Page:Bleak House.djvu/468

"They are all———”

“Ye-es. Dead of course, my dear,” said she.

As I saw she would go on, I thought it best to try to be serviceable to her by meeting the theme, rather than avoiding it.

“Would it not be wiser,” said I, “to expect this Judgment no more?”

“Why, my dear,” she answered promptly, “of course it would!”

“And to attend the court no more?”

“Equally of course,” said she. Very wearing to be always in expectation of what never comes, my dear Fitz Jarndyce! Wearing, I assure you, to the bone!”

She slightly showed me her arm, and it was fearfully thin indeed.

“But, my dear,” she went on, in her mysterious way, “there's a dreadful attraction in the place. Hush! Don't mention it to our diminutive friend, when she comes in. Or it may frighten her. Or it may frighten her. With good reason. There's a cruel attraction in the place. You can't leave it. And you must expect.”

I tried to assure her that this was not so. She heard me patiently and smilingly, but was ready with her own answer.

“Aye, aye, aye! You think so, because I am a little rambling. Ve-ry absurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry confusing, too. To the head. I find it so. But, my dear, I have been there many years, and I have noticed. It's the Mace and Seal upon the table.”

What could they do, did she think? I mildly asked her.

“Draw,” returned Miss Flite. “Draw people on, my dear. Draw peace out of them. Sense out of them. Good looks out of them. Good qualities out of them. I have felt them even drawing my rest away in the night. Cold and glittering devils!”

She tapped me several times upon the arm, and nodded good-humouredly, as if she were anxious I should understand that I had no cause to fear her, though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful secrets to me.

“Let me see,” said she. “I'll tell you my own case. Before they ever drew me—before I had ever seen them—what was it I used to do? Tambourine playing? No. Tambour work. I and my sister worked at tambour work. Our father and our brother had a builder's business. We all lived together. Ve-ry respectably, my dear! First, our father was drawn—slowly. Home was drawn with him. In a few years, he was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt, without a kind word or a kind look for any one. He had been so different, Fitz Jarndyce. He was drawn to a debtor's prison. There he died. Then our brother was drawn—swiftly—to drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my sister was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then I was ill, and in misery; and heard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work of Chaucery. When I got better, I went to look at the Monster. And then I found out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there.”

Having got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which she had spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock were fresh upon her, she gradually resumed her usual air of amiable importance.

“You don't quite credit me, my dear! Well well! You will, some day. I am a little rambling. But I have noticed. I have seen many new faces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the Mace and