Bleak House
my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr.
Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.
“Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make,” said Mr. Bucket,
rapidly glancing at it, “is to let me speak a word to this young lady
in private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to
that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one
thing that’s likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your
swiftest and best!” In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the
door. “Now my dear, you’re steady and quite sure of yourself?”
“Quite,” said I.
“Whose writing is that?”
It was my mother’s. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of
paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed
to me at my guardian’s.
“You know the hand,” he said, “and if you are firm enough to read it
to me, do! But be particular to a word.”
It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what
follows:
I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the
dear one, if I could, once more—but only to see her—not
to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other
object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the
mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me,
she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the
dear one’s good. You remember her dead child. The men’s
consent I bought, but her help was freely given.
“‘I came.’ That was written,” said my companion, “when she rested
there. It bears out what I made of it. I was right.”
The next was written at another time:
I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and
I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no
purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am
saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and
fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but
I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was
right that all that had sustained me should give way at
once and that I should die of terror and my conscience.
“Take courage,” said Mr. Bucket. “There’s only a few words more.”
Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost
in the dark:
I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon
forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing
about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part
with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get
so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive.
Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my
chair. “Cheer up! Don’t think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon
as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready.”
I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for
my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I
heard Mr. Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At
length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important
to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for
whatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that
she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed.
The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what
passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where
the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these
points, I went into the next room with them. Mr. Woodcourt would have
remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us.
The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down.
They stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might
have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a
plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I
kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my
shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into
tears.
“My poor girl,” said I, laying my face against her forehead, for
indeed I was crying too, and trembling, “it seems cruel to trouble
you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter
than I could tell you in an hour.”
She began piteously declaring that she didn’t mean any harm, she
didn’t mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby!
“We are all sure of that,” said I. “But pray tell me how you got it.”
“Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I’ll tell true, indeed,
Mrs. Snagsby.”
“I am sure of that,” said I. “And how was it?”
“I had been out on an errand, dear lady—long after it was
dark—quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking
person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me
coming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here.
And I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about
here, but had lost her way and couldn’t find them. Oh, what shall I
do, what shall I do! They won’t believe me! She didn’t say any harm
to me, and I didn’t say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!”
It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her—which she did, I
must say, with a good deal of contrition—before she could be got
beyond this.
“She could not find those places,” said I.
“No!” cried the girl, shaking her head. “No! Couldn’t find them. And
she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if
you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you’d have given her half a crown, I
know!”
“Well, Guster, my girl,” said he, at first not knowing what to say.
“I hope I should.”
“And yet she was so well spoken,” said the girl, looking at me with
wide open eyes, “that it made a person’s heart bleed. And so she said
to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her
which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I
told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to
parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far
from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate.”
As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket
received this with a look which I could not separate from one of
alarm.
“Oh, dear, dear!” cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her
hands. “What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying
ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff—that
you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby—that frightened me so,
Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!”
“You are so much better now,” said I. “Pray, pray tell me more.”
“Yes I will, yes I will! But don’t be angry with me, that’s a dear
lady, because I have been so ill.”
Angry with her, poor soul!
“There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to
find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with
eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back.
And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was
to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded
and never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the
messenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no
harm, and she said no—no harm. And so I took it from her, and she
said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and
consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and
went.”
“And did she go—”
“Yes,” cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. “Yes! She went the
way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came behind me
from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened.”
Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and
immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated, but I
said, “Don’t leave me now!” and Mr. Bucket added, “You’ll be better
with us, we may want you; don’t lose time!”
I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that
it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the
street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling
and that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled
people passing in the streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the
clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of
blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the
courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor
girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my
hearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained
house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great
water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the
air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real.
At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one
lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly
struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground—a
dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where
I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in
by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose
walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the
gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and
splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a
woman lying—Jenny, the mother of the dead child.
I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me
with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to
the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did
so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.
“Miss Summerson, you’ll understand me, if you think a moment. They
changed clothes at the cottage.”
They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my
mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no
meaning to them in any other connexion.
“And one returned,” said Mr. Bucket, “and one went on. And the one
that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and
then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!”
I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what
it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead
child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron
gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately
spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered,
senseless creature. She who had brought my mother’s letter, who could
give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide
us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to
this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could
not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that
moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not
comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt’s face.
I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to
keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a
reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.
I even heard it said between them, “Shall she go?”
“She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They
have a higher right than ours.”
I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head,
put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my
mother, cold and dead.
CHAPTER LX
Perspective
I proceed to other passages of my narrative. From the goodness of all
about me I derived such consolation as I can never think of unmoved.
I have already said so much of myself, and so much still remains,
that I will not dwell upon my sorrow. I had an illness, but it was
not a long one; and I would avoid even this mention of it if I could