And now the day arrived when Mr Dorrit and his family were to leave the
prison for ever, and the stones of its much-trodden pavement were to
know them no more.
The interval had been short, but he had greatly complained of its
length, and had been imperious with Mr Rugg touching the delay. He had
been high with Mr Rugg, and had threatened to employ some one else. He
had requested Mr Rugg not to presume upon the place in which he found
him, but to do his duty, sir, and to do it with promptitude. He had told
Mr Rugg that he knew what lawyers and agents were, and that he would not
submit to imposition. On that gentleman’s humbly representing that
he exerted himself to the utmost, Miss Fanny was very short with him;
desiring to know what less he could do, when he had been told a dozen
times that money was no object, and expressing her suspicion that he
forgot whom he talked to.
Towards the Marshal, who was a Marshal of many years’ standing, and
with whom he had never had any previous difference, Mr Dorrit comported
himself with severity. That officer, on personally tendering his
congratulations, offered the free use of two rooms in his house for Mr
Dorrit’s occupation until his departure. Mr Dorrit thanked him at the
moment, and replied that he would think of it; but the Marshal was no
sooner gone than he sat down and wrote him a cutting note, in which
he remarked that he had never on any former occasion had the honour of
receiving his congratulations (which was true, though indeed there had
not been anything particular to congratulate him upon), and that he
begged, on behalf of himself and family, to repudiate the Marshal’s
offer, with all those thanks which its disinterested character and its
perfect independence of all worldly considerations demanded.
Although his brother showed so dim a glimmering of interest in their
altered fortunes that it was very doubtful whether he understood them,
Mr Dorrit caused him to be measured for new raiment by the hosiers,
tailors, hatters, and bootmakers whom he called in for himself; and
ordered that his old clothes should be taken from him and burned. Miss
Fanny and Mr Tip required no direction in making an appearance of great
fashion and elegance; and the three passed this interval together at the
best hotel in the neighbourhood--though truly, as Miss Fanny said, the
best was very indifferent. In connection with that establishment, Mr
Tip hired a cabriolet, horse, and groom, a very neat turn out, which
was usually to be observed for two or three hours at a time gracing the
Borough High Street, outside the Marshalsea court-yard. A modest
little hired chariot and pair was also frequently to be seen there;
in alighting from and entering which vehicle, Miss Fanny fluttered the
Marshal’s daughters by the display of inaccessible bonnets.
A great deal of business was transacted in this short period. Among
other items, Messrs Peddle and Pool, solicitors, of Monument Yard, were
instructed by their client Edward Dorrit, Esquire, to address a letter
to Mr Arthur Clennam, enclosing the sum of twenty-four pounds nine
shillings and eightpence, being the amount of principal and interest
computed at the rate of five per cent. per annum, in which their
client believed himself to be indebted to Mr Clennam. In making this
communication and remittance, Messrs Peddle and Pool were further
instructed by their client to remind Mr Clennam that the favour of the
advance now repaid (including gate-fees) had not been asked of him, and
to inform him that it would not have been accepted if it had been openly
proffered in his name. With which they requested a stamped receipt, and
remained his obedient servants. A great deal of business had likewise to
be done, within the so-soon-to-be-orphaned Marshalsea, by Mr Dorrit
so long its Father, chiefly arising out of applications made to him
by Collegians for small sums of money. To these he responded with the
greatest liberality, and with no lack of formality; always first writing
to appoint a time at which the applicant might wait upon him in his
room, and then receiving him in the midst of a vast accumulation of
documents, and accompanying his donation (for he said in every such
case, ‘it is a donation, not a loan’) with a great deal of good counsel:
to the effect that he, the expiring Father of the Marshalsea, hoped to
be long remembered, as an example that a man might preserve his own and
the general respect even there.
The Collegians were not envious. Besides that they had a personal and
traditional regard for a Collegian of so many years’ standing, the event
was creditable to the College, and made it famous in the newspapers.
Perhaps more of them thought, too, than were quite aware of it, that the
thing might in the lottery of chances have happened to themselves, or
that something of the sort might yet happen to themselves some day or
other. They took it very well. A few were low at the thought of being
left behind, and being left poor; but even these did not grudge the
family their brilliant reverse. There might have been much more envy in
politer places. It seems probable that mediocrity of fortune would have
been disposed to be less magnanimous than the Collegians, who lived from
hand to mouth--from the pawnbroker’s hand to the day’s dinner.
They got up an address to him, which they presented in a neat frame and
glass (though it was not afterwards displayed in the family mansion or
preserved among the family papers); and to which he returned a gracious
answer. In that document he assured them, in a Royal manner, that he
received the profession of their attachment with a full conviction
of its sincerity; and again generally exhorted them to follow his
example--which, at least in so far as coming into a great property was
concerned, there is no doubt they would have gladly imitated. He took
the same occasion of inviting them to a comprehensive entertainment, to
be given to the whole College in the yard, and at which he signified
he would have the honour of taking a parting glass to the health and
happiness of all those whom he was about to leave behind.
He did not in person dine at this public repast (it took place at two in
the afternoon, and his dinners now came in from the hotel at six), but
his son was so good as to take the head of the principal table, and to
be very free and engaging. He himself went about among the company, and
took notice of individuals, and saw that the viands were of the quality
he had ordered, and that all were served. On the whole, he was like a
baron of the olden time in a rare good humour. At the conclusion of the
repast, he pledged his guests in a bumper of old Madeira; and told them
that he hoped they had enjoyed themselves, and what was more, that they
would enjoy themselves for the rest of the evening; that he wished them
well; and that he bade them welcome. His health being drunk with
acclamations, he was not so baronial after all but that in trying to
return thanks he broke down, in the manner of a mere serf with a heart
in his breast, and wept before them all. After this great success, which
he supposed to be a failure, he gave them ‘Mr Chivery and his brother
officers;’ whom he had beforehand presented with ten pounds each, and
who were all in attendance. Mr Chivery spoke to the toast, saying, What
you undertake to lock up, lock up; but remember that you are, in the
words of the fettered African, a man and a brother ever. The list of
toasts disposed of, Mr Dorrit urbanely went through the motions of
playing a game of skittles with the Collegian who was the next oldest
inhabitant to himself; and left the tenantry to their diversions.
But all these occurrences preceded the final day. And now the day
arrived when he and his family were to leave the prison for ever, and
when the stones of its much-trodden pavement were to know them no more.
Noon was the hour appointed for the departure. As it approached, there
was not a Collegian within doors, nor a turnkey absent. The latter class
of gentlemen appeared in their Sunday clothes, and the greater part of
the Collegians were brightened up as much as circumstances allowed. Two
or three flags were even displayed, and the children put on odds and
ends of ribbon. Mr Dorrit himself, at this trying time, preserved a
serious but graceful dignity. Much of his great attention was given to
his brother, as to whose bearing on the great occasion he felt anxious.
‘My dear Frederick,’ said he, ‘if you will give me your arm we will pass
among our friends together. I think it is right that we should go out
arm in arm, my dear Frederick.’
‘Hah!’ said Frederick. ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’
‘And if, my dear Frederick--if you could, without putting any great
constraint upon yourself, throw a little (pray excuse me, Frederick), a
little polish into your usual demeanour--’
‘William, William,’ said the other, shaking his head, ‘it’s for you to
do all that. I don’t know how. All forgotten, forgotten!’
‘But, my dear fellow,’ returned William, ‘for that very reason, if
for no other, you must positively try to rouse yourself. What you
have forgotten you must now begin to recall, my dear Frederick. Your
position--’
‘Eh?’ said Frederick.
‘Your position, my dear Frederick.’
‘Mine?’ He looked first at his own figure, and then at his brother’s,
and then, drawing a long breath, cried, ‘Hah, to be sure! Yes, yes,
yes.’
‘Your position, my dear Frederick, is now a fine one. Your position, as
my brother, is a very fine one. And I know that it belongs to your
conscientious nature to try to become worthy of it, my dear Frederick,
and to try to adorn it. To be no discredit to it, but to adorn it.’
‘William,’ said the other weakly, and with a sigh, ‘I will do anything
you wish, my brother, provided it lies in my power. Pray be so kind as
to recollect what a limited power mine is. What would you wish me to do
to-day, brother? Say what it is, only say what it is.’
‘My dearest Frederick, nothing. It is not worth troubling so good a
heart as yours with.’
‘Pray trouble it,’ returned the other. ‘It finds it no trouble, William,
to do anything it can for you.’
William passed his hand across his eyes, and murmured with august
satisfaction, ‘Blessings on your attachment, my poor dear fellow!’ Then
he said aloud, ‘Well, my dear Frederick, if you will only try, as we
walk out, to show that you are alive to the occasion--that you think
about it--’
‘What would you advise me to think about it?’ returned his submissive
brother.
‘Oh! my dear Frederick, how can I answer you? I can only say what, in
leaving these good people, I think myself.’
‘That’s it!’ cried his brother. ‘That will help me.’
‘I find that I think, my dear Frederick, and with mixed emotions in
which a softened compassion predominates, What will they do without me!’
‘True,’ returned his brother. ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes. I’ll think that as we
go, What will they do without my brother! Poor things! What will they do
without him!’
Twelve o’clock having just struck, and the carriage being reported ready
in the outer court-yard, the brothers proceeded down-stairs arm-in-arm.
Edward Dorrit, Esquire (once Tip), and his sister Fanny followed,
also arm-in-arm; Mr Plornish and Maggy, to whom had been entrusted the
removal of such of the family effects as were considered worth removing,
followed, bearing bundles and burdens to be packed in a cart.
In the yard, were the Collegians and turnkeys. In the yard, were Mr
Pancks and Mr Rugg, come to see the last touch given to their work.
