Bleak House. Charles Dickens
and agreeable. At least, Ada asked me if I did not, and I said yes.
Chapter XIV
Deportment
Richard left us on the very next evening, to begin his new career, and committed Ada to my charge with great love for her, and great trust in me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write to Richard once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of all his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute and persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's bridesmaid when they were married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.
'And if the suit should make us rich, Esther – which it may, you know!' said Richard, to crown all.
A shade crossed Ada's face.
'My dearest Ada,' asked Richard, 'why not?'
'It had better declare us poor at once,' said Ada.
'O! I don't know about that,' returned Richard; 'but, at all events, it won't declare anything at once. It hasn't declared anything in Heaven knows how many years.'
'Too true,' said Ada.
'Yes, but,' urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather than her words, 'the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that reasonable?'
'You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will make us unhappy.'
'But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!' cried Richard. 'We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it should make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The Court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.'
'No,' said Ada, 'but it may be better to forget all about it.'
'Well, well!' cried Richard, 'then we will forget all about it! We consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her approving face, and it's done!'
'Dame Durden's approving face,' said I, looking out of the box in which I was packing his books, 'was not very visible when you called it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do better.'
So Richard said there was an end of it, – and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the great wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.
On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs. Jellyby's, but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It appeared that she had gone somewhere, to a tea-drinking, and had taken Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt, sufficient active exercise of pen and ink, to make her daughter's part in the proceedings anything but a holiday.
It being, now, beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby's return, we called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile End, directly after breakfast, on some Borrioboolan business, arising out of a Society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have strolled away with the dustman's cart), I now inquired for him again. The oyster-shells he had been building a house with, were still in the passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had 'gone after the sheep.' When we repeated, with some surprise, 'The sheep?' she said, O yes, on market days he sometimes followed them quite out of town, and came back in such a state as never was!
I was sitting at the window with my guardian, on the following morning, and Ada was busy writing – of course to Richard – when Miss Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom she had made some endeavours to render presentable, by wiping the dirt into corners of his face and hands, and making his hair very wet and then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear child wore, was either too large for him or too small. Among his other contradictory decorations he had the hat of a Bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a ploughman: while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare, below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been hastily mended; and I recognised the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance, and looked very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in, by the way in which she glanced, first at him and then at us.
'O dear me!' said my guardian. 'Due East!'
Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome, and presented her to Mr. Jarndyce; to whom she said, as she sat down:
'Ma's compliments, and she hopes you'll excuse her because she's correcting proofs of the plan. She's going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she knows you'll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them with me. Ma's compliments.' With which she presented it sulkily enough.
'Thank you,' said my guardian. 'I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby. O dear me! This is a very trying wind!'
We were busy with Peepy; taking off his clerical hat; asking him if he remembered us; and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first, but relented at the sight of spongecake, and allowed me to take him on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then withdrawing into the temporary Growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a conversation with her usual abruptness.
'We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn,' said she. 'I have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn't be worse off if I was a what 's-his-name – man and a brother!'
I tried to say something soothing.
'O, it's of no use, Miss Summerson,' exclaimed Miss Jellyby, 'though I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am used, and I am not to be talked over. You wouldn't be talked over, if you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!'
'I sha'n't!' said Peepy.
'Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!' returned Miss Jellyby, with tears in her eyes. 'I'll never take pains to dress you any more.'
'Yes, I will go, Caddy!' cried Peepy, who was really a good child, and who was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once.
'It seems a little thing to cry about,' said poor Miss Jellyby, apologetically, 'but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so, that that alone makes my head ache till I can't see out of my eyes. And look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as he is!'
Peepy, happily unconsious of the defects in his appearance, sat on the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of his den at us, while he ate his cake.
'I have sent him to the other end of the room,' observed Miss Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, 'because I don't want him to hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There'll be nobody but Ma to thank for it.'
We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby's affairs were not in so bad a state as that.
'It's of no use hoping, though it's very kind of you,' returned Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. 'Pa told me, only yesterday morning (and dreadfully unhappy he is), that he couldn't weather the storm. I should be surprised if he could.