 Chapter 29. Book the Second of Little Dorrid. Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff. Little Dorrid by Charles Dickens. Book the Second. Chapter 29. A plea in the Marshall Sea. Haggered anxiety and remorse are bad companions to be barred up with. Brewed in all day and resting very little indeed at night will not arm a man against misery. Next morning, Clenum felt that his health was sinking and his spirits had already sung, and that the weight under which he bent was bearing him down. Night after night he had risen from his bed of wretchedness at twelve or one o'clock and had sat at his window watching the sickly lamps in the yard and looking upward for the first one trace of day, hours before it was possible that the sky could show it to him. Now, when the night came, he could not even persuade himself to undress. For a burning restlessness set in, an agonized impatience of the prison and a conviction that he was going to break his heart and die there, which caused him indescribable suffering. His dread and hatred of the place became so intense that he felt it a labor to draw his breath in it. The sensation of being stifled sometimes so overpowered him that he would stand at the window holding his throat and gasping. At the same time, a longing for other air and a yearning to be beyond the blind, blank wall made him feel as if he must go mad with the ardour of the desire. Many other prisoners had had experience of this condition before him and its violence and continuity had worn themselves out in their cases, as they did in his. Two nights and a day exhausted it. It came back by fits, but those grew fainter and returned at lengthening intervals. A desolate calm succeeded, and the middle of the week found him settled down in the despondency of low, slow fever. With Cavaletto and Panks away, he had no visitors to fear but Mr. and Mrs. Plournage. His anxiety in reference to that worthy pair was that they should not come near him, for in the morbid state of his nerves, he sought to be left alone and spared the being seen so subdued and weak. He wrote a note to Mrs. Plournage representing himself as occupied with his affairs and bound by the necessity of devoting himself to them to remain for a time even without the pleasant interruption of a sight of her kind face. As to young John, who looked in daily at a certain hour when the tongue keys were relieved to ask if he could do anything for him, he always made a pretense of being engaged in writing and to answer cheerfully in the negative. The subject of their only long conversation had never been revived between them. Through all these changes of unhappiness, however, it had never lost its hold on Clenum's mind. The sixth day of the appointed week was a moist, hot, misty day. It seemed as though the prison's poverty and shabbiness and dirt were growing in the sultry atmosphere. With an aching head and a weary heart, Clenum had watched the miserable night out, listening to the fall of rain on the yard pavement, thinking of its softer fall upon the country earth. A blurred circle of yellow haze had risen up in the sky in lieu of sun, and he had watched the patch it put upon his wall, like a bit of the prison's raggedness. He had heard the gates open, and the badly short feed that waited outside shuffle in, and the sweeping and pumping and moving about begin which commenced the prison morning. So ill and faint that he was obliged to rest many times in the process of getting himself washed, he had at length crept to his chair by the open window. In it he sat dosing, while the old woman who arranged his room went through her morning's work. Light of head with want of sleep and want of food, his appetite and even his sense of taste having forsaken him, he had been two or three times conscious in the night of going astray. He had heard fragments of tunes and songs in the warm wind which he knew had no existence. Now that he began to dose in exhaustion, he heard them again, and voices seemed to address him, and he answered and started. Dosing and dreaming, without the power of reckoning time, saw that a minute might have been an hour and an hour a minute, some abiding impression of a garden stole over him, a garden of flowers, with a damp warm wind gently stirring their scents. It required such a painful effort to lift his head for the purpose of inquiring into this, or inquiring into anything, that the impression appeared to have become quite an old and important one when he looked around. Beside the teacup on his table he saw, then, a blooming nosegay, a wonderful handful of the choicest and most lovely flowers. Nothing had ever appeared so beautiful in his sight. He took them up and inhaled their fragrance, and he lifted them to his hot head, and he put them down and opened his sparged hands to them, as cold hands are opened to receive the cheering of a fire. It was not until he had delighted in them for some time that he wondered who had sent them, and opened his door to ask the woman who must have put them there, how they had come into her hands. But she was gone, and seemed to have been long gone, for the tea she had left for him on the table was cold. He tried to drink some, but could not bear the odor of it, so he crept back to his chair by the open window and put the flowers on the little round table of old. When the first faintness consequent on having moved about had left him, he subsided into his former state. One of the night tunes was playing in the wind, when the door of his room seemed to open up to a light touch, and after a moment's pause, a quiet figure seemed to stand there, with a black mantle on it. It seemed to draw the mantle off and drop it on the ground, and then it seemed to be his little dorate in her old, worn dress. It seemed to tremble, and to clasp its hands, and to smile, and to burst into tears. He roused himself and cried out, and then he saw, in the loving, pitying, sorrowing, dear face, as in a mirror, how changed he was. And she came towards him, and with her hands laid on his breast to keep him in his chair, and with her knees upon the floor at his feet, and with her lips raised up to kiss him, and with her tears dropping on him as the rain from heaven had dropped upon the flowers. Little Dorate, her living presence, called him by his name. Oh, my best friend, dear Mr. Clenum, don't let me see you weep, unless you weep with pleasure to see me. I hope you do. Your own poor child come back. So faithful, tender, and unspoiled by fortune. In the sound of her voice, in the light of her eyes, in the touch of her hands, so angelically comforting and true. As he embraced her, she said to him, They never told me you were ill, and drawing an arm softly round his neck, laid his head upon her bosom, and put a hand upon his head, and resting her cheek upon that hand, nursed him as lovingly, and God knows as innocently as she had nursed her father in that room, when she had been but a baby, needing all the care from others that she took of them. When he could speak, he said, Is it possible that you have come to me? And in this dress? I hoped you would like me better in this dress than any other. I have always kept it by me to remind me, though I wanted no reminding. I am not alone, you see. I have brought an old friend with me. Looking round, he saw Maggie in her big cap which had been long abandoned, with a basket on her arm as in the bygone days, chuckling rapturously. It