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she kneeled beside his bed again, and prayed, 'O spare his life! O

save him to me! O look down upon my dear, long-suffering, unfortunate,

much-changed, dear dear father!'

Not until the morning came to protect him and encourage him, did she

give him a last kiss and leave the small room. When she had stolen

down-stairs, and along the empty yard, and had crept up to her own

high garret, the smokeless housetops and the distant country hills were

discernible over the wall in the clear morning. As she gently opened the

window, and looked eastward down the prison yard, the spikes upon the

wall were tipped with red, then made a sullen purple pattern on the sun

as it came flaming up into the heavens. The spikes had never looked so

sharp and cruel, nor the bars so heavy, nor the prison space so gloomy

and contracted. She thought of the sunrise on rolling rivers, of the

sunrise on wide seas, of the sunrise on rich landscapes, of the

sunrise on great forests where the birds were waking and the trees were

rustling; and she looked down into the living grave on which the sun

had risen, with her father in it three-and-twenty years, and said, in

a burst of sorrow and compassion, 'No, no, I have never seen him in my

life!'

CHAPTER 20. Moving in Society

If Young John Chivery had had the inclination and the power to write a

satire on family pride, he would have had no need to go for an avenging

illustration out of the family of his beloved. He would have found it

amply in that gallant brother and that dainty sister, so steeped in mean

experiences, and so loftily conscious of the family name; so ready

to beg or borrow from the poorest, to eat of anybody's bread, spend

anybody's money, drink from anybody's cup and break it afterwards.

To have painted the sordid facts of their lives, and they throughout

invoking the death's head apparition of the family gentility to come and

scare their benefactors, would have made Young John a satirist of the

first water.

Tip had turned his liberty to hopeful account by becoming a

billiard-marker. He had troubled himself so little as to the means of

his release, that Clennam scarcely needed to have been at the pains of

impressing the mind of Mr Plornish on that subject. Whoever had paid

him the compliment, he very readily accepted the compliment with HIS

compliments, and there was an end of it. Issuing forth from the gate

on these easy terms, he became a billiard-marker; and now occasionally

looked in at the little skittle-ground in a green Newmarket coat

(second-hand), with a shining collar and bright buttons (new), and drank

the beer of the Collegians.

One solid stationary point in the looseness of this gentleman's

character was, that he respected and admired his sister Amy. The feeling

had never induced him to spare her a moment's uneasiness, or to put

himself to any restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that

Marshalsea taint upon his love, he loved her. The same rank Marshalsea

flavour was to be recognised in his distinctly perceiving that she

sacrificed her life to her father, and in his having no idea that she

had done anything for himself.

When this spirited young man and his sister had begun systematically

to produce the family skeleton for the overawing of the College, this

narrative cannot precisely state. Probably at about the period when

they began to dine on the College charity. It is certain that the more

reduced and necessitous they were, the more pompously the skeleton

emerged from its tomb; and that when there was anything particularly

shabby in the wind, the skeleton always came out with the ghastliest

flourish.

Little Dorrit was late on the Monday morning, for her father slept

late, and afterwards there was his breakfast to prepare and his room to

arrange. She had no engagement to go out to work, however, and therefore

stayed with him until, with Maggy's help, she had put everything right

about him, and had seen him off upon his morning walk (of twenty yards

or so) to the coffee-house to read the paper.

She then got on her bonnet and went out, having been anxious to get out

much sooner. There was, as usual, a cessation of the small-talk in

the Lodge as she passed through it; and a Collegian who had come in

on Saturday night, received the intimation from the elbow of a more

seasoned Collegian, 'Look out. Here she is!' She wanted to see her

sister, but when she got round to Mr Cripples's, she found that both her

sister and her uncle had gone to the theatre where they were engaged.

Having taken thought of this probability by the way, and having settled

that in such case she would follow them, she set off afresh for the

theatre, which was on that side of the river, and not very far away.

Little Dorrit was almost as ignorant of the ways of theatres as of the

ways of gold mines, and when she was directed to a furtive sort of door,

with a curious up-all-night air about it, that appeared to be ashamed of

itself and to be hiding in an alley, she hesitated to approach it; being

further deterred by the sight of some half-dozen close-shaved gentlemen

with their hats very strangely on, who were lounging about the door,

looking not at all unlike Collegians. On her applying to them, reassured

by this resemblance, for a direction to Miss Dorrit, they made way for

her to enter a dark hall--it was more like a great grim lamp gone out

than anything else--where she could hear the distant playing of music

and the sound of dancing feet. A man so much in want of airing that he

had a blue mould upon him, sat watching this dark place from a hole in

a corner, like a spider; and he told her that he would send a message

up to Miss Dorrit by the first lady or gentleman who went through. The

first lady who went through had a roll of music, half in her muff and

half out of it, and was in such a tumbled condition altogether, that it

seemed as if it would be an act of kindness to iron her. But as she was

very good-natured, and said, 'Come with me; I'll soon find Miss Dorrit

for you,' Miss Dorrit's sister went with her, drawing nearer and nearer

at every step she took in the darkness to the sound of music and the

sound of dancing feet.

At last they came into a maze of dust, where a quantity of people were

tumbling over one another, and where there was such a confusion of

unaccountable shapes of beams, bulkheads, brick walls, ropes, and

rollers, and such a mixing of gaslight and daylight, that they seemed

to have got on the wrong side of the pattern of the universe. Little

Dorrit, left to herself, and knocked against by somebody every moment,

was quite bewildered, when she heard her sister's voice.

'Why, good gracious, Amy, what ever brought you here?'