In the yard, was Young John making a new epitaph for himself, on
the occasion of his dying of a broken heart. In the yard, was the
Patriarchal Casby, looking so tremendously benevolent that many
enthusiastic Collegians grasped him fervently by the hand, and the wives
and female relatives of many more Collegians kissed his hand, nothing
doubting that he had done it all. In the yard, was the man with the
shadowy grievance respecting the Fund which the Marshal embezzled, who
had got up at five in the morning to complete the copying of a perfectly
unintelligible history of that transaction, which he had committed to Mr
Dorrit’s care, as a document of the last importance, calculated to stun
the Government and effect the Marshal’s downfall. In the yard, was the
insolvent whose utmost energies were always set on getting into debt,
who broke into prison with as much pains as other men have broken out
of it, and who was always being cleared and complimented; while the
insolvent at his elbow--a mere little, snivelling, striving tradesman,
half dead of anxious efforts to keep out of debt--found it a hard
matter, indeed, to get a Commissioner to release him with much reproof
and reproach. In the yard, was the man of many children and many
burdens, whose failure astonished everybody; in the yard, was the man of
no children and large resources, whose failure astonished nobody. There,
were the people who were always going out to-morrow, and always putting
it off; there, were the people who had come in yesterday, and who
were much more jealous and resentful of this freak of fortune than
the seasoned birds. There, were some who, in pure meanness of spirit,
cringed and bowed before the enriched Collegian and his family; there,
were others who did so really because their eyes, accustomed to the
gloom of their imprisonment and poverty, could not support the light of
such bright sunshine. There, were many whose shillings had gone into his
pocket to buy him meat and drink; but none who were now obtrusively Hail
fellow well met! with him, on the strength of that assistance. It was
rather to be remarked of the caged birds, that they were a little shy
of the bird about to be so grandly free, and that they had a tendency to
withdraw themselves towards the bars, and seem a little fluttered as he
passed.
Through these spectators the little procession, headed by the two
brothers, moved slowly to the gate. Mr Dorrit, yielding to the vast
speculation how the poor creatures were to get on without him, was
great, and sad, but not absorbed. He patted children on the head
like Sir Roger de Coverley going to church, he spoke to people in the
background by their Christian names, he condescended to all present, and
seemed for their consolation to walk encircled by the legend in golden
characters, ‘Be comforted, my people! Bear it!’
At last three honest cheers announced that he had passed the gate, and
that the Marshalsea was an orphan. Before they had ceased to ring in the
echoes of the prison walls, the family had got into their carriage, and
the attendant had the steps in his hand.
Then, and not before, ‘Good Gracious!’ cried Miss Fanny all at once,
‘Where’s Amy!’
Her father had thought she was with her sister. Her sister had thought
she was ‘somewhere or other.’ They had all trusted to finding her, as
they had always done, quietly in the right place at the right moment.
This going away was perhaps the very first action of their joint lives
that they had got through without her.
A minute might have been consumed in the ascertaining of these points,
when Miss Fanny, who, from her seat in the carriage, commanded the long
narrow passage leading to the Lodge, flushed indignantly.
‘Now I do say, Pa,’ cried she, ‘that this is disgraceful!’
‘What is disgraceful, Fanny?’
‘I do say,’ she repeated, ‘this is perfectly infamous! Really almost
enough, even at such a time as this, to make one wish one was dead!
Here is that child Amy, in her ugly old shabby dress, which she was so
obstinate about, Pa, which I over and over again begged and prayed her
to change, and which she over and over again objected to, and promised
to change to-day, saying she wished to wear it as long as ever she
remained in there with you--which was absolutely romantic nonsense of
the lowest kind--here is that child Amy disgracing us to the last moment
and at the last moment, by being carried out in that dress after all.
And by that Mr Clennam too!’
The offence was proved, as she delivered the indictment. Clennam
appeared at the carriage-door, bearing the little insensible figure in
his arms.
‘She has been forgotten,’ he said, in a tone of pity not free from
reproach. ‘I ran up to her room (which Mr Chivery showed me) and found
the door open, and that she had fainted on the floor, dear child.
She appeared to have gone to change her dress, and to have sunk down
overpowered. It may have been the cheering, or it may have happened
sooner. Take care of this poor cold hand, Miss Dorrit. Don’t let it
fall.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ returned Miss Dorrit, bursting into tears. ‘I believe
I know what to do, if you will give me leave. Dear Amy, open your eyes,
that’s a love! Oh, Amy, Amy, I really am so vexed and ashamed! Do rouse
yourself, darling! Oh, why are they not driving on! Pray, Pa, do drive
on!’
The attendant, getting between Clennam and the carriage-door, with a
sharp ‘By your leave, sir!’ bundled up the steps, and they drove away.
BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES
CHAPTER 1. Fellow Travellers
In the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to the
highest ridges of the Alps.
It was vintage time in the valleys on the Swiss side of the Pass of the
Great Saint Bernard, and along the banks of the Lake of Geneva.
The air there was charged with the scent of gathered grapes. Baskets,
troughs, and tubs of grapes stood in the dim village doorways, stopped
the steep and narrow village streets, and had been carrying all day
along the roads and lanes. Grapes, split and crushed under foot, lay
about everywhere. The child carried in a sling by the laden peasant
woman toiling home, was quieted with picked-up grapes; the idiot sunning
his big goitre under the leaves of the wooden chalet by the way to the
Waterfall, sat munching grapes; the breath of the cows and goats was
redolent of leaves and stalks of grapes; the company in every little
cabaret were eating, drinking, talking grapes. A pity that no ripe touch
of this generous abundance could be given to the thin, hard, stony wine,
which after all was made from the grapes!
The air had been warm and transparent through the whole of the bright
day. Shining metal spires and church-roofs, distant and rarely seen, had
sparkled in the view; and the snowy mountain-tops had been so clear that
unaccustomed eyes, cancelling the intervening country, and slighting
their rugged heights for something fabulous, would have measured them as
within a few hours easy reach. Mountain-peaks of great celebrity in the
valleys, whence no trace of their existence was visible sometimes for
months together, had been since morning plain and near in the blue sky.
And now, when it was dark below, though they seemed solemnly to recede,
like spectres who were going to vanish, as the red dye of the sunset
faded out of them and left them coldly white, they were yet distinctly
defined in their loneliness above the mists and shadows.
Seen from these solitudes, and from the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard,
which was one of them, the ascending Night came up the mountain like a
rising water. When it at last rose to the walls of the convent of the
Great Saint Bernard, it was as if that weather-beaten structure were
another Ark, and floated on the shadowy waves.
Darkness, outstripping some visitors on mules, had risen thus to
the rough convent walls, when those travellers were yet climbing the
mountain. As the heat of the glowing day when they had stopped to drink
at the streams of melted ice and snow, was changed to the searching cold
of the frosty rarefied night air at a great height, so the fresh beauty
of the lower journey had yielded to barrenness and desolation. A craggy
track, up which the mules in single file scrambled and turned from
block to block, as though they were ascending the broken staircase of
a gigantic ruin, was their way now. No trees were to be seen, nor any
vegetable growth save a poor brown scrubby moss, freezing in the chinks
of rock. Blackened skeleton arms of wood by the wayside pointed upward
to the convent as if the ghosts of former travellers overwhelmed by the
snow haunted the scene of their distress. Icicle-hung caves and cellars
built for refuges from sudden storms, were like so many whispers of the
perils of the place; never-resting wreaths and mazes of mist wandered
about, hunted by a moaning wind; and snow, the besetting danger of the
mountain, against which all its defences were taken, drifted sharply
down.
The file of mules, jaded by their day’s work, turned and wound slowly
up the deep ascent; the foremost led by a guide on foot, in his
broad-brimmed hat and round jacket, carrying a mountain staff or two
upon his shoulder, with whom another guide conversed. There was no
speaking among the string of riders. The sharp cold, the fatigue of the
journey, and a new sensation of a catching in the breath, partly as if
they had just emerged from very clear crisp water, and partly as if they
had been sobbing, kept them silent.
At length, a light on the summit of the rocky staircase gleamed through
the snow and mist. The guides called to the mules, the mules pricked up
their drooping heads, the travellers’ tongues were loosened, and in a
sudden burst of slipping, climbing, jingling, clinking, and talking,
they arrived at the convent door.
Other mules had arrived not long before, some with peasant riders and
some with goods, and had trodden the snow about the door into a pool
of mud. Riding-saddles and bridles, pack-saddles and strings of bells,
mules and men, lanterns, torches, sacks, provender, barrels, cheeses,
kegs of honey and butter, straw bundles and packages of many shapes,
were crowded confusedly together in this thawed quagmire and about the
steps. Up here in the clouds, everything was seen through cloud, and
seemed dissolving into cloud. The breath of the men was cloud, the
breath of the mules was cloud, the lights were encircled by cloud,
speakers close at hand were not seen for cloud, though their voices and
all other sounds were surprisingly clear. Of the cloudy line of mules
hastily tied to rings in the wall, one would bite another, or kick
another, and then the whole mist would be disturbed: with men diving
into it, and cries of men and beasts coming out of it, and no bystander
discerning what was wrong. In the midst of this, the great stable of the
convent, occupying the basement story and entered by the basement door,
outside which all the disorder was, poured forth its contribution of
cloud, as if the whole rugged edifice were filled with nothing else,
and would collapse as soon as it had emptied itself, leaving the snow to
fall upon the bare mountain summit.
While all this noise and hurry were rife among the living travellers,
there, too, silently assembled in a grated house half-a-dozen paces
removed, with the same cloud enfolding them and the same snow flakes
drifting in upon them, were the dead travellers found upon the mountain.
