Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (best books to read for students TXT) 📖

a man’s advantages and means and energies, had slighted the whisper in my heart, that if my father had erred, it was my first duty to conceal the fault and to repair it, what youthful figure with tender feet going almost bare on the damp ground, with spare hands ever working, with its slight shape but half protected from the sharp weather, would have stood before me to put me to shame? Little Dorrit’s.’ So always as he sat alone in the faded chair, thinking. Always, Little Dorrit. Until it seemed to him as if he met the reward of having wandered away from her, and suffered anything to pass between him and his remembrance of her virtues.

His door was opened, and the head of the elder Chivery was put in a very little way, without being turned towards him.

‘I am off the Lock, Mr Clennam, and going out. Can I do anything for you?’

‘Many thanks. Nothing.’

‘You’ll excuse me opening the door,’ said Mr Chivery; ‘but I couldn’t make you hear.’

‘Did you knock?’ ‘Half-a-dozen times.’

Rousing himself, Clennam observed that the prison had awakened from its noontide doze, that the inmates were loitering about the shady yard, and that it was late in the afternoon. He had been thinking for hours. ‘Your things is come,’ said Mr Chivery, ‘and my son is going to carry ‘em up. I should have sent ‘em up but for his wishing to carry ‘em himself. Indeed he would have ‘em himself, and so I couldn’t send ‘em up. Mr Clennam, could I say a word to you?’

‘Pray come in,’ said Arthur; for Mr Chivery’s head was still put in at the door a very little way, and Mr Chivery had but one ear upon him, instead of both eyes. This was native delicacy in Mr Chivery —true politeness; though his exterior had very much of a turnkey about it, and not the least of a gentleman.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mr Chivery, without advancing; ‘it’s no odds me coming in. Mr Clennam, don’t you take no notice of my son (if you’ll be so good) in case you find him cut up anyways difficult. My son has a ‘art, and my son’s ‘art is in the right place. Me and his mother knows where to find it, and we find it sitiwated correct.’

With this mysterious speech, Mr Chivery took his ear away and shut the door. He might have been gone ten minutes, when his son succeeded him.

‘Here’s your portmanteau,’ he said to Arthur, putting it carefully down.

‘It’s very kind of you. I am ashamed that you should have the trouble.’

He was gone before it came to that; but soon returned, saying exactly as before, ‘Here’s your black box:’ which he also put down with care.

‘I am very sensible of this attention. I hope we may shake hands now, Mr John.’

Young John, however, drew back, turning his right wrist in a socket made of his left thumb and middle-finger and said as he had said at first, ‘I don’t know as I can. No; I find I can’t!’ He then stood regarding the prisoner sternly, though with a swelling humour in his eyes that looked like pity.

‘Why are you angry with me,’ said Clennam, ‘and yet so ready to do me these kind services? There must be some mistake between us. If I have done anything to occasion it I am sorry.’

‘No mistake, sir,’ returned John, turning the wrist backwards and forwards in the socket, for which it was rather tight. ‘No mistake, sir, in the feelings with which my eyes behold you at the present moment! If I was at all fairly equal to your weight, Mr Clennam—which I am not; and if you weren’t under a cloud—which you are; and if it wasn’t against all rules of the Marshalsea— which it is; those feelings are such, that they would stimulate me, more to having it out with you in a Round on the present spot than to anything else I could name.’ Arthur looked at him for a moment in some wonder, and some little anger. ‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘A mistake, a mistake!’ Turning away, he sat down with a heavy sigh in the faded chair again.

Young John followed him with his eyes, and, after a short pause, cried out, ‘I beg your pardon!’

‘Freely granted,’ said Clennam, waving his hand without raising his sunken head. ‘Say no more. I am not worth it.’

‘This furniture, sir,’ said Young John in a voice of mild and soft explanation, ‘belongs to me. I am in the habit of letting it out to parties without furniture, that have the room. It an’t much, but it’s at your service. Free, I mean. I could not think of letting you have it on any other terms. You’re welcome to it for nothing.’

Arthur raised his head again to thank him, and to say he could not accept the favour. John was still turning his wrist, and still contending with himself in his former divided manner.

 

‘What is the matter between us?’ said Arthur.

‘I decline to name it, sir,’ returned Young John, suddenly turning loud and sharp. ‘Nothing’s the matter.’

Arthur looked at him again, in vain, for an explanation of his behaviour. After a while, Arthur turned away his head again. Young John said, presently afterwards, with the utmost mildness:

‘The little round table, sir, that’s nigh your elbow, was—you know whose—I needn’t mention him—he died a great gentleman. I bought it of an individual that he gave it to, and that lived here after him. But the individual wasn’t any ways equal to him. Most individuals would find it hard to come up to his level.’

