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

off that sound again, and it occurred to his companion for the first time that it was his way of laughing. He was a singular man in all respects; he might not have been quite in earnest, but that the short, hard, rapid manner in which he shot out these cinders of principles, as if it were done by mechanical revolvency, seemed irreconcilable with banter.

“You are no great reader, I suppose?” said Clennam.

“Never read anything but letters and accounts. Never collect anything but advertisements relative to next of kin. If that’s a taste, I have got that. You’re not of the Clennams of Cornwall, Mr. Clennam?”

“Not that I ever heard of.”

“I know you’re not. I asked your mother, sir. She has too much character to let a chance escape her.”

“Supposing I had been of the Clennams of Cornwall?”

“You’d have heard of something to your advantage.”

“Indeed! I have heard of little enough to my advantage for some time.”

“There’s a Cornish property going a begging, sir, and not a Cornish Clennam to have it for the asking,” said Pancks, taking his notebook from his breast pocket and putting it in again. “I turn off here. I wish you good night.”

“Good night!” said Clennam. But the Tug, suddenly lightened, and untrammelled by having any weight in tow, was already puffing away into the distance.

They had crossed Smithfield together, and Clennam was left alone at the corner of Barbican. He had no intention of presenting himself in his mother’s dismal room that night, and could not have felt more depressed and cast away if he had been in a wilderness. He turned slowly down Aldersgate Street, and was pondering his way along towards Saint Paul’s, purposing to come into one of the great thoroughfares for the sake of their light and life, when a crowd of people flocked towards him on the same pavement, and he stood aside against a shop to let them pass. As they came up, he made out that they were gathered around a something that was carried on men’s shoulders. He soon saw that it was a litter, hastily made of a shutter or some such thing; and a recumbent figure upon it, and the scraps of conversation in the crowd, and a muddy bundle carried by one man, and a muddy hat carried by another, informed him that an accident had occurred. The litter stopped under a lamp before it had passed him half-a-dozen paces, for some readjustment of the burden; and, the crowd stopping too, he found himself in the midst of the array.

“An accident going to the Hospital?” he asked an old man beside him, who stood shaking his head, inviting conversation.

“Yes,” said the man, “along of them Mails. They ought to be prosecuted and fined, them Mails. They come a racing out of Lad Lane and Wood Street at twelve or fourteen mile a hour, them Mails do. The only wonder is, that people ain’t killed oftener by them Mails.”

“This person is not killed, I hope?”

“I don’t know!” said the man, “it an’t for the want of a will in them Mails, if he an’t.” The speaker having folded his arms, and set in comfortably to address his depreciation of them Mails to any of the bystanders who would listen, several voices, out of pure sympathy with the sufferer, confirmed him; one voice saying to Clennam, “They’re a public nuisance, them Mails, sir;” another, “I see one on ’em pull up within half a inch of a boy, last night;” another, “I see one on ’em go over a cat, sir⁠—and it might have been your own mother;” and all representing, by implication, that if he happened to possess any public influence, he could not use it better than against them Mails.

“Why, a native Englishman is put to it every night of his life, to save his life from them Mails,” argued the first old man; “and he knows when they’re a coming round the corner, to tear him limb from limb. What can you expect from a poor foreigner who don’t know nothing about ’em!”

“Is this a foreigner?” said Clennam, leaning forward to look.

In the midst of such replies as “Frenchman, sir,” “Porteghee, sir,” “Dutchman, sir,” “Prooshan, sir,” and other conflicting testimony, he now heard a feeble voice asking, both in Italian and in French, for water. A general remark going round, in reply, of “Ah, poor fellow, he says he’ll never get over it; and no wonder!” Clennam begged to be allowed to pass, as he understood the poor creature. He was immediately handed to the front, to speak to him.

“First, he wants some water,” said he, looking round. (A dozen good fellows dispersed to get it.) “Are you badly hurt, my friend?” he asked the man on the litter, in Italian.

“Yes, sir; yes, yes, yes. It’s my leg, it’s my leg. But it pleases me to hear the old music, though I am very bad.”

“You are a traveller! Stay! See, the water! Let me give you some.”

They had rested the litter on a pile of paving stones. It was at a convenient height from the ground, and by stooping he could lightly raise the head with one hand and hold the glass to his lips with the other. A little, muscular, brown man, with black hair and white teeth. A lively face, apparently. Earrings in his ears.

“That’s well. You are a traveller?”

“Surely, sir.”

“A stranger in this city?”

“Surely, surely, altogether. I am arrived this unhappy evening.”

“From what country?”

“Marseilles.”

“Why, see there! I also! Almost as much a stranger here as you, though born here, I came from Marseilles a little while ago. Don’t be cast down.” The face looked up at him imploringly, as he rose from wiping it, and gently replaced the coat that covered the writhing figure. “I won’t leave you till you shall be well taken care of. Courage! You will be very much better half an hour hence.”

“Ah! Altro, Altro!” cried the poor little man, in a faintly incredulous tone; and