was only yesterday evening that I came to London with my brother. I sent round to Mrs. Blownish almost as soon as we arrived, that I might hear of you and let you know I had come. Then I heard you were here. Did you happen to think of me in the night? I almost believe you must have thought of me a little. I thought of you so anxiously, and it appeared so long to morning. I have thought of you. He hesitated what to call her. She perceived it in an instant. You have not spoken to me by my right name yet. You know what my right name always is with you. I have thought of you, little Dorit, every day, every hour, every minute since I have been here. Have you? Have you? He saw the bright delight of her face and the flush that kindled in it with a feeling of shame. He, a broken, bankrupt, sick, dishonoured prisoner. I was here before the gates were opened, but I was afraid to come straight to you. I should have done you more harm than good at first, for the prison was so familiar and yet so strange, and it brought back so many remembrances of my poor father and of you two that at first it overpowered me. But we went to Mr. Chivary before we came to the gate, and he brought us in, and got a chance room for us, my poor old room, you know, and we waited there a little. I brought the flowers to the door, but you didn't hear me. She looked something more womanly than when she had gone away, and the ripening touch of the Italian son was visible upon her face. But otherwise she was quite unchanged. The same deep, timid earnestness that he had always seen in her, and never without emotion, he saw still. If it had a new meaning that smote him to the heart, the change was in his perception, not in her. She took off her old bonnet, hung it in the old place, and noiselessly began with Maggie's help to make his room as fresh and neat as it could be made, and to sprinkle it with a pleasant smelling water. When that was done, the basket which was filled with grapes and other fruit was unpacked, and all its contents were quietly put away. When that was done, a moment's whisper dispatched Maggie to dispatch somebody else to fill the basket again, which soon came back replenished with new stores, from which a present provision of cooling drink and jelly, and a prospective supply of roast chicken and wine and water were the first extracts. These various arrangements completed, she took out her old needle case to make him a curtain for his window, and thus, with a quiet reigning in the room, that seemed to diffuse itself through the else-noisy prison, he found himself composed in his chair, with little Dorit working at his side. To see the modest head again bent down over its task, and the nimble fingers busy at their old work, though she was not so absorbed in it, but that her compassionate eyes were often raised to his face, and when they drooped again, had tears in them to be so consoled and comforted, and to believe that all the devotion of this great nature was turned to him, in his adversity to pour out its inexhaustible wealth of goodness upon him, did not steady Clenum's trembling voice or hand, or strengthen him in his weakness, yet it inspired him with an inward fortitude that rose with his love, and how dearly he loved her now, what words can tell. As they sat side by side in the shadow of the wall, the shadow fell like light upon him. She would not let him speak much, and he lay back in his chair looking at her. Now and again she would rise and give him the glass that he might drink, or would smooth the resting place of his head. Then she would gently resume her seat by him, and bend over her work again. The shadow moved with the sun, and never moved from his side, except to wait upon him. The sun went down and she was still there. She had done her work now, and her hand, faltering on the arm of his chair since its last tending of him, was hesitating there yet. He laid his hand upon it, and it clasped him with a trembling supplication. Dear Mr. Clenum, I must say something to you before I go. I have put it off from hour to hour, but I must say it. I too, dear little Dorit, I have put off what I must say. She nervously moved her hand towards his lips as if to stop him. Then it dropped, trembling, into its former place. I am not going abroad again. My brother is, but I am not. He was always attached to me, and he is so grateful to me now, so much too grateful for it is only because I happen to be with him in his illness that he says, I shall be free to stay what I like best and to do what I like best. He only wishes me to be happy, he says. There was one bright star shining in the sky. She looked up at it while she spoke, as if it were the fervent purpose of her own heart shining above her. He will understand, I dare say, without my telling you that your brother has come home to find my dear father's will and to take possession of his property. He says, if there is a will he is sure I shall be left rich and if there is none that he will make me so. He would have spoken, but she put up her trembling hand again and he stopped. I have no use for money. I have no wish for it. It would be of no value at all to me, but for your sake. And you here, I must always be much worse than poor with you distressed. Will you let me lend you all I have? Will you let me give it to you? Will you let me show you that I have never forgotten that I never can forget your protection of me when this was my home? Dear Mr. Clenham, make me of all the world the happiest by saying yes. Make me as happy as I can be in leaving you here letting me go away with the hope that you will think of it kindly and that for my sake, not for yours, for mine, for nobody's, but mine, you will give me the greatest joy I can experience on earth, the joy of knowing that I have been serviceable to you and that I have paid some little of the great debt of my affection and gratitude. I can't say what I wish to say. I can't visit you here where I have lived so long. I can't say much and be as calm and comforting as I ought. My tears will make their way. I cannot keep them back. But pray, pray, pray, do not turn from your little door it now in your affliction. Pray, pray, pray, I beg you and implore you with all my grieving heart. My friend, my dear, take all I have and make it a blessing to me. The star had shone her face until now and it sank upon his hand and her own. It had grown darker when he raised her in his encircling arm and softly answered her. No, darling little Dorit, no, my child, I must not hear of such a sacrifice. Liberty and hope would be so dear bought at such a price that I could never support their weight, never bear the reproach of possessing them. But with what ardent thankfulness and love I say this, I may call heaven to witness. And yet, you will not let me be faithful to you in your affliction? Say, dearest little Dorit, and I will try to be faithful to you. If, in the bygone days when this was your home and when this was your dress, I had understood myself, I speak only of myself, better, and had read the secrets of my own breast more distinctly. If, through my reserve I must, I had discerned a light that I see brightly now when it has passed far away, and my weak footsteps can never overtake it. If I had then known and told you that I loved and honoured you, not as the poor child I used to call you, but as a woman whose true hand would raise me high above myself and make me a far happier