Bleak House
Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at
the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, “We are locked in.
Mrs. Blinder’s got the key!”
I applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. In a poor room
with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture was a
mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a
heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather
was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets
as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that
their noses looked red and pinched and their small figures shrunken
as the boy walked up and down nursing and hushing the child with its
head on his shoulder.
“Who has locked you up here alone?” we naturally asked.
“Charley,” said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.
“Is Charley your brother?”
“No. She’s my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley.”
“Are there any more of you besides Charley?”
“Me,” said the boy, “and Emma,” patting the limp bonnet of the child
he was nursing. “And Charley.”
“Where is Charley now?”
“Out a-washing,” said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again
and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to
gaze at us at the same time.
We were looking at one another and at these two children when there
came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd
and older-looking in the face—pretty-faced too—wearing a womanly
sort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare arms on a
womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with
washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her
arms. But for this, she might have been a child playing at washing
and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the
truth.
She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had
made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very
light, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she
stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.
“Oh, here’s Charley!” said the boy.
The child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to be
taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of
manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us
over the burden that clung to her most affectionately.
“Is it possible,” whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the
little creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy
keeping close to her, holding to her apron, “that this child works
for the rest? Look at this! For God’s sake, look at this!”
It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two
of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet
with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the
childish figure.
“Charley, Charley!” said my guardian. “How old are you?”
“Over thirteen, sir,” replied the child.
“Oh! What a great age,” said my guardian. “What a great age,
Charley!”
I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half
playfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.
“And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?” said my
guardian.
“Yes, sir,” returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect
confidence, “since father died.”
“And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley,” said my guardian,
turning his face away for a moment, “how do you live?”
“Since father died, sir, I’ve gone out to work. I’m out washing
to-day.”
“God help you, Charley!” said my guardian. “You’re not tall enough to
reach the tub!”
“In pattens I am, sir,” she said quickly. “I’ve got a high pair as
belonged to mother.”
“And when did mother die? Poor mother!”
“Mother died just after Emma was born,” said the child, glancing at
the face upon her bosom. “Then father said I was to be as good a
mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home and
did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I began
to go out. And that’s how I know how; don’t you see, sir?”
“And do you often go out?”
“As often as I can,” said Charley, opening her eyes and smiling,
“because of earning sixpences and shillings!”
“And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?”
“To keep ’em safe, sir, don’t you see?” said Charley. “Mrs. Blinder
comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and
perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and Tom
an’t afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?”
“No-o!” said Tom stoutly.
“When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and
they show up here quite bright—almost quite bright. Don’t they,
Tom?”
“Yes, Charley,” said Tom, “almost quite bright.”
“Then he’s as good as gold,” said the little creature—Oh, in such a
motherly, womanly way! “And when Emma’s tired, he puts her to bed.
And when he’s tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and
light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it
with me. Don’t you, Tom?”
“Oh, yes, Charley!” said Tom. “That I do!” And either in this glimpse
of the great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love for
Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the scanty
folds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying.
It was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed among
these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father and
their mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of
taking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work,
and by her bustling busy way. But now, when Tom cried, although she
sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any
movement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little charges,
I saw two silent tears fall down her face.
I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops,
and the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the
birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours, when I found that
Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken
her all this time to get upstairs) and was talking to my guardian.
“It’s not much to forgive ’em the rent, sir,” she said; “who could
take it from them!”
“Well, well!” said my guardian to us two. “It is enough that the time
will come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and that
forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these—This child,” he
added after a few moments, “could she possibly continue this?”
“Really, sir, I think she might,” said Mrs. Blinder, getting her
heavy breath by painful degrees. “She’s as handy as it’s possible to
be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after the
mother died was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her
with him after he was took ill, it really was! ‘Mrs. Blinder,’ he
said to me the very last he spoke—he was lying there—‘Mrs.
Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel sitting in
this room last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our
Father!’”
“He had no other calling?” said my guardian.
“No, sir,” returned Mrs. Blinder, “he was nothing but a follerers.
When he first came to lodge here, I didn’t know what he was, and I
confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn’t liked in
the yard. It wasn’t approved by the other lodgers. It is NOT a
genteel calling,” said Mrs. Blinder, “and most people do object to
it. Mr. Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good lodger,
though his temper has been hard tried.”
“So you gave him notice?” said my guardian.
“So I gave him notice,” said Mrs. Blinder. “But really when the time
came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was
punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir,” said Mrs.
Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole with her eye, “and it’s
something in this world even to do that.”
“So you kept him after all?”
“Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could
arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its
being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent
gruff—but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been
kind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is
proved.”
“Have many people been kind to the children?” asked Mr. Jarndyce.
“Upon the whole, not so bad, sir,” said Mrs. Blinder; “but certainly
not so many as would have been if their father’s calling had been
different. Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a
little purse. Some neighbours in the yard that had always joked and
tapped their shoulders when he went by came forward with a little
subscription, and—in general—not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte.
Some people won’t employ her because she was a follerer’s child; some
people that do employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having
her to work for them, with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and
perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But she’s patienter than
others would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the
full mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, not
so bad, sir, but might be better.”
Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity
of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it
was fully restored. Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak to us when his
attention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the
Mr. Gridley who had been mentioned and whom we had seen on our way
up.
“I don’t know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen,” he
said, as if he resented our presence, “but you’ll excuse my coming
in. I don’t come in to stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom!
Well, little one! How is it with us all to-day?”
He bent over the group in a caressing way and clearly was regarded as
a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern
character and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My
guardian noticed it and respected it.
“No one, surely, would come here to stare about him,” he said mildly.
“May be so, sir, may be so,” returned the other, taking Tom upon his
knee and waving him off impatiently. “I don’t want to argue with
ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing to last one man
his life.”
“You have sufficient reason, I dare say,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “for
being chafed and irritated—”
“There again!” exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. “I am of
a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!”
“Not very, I think.”
“Sir,” said Gridley, putting down the child and going up to him as if
he meant to strike him, “do you know anything of Courts of Equity?”
“Perhaps I do, to my sorrow.”
“To your sorrow?” said the man, pausing in his wrath, “if so, I beg
your pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir,” with
renewed violence, “I have been dragged for five and twenty years over
burning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go
into the Court of Chancery yonder and ask what is one of the standing
jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell
you that the best joke they have is the man from Shropshire. I,” he
said, beating one hand on the other passionately, “am the man from
Shropshire.”
“I believe I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing
some entertainment in the same grave place,” said my guardian
composedly. “You may have heard my name—Jarndyce.”
“Mr. Jarndyce,” said Gridley with a rough sort of salutation, “you
bear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I
tell you—and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they
are friends of yours—that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I