第 24 页

kind of tenement, he would have had it plastered a foot deep rather

than answer No. But he was obliged to answer No; and he saw a shade of

disappointment on her face, as she checked a sigh, and looked at the

low fire. Then he saw, also, that Mrs Plornish was a young woman, made

somewhat slatternly in herself and her belongings by poverty; and so

dragged at by poverty and the children together, that their united

forces had already dragged her face into wrinkles.

'All such things as jobs,' said Mrs Plornish, 'seems to me to have gone

underground, they do indeed.' (Herein Mrs Plornish limited her remark to

the plastering trade, and spoke without reference to the Circumlocution

Office and the Barnacle Family.)

'Is it so difficult to get work?' asked Arthur Clennam.

'Plornish finds it so,' she returned. 'He is quite unfortunate. Really

he is.' Really he was. He was one of those many wayfarers on the road

of life, who seem to be afflicted with supernatural corns, rendering it

impossible for them to keep up even with their lame competitors.

A willing, working, soft hearted, not hard-headed fellow, Plornish took

his fortune as smoothly as could be expected; but it was a rough one.

It so rarely happened that anybody seemed to want him, it was such an

exceptional case when his powers were in any request, that his misty

mind could not make out how it happened. He took it as it came,

therefore; he tumbled into all kinds of difficulties, and tumbled out of

them; and, by tumbling through life, got himself considerably bruised.

'It's not for want of looking after jobs, I am sure,' said Mrs Plornish,

lifting up her eyebrows, and searching for a solution of the problem

between the bars of the grate; 'nor yet for want of working at them when

they are to be got. No one ever heard my husband complain of work.'

Somehow or other, this was the general misfortune of Bleeding Heart

Yard. From time to time there were public complaints, pathetically

going about, of labour being scarce--which certain people seemed to take

extraordinarily ill, as though they had an absolute right to it on their

own terms--but Bleeding Heart Yard, though as willing a Yard as any in

Britain, was never the better for the demand. That high old family, the

Barnacles, had long been too busy with their great principle to look

into the matter; and indeed the matter had nothing to do with their

watchfulness in out-generalling all other high old families except the

Stiltstalkings.

While Mrs Plornish spoke in these words of her absent lord, her lord

returned. A smooth-cheeked, fresh-coloured, sandy-whiskered man of

thirty. Long in the legs, yielding at the knees, foolish in the face,

flannel-jacketed, lime-whitened.

'This is Plornish, sir.'

'I came,' said Clennam, rising, 'to beg the favour of a little

conversation with you on the subject of the Dorrit family.'

Plornish became suspicious. Seemed to scent a creditor. Said, 'Ah, yes.

Well. He didn't know what satisfaction he could give any gentleman,

respecting that family. What might it be about, now?'

'I know you better,' said Clennam, smiling, 'than you suppose.'

Plornish observed, not Smiling in return, And yet he hadn't the pleasure

of being acquainted with the gentleman, neither.

'No,' said Arthur, 'I know your kind offices at second hand, but on the

best authority; through Little Dorrit.--I mean,' he explained, 'Miss

Dorrit.'

'Mr Clennam, is it? Oh! I've heard of you, Sir.'

'And I of you,' said Arthur.

'Please to sit down again, Sir, and consider yourself welcome.--Why,

yes,' said Plornish, taking a chair, and lifting the elder child upon

his knee, that he might have the moral support of speaking to a stranger

over his head, 'I have been on the wrong side of the Lock myself, and

in that way we come to know Miss Dorrit. Me and my wife, we are well

acquainted with Miss Dorrit.' 'Intimate!' cried Mrs Plornish. Indeed,

she was so proud of the acquaintance, that she had awakened some

bitterness of spirit in the Yard by magnifying to an enormous amount the

sum for which Miss Dorrit's father had become insolvent. The Bleeding

Hearts resented her claiming to know people of such distinction.

'It was her father that I got acquainted with first. And through getting

acquainted with him, you see--why--I got acquainted with her,' said

Plornish tautologically.

'I see.'