The mother, storm-belated many winters ago, still standing in the corner
with her baby at her breast; the man who had frozen with his arm raised
to his mouth in fear or hunger, still pressing it with his dry lips
after years and years. An awful company, mysteriously come together! A
wild destiny for that mother to have foreseen! ‘Surrounded by so many
and such companions upon whom I never looked, and never shall look,
I and my child will dwell together inseparable, on the Great Saint
Bernard, outlasting generations who will come to see us, and will never
know our name, or one word of our story but the end.’
The living travellers thought little or nothing of the dead just then.
They thought much more of alighting at the convent door, and warming
themselves at the convent fire. Disengaged from the turmoil, which was
already calming down as the crowd of mules began to be bestowed in the
stable, they hurried shivering up the steps and into the building. There
was a smell within, coming up from the floor, of tethered beasts, like
the smell of a menagerie of wild animals. There were strong arched
galleries within, huge stone piers, great staircases, and thick walls
pierced with small sunken windows--fortifications against the mountain
storms, as if they had been human enemies. There were gloomy vaulted
sleeping-rooms within, intensely cold, but clean and hospitably prepared
for guests. Finally, there was a parlour for guests to sit in and sup
in, where a table was already laid, and where a blazing fire shone red
and high.
In this room, after having had their quarters for the night allotted
to them by two young Fathers, the travellers presently drew round the
hearth. They were in three parties; of whom the first, as the most
numerous and important, was the slowest, and had been overtaken by
one of the others on the way up. It consisted of an elderly lady, two
grey-haired gentlemen, two young ladies, and their brother. These were
attended (not to mention four guides), by a courier, two footmen, and
two waiting-maids: which strong body of inconvenience was accommodated
elsewhere under the same roof. The party that had overtaken them, and
followed in their train, consisted of only three members: one lady and
two gentlemen. The third party, which had ascended from the valley
on the Italian side of the Pass, and had arrived first, were four in
number: a plethoric, hungry, and silent German tutor in spectacles, on
a tour with three young men, his pupils, all plethoric, hungry, and
silent, and all in spectacles.
These three groups sat round the fire eyeing each other drily, and
waiting for supper. Only one among them, one of the gentlemen belonging
to the party of three, made advances towards conversation. Throwing out
his lines for the Chief of the important tribe, while addressing himself
to his own companions, he remarked, in a tone of voice which included
all the company if they chose to be included, that it had been a long
day, and that he felt for the ladies. That he feared one of the
young ladies was not a strong or accustomed traveller, and had been
over-fatigued two or three hours ago. That he had observed, from his
station in the rear, that she sat her mule as if she were exhausted.
That he had, twice or thrice afterwards, done himself the honour of
inquiring of one of the guides, when he fell behind, how the lady did.
That he had been enchanted to learn that she had recovered her spirits,
and that it had been but a passing discomfort. That he trusted (by this
time he had secured the eyes of the Chief, and addressed him) he might
be permitted to express his hope that she was now none the worse, and
that she would not regret having made the journey.
‘My daughter, I am obliged to you, sir,’ returned the Chief, ‘is quite
restored, and has been greatly interested.’
‘New to mountains, perhaps?’ said the insinuating traveller.
‘New to--ha--to mountains,’ said the Chief.
‘But you are familiar with them, sir?’ the insinuating traveller
assumed.
‘I am--hum--tolerably familiar. Not of late years. Not of late years,’
replied the Chief, with a flourish of his hand.
The insinuating traveller, acknowledging the flourish with an
inclination of his head, passed from the Chief to the second young lady,
who had not yet been referred to otherwise than as one of the ladies in
whose behalf he felt so sensitive an interest.
He hoped she was not incommoded by the fatigues of the day.
‘Incommoded, certainly,’ returned the young lady, ‘but not tired.’
The insinuating traveller complimented her on the justice of the
distinction. It was what he had meant to say. Every lady must doubtless
be incommoded by having to do with that proverbially unaccommodating
animal, the mule.
‘We have had, of course,’ said the young lady, who was rather reserved
and haughty, ‘to leave the carriages and fourgon at Martigny. And the
impossibility of bringing anything that one wants to this inaccessible
place, and the necessity of leaving every comfort behind, is not
convenient.’
‘A savage place indeed,’ said the insinuating traveller.
The elderly lady, who was a model of accurate dressing, and whose manner
was perfect, considered as a piece of machinery, here interposed a
remark in a low soft voice.
‘But, like other inconvenient places,’ she observed, ‘it must be seen.
As a place much spoken of, it is necessary to see it.’
‘O! I have not the least objection to seeing it, I assure you, Mrs
General,’ returned the other, carelessly.
‘You, madam,’ said the insinuating traveller, ‘have visited this spot
before?’
‘Yes,’ returned Mrs General. ‘I have been here before. Let me
commend you, my dear,’ to the former young lady, ‘to shade your face
from the hot wood, after exposure to the mountain air and snow. You,
too, my dear,’ to the other and younger lady, who immediately did so;
while the former merely said, ‘Thank you, Mrs General, I am Perfectly
comfortable, and prefer remaining as I am.’
The brother, who had left his chair to open a piano that stood in
the room, and who had whistled into it and shut it up again, now came
strolling back to the fire with his glass in his eye. He was dressed in
the very fullest and completest travelling trim. The world seemed hardly
large enough to yield him an amount of travel proportionate to his
equipment.
‘These fellows are an immense time with supper,’ he drawled. ‘I wonder
what they’ll give us! Has anybody any idea?’
‘Not roast man, I believe,’ replied the voice of the second gentleman of
the party of three.
‘I suppose not. What d’ye mean?’ he inquired.
‘That, as you are not to be served for the general supper, perhaps you
will do us the favour of not cooking yourself at the general fire,’
returned the other.
The young gentleman who was standing in an easy attitude on the hearth,
cocking his glass at the company, with his back to the blaze and his
coat tucked under his arms, something as if he were Of the Poultry
species and were trussed for roasting, lost countenance at this
reply; he seemed about to demand further explanation, when it was
discovered--through all eyes turning on the speaker--that the lady with
him, who was young and beautiful, had not heard what had passed through
having fainted with her head upon his shoulder.
‘I think,’ said the gentleman in a subdued tone, ‘I had best carry
her straight to her room. Will you call to some one to bring a light?’
addressing his companion, ‘and to show the way? In this strange rambling
place I don’t know that I could find it.’
‘Pray, let me call my maid,’ cried the taller of the young ladies.
‘Pray, let me put this water to her lips,’ said the shorter, who had not
spoken yet.
Each doing what she suggested, there was no want of assistance. Indeed,
when the two maids came in (escorted by the courier, lest any one should
strike them dumb by addressing a foreign language to them on the road),
there was a prospect of too much assistance. Seeing this, and saying as
much in a few words to the slighter and younger of the two ladies,
the gentleman put his wife’s arm over his shoulder, lifted her up, and
carried her away.
His friend, being left alone with the other visitors, walked slowly up
and down the room without coming to the fire again, pulling his black
moustache in a contemplative manner, as if he felt himself committed
to the late retort. While the subject of it was breathing injury in a
corner, the Chief loftily addressed this gentleman.
‘Your friend, sir,’ said he, ‘is--ha--is a little impatient; and, in
his impatience, is not perhaps fully sensible of what he owes
to--hum--to--but we will waive that, we will waive that. Your friend is
a little impatient, sir.’
‘It may be so, sir,’ returned the other. ‘But having had the honour of
making that gentleman’s acquaintance at the hotel at Geneva, where we
and much good company met some time ago, and having had the honour
of exchanging company and conversation with that gentleman on several
subsequent excursions, I can hear nothing--no, not even from one of your
appearance and station, sir--detrimental to that gentleman.’
‘You are in no danger, sir, of hearing any such thing from me. In
remarking that your friend has shown impatience, I say no such thing. I
make that remark, because it is not to be doubted that my son, being by
birth and by--ha--by education a--hum--a gentleman, would have readily
adapted himself to any obligingly expressed wish on the subject of the
fire being equally accessible to the whole of the present circle. Which,
in principle, I--ha--for all are--hum--equal on these occasions--I
consider right.’
‘Good,’ was the reply. ‘And there it ends! I am your son’s obedient
servant. I beg your son to receive the assurance of my profound
consideration. And now, sir, I may admit, freely admit, that my friend
is sometimes of a sarcastic temper.’
‘The lady is your friend’s wife, sir?’
‘The lady is my friend’s wife, sir.’
‘She is very handsome.’
‘Sir, she is peerless. They are still in the first year of their
marriage. They are still partly on a marriage, and partly on an
artistic, tour.’
‘Your friend is an artist, sir?’
The gentleman replied by kissing the fingers of his right hand, and
wafting the kiss the length of his arm towards Heaven. As who should
say, I devote him to the celestial Powers as an immortal artist!
‘But he is a man of family,’ he added. ‘His connections are of the best.
He is more than an artist: he is highly connected. He may, in effect,
have repudiated his connections, proudly, impatiently, sarcastically (I
make the concession of both words); but he has them. Sparks that have
been struck out during our intercourse have shown me this.’
‘Well! I hope,’ said the lofty gentleman, with the air of finally
disposing of the subject, ‘that the lady’s indisposition may be only
temporary.’
‘Sir, I hope so.’
‘Mere fatigue, I dare say.’
‘Not altogether mere fatigue, sir, for her mule stumbled to-day, and
she fell from the saddle. She fell lightly, and was up again without
assistance, and rode from us laughing; but she complained towards
evening of a slight bruise in the side. She spoke of it more than once,
as we followed your party up the mountain.’
The head of the large retinue, who was gracious but not familiar,
appeared by this time to think that he had condescended more than
enough. He said no more, and there was silence for some quarter of an
hour until supper appeared.
