Little Dorrit

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'She is very well. She is going away next week.'

'Home?' asked Mr Dorrit.

'After a few weeks' stay upon the road.'

'She will be a vast loss here,' said Mr Dorrit. 'A vast--ha--
acquisition at home. To Fanny, and to--hum--the rest of the--ha--
great world.'

Little Dorrit thought of the competition that was to be entered
upon, and assented very softly.

'Mrs Merdle is going to have a great farewell Assembly, dear, and
a dinner before it. She has been expressing her anxiety that you
should return in time. She has invited both you and me to her
dinner.'

'She is--ha--very kind. When is the day?'

'The day after to-morrow.'

'Write round in the morning, and say that I have returned, and
shall--hum--be delighted.'

'May I walk with you up the stairs to your room, dear?'

'No!' he answered, looking angrily round; for he was moving away,
as if forgetful of leave-taking. 'You may not, Amy. I want no
help. I am your father, not your infirm uncle!' He checked
himself, as abruptly as he had broken into this reply, and said,
'You have not kissed me, Amy. Good night, my dear! We must
marry--ha--we must marry YOU, now.' With that he went, more slowly
and more tired, up the staircase to his rooms, and, almost as soon
as he got there, dismissed his valet. His next care was to look
about him for his Paris purchases, and, after opening their cases
and carefully surveying them, to put them away under lock and key.
After that, what with dozing and what with castle-building, he lost
himself for a long time, so that there was a touch of morning on
the eastward rim of the desolate Campagna when he crept to bed.

Mrs General sent up her compliments in good time next day, and
hoped he had rested well after this fatiguing journey. He sent
down his compliments, and begged to inform Mrs General that he had
rested very well indeed, and was in high condition. Nevertheless,
he did not come forth from his own rooms until late in the
afternoon; and, although he then caused himself to be magnificently
arrayed for a drive with Mrs General and his daughter, his
appearance was scarcely up to his description of himself.
As the family had no visitors that day, its four members dined
alone together. He conducted Mrs General to the seat at his right
hand with immense ceremony; and Little Dorrit could not but notice
as she followed with her uncle, both that he was again elaborately
dressed, and that his manner towards Mrs General was very
particular. The perfect formation of that accomplished lady's
surface rendered it difficult to displace an atom of its genteel
glaze, but Little Dorrit thought she descried a slight thaw of
triumph in a corner of her frosty eye.

Notwithstanding what may be called in these pages the Pruney and
Prismatic nature of the family banquet, Mr Dorrit several times
fell asleep while it was in progress. His fits of dozing were as
sudden as they had been overnight, and were as short and profound.
When the first of these slumberings seized him, Mrs General looked
almost amazed: but, on each recurrence of the symptoms, she told
her polite beads, Papa, Potatoes, Poultry, Prunes, and Prism; and,
by dint of going through that infallible performance very slowly,
appeared to finish her rosary at about the same time as Mr Dorrit
started from his sleep.

He was again painfully aware of a somnolent tendency in Frederick
(which had no existence out of his own imagination), and after
dinner, when Frederick had withdrawn, privately apologised to Mrs
General for the poor man. 'The most estimable and affectionate of
brothers,' he said, 'but--ha, hum--broken up altogether.
Unhappily, declining fast.'

'Mr Frederick, sir,' quoth Mrs General, 'is habitually absent and
drooping, but let us hope it is not so bad as that.'

Mr Dorrit, however, was determined not to let him off. 'Fast
declining, madam. A wreck. A ruin. Mouldering away before our
eyes. Hum. Good Frederick!'

'You left Mrs Sparkler quite well and happy, I trust?' said Mrs
General, after heaving a cool sigh for Frederick.

'Surrounded,' replied Mr Dorrit, 'by--ha--all that can charm the
taste, and--hum--elevate the mind. Happy, my dear madam, in
a--hum--husband.'

Mrs General was a little fluttered; seeming delicately to put the
word away with her gloves, as if there were no knowing what it
might lead to.

'Fanny,' Mr Dorrit continued. 'Fanny, Mrs General, has high
qualities. Ha. Ambition--hum--purpose, consciousness of--ha--
position, determination to support that position--ha, hum--grace,
beauty, and native nobility.'

'No doubt,' said Mrs General (with a little extra stiffness).

'Combined with these qualities, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'Fanny
has--ha--manifested one blemish which has made me--hum--made me
uneasy, and--ha--I must add, angry; but which I trust may now be
considered at an end, even as to herself, and which is undoubtedly
at an end as to--ha--others.'

