第 39 页

the corduroy knee-breeches who had no cares, and past the lean clerk

Collegian in buttonless black who had no hopes, up his own poor shabby

staircase to his own poor shabby room.

There, the table was laid for his supper, and his old grey gown was

ready for him on his chair-back at the fire. His daughter put her

little prayer-book in her pocket--had she been praying for pity on all

prisoners and captives!--and rose to welcome him.

Uncle had gone home, then? she asked @ as she changed his coat and

gave him his black velvet cap. Yes, uncle had gone home. Had her father

enjoyed his walk? Why, not much, Amy; not much. No! Did he not feel

quite well?

As she stood behind him, leaning over his chair so lovingly, he looked

with downcast eyes at the fire. An uneasiness stole over him that was

like a touch of shame; and when he spoke, as he presently did, it was in

an unconnected and embarrassed manner.

'Something, I--hem!--I don't know what, has gone wrong with Chivery.

He is not--ha!--not nearly so obliging and attentive as usual to-night.

It--hem!--it's a little thing, but it puts me out, my love. It's

impossible to forget,' turning his hands over and over and looking

closely at them, 'that--hem!--that in such a life as mine, I am

unfortunately dependent on these men for something every hour in the

day.'

Her arm was on his shoulder, but she did not look in his face while he

spoke. Bending her head she looked another way.

'I--hem!--I can't think, Amy, what has given Chivery offence. He is

generally so--so very attentive and respectful. And to-night he was

quite--quite short with me. Other people there too! Why, good Heaven!

if I was to lose the support and recognition of Chivery and his brother

officers, I might starve to death here.' While he spoke, he was opening

and shutting his hands like valves; so conscious all the time of that

touch of shame, that he shrunk before his own knowledge of his meaning.

'I--ha!--I can't think what it's owing to. I am sure I cannot imagine

what the cause of it is. There was a certain Jackson here once, a

turnkey of the name of Jackson (I don't think you can remember him,

my dear, you were very young), and--hem!--and he had a--brother, and

this--young brother paid his addresses to--at least, did not go so far

as to pay his addresses to--but admired--respectfully admired--the--not

daughter, the sister--of one of us; a rather distinguished Collegian; I

may say, very much so. His name was Captain Martin; and he

consulted me on the question whether It was necessary that his

daughter--sister--should hazard offending the turnkey brother by

being too--ha!--too plain with the other brother. Captain Martin was

a gentleman and a man of honour, and I put it to him first to give me

his--his own opinion. Captain Martin (highly respected in the army) then

unhesitatingly said that it appeared to him that his--hem!--sister was

not called upon to understand the young man too distinctly, and that

she might lead him on--I am doubtful whether "lead him on" was Captain

Martin's exact expression: indeed I think he said tolerate him--on her

father's--I should say, brother's--account. I hardly know how I have

strayed into this story. I suppose it has been through being unable to

account for Chivery; but as to the connection between the two, I don't

see--'

His voice died away, as if she could not bear the pain of hearing him,

and her hand had gradually crept to his lips. For a little while there

was a dead silence and stillness; and he remained shrunk in his chair,

and she remained with her arm round his neck and her head bowed down

upon his shoulder.

His supper was cooking in a saucepan on the fire, and, when she moved,

it was to make it ready for him on the table. He took his usual seat,

she took hers, and he began his meal. They did not, as yet, look at one

another. By little and little he began; laying down his knife and fork

with a noise, taking things up sharply, biting at his bread as if he

were offended with it, and in other similar ways showing that he was out

of sorts. At length he pushed his plate from him, and spoke aloud; with

the strangest inconsistency.

'What does it matter whether I eat or starve? What does it matter

whether such a blighted life as mine comes to an end, now, next week, or

next year? What am I worth to anyone? A poor prisoner, fed on alms and

broken victuals; a squalid, disgraced wretch!'

'Father, father!' As he rose she went on her knees to him, and held up

her hands to him.

