Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (best books to read for students TXT) đ
- Author: Charles Dickens
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âI have given up everything in life for the business, and the time came for me to give up that.â
âGood!â cried Jeremiah, evidently meaning Bad. âVery good! only donât expect me to stand between your mother and you, Arthur. I stood between your mother and your father, fending off this, and fending off that, and getting crushed and pounded betwixt em; and Iâve done with such work.â
âYou will never be asked to begin it again for me, Jeremiah.â
â Good. Iâm glad to hear it; because I should have had to decline it, if I had been. Thatâs enoughâas your mother saysâand more than enough of such matters on a Sabbath night. Affery, woman, have you found what you want yet?â
She had been collecting sheets and blankets from a press, and hastened to gather them up, and to reply, âYes, Jeremiah.â Arthur Clennam helped her by carrying the load himself, wished the old man good night, and went upstairs with her to the top of the house.
They mounted up and up, through the musty smell of an old close house, little used, to a large garret bedroom. Meagre and spare, like all the other rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer than the rest, by being the place of banishment for the worn-out furniture. Its movables were ugly old chairs with worn-out seats, and ugly old chairs without any seats; a threadbare patternless carpet, a maimed table, a crippled wardrobe, a lean set of fire-irons like the skeleton of a set deceased, a washing-stand that looked as if it had stood for ages in a hail of dirty soapsuds, and a bedstead with four bare atomies of posts, each terminating in a spike, as if for the dismal accommodation of lodgers who might prefer to impale themselves. Arthur opened the long low window, and looked out upon the old blasted and blackened forest of chimneys, and the old red glare in the sky, which had seemed to him once upon a time but a nightly reflection of the fiery environment that was presented to his childish fancy in all directions, let it look where it would.
He drew in his head again, sat down at the bedside, and looked on at Affery Flintwinch making the bed.
âAffery, you were not married when I went away.â
She screwed her mouth into the form of saying âNo,â shook her head, and proceeded to get a pillow into its case.
âHow did it happen?â
âWhy, Jeremiah, oâ course,â said Affery, with an end of the pillow-case between her teeth.
âOf course he proposed it, but how did it all come about? I should have thought that neither of you would have married; least of all should I have thought of your marrying each other.â
âNo more should I,â said Mrs Flintwinch, tying the pillow tightly in its case.
âThatâs what I mean. When did you begin to think otherwise?â
âNever begun to think otherwise at all,â said Mrs Flintwinch.
Seeing, as she patted the pillow into its place on the bolster, that he was still looking at her as if waiting for the rest of her reply, she gave it a great poke in the middle, and asked, âHow could I help myself?â
âHow could you help yourself from being married!â
âOâ course,â said Mrs Flintwinch. âIt was no doing oâ mine. IâD never thought of it. Iâd got something to do, without thinking, indeed! She kept me to it (as well as he) when she could go about, and she could go about then.â âWell?â
âWell?â echoed Mrs Flintwinch. âThatâs what I said myself. Well! Whatâs the use of considering? If them two clever ones have made up their minds to it, whatâs left for me to do? Nothing.â
âWas it my motherâs project, then?â
âThe Lord bless you, Arthur, and forgive me the wish!â cried Affery, speaking always in a low tone. âIf they hadnât been both of a mind in it, how could it ever have been? Jeremiah never courted me; tâant likely that he would, after living in the house with me and ordering me about for as many years as heâd done. He said to me one day, he said, âAffery,â he said, ânow I am going to tell you something. What do you think of the name of Flintwinch?â âWhat do I think of it?â I says. âYes,â he said, âbecause youâre going to take it,â he said. âTake it?â I says. âJere-MI-ah?â Oh! heâs a clever one!â
Mrs Flintwinch went on to spread the upper sheet over the bed, and the blanket over that, and the counterpane over that, as if she had quite concluded her story. âWell?â said Arthur again.
âWell?â echoed Mrs Flintwinch again. âHow could I help myself? He said to me, âAffery, you and me must be married, and Iâll tell you why. Sheâs failing in health, and sheâll want pretty constant attendance up in her room, and we shall have to be much with her, and thereâll be nobody about now but ourselves when weâre away from her, and altogether it will be more convenient. Sheâs of my opinion,â he said, âso if youâll put your bonnet on next Monday morning at eight, weâll get it over.ââ Mrs Flintwinch tucked up the bed.
