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

waved his right hand freely, as expressing abundance of space.

“I would rather,” said Clennam, “be taken to the Marshalsea than to any other prison.”

“Do you say so indeed, sir?” returned Mr. Rugg. “Then this is taste, too, and we may be walking.”

He was a little offended at first, but he soon overlooked it. They walked through the Yard to the other end. The Bleeding Hearts were more interested in Arthur since his reverses than formerly; now regarding him as one who was true to the place and had taken up his freedom. Many of them came out to look after him, and to observe to one another, with great unctuousness, that he was “pulled down by it.” Mrs. Plornish and her father stood at the top of the steps at their own end, much depressed and shaking their heads.

There was nobody visibly in waiting when Arthur and Mr. Rugg arrived at the Countinghouse. But an elderly member of the Jewish persuasion, preserved in rum, followed them close, and looked in at the glass before Mr. Rugg had opened one of the day’s letters. “Oh!” said Mr. Rugg, looking up. “How do you do? Step in⁠—Mr. Clennam, I think this is the gentleman I was mentioning.”

This gentleman explained the object of his visit to be “a tyfling madder ob bithznithz,” and executed his legal function.

“Shall I accompany you, Mr. Clennam?” asked Mr. Rugg politely, rubbing his hands.

“I would rather go alone, thank you. Be so good as send me my clothes.” Mr. Rugg in a light airy way replied in the affirmative, and shook hands with him. He and his attendant then went downstairs, got into the first conveyance they found, and drove to the old gates.

“Where I little thought, Heaven forgive me,” said Clennam to himself, “that I should ever enter thus!”

Mr. Chivery was on the Lock, and Young John was in the Lodge: either newly released from it, or waiting to take his own spell of duty. Both were more astonished on seeing who the prisoner was, than one might have thought turnkeys would have been. The elder Mr. Chivery shook hands with him in a shamefaced kind of way, and said, “I don’t call to mind, sir, as I was ever less glad to see you.” The younger Mr. Chivery, more distant, did not shake hands with him at all; he stood looking at him in a state of indecision so observable that it even came within the observation of Clennam with his heavy eyes and heavy heart. Presently afterwards, Young John disappeared into the jail.

As Clennam knew enough of the place to know that he was required to remain in the Lodge a certain time, he took a seat in a corner, and feigned to be occupied with the perusal of letters from his pocket. They did not so engross his attention, but that he saw, with gratitude, how the elder Mr. Chivery kept the Lodge clear of prisoners; how he signed to some, with his keys, not to come in, how he nudged others with his elbows to go out, and how he made his misery as easy to him as he could.

Arthur was sitting with his eyes fixed on the floor, recalling the past, brooding over the present, and not attending to either, when he felt himself touched upon the shoulder. It was by Young John; and he said, “You can come now.”

He got up and followed Young John. When they had gone a step or two within the inner iron-gate, Young John turned and said to him:

“You want a room. I have got you one.”

“I thank you heartily.”

Young John turned again, and took him in at the old doorway, up the old staircase, into the old room. Arthur stretched out his hand. Young John looked at it, looked at him⁠—sternly⁠—swelled, choked, and said:

“I don’t know as I can. No, I find I can’t. But I thought you’d like the room, and here it is for you.”

Surprise at this inconsistent behaviour yielded when he was gone (he went away directly) to the feelings which the empty room awakened in Clennam’s wounded breast, and to the crowding associations with the one good and gentle creature who had sanctified it. Her absence in his altered fortunes made it, and him in it, so very desolate and so much in need of such a face of love and truth, that he turned against the wall to weep, sobbing out, as his heart relieved itself, “O my Little Dorrit!”

XXVII The Pupil of the Marshalsea

The day was sunny, and the Marshalsea, with the hot noon striking upon it, was unwontedly quiet. Arthur Clennam dropped into a solitary armchair, itself as faded as any debtor in the jail, and yielded himself to his thoughts.

In the unnatural peace of having gone through the dreaded arrest, and got there⁠—the first change of feeling which the prison most commonly induced, and from which dangerous resting-place so many men had slipped down to the depths of degradation and disgrace by so many ways⁠—he could think of some passages in his life, almost as if he were removed from them into another state of existence. Taking into account where he was, the interest that had first brought him there when he had been free to keep away, and the gentle presence that was equally inseparable from the walls and bars about him and from the impalpable remembrances of his later life which no walls or bars could imprison, it was not remarkable that everything his memory turned upon should bring him round again to Little Dorrit. Yet it was remarkable to him; not because of the fact itself, but because of the reminder it brought with it, how much the dear little creature had influenced his better resolutions.

None of us clearly know to whom or to what we are indebted in this wise, until some marked stop in the whirling wheel of life brings the right perception with it. It comes with sickness, it comes with sorrow, it comes with the loss of the dearly