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

south-front 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 fee’d, 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 really 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

too—but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the

mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed

Egbert 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 business-like 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 acquired 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 head 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 he

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. Jenny’s 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!”