BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la Sumar

CHAPTER VIII  

Covering a Multitude of Sins 

It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out of  window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like two  beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the  indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the  day came on.  As the prospect gradually revealed itself and  disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark,  like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the  unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. 

At first they  were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later  stars still glimmered.  That pale interval over, the picture began  to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have  found enough to look at for an hour.  Imperceptibly my candles  became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in  my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful  landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its  massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than  seemed compatible with its rugged character.  But so from rough  outsides (I hope I have learnt), serene and gentle influences often  proceed.  Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so  attentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys,  though what with trying to remember the contents of each little  store-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a  slate about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and  glass, and china, and a great many other things; and what with  being generally a methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little  person, I was so busy that I could not believe it was breakfast- time when I heard the bell ring. 

Away I ran, however, and made  tea, as I had already been installed into the responsibility of the  tea-pot; and then, as they were all rather late and nobody was down  yet, I thought I would take a peep at the garden and get some  knowledge of that too.  I found it quite a delightful place--in  front, the pretty avenue and drive by which we had approached (and  where, by the by, we had cut up the gravel so terribly with our  wheels that I asked the gardener to roll it); at the back, the  flower-garden, with my darling at her window up there, throwing it  open to smile out at me, as if she would have kissed me from that  distance. 

Beyond the flower-garden was a kitchen-garden, and then  a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard, and then a dear little  farm-yard.  As to the house itself, with its three peaks in the  roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large, some so small, and  all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the southfront for roses  and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable, welcoming look--it  was, as Ada said when she came out to meet me with her arm through  that 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 been  overnight.  There was honey on the table, and it led him into a  discourse about bees.  He had no objection to honey, he said (and I  should think he had not, for he seemed to like it), but he  protested against the overweening assumptions of bees.  He didn't  at 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 a  merit of his tastes. 

If every confectioner went buzzing about the  world banging against everything that came in his way and  egotistically calling upon everybody to take notice that he was  going to his work and must not be interrupted, the world would be  quite an unsupportable place.  Then, after all, it was a ridiculous  position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone as soon as  you had made it.  You would have a very mean opinion of a  Manchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose.  He must say  he thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea.   The drone said unaffectedly, "You will excuse me; I really cannot  attend to the shop!  I find myself in a world in which there is so  much to see and so short a time to see it in that I must take the  liberty of looking about me and begging to be provided for by  somebody who doesn't want to look about him."  This appeared to Mr.  Skimpole to be the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good  philosophy, always supposing the drone to be willing to be on good  terms with the bee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow  always was, if the consequential creature would only let him, and  not be so conceited about his honey!  He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of  ground and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as  serious a meaning in what he said as he was capable of having.  I  left them still listening to him when I withdrew to attend to my  new duties.  They had occupied me for some time, and I was passing  through the passages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm  when 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 papers  and 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, is  the 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 or  disappointed in--the wind, and it's easterly, I take refuge here.   The growlery is the best-used room in the house.  You are not aware  of half my humours yet.  My dear, how you are trembling!"  I could not help it; I tried very hard, but being alone with that  benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so  happy 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 believed  with an intention of jumping out, until he turned and I was  reassured by seeing in his eyes what he had gone there to hide.  He  gently 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 is  difficult--" 

"Nonsense!" he said. 

"It's easy, easy.  Why not?  I hear of a good  little orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head  to be that protector.  She grows up, and more than justifies my  good opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend.  What is  there 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 really  is not what I expected of you!"  And it had such a good effect that  I folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself.  Mr.  Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me  as confidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing with  him every morning for I don't know how long.  I almost felt as if I  had. 

"Of course, Esther," he said, "you don't understand this Chancery  business?"  And of course I shook my head.  "I don't know who does," he returned. 

"The lawyers have twisted it  into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the  case have long disappeared from the face of the earth.  It's about  a will and the trusts under a will--or it was once.  It's about  nothing but costs now.  We are always appearing, and disappearing,  and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and  arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting,  and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and  equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs.   That's the great question.  All the rest, by some extraordinary  means, has melted away." 

