The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my eyes to encounter those of a dirty- faced little spectre fixed upon me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them all.
CHAPTER V
A Morning Adventure
Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed heavy-I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt that they would have made midsummer sunshine dim-I was sufficiently forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and sufficiently curious about London to think it a good idea on the part of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should go out for a walk.
'Ma won't be down for ever so long,' she said, 'and then it's a chance if breakfast's ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so.
As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. He never has what you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes there isn't any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I'm afraid you must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would rather go to bed.'
'I am not at all tired, my dear,' said I, 'and would much prefer to go out.'
'If you're sure you would,' returned Miss Jellyby, 'I'll get my things on.'
Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him, that he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed again. To this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at me during the whole operation as if he never had been, and never could again be, so astonished in his life-looking very miserable also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep as soon as it was over. At first I was in two minds about taking such a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody in the house was likely to notice it.
What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writingroom, which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick, throwing the candle in to make it burn better.
Everything was just as we had left it last night and was evidently intended to remain so. Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been left ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over the house. Some pewter pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings; the door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us, that she had been to see what o'clock it was.
But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and down Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk.
So he took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and that I really should not have thought she liked me much unless she had told me so.
'Where would you wish to go?' she asked.
'Anywhere, my dear,' I replied.
'Anywhere's nowhere,' said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.
'Let us go somewhere at any rate,' said I.
She then walked me on very fast.
'I don't care!' she said. 'Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I say I don't care-but if he was to come to our house with his great, shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as Methuselah, I wouldn't have anything to say to him.
Such ASSES as he and Ma make of themselves!'
'My dear!' I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. 'Your duty as a child-'
'Oh! Don't talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where's Ma's duty as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it's much more their affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say!
Very well, so am I shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there's an end of it!'
She walked me on faster yet.
'But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and I won't have anything to say to him. I can't bear him. If there's any stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it's the stuff he and Ma talk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the patience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma's management!'
I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run a race. Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and walked moodily on at my side while I admired the long successions and varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.
'So, cousin,' said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada behind me.
'We are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to our place of meeting yesterday, and-by the Great Seal, here's the old lady again!'
Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and smiling, and saying with her yesterday's air of patronage, 'The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!'
'You are out early, ma'am,' said I as she curtsied to me.
'Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before the court sits. It's retired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,' said the old lady mincingly. 'The business of the day requires a great deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to follow.'
'Who's this, Miss Summerson?' whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm tighter through her own.
The little old lady's hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for herself directly.
'A suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honour to attend court regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?' said the old lady, recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low curtsy.
Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday, good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with the suit.
'Ha!' said the old lady. 'She does not expect a judgment? She will still grow old. But not so old. Oh, dear, no! This is the garden of Lincoln's Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the summer-time. Where the birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater part of the long vacation here. In contemplation. You find the long vacation exceedingly long, don't you?'
We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.
'When the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor's court,' said the old lady, 'the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see my lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and beauty are very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a visit from either.'
She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Jellyby away, beckoned Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself and looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half curious and all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she continued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow, our strange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling condescension, that she lived close by.
It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by that we had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before she was at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and