'Ah! And there's manners! There's polish! There's a gentleman to have

run to seed in the Marshalsea jail! Why, perhaps you are not aware,'

said Plornish, lowering his voice, and speaking with a perverse

admiration of what he ought to have pitied or despised, 'not aware that

Miss Dorrit and her sister dursn't let him know that they work for a

living. No!' said Plornish, looking with a ridiculous triumph first at

his wife, and then all round the room. 'Dursn't let him know it, they

dursn't!'

'Without admiring him for that,' Clennam quietly observed, 'I am very

sorry for him.' The remark appeared to suggest to Plornish, for the

first time, that it might not be a very fine trait of character after

all. He pondered about it for a moment, and gave it up.

'As to me,' he resumed, 'certainly Mr Dorrit is as affable with me, I

am sure, as I can possibly expect. Considering the differences and

distances betwixt us, more so. But it's Miss Dorrit that we were

speaking of.'

'True. Pray how did you introduce her at my mother's!'

Mr Plornish picked a bit of lime out of his whisker, put it between his

lips, turned it with his tongue like a sugar-plum, considered, found

himself unequal to the task of lucid explanation, and appealing to his

wife, said, 'Sally, you may as well mention how it was, old woman.'

'Miss Dorrit,' said Sally, hushing the baby from side to side, and

laying her chin upon the little hand as it tried to disarrange the gown

again, 'came here one afternoon with a bit of writing, telling that

how she wished for needlework, and asked if it would be considered any

ill-conwenience in case she was to give her address here.' (Plornish

repeated, her address here, in a low voice, as if he were making

responses at church.) 'Me and Plornish says, No, Miss Dorrit, no

ill-conwenience,' (Plornish repeated, no ill-conwenience,) 'and she

wrote it in, according. Which then me and Plornish says, Ho Miss

Dorrit!' (Plornish repeated, Ho Miss Dorrit.) 'Have you thought of

copying it three or four times, as the way to make it known in more

places than one? No, says Miss Dorrit, I have not, but I will. She

copied it out according, on this table, in a sweet writing, and

Plornish, he took it where he worked, having a job just then,' (Plornish

repeated job just then,) 'and likewise to the landlord of the Yard;

through which it was that Mrs Clennam first happened to employ Miss

Dorrit.' Plornish repeated, employ Miss Dorrit; and Mrs Plornish having

come to an end, feigned to bite the fingers of the little hand as she

kissed it.

'The landlord of the Yard,' said Arthur Clennam, 'is--'

'He is Mr Casby, by name, he is,' said Plornish, 'and Pancks, he

collects the rents. That,' added Mr Plornish, dwelling on the subject

with a slow thoughtfulness that appeared to have no connection with any

specific object, and to lead him nowhere, 'that is about what they are,

you may believe me or not, as you think proper.'

'Ay?' returned Clennam, thoughtful in his turn. 'Mr Casby, too! An old

acquaintance of mine, long ago!'

Mr Plornish did not see his road to any comment on this fact, and made

none. As there truly was no reason why he should have the least interest

in it, Arthur Clennam went on to the present purport of his visit;

namely, to make Plornish the instrument of effecting Tip's release,

with as little detriment as possible to the self-reliance and

self-helpfulness of the young man, supposing him to possess any remnant

of those qualities: without doubt a very wide stretch of supposition.

Plornish, having been made acquainted with the cause of action from the

Defendant's own mouth, gave Arthur to understand that the Plaintiff

was a 'Chaunter'--meaning, not a singer of anthems, but a seller of

horses--and that he (Plornish) considered that ten shillings in the

pound 'would settle handsome,' and that more would be a waste of money.

The Principal and instrument soon drove off together to a stable-yard in

High Holborn, where a remarkably fine grey gelding, worth, at the lowest

figure, seventy-five guineas (not taking into account the value of the

shot he had been made to swallow for the improvement of his form), was

to be parted with for a twenty-pound note, in consequence of his having

run away last week with Mrs Captain Barbary of Cheltenham, who wasn't up

to a horse of his courage, and who, in mere spite, insisted on selling

him for that ridiculous sum: or, in other words, on giving him away.