"But it was, sir," said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub  his head, "about a will?" 

"Why, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything," he  returned.  

"A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great  fortune, and made a great will.  In the question how the trusts  under that will are to be administered, the fortune left by the  will is squandered away; the legatees under the will are reduced to  such a miserable condition that they would be sufficiently punished  if they had committed an enormous crime in having money left them,  and the will itself is made a dead letter.  All through the  deplorable cause, everything that everybody in it, except one man,  knows already is referred to that only one man who don't know it to  find out--all through the deplorable cause, everybody must have  copies, over and over again, of everything that has accumulated  about it in the way of cartloads of papers (or must pay for them  without having them, which is the usual course, for nobody wants  them) and must go down the middle and up again through such an  infernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense and  corruption as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a  witch's Sabbath.  Equity sends questions to law, law sends  questions back to equity; law finds it can't do this, equity finds  it can't do that; neither can so much as say it can't do anything,  without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing for  A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for B;  and so on through the whole alphabet, like the history of the apple  pie.  And thus, through years and years, and lives and lives,  everything goes on, constantly beginning over and over again, and  nothing 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, whether  we like it or not.  But it won't do to think of it!  When my great  uncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the  beginning 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 the  signs 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 its  present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the  wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to  disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close.  In  the meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled  through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof,  the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door.  When I brought  what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have  been 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 a  shudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat  down 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, some  property of ours which is much at this day what Bleak House was  then; I say property of ours, meaning of the suit's, but I ought to  call it the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth  that will ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it for  anything but an eyesore and a heartsore.  It is a street of  perishing blind houses, with their eyes stoned out, without a pane  of glass, without so much as a window-frame, with the bare blank  shutters tumbling from their hinges and falling asunder, the iron  rails peeling away in flakes of rust, the chimneys sinking in, the  stone steps to every door (and every door might be death's door)  turning stagnant green, the very crutches on which the ruins are  propped decaying.  Although Bleak House was not in Chancery, its  master was, and it was stamped with the same seal.  These are the  Great Seal's impressions, my dear, all over England--the children  know them!" 

"How changed it is!" I said again. 

"Why, so it is," he answered much more cheerfully; "and it is  wisdom in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture."  (The  idea of my wisdom!) 

"These are things I never talk about or even  think about, excepting in the growlery here.  If you consider it  right 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, as  if it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness.  But I gave  the housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to  myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on  the basket, looked at him quietly. 

"I hope, guardian," said I, "that you may not trust too much to my  discretion.  I hope you may not mistake me.  I am afraid it will be  a disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it really  is the truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not the  honesty to confess it."  He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary.  He told  me, with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well  indeed 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 lives  here, my dear," he returned playfully; "the little old woman of the  child'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 your  housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we shall have to  abandon the growlery and nail up the door." 

This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old  Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame  Durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became  quite lost among them. 

"However," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to return to our gossip.  Here's  Rick, a fine young fellow full of promise.  What's to be done with  him?" 

Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point! 

"Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his  hands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. 

"He must have  a profession; he must make some choice for himself.  There will be  a world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be  done." 

"More what, guardian?" said I. 

"More wiglomeration," said he. 

"It's the only name I know for the  thing.  He is a ward in Chancery, my dear.  Kenge and Carboy will  have something to say about it; Master Somebody--a sort of  ridiculous sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a  back room at the end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane--will have  something to say about it; counsel will have something to say about  it; the Chancellor will have something to say about it; the  satellites will have something to say about it; they will all have  to be handsomely feed, all round, about it; the whole thing will be  vastly ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I  call it, in general, wiglomeration.  How mankind ever came to be  afflicted with wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people  ever 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 that  whether he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face  was sure to recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine;  and he was sure to turn comfortable again and put his hands in his  pockets 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, just  accustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet  way, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it.  We are  sure to come at the heart of the matter by your means, little  woman." 

I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was  attaining 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 to  Richard.  But of course I said nothing in reply except that I would  do my best, though I feared (I realty felt it necessary to repeat  this) that he thought me much more sagacious than I was.  At which  my guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard. 

