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

the year round, with his window open, his bedstead without any furniture standing in the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold bath gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that you came into another passage, where there were backstairs and where you could hear the horses being rubbed down outside the stable and being told to “Hold up” and “Get over,” as they slipped about very much on the uneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another door (every room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back there or had ever got out of it.

The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as pleasantly irregular. Ada’s sleeping-room was all flowers⁠—in chintz and paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff courtly chairs which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool for greater state, on either side of the fireplace. Our sitting-room was green and had framed and glazed upon the walls numbers of surprising and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a real trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been served with gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists. In my room there were oval engravings of the months⁠—ladies haymaking in short waists and large hats tied under the chin, for June; smooth-legged noblemen pointing with cocked-hats to village steeples, for October. Half-length portraits in crayons abounded all through the house, but were so dispersed that I found the brother of a youthful officer of mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen Anne’s reign, taking a complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty; and a composition in needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an alphabet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to the chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to the pincushions and scent-bottles on the dressing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. They agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of the whitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a drawer, small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities of rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such, with its illuminated windows, softened here and there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon the starlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort; with its hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with the face of its generous master brightening everything we saw; and just wind enough without to sound a low accompaniment to everything we heard, were our first impressions of Bleak House.

“I am glad you like it,” said Mr. Jarndyce when he had brought us round again to Ada’s sitting-room. “It makes no pretensions, but it is a comfortable little place, I hope, and will be more so with such bright young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before dinner. There’s no one here but the finest creature upon earth⁠—a child.”

“More children, Esther!” said Ada.

“I don’t mean literally a child,” pursued Mr. Jarndyce; “not a child in years. He is grown up⁠—he is at least as old as I am⁠—but in simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child.”

We felt that he must be very interesting.

“He knows Mrs. Jellyby,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “He is a musical man, an amateur, but might have been a professional. He is an artist too, an amateur, but might have been a professional. He is a man of attainments and of captivating manners. He has been unfortunate in his affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his family; but he don’t care⁠—he’s a child!”

“Did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?” inquired Richard.

“Yes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But he has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to look after him. He is a child, you know!” said Mr. Jarndyce.

“And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?” inquired Richard.

“Why, just as you may suppose,” said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance suddenly falling. “It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole’s children have tumbled up somehow or other. The wind’s getting round again, I am afraid. I feel it rather!”

Richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night.

“It is exposed,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “No doubt that’s the cause. Bleak House has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come along!”

Our luggage having arrived and being all at hand, I was dressed in a few minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away when a maid (not the one in attendance upon Ada, but another, whom I had not seen) brought a basket into my room with two bunches of keys in it, all labelled.

“For you, miss, if you please,” said she.

“For me?” said I.

“The housekeeping keys, miss.”

I showed my surprise, for she added with some little surprise on her own part, “I was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss. Miss Summerson, if I don’t deceive myself?”

“Yes,” said I. “That is my name.”

“The large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the cellars, miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint tomorrow morning, I was to show you the presses and things they belong to.”

I said I would be ready at half-past six, and after she was gone, stood looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust. Ada found me thus and had such a delightful confidence in me when I showed her the keys and told her about them that it would have been insensibility and ingratitude not to feel