Plornish, going up this yard alone and leaving his Principal outside,

found a gentleman with tight drab legs, a rather old hat, a little

hooked stick, and a blue neckerchief (Captain Maroon of Gloucestershire,

a private friend of Captain Barbary); who happened to be there, in

a friendly way, to mention these little circumstances concerning the

remarkably fine grey gelding to any real judge of a horse and quick

snapper-up of a good thing, who might look in at that address as per

advertisement. This gentleman, happening also to be the Plaintiff in the

Tip case, referred Mr Plornish to his solicitor, and declined to treat

with Mr Plornish, or even to endure his presence in the yard, unless

he appeared there with a twenty-pound note: in which case only, the

gentleman would augur from appearances that he meant business, and

might be induced to talk to him. On this hint, Mr Plornish retired

to communicate with his Principal, and presently came back with the

required credentials. Then said Captain Maroon, 'Now, how much time do

you want to make the other twenty in? Now, I'll give you a month.' Then

said Captain Maroon, when that wouldn't suit, 'Now, I'll tell what I'll

do with you. You shall get me a good bill at four months, made payable

at a banking-house, for the other twenty!' Then said Captain Maroon,

when THAT wouldn't suit, 'Now, come; Here's the last I've got to say

to you. You shall give me another ten down, and I'll run my pen clean

through it.' Then said Captain Maroon when THAT wouldn't suit, 'Now,

I'll tell you what it is, and this shuts it up; he has used me bad, but

I'll let him off for another five down and a bottle of wine; and if you

mean done, say done, and if you don't like it, leave it.' Finally said

Captain Maroon, when THAT wouldn't suit either, 'Hand over, then!'--And

in consideration of the first offer, gave a receipt in full and

discharged the prisoner.

'Mr Plornish,' said Arthur, 'I trust to you, if you please, to keep my

secret. If you will undertake to let the young man know that he is free,

and to tell him that you were employed to compound for the debt by

some one whom you are not at liberty to name, you will not only do me a

service, but may do him one, and his sister also.'

'The last reason, sir,' said Plornish, 'would be quite sufficient. Your

wishes shall be attended to.'

'A Friend has obtained his discharge, you can say if you please. A

Friend who hopes that for his sister's sake, if for no one else's, he

will make good use of his liberty.'

'Your wishes, sir, shall be attended to.'

'And if you will be so good, in your better knowledge of the family, as

to communicate freely with me, and to point out to me any means by which

you think I may be delicately and really useful to Little Dorrit, I

shall feel under an obligation to you.'

'Don't name it, sir,' returned Plornish, 'it'll be ekally a pleasure an

a--it'l be ekally a pleasure and a--' Finding himself unable to balance

his sentence after two efforts, Mr Plornish wisely dropped it. He took

Clennam's card and appropriate pecuniary compliment.

He was earnest to finish his commission at once, and his Principal

was in the same mind. So his Principal offered to set him down at the

Marshalsea Gate, and they drove in that direction over Blackfriars

Bridge. On the way, Arthur elicited from his new friend a confused

summary of the interior life of Bleeding Heart Yard. They was all hard

up there, Mr Plornish said, uncommon hard up, to be sure. Well, he

couldn't say how it was; he didn't know as anybody could say how it was;

all he know'd was, that so it was.

When a man felt, on his own back and in his own belly, that poor he was,

that man (Mr Plornish gave it as his decided belief) know'd well that

he was poor somehow or another, and you couldn't talk it out of him, no

more than you could talk Beef into him. Then you see, some people as was

better off said, and a good many such people lived pretty close up

to the mark themselves if not beyond it so he'd heerd, that they was

'improvident' (that was the favourite word) down the Yard. For instance,

if they see a man with his wife and children going to Hampton Court in a

Wan, perhaps once in a year, they says, 'Hallo! I thought you was poor,

my improvident friend!' Why, Lord, how hard it was upon a man! What was

a man to do? He couldn't go mollancholy mad, and even if he did, you

wouldn't be the better for it. In Mr Plornish's judgment you would be

the worse for it. Yet you seemed to want to make a man mollancholy mad.