Little Dorrit

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The entrance of the lady whom he announced, to take her place at
the breakfast-table, terminated the discussion. Shortly
afterwards, the courier announced that the valet, and the footman,
and the two maids, and the four guides, and the fourteen mules,
were in readiness; so the breakfast party went out to the convent
door to join the cavalcade.

Mr Gowan stood aloof with his cigar and pencil, but Mr Blandois was
on the spot to pay his respects to the ladies. When he gallantly
pulled off his slouched hat to Little Dorrit, she thought he had
even a more sinister look, standing swart and cloaked in the snow,
than he had in the fire-light over-night. But, as both her father
and her sister received his homage with some favour, she refrained
from expressing any distrust of him, lest it should prove to be a
new blemish derived from her prison birth.

Nevertheless, as they wound down the rugged way while the convent
was yet in sight, she more than once looked round, and descried Mr
Blandois, backed by the convent smoke which rose straight and high
from the chimneys in a golden film, always standing on one jutting
point looking down after them. Long after he was a mere black
stick in the snow, she felt as though she could yet see that smile
of his, that high nose, and those eyes that were too near it. And
even after that, when the convent was gone and some light morning
clouds veiled the pass below it, the ghastly skeleton arms by the
wayside seemed to be all pointing up at him.

More treacherous than snow, perhaps, colder at heart, and harder to
melt, Blandois of Paris by degrees passed out of her mind, as they
came down into the softer regions. Again the sun was warm, again
the streams descending from glaciers and snowy caverns were
refreshing to drink at, again they came among the pine-trees, the
rocky rivulets, the verdant heights and dales, the wooden chalets
and rough zigzag fences of Swiss country. Sometimes the way so
widened that she and her father could ride abreast. And then to
look at him, handsomely clothed in his fur and broadcloths, rich,
free, numerously served and attended, his eyes roving far away
among the glories of the landscape, no miserable screen before them
to darken his sight and cast its shadow on him, was enough.

Her uncle was so far rescued from that shadow of old, that he wore
the clothes they gave him, and performed some ablutions as a
sacrifice to the family credit, and went where he was taken, with
a certain patient animal enjoyment, which seemed to express that
the air and change did him good. In all other respects, save one,
he shone with no light but such as was reflected from his brother.
His brother's greatness, wealth, freedom, and grandeur, pleased him
without any reference to himself. Silent and retiring, he had no
use for speech when he could hear his brother speak; no desire to
be waited on, so that the servants devoted themselves to his
brother. The only noticeable change he originated in himself, was
an alteration in his manner to his younger niece. Every day it
refined more and more into a marked respect, very rarely shown by
age to youth, and still more rarely susceptible, one would have
said, of the fitness with which he invested it. On those occasions
when Miss Fanny did declare once for all, he would take the next
opportunity of baring his grey head before his younger niece, and
of helping her to alight, or handing her to the carriage, or
showing her any other attention, with the profoundest deference.
Yet it never appeared misplaced or forced, being always heartily
simple, spontaneous, and genuine. Neither would he ever consent,
even at his brother's request, to be helped to any place before
her, or to take precedence of her in anything. So jealous was he
of her being respected, that, on this very journey down from the
Great Saint Bernard, he took sudden and violent umbrage at the
footman's being remiss to hold her stirrup, though standing near
when she dismounted; and unspeakably astonished the whole retinue
by charging at him on a hard-headed mule, riding him into a corner,
and threatening to trample him to death.

They were a goodly company, and the Innkeepers all but worshipped
them. Wherever they went, their importance preceded them in the
person of the courier riding before, to see that the rooms of state
were ready. He was the herald of the family procession. The great
travelling-carriage came next: containing, inside, Mr Dorrit, Miss
Dorrit, Miss Amy Dorrit, and Mrs General; outside, some of the
retainers, and (in fine weather) Edward Dorrit, Esquire, for whom
the box was reserved. Then came the chariot containing Frederick
Dorrit, Esquire, and an empty place occupied by Edward Dorrit,
Esquire, in wet weather. Then came the fourgon with the rest of
the retainers, the heavy baggage, and as much as it could carry of
the mud and dust which the other vehicles left behind.

