Bleak House, Charles Dickens [early reader books TXT] 📗

confused by the idea that they are singing while I am following the arguments in court. And my mind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time, I’ll tell you their names. Not at present. On a day of such good omen, they shall sing as much as they like. In honour of youth,” a smile and curtsy, “hope,” a smile and curtsy, “and beauty,” a smile and curtsy. “There! We’ll let in the full light.”

The birds began to stir and chirp.

“I cannot admit the air freely,” said the little old lady⁠—the room was close, and would have been the better for it⁠—“because the cat you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives. She crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have discovered,” whispering mysteriously, “that her natural cruelty is sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly and full of malice. I half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat, but the wolf of the old saying. It is so very difficult to keep her from the door.”

Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was half-past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to an end than we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court. On our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she opened the door to attend us downstairs.

“With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I should be there before the Chancellor comes in,” said she, “for he might mention my case the first thing. I have a presentiment that he will mention it the first thing this morning.”

She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a little⁠—M⁠⸺. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a dark door there.

“The only other lodger,” she now whispered in explanation, “a law-writer. The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to the devil. I don’t know what he can have done with the money. Hush!”

She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there, and repeating “Hush!” went before us on tiptoe as though even the sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.

Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be working hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece of chalk by him, with which, as he put each separate package or bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the panelling of the wall.

Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and chalked the letter J upon the wall⁠—in a very curious manner, beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as any clerk in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy’s office would have made.

“Can you read it?” he asked me with a keen glance.

“Surely,” said I. “It’s very plain.”

“What is it?”

“J.”

With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out and turned an “a” in its place (not a capital letter this time), and said, “What’s that?”

I told him. He then rubbed that out and turned the letter “r,” and asked me the same question. He went on quickly until he had formed in the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of the letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on the wall together.

“What does that spell?” he asked me.

When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the same rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters forming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment, I also read; and he laughed again.

“Hi!” said the old man, laying aside the chalk. “I have a turn for copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor write.”

He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite relieved by Richard’s appearing at the door and saying, “Miss Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair. Don’t be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Krook!”

I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good morning and joining my friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada and me. Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back and saw Mr. Krook standing at his shop-door, in his spectacles, looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and her tail sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall feather.

“Quite an adventure for a morning in London!” said Richard with a sigh. “Ah, cousin, cousin, it’s a weary word this Chancery!”

“It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember,” returned Ada. “I am grieved that I should be the enemy⁠—as I suppose I am⁠—of a great number of relations and others, and that they should be my enemies⁠—as I suppose