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

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 tomorrow, 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 downstairs. 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 downstairs, 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 upstairs 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 tomorrow!’

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