These equipages adorned the yard of the hotel at Martigny, on the
return of the family from their mountain excursion. Other vehicles
were there, much company being on the road, from the patched
Italian Vettura--like the body of a swing from an English fair put
upon a wooden tray on wheels, and having another wooden tray
without wheels put atop of it--to the trim English carriage. But
there was another adornment of the hotel which Mr Dorrit had not
bargained for. Two strange travellers embellished one of his
rooms.

The Innkeeper, hat in hand in the yard, swore to the courier that
he was blighted, that he was desolated, that he was profoundly
afflicted, that he was the most miserable and unfortunate of
beasts, that he had the head of a wooden pig. He ought never to
have made the concession, he said, but the very genteel lady had so
passionately prayed him for the accommodation of that room to dine
in, only for a little half-hour, that he had been vanquished. The
little half-hour was expired, the lady and gentleman were taking
their little dessert and half-cup of coffee, the note was paid, the
horses were ordered, they would depart immediately; but, owing to
an unhappy destiny and the curse of Heaven, they were not yet gone.

Nothing could exceed Mr Dorrit's indignation, as he turned at the
foot of the staircase on hearing these apologies. He felt that the
family dignity was struck at by an assassin's hand. He had a sense
of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could
detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the
fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels
that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting his dignity.

'Is it possible, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, reddening excessively, 'that
you have--ha--had the audacity to place one of my rooms at the
disposition of any other person?'

Thousands of pardons! It was the host's profound misfortune to
have been overcome by that too genteel lady. He besought
Monseigneur not to enrage himself. He threw himself on Monseigneur
for clemency. If Monseigneur would have the distinguished goodness
to occupy the other salon especially reserved for him, for but five
minutes, all would go well.

'No, sir,' said Mr Dorrit. 'I will not occupy any salon. I will
leave your house without eating or drinking, or setting foot in it.

How do you dare to act like this? Who am I that you--ha--separate
me from other gentlemen?'

Alas! The host called all the universe to witness that Monseigneur
was the most amiable of the whole body of nobility, the most
important, the most estimable, the most honoured. If he separated
Monseigneur from others, it was only because he was more
distinguished, more cherished, more generous, more renowned.

'Don't tell me so, sir,' returned Mr Dorrit, in a mighty heat.
'You have affronted me. You have heaped insults upon me. How dare
you? Explain yourself.'

Ah, just Heaven, then, how could the host explain himself when he
had nothing more to explain; when he had only to apologise, and
confide himself to the so well-known magnanimity of Monseigneur!

'I tell you, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, panting with anger, 'that you
separate me--ha--from other gentlemen; that you make distinctions
between me and other gentlemen of fortune and station. I demand of
you, why? I wish to know on--ha--what authority, on whose
authority. Reply sir. Explain. Answer why.'

Permit the landlord humbly to submit to Monsieur the Courier then,
that Monseigneur, ordinarily so gracious, enraged himself without
cause. There was no why. Monsieur the Courier would represent to
Monseigneur, that he deceived himself in suspecting that there was
any why, but the why his devoted servant had already had the honour
to present to him. The very genteel lady--

'Silence!' cried Mr Dorrit. 'Hold your tongue! I will hear no
more of the very genteel lady; I will hear no more of you. Look at
this family--my family--a family more genteel than any lady. You
have treated this family with disrespect; you have been insolent to
this family. I'll ruin you. Ha--send for the horses, pack the
carriages, I'll not set foot in this man's house again!'

No one had interfered in the dispute, which was beyond the French
colloquial powers of Edward Dorrit, Esquire, and scarcely within
the province of the ladies. Miss Fanny, however, now supported her
father with great bitterness; declaring, in her native tongue, that
it was quite clear there was something special in this man's
impertinence; and that she considered it important that he should
be, by some means, forced to give up his authority for making
distinctions between that family and other wealthy families. What
the reasons of his presumption could be, she was at a loss to
imagine; but reasons he must have, and they ought to be torn from
him.

All the guides, mule-drivers, and idlers in the yard, had made
themselves parties to the angry conference, and were much impressed
by the courier's now bestirring himself to get the carriages out.
With the aid of some dozen people to each wheel, this was done at
a great cost of noise; and then the loading was proceeded with,
pending the arrival of the horses from the post-house.

