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

it.”

“I⁠—hum⁠—ha⁠—I confess I could have desired, Amy my dear,” he said, jogging about in a more feverish flutter than before, “to have made some change in my dress first, and to have bought a⁠—hum⁠—a watch and chain. But if it must be done as it is, it⁠—ha⁠—it must be done. Fasten the collar of my shirt, my dear. Mr. Clennam, would you oblige me⁠—hum⁠—with a blue neckcloth you will find in that drawer at your elbow. Button my coat across at the chest, my love. It looks⁠—ha⁠—it looks broader, buttoned.”

With his trembling hand he pushed his grey hair up, and then, taking Clennam and his daughter for supporters, appeared at the window leaning on an arm of each. The Collegians cheered him very heartily, and he kissed his hand to them with great urbanity and protection. When he withdrew into the room again, he said “Poor creatures!” in a tone of much pity for their miserable condition.

Little Dorrit was deeply anxious that he should lie down to compose himself. On Arthur’s speaking to her of his going to inform Pancks that he might now appear as soon as he would, and pursue the joyful business to its close, she entreated him in a whisper to stay with her until her father should be quite calm and at rest. He needed no second entreaty; and she prepared her father’s bed, and begged him to lie down. For another half-hour or more he would be persuaded to do nothing but go about the room, discussing with himself the probabilities for and against the Marshal’s allowing the whole of the prisoners to go to the windows of the official residence which commanded the street, to see himself and family depart forever in a carriage⁠—which, he said, he thought would be a Sight for them. But gradually he began to droop and tire, and at last stretched himself upon the bed.

She took her faithful place beside him, fanning him and cooling his forehead; and he seemed to be falling asleep (always with the money in his hand), when he unexpectedly sat up and said:

“Mr. Clennam, I beg your pardon. Am I to understand, my dear sir, that I could⁠—ha⁠—could pass through the Lodge at this moment, and⁠—hum⁠—take a walk?”

“I think not, Mr. Dorrit,” was the unwilling reply. “There are certain forms to be completed; and although your detention here is now in itself a form, I fear it is one that for a little longer has to be observed too.”

At this he shed tears again.

“It is but a few hours, sir,” Clennam cheerfully urged upon him.

“A few hours, sir,” he returned in a sudden passion. “You talk very easily of hours, sir! How long do you suppose, sir, that an hour is to a man who is choking for want of air?”

It was his last demonstration for that time; as, after shedding some more tears and querulously complaining that he couldn’t breathe, he slowly fell into a slumber. Clennam had abundant occupation for his thoughts, as he sat in the quiet room watching the father on his bed, and the daughter fanning his face.

Little Dorrit had been thinking too. After softly putting his grey hair aside, and touching his forehead with her lips, she looked towards Arthur, who came nearer to her, and pursued in a low whisper the subject of her thoughts.

“Mr. Clennam, will he pay all his debts before he leaves here?”

“No doubt. All.”

“All the debts for which he had been imprisoned here, all my life and longer?”

“No doubt.”

There was something of uncertainty and remonstrance in her look; something that was not all satisfaction. He wondered to detect it, and said:

“You are glad that he should do so?”

“Are you?” asked Little Dorrit, wistfully.

“Am I? Most heartily glad!”

“Then I know I ought to be.”

“And are you not?”

“It seems to me hard,” said Little Dorrit, “that he should have lost so many years and suffered so much, and at last pay all the debts as well. It seems to me hard that he should pay in life and money both.”

“My dear child⁠—” Clennam was beginning.

“Yes, I know I am wrong,” she pleaded timidly, “don’t think any worse of me; it has grown up with me here.”

The prison, which could spoil so many things, had tainted Little Dorrit’s mind no more than this. Engendered as the confusion was, in compassion for the poor prisoner, her father, it was the first speck Clennam had ever seen, it was the last speck Clennam ever saw, of the prison atmosphere upon her.

He thought this, and forbore to say another word. With the thought, her purity and goodness came before him in their brightest light. The little spot made them the more beautiful.

Worn out with her own emotions, and yielding to the silence of the room, her hand slowly slackened and failed in its fanning movement, and her head dropped down on the pillow at her father’s side. Clennam rose softly, opened and closed the door without a sound, and passed from the prison, carrying the quiet with him into the turbulent streets.

XXXVI The Marshalsea Becomes an Orphan

And now the day arrived when Mr. Dorrit and his family were to leave the prison forever, 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 someone 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