"Come!" he said, rising and pushing back his chair. 

"I think we  may have done with the growlery for one day!  Only a concluding  word.  Esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?" 

He looked so attentively at me that I looked attentively at him and  felt sure I understood him. 

"About myself, sir?" said I. 

"Yes." 

"Guardian," said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly  colder than I could have wished, in his, "nothing!  I am quite sure  that if there were anything I ought to know or had any need to  know, I should not have to ask you to tell it to me.  If my whole  reliance and confidence were not placed in you, I must have a hard  heart 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, quite  content to know no more, quite happy.  We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House, for we had  to become acquainted with many residents in and out of the  neighbourhood who knew Mr. Jarndyce.  It seemed to Ada and me that  everybody knew him who wanted to do anything with anybody else's  money.  It amazed us when we began to sort his letters and to  answer some of them for him in the growlery of a morning to find  how the great object of the lives of nearly all his correspondents  appeared to be to form themselves into committees for getting in  and laying out money. 

The ladies were as desperate as the  gentlemen; indeed, I think they were even more so.  They threw  themselves into committees in the most impassioned manner and  collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite extraordinary.  It  appeared to us that some of them must pass their whole lives in  dealing out subscription-cards to the whole post-office directory-- shilling cards, half-crown cards, half-sovereign cards, penny  cards.  They wanted everything.  They wanted wearing apparel, they  wanted linen rags, they wanted money, they wanted coals, they  wanted soup, they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, they  wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr. Jarndyce had--or had not.   Their objects were as various as their demands.  They were going to  raise new buildings, they were going to pay off debts on old  buildings, they were going to establish in a picturesque building  (engraving of proposed west elevation attached) the Sisterhood of  Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a testimonial to Mrs.  Jellyby, they were going to have their secretary's portrait painted  and presented to his mother-in-law, whose deep devotion to him was  well known, they were going to get up everything, I really believe,  from five hundred thousand tracts to an annuity and from a marble  monument to a silver tea-pot.  They took a multitude of titles.   They were the Women of England, the Daughters of Britain, the  Sisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, the Females of  America, the Ladies of a hundred denominations. 

They appeared to  be always excited about canvassing and electing.  They seemed to  our poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to be  constantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringing  their 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 rapacious  benevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Pardiggle, who  seemed, 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 became  the subject of conversation and that it invariably interrupted Mr.  Jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked  that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people  who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the  people who did a great deal and made no noise at all. 

We were  therefore curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a  type of the former class, and were glad when she called one day  with her five young sons.  She was a formidable style of lady with spectacles, a prominent  nose, and a loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great deal  of room.  And she really did, for she knocked down little chairs  with her skirts that were quite a great way off.  As only Ada and I  were at home, we received her timidly, for she seemed to come in  like cold weather and to make the little Pardiggles blue as they  followed. 

"These, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle with great volubility  after the first salutations, "are my five boys.  You may have seen  their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one)  in the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce.  Egbert, my  eldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the  amount of five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians.  Oswald,  my second (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and  nine-pence to the Great National Smithers Testimonial.  Francis, my  third (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 is  pledged never, through life, to use tobacco in any form."  We had never seen such dissatisfied children.  It was not merely  that they were weazened and shrivelled--though they were certainly  that to--but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent.  At  the mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed  Eghert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave  me such a savage frown.  The face of each child, as the amount of  his contribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictive  manner, but his was by far the worst.  I must except, however, the  little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and  evenly miserable. 

"You have been visiting, I understand," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "at  Mrs. Jellyby's?"  We said yes, we had passed one night there. 

