Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [ereader iphone .txt] 📗

force, ‘that if it’s not worth your while to take care of yourself for your own sake, it’s not worth doing for some one else’s.’

‘Truly,’ returned Arthur, with a sigh and a smile, ‘I don’t know for whose.’

‘Mr Clennam,’ said John, warmly, ‘I am surprised that a gentleman who is capable of the straightforwardness that you are capable of, should be capable of the mean action of making me such an answer. Mr Clennam, I am surprised that a gentleman who is capable of having a heart of his own, should be capable of the heartlessness of treating mine in that way. I am astonished at it, sir. Really and truly I am astonished!’

Having got upon his feet to emphasise his concluding words, Young John sat down again, and fell to rolling his green packet on his right leg; never taking his eyes off Clennam, but surveying him with a fixed look of indignant reproach.

‘I had got over it, sir,’ said John. ‘I had conquered it, knowing that it must be conquered, and had come to the resolution to think no more about it. I shouldn’t have given my mind to it again, I hope, if to this prison you had not been brought, and in an hour unfortunate for me, this day!’ (In his agitation Young John adopted his mother’s powerful construction of sentences.) ‘When you first came upon me, sir, in the Lodge, this day, more as if a Upas tree had been made a capture of than a private defendant, such mingled streams of feelings broke loose again within me, that everything was for the first few minutes swept away before them, and I was going round and round in a vortex. I got out of it. I struggled, and got out of it. If it was the last word I had to speak, against that vortex with my utmost powers I strove, and out of it I came. I argued that if I had been rude, apologies was due, and those apologies without a question of demeaning, I did make. And now, when I’ve been so wishful to show that one thought is next to being a holy one with me and goes before all others—now, after all, you dodge me when I ever so gently hint at it, and throw me back upon myself. For, do not, sir,’ said Young John, ‘do not be so base as to deny that dodge you do, and thrown me back upon myself you have!’

All amazement, Arthur gazed at him like one lost, only saying, ‘What is it? What do you mean, John?’ But, John, being in that state of mind in which nothing would seem to be more impossible to a certain class of people than the giving of an answer, went ahead blindly.

‘I hadn’t,’ John declared, ‘no, I hadn’t, and I never had the audaciousness to think, I am sure, that all was anything but lost. I hadn’t, no, why should I say I hadn’t if I ever had, any hope that it was possible to be so blest, not after the words that passed, not even if barriers insurmountable had not been raised! But is that a reason why I am to have no memory, why I am to have no thoughts, why I am to have no sacred spots, nor anything?’

‘What can you mean?’ cried Arthur.

‘It’s all very well to trample on it, sir,’ John went on, scouring a very prairie of wild words, ‘if a person can make up his mind to be guilty of the action. It’s all very well to trample on it, but it’s there. It may be that it couldn’t be trampled upon if it wasn’t there. But that doesn’t make it gentlemanly, that doesn’t make it honourable, that doesn’t justify throwing a person back upon himself after he has struggled and strived out of himself like a butterfly. The world may sneer at a turnkey, but he’s a man— when he isn’t a woman, which among female criminals he’s expected to be.’

Ridiculous as the incoherence of his talk was, there was yet a truthfulness in Young john’s simple, sentimental character, and a sense of being wounded in some very tender respect, expressed in his burning face and in the agitation of his voice and manner, which Arthur must have been cruel to disregard. He turned his thoughts back to the starting-point of this unknown injury; and in the meantime Young John, having rolled his green packet pretty round, cut it carefully into three pieces, and laid it on a plate as if it were some particular delicacy.

‘It seems to me just possible,’ said Arthur, when he had retraced the conversation to the water-cresses and back again, ‘that you have made some reference to Miss Dorrit.’

‘It is just possible, sir,’ returned John Chivery.

‘I don’t understand it. I hope I may not be so unlucky as to make you think I mean to offend you again, for I never have meant to offend you yet, when I say I don’t understand it.’

‘Sir,’ said Young John, ‘will you have the perfidy to deny that you know and long have known that I felt towards Miss Dorrit, call it not the presumption of love, but adoration and sacrifice ?’

‘Indeed, John, I will not have any perfidy if I know it; why you should suspect me of it I am at a loss to think. Did you ever hear from Mrs Chivery, your mother, that I went to see her once?’

‘No, sir,’ returned John, shortly. ‘Never heard of such a thing.’

‘But I did. Can you imagine why?’

‘No, sir,’ returned John, shortly. ‘I can’t imagine why.’