With the supper came one of the young Fathers (there seemed to be no
old Fathers) to take the head of the table. It was like the supper of
an ordinary Swiss hotel, and good red wine grown by the convent in more
genial air was not wanting. The artist traveller calmly came and took
his place at table when the rest sat down, with no apparent sense upon
him of his late skirmish with the completely dressed traveller.
‘Pray,’ he inquired of the host, over his soup, ‘has your convent many
of its famous dogs now?’
‘Monsieur, it has three.’
‘I saw three in the gallery below. Doubtless the three in question.’
The host, a slender, bright-eyed, dark young man of polite manners,
whose garment was a black gown with strips of white crossed over it like
braces, and who no more resembled the conventional breed of Saint
Bernard monks than he resembled the conventional breed of Saint Bernard
dogs, replied, doubtless those were the three in question.
‘And I think,’ said the artist traveller, ‘I have seen one of them
before.’
It was possible. He was a dog sufficiently well known. Monsieur might
have easily seen him in the valley or somewhere on the lake, when he
(the dog) had gone down with one of the order to solicit aid for the
convent.
‘Which is done in its regular season of the year, I think?’
Monsieur was right.
‘And never without a dog. The dog is very important.’
Again Monsieur was right. The dog was very important. People were justly
interested in the dog. As one of the dogs celebrated everywhere,
Ma’amselle would observe.
Ma’amselle was a little slow to observe it, as though she were not yet
well accustomed to the French tongue. Mrs General, however, observed it
for her.
‘Ask him if he has saved many lives?’ said, in his native English, the
young man who had been put out of countenance.
The host needed no translation of the question. He promptly replied in
French, ‘No. Not this one.’
‘Why not?’ the same gentleman asked.
‘Pardon,’ returned the host composedly, ‘give him the opportunity and
he will do it without doubt. For example, I am well convinced,’ smiling
sedately, as he cut up the dish of veal to be handed round, on the young
man who had been put out of countenance, ‘that if you, Monsieur, would
give him the opportunity, he would hasten with great ardour to fulfil
his duty.’
The artist traveller laughed. The insinuating traveller (who evinced
a provident anxiety to get his full share of the supper), wiping some
drops of wine from his moustache with a piece of bread, joined the
conversation.
‘It is becoming late in the year, my Father,’ said he, ‘for
tourist-travellers, is it not?’
‘Yes, it is late. Yet two or three weeks, at most, and we shall be left
to the winter snows.’
‘And then,’ said the insinuating traveller, ‘for the scratching dogs and
the buried children, according to the pictures!’
‘Pardon,’ said the host, not quite understanding the allusion. ‘How,
then the scratching dogs and the buried children according to the
pictures?’
The artist traveller struck in again before an answer could be given.
‘Don’t you know,’ he coldly inquired across the table of his companion,
‘that none but smugglers come this way in the winter or can have any
possible business this way?’
‘Holy blue! No; never heard of it.’
‘So it is, I believe. And as they know the signs of the weather
tolerably well, they don’t give much employment to the dogs--who have
consequently died out rather--though this house of entertainment is
conveniently situated for themselves. Their young families, I am told,
they usually leave at home. But it’s a grand idea!’ cried the artist
traveller, unexpectedly rising into a tone of enthusiasm. ‘It’s a
sublime idea. It’s the finest idea in the world, and brings tears into
a man’s eyes, by Jupiter!’ He then went on eating his veal with great
composure.
There was enough of mocking inconsistency at the bottom of this speech
to make it rather discordant, though the manner was refined and the
person well-favoured, and though the depreciatory part of it was so
skilfully thrown off as to be very difficult for one not perfectly
acquainted with the English language to understand, or, even
understanding, to take offence at: so simple and dispassionate was its
tone. After finishing his veal in the midst of silence, the speaker
again addressed his friend.
‘Look,’ said he, in his former tone, ‘at this gentleman our host, not
yet in the prime of life, who in so graceful a way and with such courtly
urbanity and modesty presides over us! Manners fit for a crown! Dine
with the Lord Mayor of London (if you can get an invitation) and observe
the contrast. This dear fellow, with the finest cut face I ever saw, a
face in perfect drawing, leaves some laborious life and comes up here
I don’t know how many feet above the level of the sea, for no other
purpose on earth (except enjoying himself, I hope, in a capital
refectory) than to keep an hotel for idle poor devils like you and
me, and leave the bill to our consciences! Why, isn’t it a beautiful
sacrifice? What do we want more to touch us? Because rescued people of
interesting appearance are not, for eight or nine months out of every
twelve, holding on here round the necks of the most sagacious of dogs
carrying wooden bottles, shall we disparage the place? No! Bless the
place. It’s a great place, a glorious place!’
The chest of the grey-haired gentleman who was the Chief of the
important party, had swelled as if with a protest against his being
numbered among poor devils. No sooner had the artist traveller ceased
speaking than he himself spoke with great dignity, as having it
incumbent on him to take the lead in most places, and having deserted
that duty for a little while.
He weightily communicated his opinion to their host, that his life must
be a very dreary life here in the winter.
The host allowed to Monsieur that it was a little monotonous. The air
was difficult to breathe for a length of time consecutively. The cold
was very severe. One needed youth and strength to bear it. However,
having them and the blessing of Heaven--
Yes, that was very good. ‘But the confinement,’ said the grey-haired
gentleman.
There were many days, even in bad weather, when it was possible to
walk about outside. It was the custom to beat a little track, and take
exercise there.
‘But the space,’ urged the grey-haired gentleman. ‘So small.
So--ha--very limited.’
Monsieur would recall to himself that there were the refuges to visit,
and that tracks had to be made to them also.
Monsieur still urged, on the other hand, that the space was
so--ha--hum--so very contracted. More than that, it was always the same,
always the same.
With a deprecating smile, the host gently raised and gently lowered his
shoulders. That was true, he remarked, but permit him to say that almost
all objects had their various points of view. Monsieur and he did not
see this poor life of his from the same point of view. Monsieur was not
used to confinement.
‘I--ha--yes, very true,’ said the grey-haired gentleman. He seemed to
receive quite a shock from the force of the argument.
Monsieur, as an English traveller, surrounded by all means of travelling
pleasantly; doubtless possessing fortune, carriages, and servants--
‘Perfectly, perfectly. Without doubt,’ said the gentleman.
Monsieur could not easily place himself in the position of a person who
had not the power to choose, I will go here to-morrow, or there next
day; I will pass these barriers, I will enlarge those bounds. Monsieur
could not realise, perhaps, how the mind accommodated itself in such
things to the force of necessity.
‘It is true,’ said Monsieur. ‘We will--ha--not pursue the subject.
You are--hum--quite accurate, I have no doubt. We will say no more.’
The supper having come to a close, he drew his chair away as he spoke,
and moved back to his former place by the fire. As it was very cold
at the greater part of the table, the other guests also resumed their
former seats by the fire, designing to toast themselves well before
going to bed. The host, when they rose from the table, bowed to all
present, wished them good night, and withdrew. But first the insinuating
traveller had asked him if they could have some wine made hot; and as
he had answered Yes, and had presently afterwards sent it in, that
traveller, seated in the centre of the group, and in the full heat of
the fire, was soon engaged in serving it out to the rest.
At this time, the younger of the two young ladies, who had been silently
attentive in her dark corner (the fire-light was the chief light in the
sombre room, the lamp being smoky and dull) to what had been said of the
absent lady, glided out. She was at a loss which way to turn when she
had softly closed the door; but, after a little hesitation among the
sounding passages and the many ways, came to a room in a corner of the
main gallery, where the servants were at their supper. From these she
obtained a lamp, and a direction to the lady’s room.
It was up the great staircase on the story above. Here and there, the
bare white walls were broken by an iron grate, and she thought as she
went along that the place was something like a prison. The arched door
of the lady’s room, or cell, was not quite shut. After knocking at it
two or three times without receiving an answer, she pushed it gently
open, and looked in.
The lady lay with closed eyes on the outside of the bed, protected from
the cold by the blankets and wrappers with which she had been covered
when she revived from her fainting fit. A dull light placed in the deep
recess of the window, made little impression on the arched room. The
visitor timidly stepped to the bed, and said, in a soft whisper, ‘Are
you better?’
The lady had fallen into a slumber, and the whisper was too low to awake
her. Her visitor, standing quite still, looked at her attentively.
‘She is very pretty,’ she said to herself. ‘I never saw so beautiful a
face. O how unlike me!’
It was a curious thing to say, but it had some hidden meaning, for it
filled her eyes with tears.
‘I know I must be right. I know he spoke of her that evening. I could
very easily be wrong on any other subject, but not on this, not on
this!’
With a quiet and tender hand she put aside a straying fold of the
sleeper’s hair, and then touched the hand that lay outside the covering.
‘I like to look at her,’ she breathed to herself. ‘I like to see what
has affected him so much.’
She had not withdrawn her hand, when the sleeper opened her eyes and
started.
‘Pray don’t be alarmed. I am only one of the travellers from
down-stairs. I came to ask if you were better, and if I could do
anything for you.’
‘I think you have already been so kind as to send your servants to my
assistance?’
‘No, not I; that was my sister. Are you better?’
‘Much better. It is only a slight bruise, and has been well looked to,
and is almost easy now. It made me giddy and faint in a moment. It had
hurt me before; but at last it overpowered me all at once.’
‘May I stay with you until some one comes? Would you like it?’
‘I should like it, for it is lonely here; but I am afraid you will feel
the cold too much.’
‘I don’t mind cold. I am not delicate, if I look so.’ She quickly moved
one of the two rough chairs to the bedside, and sat down. The other as
quickly moved a part of some travelling wrapper from herself, and drew
it over her, so that her arm, in keeping it about her, rested on her
shoulder.