"Mrs. Jellyby," pursued the lady, always speaking in the same  demonstrative, loud, hard tone, so that her voice impressed my  fancy as if it had a sort of spectacles on too--and I may take the  opportunity of remarking that her spectacles were made the less  engaging by her eyes being what Ada called "choking eyes," meaning  very prominent--"Mrs. Jellyby is a benefactor to society and  deserves a helping hand.  My boys have contributed to the African  project--Egbert, one and six, being the entire allowance of nine  weeks; Oswald, one and a penny halfpenny, being the same; the rest,  according to their little means.  Nevertheless, I do not go with  Mrs. Jellyby in all things.  I do not go with Mrs. Jellyby in her  treatment of her young family.  It has been noticed.  It has been  observed that her young family are excluded from participation in  the objects to which she is devoted.  She may be right, she may be  wrong; but, right or wrong, this is not my course with MY young  family.  I take them everywhere." 

I was afterwards convinced (and so was Ada) that from the ill- conditioned eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell.  He  turned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell. 

"They attend matins with me (very prettily done) at half-past six  o'clock in the morning all the year round, including of course the  depth of winter," said Mrs. Pardiggle rapidly, "and they are with  me during the revolving duties of the day.  I am a School lady, I  am a Visiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady;  I am on the local Linen Box Committee and many general committees;  and my canvassing alone is very extensive--perhaps no one's more  so.  But they are my companions everywhere; and by these means they  acquire that knowledge of the poor, and that capacity of doing  charitable business in general--in short, that taste for the sort  of thing--which will render them in after life a service to their  neighbours and a satisfaction to themselves.  My young family are  not frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in  subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many  public meetings and listened to as many lectures, orations, and  discussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people.   Alfred (five), who, as I mentioned, has of his own election joined  the Infant Bonds of Joy, was one of the very few children who  manifested consciousness on that occasion after a fervid address of  two hours from the chairman of the evening."  Alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the  injury of that night. 

"You may have observed, Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "in  some of the lists to which I have referred, in the possession of  our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce, that the names of my young family  are concluded with the name of O. A. Pardiggle, F.R.S., one pound.   That is their father.  We usually observe the same routine.  I put  down my mite first; then my young family enrol their contributions,  according to their ages and their little means; and then Mr.  Pardiggle brings up the rear.  Mr. Pardiggle is happy to throw in  his limited donation, under my direction; and thus things are made  not only pleasant to ourselves, but, we trust, improving to  others."  Suppose Mr. Pardiggle were to dine with Mr. Jellyby, and suppose  Mr. Jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr. Pardiggle,  would Mr. Pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication  to Mr. Jellyby?  I was quite confused to find myself thinking this,  but it came into my head.  "You are very pleasantly situated here!" said Mrs. Pardiggle.  We were glad to change the subject, and going to the window,  pointed out the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles  appeared to me to rest with curious indifference. 

"You know Mr. Gusher?" said our visitor.  We were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr. Gusher's  acquaintance. 

"The loss is yours, I assure you," said Mrs. Pardiggle with her  commanding deportment. 

"He is a very fervid, impassioned speaker- full of fire!  Stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now, which, from  the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public meeting, he  would improve almost any occasion you could mention for hours and  hours!  By this time, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle, moving  back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency, a  little round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket  on it, "by this time you have found me out, I dare say?"  This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in  perfect dismay.  As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness  after what I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the  colour of my cheeks.  "Found out, I mean," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "the prominent point in  my character.  I am aware that it is so prominent as to be  discoverable immediately.  I lay myself open to detection, I know.   Well!  I freely admit, I am a woman of business.  I love hard work;  I enjoy hard work.  The excitement does me good.  I am so  accustomed and inured to hard work that I don't know what fatigue  is." 

We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or  something to that effect.  I don't think we knew what it was  either, but this is what our politeness expressed.  "I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if  you try!" said Mrs. Pardiggle. 

"The quantity of exertion (which is  no exertion to me), the amount of business (which I regard as  nothing), that I go through sometimes astonishes myself.  I have  seen my young family, and Mr. Pardiggle, quite worn out with  witnessing it, when I may truly say I have been as fresh as a  lark!"  If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he  had already looked, this was the time when he did it.  I observed  that he doubled his right fist and delivered a secret blow into the  crown of his cap, which was under his left arm. 

"This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds," said  Mrs. Pardiggle. 

