第 16 页

scale the walls with a cord and grapple, how he would descend upon

the other side? whether he could alight on a housetop, steal down a

staircase, let himself out at a door, and get lost in the crowd? As to

Fire in the prison, if one were to break out while he lay there?

And these involuntary starts of fancy were, after all, but the setting

of a picture in which three people kept before him. His father, with the

steadfast look with which he had died, prophetically darkened forth in

the portrait; his mother, with her arm up, warding off his suspicion;

Little Dorrit, with her hand on the degraded arm, and her drooping head

turned away.

What if his mother had an old reason she well knew for softening to

this poor girl! What if the prisoner now sleeping quietly--Heaven grant

it!--by the light of the great Day of judgment should trace back his

fall to her. What if any act of hers and of his father's, should have

even remotely brought the grey heads of those two brothers so low!

A swift thought shot into his mind. In that long imprisonment here, and

in her own long confinement to her room, did his mother find a balance

to be struck? 'I admit that I was accessory to that man's captivity. I

have suffered for it in kind. He has decayed in his prison: I in mine. I

have paid the penalty.'

When all the other thoughts had faded out, this one held possession

of him. When he fell asleep, she came before him in her wheeled chair,

warding him off with this justification. When he awoke, and sprang up

causelessly frightened, the words were in his ears, as if her voice had

slowly spoken them at his pillow, to break his rest: 'He withers away in

his prison; I wither away in mine; inexorable justice is done; what do I

owe on this score!'

CHAPTER 9. Little Mother

The morning light was in no hurry to climb the prison wall and look in

at the Snuggery windows; and when it did come, it would have been more

welcome if it had come alone, instead of bringing a rush of rain with

it. But the equinoctial gales were blowing out at sea, and the impartial

south-west wind, in its flight, would not neglect even the narrow

Marshalsea. While it roared through the steeple of St George's Church,

and twirled all the cowls in the neighbourhood, it made a swoop to beat

the Southwark smoke into the jail; and, plunging down the chimneys

of the few early collegians who were yet lighting their fires, half

suffocated them. Arthur Clennam would have been little disposed to

linger in bed, though his bed had been in a more private situation, and

less affected by the raking out of yesterday's fire, the kindling of

to-day's under the collegiate boiler, the filling of that Spartan vessel

at the pump, the sweeping and sawdusting of the common room, and other

such preparations. Heartily glad to see the morning, though little

rested by the night, he turned out as soon as he could distinguish

objects about him, and paced the yard for two heavy hours before the

gate was opened.

The walls were so near to one another, and the wild clouds hurried

over them so fast, that it gave him a sensation like the beginning of

sea-sickness to look up at the gusty sky. The rain, carried aslant by

flaws of wind, blackened that side of the central building which he had

visited last night, but left a narrow dry trough under the lee of the

wall, where he walked up and down among the waits of straw and dust

and paper, the waste droppings of the pump, and the stray leaves of

yesterday's greens. It was as haggard a view of life as a man need look

upon.

Nor was it relieved by any glimpse of the little creature who had

brought him there. Perhaps she glided out of her doorway and in at that

where her father lived, while his face was turned from both; but he saw

nothing of her. It was too early for her brother; to have seen him once,

was to have seen enough of him to know that he would be sluggish to

leave whatever frowsy bed he occupied at night; so, as Arthur Clennam

walked up and down, waiting for the gate to open, he cast about in

his mind for future rather than for present means of pursuing his

discoveries.

At last the lodge-gate turned, and the turnkey, standing on the step,

taking an early comb at his hair, was ready to let him out. With a

joyful sense of release he passed through the lodge, and found himself

again in the little outer court-yard where he had spoken to the brother

last night.