‘You have so much the air of a kind nurse,’ said the lady, smiling on
her, ‘that you seem as if you had come to me from home.’
‘I am very glad of it.’
‘I was dreaming of home when I woke just now. Of my old home, I mean,
before I was married.’
‘And before you were so far away from it.’
‘I have been much farther away from it than this; but then I took
the best part of it with me, and missed nothing. I felt solitary as I
dropped asleep here, and, missing it a little, wandered back to it.’
There was a sorrowfully affectionate and regretful sound in her voice,
which made her visitor refrain from looking at her for the moment.
‘It is a curious chance which at last brings us together, under this
covering in which you have wrapped me,’ said the visitor after a
pause; ‘for do you know, I think I have been looking for you some time.’
‘Looking for me?’
‘I believe I have a little note here, which I was to give to you
whenever I found you. This is it. Unless I greatly mistake, it is
addressed to you? Is it not?’
The lady took it, and said yes, and read it. Her visitor watched her as
she did so. It was very short. She flushed a little as she put her lips
to her visitor’s cheek, and pressed her hand.
‘The dear young friend to whom he presents me, may be a comfort to me
at some time, he says. She is truly a comfort to me the first time I see
her.’
‘Perhaps you don’t,’ said the visitor, hesitating--‘perhaps you don’t
know my story? Perhaps he never told you my story?’
‘No.’
‘Oh no, why should he! I have scarcely the right to tell it myself at
present, because I have been entreated not to do so. There is not much
in it, but it might account to you for my asking you not to say anything
about the letter here. You saw my family with me, perhaps? Some of
them--I only say this to you--are a little proud, a little prejudiced.’
‘You shall take it back again,’ said the other; ‘and then my husband is
sure not to see it. He might see it and speak of it, otherwise, by some
accident. Will you put it in your bosom again, to be certain?’
She did so with great care. Her small, slight hand was still upon the
letter, when they heard some one in the gallery outside.
‘I promised,’ said the visitor, rising, ‘that I would write to him after
seeing you (I could hardly fail to see you sooner or later), and tell
him if you were well and happy. I had better say you were well and
happy.’
‘Yes, yes, yes! Say I was very well and very happy. And that I thanked
him affectionately, and would never forget him.’
‘I shall see you in the morning. After that we are sure to meet again
before very long. Good night!’
‘Good night. Thank you, thank you. Good night, my dear!’
Both of them were hurried and fluttered as they exchanged this parting,
and as the visitor came out of the door. She had expected to meet the
lady’s husband approaching it; but the person in the gallery was not
he: it was the traveller who had wiped the wine-drops from his moustache
with the piece of bread. When he heard the step behind him, he turned
round--for he was walking away in the dark.
His politeness, which was extreme, would not allow of the young lady’s
lighting herself down-stairs, or going down alone. He took her lamp,
held it so as to throw the best light on the stone steps, and followed
her all the way to the supper-room. She went down, not easily hiding how
much she was inclined to shrink and tremble; for the appearance of this
traveller was particularly disagreeable to her. She had sat in her quiet
corner before supper imagining what he would have been in the scenes and
places within her experience, until he inspired her with an aversion
that made him little less than terrific.
He followed her down with his smiling politeness, followed her in,
and resumed his seat in the best place in the hearth. There with the
wood-fire, which was beginning to burn low, rising and falling upon him
in the dark room, he sat with his legs thrust out to warm, drinking the
hot wine down to the lees, with a monstrous shadow imitating him on the
wall and ceiling.
The tired company had broken up, and all the rest were gone to bed
except the young lady’s father, who dozed in his chair by the fire.
The traveller had been at the pains of going a long way up-stairs to his
sleeping-room to fetch his pocket-flask of brandy. He told them so, as
he poured its contents into what was left of the wine, and drank with a
new relish.
‘May I ask, sir, if you are on your way to Italy?’
The grey-haired gentleman had roused himself, and was preparing to
withdraw. He answered in the affirmative.
‘I also!’ said the traveller. ‘I shall hope to have the honour
of offering my compliments in fairer scenes, and under softer
circumstances, than on this dismal mountain.’
The gentleman bowed, distantly enough, and said he was obliged to him.
‘We poor gentlemen, sir,’ said the traveller, pulling his moustache dry
with his hand, for he had dipped it in the wine and brandy; ‘we poor
gentlemen do not travel like princes, but the courtesies and graces of
life are precious to us. To your health, sir!’
‘Sir, I thank you.’
‘To the health of your distinguished family--of the fair ladies, your
daughters!’
‘Sir, I thank you again, I wish you good night. My dear, are
our--ha--our people in attendance?’
‘They are close by, father.’
‘Permit me!’ said the traveller, rising and holding the door open, as
the gentleman crossed the room towards it with his arm drawn through his
daughter’s. ‘Good repose! To the pleasure of seeing you once more! To
to-morrow!’
As he kissed his hand, with his best manner and his daintiest smile,
the young lady drew a little nearer to her father, and passed him with a
dread of touching him.
‘Humph!’ said the insinuating traveller, whose manner shrunk, and whose
voice dropped when he was left alone. ‘If they all go to bed, why I must
go. They are in a devil of a hurry. One would think the night would be
long enough, in this freezing silence and solitude, if one went to bed
two hours hence.’
Throwing back his head in emptying his glass, he cast his eyes upon the
travellers’ book, which lay on the piano, open, with pens and ink beside
it, as if the night’s names had been registered when he was absent.
Taking it in his hand, he read these entries.
William Dorrit, Esquire
Frederick Dorrit, Esquire
Edward Dorrit, Esquire
Miss Dorrit
Miss Amy Dorrit
Mrs General
and Suite.
From France to Italy.
Mr and Mrs Henry Gowan.
From France to Italy.
To which he added, in a small complicated hand, ending with a long lean
flourish, not unlike a lasso thrown at all the rest of the names:
Blandois. Paris.
From France to Italy.
And then, with his nose coming down over his moustache and his moustache
going up and under his nose, repaired to his allotted cell.
CHAPTER 2. Mrs General
It is indispensable to present the accomplished lady who was of
sufficient importance in the suite of the Dorrit Family to have a line
to herself in the Travellers’ Book.
Mrs General was the daughter of a clerical dignitary in a cathedral
town, where she had led the fashion until she was as near forty-five as
a single lady can be. A stiff commissariat officer of sixty, famous as a
martinet, had then become enamoured of the gravity with which she drove
the proprieties four-in-hand through the cathedral town society, and
had solicited to be taken beside her on the box of the cool coach of
ceremony to which that team was harnessed. His proposal of marriage
being accepted by the lady, the commissary took his seat behind
the proprieties with great decorum, and Mrs General drove until the
commissary died. In the course of their united journey, they ran over
several people who came in the way of the proprieties; but always in a
high style and with composure.
The commissary having been buried with all the decorations suitable to
the service (the whole team of proprieties were harnessed to his hearse,
and they all had feathers and black velvet housings with his coat of
arms in the corner), Mrs General began to inquire what quantity of dust
and ashes was deposited at the bankers’. It then transpired that the
commissary had so far stolen a march on Mrs General as to have bought
himself an annuity some years before his marriage, and to have reserved
that circumstance in mentioning, at the period of his proposal, that
his income was derived from the interest of his money. Mrs General
consequently found her means so much diminished, that, but for the
perfect regulation of her mind, she might have felt disposed to question
the accuracy of that portion of the late service which had declared that
the commissary could take nothing away with him.
In this state of affairs it occurred to Mrs General, that she might
‘form the mind,’ and eke the manners of some young lady of distinction.
Or, that she might harness the proprieties to the carriage of some rich
young heiress or widow, and become at once the driver and guard of such
vehicle through the social mazes. Mrs General’s communication of this
idea to her clerical and commissariat connection was so warmly applauded
that, but for the lady’s undoubted merit, it might have appeared as
though they wanted to get rid of her. Testimonials representing Mrs
General as a prodigy of piety, learning, virtue, and gentility, were
lavishly contributed from influential quarters; and one venerable
archdeacon even shed tears in recording his testimony to her perfections
(described to him by persons on whom he could rely), though he had never
had the honour and moral gratification of setting eyes on Mrs General in
all his life.
Thus delegated on her mission, as it were by Church and State, Mrs
General, who had always occupied high ground, felt in a condition to
keep it, and began by putting herself up at a very high figure. An
interval of some duration elapsed, in which there was no bid for Mrs
General. At length a county-widower, with a daughter of fourteen, opened
negotiations with the lady; and as it was a part either of the native
dignity or of the artificial policy of Mrs General (but certainly one
or the other) to comport herself as if she were much more sought than
seeking, the widower pursued Mrs General until he prevailed upon her to
form his daughter’s mind and manners.
The execution of this trust occupied Mrs General about seven years, in
the course of which time she made the tour of Europe, and saw most of
that extensive miscellany of objects which it is essential that all
persons of polite cultivation should see with other people’s eyes,
and never with their own. When her charge was at length formed, the
marriage, not only of the young lady, but likewise of her father, the
widower, was resolved on. The widower then finding Mrs General both
inconvenient and expensive, became of a sudden almost as much affected
by her merits as the archdeacon had been, and circulated such praises
of her surpassing worth, in all quarters where he thought an opportunity
might arise of transferring the blessing to somebody else, that Mrs
General was a name more honourable than ever.
The phoenix was to let, on this elevated perch, when Mr Dorrit, who
had lately succeeded to his property, mentioned to his bankers that he
wished to discover a lady, well-bred, accomplished, well connected, well
accustomed to good society, who was qualified at once to complete the
education of his daughters, and to be their matron or chaperon. Mr
Dorrit’s bankers, as bankers of the county-widower, instantly said, ‘Mrs
General.’
