Bleak House
“Miss Flite,” said Mr. Woodcourt in a grave kind of voice, as if he
were appealing to her while speaking to us, and laying his hand
gently on her arm, “Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual
accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might
have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and
agitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery,
though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I
have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since
and being of some small use to her.”
“The kindest physician in the college,” whispered Miss Flite to me.
“I expect a judgment. On the day of judgment. And shall then confer
estates.”
“She will be as well in a day or two,” said Mr. Woodcourt, looking at
her with an observant smile, “as she ever will be. In other words,
quite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?”
“Most extraordinary!” said Miss Flite, smiling brightly. “You never
heard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge or
Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.) places in my hand a paper of
shillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the
paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So
well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you
say? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I
think? I think,” said Miss Flite, drawing herself back with a very
shrewd look and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant
manner, “that the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during
which the Great Seal has been open (for it has been open a long
time!), forwards them. Until the judgment I expect is given. Now
that’s very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he IS a
little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending court the other
day—I attend it regularly, with my documents—I taxed him with it,
and he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and
HE smiled at me from his bench. But it’s great good fortune, is it
not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage.
Oh, I assure you to the greatest advantage!”
I congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this
fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of
it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder
whose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me,
contemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him.
“And what do you call these little fellows, ma’am?” said he in his
pleasant voice. “Have they any names?”
“I can answer for Miss Flite that they have,” said I, “for she
promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?”
Ada remembered very well.
“Did I?” said Miss Flite. “Who’s that at my door? What are you
listening at my door for, Krook?”
The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there
with his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels.
“I warn’t listening, Miss Flite,” he said, “I was going to give a rap
with my knuckles, only you’re so quick!”
“Make your cat go down. Drive her away!” the old lady angrily
exclaimed.
“Bah, bah! There ain’t no danger, gentlefolks,” said Mr. Krook,
looking slowly and sharply from one to another until he had looked at
all of us; “she’d never offer at the birds when I was here unless I
told her to it.”
“You will excuse my landlord,” said the old lady with a dignified
air. “M, quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?”
“Hi!” said the old man. “You know I am the Chancellor.”
“Well?” returned Miss Flite. “What of that?”
“For the Chancellor,” said the old man with a chuckle, “not to be
acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain’t it, Miss Flite? Mightn’t I
take the liberty? Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce
a’most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never
to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go
there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one
day with another.”
“I never go there,” said Mr. Jarndyce (which he never did on any
consideration). “I would sooner go—somewhere else.”
“Would you though?” returned Krook, grinning. “You’re bearing hard
upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though
perhaps it is but nat’ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What,
you’re looking at my lodger’s birds, Mr. Jarndyce?” The old man had
come by little and little into the room until he now touched my
guardian with his elbow and looked close up into his face with his
spectacled eyes. “It’s one of her strange ways that she’ll never tell
the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named ’em
all.” This was in a whisper. “Shall I run ’em over, Flite?” he asked
aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away,
affecting to sweep the grate.
“If you like,” she answered hurriedly.
The old man, looking up at the cages after another look at us, went
through the list.
“Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin,
Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags,
Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That’s
the whole collection,” said the old man, “all cooped up together, by
my noble and learned brother.”
“This is a bitter wind!” muttered my guardian.
“When my noble and learned brother gives his judgment, they’re to be
let go free,” said Krook, winking at us again. “And then,” he added,
whispering and grinning, “if that ever was to happen—which it
won’t—the birds that have never been caged would kill ’em.”
“If ever the wind was in the east,” said my guardian, pretending to
look out of the window for a weathercock, “I think it’s there
to-day!”
We found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not
Miss Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature
in consulting the convenience of others as there possibly could be.
It was Mr. Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr.
Jarndyce. If he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended
him more closely. He proposed to show us his Court of Chancery and
all the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our
inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to Mr. Jarndyce and
sometimes detained him under one pretence or other until we had
passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon
some secret subject which he could not make up his mind to approach.
I cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive
of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he
could not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook’s was that day. His
watchfulness of my guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes
from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the
slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When
we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across
and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of
power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until
they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face.
At last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house
and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was
certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here on
the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old
stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were
pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands.
“What are you doing here?” asked my guardian.
“Trying to learn myself to read and write,” said Krook.
“And how do you get on?”
“Slow. Bad,” returned the old man impatiently. “It’s hard at my time
of life.”
“It would be easier to be taught by some one,” said my guardian.
“Aye, but they might teach me wrong!” returned the old man with a
wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. “I don’t know what I may
have lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn’t like to lose
anything by being learned wrong now.”
“Wrong?” said my guardian with his good-humoured smile. “Who do you
suppose would teach you wrong?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House!” replied the old man,
turning up his spectacles on his forehead and rubbing his hands. “I
don’t suppose as anybody would, but I’d rather trust my own self than
another!”
These answers and his manner were strange enough to cause my guardian
to inquire of Mr. Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln’s Inn
together, whether Mr. Krook were really, as his lodger represented
him, deranged. The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason
to think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually
was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin,
of which he drank great quantities and of which he and his back-shop,
as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him
mad as yet.
On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy’s affections by buying him a
windmill and two flour-sacks that he would suffer nobody else to take
off his hat and gloves and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my
side. Caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we
imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back.
We made much of Caddy, and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened
exceedingly; and my guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all
very happy indeed until Caddy went home at night in a hackney-coach,
with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.
I have forgotten to mention—at least I have not mentioned—that Mr.
Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr.
Badger’s. Or that Mr. Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or
that he came. Or that when they were all gone and I said to Ada,
“Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!” Ada
laughed and said—
But I don’t think it matters what my darling said. She was always
merry.
CHAPTER XV
Bell Yard
While we were in London Mr. Jarndyce was constantly beset by the
crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much
astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our
arrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two
shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went on and to
brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were
almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All
objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for
anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power
seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit for
any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in
the light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly
swallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be
the absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake
and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole
procession of people.
Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and with
her, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to
us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew Mrs. Pardiggle
out. Mrs. Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my guardian in
behalf of her eloquent friend Mr. Gusher. With Mr. Gusher appeared
Mr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist
surface and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they
seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at
first sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr.
Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great