BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la Sumar

CHAPTER IV  

Telescopic Philanthropy

We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when we arrived in his  room, at Mrs. Jellyby's; and then he turned to me and said he took  it for granted I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was. 

"I really don't, sir," I returned. 

"Perhaps Mr. Carstone--or Miss  Clare--" 

But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby. 

"In-deed!   Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire  and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs.  Jellyby's biography, "is a lady of very remarkable strength of  character who devotes herself entirely to the public.  She has  devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at  various times and is at present (until something else attracts her)  devoted to the subject of Africa, with a view to the general  cultivation of the coffee berry--AND the natives--and the happy  settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our  superabundant home population. 

Mr. Jarndyce, who is desirous to  aid any work that is considered likely to be a good work and who is  much sought after by philanthropists, has, I believe, a very high  opinion of Mrs. Jellyby."  Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us. 

"And Mr. Jellyby, sir?" suggested Richard. 

"Ah!  Mr. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, "is--a--I don't know that I can  describe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of  Mrs. Jellyby." 

"A nonentity, sir?" said Richard with a droll look. 

"I don't say that," returned Mr. Kenge gravely. 

"I can't say that,  indeed, for I know nothing whatever OF Mr. Jellyby.  I never, to my  knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jellyby.  He may be a  very superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged--merged--in the  more shining qualities of his wife." 

Mr. Kenge proceeded to tell  us that as the road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark,  and tedious on such an evening, and as we had been travelling  already, Mr. Jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement.  A  carriage would be at Mrs. Jellyby's to convey us out of town early  in the forenoon of to-morrow.  He then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in.   Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr. Kenge inquired whether  Miss Summerson's boxes and the rest of the baggage had been "sent  round." 

Mr. Guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach  was waiting to take us round too as soon as we pleased. 

"Then it only remains," said Mr. Kenge, shaking hands with us, "for  me to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Clare!) the  arrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to you, Miss  Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the  (glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr.  Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all  concerned!  Guppy, see the party safely there." 

"Where IS 'there,' Mr. Guppy?" said Richard as we went downstairs. 

"No distance," said Mr. Guppy; "round in Thavies Inn, you know." 

"I can't say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester and am  strange in London."  "Only round the corner," said Mr. Guppy. 

"We just twist up  Chancery Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four  minutes' time, as near as a toucher.  This is about a London  particular NOW, ain't it, miss?"  He seemed quite delighted with it  on my account. 

"The fog is very dense indeed!" said I.  "Not that it affects you, though, I'm sure," said Mr. Guppy,  putting up the steps.  "On the contrary, it seems to do you good,  miss, judging from your appearance." 

I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at  myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon  the box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our  inexperience and the strangeness of London until we turned up under  an archway to our destination--a narrow street of high houses like  an oblong cistern to hold the fog.  There was a confused little  crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house at  which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate on the door  with the inscription JELLYBY. 

"Don't be frightened!" said Mr. Guppy, looking in at the coach- window. 

"One of the young Jellybys been and got his head through  the area railings!"  "Oh, poor child," said I; "let me out, if you please!"  "Pray be careful of yourself, miss.  The young Jellybys are always  up to something," said Mr. Guppy.  I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little  unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and  crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a  milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were  endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general  impression that his skull was compressible by those means.  As I  found (after pacifying him) that he was a little boy with a  naturally large head, I thought that perhaps where his head could  go, his body could follow, and mentioned that the best mode of  extrication might be to push him forward.  This was so favourably  received by the milkman and beadle that he would immediately have  been pushed into the area if I had not held his pinafore while  Richard and Mr. Guppy ran down through the kitchen to catch him  when he should be released. 

At last he was happily got down  without any accident, and then he began to beat Mr. Guppy with a  hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.  Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in  pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom;  I don't know with what object, and I don't think she did. 

I  therefore supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home, and was quite  surprised when the person appeared in the passage without the  pattens, and going up to the back room on the first floor before  Ada and me, announced us as, "Them two young ladies, Missis  Jellyby!" 

We passed several more children on the way up, whom it  was difficult to avoid treading on in the dark; and as we came into  Mrs. Jellyby's presence, one of the poor little things fell  downstairs--down a whole flight (as it sounded to me), with a great  noise.  Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we  could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child's head  recorded its passage with a bump on every stair--Richard afterwards  said he counted seven, besides one for the landing--received us  with perfect equanimity.  She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump  woman of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a  curious habit of seeming to look a long way off.  As if--I am  quoting Richard again--they could see nothing nearer than Africa! 

"I am very glad indeed," said Mrs. Jellyby in an agreeable voice,  "to have the pleasure of receiving you.  I have a great respect for  Mr. Jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object  of indifference to me."  We expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door,  where there was a lame invalid of a sofa.  Mrs. Jellyby had very  good hair but was too much occupied with her African duties to  brush it.  The shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped  onto her chair when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume  her seat, we could not help noticing that her dress didn't nearly  meet up the back and that the open space was railed across with a  lattice-work of stay-lace--like a summer-house.  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 Borriohoola-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 piano-forte 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 not so  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 tomorrow.  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 today.  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.

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