Pursuing the light so fortunately hit upon, and finding the concurrent
testimony of the whole of Mrs General’s acquaintance to be of the
pathetic nature already recorded, Mr Dorrit took the trouble of going
down to the county of the county-widower to see Mrs General, in whom he
found a lady of a quality superior to his highest expectations.
‘Might I be excused,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘if I inquired--ha--what remune--’
‘Why, indeed,’ returned Mrs General, stopping the word, ‘it is a subject
on which I prefer to avoid entering. I have never entered on it with my
friends here; and I cannot overcome the delicacy, Mr Dorrit, with
which I have always regarded it. I am not, as I hope you are aware, a
governess--’
‘O dear no!’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘Pray, madam, do not imagine for a moment
that I think so.’ He really blushed to be suspected of it.
Mrs General gravely inclined her head. ‘I cannot, therefore, put a price
upon services which it is a pleasure to me to render if I can render
them spontaneously, but which I could not render in mere return for any
consideration. Neither do I know how, or where, to find a case parallel
to my own. It is peculiar.’
No doubt. But how then (Mr Dorrit not unnaturally hinted) could the
subject be approached?
‘I cannot object,’ said Mrs General--‘though even that is disagreeable
to me--to Mr Dorrit’s inquiring, in confidence of my friends here, what
amount they have been accustomed, at quarterly intervals, to pay to my
credit at my bankers’.’
Mr Dorrit bowed his acknowledgements.
‘Permit me to add,’ said Mrs General, ‘that beyond this, I can never
resume the topic. Also that I can accept no second or inferior position.
If the honour were proposed to me of becoming known to Mr Dorrit’s
family--I think two daughters were mentioned?--’
‘Two daughters.’
‘I could only accept it on terms of perfect equality, as a companion,
protector, Mentor, and friend.’
Mr Dorrit, in spite of his sense of his importance, felt as if it would
be quite a kindness in her to accept it on any conditions. He almost
said as much.
‘I think,’ repeated Mrs General, ‘two daughters were mentioned?’
‘Two daughters,’ said Mr Dorrit again.
‘It would therefore,’ said Mrs General, ‘be necessary to add a third
more to the payment (whatever its amount may prove to be), which my
friends here have been accustomed to make to my bankers’.’
Mr Dorrit lost no time in referring the delicate question to the
county-widower, and finding that he had been accustomed to pay three
hundred pounds a-year to the credit of Mrs General, arrived, without any
severe strain on his arithmetic, at the conclusion that he himself must
pay four. Mrs General being an article of that lustrous surface which
suggests that it is worth any money, he made a formal proposal to be
allowed to have the honour and pleasure of regarding her as a member of
his family. Mrs General conceded that high privilege, and here she was.
In person, Mrs General, including her skirts which had much to do with
it, was of a dignified and imposing appearance; ample, rustling, gravely
voluminous; always upright behind the proprieties. She might have
been taken--had been taken--to the top of the Alps and the bottom of
Herculaneum, without disarranging a fold in her dress, or displacing
a pin. If her countenance and hair had rather a floury appearance, as
though from living in some transcendently genteel Mill, it was rather
because she was a chalky creation altogether, than because she mended
her complexion with violet powder, or had turned grey. If her eyes had
no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express. If
she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name
or any other inscription on her face. A cool, waxy, blown-out woman, who
had never lighted well.
Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it
from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves
or rails on which she started little trains of other people’s opinions,
which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere. Even her
propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but
Mrs General’s way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and
make believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways
of forming a mind--to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards,
lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was the easiest way,
and, beyond all comparison, the properest.
Mrs General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents,
miseries, and offences, were never to be mentioned before her. Passion
was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs General, and blood was to
change to milk and water. The little that was left in the world,
when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs General’s province to
varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of
brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every
object that came under consideration. The more cracked it was, the more
Mrs General varnished it.
There was varnish in Mrs General’s voice, varnish in Mrs General’s
touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs General’s figure. Mrs
General’s dreams ought to have been varnished--if she had any--lying
asleep in the arms of the good Saint Bernard, with the feathery snow
falling on his house-top.
CHAPTER 3. On the Road
The bright morning sun dazzled the eyes, the snow had ceased, the mists
had vanished, the mountain air was so clear and light that the
new sensation of breathing it was like the having entered on a new
existence. To help the delusion, the solid ground itself seemed gone,
and the mountain, a shining waste of immense white heaps and masses, to
be a region of cloud floating between the blue sky above and the earth
far below.
Some dark specks in the snow, like knots upon a little thread, beginning
at the convent door and winding away down the descent in broken lengths
which were not yet pieced together, showed where the Brethren were at
work in several places clearing the track. Already the snow had begun to
be foot-thawed again about the door. Mules were busily brought out, tied
to the rings in the wall, and laden; strings of bells were buckled
on, burdens were adjusted, the voices of drivers and riders sounded
musically. Some of the earliest had even already resumed their journey;
and, both on the level summit by the dark water near the convent, and on
the downward way of yesterday’s ascent, little moving figures of men and
mules, reduced to miniatures by the immensity around, went with a clear
tinkling of bells and a pleasant harmony of tongues.
In the supper-room of last night, a new fire, piled upon the feathery
ashes of the old one, shone upon a homely breakfast of loaves, butter,
and milk. It also shone on the courier of the Dorrit family, making tea
for his party from a supply he had brought up with him, together with
several other small stores which were chiefly laid in for the use of the
strong body of inconvenience. Mr Gowan and Blandois of Paris had already
breakfasted, and were walking up and down by the lake, smoking their
cigars.
‘Gowan, eh?’ muttered Tip, otherwise Edward Dorrit, Esquire, turning
over the leaves of the book, when the courier had left them to
breakfast. ‘Then Gowan is the name of a puppy, that’s all I have got to
say! If it was worth my while, I’d pull his nose. But it isn’t worth my
while--fortunately for him. How’s his wife, Amy? I suppose you know.
You generally know things of that sort.’
‘She is better, Edward. But they are not going to-day.’
‘Oh! They are not going to-day! Fortunately for that fellow too,’ said
Tip, ‘or he and I might have come into collision.’
‘It is thought better here that she should lie quiet to-day, and not be
fatigued and shaken by the ride down until to-morrow.’
‘With all my heart. But you talk as if you had been nursing her. You
haven’t been relapsing into (Mrs General is not here) into old habits,
have you, Amy?’
He asked her the question with a sly glance of observation at Miss
Fanny, and at his father too.
‘I have only been in to ask her if I could do anything for her, Tip,’
said Little Dorrit.
‘You needn’t call me Tip, Amy child,’ returned that young gentleman
with a frown; ‘because that’s an old habit, and one you may as well lay
aside.’
‘I didn’t mean to say so, Edward dear. I forgot. It was so natural once,
that it seemed at the moment the right word.’
‘Oh yes!’ Miss Fanny struck in. ‘Natural, and right word, and once, and
all the rest of it! Nonsense, you little thing! I know perfectly well
why you have been taking such an interest in this Mrs Gowan. You can’t
blind _me_.’
‘I will not try to, Fanny. Don’t be angry.’
‘Oh! angry!’ returned that young lady with a flounce. ‘I have no
patience’ (which indeed was the truth).
‘Pray, Fanny,’ said Mr Dorrit, raising his eyebrows, ‘what do you mean?
Explain yourself.’
‘Oh! Never mind, Pa,’ replied Miss Fanny, ‘it’s no great matter.
Amy will understand me. She knew, or knew of, this Mrs Gowan before
yesterday, and she may as well admit that she did.’
‘My child,’ said Mr Dorrit, turning to his younger daughter, ‘has your
sister--any--ha--authority for this curious statement?’
‘However meek we are,’ Miss Fanny struck in before she could answer, ‘we
don’t go creeping into people’s rooms on the tops of cold mountains,
and sitting perishing in the frost with people, unless we know something
about them beforehand. It’s not very hard to divine whose friend Mrs
Gowan is.’
‘Whose friend?’ inquired her father.
‘Pa, I am sorry to say,’ returned Miss Fanny, who had by this time
succeeded in goading herself into a state of much ill-usage and
grievance, which she was often at great pains to do: ‘that I believe her
to be a friend of that very objectionable and unpleasant person, who,
with a total absence of all delicacy, which our experience might have
led us to expect from him, insulted us and outraged our feelings in
so public and wilful a manner on an occasion to which it is understood
among us that we will not more pointedly allude.’
‘Amy, my child,’ said Mr Dorrit, tempering a bland severity with a
dignified affection, ‘is this the case?’
Little Dorrit mildly answered, yes it was.
‘Yes it is!’ cried Miss Fanny. ‘Of course! I said so! And now, Pa, I do
declare once for all’--this young lady was in the habit of declaring the
same thing once for all every day of her life, and even several times in
a day--‘that this is shameful! I do declare once for all that it ought
to be put a stop to. Is it not enough that we have gone through what
is only known to ourselves, but are we to have it thrown in our faces,
perseveringly and systematically, by the very person who should spare
our feelings most? Are we to be exposed to this unnatural conduct every
moment of our lives? Are we never to be permitted to forget? I say
again, it is absolutely infamous!’
‘Well, Amy,’ observed her brother, shaking his head, ‘you know I stand
by you whenever I can, and on most occasions. But I must say, that, upon
my soul, I do consider it rather an unaccountable mode of showing your
sisterly affection, that you should back up a man who treated me in the
most ungentlemanly way in which one man can treat another. And who,’ he
added convincingly, ‘must be a low-minded thief, you know, or he never
could have conducted himself as he did.’
