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

rusks and a small precise pat of butter, cool, symmetrical, white, and plump. The old man who had been standing by the door in one attitude during the whole interview, looking at the mother upstairs as he had looked at the son downstairs, went out at the same time, and, after a longer absence, returned with another tray on which was the greater part of a bottle of port wine (which, to judge by his panting, he had brought from the cellar), a lemon, a sugar-basin, and a spice box. With these materials and the aid of the kettle, he filled a tumbler with a hot and odorous mixture, measured out and compounded with as much nicety as a physician’s prescription. Into this mixture Mrs. Clennam dipped certain of the rusks, and ate them; while the old woman buttered certain other of the rusks, which were to be eaten alone. When the invalid had eaten all the rusks and drunk all the mixture, the two trays were removed; and the books and the candle, watch, handkerchief, and spectacles were replaced upon the table. She then put on the spectacles and read certain passages aloud from a book⁠—sternly, fiercely, wrathfully⁠—praying that her enemies (she made them by her tone and manner expressly hers) might be put to the edge of the sword, consumed by fire, smitten by plagues and leprosy, that their bones might be ground to dust, and that they might be utterly exterminated. As she read on, years seemed to fall away from her son like the imaginings of a dream, and all the old dark horrors of his usual preparation for the sleep of an innocent child to overshadow him.

She shut the book and remained for a little time with her face shaded by her hand. So did the old man, otherwise still unchanged in attitude; so, probably, did the old woman in her dimmer part of the room. Then the sick woman was ready for bed.

“Good night, Arthur. Affery will see to your accommodation. Only touch me, for my hand is tender.” He touched the worsted muffling of her hand⁠—that was nothing; if his mother had been sheathed in brass there would have been no new barrier between them⁠—and followed the old man and woman downstairs.

The latter asked him, when they were alone together among the heavy shadows of the dining-room, would he have some supper?

“No, Affery, no supper.”

“You shall if you like,” said Affery. “There’s her tomorrow’s partridge in the larder⁠—her first this year; say the word and I’ll cook it.”

No, he had not long dined, and could eat nothing.

“Have something to drink, then,” said Affery; “you shall have some of her bottle of port, if you like. I’ll tell Jeremiah that you ordered me to bring it you.”

No; nor would he have that, either.

“It’s no reason, Arthur,” said the old woman, bending over him to whisper, “that because I am afeared of my life of ’em, you should be. You’ve got half the property, haven’t you?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Well then, don’t you be cowed. You’re clever, Arthur, an’t you?”

He nodded, as she seemed to expect an answer in the affirmative.

“Then stand up against them! She’s awful clever, and none but a clever one durst say a word to her. He’s a clever one⁠—oh, he’s a clever one!⁠—and he gives it her when he has a mind to’t, he does!”

“Your husband does?”

“Does? It makes me shake from head to foot, to hear him give it her. My husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, can conquer even your mother. What can he be but a clever one to do that!”

His shuffling footstep coming towards them caused her to retreat to the other end of the room. Though a tall, hard-favoured, sinewy old woman, who in her youth might have enlisted in the Foot Guards without much fear of discovery, she collapsed before the little keen-eyed crab-like old man.

“Now, Affery,” said he, “now, woman, what are you doing? Can’t you find Master Arthur something or another to pick at?”

Master Arthur repeated his recent refusal to pick at anything.

“Very well, then,” said the old man; “make his bed. Stir yourself.” His neck was so twisted that the knotted ends of his white cravat usually dangled under one ear; his natural acerbity and energy, always contending with a second nature of habitual repression, gave his features a swollen and suffused look; and altogether, he had a weird appearance of having hanged himself at one time or other, and of having gone about ever since, halter and all, exactly as some timely hand had cut him down.

“You’ll have bitter words together tomorrow, Arthur; you and your mother,” said Jeremiah. “Your having given up the business on your father’s death⁠—which she suspects, though we have left it to you to tell her⁠—won’t go off smoothly.”

“I have given up everything in life for the business, and the time came for me to give up that.”

“Good!” cried Jeremiah, evidently meaning Bad. “Very good! only don’t expect me to stand between your mother and you, Arthur. I stood between your mother and your father, fending off this, and fending off that, and getting crushed and pounded betwixt em; and I’ve done with such work.”

“You will never be asked to begin it again for me, Jeremiah.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it; because I should have had to decline it, if I had been. That’s enough⁠—as your mother says⁠—and more than enough of such matters on a Sabbath night. Affery, woman, have you found what you want yet?”

She had been collecting sheets and blankets from a press, and hastened to gather them up, and to reply, “Yes, Jeremiah.” Arthur Clennam helped her by carrying the load himself, wished the old man good night, and went upstairs with her to the top of the house.

They mounted up and up, through the musty smell of an old close house, little used, to a large garret bedroom. Meagre and spare, like all the other rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer than the rest, by being