第 15 页

'I don't remember his name, father.'

'Frederick, do you remember his name?' Frederick doubted if he had ever

heard it. No one could doubt that Frederick was the last person upon

earth to put such a question to, with any hope of information.

'I mean,' said his brother, 'the gentleman who did that handsome action

with so much delicacy. Ha! Tush! The name has quite escaped me. Mr

Clennam, as I have happened to mention handsome and delicate action, you

may like, perhaps, to know what it was.'

'Very much,' said Arthur, withdrawing his eyes from the delicate head

beginning to droop and the pale face with a new solicitude stealing over

it.

'It is so generous, and shows so much fine feeling, that it is almost a

duty to mention it. I said at the time that I always would mention it

on every suitable occasion, without regard to personal sensitiveness.

A--well--a--it's of no use to disguise the fact--you must know, Mr

Clennam, that it does sometimes occur that people who come here desire

to offer some little--Testimonial--to the Father of the place.'

To see her hand upon his arm in mute entreaty half-repressed, and her

timid little shrinking figure turning away, was to see a sad, sad sight.

'Sometimes,' he went on in a low, soft voice, agitated, and clearing

his throat every now and then; 'sometimes--hem--it takes one shape and

sometimes another; but it is generally--ha--Money. And it is, I cannot

but confess it, it is too often--hem--acceptable. This gentleman that I

refer to, was presented to me, Mr Clennam, in a manner highly gratifying

to my feelings, and conversed not only with great politeness, but with

great--ahem--information.' All this time, though he had finished his

supper, he was nervously going about his plate with his knife and

fork, as if some of it were still before him. 'It appeared from his

conversation that he had a garden, though he was delicate of mentioning

it at first, as gardens are--hem--are not accessible to me. But it came

out, through my admiring a very fine cluster of geranium--beautiful

cluster of geranium to be sure--which he had brought from his

conservatory. On my taking notice of its rich colour, he showed me a

piece of paper round it, on which was written, "For the Father of the

Marshalsea," and presented it to me. But this was--hem--not all. He made

a particular request, on taking leave, that I would remove the paper in

half an hour. I--ha--I did so; and I found that it contained--ahem--two

guineas. I assure you, Mr Clennam, I have received--hem--Testimonials

in many ways, and of many degrees of value, and they have always

been--ha--unfortunately acceptable; but I never was more pleased than

with this--ahem--this particular Testimonial.' Arthur was in the act

of saying the little he could say on such a theme, when a bell began to

ring, and footsteps approached the door. A pretty girl of a far better

figure and much more developed than Little Dorrit, though looking much

younger in the face when the two were observed together, stopped in the

doorway on seeing a stranger; and a young man who was with her, stopped

too.

'Mr Clennam, Fanny. My eldest daughter and my son, Mr Clennam. The bell

is a signal for visitors to retire, and so they have come to say good

night; but there is plenty of time, plenty of time. Girls, Mr Clennam

will excuse any household business you may have together. He knows, I

dare say, that I have but one room here.'

'I only want my clean dress from Amy, father,' said the second girl.

'And I my clothes,' said Tip.

Amy opened a drawer in an old piece of furniture that was a chest of

drawers above and a bedstead below, and produced two little bundles,

which she handed to her brother and sister. 'Mended and made up?'

Clennam heard the sister ask in a whisper. To which Amy answered 'Yes.'

He had risen now, and took the opportunity of glancing round the room.

The bare walls had been coloured green, evidently by an unskilled hand,

and were poorly decorated with a few prints. The window was curtained,

and the floor carpeted; and there were shelves and pegs, and other such

conveniences, that had accumulated in the course of years. It was a

close, confined room, poorly furnished; and the chimney smoked to boot,

or the tin screen at the top of the fireplace was superfluous; but

constant pains and care had made it neat, and even, after its kind,

comfortable. All the while the bell was ringing, and the uncle was

anxious to go. 'Come, Fanny, come, Fanny,' he said, with his ragged

clarionet case under his arm; 'the lock, child, the lock!'