But the very genteel lady's English chariot being already horsed
and at the inn-door, the landlord had slipped up-stairs to
represent his hard case. This was notified to the yard by his now
coming down the staircase in attendance on the gentleman and the
lady, and by his pointing out the offended majesty of Mr Dorrit to
them with a significant motion of his hand.

'Beg your pardon,' said the gentleman, detaching himself from the
lady, and coming forward. 'I am a man of few words and a bad hand
at an explanation--but lady here is extremely anxious that there
should be no Row. Lady--a mother of mine, in point of fact--wishes
me to say that she hopes no Row.'

Mr Dorrit, still panting under his injury, saluted the gentleman,
and saluted the lady, in a distant, final, and invincible manner.

'No, but really--here, old feller; you!' This was the gentleman's
way of appealing to Edward Dorrit, Esquire, on whom he pounced as
a great and providential relief. 'Let you and I try to make this
all right. Lady so very much wishes no Row.'

Edward Dorrit, Esquire, led a little apart by the button, assumed
a diplomatic expression of countenance in replying, 'Why you must
confess, that when you bespeak a lot of rooms beforehand, and they
belong to you, it's not pleasant to find other people in 'em.'

'No,' said the other, 'I know it isn't. I admit it. Still, let
you and I try to make it all right, and avoid Row. The fault is
not this chap's at all, but my mother's. Being a remarkably fine
woman with no bigodd nonsense about her--well educated, too--she
was too many for this chap. Regularly pocketed him.'

'If that's the case--' Edward Dorrit, Esquire, began.

'Assure you 'pon my soul 'tis the case. Consequently,' said the
other gentleman, retiring on his main position, 'why Row?'

'Edmund,' said the lady from the doorway, 'I hope you have
explained, or are explaining, to the satisfaction of this gentleman
and his family that the civil landlord is not to blame?'

'Assure you, ma'am,' returned Edmund, 'perfectly paralysing myself
with trying it on.' He then looked steadfastly at Edward Dorrit,
Esquire, for some seconds, and suddenly added, in a burst of
confidence, 'Old feller! Is it all right?'

'I don't know, after all,' said the lady, gracefully advancing a
step or two towards Mr Dorrit, 'but that I had better say myself,
at once, that I assured this good man I took all the consequences
on myself of occupying one of a stranger's suite of rooms during
his absence, for just as much (or as little) time as I could dine
in. I had no idea the rightful owner would come back so soon, nor
had I any idea that he had come back, or I should have hastened to
make restoration of my ill-gotten chamber, and to have offered my
explanation and apology. I trust in saying this--'

For a moment the lady, with a glass at her eye, stood transfixed
and speechless before the two Miss Dorrits. At the same moment,
Miss Fanny, in the foreground of a grand pictorial composition,
formed by the family, the family equipages, and the family
servants, held her sister tight under one arm to detain her on the
spot, and with the other arm fanned herself with a distinguished
air, and negligently surveyed the lady from head to foot.

The lady, recovering herself quickly--for it was Mrs Merdle and she
was not easily dashed--went on to add that she trusted in saying
this, she apologised for her boldness, and restored this well-
behaved landlord to the favour that was so very valuable to him.
Mr Dorrit, on the altar of whose dignity all this was incense, made
a gracious reply; and said that his people should--ha--countermand
his horses, and he would--hum--overlook what he had at first
supposed to be an affront, but now regarded as an honour. Upon
this the bosom bent to him; and its owner, with a wonderful command
of feature, addressed a winning smile of adieu to the two sisters,
as young ladies of fortune in whose favour she was much
prepossessed, and whom she had never had the gratification of
seeing before.

Not so, however, Mr Sparkler. This gentleman, becoming transfixed
at the same moment as his lady-mother, could not by any means unfix
himself again, but stood stiffly staring at the whole composition
with Miss Fanny in the Foreground. On his mother saying, 'Edmund,
we are quite ready; will you give me your arm?' he seemed, by the
motion of his lips, to reply with some remark comprehending the
form of words in which his shining talents found the most frequent
utterance, but he relaxed no muscle. So fixed was his figure, that
it would have been matter of some difficulty to bend him
sufficiently to get him in the carriage-door, if he had not
received the timely assistance of a maternal pull from within. He
was no sooner within than the pad of the little window in the back
of the chariot disappeared, and his eye usurped its place. There
it remained as long as so small an object was discernible, and
probably much longer, staring (as though something inexpressibly
surprising should happen to a codfish) like an ill-executed eye in
a large locket.