and better man. If I could so use the opportunity there is no recalling the wish I had, oh, I wish I had, and if something had kept us apart then when I was moderately thriving and when you were poor, I might have met your noble offer of your fortune, dearest girl, with other words than these and still have blushed to touch it, but as it is, I must never touch it, never. She besought him more pathetically and earnestly with her little supplicatory hand that I could have done in any words. I am disgraced enough, my little Dorit. I must not descend so low as that and carry you so dear, so generous, so good down with me. God bless you, God reward you. It is past. He took her in his arms as if she had been his daughter. Always so much older, so much rougher and so much less worthy even what hours must be dismissed by both of us and you must see me only as I am. I put this parting kiss upon your cheek my child, who might have been more near to me, who never could have been more dear, a ruined man far removed from you, forever separated from you, whose cause is run while yours is but beginning. I have not the courage to ask to be forgiven by you in my humiliation, but I ask to be remembered only as I am. The bell began to ring, warning visitors to depart. He took her mantle from the wall and tenderly wrapped it around her. One other word, my little Dorit, a hard one to me, but it is a necessary one. The time when you and this prison had anything in common has long gone by. Do you understand? Oh, you will never say to me! She cried a weeping bitterly and holding up her clasped hands in entreaty, that I am not to come back any more! You will surely not desert me so! I would say, if I could. But I have not the courage quite to shut out this dear face and abandon all hope of its return. But do not come soon, do not come often. This is now a tainted place, and I well know the taint of it clings to me. You belong to much brighter and better scenes. You are to look back here, my little Dorit. You are to look away to very different and much happier paths. Again, God bless you in them. God reward you. Maggie, who had fallen into very low spirits, here, cried, Oh, get him into a hospital! Get him into a hospital, mother! You'll never look like yourself again if I ain't got into a hospital. And then the little womaness was always suspending at her will. She would say, What do you keep the chicken there for? And then they can take it out and give it to him, and they all be happy. The interruption was seasonable, for the bell had nearly rang itself out. Again, tenderly rapping her mantle about her and taking her on his arm. Though, but for her visit he was almost too weak to walk, Arthur led little Dorit downstairs. She was the last visitor to pass out at the lodge and the gate jarred heavily and hopelessly upon her. With the funeral clang that it sounded into Arthur's heart his sense of weakness returned. It was a toilsome journey upstairs to his room and he re-entered its dark solitary pressings in an utterable misery. When it was almost midnight and the prison had long been quiet a cautious creek came up the stairs and a cautious tap of a key was given at his door. It was young John. He glided in in his stockings and held the door closed while he spoke in a whisper. It's okay still Rose, but I don't mind. I was determined to come through and come to you. What is the matter? Nothing's the matter, sir. I was waiting in the courtyard for Miss Dorit when she came out. I thought you'd like someone to see that she was safe. Thank you, thank you. I took her home, John. I saw her to her hotel, the same that Miss Dorit was at. Miss Dorit walked all the way and talked to me so kind he quite knocked me over. Why do you think she walked instead of riding? I don't know, John. To talk about you, she said to me, John, you was always honorable and if you will promise me that you will take care of him and never let him want for help I promised her and I'll stand by you, said John Chivory, forever. Clenum, much affected, stretched out his hand to this honest spirit. Before I take it, said John looking at it without coming from the door. Guess what message Miss Dorit gave me? Clenum shook his head. Tell him, repeated John, in a distinct, though quavering voice, that his little Dorit sent him a rendying love. Now it's delivered. Have I been honorable, sir? Very, very. Will you tell Miss Dorit I've been honorable, sir? I will indeed. There is my answer, said John, and I'll stand by you forever. After a hearty squeeze, he disappeared with the same cautious creak upon the stair, crept shooless over the pavement of the yard, and locking the gates behind him, passed out into the front where he had left his shoes. If the same way had been paved with burning plough shares, it is not at all improbable that John would have traversed it with the same devotion for the same purpose. End of chapter 29 Book II of Little Dorit This recording is in the public domain. Chapter 30 Book II of Little Dorit Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff Little Dorit by Charles Dickens Book II Chapter 30 Closing in Part 1 The last day of the appointed week touched the bars of the Marshall Sea Gate. Black, all night, since the gate had clashed upon Little Dorit, its iron stripes were turned by the early glowing sun into stripes of gold. Far as land across the city, over its jumbled roofs and through the open tracery of its church towers, struck the long bright rays bars of the prison of this lower world. Throughout the day the old house within the gateway remained untroubled by any visitors. But when the sun was low, three men turned in at the gateway and made for the dilapidated house. Rigor was the first and walked by himself smoking. Mr. Baptist was the second and joked close after him, looking at no other object. Mr. Panks was the third and carried his hat under his arm for the liberation of his restive hair, the weather being extremely hot. They all came together at the doorsteps. You pair of mad men, said Rigor facing about, don't go yet. We don't mean to, said Mr. Panks. Giving him a dark glance in acknowledgement of his answer, Rigor knocked loudly. He had charged himself with drink for the playing out of his game and was impatient to begin. He had hardly finished one long resounding knock when he turned to the knocker again and began another. That was not yet finished when Jeremiah Flintwinch opened the door and they all clanked into the stone hall. Rigor, thrusting Mr. Flintwinch aside, proceeded straight upstairs. His two attendants followed him, Mr. Flintwinch followed them and they all came trooping into Mrs. Clannum's quiet room. It was in its usual state, except that one of the windows was wide open and Avery sat on its old fashioned window seat mending a stocking. The usual articles were on the little table. The usual dead-end fire was in the grate. The bed had its usual pole upon it and the mistress of all sat on her black beer-like sofa propped up by her black angular bolster that was like the headman's block. Yet there was a nameless air of preparation in the room as if it was strung up for an occasion. From what the room derived it every one of its small variety of objects being in the fixed spot it had occupied for years no one could have said without looking actively at its mistress and that too with the previous knowledge of her face. Although her unchanging black dress was in