‘And see,’ said Miss Fanny, ‘see what is involved in this! Can we ever
hope to be respected by our servants? Never. Here are our two women, and
Pa’s valet, and a footman, and a courier, and all sorts of dependents,
and yet in the midst of these, we are to have one of ourselves rushing
about with tumblers of cold water, like a menial! Why, a policeman,’
said Miss Fanny, ‘if a beggar had a fit in the street, could but go
plunging about with tumblers, as this very Amy did in this very room
before our very eyes last night!’
‘I don’t so much mind that, once in a way,’ remarked Mr Edward; ‘but
your Clennam, as he thinks proper to call himself, is another thing.’
‘He is part of the same thing,’ returned Miss Fanny, ‘and of a piece
with all the rest. He obtruded himself upon us in the first instance.
We never wanted him. I always showed him, for one, that I could
have dispensed with his company with the greatest pleasure.
He then commits that gross outrage upon our feelings, which he never
could or would have committed but for the delight he took in exposing
us; and then we are to be demeaned for the service of his friends! Why,
I don’t wonder at this Mr Gowan’s conduct towards you. What else was
to be expected when he was enjoying our past misfortunes--gloating over
them at the moment!’
‘Father--Edward--no indeed!’ pleaded Little Dorrit. ‘Neither Mr nor Mrs
Gowan had ever heard our name. They were, and they are, quite ignorant
of our history.’
‘So much the worse,’ retorted Fanny, determined not to admit anything in
extenuation, ‘for then you have no excuse. If they had known about us,
you might have felt yourself called upon to conciliate them. That would
have been a weak and ridiculous mistake, but I can respect a mistake,
whereas I can’t respect a wilful and deliberate abasing of those who
should be nearest and dearest to us. No. I can’t respect that. I can do
nothing but denounce that.’
‘I never offend you wilfully, Fanny,’ said Little Dorrit, ‘though you
are so hard with me.’
‘Then you should be more careful, Amy,’ returned her sister. ‘If you do
such things by accident, you should be more careful. If I happened to
have been born in a peculiar place, and under peculiar circumstances
that blunted my knowledge of propriety, I fancy I should think myself
bound to consider at every step, “Am I going, ignorantly, to compromise
any near and dear relations?” That is what I fancy _I_ should do, if it
was _my_ case.’
Mr Dorrit now interposed, at once to stop these painful subjects by his
authority, and to point their moral by his wisdom.
‘My dear,’ said he to his younger daughter, ‘I beg you to--ha--to say
no more. Your sister Fanny expresses herself strongly, but not without
considerable reason. You have now a--hum--a great position to support.
That great position is not occupied by yourself alone, but by--ha--by
me, and--ha hum--by us. Us. Now, it is incumbent upon all people in an
exalted position, but it is particularly so on this family, for reasons
which I--ha--will not dwell upon, to make themselves respected. To be
vigilant in making themselves respected. Dependants, to respect us, must
be--ha--kept at a distance and--hum--kept down. Down. Therefore, your
not exposing yourself to the remarks of our attendants by appearing to
have at any time dispensed with their services and performed them for
yourself, is--ha--highly important.’
‘Why, who can doubt it?’ cried Miss Fanny. ‘It’s the essence of
everything.’
‘Fanny,’ returned her father, grandiloquently, ‘give me leave, my dear.
We then come to--ha--to Mr Clennam. I am free to say that I do not, Amy,
share your sister’s sentiments--that is to say altogether--hum--
altogether--in reference to Mr Clennam. I am content to regard that
individual in the light of--ha--generally--a well-behaved person. Hum.
A well-behaved person. Nor will I inquire whether Mr Clennam did, at any
time, obtrude himself on--ha--my society. He knew my society to
be--hum--sought, and his plea might be that he regarded me in the light
of a public character. But there were circumstances attending
my--ha--slight knowledge of Mr Clennam (it was very slight), which,’
here Mr Dorrit became extremely grave and impressive, ‘would render it
highly indelicate in Mr Clennam to--ha--to seek to renew communication
with me or with any member of my family under existing circumstances.
If Mr Clennam has sufficient delicacy to perceive the impropriety of
any such attempt, I am bound as a responsible gentleman to--ha--defer
to that delicacy on his part. If, on the other hand, Mr Clennam has not
that delicacy, I cannot for a moment--ha--hold any correspondence with
so--hum--coarse a mind. In either case, it would appear that Mr Clennam
is put altogether out of the question, and that we have nothing to do
with him or he with us. Ha--Mrs General!’
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.
Such people were not realities to the little figure of the English girl;
such people were all unknown to her. She would watch the sunset, in its
long low lines of purple and red, and its burning flush high up into
the sky: so glowing on the buildings, and so lightening their structure,
that it made them look as if their strong walls were transparent, and
they shone from within. She would watch those glories expire; and then,
after looking at the black gondolas underneath, taking guests to music
and dancing, would raise her eyes to the shining stars. Was there no
party of her own, in other times, on which the stars had shone? To think
of that old gate now!
She would think of that old gate, and of herself sitting at it in the
dead of the night, pillowing Maggy’s head; and of other places and of
other scenes associated with those different times. And then she would
lean upon her balcony, and look over at the water, as though they all
lay underneath it. When she got to that, she would musingly watch its
running, as if, in the general vision, it might run dry, and show her
the prison again, and herself, and the old room, and the old inmates,
and the old visitors: all lasting realities that had never changed.
CHAPTER 4. A Letter from Little Dorrit
Dear Mr Clennam,
I write to you from my own room at Venice, thinking you will be glad to
hear from me. But I know you cannot be so glad to hear from me as I am
to write to you; for everything about you is as you have been accustomed
to see it, and you miss nothing--unless it should be me, which can only
be for a very little while together and very seldom--while everything in
my life is so strange, and I miss so much.
When we were in Switzerland, which appears to have been years ago,
though it was only weeks, I met young Mrs Gowan, who was on a mountain
excursion like ourselves. She told me she was very well and very happy.
She sent you the message, by me, that she thanked you affectionately and
would never forget you. She was quite confiding with me, and I loved her
almost as soon as I spoke to her. But there is nothing singular in that;
who could help loving so beautiful and winning a creature! I could not
wonder at any one loving her. No indeed.
It will not make you uneasy on Mrs Gowan’s account, I hope--for I
remember that you said you had the interest of a true friend in her--if
I tell you that I wish she could have married some one better suited to
her. Mr Gowan seems fond of her, and of course she is very fond of him,
but I thought he was not earnest enough--I don’t mean in that respect--I
mean in anything. I could not keep it out of my mind that if I was Mrs
Gowan (what a change that would be, and how I must alter to become like
her!) I should feel that I was rather lonely and lost, for the want of
some one who was steadfast and firm in purpose. I even thought she felt
this want a little, almost without knowing it. But mind you are not made
uneasy by this, for she was ‘very well and very happy.’ And she looked
most beautiful.
I expect to meet her again before long, and indeed have been expecting
for some days past to see her here. I will ever be as good a friend to
her as I can for your sake. Dear Mr Clennam, I dare say you think little
of having been a friend to me when I had no other (not that I have any
other now, for I have made no new friends), but I think much of it, and
I never can forget it.
I wish I knew--but it is best for no one to write to me--how Mr and Mrs
Plornish prosper in the business which my dear father bought for them,
and that old Mr Nandy lives happily with them and his two grandchildren,
and sings all his songs over and over again. I cannot quite keep back
the tears from my eyes when I think of my poor Maggy, and of the blank
she must have felt at first, however kind they all are to her, without
her Little Mother. Will you go and tell her, as a strict secret, with my
love, that she never can have regretted our separation more than I have
regretted it? And will you tell them all that I have thought of them
every day, and that my heart is faithful to them everywhere? O, if you
could know how faithful, you would almost pity me for being so far away
and being so grand!
You will be glad, I am sure, to know that my dear father is very well
in health, and that all these changes are highly beneficial to him, and
that he is very different indeed from what he used to be when you used
to see him. There is an improvement in my uncle too, I think, though he
never complained of old, and never exults now. Fanny is very graceful,
quick, and clever. It is natural to her to be a lady; she has adapted
herself to our new fortunes with wonderful ease.
This reminds me that I have not been able to do so, and that I sometimes
almost despair of ever being able to do so. I find that I cannot learn.
Mrs General is always with us, and we speak French and speak Italian,
and she takes pains to form us in many ways. When I say we speak French
and Italian, I mean they do. As for me, I am so slow that I scarcely
get on at all. As soon as I begin to plan, and think, and try, all my
planning, thinking, and trying go in old directions, and I begin to feel
careful again about the expenses of the day, and about my dear father,
and about my work, and then I remember with a start that there are no
such cares left, and that in itself is so new and improbable that it
sets me wandering again. I should not have the courage to mention this
to any one but you.
It is the same with all these new countries and wonderful sights.
They are very beautiful, and they astonish me, but I am not collected
enough--not familiar enough with myself, if you can quite understand
what I mean--to have all the pleasure in them that I might have. What
I knew before them, blends with them, too, so curiously. For instance,
when we were among the mountains, I often felt (I hesitate to tell such
an idle thing, dear Mr Clennam, even to you) as if the Marshalsea must
be behind that great rock; or as if Mrs Clennam’s room where I have
worked so many days, and where I first saw you, must be just beyond that
snow. Do you remember one night when I came with Maggy to your lodging
in Covent Garden? That room I have often and often fancied I have seen
before me, travelling along for miles by the side of our carriage, when
I have looked out of the carriage-window after dark. We were shut out
that night, and sat at the iron gate, and walked about till morning.
I often look up at the stars, even from the balcony of this room, and
believe that I am in the street again, shut out with Maggy. It is the
same with people that I left in England.
