“But what I say is, Mr. Clennam,” the good woman went on, “there’s always something to be thankful for, as I am sure you will yourself admit. Speaking in this room, it’s not hard to think what the present something is. It’s a thing to be thankful for, indeed, that Miss Dorrit is not here to know it.”
Arthur thought she looked at him with particular expression.
“It’s a thing,” reiterated Mrs. Plornish, “to be thankful for, indeed, that Miss Dorrit is far away. It’s to be hoped she is not likely to hear of it. If she had been here to see it, sir, it’s not to be doubted that the sight of you,” Mrs. Plornish repeated those words—“not to be doubted, that the sight of you—in misfortune and trouble, would have been almost too much for her affectionate heart. There’s nothing I can think of, that would have touched Miss Dorrit so bad as that.”
Of a certainty Mrs. Plornish did look at him now, with a sort of quivering defiance in her friendly emotion.
“Yes!” said she. “And it shows what notice father takes, though at his time of life, that he says to me this afternoon, which Happy Cottage knows I neither make it up nor any ways enlarge, ‘Mary, it’s much to be rejoiced in that Miss Dorrit is not on the spot to behold it.’ Those were father’s words. Father’s own words was, ‘Much to be rejoiced in, Mary, that Miss Dorrit is not on the spot to behold it.’ I says to father then, I says to him, ‘Father, you are right!’ That,” Mrs. Plornish concluded, with the air of a very precise legal witness, “is what passed betwixt father and me. And I tell you nothing but what did pass betwixt me and father.”
Mr. Plornish, as being of a more laconic temperament, embraced this opportunity of interposing with the suggestion that she should now leave Mr. Clennam to himself. “For, you see,” said Mr. Plornish, gravely, “I know what it is, old gal;” repeating that valuable remark several times, as if it appeared to him to include some great moral secret. Finally, the worthy couple went away arm in arm.
Little Dorrit, Little Dorrit. Again, for hours. Always Little Dorrit!
Happily, if it ever had been so, it was over, and better over. Granted that she had loved him, and he had known it and had suffered himself to love her, what a road to have led her away upon—the road that would have brought her back to this miserable place! He ought to be much comforted by the reflection that she was quit of it forever; that she was, or would soon be, married (vague rumours of her father’s projects in that direction had reached Bleeding Heart Yard, with the news of her sister’s marriage); and that the Marshalsea gate had shut forever on all those perplexed possibilities of a time that was gone.
Dear Little Dorrit.
Looking back upon his own poor story, she was its vanishing-point. Everything in its perspective led to her innocent figure. He had travelled thousands of miles towards it; previous unquiet hopes and doubts had worked themselves out before it; it was the centre of the interest of his life; it was the termination of everything that was good and pleasant in it; beyond, there was nothing but mere waste and darkened sky.
As ill at ease as on the first night of his lying down to sleep within those dreary walls, he wore the night out with such thoughts. What time Young John lay wrapt in peaceful slumber, after composing and arranging the following monumental inscription on his pillow—
Stranger!
Respect the Tomb of
John Chivery, Junior,
Who Died at an Advanced Age
Not Necessary to Mention.He Encountered His Rival in a Distressed State,
and Felt Inclined
To Have a Round With Him;
But, for the Sake of the Loved One,
Conquered Those Feelings of Bitterness,
and Became
Magnanimous.
XXVIII
An Appearance in the Marshalsea
The opinion of the community outside the prison gates bore hard on Clennam as time went on, and he made no friends among the community within. Too depressed to associate with the herd in the yard, who got together to forget their cares; too retiring and too unhappy to join in the poor socialities of the tavern; he kept his own room, and was held in distrust. Some said he was proud; some objected that he was sullen and reserved; some were contemptuous of him, for that he was a poor-spirited dog who pined under his debts. The whole population were shy of him on these various counts of indictment, but especially the last, which involved a species of domestic treason; and he soon became so confirmed in his seclusion, that his only time for walking up and down was when the evening Club were assembled at their songs and toasts and sentiments, and when the yard was nearly left to the women and children.
Imprisonment began to tell upon him. He knew that he idled and moped. After what he had known of the influences of imprisonment within the four small walls of the very room he occupied, this consciousness made him afraid of himself. Shrinking from the observation of other men, and shrinking from his own, he began to change very sensibly. Anybody might see that the shadow of the wall was dark upon him.
One day when he might have been some ten or twelve weeks in jail, and when he had been trying to read and had not been able to release even the imaginary people of the book from the Marshalsea, a footstep stopped at his door, and a hand tapped at it. He arose and opened it, and an agreeable voice accosted him with “How do you do, Mr. Clennam? I hope I am not unwelcome in calling to see you.”
It was the sprightly young Barnacle, Ferdinand. He looked very good-natured and prepossessing, though overpoweringly gay and free, in contrast with the squalid prison.
“You are surprised to see me, Mr. Clennam,”