every plaid precisely as of old and her unchanging attitude was rigidly preserved, a very slight additional setting of her features and contraction of her gloomy forehead was so powerfully marked that it marked everything about her. Who are these? She said wonderingly as the two attendants entered. What do they want here? Who are these, dear madam, is it? returned Rigo. Faith, they are friends of your son the prisoner. And what do they want here, is it? Death, madam, I don't know. You will do well to ask them. You know you told us at the door not to go yet, said Panks. And you know you told me at the door you didn't mean to go, retorted Rigo. Madam, permit me to present two spies of the prisoners, madmen, but spies. If you wish them to remain here during our little conversation, say the word. It is nothing to me. Why should I wish them to remain here? said Mrs. Clenum. What have I to do with them? Then, dearest madam, said Rigo, throwing himself into an armchair so heavily that the old room trembled. You will do well to dismiss them. It is your affair. They are not my spies, not my rascals. Hark! You, Panks, said Mrs. Clenum, bending her brows upon him angrily. You, Casby's clerk, attend to your employee's business and your own. Go, and take that other man with you. Thank you, ma'am, returned Mr. Panks. I'm glad to say I see no objection to our both retiring. We have done all we undertook to do for Mr. Clenum. His constant anxiety has been and it grew worse upon him when he became a prisoner, that this agreeable gentleman should be brought back here to the place from which he slipped away. Here he is, brought back. And I will say, I did Mr. Panks, to his ill-looking face that in my opinion the world would be no worse for his slipping out of it altogether. Your opinion is not asked, answered Mrs. Clenum. Go. I am sorry not to leave you in better company, ma'am, said Panks, and sorry too that Mr. Clenum can't be present. It's my fault that is. You mean his own, she returned. No, I mean mine, ma'am, said Panks, for it was my misfortune to lead him into a ruinous investment. Mr. Panks still clung to that word and never set speculation. Though I can prove by figures, I did Mr. Panks with an anxious countenance that it ought to have been a good investment. I have gone over it since it failed every day of my life and it comes out regarded as a question of figures, triumphant. The present is not a time or place, Mr. Panks pursued with a longing glance into his head where he kept his calculations for entering upon the figures, but the figures are not to be disputed. Mr. Clenum ought to have been at this moment in his carriage and pair and I ought to have been worth from three to five thousand pound. Mr. Panks put his hair erect with a general aspect of confidence that could hardly have been surpassed if he had had the amount in his pocket. These incontrovertible figures had been the occupation of every moment of his leisure since he had lost his money and were destined to afford him consolation to the end of his days. However, said Mr. Panks, enough of that, I'll throw, old boy, you have seen the figures and you know how they come out. Mr. Baptist who had not the slightest arithmetical power of compensating himself in this way nodded with a fine display of bright teeth at whom Mr. Flintwinch had been looking and to whom he then said Oh, it's you, is it? I thought I remembered your face but I wasn't certain till I saw your teeth. Ah, yes to be sure. It was this officious refugee said Jeremiah to Mrs. Clenum who came knocking at the door on the night when Arthur and Chatterbox were here and who asked me a whole catechism of questions about Mr. Blandoir. It is true, Mr. Baptist cheerfully admitted and behold him padrone I have found him consequentamentally I shouldn't have objected returned Mr. Flintwinch to your having broken your neck consequentamentally. And now, said Mr. Panks whose eye had often stealthily wandered to the window-seat and the stocking that was being mended there I've only one other word to say before I go. If Mr. Clenum was here but unfortunately, though he has so far got the better of this fine gentleman as to return him to this place against his will, he is ill and in prison ill and in prison poor fellow if you was here said Mr. Panks taking one step aside towards the window-seat and laying his right hand upon the stocking he would say Mr. Panks held up his right forefinger between his nose and the stocking with a ghostly air of warning turned, steamed out and towed Mr. Baptist after him. The house door was hurt to close upon them their steps were hurt passing over the dull pavement of the echoing courtyard and still nobody had added a word. Mrs. Clenum and Jeremiah had exchanged a look and had then looked and looked still at Avery who sat mending the stocking with great acidity. Calm said Mr. Flint to inch at length screwing himself a curve or two in the direction of the window-seat and rubbing the palms of his hands on his coat tail as if you were preparing them to do something whatever has to be said among us had better be begun to be said without more loss of time so Avery my woman take yourself away in a moment Avery had thrown the stocking down started up caught hold of the window-sill with her right hand lodged herself upon the window-seat with her right knee and was flourishing her left hand beating expected assailants off no I want Jeremiah no I want I won't go I'll stay here I'll hear all I don't know and say all I know I will at last if I die for it I will I will I will I will Mr. Flint to inch stiffening with indignation and amazement moistened the fingers of one hand at his lips softly described a circle with them in the palm of the other hand and continued with a menacing grin to screw himself in the direction of his wife gasping some remarks as he advanced of which in his choking anger only the words such a dose were audible not a bit nearer Jeremiah cried Avery never seizing to beat the air don't come a bit nearer to me or I'll rouse the neighborhood I throw myself out of window I'll scream fire and murder I'll wake the dead stop where you are or I'll make shrieks enough to wake the dead the determined voice of Mrs. Clenham echoed stop I had stopped already it is closing in Flint to inch let her alone do you turn against me after these many years I do if it's turning against you to hear what I don't know and say what I know I have broke out now and I can't go back I'm determined to do it I will do it I will I will if that's turning against you yes I turn against you both of you two clever ones I told Arthur when he first come home to stand up against you I told him it was no reason because I was afraid of my life of you that it should be all manner of things have been going on since then and I won't be run up by Jeremiah no yet I won't be diced and scared no made a party to I don't know what no more I won't I won't I won't I'll up for Arthur when he has nothing left and is ill and in prison and I can't up for himself I will I will I will I will how do you know you're a heap of confusion asked Mrs. Clenum Stirlily that in doing what you are doing now you're even serving Arthur I don't know nothing rightly about anything said Afery and if ever you said a true word in your life it's when you call me a heap of confusion for you two clever ones have done you most to make me such you married me whether I liked it or not and you've