'To what, Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, with her gloves again
somewhat excited, 'can you allude? I am at a loss to--'

'Do not say that, my dear madam,' interrupted Mr Dorrit.

Mrs General's voice, as it died away, pronounced the words, 'at a
loss to imagine.'

After which Mr Dorrit was seized with a doze for about a minute,
out of which he sprang with spasmodic nimbleness.

'I refer, Mrs General, to that--ha--strong spirit of opposition,
or--hum--I might say--ha--jealousy in Fanny, which has occasionally
risen against the--ha--sense I entertain of--hum--the claims of--
ha--the lady with whom I have now the honour of communing.'

'Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, 'is ever but too obliging, ever
but too appreciative. If there have been moments when I have
imagined that Miss Dorrit has indeed resented the favourable
opinion Mr Dorrit has formed of my services, I have found, in that
only too high opinion, my consolation and recompense.'

'Opinion of your services, madam?' said Mr Dorrit.

'Of,' Mrs General repeated, in an elegantly impressive manner, 'my
services.'

'Of your services alone, dear madam?' said Mr Dorrit.

'I presume,' retorted Mrs General, in her former impressive manner,
'of my services alone. For, to what else,' said Mrs General, with
a slightly interrogative action of her gloves, 'could I impute--'

'To--ha--yourself, Mrs General. Ha, hum. To yourself and your
merits,' was Mr Dorrit's rejoinder.

'Mr Dorrit will pardon me,' said Mrs General, 'if I remark that
this is not a time or place for the pursuit of the present
conversation. Mr Dorrit will excuse me if I remind him that Miss
Dorrit is in the adjoining room, and is visible to myself while I
utter her name. Mr Dorrit will forgive me if I observe that I am
agitated, and that I find there are moments when weaknesses I
supposed myself to have subdued, return with redoubled power. Mr
Dorrit will allow me to withdraw.'

'Hum. Perhaps we may resume this--ha--interesting conversation,'
said Mr Dorrit, 'at another time; unless it should be, what I hope
it is not--hum--in any way disagreeable to--ah--Mrs General.'
'Mr Dorrit,' said Mrs General, casting down her eyes as she rose
with a bend, 'must ever claim my homage and obedience.'

Mrs General then took herself off in a stately way, and not with
that amount of trepidation upon her which might have been expected
in a less remarkable woman. Mr Dorrit, who had conducted his part
of the dialogue with a certain majestic and admiring condescension
--much as some people may be seen to conduct themselves in Church,
and to perform their part in the service--appeared, on the whole,
very well satisfied with himself and with Mrs General too. On the
return of that lady to tea, she had touched herself up with a
little powder and pomatum, and was not without moral enchantment
likewise: the latter showing itself in much sweet patronage of
manner towards Miss Dorrit, and in an air of as tender interest in
Mr Dorrit as was consistent with rigid propriety. At the close of
the evening, when she rose to retire, Mr Dorrit took her by the
hand as if he were going to lead her out into the Piazza of the
people to walk a minuet by moonlight, and with great solemnity
conducted her to the room door, where he raised her knuckles to his
lips. Having parted from her with what may be conjectured to have
been a rather bony kiss of a cosmetic flavour, he gave his daughter
his blessing, graciously. And having thus hinted that there was
something remarkable in the wind, he again went to bed.

He remained in the seclusion of his own chamber next morning; but,
early in the afternoon, sent down his best compliments to Mrs
General, by Mr Tinkler, and begged she would accompany Miss Dorrit
on an airing without him. His daughter was dressed for Mrs
Merdle's dinner before he appeared. He then presented himself in
a refulgent condition as to his attire, but looking indefinably
shrunken and old. However, as he was plainly determined to be
angry with her if she so much as asked him how he was, she only
ventured to kiss his cheek, before accompanying him to Mrs Merdle's
with an anxious heart.

The distance that they had to go was very short, but he was at his
building work again before the carriage had half traversed it. Mrs
Merdle received him with great distinction; the bosom was in
admirable preservation, and on the best terms with itself; the
dinner was very choice; and the company was very select.

