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

and fell to folding the cabbage-leaf that had contained the ham. When he had folded it into a number of layers, one over another, so that it was small in the palm of his hand, he began to flatten it between both his hands, and to eye Clennam attentively.

“I wonder,” he at length said, compressing his green packet with some force, “that if it’s not worth your while to take care of yourself for your own sake, it’s not worth doing for someone else’s.”

“Truly,” returned Arthur, with a sigh and a smile, “I don’t know for whose.”

“Mr. Clennam,” said John, warmly, “I am surprised that a gentleman who is capable of the straightforwardness that you are capable of, should be capable of the mean action of making me such an answer. Mr. Clennam, I am surprised that a gentleman who is capable of having a heart of his own, should be capable of the heartlessness of treating mine in that way. I am astonished at it, sir. Really and truly I am astonished!”

Having got upon his feet to emphasise his concluding words, Young John sat down again, and fell to rolling his green packet on his right leg; never taking his eyes off Clennam, but surveying him with a fixed look of indignant reproach.

“I had got over it, sir,” said John. “I had conquered it, knowing that it must be conquered, and had come to the resolution to think no more about it. I shouldn’t have given my mind to it again, I hope, if to this prison you had not been brought, and in an hour unfortunate for me, this day!” (In his agitation Young John adopted his mother’s powerful construction of sentences.) “When you first came upon me, sir, in the Lodge, this day, more as if a Upas tree had been made a capture of than a private defendant, such mingled streams of feelings broke loose again within me, that everything was for the first few minutes swept away before them, and I was going round and round in a vortex. I got out of it. I struggled, and got out of it. If it was the last word I had to speak, against that vortex with my utmost powers I strove, and out of it I came. I argued that if I had been rude, apologies was due, and those apologies without a question of demeaning, I did make. And now, when I’ve been so wishful to show that one thought is next to being a holy one with me and goes before all others⁠—now, after all, you dodge me when I ever so gently hint at it, and throw me back upon myself. For, do not, sir,” said Young John, “do not be so base as to deny that dodge you do, and thrown me back upon myself you have!”

All amazement, Arthur gazed at him like one lost, only saying, “What is it? What do you mean, John?” But, John, being in that state of mind in which nothing would seem to be more impossible to a certain class of people than the giving of an answer, went ahead blindly.

“I hadn’t,” John declared, “no, I hadn’t, and I never had the audaciousness to think, I am sure, that all was anything but lost. I hadn’t, no, why should I say I hadn’t if I ever had, any hope that it was possible to be so blest, not after the words that passed, not even if barriers insurmountable had not been raised! But is that a reason why I am to have no memory, why I am to have no thoughts, why I am to have no sacred spots, nor anything?”

“What can you mean?” cried Arthur.

“It’s all very well to trample on it, sir,” John went on, scouring a very prairie of wild words, “if a person can make up his mind to be guilty of the action. It’s all very well to trample on it, but it’s there. It may be that it couldn’t be trampled upon if it wasn’t there. But that doesn’t make it gentlemanly, that doesn’t make it honourable, that doesn’t justify throwing a person back upon himself after he has struggled and strived out of himself like a butterfly. The world may sneer at a turnkey, but he’s a man⁠—when he isn’t a woman, which among female criminals he’s expected to be.”

Ridiculous as the incoherence of his talk was, there was yet a truthfulness in Young John’s simple, sentimental character, and a sense of being wounded in some very tender respect, expressed in his burning face and in the agitation of his voice and manner, which Arthur must have been cruel to disregard. He turned his thoughts back to the starting-point of this unknown injury; and in the meantime Young John, having rolled his green packet pretty round, cut it carefully into three pieces, and laid it on a plate as if it were some particular delicacy.

“It seems to me just possible,” said Arthur, when he had retraced the conversation to the watercresses and back again, “that you have made some reference to Miss Dorrit.”

“It is just possible, sir,” returned John Chivery.

“I don’t understand it. I hope I may not be so unlucky as to make you think I mean to offend you again, for I never have meant to offend you yet, when I say I don’t understand it.”

“Sir,” said Young John, “will you have the perfidy to deny that you know and long have known that I felt towards Miss Dorrit, call it not the presumption of love, but adoration and sacrifice?”

“Indeed, John, I will not have any perfidy if I know it; why you should suspect me of it I am at a loss to think. Did you ever hear from Mrs. Chivery, your mother, that I went to see her once?”

“No, sir,” returned John, shortly. “Never heard of such a thing.”

“But I did. Can you imagine why?”

“No, sir,” returned John, shortly. “I can’t imagine why.”

“I will tell you. I was