'Amy,' he went on in a suppressed voice, trembling violently, and

looking at her as wildly as if he had gone mad. 'I tell you, if you

could see me as your mother saw me, you wouldn't believe it to be the

creature you have only looked at through the bars of this cage. I was

young, I was accomplished, I was good-looking, I was independent--by God

I was, child!--and people sought me out, and envied me. Envied me!'

'Dear father!' She tried to take down the shaking arm that he flourished

in the air, but he resisted, and put her hand away.

'If I had but a picture of myself in those days, though it was ever so

ill done, you would be proud of it, you would be proud of it. But I have

no such thing. Now, let me be a warning! Let no man,' he cried, looking

haggardly about, 'fail to preserve at least that little of the times of

his prosperity and respect. Let his children have that clue to what he

was. Unless my face, when I am dead, subsides into the long departed

look--they say such things happen, I don't know--my children will have

never seen me.'

'Father, father!'

'O despise me, despise me! Look away from me, don't listen to me, stop

me, blush for me, cry for me--even you, Amy! Do it, do it! I do it to

myself! I am hardened now, I have sunk too low to care long even for

that.'

'Dear father, loved father, darling of my heart!' She was clinging to

him with her arms, and she got him to drop into his chair again, and

caught at the raised arm, and tried to put it round her neck.

'Let it lie there, father. Look at me, father, kiss me, father! Only

think of me, father, for one little moment!'

Still he went on in the same wild way, though it was gradually breaking

down into a miserable whining.

'And yet I have some respect here. I have made some stand against it. I

am not quite trodden down. Go out and ask who is the chief person in the

place. They'll tell you it's your father. Go out and ask who is never

trifled with, and who is always treated with some delicacy. They'll say,

your father. Go out and ask what funeral here (it must be here, I know

it can be nowhere else) will make more talk, and perhaps more grief,

than any that has ever gone out at the gate. They'll say your father's.

Well then. Amy! Amy! Is your father so universally despised? Is there

nothing to redeem him? Will you have nothing to remember him by but his

ruin and decay? Will you be able to have no affection for him when he is

gone, poor castaway, gone?'

He burst into tears of maudlin pity for himself, and at length suffering

her to embrace him and take charge of him, let his grey head rest

against her cheek, and bewailed his wretchedness. Presently he changed

the subject of his lamentations, and clasping his hands about her as she

embraced him, cried, O Amy, his motherless, forlorn child! O the days

that he had seen her careful and laborious for him! Then he reverted to

himself, and weakly told her how much better she would have loved him

if she had known him in his vanished character, and how he would have

married her to a gentleman who should have been proud of her as his

daughter, and how (at which he cried again) she should first have ridden

at his fatherly side on her own horse, and how the crowd (by which he

meant in effect the people who had given him the twelve shillings

he then had in his pocket) should have trudged the dusty roads

respectfully.

Thus, now boasting, now despairing, in either fit a captive with the

jail-rot upon him, and the impurity of his prison worn into the grain of

his soul, he revealed his degenerate state to his affectionate child.

No one else ever beheld him in the details of his humiliation. Little

recked the Collegians who were laughing in their rooms over his late

address in the Lodge, what a serious picture they had in their obscure

gallery of the Marshalsea that Sunday night.

There was a classical daughter once--perhaps--who ministered to her

father in his prison as her mother had ministered to her. Little Dorrit,

though of the unheroic modern stock and mere English, did much more,

in comforting her father's wasted heart upon her innocent breast, and

turning to it a fountain of love and fidelity that never ran dry or

waned through all his years of famine.