There was a string of people already straggling in, whom it was not

difficult to identify as the nondescript messengers, go-betweens, and

errand-bearers of the place. Some of them had been lounging in the rain

until the gate should open; others, who had timed their arrival

with greater nicety, were coming up now, and passing in with damp

whitey-brown paper bags from the grocers, loaves of bread, lumps of

butter, eggs, milk, and the like. The shabbiness of these attendants

upon shabbiness, the poverty of these insolvent waiters upon insolvency,

was a sight to see. Such threadbare coats and trousers, such fusty gowns

and shawls, such squashed hats and bonnets, such boots and shoes, such

umbrellas and walking-sticks, never were seen in Rag Fair. All of

them wore the cast-off clothes of other men and women, were made up of

patches and pieces of other people's individuality, and had no sartorial

existence of their own proper. Their walk was the walk of a race apart.

They had a peculiar way of doggedly slinking round the corner, as if

they were eternally going to the pawnbroker's. When they coughed, they

coughed like people accustomed to be forgotten on doorsteps and in

draughty passages, waiting for answers to letters in faded ink, which

gave the recipients of those manuscripts great mental disturbance and no

satisfaction. As they eyed the stranger in passing, they eyed him with

borrowing eyes--hungry, sharp, speculative as to his softness if they

were accredited to him, and the likelihood of his standing something

handsome. Mendicity on commission stooped in their high shoulders,

shambled in their unsteady legs, buttoned and pinned and darned and

dragged their clothes, frayed their button-holes, leaked out of their

figures in dirty little ends of tape, and issued from their mouths in

alcoholic breathings.

As these people passed him standing still in the court-yard, and one of

them turned back to inquire if he could assist him with his services,

it came into Arthur Clennam's mind that he would speak to Little Dorrit

again before he went away. She would have recovered her first surprise,

and might feel easier with him. He asked this member of the fraternity

(who had two red herrings in his hand, and a loaf and a blacking brush

under his arm), where was the nearest place to get a cup of coffee

at. The nondescript replied in encouraging terms, and brought him to a

coffee-shop in the street within a stone's throw.

'Do you know Miss Dorrit?' asked the new client.

The nondescript knew two Miss Dorrits; one who was born inside--That was

the one! That was the one? The nondescript had known her many years.

In regard of the other Miss Dorrit, the nondescript lodged in the same

house with herself and uncle.

This changed the client's half-formed design of remaining at the

coffee-shop until the nondescript should bring him word that Dorrit

had issued forth into the street. He entrusted the nondescript with a

confidential message to her, importing that the visitor who had waited

on her father last night, begged the favour of a few words with her at

her uncle's lodging; he obtained from the same source full directions to

the house, which was very near; dismissed the nondescript gratified with

half-a-crown; and having hastily refreshed himself at the coffee-shop,

repaired with all speed to the clarionet-player's dwelling.

There were so many lodgers in this house that the doorpost seemed to be

as full of bell-handles as a cathedral organ is of stops. Doubtful

which might be the clarionet-stop, he was considering the point, when a

shuttlecock flew out of the parlour window, and alighted on his hat.

He then observed that in the parlour window was a blind with the

inscription, MR CRIPPLES's ACADEMY; also in another line, EVENING

TUITION; and behind the blind was a little white-faced boy, with a slice

of bread-and-butter and a battledore.

The window being accessible from the footway, he looked in over the

blind, returned the shuttlecock, and put his question.

'Dorrit?' said the little white-faced boy (Master Cripples in fact). 'Mr

Dorrit? Third bell and one knock.' The pupils of Mr Cripples appeared to

have been making a copy-book of the street-door, it was so extensively

scribbled over in pencil.

The frequency of the inscriptions, 'Old Dorrit,' and 'Dirty Dick,'

in combination, suggested intentions of personality on the part Of

Mr Cripples's pupils. There was ample time to make these observations

before the door was opened by the poor old man himself.

'Ha!' said he, very slowly remembering Arthur, 'you were shut in last

night?'

'Yes, Mr Dorrit. I hope to meet your niece here presently.'

'Oh!' said he, pondering. 'Out of my brother's way? True. Would you come

up-stairs and wait for her?'

'Thank you.'