led me pretty well ever since such a life of dreaming and frightening as never was known expect me to be but a heap of confusion. You wanted to make me such, and I am such, but I won't submit no longer. No, I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't." She was still beating the air against all comers. After gazing at her in silence, Mrs. Clenum turned to Rigo. You see and hear this foolish creature. Do you object to such a piece of distraction remaining where she is? Aye, madame. He replied, Do I? That's a question for you. I do not, she said gloomily. There is little left to choose now. Flintwinch, it is closing in. Mr. Flintwinch replied by directing a look of red vengeance at his wife, and then, as if to pinion himself from falling upon her, screwed his crossed arms into the breast of his waistcoat, and with his chin very near one of his elbows stood in a corner, watching Rigo in the oddest attitude. Rigo, for his part, arose from his chair, and seated himself on the table with his legs dangling. In this easy attitude, he met Mrs. Clenum's set face, with his moustache going up and his nose coming down. Madame, I am a gentleman. Of whom, she interrupted in her steady tones, I have heard a disparagement in connection with a French jail and an accusation of murder. He kissed his hand to her with his exaggerated gallantry. Perfectly, exactly. Of a lady too. What absurdity! How incredible! I had the honour of making a great success then. I hope to have the honour of making a great success now. I kiss your hands, Madame. I am a gentleman. I was going to observe. Who, when he says, I will definitely finish this or that affair at the present sitting, does definitely finish it? I announce to you that we are arrived at our last sitting on our little business. You do me the favour to follow and to comprehend? She kept her eyes fixed upon him with a frown. Yes, further. I am a gentleman to whom mere mercenary trade bargains are unknown, but to whom money is always acceptable as the means of pursuing his pleasures. You do me the favour to follow and to comprehend? Scarcely necessary to ask one would say, yes, further. I am a gentleman of the softest and sweetest disposition, but who, if trifled with, becomes enraged. Noble natures under such circumstances become enraged. I possess a noble nature. When the line is awakened, that is to say, when I enrage, the satisfaction of my animosity is as acceptable to me as money. You always do me the favour to follow and to comprehend? Yes, she answered, somewhat louder than before. Do not let me derange you. Pray be tranquil. I have said we are now arrived at our last sitting. Allow me to recall the two sittings we have held. It is not necessary. Death, madame. He burst out. It's my fancy. Besides, it clears the way. The first sitting was limited. I had the honour of making your acquaintance, of presenting my letter. I am a knight of industry. At your service, madame, but my polished manners had won me so much of success as a master of languages, among your compatriots, who are as stiff as their own starches to one another, but are ready to relax to a foreign gentleman of polished manners, and of observing one or two little things. He glanced around the room and smiled. About this honourable house to know which was necessary to assure me, and to convince me that I had the distinguished pleasure of making the acquaintance of the lady I sought, I achieved this. I gave my word of honour to our dear Flintwinch that I would return. I gracefully departed. Her face neither acquiesced nor demurred. The same when he paused, and when he spoke, it as yet showed him always the one attentive frown, and the dark revelation before mentioned of her being nerved, for the occasion. I say gracefully departed because it was graceful to retire without alarming a lady. To be morally graceful, not less than physically, is a part of the character of Rigo Blandoir. It was also politic, as leaving you with something overhanging you to expect me again with a little anxiety on a day not named. But your slave is politic. By heaven, madame, politic. Let us return. On the day not named, I have again the honour to render myself at your house. I intimate that I have something to sell which, if not bought, will compromise madame for my highly esteem. I explain myself generally. I demand, I think it was a thousand pounds. Will you correct me? Thus forced to speak, she replied with constraint. You demand it as much as a thousand pounds. I demand at present, too. Such are the evils of delay, but to return once more. We are not accordant. We differ on that occasion. I am playful. Playfulness is a part of my amiable character. Playfully I become as one slain and hidden, for it may alone be worth half the sum to madame to be freed from the suspicions that my droll idea awakens. Accident and spies intermix themselves against my playfulness and spoil the fruit. Perhaps who knows, only you and flintwinch, when it is just ripe. Thus madame, I am here for the last time. Listen. Definitely the last. As he struck his straggling boot heels against the flap of the table, meeting her frown with an insolent gaze, he began to change his tone for a fierce one. Stop an instant. Let us advance by steps. Here is my hotel note to be paid according to contract. Five minutes hence we may be at daggers' points. I'll not leave it till then, or you'll cheat me. Pay it. Count me the money. Take it from his hand and pay it, flintwinch, said Mrs. Clenham. He spurted it into Mr. Flintwinch's face when the old man advanced to take it, and held forth his hand, repeating noisily, paid, counted out, good money. Jeremiah picked the bill up, looked at the total with a bloodshot eye, took a small canvas back from his pocket, and told the amount into his hand. Rigor chinked the money, weighed it in his hand, threw it up a little way and caught it, chinked it again. The sound of it to the bold rigor blond eyes like the taste of fresh mate to the tiger, say then, madame, how much? He turned upon her suddenly with a menacing gesture of the weighted hand that clenched the money, as if he were going to strike her with it. I tell you again, as I told you before, that we are not rich here, as you suppose us to be, and that your demand is excessive. I have not the present means of complying with such a demand, if I had ever so great an inclination. If, cried Rigor, hear this lady with her rift, will you say that you have not the inclination? I will say what presents itself to me, and not what presents itself to you. Said then, as to the inclination, quick, calm to the inclination, and I know what to do. She was no quicker, and no slower in her reply. It would seem that you have obtained possession of a paper, or of papers, which I assuredly have the inclination to recover. Rigor, with a loud laugh, drummed his heels against the table, and chinked his money. I think so, I believe you're there. The paper might be worth, to me, a sum of money. I cannot say how much or how little. What the devil, he asked savagely. Not after a week's grace to consider. No, I will not out of my scanty means, for I tell you again, we are poor here and not rich. I will not offer any price for a power that I do not know the worst and the fullest extent of. This is the third time of your hinting and threatening. You must speak explicitly, or you may go where you will, and do what you will. It is better to be torn