‘I will tell you. I was solicitous to promote Miss Dorrit’s happiness; and if I could have supposed that Miss Dorrit returned your affection—’

Poor John Chivery turned crimson to the tips of his ears. ‘Miss Dorrit never did, sir. I wish to be honourable and true, so far as in my humble way I can, and I would scorn to pretend for a moment that she ever did, or that she ever led me to believe she did; no, nor even that it was ever to be expected in any cool reason that she would or could. She was far above me in all respects at all times. As likewise,’ added John, ‘similarly was her genteel family.’ His chivalrous feeling towards all that belonged to her made him so very respectable, in spite of his small stature and his rather weak legs, and his very weak hair, and his poetical temperament, that a Goliath might have sat in his place demanding less consideration at Arthur’s hands.

‘You speak, john,’ he said, with cordial admiration, ‘like a Man.’

‘Well, sir,’ returned John, brushing his hand across his eyes,

‘then I wish you’d do the same.’

He was quick with this unexpected retort, and it again made Arthur regard him with a wondering expression of face.

‘Leastways,’ said John, stretching his hand across the tea-tray, ‘if too strong a remark, withdrawn! But, why not, why not? When I say to you, Mr Clennam, take care of yourself for some one else’s sake, why not be open, though a turnkey? Why did I get you the room which I knew you’d like best? Why did I carry up your things?

Not that I found ‘em heavy; I don’t mention ‘em on that accounts; far from it. Why have I cultivated you in the manner I have done since the morning? On the ground of your own merits? No. They’re very great, I’ve no doubt at all; but not on the ground of them. Another’s merits have had their weight, and have had far more weight with Me. Then why not speak free?’

‘Unaffectedly, John,’ said Clennam, ‘you are so good a fellow and I have so true a respect for your character, that if I have appeared to be less sensible than I really am of the fact that the kind services you have rendered me to-day are attributable to my having been trusted by Miss Dorrit as her friend—I confess it to be a fault, and I ask your forgiveness.’

‘Oh! why not,’ John repeated with returning scorn, ‘why not speak free!’

‘I declare to you,’ returned Arthur, ‘that I do not understand you.

Look at me. Consider the trouble I have been in. Is it likely that I would wilfully add to my other self-reproaches, that of being ungrateful or treacherous to you. I do not understand you.’

john’s incredulous face slowly softened into a face of doubt. He rose, backed into the garret-window of the room, beckoned Arthur to come there, and stood looking at him thoughtfully. ‘Mr Clennam, do you mean to say that you don’t know?’

‘What, John?’

‘Lord,’ said Young John, appealing with a gasp to the spikes on the wall. ‘He says, What!’

Clennam looked at the spikes, and looked at John; and looked at the spikes, and looked at John.

‘He says What! And what is more,’ exclaimed Young John, surveying him in a doleful maze, ‘he appears to mean it! Do you see this window, sir?’

‘Of course I see this window.’

‘See this room?’

‘Why, of course I see this room.’

‘That wall opposite, and that yard down below? They have all been witnesses of it, from day to day, from night to night, from week to week, from month to month. For how often have I seen Miss Dorrit here when she has not seen me!’

‘Witnesses of what?’ said Clennam.

‘Of Miss Dorrit’s love.’

‘For whom?’

‘You,’ said John. And touched him with the back of his hand upon the breast, and backed to his chair, and sat down on it with a pale face, holding the arms, and shaking his head at him.

If he had dealt Clennam a heavy blow, instead of laying that light touch upon him, its effect could not have been to shake him more. He stood amazed; his eyes looking at John; his lips parted, and seeming now and then to form the word ‘Me!’ without uttering it; his hands dropped at his sides; his whole appearance that of a man who has been awakened from sleep, and stupefied by intelligence beyond his full comprehension.

‘Me!’ he at length said aloud.

‘Ah!’ groaned Young John. ‘You!’

He did what he could to muster a smile, and returned, ‘Your fancy. You are completely mistaken.’

‘I mistaken, sir!’ said Young John. ‘I completely mistaken on that subject! No, Mr Clennam, don’t tell me so. On any other, if you like, for I don’t set up to be a penetrating character, and am well aware of my own deficiencies. But, I mistaken on a point that has caused me more smart in my breast than a flight of savages’ arrows could have done! I mistaken on a point that almost sent me into my grave, as I sometimes wished it would, if the grave could only have been made compatible with the tobacco-business and father and mother’s feelings! I mistaken on a point that, even at the present moment, makes me take out my pocket-handkercher like a great girl, as people say: though I am sure I don’t know why a great girl should be a term of reproach, for every rightly constituted male mind loves ‘em great and small. Don’t tell me so, don’t tell me so!’

Still highly respectable at bottom, though absurd enough upon the surface, Young John took out his pocket-handkerchief with a genuine absence both of display and concealment, which is only to be seen in a man with a great deal of good in him, when he takes out his pocket-handkerchief for the purpose of wiping his eyes. Having dried them, and indulged in the harmless luxury of a sob and a sniff, he put it up again.

The touch