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

“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 firelight 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 someone 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