'I wanted to see you, Fanny dear; and as I am going out all day

to-morrow, and knew you might be engaged all day to-day, I thought--'

'But the idea, Amy, of YOU coming behind! I never did!' As her sister

said this in no very cordial tone of welcome, she conducted her to a

more open part of the maze, where various golden chairs and tables were

heaped together, and where a number of young ladies were sitting on

anything they could find, chattering. All these young ladies wanted

ironing, and all had a curious way of looking everywhere while they

chattered.

Just as the sisters arrived here, a monotonous boy in a Scotch cap put

his head round a beam on the left, and said, 'Less noise there, ladies!'

and disappeared. Immediately after which, a sprightly gentleman with a

quantity of long black hair looked round a beam on the right, and said,

'Less noise there, darlings!' and also disappeared.

'The notion of you among professionals, Amy, is really the last thing

I could have conceived!' said her sister. 'Why, how did you ever get

here?'

'I don't know. The lady who told you I was here, was so good as to bring

me in.'

'Like you quiet little things! You can make your way anywhere, I

believe. I couldn't have managed it, Amy, though I know so much more of

the world.'

It was the family custom to lay it down as family law, that she was a

plain domestic little creature, without the great and sage experience of

the rest. This family fiction was the family assertion of itself against

her services. Not to make too much of them.

'Well! And what have you got on your mind, Amy? Of course you have

got something on your mind about me?' said Fanny. She spoke as if her

sister, between two and three years her junior, were her prejudiced

grandmother.

'It is not much; but since you told me of the lady who gave you the

bracelet, Fanny--'

The monotonous boy put his head round the beam on the left, and said,

'Look out there, ladies!' and disappeared. The sprightly gentleman with

the black hair as suddenly put his head round the beam on the right, and

said, 'Look out there, darlings!' and also disappeared. Thereupon all

the young ladies rose and began shaking their skirts out behind.

'Well, Amy?' said Fanny, doing as the rest did; 'what were you going to

say?'

'Since you told me a lady had given you the bracelet you showed me,

Fanny, I have not been quite easy on your account, and indeed want to

know a little more if you will confide more to me.'

'Now, ladies!' said the boy in the Scotch cap. 'Now, darlings!' said the

gentleman with the black hair. They were every one gone in a moment, and

the music and the dancing feet were heard again.

Little Dorrit sat down in a golden chair, made quite giddy by these

rapid interruptions. Her sister and the rest were a long time gone; and

during their absence a voice (it appeared to be that of the gentleman

with the black hair) was continually calling out through the music,

'One, two, three, four, five, six--go! One, two, three, four, five,

six--go! Steady, darlings! One, two, three, four, five, six--go!'

Ultimately the voice stopped, and they all came back again, more or less

out of breath, folding themselves in their shawls, and making ready

for the streets. 'Stop a moment, Amy, and let them get away before

us,' whispered Fanny. They were soon left alone; nothing more important

happening, in the meantime, than the boy looking round his old beam, and

saying, 'Everybody at eleven to-morrow, ladies!' and the gentleman with

the black hair looking round his old beam, and saying, 'Everybody at

eleven to-morrow, darlings!' each in his own accustomed manner.

When they were alone, something was rolled up or by other means got out

of the way, and there was a great empty well before them, looking down

into the depths of which Fanny said, 'Now, uncle!' Little Dorrit, as her

eyes became used to the darkness, faintly made him out at the bottom of

the well, in an obscure corner by himself, with his instrument in its

ragged case under his arm.

The old man looked as if the remote high gallery windows, with their

little strip of sky, might have been the point of his better fortunes,

from which he had descended, until he had gradually sunk down below

there to the bottom. He had been in that place six nights a week for

many years, but had never been observed to raise his eyes above his

music-book, and was confidently believed to have never seen a play.

There were legends in the place that he did not so much as know the

popular heroes and heroines by sight, and that the low comedian had

'mugged' at him in his richest manner fifty nights for a wager, and he

had shown no trace of consciousness. The carpenters had a joke to the

effect that he was dead without being aware of it; and the frequenters

of the pit supposed him to pass his whole life, night and day, and

Sunday and all, in the orchestra. They had tried him a few times with

pinches of snuff offered over the rails, and he had always responded to

this attention with a momentary waking up of manner that had the pale

phantom of a gentleman in it: beyond this he never, on any occasion, had

any other part in what was going on than the part written out for the

clarionet; in private life, where there was no part for the clarionet,

he had no part at all. Some said he was poor, some said he was a wealthy

miser; but he said nothing, never lifted up his bowed head, never varied

his shuffling gait by getting his springless foot from the ground.

Though expecting now to be summoned by his niece, he did not hear her

until she had spoken to him three or four times; nor was he at all

surprised by the presence of two nieces instead of one, but merely said

in his tremulous voice, 'I am coming, I am coming!' and crept forth by

some underground way which emitted a cellarous smell.

'And so, Amy,' said her sister, when the three together passed out at

the door that had such a shame-faced consciousness of being different

from other doors: the uncle instinctively taking Amy's arm as the arm to

be relied on: 'so, Amy, you are curious about me?'

She was pretty, and conscious, and rather flaunting; and the

condescension with which she put aside the superiority of her charms,

and of her worldly experience, and addressed her sister on almost equal

terms, had a vast deal of the family in it.

'I am interested, Fanny, and concerned in anything that concerns you.'

'So you are, so you are, and you are the best of Amys. If I am ever a

little provoking, I am sure you'll consider what a thing it is to

occupy my position and feel a consciousness of being superior to it. I

shouldn't care,' said the Daughter of the Father of the Marshalsea, 'if

the others were not so common. None of them have come down in the world

as we have. They are all on their own level. Common.'

Little Dorrit mildly looked at the speaker, but did not interrupt her.

Fanny took out her handkerchief, and rather angrily wiped her eyes. 'I

was not born where you were, you know, Amy, and perhaps that makes a