to pieces at a spring than to be a mouse at the caprice of such a cat. He looked at her so hard with those eyes, too near together, that the sinister sight of each, crossing that of the other, seemed to make the bridge of this hooked nose crooked. After a long survey, he said, with a further setting of his infernal smile. You are a bold woman. I am a resolved woman. You always were. What, she always was. Is it not so, my little flintwinch? Flintwinch, say nothing to him. It is for him to say here and now, all he can, or to go hence, and do all he can. You know this to be our determination. Leave him to his action on it. She did not ring under his evil lear, or avoid it. He turned it upon her again, but she remained steady at the point to which she had fixed herself. He got off the table, placed a chair near the sofa, sat down in it, and leaned an arm upon the sofa close to her own, which he touched with his hand. Her face was ever frowning, attentive, and settled. It is your pleasure then, madame, that I shall relate a morsel of family history in this little family society, said Rigo, with a warning play of his life fingers on her arm. I am something of a doctor. Let me touch your pulse. She suffered him to take her wrist in his hand. Holding it, he proceeded to say, A history of a strange marriage, and a strange mother, and a revenge, and a suppression. This pulse is beating curiously. It appears to me that it doubles while I touch it. Are these the usual changes of your maladies, madame? There was a struggle in her maimed arm as she twisted it away, but there was none in her face. On his face, there was his own smile. I have lived an adventurous life. I am an adventurous character. I have known many adventurers, interesting spirits, amiable society. To one of them, I owe my knowledge and my proofs. I repeat it, estimable lady, proofs of the ravishing little family history I go to commence. You will be charmed with it, but I forget. One should name a history. Shall I name it the history of a house? But, bah, again, there are so many houses. Shall I name it the history of this house? Leaning over the sofa, poised on two legs of his chair and his left elbow, that hand often tapping her arm to beat his words home. His legs crossed, his right hand sometimes arranging his hair, sometimes smoothing his moustache, sometimes striking his nose, always threatening her whatever he did. Cause, insolent, rapacious, cruel, and powerful, he pursued his narrative at his ease. In thin, then, I name it the history of this house. I commence it. There live here, let us suppose an uncle and nephew. The uncle, a rigid old gentleman of strong force of character. The nephew, habitually timid, repressed, and under-constrained. Mistress Afery, fixedly attentive in the window-seat, biting the rolled-up end of her apron, and trembling from head to foot, here cried out, Jeremiah, keep up from me! I've heard in my dreams of Arthur's father and his uncle. He's talking of them. It was before my time here, but I've heard in my dreams that Arthur's father was a poor, irresolute frightened chap, who had had everything but his orphan life scared out of him when he was young, and that he had no voice in the choice of his wife even but his uncle Chosa. There she sits. I heard it in my dreams, and you said it to her own self. Has Mr. Flintwinch took his fist at her, and has Mrs. Clenum gazed upon her? Rigor kissed his hand to her. Perfectly right, dear Madame Flintwinch, you have a genius for dreaming. I don't want none of your praises, returned Afery. I don't want to have nothing at all to say to you, but Jeremiah said there was dreams, and I'll tell him as such. Here she put her apron in her mouth again, as if she was stopping somebody else's mouth, perhaps Jeremiah's, which was chattering with threats as if he were grimly cold. Our beloved Madame Flintwinch, said Rigor, developing all of a sudden a fine susceptibility and spirituality is right to a marvel. Yes, so runs the history. Monsieur the Uncle commands the nephew to marry. Monsieur says to him in effect, My nephew, I introduce to you a lady of strong force of character like myself, a resolved lady, a stern lady, a lady who has a will that can break the weak to powder, a lady without pity, without love, implacable, revengeful, cold as the stone, but raging as the fire. Ah, what fortitude. Ah, what superiority of intellectual strength. Truly a proud and noble character that I describe in the supposed words of Monsieur the Uncle. Ha, ha, ha, death of my soul. I love the sweet lady. Mrs. Clenham's face had changed. There was a remarkable darkness of colour on it, and the brow was more contracted. Madame, Madame, said Rigor, tapping her on the arm, as if his cruel hand was sounding a musical instrument. I perceive I interest you. I perceive I awaken your sympathy. Let us go on. The drooping nose and the ascending moustache had, however, to be hidden for a moment with the white hand before he could go on. He enjoyed the effect he made so much. The nephew, being as the Lucid Madame Flintvinge has remarked, a poor devil who has had everything but his often life frightened and famished out of him, the nephew obeys his head and makes a response, my uncle, it is to you to command, do as you will. Monsieur the Uncle does as he will. It is what he always does. The auspicious snapshills take place. The newly married come home to this charming mansion. The lady is received, let us suppose, by Flintvinge. Hey, old intriguer! Jeremiah, with his eyes upon his mistress, made no reply. Rigor looked from one to the other, struck his ugly nose, and made a clucking with his tongue. Soon the lady makes a singular and exciting discovery. Thereupon, full of anger, full of jealousy, full of vengeance, she forms, see you, madame, a scheme of retribution, the weight of which she ingeniously forces her crushed husband to bear himself, as well as execute upon her enemy. What superior intelligence! Keep off, Jeremiah! cried the palpitating aphorie, taking her apron from her mouth again. But it was one of my dreams that you told her, when you quarreled with her one winter evening at dusk. There she sits and you're looking at her, that she oughtn't have let Arthur, when he come home, suspect his father only, that she had always had the strength and the power, and that she ought to have stood up more to Arthur for his father. It was in the same dream where you said to her, that she was not, not something, but I don't know what, for she burst out tremendous and stopped you. You know the dream as well as I do, when you come downstairs into the kitchen with the candle in your hand, and hitched my apron off my head, when you told me I had been dreaming, when you wouldn't believe the noises. After this explosion, Aphorie put her apron into her mouth again, always keeping her hand on the window sill, and her knee on the window seat, ready to cry out, or jump out if her lord and master approached. Rigor had not lost a word of this. Ha-ha! he cried, lifting his eyebrows, falling his arms and leaning back in his chair. Assuredly, Madame Flint, which is an oracle, how shall we interpret the oracle, you and I, and the old intriguer? He said that you were not, and you burst out and stopped him. What was it you were not? What is it you are not? Say then, madame. Under this ferocious banter, she said breathing harder, and her mouth was disturbed. Her lips quivered and opened, in