When I go about here in a gondola, I surprise myself looking into other
gondolas as if I hoped to see them. It would overcome me with joy to
see them, but I don’t think it would surprise me much, at first. In my
fanciful times, I fancy that they might be anywhere; and I almost expect
to see their dear faces on the bridges or the quays.
Another difficulty that I have will seem very strange to you. It must
seem very strange to any one but me, and does even to me: I often feel
the old sad pity for--I need not write the word--for him. Changed as he
is, and inexpressibly blest and thankful as I always am to know it, the
old sorrowful feeling of compassion comes upon me sometimes with such
strength that I want to put my arms round his neck, tell him how I love
him, and cry a little on his breast. I should be glad after that, and
proud and happy. But I know that I must not do this; that he would not
like it, that Fanny would be angry, that Mrs General would be amazed;
and so I quiet myself. Yet in doing so, I struggle with the feeling that
I have come to be at a distance from him; and that even in the midst of
all the servants and attendants, he is deserted, and in want of me.
Dear Mr Clennam, I have written a great deal about myself, but I must
write a little more still, or what I wanted most of all to say in this
weak letter would be left out of it. In all these foolish thoughts of
mine, which I have been so hardy as to confess to you because I know you
will understand me if anybody can, and will make more allowance for me
than anybody else would if you cannot--in all these thoughts, there is
one thought scarcely ever--never--out of my memory, and that is that
I hope you sometimes, in a quiet moment, have a thought for me. I must
tell you that as to this, I have felt, ever since I have been away, an
anxiety which I am very anxious to relieve. I have been afraid that you
may think of me in a new light, or a new character. Don’t do that, I
could not bear that--it would make me more unhappy than you can suppose.
It would break my heart to believe that you thought of me in any way
that would make me stranger to you than I was when you were so good to
me. What I have to pray and entreat of you is, that you will never think
of me as the daughter of a rich person; that you will never think of me
as dressing any better, or living any better, than when you first
knew me. That you will remember me only as the little shabby girl you
protected with so much tenderness, from whose threadbare dress you have
kept away the rain, and whose wet feet you have dried at your fire.
That you will think of me (when you think of me at all), and of my true
affection and devoted gratitude, always without change, as of
Your poor child,
LITTLE DORRIT.
P.S.--Particularly remember that you are not to be uneasy about Mrs
Gowan. Her words were, ‘Very well and very happy.’ And she looked most
beautiful.
CHAPTER 5. Something Wrong Somewhere
The family had been a month or two at Venice, when Mr Dorrit, who was
much among Counts and Marquises, and had but scant leisure, set an hour
of one day apart, beforehand, for the purpose of holding some conference
with Mrs General.
The time he had reserved in his mind arriving, he sent Mr Tinkler, his
valet, to Mrs General’s apartment (which would have absorbed about a
third of the area of the Marshalsea), to present his compliments to that
lady, and represent him as desiring the favour of an interview. It being
that period of the forenoon when the various members of the family had
coffee in their own chambers, some couple of hours before assembling at
breakfast in a faded hall which had once been sumptuous, but was now
the prey of watery vapours and a settled melancholy, Mrs General was
accessible to the valet. That envoy found her on a little square of
carpet, so extremely diminutive in reference to the size of her stone
and marble floor that she looked as if she might have had it spread for
the trying on of a ready-made pair of shoes; or as if she had come into
possession of the enchanted piece of carpet, bought for forty purses by
one of the three princes in the Arabian Nights, and had that moment been
transported on it, at a wish, into a palatial saloon with which it had
no connection.
Mrs General, replying to the envoy, as she set down her empty
coffee-cup, that she was willing at once to proceed to Mr Dorrit’s
apartment, and spare him the trouble of coming to her (which, in his
gallantry, he had proposed), the envoy threw open the door, and
escorted Mrs General to the presence. It was quite a walk, by mysterious
staircases and corridors, from Mrs General’s apartment,--hoodwinked by
a narrow side street with a low gloomy bridge in it, and dungeon-like
opposite tenements, their walls besmeared with a thousand downward
stains and streaks, as if every crazy aperture in them had been weeping
tears of rust into the Adriatic for centuries--to Mr Dorrit’s apartment:
with a whole English house-front of window, a prospect of beautiful
church-domes rising into the blue sky sheer out of the water which
reflected them, and a hushed murmur of the Grand Canal laving the
doorways below, where his gondolas and gondoliers attended his pleasure,
drowsily swinging in a little forest of piles.
Mr Dorrit, in a resplendent dressing-gown and cap--the dormant grub that
had so long bided its time among the Collegians had burst into a rare
butterfly--rose to receive Mrs General. A chair to Mrs General. An
easier chair, sir; what are you doing, what are you about, what do you
mean? Now, leave us!
‘Mrs General,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘I took the liberty--’
‘By no means,’ Mrs General interposed. ‘I was quite at your disposition.
I had had my coffee.’
‘--I took the liberty,’ said Mr Dorrit again, with the magnificent
placidity of one who was above correction, ‘to solicit the favour of
a little private conversation with you, because I feel rather worried
respecting my--ha--my younger daughter. You will have observed a great
difference of temperament, madam, between my two daughters?’
Said Mrs General in response, crossing her gloved hands (she was never
without gloves, and they never creased and always fitted), ‘There is a
great difference.’
‘May I ask to be favoured with your view of it?’ said Mr Dorrit, with a
deference not incompatible with majestic serenity.
‘Fanny,’ returned Mrs General, ‘has force of character and
self-reliance. Amy, none.’
None? O Mrs General, ask the Marshalsea stones and bars. O Mrs General,
ask the milliner who taught her to work, and the dancing-master who
taught her sister to dance. O Mrs General, Mrs General, ask me, her
father, what I owe her; and hear my testimony touching the life of this
slighted little creature from her childhood up!
No such adjuration entered Mr. Dorrit’s head. He looked at Mrs
General, seated in her usual erect attitude on her coach-box behind the
proprieties, and he said in a thoughtful manner, ‘True, madam.’
‘I would not,’ said Mrs General, ‘be understood to say, observe,
that there is nothing to improve in Fanny. But there is material
there--perhaps, indeed, a little too much.’
‘Will you be kind enough, madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘to be--ha--more
explicit? I do not quite understand my elder daughter’s having--hum--too
much material. What material?’
‘Fanny,’ returned Mrs General, ‘at present forms too many opinions.
Perfect breeding forms none, and is never demonstrative.’
Lest he himself should be found deficient in perfect breeding, Mr Dorrit
hastened to reply, ‘Unquestionably, madam, you are right.’ Mrs General
returned, in her emotionless and expressionless manner, ‘I believe so.’
‘But you are aware, my dear madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘that my daughters
had the misfortune to lose their lamented mother when they were very
young; and that, in consequence of my not having been until lately
the recognised heir to my property, they have lived with me as
a comparatively poor, though always proud, gentleman, in--ha
hum--retirement!’
‘I do not,’ said Mrs General, ‘lose sight of the circumstance.’
‘Madam,’ pursued Mr Dorrit, ‘of my daughter Fanny, under her present
guidance and with such an example constantly before her--’
(Mrs General shut her eyes.)
--‘I have no misgivings. There is adaptability of character in Fanny.
But my younger daughter, Mrs General, rather worries and vexes my
thoughts. I must inform you that she has always been my favourite.’
‘There is no accounting,’ said Mrs General, ‘for these partialities.’
‘Ha--no,’ assented Mr Dorrit. ‘No. Now, madam, I am troubled by noticing
that Amy is not, so to speak, one of ourselves. She does not care to go
about with us; she is lost in the society we have here; our tastes
are evidently not her tastes. Which,’ said Mr Dorrit, summing up with
judicial gravity, ‘is to say, in other words, that there is something
wrong in--ha--Amy.’
‘May we incline to the supposition,’ said Mrs General, with a little
touch of varnish, ‘that something is referable to the novelty of the
position?’
‘Excuse me, madam,’ observed Mr Dorrit, rather quickly. ‘The daughter
of a gentleman, though--ha--himself at one time comparatively far from
affluent--comparatively--and herself reared in--hum--retirement, need
not of necessity find this position so very novel.’
‘True,’ said Mrs General, ‘true.’
‘Therefore, madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘I took the liberty’ (he laid an
emphasis on the phrase and repeated it, as though he stipulated, with
urbane firmness, that he must not be contradicted again), ‘I took the
liberty of requesting this interview, in order that I might mention the
topic to you, and inquire how you would advise me?’
‘Mr Dorrit,’ returned Mrs General, ‘I have conversed with Amy several
times since we have been residing here, on the general subject of the
formation of a demeanour. She has expressed herself to me as wondering
exceedingly at Venice. I have mentioned to her that it is better not to
wonder. I have pointed out to her that the celebrated Mr Eustace, the
classical tourist, did not think much of it; and that he compared the
Rialto, greatly to its disadvantage, with Westminster and Blackfriars
Bridges. I need not add, after what you have said, that I have not yet
found my arguments successful. You do me the honour to ask me what to
advise. It always appears to me (if this should prove to be a baseless
assumption, I shall be pardoned), that Mr Dorrit has been accustomed to
exercise influence over the minds of others.’
‘Hum--madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘I have been at the head of--ha of
a considerable community. You are right in supposing that I am not
unaccustomed to--an influential position.’
‘I am happy,’ returned Mrs General, ‘to be so corroborated. I would
therefore the more confidently recommend that Mr Dorrit should speak to
Amy himself, and make his observations and wishes known to her. Being
his favourite, besides, and no doubt attached to him, she is all the
more likely to yield to his influence.’
‘I had anticipated your suggestion, madam,’ said Mr Dorrit,
‘but--ha--was not sure that I might--hum--not encroach on--’