Fanny bade her father good night, and whisked off airily. Tip had

already clattered down-stairs. 'Now, Mr Clennam,' said the uncle,

looking back as he shuffled out after them, 'the lock, sir, the lock.'

Mr Clennam had two things to do before he followed; one, to offer his

testimonial to the Father of the Marshalsea, without giving pain to his

child; the other to say something to that child, though it were but a

word, in explanation of his having come there.

'Allow me,' said the Father, 'to see you down-stairs.'

She had slipped out after the rest, and they were alone. 'Not on any

account,' said the visitor, hurriedly. 'Pray allow me to--' chink,

chink, chink.

'Mr Clennam,' said the Father, 'I am deeply, deeply--' But his visitor

had shut up his hand to stop the clinking, and had gone down-stairs with

great speed.

He saw no Little Dorrit on his way down, or in the yard. The last two or

three stragglers were hurrying to the lodge, and he was following,

when he caught sight of her in the doorway of the first house from the

entrance. He turned back hastily.

'Pray forgive me,' he said, 'for speaking to you here; pray forgive me

for coming here at all! I followed you to-night. I did so, that I might

endeavour to render you and your family some service. You know the

terms on which I and my mother are, and may not be surprised that I

have preserved our distant relations at her house, lest I should

unintentionally make her jealous, or resentful, or do you any injury in

her estimation. What I have seen here, in this short time, has greatly

increased my heartfelt wish to be a friend to you. It would recompense

me for much disappointment if I could hope to gain your confidence.'

She was scared at first, but seemed to take courage while he spoke to

her.

'You are very good, sir. You speak very earnestly to me. But I--but I

wish you had not watched me.'

He understood the emotion with which she said it, to arise in her

father's behalf; and he respected it, and was silent.

'Mrs Clennam has been of great service to me; I don't know what we

should have done without the employment she has given me; I am afraid

it may not be a good return to become secret with her; I can say no more

to-night, sir. I am sure you mean to be kind to us. Thank you, thank

you.' 'Let me ask you one question before I leave. Have you known my

mother long?'

'I think two years, sir,--The bell has stopped.'

'How did you know her first? Did she send here for you?'

'No. She does not even know that I live here. We have a friend, father

and I--a poor labouring man, but the best of friends--and I wrote out

that I wished to do needlework, and gave his address. And he got what

I wrote out displayed at a few places where it cost nothing, and Mrs

Clennam found me that way, and sent for me. The gate will be locked,

sir!'

She was so tremulous and agitated, and he was so moved by compassion for

her, and by deep interest in her story as it dawned upon him, that he

could scarcely tear himself away. But the stoppage of the bell, and the

quiet in the prison, were a warning to depart; and with a few hurried

words of kindness he left her gliding back to her father.

But he remained too late. The inner gate was locked, and the lodge

closed. After a little fruitless knocking with his hand, he was standing

there with the disagreeable conviction upon him that he had got to get

through the night, when a voice accosted him from behind.

'Caught, eh?' said the voice. 'You won't go home till morning. Oh! It's

you, is it, Mr Clennam?'

The voice was Tip's; and they stood looking at one another in the

prison-yard, as it began to rain.

'You've done it,' observed Tip; 'you must be sharper than that next

time.'

'But you are locked in too,' said Arthur.

'I believe I am!' said Tip, sarcastically. 'About! But not in your way.

I belong to the shop, only my sister has a theory that our governor must

never know it. I don't see why, myself.'

'Can I get any shelter?' asked Arthur. 'What had I better do?'

'We had better get hold of Amy first of all,' said Tip, referring any

difficulty to her as a matter of course.

'I would rather walk about all night--it's not much to do--than give

that trouble.'