spite of her utmost efforts to keep them still. Come then, madame, speak then. Our old intriguer said that you were not, and you stopped him. He was going to say that you were not what. I know already, but I want a little confidence from you. How, then, you are not what? She tried again to repress herself, but broke out vehemently. Not Arthur's mother! Good, said Rigo, you are amenable. With the set expression of her face all torn away by the explosion of her passion, and with a bursting from every rent feature, of the smouldering fire so long pent up, she cried out, I will tell it myself, I will not hear it from your lips, and with the taint of your wickedness upon it. Since it must be seen, I will have it seen by the light I stood in. Not another word. Hear me! Unless you are a more obstinate and more persisting woman than even I know you to be. Mr. Flintwinch interposed. You had better leave Mr. Rigo, Mr. Blandoir, Mr. Bale Zibarba to tell it in his own way. What does it signify when he knows all about it? He does not know all about it. He knows all, he cares about it. Mr. Flintwinch desperately urged. He does not know me. What do you suppose he cares for you, you conceited woman? said Mr. Flintwinch. I tell you, Flintwinch, I will speak. I tell you when it has come to this. I will tell it with my own lips, and will express myself throughout it. What? Have I suffered nothing in this room? No deprivation? No imprisonment? That I should condescend at last contemplate myself in such a glass as that? Can you see him? Can you hear him? If your wife were a hundred times the ingrate that she is, and if I were a thousand times more hopeless than I am of inducing her to be silent if this man is silenced, I would tell it myself before I would bear the torment of the hearing it from him. End of part one of chapter the thirtieth book the second of Little Dorrid. This recording is in the public domain. Chapter the thirtieth book the second of Little Dorrid. Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff. Little Dorrid by Charles Dickens. Book the second. Chapter the thirtieth. Closing in. Part two. Rigo pushed his chair a little back, pushed his legs out straight before him, and sat with his arms folded over against her. You do not know what it is, she went on addressing him, to be brought up strictly and straightly. I was so brought up. Mine was no light youth of sinful gaiety and pleasure. Mine were days of wholesome repression, punishment and fear. The corruption of our hearts, the evil of our ways, the curse that is upon us, the terrors that surround us, these were the themes of my childhood. They formed my character and filled me with an abhorrence of evil doers. When old Mr. Gilbert Clenham proposed his orphan nephew to my father for my husband, my father impressed upon me that his bringing-up had been, like mine, one of severe restraint. He told me that besides the discipline his spirit had undergone, he had lived in a starved house, where rioting and gaiety were unknown, and where every day was a day of toil and trial like the last. He told me that he had been a man in years long before his uncle had acknowledged him as one, and that from his school days to that hour, his uncle's roof had been a sanctuary to him, from the contagion of the irreligious and disillute. When within a twelve month of our marriage I found my husband, at that time when my father spoke of him, to have sinned against the Lord and outraged me by holding a guilty creature in my place, was I to doubt that it had been appointed to me to make the discovery, and that it was appointed to me to lay the hand of punishment upon that creature of perdition? Was I to dismiss in a moment not my own wrongs, what was I, but all the rejection of sin, and all the war against it in which I had been bred? She laid her wrathful hand upon the watch on the table. No, do not forget, the initials of those words are within here now, and were within here then. I was appointed to find the old letter that referred to them, and that told me what they meant, and whose work they were, and why they were worked lying with this watch in his secret drawer. But for that appointment there would have been no discovery. Do not forget. It spoke to me like a voice from an angry cloud. Do not forget the deadly sin. Do not forget the appointed discovery. Do not forget the appointed suffering. I did not forget. Was it my own wrong I remembered? Mine. I was but a servant and a minister. What power could I have over them, but that they were bound in the bonds of their sin? And delivered to me? More than forty years had passed over the gray head of this determined woman, since the time she recalled. More than forty years of strife and struggle with the whisper, that, by whatever name she called her vindictive pride and rage, nothing through all eternity could change their nature. Yet, gone those more than forty years, and come this nemesis now looking her in the face, which is still abided by her old impiety, still reversed the order of creation, and breathed her own breath into a clay image of her creator. Verily, verily, travelers have seen many monstrous idols in many countries, but no human eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and shocking images of the divine nature than we creatures of the dust make in our own likenesses, of our own bad passions. When I forced him to give her up to me, by her name and place of abode, she went on in her torrent of indignation and defence. When I accused her, and she fell hiding her face at my feet, was it my injury that I asserted, were they my reproaches that I poured upon her? Those who were appointed of old to go to wicked kings and accuse them, were they not ministers and servants, and had not I, unworthy and far removed from them, sinned to denounce, when she pleaded to me her youth, and his wretched and hard life? That was her phrase for the virtuous training he had belied. And the desecrated ceremony of marriage there had secretly been between them, and the terrors of want and shame that had overwhelmed them both when I was first appointed to be the instrument of their punishment, and the love, for she said the word to me down at my feet, in which she had abandoned him and left him to me. Was it my enemy that became my footstool, were they the words of my wrath that made her shrink and quiver? Not unto me the strength be ascribed, not unto me the ringing of the expiation. Many years had come and gone, since she had had the free use even of her fingers. But it was noticeable that she had already more than once struck her clenched hand vigorously upon the table, and that when she said these words, she raised her whole arm in the air, as though it had been a common action with her. And what was the repentance that was extorted from the hardness of her heart and the blackness of her depravity? I vindictive and implacable? It may be so, to such as you, who know no righteousness and no appointment except Satan's. Laugh, but I will be known as I know myself, and as Flintwinch knows me, though it is only to you and this half-witted woman. Add to yourself, madame, said Rigo, I have my little suspicions that madame is rather solicitous to be justified to herself. It is false, it is not so, I have no need to be, she said with great energy and anger. Truly, retorted Rigo, I ask, what was the penitence in works that was demanded of her? You have a child. I have