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

time, ladies and gentlemen⁠—and the air is, all things considered, very good. It blows over the⁠—ha⁠—Surrey hills. Blows over the Surrey hills. This is the Snuggery. Hum. Supported by a small subscription of the⁠—ha⁠—Collegiate body. In return for which⁠—hot water⁠—general kitchen⁠—and little domestic advantages. Those who are habituated to the⁠—ha⁠—Marshalsea, are pleased to call me its father. I am accustomed to be complimented by strangers as the⁠—ha⁠—Father of the Marshalsea. Certainly, if years of residence may establish a claim to so⁠—ha⁠—honourable a title, I may accept the⁠—hum⁠—conferred distinction. My child, ladies and gentlemen. My daughter. Born here!”

She was not ashamed of it, or ashamed of him. She was pale and frightened; but she had no other care than to soothe him and get him away, for his own dear sake. She was between him and the wondering faces, turned round upon his breast with her own face raised to his. He held her clasped in his left arm, and between whiles her low voice was heard tenderly imploring him to go away with her.

“Born here,” he repeated, shedding tears. “Bred here. Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter. Child of an unfortunate father, but⁠—ha⁠—always a gentleman. Poor, no doubt, but⁠—hum⁠—proud. Always proud. It has become a⁠—hum⁠—not infrequent custom for my⁠—ha⁠—personal admirers⁠—personal admirers solely⁠—to be pleased to express their desire to acknowledge my semiofficial position here, by offering⁠—ha⁠—little tributes, which usually take the form of⁠—ha⁠—voluntary recognitions of my humble endeavours to⁠—hum⁠—to uphold a Tone here⁠—a Tone⁠—I beg it to be understood that I do not consider myself compromised. Ha. Not compromised. Ha. Not a beggar. No; I repudiate the title! At the same time far be it from me to⁠—hum⁠—to put upon the fine feelings by which my partial friends are actuated, the slight of scrupling to admit that those offerings are⁠—hum⁠—highly acceptable. On the contrary, they are most acceptable. In my child’s name, if not in my own, I make the admission in the fullest manner, at the same time reserving⁠—ha⁠—shall I say my personal dignity? Ladies and gentlemen, God bless you all!”

By this time, the exceeding mortification undergone by the Bosom had occasioned the withdrawal of the greater part of the company into other rooms. The few who had lingered thus long followed the rest, and Little Dorrit and her father were left to the servants and themselves. Dearest and most precious to her, he would come with her now, would he not? He replied to her fervid entreaties, that he would never be able to get up the narrow stairs without Bob; where was Bob, would nobody fetch Bob? Under pretence of looking for Bob, she got him out against the stream of gay company now pouring in for the evening assembly, and got him into a coach that had just set down its load, and got him home.

The broad stairs of his Roman palace were contracted in his failing sight to the narrow stairs of his London prison; and he would suffer no one but her to touch him, his brother excepted. They got him up to his room without help, and laid him down on his bed. And from that hour his poor maimed spirit, only remembering the place where it had broken its wings, cancelled the dream through which it had since groped, and knew of nothing beyond the Marshalsea. When he heard footsteps in the street, he took them for the old weary tread in the yards. When the hour came for locking up, he supposed all strangers to be excluded for the night. When the time for opening came again, he was so anxious to see Bob, that they were fain to patch up a narrative how that Bob⁠—many a year dead then, gentle turnkey⁠—had taken cold, but hoped to be out tomorrow, or the next day, or the next at furthest.

He fell away into a weakness so extreme that he could not raise his hand. But he still protected his brother according to his long usage; and would say with some complacency, fifty times a day, when he saw him standing by his bed, “My good Frederick, sit down. You are very feeble indeed.”

They tried him with Mrs. General, but he had not the faintest knowledge of her. Some injurious suspicion lodged itself in his brain, that she wanted to supplant Mrs. Bangham, and that she was given to drinking. He charged her with it in no measured terms; and was so urgent with his daughter to go round to the Marshal and entreat him to turn her out, that she was never reproduced after the first failure.

Saving that he once asked “if Tip had gone outside?” the remembrance of his two children not present seemed to have departed from him. But the child who had done so much for him and had been so poorly repaid, was never out of his mind. Not that he spared her, or was fearful of her being spent by watching and fatigue; he was not more troubled on that score than he had usually been. No; he loved her in his old way. They were in the jail again, and she tended him, and he had constant need of her, and could not turn without her; and he even told her, sometimes, that he was content to have undergone a great deal for her sake. As to her, she bent over his bed with her quiet face against his, and would have laid down her own life to restore him.

When he had been sinking in this painless way for two or three days, she observed him to be troubled by the ticking of his watch⁠—a pompous gold watch that made as great a to-do about its going as if nothing else went but itself and Time. She suffered it to run down; but he was still uneasy, and showed that was not what he wanted. At length he roused himself to explain that he wanted money to be raised on this watch. He was quite pleased when she pretended