It was principally English; saving that it comprised the usual
French Count and the usual Italian Marchese--decorative social
milestones, always to be found in certain places, and varying very
little in appearance. The table was long, and the dinner was long;
and Little Dorrit, overshadowed by a large pair of black whiskers
and a large white cravat, lost sight of her father altogether,
until a servant put a scrap of paper in her hand, with a whispered
request from Mrs Merdle that she would read it directly. Mrs
Merdle had written on it in pencil, 'Pray come and speak to Mr
Dorrit, I doubt if he is well.'

She was hurrying to him, unobserved, when he got up out of his
chair, and leaning over the table called to her, supposing her to
be still in her place:

'Amy, Amy, my child!'

The action was so unusual, to say nothing of his strange eager
appearance and strange eager voice, that it instantaneously caused
a profound silence.

' Amy, my dear,' he repeated. 'Will you go and see if Bob is on
the lock?'

She was at his side, and touching him, but he still perversely
supposed her to be in her seat, and called out, still leaning over
the table, 'Amy, Amy. I don't feel quite myself. Ha. I don't
know what's the matter with me. I particularly wish to see Bob.
Ha. Of all the turnkeys, he's as much my friend as yours. See if
Bob is in the lodge, and beg him to come to me.'

All the guests were now in consternation, and everybody rose.

'Dear father, I am not there; I am here, by you.'

'Oh! You are here, Amy! Good. Hum. Good. Ha. Call Bob. If he
has been relieved, and is not on the lock, tell Mrs Bangham to go
and fetch him.'

She was gently trying to get him away; but he resisted, and would
not go.

'I tell you, child,' he said petulantly, 'I can't be got up the
narrow stairs without Bob. Ha. Send for Bob. Hum. Send for
Bob--best of all the turnkeys--send for Bob!'

He looked confusedly about him, and, becoming conscious of the
number of faces by which he was surrounded, addressed them:

'Ladies and gentlemen, the duty--ha--devolves upon me of--hum--
welcoming you to the Marshalsea! Welcome to the Marshalsea! The
space is--ha--limited--limited--the parade might be wider; but you
will find it apparently grow larger after a time--a time, ladies
and gentlemen--and the air is, all things considered, very good.
It blows over the--ha--Surrey hills. Blows over the Surrey hills.
This is the Snuggery. Hum. Supported by a small subscription of
the--ha--Collegiate body. In return for which--hot water--general
kitchen--and little domestic advantages. Those who are habituated
to the--ha--Marshalsea, are pleased to call me its father. I am
accustomed to be complimented by strangers as the--ha--Father of
the Marshalsea. Certainly, if years of residence may establish a
claim to so--ha--honourable a title, I may accept the--hum--
conferred distinction. My child, ladies and gentlemen. My
daughter. Born here!'

She was not ashamed of it, or ashamed of him. She was pale and
frightened; but she had no other care than to soothe him and get
him away, for his own dear sake. She was between him and the
wondering faces, turned round upon his breast with her own face
raised to his. He held her clasped in his left arm, and between
whiles her low voice was heard tenderly imploring him to go away
with her.

'Born here,' he repeated, shedding tears. 'Bred here. Ladies and
gentlemen, my daughter. Child of an unfortunate father, but--ha--
always a gentleman. Poor, no doubt, but--hum--proud. Always
proud. It has become a--hum--not infrequent custom for my--ha--
personal admirers--personal admirers solely--to be pleased to
express their desire to acknowledge my semi-official position here,
by offering--ha--little tributes, which usually take the form of--
ha--voluntary recognitions of my humble endeavours to--hum--to
uphold a Tone here--a Tone--I beg it to be understood that I do not
consider myself compromised. Ha. Not compromised. Ha. Not a
beggar. No; I repudiate the title! At the same time far be it
from me to--hum--to put upon the fine feelings by which my partial
friends are actuated, the slight of scrupling to admit that those
offerings are--hum--highly acceptable. On the contrary, they are
most acceptable. In my child's name, if not in my own, I make the
admission in the fullest manner, at the same time reserving--ha--
shall I say my personal dignity? Ladies and gentlemen, God bless
you all!'

By this time, the exceeding mortification undergone by the Bosom
had occasioned the withdrawal of the greater part of the company
into other rooms. The few who had lingered thus long followed the
rest, and Little Dorrit and her father were left to the servants
and themselves. Dearest and most precious to her, he would come
with her now, would he not? He replied to her fervid entreaties,
that he would never be able to get up the narrow stairs without
Bob; where was Bob, would nobody fetch Bob? Under pretence of
looking for Bob, she got him out against the stream of gay company
now pouring in for the evening assembly, and got him into a coach
that had just set down its load, and got him home.

