The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  “But, suppose,” said my guardian, laughing, “he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of providing it?”

  “My dear Jarndyce,” he returned, “you surprise me. You take the butcher’s position. A butcher I once dealt with, occupied that very ground. Says he, ‘Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound?’ ‘Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound, my honest friend?’ said I, naturally amazed by the question. ‘I like spring lamb!’ This was so far convincing. ‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!’ ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You had got the lamb, and I have not got the money. You couldn’t really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!’ He had not a word. There was an end of the subject.”

  “Did he take no legal proceedings?” inquired my guardian.

  “Yes, he took legal proceedings,” said Mr. Skimpole. “But, in that, he was influenced by passion; not by reason. Passion reminds me of Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire.”

  “He is a great favourite with my girls,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “and I have promised for them.”

  “Nature forgot to shade him off, I think?” observed Mr. Skimpole to Ada and me. “A little too boisterous—like the sea? A little too vehement—like a bull, who has made up his mind to consider every colour scarlet? But, I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!”

  I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very highly of one another; Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to many things, and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for anything. Besides which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the point of breaking out into some strong opinion, when Mr. Skimpole was referred to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly pleased with him.

  “He has invited me,” said Mr. Skimpole; “and if a child may trust himself in such hands: which the present child is encouraged to do, with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him: I shall go. He proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By the bye, Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss Summerson?”

  He asked me, as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful, light-hearted manner, and without the least embarrassment.

  “O yes!” said I.

  “Coavinses has been arrested by the great Bailiff,” said Mr. Skimpole. “He will never do violence to the sunshine any more.”

  It quite shocked me to hear it; for I had already recalled, with anything but a serious association, the image of the man sitting on the sofa that night, wiping his head.

  “His successor informed me of it yesterday,” said Mr. Skimpole. “His successor is in my house now—in possession, I think he calls it. He came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter’s birthday. I put it to him, ‘This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed daughter you wouldn’t like me to come, uninvited, on her birthday?’ But, he stayed.”

  Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched the piano by which he was seated.

  “And he told me,” he said, playing little chords where I shall put full stops, “that Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And that Coavinses’ profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses. Were at a considerable disadvantage.”

  Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr. Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada’s favourite songs. Ada and I both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing in his mind.

  After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and stopped Mr. Skimpole’s playing. “I don’t like this, Skimpole,” he said thoughtfully.

  Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up surprised.

  “The man was necessary,” pursued my guardian, walking backward and forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the room, and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high east wind had blown it into that form. “If we make such men necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was no harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to know more about this.”

  “O! Coavinses?” cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he meant. “Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses’ headquarters, and you can know what you will.”

  Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal. “Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way, as soon as another!” We were quickly ready and went out. Mr. Skimpole went with us, and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing, he said, for him to want Coavinses, instead of Coavinses wanting him!

  He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses’ Castle. On our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came out of a sort of office, and looked at us over a spiked wicket.

  “Who did you want?” said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his chin.

  “There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “who is dead.”

  “Yes?” said the boy. “Well?”

  “I want to know his name, if you please?”

  “Name of Neckett,” said the boy.

  “And his address?”

  “Bell Yard,” said the boy. “Chandler’s shop, left hand side, name of Blinder.”

  “Was he—I don’t know how to shape the question,” murmured my guardian—“industrious?”

  “Was Neckett?” said the boy. “Yes, wery much so. He was never tired of watching. He’d set upon a post at a street-corner, eight or ten hours at a stretch, if he undertook to do it.”

  “He might have done worse,” I heard my guardian soliloquize. “He might have undertaken to do it, and not done it. Thank you. That’s all I want.”

  We left the boy, with his head on one side, and his arms on the gate, fondling and sucking the spikes; and went back to Lincoln’s Inn, where Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses, awaited us. Then, we all went to Bell Yard: a narrow alley, at a very short distance. We soon found the chandler’s shop. In it, was a good-natured-looking old woman, with a dropsy, or an asthma, or perhaps both.

  “Neckett’s children?” said she in reply to my inquiry. “Yes, surely, miss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the stairs.” And she handed me the key across the counter.

  I glanced at the key, and glanced at her; but she took it for granted that I knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the children’s door, I came out, without asking any more questions, and led the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could; but four of us made some noise on the aged boards; and, when we came to the second story, we found we had disturbed a man who was standing there, looking out of his room.

  “Is it Gridley that’s wanted?” he said, fixing his eyes on me with an angry stare.

  “No, sir,” said I, “I am going higher up.”

  He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole: fixing the same angry stare on each in succession, as they passed and followed me. Mr. Jarndyce gave him good day. “Good day!” he said, abruptly and fiercely. He was a tall sallow man, with a careworn head, on which but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and prominent eyes. He had a combative look; and a chafing, irritable manner, which, associated with his figure—still large and powerful, though evidently in its decline—rather alarmed me. He had a pen in his hand, and, in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I saw that it was covered with a litter of papers.

  Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at the d
oor, 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 neighborhood, 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.

  “O, 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.

  “O! 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? O! 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 today.”

  “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—O! 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?”

  “O 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 follerer. 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 drawbacks 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 today?”

  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.