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

to deceive you, he’s gone to look for a job.”

“Not to deceive you” was a method of speech with Mrs. Plornish. She would deceive you, under any circumstances, as little as might be; but she had a trick of answering in this provisional form.

“Do you think he will be back soon, if I wait for him?”

“I have been expecting him,” said Mrs. Plornish, “this half an hour, at any minute of time. Walk in, sir.”

Arthur entered the rather dark and close parlour (though it was lofty too), and sat down in the chair she placed for him.

“Not to deceive you, sir, I notice it,” said Mrs. Plornish, “and I take it kind of you.”

He was at a loss to understand what she meant; and by expressing as much in his looks, elicited her explanation.

“It ain’t many that comes into a poor place, that deems it worth their while to move their hats,” said Mrs. Plornish. “But people think more of it than people think.”

Clennam returned, with an uncomfortable feeling in so very slight a courtesy being unusual, Was that all! And stooping down to pinch the cheek of another young child who was sitting on the floor, staring at him, asked Mrs. Plornish how old that fine boy was?

“Four year just turned, sir,” said Mrs. Plornish. “He is a fine little fellow, ain’t he, sir? But this one is rather sickly.” She tenderly hushed the baby in her arms, as she said it. “You wouldn’t mind my asking if it happened to be a job as you was come about, sir, would you?” asked Mrs. Plornish wistfully.

She asked it so anxiously, that if he had been in possession of any kind of tenement, he would have had it plastered a foot deep rather than answer No. But he was obliged to answer No; and he saw a shade of disappointment on her face, as she checked a sigh, and looked at the low fire. Then he saw, also, that Mrs. Plornish was a young woman, made somewhat slatternly in herself and her belongings by poverty; and so dragged at by poverty and the children together, that their united forces had already dragged her face into wrinkles.

“All such things as jobs,” said Mrs. Plornish, “seems to me to have gone underground, they do indeed.” (Herein Mrs. Plornish limited her remark to the plastering trade, and spoke without reference to the Circumlocution Office and the Barnacle Family.)

“Is it so difficult to get work?” asked Arthur Clennam.

“Plornish finds it so,” she returned. “He is quite unfortunate. Really he is.”

Really he was. He was one of those many wayfarers on the road of life, who seem to be afflicted with supernatural corns, rendering it impossible for them to keep up even with their lame competitors. A willing, working, soft hearted, not hardheaded fellow, Plornish took his fortune as smoothly as could be expected; but it was a rough one. It so rarely happened that anybody seemed to want him, it was such an exceptional case when his powers were in any request, that his misty mind could not make out how it happened. He took it as it came, therefore; he tumbled into all kinds of difficulties, and tumbled out of them; and, by tumbling through life, got himself considerably bruised.

“It’s not for want of looking after jobs, I am sure,” said Mrs. Plornish, lifting up her eyebrows, and searching for a solution of the problem between the bars of the grate; “nor yet for want of working at them when they are to be got. No one ever heard my husband complain of work.”

Somehow or other, this was the general misfortune of Bleeding Heart Yard. From time to time there were public complaints, pathetically going about, of labour being scarce⁠—which certain people seemed to take extraordinarily ill, as though they had an absolute right to it on their own terms⁠—but Bleeding Heart Yard, though as willing a Yard as any in Britain, was never the better for the demand. That high old family, the Barnacles, had long been too busy with their great principle to look into the matter; and indeed the matter had nothing to do with their watchfulness in out-generalling all other high old families except the Stiltstalkings.

While Mrs. Plornish spoke in these words of her absent lord, her lord returned. A smooth-cheeked, fresh-coloured, sandy-whiskered man of thirty. Long in the legs, yielding at the knees, foolish in the face, flannel-jacketed, lime-whitened.

“This is Plornish, sir.”

“I came,” said Clennam, rising, “to beg the favour of a little conversation with you on the subject of the Dorrit family.”

Plornish became suspicious. Seemed to scent a creditor. Said, “Ah, yes. Well. He didn’t know what satisfaction he could give any gentleman, respecting that family. What might it be about, now?”

“I know you better,” said Clennam, smiling, “than you suppose.”

Plornish observed, not smiling in return, And yet he hadn’t the pleasure of being acquainted with the gentleman, neither.

“No,” said Arthur, “I know your kind offices at second hand, but on the best authority; through Little Dorrit.⁠—I mean,” he explained, “Miss Dorrit.”

“Mr. Clennam, is it? Oh! I’ve heard of you, Sir.”

“And I of you,” said Arthur.

“Please to sit down again, Sir, and consider yourself welcome.⁠—Why, yes,” said Plornish, taking a chair, and lifting the elder child upon his knee, that he might have the moral support of speaking to a stranger over his head, “I have been on the wrong side of the Lock myself, and in that way we come to know Miss Dorrit. Me and my wife, we are well acquainted with Miss Dorrit.”

“Intimate!” cried Mrs. Plornish. Indeed, she was so proud of the acquaintance, that she had awakened some bitterness of spirit in the Yard by magnifying to an enormous amount the sum for which Miss Dorrit’s father had become insolvent. The Bleeding Hearts resented her claiming to know people of such distinction.

“It was her father that I got acquainted with first. And through getting acquainted with him, you see⁠—why⁠—I got acquainted with her,” said Plornish tautologically.

“I see.”

“Ah! And there’s manners! There’s polish! There’s a gentleman to have