This encounter was so highly agreeable to Miss Fanny, and gave her
so much to think of with triumph afterwards, that it softened her
asperities exceedingly. When the procession was again in motion
next day, she occupied her place in it with a new gaiety; and
showed such a flow of spirits indeed, that Mrs General looked
rather surprised.

Little Dorrit was glad to be found no fault with, and to see that
Fanny was pleased; but her part in the procession was a musing
part, and a quiet one. Sitting opposite her father in the
travelling-carriage, and recalling the old Marshalsea room, her
present existence was a dream. All that she saw was new and
wonderful, but it was not real; it seemed to her as if those
visions of mountains and picturesque countries might melt away at
any moment, and the carriage, turning some abrupt corner, bring up
with a jolt at the old Marshalsea gate.

To have no work to do was strange, but not half so strange as
having glided into a corner where she had no one to think for,
nothing to plan and contrive, no cares of others to load herself
with. Strange as that was, it was far stranger yet to find a space
between herself and her father, where others occupied themselves in
taking care of him, and where she was never expected to be. At
first, this was so much more unlike her old experience than even
the mountains themselves, that she had been unable to resign
herself to it, and had tried to retain her old place about him.
But he had spoken to her alone, and had said that people--ha--
people in an exalted position, my dear, must scrupulously exact
respect from their dependents; and that for her, his daughter, Miss
Amy Dorrit, of the sole remaining branch of the Dorrits of
Dorsetshire, to be known to--hum--to occupy herself in fulfilling
the functions of--ha hum--a valet, would be incompatible with that
respect. Therefore, my dear, he--ha--he laid his parental
injunctions upon her, to remember that she was a lady, who had now
to conduct herself with--hum--a proper pride, and to preserve the
rank of a lady; and consequently he requested her to abstain from
doing what would occasion--ha--unpleasant and derogatory remarks.
She had obeyed without a murmur. Thus it had been brought about
that she now sat in her corner of the luxurious carriage with her
little patient hands folded before her, quite displaced even from
the last point of the old standing ground in life on which her feet
had lingered.

It was from this position that all she saw appeared unreal; the
more surprising the scenes, the more they resembled the unreality
of her own inner life as she went through its vacant places all day
long. The gorges of the Simplon, its enormous depths and
thundering waterfalls, the wonderful road, the points of danger
where a loose wheel or a faltering horse would have been
destruction, the descent into Italy, the opening of that beautiful
land as the rugged mountain-chasm widened and let them out from a
gloomy and dark imprisonment--all a dream--only the old mean
Marshalsea a reality. Nay, even the old mean Marshalsea was shaken
to its foundations when she pictured it without her father. She
could scarcely believe that the prisoners were still lingering in
the close yard, that the mean rooms were still every one tenanted,
and that the turnkey still stood in the Lodge letting people in and
out, all just as she well knew it to be.

With a remembrance of her father's old life in prison hanging about
her like the burden of a sorrowful tune, Little Dorrit would wake
from a dream of her birth-place into a whole day's dream. The
painted room in which she awoke, often a humbled state-chamber in
a dilapidated palace, would begin it; with its wild red autumnal
vine-leaves overhanging the glass, its orange-trees on the cracked
white terrace outside the window, a group of monks and peasants in
the little street below, misery and magnificence wrestling with
each other upon every rood of ground in the prospect, no matter how
widely diversified, and misery throwing magnificence with the
strength of fate. To this would succeed a labyrinth of bare
passages and pillared galleries, with the family procession already
preparing in the quadrangle below, through the carriages and
luggage being brought together by the servants for the day's
journey. Then breakfast in another painted chamber, damp-stained
and of desolate proportions; and then the departure, which, to her
timidity and sense of not being grand enough for her place in the
ceremonies, was always an uneasy thing. For then the courier (who
himself would have been a foreign gentleman of high mark in the
Marshalsea) would present himself to report that all was ready; and
then her father's valet would pompously induct him into his
travelling-cloak; and then Fanny's maid, and her own maid (who was
a weight on Little Dorrit's mind--absolutely made her cry at first,
she knew so little what to do with her), would be in attendance;
and then her brother's man would complete his master's equipment;
and then her father would give his arm to Mrs General, and her
uncle would give his to her, and, escorted by the landlord and Inn
servants, they would swoop down-stairs. There, a crowd would be
collected to see them enter their carriages, which, amidst much
bowing, and begging, and prancing, and lashing, and clattering,
they would do; and so they would be driven madly through narrow
unsavoury streets, and jerked out at the town gate.