She soothed him; asked him for his forgiveness if she had been, or

seemed to have been, undutiful; told him, Heaven knows truly, that she

could not honour him more if he were the favourite of Fortune and the

whole world acknowledged him. When his tears were dried, and he sobbed

in his weakness no longer, and was free from that touch of shame, and

had recovered his usual bearing, she prepared the remains of his supper

afresh, and, sitting by his side, rejoiced to see him eat and drink. For

now he sat in his black velvet cap and old grey gown, magnanimous again;

and would have comported himself towards any Collegian who might have

looked in to ask his advice, like a great moral Lord Chesterfield, or

Master of the ethical ceremonies of the Marshalsea.

To keep his attention engaged, she talked with him about his wardrobe;

when he was pleased to say, that Yes, indeed, those shirts she proposed

would be exceedingly acceptable, for those he had were worn out, and,

being ready-made, had never fitted him. Being conversational, and in a

reasonable flow of spirits, he then invited her attention to his coat

as it hung behind the door: remarking that the Father of the place

would set an indifferent example to his children, already disposed to be

slovenly, if he went among them out at elbows. He was jocular, too,

as to the heeling of his shoes; but became grave on the subject of his

cravat, and promised her that, when she could afford it, she should buy

him a new one.

While he smoked out his cigar in peace, she made his bed, and put the

small room in order for his repose. Being weary then, owing to the

advanced hour and his emotions, he came out of his chair to bless her

and wish her Good night. All this time he had never once thought of HER

dress, her shoes, her need of anything. No other person upon earth, save

herself, could have been so unmindful of her wants.

He kissed her many times with 'Bless you, my love. Good night, MY dear!'

But her gentle breast had been so deeply wounded by what she had seen of

him that she was unwilling to leave him alone, lest he should lament

and despair again. 'Father, dear, I am not tired; let me come back

presently, when you are in bed, and sit by you.'

He asked her, with an air of protection, if she felt solitary?

'Yes, father.'

'Then come back by all means, my love.'

'I shall be very quiet, father.'

'Don't think of me, my dear,' he said, giving her his kind permission

fully. 'Come back by all means.'

He seemed to be dozing when she returned, and she put the low fire

together very softly lest she should awake him. But he overheard her,

and called out who was that?

'Only Amy, father.'

'Amy, my child, come here. I want to say a word to you.' He raised

himself a little in his low bed, as she kneeled beside it to bring her

face near him; and put his hand between hers. O! Both the private father

and the Father of the Marshalsea were strong within him then.

'My love, you have had a life of hardship here. No companions, no

recreations, many cares I am afraid?'

'Don't think of that, dear. I never do.'

'You know my position, Amy. I have not been able to do much for you; but

all I have been able to do, I have done.'

'Yes, my dear father,' she rejoined, kissing him. 'I know, I know.'

'I am in the twenty-third year of my life here,' he said, with a catch

in his breath that was not so much a sob as an irrepressible sound of

self-approval, the momentary outburst of a noble consciousness. 'It is

all I could do for my children--I have done it. Amy, my love, you are

by far the best loved of the three; I have had you principally in my

mind--whatever I have done for your sake, my dear child, I have done

freely and without murmuring.'

Only the wisdom that holds the clue to all hearts and all mysteries, can

surely know to what extent a man, especially a man brought down as this

man had been, can impose upon himself. Enough, for the present place,

that he lay down with wet eyelashes, serene, in a manner majestic, after

bestowing his life of degradation as a sort of portion on the devoted

child upon whom its miseries had fallen so heavily, and whose love alone

had saved him to be even what he was.

That child had no doubts, asked herself no question, for she was but too

content to see him with a lustre round his head. Poor dear, good dear,

truest, kindest, dearest, were the only words she had for him, as she

hushed him to rest.

She never left him all that night. As if she had done him a wrong which

her tenderness could hardly repair, she sat by him in his sleep, at

times softly kissing him with suspended breath, and calling him in a

whisper by some endearing name. At times she stood aside so as not to

intercept the low fire-light, and, watching him when it fell upon his

sleeping face, wondered did he look now at all as he had looked when he

was prosperous and happy; as he had so touched her by imagining that he

might look once more in that awful time. At the thought of that time,