"If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have  to say, I tell that person directly, 'I am incapable of fatigue, my  good friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on until I have  done.'  It answers admirably!  Miss Summerson, I hope I shall have  your assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss Clare's  very soon."  At first I tried to excuse myself for the present on the general  ground of having occupations to attend to which I must not neglect.   But as this was an ineffectual protest, I then said, more  particularly, that I was not sure of my qualifications.  That I was  inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very  differently situated, and addressing them from suitable points of  view.  That I had not that delicate knowledge of the heart which  must be essential to such a work.  That I had much to learn,  myself, before I could teach others, and that I could not confide  in my good intentions alone.  For these reasons I thought it best  to be as useful as I could, and to render what kind services I  could to those immediately about me, and to try to let that circle  of duty gradually and naturally expand itself.  All this I said  with anything but confidence, because Mrs. Pardiggle was much older  than I, and had great experience, and was so very military in her  manners.

"You are wrong, Miss Summerson," said she, "but perhaps you are not  equal to hard work or the excitement of it, and that makes a vast  difference.  If you would like to see how I go through my work, I  am now about--with my young family--to visit a brickmaker in the  neighbourhood (a very bad character) and shall be glad to take you  with me.  Miss Clare also, if she will do me the favour."  Ada and I interchanged looks, and as we were going out in any case,  accepted the offer.  When we hastily returned from putting on our  bonnets, we found the young family languishing in a corner and Mrs.  Pardiggle sweeping about the room, knocking down nearly all the  light objects it contained.  Mrs. Pardiggle took possession of Ada,  and I followed with the family. 

Ada told me afterwards that Mrs. Pardiggle talked in the same loud  tone (that, indeed, I overheard) all the way to the brickmaker's  about an exciting contest which she had for two or three years  waged against another lady relative to the bringing in of their  rival candidates for a pension somewhere.  There had been a  quantity of printing, and promising, and proxying, and polling, and  it appeared to have imparted great liveliness to all concerned,  except the pensioners--who were not elected yet.  I am very fond of being confided in by children and am happy in  being usually favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it  gave me great uneasiness.  As soon as we were out of doors, Egbert,  with the manner of a little footpad, demanded a shilling of me on  the ground that his pocket-money was "boned" from him.  On my  pointing out the great impropriety of the word, especially in  connexion with his parent (for he added sulkily "By her!"), he  pinched me and said, "Oh, then!  Now!  Who are you!  YOU wouldn't  like it, I think?  What does she make a sham for, and pretend to  give me money, and take it away again?  Why do you call it my  allowance, and never let me spend it?" 

These exasperating  questions so inflamed his mind and the minds of Oswald and Francis  that they all pinched me at once, and in a dreadfully expert way-- screwing up such little pieces of my arms that I could hardly  forbear crying out.  Felix, at the same time, stamped upon my toes.   And the Bond of Joy, who on account of always having the whole of  his little income anticipated stood in fact pledged to abstain from  cakes as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage when we  passed a pastry-cook's shop that he terrified me by becoming  purple.  I never underwent so much, both in body and mind, in the  course of a walk with young people as from these unnaturally  constrained children when they paid me the compliment of being  natural.  I was glad when we came to the brickmaker's house, though it was  one of a cluster of wretched hovels in a brick-field, with pigsties  close to the broken windows and miserable little gardens before the  doors growing nothing but stagnant pools.  Here and there an old  tub was put to catch the droppings of rain-water from a roof, or  they were banked up with mud into a little pond like a large dirt- pie.  At the doors and windows some men and women lounged or  prowled about, and took little notice of us except to laugh to one  another or to say something as we passed about gentlefolks minding  their own business and not troubling their heads and muddying their  shoes with coming to look after other people's. 

Mrs. Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral  determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy  habits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have  been tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the  farthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly filled.   Besides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman  with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a  man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated,  lying at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful  young man fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some  kind of washing in very dirty water.  They all looked up at us as  we came in, and the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire  as if to hide her bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome. 

"Well, my friends," said Mrs. Pardiggle, but her voice had not a  friendly sound, I thought; it was much too businesslike and  systematic. 