The broad stairs of his Roman palace were contracted in his failing
sight to the narrow stairs of his London prison; and he would
suffer no one but her to touch him, his brother excepted. They got
him up to his room without help, and laid him down on his bed. And
from that hour his poor maimed spirit, only remembering the place
where it had broken its wings, cancelled the dream through which it
had since groped, and knew of nothing beyond the Marshalsea. When
he heard footsteps in the street, he took them for the old weary
tread in the yards. When the hour came for locking up, he supposed
all strangers to be excluded for the night. When the time for
opening came again, he was so anxious to see Bob, that they were
fain to patch up a narrative how that Bob--many a year dead then,
gentle turnkey--had taken cold, but hoped to be out to-morrow, or
the next day, or the next at furthest.

He fell away into a weakness so extreme that he could not raise his
hand. But he still protected his brother according to his long
usage; and would say with some complacency, fifty times a day, when
he saw him standing by his bed, 'My good Frederick, sit down. You
are very feeble indeed.'

They tried him with Mrs General, but he had not the faintest
knowledge of her. Some injurious suspicion lodged itself in his
brain, that she wanted to supplant Mrs Bangham, and that she was
given to drinking. He charged her with it in no measured terms;
and was so urgent with his daughter to go round to the Marshal and
entreat him to turn her out, that she was never reproduced after
the first failure.
Saving that he once asked 'if Tip had gone outside?' the
remembrance of his two children not present seemed to have departed
from him. But the child who had done so much for him and had been
so poorly repaid, was never out of his mind. Not that he spared
her, or was fearful of her being spent by watching and fatigue; he
was not more troubled on that score than he had usually been. No;
he loved her in his old way. They were in the jail again, and she
tended him, and he had constant need of her, and could not turn
without her; and he even told her, sometimes, that he was content
to have undergone a great deal for her sake. As to her, she bent
over his bed with her quiet face against his, and would have laid
down her own life to restore him.

When he had been sinking in this painless way for two or three
days, she observed him to be troubled by the ticking of his watch--
a pompous gold watch that made as great a to-do about its going as
if nothing else went but itself and Time. She suffered it to run
down; but he was still uneasy, and showed that was not what he
wanted. At length he roused himself to explain that he wanted
money to be raised on this watch. He was quite pleased when she
pretended to take it away for the purpose, and afterwards had a
relish for his little tastes of wine and jelly, that he had not had
before.

He soon made it plain that this was so; for, in another day or two
he sent off his sleeve-buttons and finger-rings. He had an amazing
satisfaction in entrusting her with these errands, and appeared to
consider it equivalent to making the most methodical and provident
arrangements. After his trinkets, or such of them as he had been
able to see about him, were gone, his clothes engaged his
attention; and it is as likely as not that he was kept alive for
some days by the satisfaction of sending them, piece by piece, to
an imaginary pawnbroker's.

Thus for ten days Little Dorrit bent over his pillow, laying her
cheek against his. Sometimes she was so worn out that for a few
minutes they would slumber together. Then she would awake; to
recollect with fast-flowing silent tears what it was that touched
her face, and to see, stealing over the cherished face upon the
pillow, a deeper shadow than the shadow of the Marshalsea Wall.

Quietly, quietly, all the lines of the plan of the great Castle
melted one after another. Quietly, quietly, the ruled and cross-
ruled countenance on which they were traced, became fair and blank.

Quietly, quietly, the reflected marks of the prison bars and of the
zig-zag iron on the wall-top, faded away. Quietly, quietly, the
face subsided into a far younger likeness of her own than she had
ever seen under the grey hair, and sank to rest.

At first her uncle was stark distracted. 'O my brother! O
William, William! You to go before me; you to go alone; you to go,
and I to remain! You, so far superior, so distinguished, so noble;
I, a poor useless creature fit for nothing, and whom no one would
have missed!'

It did her, for the time, the good of having him to think of and to
succour.

'Uncle, dear uncle, spare yourself, spare me!'

The old man was not deaf to the last words. When he did begin to
restrain himself, it was that he might spare her. He had no care
for himself; but, with all the remaining power of the honest heart,
stunned so long and now awaking to be broken, he honoured and
blessed her.

