Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

with a slightly increased infirmity, and his old eyes will glimmer with a moist and marshy light. Then the little old man is drunk. A very small measure will overset him; he may be bowled off his unsteady legs with a half-pint pot. Some pitying acquaintance⁠—chance acquaintance very often⁠—has warmed up his weakness with a treat of beer, and the consequence will be the lapse of a longer time than usual before he shall pass again. For the little old man is going home to the Workhouse; and on his good behaviour they do not let him out often (though methinks they might, considering the few years he has before him to go out in, under the sun); and on his bad behaviour they shut him up closer than ever in a grove of two score and nineteen more old men, every one of whom smells of all the others.

Mrs. Plornish’s father⁠—a poor little reedy piping old gentleman, like a worn-out bird; who had been in what he called the music-binding business, and met with great misfortunes, and who had seldom been able to make his way, or to see it or to pay it, or to do anything at all with it but find it no thoroughfare⁠—had retired of his own accord to the Workhouse which was appointed by law to be the Good Samaritan of his district (without the twopence, which was bad political economy), on the settlement of that execution which had carried Mr. Plornish to the Marshalsea College. Previous to his son-in-law’s difficulties coming to that head, Old Nandy (he was always so called in his legal Retreat, but he was Old Mr. Nandy among the Bleeding Hearts) had sat in a corner of the Plornish fireside, and taken his bite and sup out of the Plornish cupboard. He still hoped to resume that domestic position when Fortune should smile upon his son-in-law; in the meantime, while she preserved an immovable countenance, he was, and resolved to remain, one of these little old men in a grove of little old men with a community of flavour.

But no poverty in him, and no coat on him that never was the mode, and no Old Men’s Ward for his dwelling-place, could quench his daughter’s admiration. Mrs. Plornish was as proud of her father’s talents as she could possibly have been if they had made him Lord Chancellor. She had as firm a belief in the sweetness and propriety of his manners as she could possibly have had if he had been Lord Chamberlain. The poor little old man knew some pale and vapid little songs, long out of date, about Chloe, and Phyllis, and Strephon being wounded by the son of Venus; and for Mrs. Plornish there was no such music at the Opera as the small internal flutterings and chirpings wherein he would discharge himself of these ditties, like a weak, little, broken barrel-organ, ground by a baby. On his “days out,” those flecks of light in his flat vista of pollard old men, it was at once Mrs. Plornish’s delight and sorrow, when he was strong with meat, and had taken his full halfpennyworth of porter, to say, “Sing us a song, Father.” Then he would give them Chloe, and if he were in pretty good spirits, Phyllis also⁠—Strephon he had hardly been up to since he went into retirement⁠—and then would Mrs. Plornish declare she did believe there never was such a singer as Father, and wipe her eyes.

If he had come from Court on these occasions, nay, if he had been the noble Refrigerator come home triumphantly from a foreign court to be presented and promoted on his last tremendous failure, Mrs. Plornish could not have handed him with greater elevation about Bleeding Heart Yard. “Here’s Father,” she would say, presenting him to a neighbour. “Father will soon be home with us for good, now. Ain’t Father looking well? Father’s a sweeter singer than ever; you’d never have forgotten it, if you’d aheard him just now.” As to Mr. Plornish, he had married these articles of belief in marrying Mr. Nandy’s daughter, and only wondered how it was that so gifted an old gentleman had not made a fortune. This he attributed, after much reflection, to his musical genius not having been scientifically developed in his youth. “For why,” argued Mr. Plornish, “why go a-binding music when you’ve got it in yourself? That’s where it is, I consider.”

Old Nandy had a patron: one patron. He had a patron who in a certain sumptuous way⁠—an apologetic way, as if he constantly took an admiring audience to witness that he really could not help being more free with this old fellow than they might have expected, on account of his simplicity and poverty⁠—was mightily good to him. Old Nandy had been several times to the Marshalsea College, communicating with his son-in-law during his short durance there; and had happily acquired to himself, and had by degrees and in course of time much improved, the patronage of the Father of that national institution.

Mr. Dorrit was in the habit of receiving this old man as if the old man held of him in vassalage under some feudal tenure. He made little treats and teas for him, as if he came in with his homage from some outlying district where the tenantry were in a primitive state. It seemed as if there were moments when he could by no means have sworn but that the old man was an ancient retainer of his, who had been meritoriously faithful. When he mentioned him, he spoke of him casually as his old pensioner. He had a wonderful satisfaction in seeing him, and in commenting on his decayed condition after he was gone. It appeared to him amazing that he could hold up his head at all, poor creature. “In the Workhouse, sir, the Union; no privacy, no visitors, no station, no respect, no speciality. Most deplorable!”

It was Old Nandy’s birthday, and they let him out. He said nothing about its being his birthday,