"How do you do, all of you?  I am here again.  I told  you, you couldn't tire me, you know.  I am fond of hard work, and  am true to my word." 

"There an't," growled the man on the floor, whose head rested on  his hand as he stared at us, "any more on you to come in, is  there?" 

"No, my friend," said Mrs. Pardiggle, seating herself on one stool  and knocking down another.  "We are all here." 

"Because I thought there warn't enough of you, perhaps?" said the  man, with his pipe between his lips as he looked round upon us.  The young man and the girl both laughed.  Two friends of the young  man, whom we had attracted to the doorway and who stood there with  their hands in their pockets, echoed the laugh noisily. 

"You can't tire me, good people," said Mrs. Pardiggle to these  latter. 

"I enjoy hard work, and the harder you make mine, the  better I like it." 

"Then make it easy for her!" growled the man upon the floor. 

"I  wants it done, and over.  I wants a end of these liberties took  with my place.  I wants an end of being drawed like a badger.  Now  you're a-going to poll-pry and question according to custom--I know  what you're a-going to be up to.  Well!  You haven't got no  occasion to be up to it.  I'll save you the trouble.  Is my  daughter a-washin?  Yes, she IS a-washin.  Look at the water.   Smell it!  That's wot we drinks.  How do you like it, and what do  you think of gin instead!  An't my place dirty?  Yes, it is dirty-- it's nat'rally dirty, and it's nat'rally onwholesome; and we've had  five dirty and onwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and so  much the better for them, and for us besides.  Have I read the  little book wot you left?  No, I an't read the little book wot you  left.  There an't nobody here as knows how to read it; and if there  wos, it wouldn't be suitable to me.  It's a book fit for a babby,  and I'm not a babby.  If you was to leave me a doll, I shouldn't  nuss it.  How have I been conducting of myself?  Why, I've been  drunk for three days; and I'da been drunk four if I'da had the  money.  Don't I never mean for to go to church?  No, I don't never  mean for to go to church.  I shouldn't be expected there, if I did;  the beadle's too gen-teel for me.  And how did my wife get that  black eye?  Why, I give it her; and if she says I didn't, she's a  lie!" 

He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say all this, and he now  turned over on his other side and smoked again.  Mrs. Pardiggle,  who had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible  composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his  antagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were a constable's  staff and took the whole family into custody.  I mean into  religious custody, of course; but she really did it as if she were  an inexorable moral policeman carrying them all off to a station- house.  Ada and I were very uncomfortable.  We both felt intrusive and out  of place, and we both thought that Mrs. Pardiggle would have got on  infinitely better if she had not had such a mechanical way of  taking possession of people. 

The children sulked and stared; the  family took no notice of us whatever, except when the young man  made the dog bark, which he usually did when Mrs. Pardiggle was  most emphatic.  We both felt painfully sensible that between us and  these people there was an iron barrier which could not be removed  by our new friend.  By whom or how it could be removed, we did not  know, but we knew that.  Even what she read and said seemed to us  to be ill-chosen for such auditors, if it had been imparted ever so  modestly and with ever so much tact.  As to the little book to  which the man on the floor had referred, we acqulred a knowledge of  it afterwards, and Mr. Jarndyce said he doubted if Robinson Crusoe  could have read it, though he had had no other on his desolate  island.  We were much relieved, under these circumstances, when Mrs.  Pardiggle left off.  The man on the floor, then turning his bead round again, said  morosely, "Well!  You've done, have you?"  "For to-day, I have, my friend.  But I am never fatigued.  I shall  come to you again in your regular order," returned Mrs. Pardiggle  with demonstrative cheerfulness.  "So long as you goes now," said he, folding his arms and shutting  his eyes with an oath, "you may do wot you like!"  Mrs. Pardiggle accordingly rose and made a little vortex in the  confined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped.   Taking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others  to follow closely, and expressing her hope that the brickmaker and  all his house would be improved when she saw them next, she then  proceeded to another cottage.  I hope it is not unkind in me to say  that she certainly did make, in this as in everything else, a show  that was not conciliatory of doing charity by wholesale and of  dealing in it to a large extent.  She supposed that we were following her, but as soon as the space  was left clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fire to ask  if the baby were ill.  She only looked at it as it lay on her lap.  We had observed before  that when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her  hand, as though she wished to separate any association with noise  and violence and ill treatment from the poor little child.  Ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to  touch its little face.  As she did so, I saw what happened and drew  her back.  The child died. 