Arthur drew the little table nearer, rested his arm upon it, and kept it there.

‘Perhaps you may not be aware, sir,’ said Young John, ‘that I intruded upon him when he was over here in London. On the whole he was of opinion that it WAS an intrusion, though he was so good as to ask me to sit down and to inquire after father and all other old friends. Leastways humblest acquaintances. He looked, to me, a good deal changed, and I said so when I came back. I asked him if Miss Amy was well—’

‘And she was?’

‘I should have thought you would have known without putting the question to such as me,’ returned Young John, after appearing to take a large invisible pill. ‘Since you do put me the question, I am sorry I can’t answer it. But the truth is, he looked upon the inquiry as a liberty, and said, “What was that to me?” It was then I became quite aware I was intruding: of which I had been fearful before. However, he spoke very handsome afterwards; very handsome.’

They were both silent for several minutes: except that Young John remarked, at about the middle of the pause, ‘He both spoke and acted very handsome.’

It was again Young John who broke the silence by inquiring:

‘If it’s not a liberty, how long may it be your intentions, sir, to go without eating and drinking?’

‘I have not felt the want of anything yet,’ returned Clennam. ‘I have no appetite just now.’

‘The more reason why you should take some support, sir,’ urged Young John. ‘If you find yourself going on sitting here for hours and hours partaking of no refreshment because you have no appetite, why then you should and must partake of refreshment without an appetite. I’m going to have tea in my own apartment. If it’s not a liberty, please to come and take a cup. Or I can bring a tray here in two minutes.’

Feeling that Young John would impose that trouble on himself if he refused, and also feeling anxious to show that he bore in mind both the elder Mr Chivery’s entreaty, and the younger Mr Chivery’s apology, Arthur rose and expressed his willingness to take a cup of tea in Mr john’s apartment. Young John locked his door for him as they went out, slided the key into his pocket with great dexterity, and led the way to his own residence.

It was at the top of the house nearest to the gateway. It was the room to which Clennam had hurried on the day when the enriched family had left the prison for ever, and where he had lifted her insensible from the floor. He foresaw where they were going as soon as their feet touched the staircase. The room was so far changed that it was papered now, and had been repainted, and was far more comfortably furnished; but he could recall it just as he had seen it in that single glance, when he raised her from the ground and carried her down to the carriage.

Young John looked hard at him, biting his fingers.

‘I see you recollect the room, Mr Clennam?’ ‘I recollect it well, Heaven bless her!’

Oblivious of the tea, Young John continued to bite his fingers and to look at his visitor, as long as his visitor continued to glance about the room. Finally, he made a start at the teapot, gustily rattled a quantity of tea into it from a canister, and set off for the common kitchen to fill it with hot water.

The room was so eloquent to Clennam in the changed circumstances of his return to the miserable Marshalsea; it spoke to him so mournfully of her, and of his loss of her; that it would have gone hard with him to resist it, even though he had not been alone. Alone, he did not try. He had his hand on the insensible wall as tenderly as if it had been herself that he touched, and pronounced her name in a low voice. He stood at the window, looking over the prison-parapet with its grim spiked border, and breathed a benediction through the summer haze towards the distant land where she was rich and prosperous.

Young John was some time absent, and, when he came back, showed that he had been outside by bringing with him fresh butter in a cabbage leaf, some thin slices of boiled ham in another cabbage leaf, and a little basket of water-cresses and salad herbs. When these were arranged upon the table to his satisfaction, they sat down to tea.

Clennam tried to do honour to the meal, but unavailingly. The ham sickened him, the bread seemed to turn to sand in his mouth. He could force nothing upon himself but a cup of tea.

‘Try a little something green,’ said Young John, handing him the basket.

He took a sprig or so of water-cress, and tried again; but the bread turned to a heavier sand than before, and the ham (though it was good enough of itself) seemed to blow a faint simoom of ham through the whole Marshalsea.

‘Try a little more something green, sir,’ said Young John; and again handed the basket.

It was so like handing green meat into the cage of a dull imprisoned bird, and John had so evidently brought the little basket as a handful of fresh relief from the stale hot paving-stones and bricks of the jail, that Clennam said, with a smile, ‘It was very kind of you to think of putting this between the wires; but I cannot even get this down to-day.’

As if the difficulty were contagious, Young John soon pushed away his own plate, and fell to folding the cabbage-leaf that had contained the ham. When he had folded it into a number of layers, one over another, so that it was small in the palm of his hand, he began to flatten it between both his hands, and to eye Clennam attentively. ‘I wonder,’ he at length said, compressing his green packet with some