'You needn't do that, if you don't mind paying for a bed. If you don't

mind paying, they'll make you up one on the Snuggery table, under the

circumstances. If you'll come along, I'll introduce you there.'

As they passed down the yard, Arthur looked up at the window of the room

he had lately left, where the light was still burning. 'Yes, sir,' said

Tip, following his glance. 'That's the governor's. She'll sit with him

for another hour reading yesterday's paper to him, or something of that

sort; and then she'll come out like a little ghost, and vanish away

without a sound.'

'I don't understand you.'

'The governor sleeps up in the room, and she has a lodging at the

turnkey's. First house there,' said Tip, pointing out the doorway into

which she had retired. 'First house, sky parlour. She pays twice as much

for it as she would for one twice as good outside. But she stands by the

governor, poor dear girl, day and night.'

This brought them to the tavern-establishment at the upper end of the

prison, where the collegians had just vacated their social evening club.

The apartment on the ground-floor in which it was held, was the Snuggery

in question; the presidential tribune of the chairman, the pewter-pots,

glasses, pipes, tobacco-ashes, and general flavour of members, were

still as that convivial institution had left them on its adjournment.

The Snuggery had two of the qualities popularly held to be essential to

grog for ladies, in respect that it was hot and strong; but in the third

point of analogy, requiring plenty of it, the Snuggery was defective;

being but a cooped-up apartment.

The unaccustomed visitor from outside, naturally assumed everybody here

to be prisoners--landlord, waiter, barmaid, potboy, and all. Whether

they were or not, did not appear; but they all had a weedy look. The

keeper of a chandler's shop in a front parlour, who took in gentlemen

boarders, lent his assistance in making the bed. He had been a tailor in

his time, and had kept a phaeton, he said. He boasted that he stood up

litigiously for the interests of the college; and he had undefined and

undefinable ideas that the marshal intercepted a 'Fund,' which ought to

come to the collegians. He liked to believe this, and always impressed

the shadowy grievance on new-comers and strangers; though he could not,

for his life, have explained what Fund he meant, or how the notion had

got rooted in his soul. He had fully convinced himself, notwithstanding,

that his own proper share of the Fund was three and ninepence a week;

and that in this amount he, as an individual collegian, was swindled by

the marshal, regularly every Monday. Apparently, he helped to make the

bed, that he might not lose an opportunity of stating this case; after

which unloading of his mind, and after announcing (as it seemed he

always did, without anything coming of it) that he was going to write a

letter to the papers and show the marshal up, he fell into miscellaneous

conversation with the rest. It was evident from the general tone of the

whole party, that they had come to regard insolvency as the normal state

of mankind, and the payment of debts as a disease that occasionally

broke out. In this strange scene, and with these strange spectres

flitting about him, Arthur Clennam looked on at the preparations as if

they were part of a dream. Pending which, the long-initiated Tip, with

an awful enjoyment of the Snuggery's resources, pointed out the common

kitchen fire maintained by subscription of collegians, the boiler for

hot water supported in like manner, and other premises generally tending

to the deduction that the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, was to

come to the Marshalsea.

The two tables put together in a corner, were, at length, converted into

a very fair bed; and the stranger was left to the Windsor chairs,

the presidential tribune, the beery atmosphere, sawdust, pipe-lights,

spittoons and repose. But the last item was long, long, long, in linking

itself to the rest. The novelty of the place, the coming upon it without

preparation, the sense of being locked up, the remembrance of that room

up-stairs, of the two brothers, and above all of the retiring childish

form, and the face in which he now saw years of insufficient food, if

not of want, kept him waking and unhappy.

Speculations, too, bearing the strangest relations towards the prison,

but always concerning the prison, ran like nightmares through his mind

while he lay awake. Whether coffins were kept ready for people who might

die there, where they were kept, how they were kept, where people who

died in the prison were buried, how they were taken out, what forms were

observed, whether an implacable creditor could arrest the dead? As to

escaping, what chances there were of escape? Whether a prisoner could