"Oh, Esther!" cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside it. 

"Look  here!  Oh, Esther, my love, the little thing!  The suffering,  quiet, pretty little thing!  I am so sorry for it.  I am so sorry  for the mother.  I never saw a sight so pitiful as this before!   Oh, baby, baby!" 

Such compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down  weeping and put her hand upon the mother's might have softened any  mother's heart that ever beat.  The woman at first gazed at her in  astonishment and then burst into tears.  Presently I took the light burden from her lap, did what I could to  make the baby's rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf,  and covered it with my own handkerchief.  We tried to comfort the  mother, and we whispered to her what Our Saviour said of children.   She answered nothing, but sat weeping--weeping very much.  When I turned, I found that the young man had taken out the dog and  was standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but  quiet.  The girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the  ground.  The man had risen.  He still smoked his pipe with an air  of defiance, but he was silent.  An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing  at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, "Jenny!   Jenny!" 

The mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the  woman's neck.  She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage.  She  had no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when  she condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no  beauty.  I say condoled, but her only words were "Jenny!  Jenny!"   All the rest was in the tone in which she said them.  I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and  shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one  another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of  each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives.  I  think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. 

What  the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves  and God.  We felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted.  We  stole out quietly and without notice from any one except the man.   He was leaning against the wall near the door, and finding that  there was scarcely room for us to pass, went out before us.  He  seemed to want to hide that he did this on our account, but we  perceived that be did, and thanked him.  He made no answer.  Ada was so full of grief all the way home, and Richard, whom we  found at home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he  said to me, when she was not present, how beautiful it was too!),  that we arranged to return at night with some little comforts and  repeat our visit at the brick-maker's house.  We said as little as  we could to Mr. Jarndyce, but the wind changed directly.  Richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning  expedition.  On our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking- house, where a number of men were flocking about the door.  Among  them, and prominent in some dispute, was the father of the little  child. 

At a short distance, we passed the young man and the dog,  in congenial company.  The sister was standing laughing and talking  with some other young women at the corner of the row of cottages,  but she seemed ashamed and turned away as we went by.  We left our escort within sight of the brickmaker's dwelling and  proceeded by ourselves.  When we came to the door, we found the  woman who had brought such consolation with her standing there  looking anxiously out. 

"It's you, young ladies, is it?" she said in a whisper. 

"I'm a- watching for my master.  My heart's in my mouth.  If he was to  catch me away from home, he'd pretty near murder me." 

"Do you mean your husband?" said I. 

"Yes, miss, my master.  Jennys asleep, quite worn out.  She's  scarcely had the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days  and nights, except when I've been able to take it for a minute or  two." 

As she gave way for us, she went softly in and put what we had  brought near the miserable bed on which the mother slept.  No  effort had been made to clean the room--it seemed in its nature  almost hopeless of being clean; but the small waxen form from which  so much solemnity diffused itself had been composed afresh, and  washed, and neatly dressed in some fragments of white linen; and on  my handkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a little bunch  of sweet herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred hands, so  lightly, so tenderly! 

"May heaven reward you!" we said to her. 

"You are a good woman." 

"Me, young ladies?" she returned with surprise. 

"Hush!  Jenny,  Jenny!" 

The mother had moaned in her sleep and moved.  The sound of the  familiar voice seemed to calm her again.  She was quiet once more.  How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon  the tiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around  the child through Ada's drooping hair as her pity bent her head-- how little I thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would  come to lie after covering the motionless and peaceful breast!  I  only thought that perhaps the Angel of the child might not be all  unconscious of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate a  hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when we had taken  leave, and left her at the door, by turns looking, and listening in  terror for herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, "Jenny,  Jenny!"

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