'O God,' he cried, before they left the room, with his wrinkled
hands clasped over her. 'Thou seest this daughter of my dear dead
brother! All that I have looked upon, with my half-blind and
sinful eyes, Thou hast discerned clearly, brightly. Not a hair of
her head shall be harmed before Thee. Thou wilt uphold her here to
her last hour. And I know Thou wilt reward her hereafter!'

They remained in a dim room near, until it was almost midnight,
quiet and sad together. At times his grief would seek relief in a
burst like that in which it had found its earliest expression; but,
besides that his little strength would soon have been unequal to
such strains, he never failed to recall her words, and to reproach
himself and calm himself. The only utterance with which he
indulged his sorrow, was the frequent exclamation that his brother
was gone, alone; that they had been together in the outset of their
lives, that they had fallen into misfortune together, that they had
kept together through their many years of poverty, that they had
remained together to that day; and that his brother was gone alone,
alone!

They parted, heavy and sorrowful. She would not consent to leave
him anywhere but in his own room, and she saw him lie down in his
clothes upon his bed, and covered him with her own hands. Then she
sank upon her own bed, and fell into a deep sleep: the sleep of
exhaustion and rest, though not of complete release from a
pervading consciousness of affliction. Sleep, good Little Dorrit.
Sleep through the night!

It was a moonlight night; but the moon rose late, being long past
the full. When it was high in the peaceful firmament, it shone
through half-closed lattice blinds into the solemn room where the
stumblings and wanderings of a life had so lately ended. Two quiet
figures were within the room; two figures, equally still and
impassive, equally removed by an untraversable distance from the
teeming earth and all that it contains, though soon to lie in it.

One figure reposed upon the bed. The other, kneeling on the floor,
drooped over it; the arms easily and peacefully resting on the
coverlet; the face bowed down, so that the lips touched the hand
over which with its last breath it had bent. The two brothers were
before their Father; far beyond the twilight judgment of this
world; high above its mists and obscurities.

CHAPTER 20

Introduces the next

The passengers were landing from the packet on the pier at Calais.
A low-lying place and a low-spirited place Calais was, with the
tide ebbing out towards low water-mark. There had been no more
water on the bar than had sufficed to float the packet in; and now
the bar itself, with a shallow break of sea over it, looked like a
lazy marine monster just risen to the surface, whose form was
indistinctly shown as it lay asleep. The meagre lighthouse all in
white, haunting the seaboard as if it were the ghost of an edifice
that had once had colour and rotundity, dropped melancholy tears
after its late buffeting by the waves. The long rows of gaunt
black piles, slimy and wet and weather-worn, with funeral garlands
of seaweed twisted about them by the late tide, might have
represented an unsightly marine cemetery. Every wave-dashed,
storm-beaten object, was so low and so little, under the broad grey
sky, in the noise of the wind and sea, and before the curling lines
of surf, making at it ferociously, that the wonder was there was
any Calais left, and that its low gates and low wall and low roofs
and low ditches and low sand-hills and low ramparts and flat
streets, had not yielded long ago to the undermining and besieging
sea, like the fortifications children make on the sea-shore.

After slipping among oozy piles and planks, stumbling up wet steps
and encountering many salt difficulties, the passengers entered on
their comfortless peregrination along the pier; where all the
French vagabonds and English outlaws in the town (half the
population) attended to prevent their recovery from bewilderment.
After being minutely inspected by all the English, and claimed and
reclaimed and counter-claimed as prizes by all the French in a
hand-to-hand scuffle three quarters of a mile long, they were at
last free to enter the streets, and to make off in their various
directions, hotly pursued.

Clennam, harassed by more anxieties than one, was among this
devoted band. Having rescued the most defenceless of his
compatriots from situations of great extremity, he now went his way
alone, or as nearly alone as he could be, with a native gentleman
in a suit of grease and a cap of the same material, giving chase at
a distance of some fifty yards, and continually calling after him,
'Hi! Ice-say! You! Seer! Ice-say! Nice Oatel!'

Even this hospitable person, however, was left behind at last, and
Clennam pursued his way, unmolested. There was a tranquil air in
the town after the turbulence of the Channel and the beach, and its
dulness in that comparison was agreeable. He met new groups of his
countrymen, who had all a straggling air of having at one time
overblown themselves, like certain uncomfortable kinds of flowers,
and of being now mere weeds. They had all an air, too, of lounging
out a limited round, day after day, which strongly reminded him of
the Marshalsea. But, taking no further note of them than was
sufficient to give birth to the reflection, he sought out a certain
street and number which he kept in his mind.