseemed, as I judged from the number of her letters to Mr. Jarndyce,to be almost as powerful a correspondent as Mrs. Jellyby herself.
We observed that the wind always changed when Mrs. Pardiggle becamethe subject of conversation and that it invariably interrupted Mr.
Jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarkedthat there were two classes of charitable people; one, the peoplewho did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, thepeople who did a great deal and made no noise at all. We weretherefore curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle, suspecting her to be atype of the former class, and were glad when she called one daywith her five young sons.
She was a formidable style of lady with spectacles, a prominentnose, and a loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great dealof room. And she really did, for she knocked down little chairswith her skirts that were quite a great way off. As only Ada and Iwere at home, we received her timidly, for she seemed to come inlike cold weather and to make the little Pardiggles blue as theyfollowed.
"These, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle with great volubilityafter the first salutations, "are my five boys. You may have seentheir names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one)in the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, myeldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to theamount of five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald,my second (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two andnine-pence to the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, mythird (nine), one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven),eightpence to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five),has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and ispledged never, through life, to use tobacco in any form."We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merelythat they were weazened and shrivelled--though they were certainlythat to--but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. Atthe mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposedEghert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gaveme such a savage frown. The face of each child, as the amount ofhis contribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictivemanner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however, thelittle recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly andevenly miserable.
"You have been visiting, I understand," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "atMrs. Jellyby's?"We said yes, we had............