Bleak House, Charles Dickens [the beginning after the end novel read .txt] 📗

look for it, and hardly

ever found it.

 

As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this

shorn lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton

Garden (where I found the children, when I afterwards went there,

cutting the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking

themselves with it), Caddy had brought about a meeting between him

and old Mr. Turveydrop; and poor Mr. Jellyby, being very humble and

meek, had deferred to Mr. Turveydrop’s deportment so submissively

that they had become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr.

Turveydrop, thus familiarized with the idea of his son’s marriage,

had worked up his parental feelings to the height of contemplating

that event as being near at hand and had given his gracious consent

to the young couple commencing housekeeping at the academy in

Newman Street when they would.

 

“And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?”

 

“Oh! Poor Pa,” said Caddy, “only cried and said he hoped we might

get on better than he and Ma had got on. He didn’t say so before

Prince, he only said so to me. And he said, ‘My poor girl, you

have not been very well taught how to make a home for your husband,

but unless you mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had

better murder him than marry him—if you really love him.’”

 

“And how did you reassure him, Caddy?”

 

“Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and

hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn’t help crying

myself. But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and

that I hoped our house would be a place for him to come and find

some comfort in of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could

be a better daughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned

Peepy’s coming to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and

said the children were Indians.”

 

“Indians, Caddy?”

 

“Yes,” said Caddy, “wild Indians. And Pa said”—here she began to

sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world—

“that he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was

their being all tomahawked together.”

 

Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Jellyby did

not mean these destructive sentiments.

 

“No, of course I know Pa wouldn’t like his family to be weltering

in their blood,” said Caddy, “but he means that they are very

unfortunate in being Ma’s children and that he is very unfortunate

in being Ma’s husband; and I am sure that’s true, though it seems

unnatural to say so.”

 

I asked Caddy if Mrs. Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed.

 

“Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther,” she returned. “It’s impossible

to say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often

enough; and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look,

as if I was I don’t know what—a steeple in the distance,” said

Caddy with a sudden idea; “and then she shakes her head and says

‘Oh, Caddy, Caddy, what a tease you are!’ and goes on with the

Borrioboola letters.”

 

“And about your wardrobe, Caddy?” said I. For she was under no

restraint with us.

 

“Well, my dear Esther,” she returned, drying her eyes, “I must do

the best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind

remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question

concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and

would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor

cares.”

 

Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother,

but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am

afraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so

much to admire in the good disposition which had survived under

such discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I)

proposed a little scheme that made her perfectly joyful. This was

her staying with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one,

and our all three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and

sewing, and saving, and doing the very best we could think of to

make the most of her stock. My guardian being as pleased with the

idea as Caddy was, we took her home next day to arrange the matter

and brought her out again in triumph with her boxes and all the

purchases that could be squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr.

Jellyby had found in the docks I suppose, but which he at all

events gave her. What my guardian would not have given her if we

had encouraged him, it would be difficult to say, but we thought it

right to compound for no more than her wedding-dress and bonnet.

He agreed to this compromise, and if Caddy had ever been happy in

her life, she was happy when we sat down to work.

 

She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her

fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not

help reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and

partly with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon

got over that and began to improve rapidly. So day after day she,

and my darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of

the town, and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.

 

Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious “to learn

housekeeping,” as she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her

learning housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a

joke that I laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical

confusion when she proposed it. However, I said, “Caddy, I am sure

you are very welcome to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my

dear,” and I showed her all my books and methods and all my fidgety

ways. You would have supposed that I was showing her some

wonderful inventions, by her study of them; and if you had seen

her, whenever I jingled my housekeeping keys, get up and attend me,

certainly you might have thought that there never was a greater

imposter than I with a blinder follower than Caddy Jellyby.

 

So what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and

backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the

three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy to see

what could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to

take care of my guardian.

 

When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging

in Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times,

where preparations were in progress too—a good many, I observed,

for enhancing the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop, and a few for

putting the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the

house—but our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent

for the wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Jellyby beforehand with

some faint sense of the occasion.

 

The latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs.

Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the

back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with waste-paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be

littered with straw. Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking

strong coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by

appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going

into a decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr. Jellyby

came home, he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen.

There he got something to eat if the servant would give him

anything, and then, feeling that he was in the way, went out and

walked about Hatton Garden in the wet. The poor children scrambled

up and tumbled down the house as they had always been accustomed to

do.

 

The production of these devoted little sacrifices in any

presentable condition being quite out of the question at a week’s

notice, I proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we

could on her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept,

and should confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama’s

room, and a clean breakfast. In truth Mrs. Jellyby required a good

deal of attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened

considerably since I first knew her and her hair looking like the

mane of a dustman’s horse.

 

Thinking that the display of Caddy’s wardrobe would be the best

means of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Jellyby to come

and look at it spread out on Caddy’s bed in the evening after the

unwholesome boy was gone.

 

“My dear Miss Summerson,” said she, rising from her desk with her

usual sweetness of temper, “these are really ridiculous

preparations, though your assisting them is a proof of your

kindness. There is something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the

idea of Caddy being married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly

puss!”

 

She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes

in her customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea

to her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head,

“My good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might

have been equipped for Africa!”

 

On our going downstairs again, Mrs. Jellyby asked me whether this

troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday. And

on my replying yes, she said, “Will my room be required, my dear

Miss Summerson? For it’s quite impossible that I can put my papers

away.”

 

I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be

wanted and that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere.

“Well, my dear Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, “you know best,

I dare say. But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has

embarrassed me to that extent, overwhelmed as I am with public

business, that I don’t know which way to turn. We have a

Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday afternoon, and the

inconvenience is very serious.”

 

“It is not likely to occur again,” said I, smiling. “Caddy will be

married but once, probably.”

 

“That’s true,” Mrs. Jellyby replied; “that’s true, my dear. I

suppose we must make the best of it!”

 

The next question was how Mrs. Jellyby should be dressed on the

occasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely

from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally

shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a

superior spirit who could just bear with our trifling.

 

The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary

confusion in which she kept them, added not a little to our

difficulty; but at length we devised something not very unlike what

a commonplace mother might wear on such an occasion. The

abstracted manner in which Mrs. Jellyby would deliver herself up to

having this attire tried on by the dressmaker, and the sweetness

with which she would then observe to me how sorry she was that I

had not turned my thoughts to Africa, were consistent with the rest

of her behaviour.

 

The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if

Mrs. Jellyby’s household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul’s

or Saint Peter’s, the sole advantage they would have found in