Turning himself as slowly as he turned in his mind whatever he heard or

said, he led the way up the narrow stairs. The house was very close, and

had an unwholesome smell. The little staircase windows looked in at the

back windows of other houses as unwholesome as itself, with poles and

lines thrust out of them, on which unsightly linen hung; as if the

inhabitants were angling for clothes, and had had some wretched bites

not worth attending to. In the back garret--a sickly room, with a

turn-up bedstead in it, so hastily and recently turned up that the

blankets were boiling over, as it were, and keeping the lid open--a

half-finished breakfast of coffee and toast for two persons was jumbled

down anyhow on a rickety table.

There was no one there. The old man mumbling to himself, after some

consideration, that Fanny had run away, went to the next room to fetch

her back. The visitor, observing that she held the door on the inside,

and that, when the uncle tried to open it, there was a sharp adjuration

of 'Don't, stupid!' and an appearance of loose stocking and flannel,

concluded that the young lady was in an undress. The uncle, without

appearing to come to any conclusion, shuffled in again, sat down in his

chair, and began warming his hands at the fire; not that it was cold, or

that he had any waking idea whether it was or not.

'What did you think of my brother, sir?' he asked, when he by-and-by

discovered what he was doing, left off, reached over to the

chimney-piece, and took his clarionet case down.

'I was glad,' said Arthur, very much at a loss, for his thoughts were

on the brother before him; 'to find him so well and cheerful.' 'Ha!'

muttered the old man, 'yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!'

Arthur wondered what he could possibly want with the clarionet case. He

did not want it at all. He discovered, in due time, that it was not the

little paper of snuff (which was also on the chimney-piece), put it back

again, took down the snuff instead, and solaced himself with a pinch. He

was as feeble, spare, and slow in his pinches as in everything else, but

a certain little trickling of enjoyment of them played in the poor worn

nerves about the corners of his eyes and mouth.

'Amy, Mr Clennam. What do you think of her?'

'I am much impressed, Mr Dorrit, by all that I have seen of her and

thought of her.'

'My brother would have been quite lost without Amy,' he returned. 'We

should all have been lost without Amy. She is a very good girl, Amy. She

does her duty.'

Arthur fancied that he heard in these praises a certain tone of custom,

which he had heard from the father last night with an inward protest and

feeling of antagonism. It was not that they stinted her praises, or

were insensible to what she did for them; but that they were lazily

habituated to her, as they were to all the rest of their condition.

He fancied that although they had before them, every day, the means of

comparison between her and one another and themselves, they regarded her

as being in her necessary place; as holding a position towards them all

which belonged to her, like her name or her age. He fancied that they

viewed her, not as having risen away from the prison atmosphere, but as

appertaining to it; as being vaguely what they had a right to expect,

and nothing more.

Her uncle resumed his breakfast, and was munching toast sopped in

coffee, oblivious of his guest, when the third bell rang. That was Amy,

he said, and went down to let her in; leaving the visitor with as vivid

a picture on his mind of his begrimed hands, dirt-worn face, and decayed

figure, as if he were still drooping in his chair.

She came up after him, in the usual plain dress, and with the usual

timid manner. Her lips were a little parted, as if her heart beat faster

than usual.

'Mr Clennam, Amy,' said her uncle, 'has been expecting you some time.'

'I took the liberty of sending you a message.'

'I received the message, sir.'

'Are you going to my mother's this morning? I think not, for it is past

your usual hour.' 'Not to-day, sir. I am not wanted to-day.'

'Will you allow Me to walk a little way in whatever direction you may

be going? I can then speak to you as we walk, both without detaining you

here, and without intruding longer here myself.'

She looked embarrassed, but said, if he pleased. He made a pretence of

having mislaid his walking-stick, to give her time to set the bedstead

right, to answer her sister's impatient knock at the wall, and to say a

word softly to her uncle. Then he found it, and they went down-stairs;

she first, he following; the uncle standing at the stair-head, and