âWell?â
âWell?â repeated Mrs Flintwinch, âI think so! I sits me down and says it. Well!âJeremiah then says to me, âAs to banns, next Sunday being the third time of asking (for Iâve put âem up a fortnight), is my reason for naming Monday. Sheâll speak to you about it herself, and now sheâll find you prepared, Affery.â That same day she spoke to me, and she said, âSo, Affery, I understand that you and Jeremiah are going to be married. I am glad of it, and so are you, with reason. It is a very good thing for you, and very welcome under the circumstances to me. He is a sensible man, and a trustworthy man, and a persevering man, and a pious man.â What could I say when it had come to that? Why, if it had beenâa smothering instead of a wedding,â Mrs Flintwinch cast about in her mind with great pains for this form of expression, âI couldnât have said a word upon it, against them two clever ones.â
âIn good faith, I believe so.â âAnd so you may, Arthur.â
âAffery, what girl was that in my motherâs room just now?â
âGirl?â said Mrs Flintwinch in a rather sharp key.
âIt was a girl, surely, whom I saw near youâalmost hidden in the dark corner?â
âOh! She? Little Dorrit? Sheâs nothing; sheâs a whim ofâhers.â It was a peculiarity of Affery Flintwinch that she never spoke of Mrs Clennam by name. âBut thereâs another sort of girls than that about. Have you forgot your old sweetheart? Long and long ago, Iâll be bound.â
âI suffered enough from my motherâs separating us, to remember her.
I recollect her very well.â
âHave you got another?â
âNo.â
âHereâs news for you, then. Sheâs well to do now, and a widow. And if you like to have her, why you can.â
âAnd how do you know that, Affery?â
âThem two clever ones have been speaking about it.âThereâs Jeremiah on the stairs!â She was gone in a moment.
Mrs Flintwinch had introduced into the web that his mind was busily weaving, in that old workshop where the loom of his youth had stood, the last thread wanting to the pattern. The airy folly of a boyâs love had found its way even into that house, and he had been as wretched under its hopelessness as if the house had been a castle of romance. Little more than a week ago at Marseilles, the face of the pretty girl from whom he had parted with regret, had had an unusual interest for him, and a tender hold upon him, because of some resemblance, real or imagined, to this first face that had soared out of his gloomy life into the bright glories of fancy. He leaned upon the sill of the long low window, and looking out upon the blackened forest of chimneys again, began to dream; for it had been the uniform tendency of this manâs lifeâso much was wanting in it to think about, so much that might have been better directed and happier to speculate uponâto make him a dreamer, after all.
When Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, she usually dreamed, unlike the son of her old mistress, with her eyes shut. She had a curiously vivid dream that night, and before she had left the son of her old mistress many hours. In fact it was not at all like a dream; it was so very real in every respect. It happened in this wise.
The bedchamber occupied by Mr and Mrs Flintwinch was within a few paces of that to which Mrs Clennam had been so long confined. It was not on the same floor, for it was a room at the side of the house, which was approached by a steep descent of a few odd steps, diverging from the main staircase nearly opposite to Mrs Clennamâs door. It could scarcely be said to be within call, the walls, doors, and panelling of the old place were so cumbrous; but it was within easy reach, in any undress, at any hour of the night, in any temperature. At the head of the bed and within a foot of Mrs Flintwinchâs ear, was a bell, the line of which hung ready to Mrs Clennamâs hand. Whenever this bell rang, up started Affery, and was in the sick room before she was awake.
Having got her mistress into bed, lighted her lamp, and given her good night, Mrs Flintwinch went to roost as usual, saving that her lord had not yet appeared. It was her lord himself who becameâ unlike the last theme in the mind, according to the observation of most philosophersâthe subject of Mrs Flintwinchâs dream. It seemed to her that she awoke after sleeping some hours, and found Jeremiah not yet abed. That she looked at the candle she had left burning, and, measuring the time like King Alfred the Great, was confirmed by its wasted state in her belief that she had been asleep for some considerable period. That she arose thereupon, muffled herself up in a wrapper, put on her shoes, and went out on the staircase, much surprised, to look for Jeremiah.
The staircase was as wooden and solid as need be, and Affery went straight down it without any of those deviations peculiar to dreams. She did not skim over it, but walked down it, and guided herself by the banisters on account of her candle having died out. In one corner of the hall, behind the house-door, there was a little waiting-room, like a well-shaft, with a long narrow window in it as if it had been ripped up. In this room, which was never used, a light was burning.
Mrs Flintwinch crossed the hall, feeling its pavement cold to her stockingless feet, and peeped in between the rusty hinges on the door, which stood a little open. She expected to see Jeremiah fast asleep or in a fit, but he was calmly seated in a chair, awake, and in his usual health. But whatâhey?âLord forgive us!âMrs Flintwinch muttered some ejaculation to this effect, and turned giddy.
For, Mr Flintwinch awake, was watching Mr Flintwinch asleep. He sat on one side of the small table, looking keenly at himself on the other side with his chin sunk on his breast, snoring. The waking Flintwinch had his full front face presented to his wife; the sleeping Flintwinch was in profile. The waking Flintwinch was
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