Among the day's unrealities would be roads where the bright red
vines were looped and garlanded together on trees for many miles;
woods of olives; white villages and towns on hill-sides, lovely
without, but frightful in their dirt and poverty within; crosses by
the way; deep blue lakes with fairy islands, and clustering boats
with awnings of bright colours and sails of beautiful forms; vast
piles of building mouldering to dust; hanging-gardens where the
weeds had grown so strong that their stems, like wedges driven
home, had split the arch and rent the wall; stone-terraced lanes,
with the lizards running into and out of every chink; beggars of
all sorts everywhere: pitiful, picturesque, hungry, merry; children
beggars and aged beggars. Often at posting-houses and other
halting places, these miserable creatures would appear to her the
only realities of the day; and many a time, when the money she had
brought to give them was all given away, she would sit with her
folded hands, thoughtfully looking after some diminutive girl
leading her grey father, as if the sight reminded her of something
in the days that were gone.

Again, there would be places where they stayed the week together in
splendid rooms, had banquets every day, rode out among heaps of
wonders, walked through miles of palaces, and rested in dark
corners of great churches; where there were winking lamps of gold
and silver among pillars and arches, kneeling figures dotted about
at confessionals and on the pavements; where there was the mist and
scent of incense; where there were pictures, fantastic images,
gaudy altars, great heights and distances, all softly lighted
through stained glass, and the massive curtains that hung in the
doorways. From these cities they would go on again, by the roads
of vines and olives, through squalid villages, where there was not
a hovel without a gap in its filthy walls, not a window with a
whole inch of glass or paper; where there seemed to be nothing to
support life, nothing to eat, nothing to make, nothing to grow,
nothing to hope, nothing to do but die.

Again they would come to whole towns of palaces, whose proper
inmates were all banished, and which were all changed into
barracks: troops of idle soldiers leaning out of the state windows,
where their accoutrements hung drying on the marble architecture,
and showing to the mind like hosts of rats who were (happily)
eating away the props of the edifices that supported them, and must
soon, with them, be smashed on the heads of the other swarms of
soldiers and the swarms of priests, and the swarms of spies, who
were all the ill-looking population left to be ruined, in the
streets below.

Through such scenes, the family procession moved on to Venice. And
here it dispersed for a time, as they were to live in Venice some
few months in a palace (itself six times as big as the whole
Marshalsea) on the Grand Canal.

In this crowning unreality, where all the streets were paved with
water, and where the deathlike stillness of the days and nights was
broken by no sound but the softened ringing of church-bells, the
rippling of the current, and the cry of the gondoliers turning the
corners of the flowing streets, Little Dorrit, quite lost by her
task being done, sat down to muse. The family began a gay life,
went here and there, and turned night into day; but she was timid
of joining in their gaieties, and only asked leave to be left
alone.

Sometimes she would step into one of the gondolas that were always
kept in waiting, moored to painted posts at the door--when she
could escape from the attendance of that oppressive maid, who was
her mistress, and a very hard one--and would be taken all over the
strange city. Social people in other gondolas began to ask each
other who the little solitary girl was whom they passed, sitting in
her boat with folded hands, looking so pensively and wonderingly
about her. Never thinking that it would be worth anybody's while
to notice her or her doings, Little Dorrit, in her quiet, scared,
lost manner, went about the city none the less.

But her favourite station was the balcony of her own room,
overhanging the canal, with other balconies below, and none above.
It was of massive stone darkened by ages, built in a wild fancy
which came from the East to that collection of wild fancies; and
Little Dorrit was little indeed, leaning on the broad-cushioned
ledge, and looking over. As she liked no place of an evening half
so well, she soon began to be watched for, and many eyes in passing
gondolas were raised, and many people said, There was the little
figure of the English girl who was always alone.