none. You love that child. Give him to me. He shall believe himself to be my son, and he shall be believed by every one to be my son. To save you from exposure, his father shall swear never to see or communicate with you more. Equally to save him from being stripped by his uncle, and to save your child from being a beggar, you shall swear never to see or communicate with either of them more. That done, and your present means derived from my husband renounced, I charge myself with your support. You may with your place of retreat unknown then leave, if you please, uncontradicted by me, the lie that when you passed out of all knowledge but mine you merited a good name. That was all. She had to sacrifice her sinful and shameful affections no more. He was then free to bear her load of guilt in secret, and to break her heart in secret, and through such present misery, light enough for her, I think, to purchase her redemption from endless misery if she could. If in this I punished her here, did I not open to her away hereafter? If she knew herself to be surrounded by insatiable vengeance and unquenchable fires, were they mine? If I threatened her, then and afterwards, with the terrors that encompassed her, did I hold them in my right hand? She turned the watch upon the table, and opened it, and with an unsuffering face, looked at the worked letters within. They did not forget. It is appointed against such offences that the offenders shall not be able to forget. If the presence of Arthur was a daily reproach to his father, and if the absence of Arthur was a daily agony to his mother, that was the just dispensation of Jehovah. As well might it be charged upon me, that the stings of unawakened conscience drove her mad, and that it was the will of the disposer of all things that she should live so many years. I devoted myself to reclaim the otherwise predestined and lost boy, to give him the reputation of an honest origin, to bring him up in fear and trembling, and in a life of practical contrition for the sins that were heavy on his head before his entrance into this condemned world. Was that a cruelty? Was I, too, not visited with consequences of the original offence in which I had no complicity? Arthur's father, and I, lived no further apart, with half the globe between us, than when we were together in this house. He died and sent this watch back to me, with its do not forget. I do not forget, though I do not read it as he did. I read in it that I was appointed to do these things. I have so read these three letters since I have had them lying on this table, and I did so read them with equal distinctness when they were thousands of miles away. As she took the watch case in her hand, with that new freedom in the use of her hand, of which she showed no consciousness whatever, bending her eyes upon it, as if she were defying it to move her, Rigo cried with a loud and contentious snapping of his fingers. Come, madame, time runs out. Come, lady of piety, it must be. You can tell nothing I don't know. Come to the money stolen, or I will. Death of my soul, I have had enough of your rather jargon. Come straight to the stolen money. Rich that you are, she answered, and now her hands clasped her head. Through what fatal error of flintwings, through what incompleteness on his part, who was the only other person helping in these things and trusted with them, through whose and what bringing together of the ashes of a burnt paper you have become possessed of that codicil, I know no more than how you are quite the rest of your power here. And yet, interrupted Rigo, it is my odd fortune to have by me, in a convenient place that I know of, that same short little addition to the will of M. Gilbert Clannum, written by a lady and witnessed by the same lady and our old intriguer. Ah, bah, old intriguer, crooked little puppet. Madame, let us go on. Time presses. You or I to finish. Aye, she answered with increased determination, if it were possible. Aye, because I will not endure to be shown myself and have myself shown to anyone, with your horrible distortion upon me. You with your practices of infamous foreign prisons and galleys would make it the money that impelled me. It was not the money. Bah, bah, bah. I repudiate for the moment my politeness and say lies, lies, lies. You know you suppressed the deed and kept the money. Not for the money's sake, wretch. She made a struggle, as if she were starting up. Even as if, in her vehemence, she had almost risen on her disabled feet. If Gilbert Clannum reduced to imbecility at the point of death and laboring under the delusion of some imaginary relenting towards a girl, of whom he had heard that his nephew had once had a fancy for her, which he had crushed out of him, and that she afterwards drooped away into melancholy and withdrawal from all who knew her, if in that state of weakness he dictated to me, whose life she had darkened with her sin, and who had been appointed to know her wickedness from her own hand and her own lips. A bequest meant as a recompense to her for supposed and merited suffering. Was there no difference between my spurning that injustice, and coveting mere money, a thing which you and your comrades in the prisons may steal from anyone? Time, presses madame, take care. If this house was blazing from the roof to the ground, she returned, I would stay in it to justify myself against my righteous motives being clasped with those of stabbers and thieves. Rigo snapped his fingers tauntingly in her face. One thousand guineas to the little beauty you slowly hunted to death, one thousand guineas to the youngest daughter her patron might have at fifty, or if he had none, brother's youngest daughter on her coming of age. As the remembrance of his disinterestedness may like best of his protection of a friendless young orphan girl. Two thousand guineas. What? You will never come to the money? That patron, she was vehemently proceeding when he checked her. Names, call him Mr. Frederick Dorit, no more evasions. That Frederick Dorit was the beginning of it all, if he had not been a player of music and had not kept, in those days of his youth and prosperity, an idle house where singers and players and such like children of evil turned their backs on the light and their faces to the darkness, she might have remained in her lowly station, and might not have been raised out of it to be cast down. But no. Satan entered into that Frederick Dorit and counseled him that he was a man of innocent and laudable tastes who did kind actions, and that he was a poor girl with a voice for singing music with. Then he is to have her taught, then Arthur's father, who has all along been secretly pining in the ways of virtuous raggedness for those accursed snares which are called the arts, becomes acquainted with her. And so, a graceless orphan, training to be a singing girl, carries it by that Frederick Dorit's agency against me, and I am humbled and deceived. Not I, that is to say, she added quickly, a sculler flushed into her face, a greater than I, what am I? Jeremiah Flintwinch, who had been gradually screwing himself towards her, and who was now very near her elbow without her knowing it, made a specially right face of objection when she said these words, and moreover twitched his gaiters, as if such pretensions were equivalent to little barbs in his legs. Lastly, she continued, for I am at the end of these things, and I will say no more of them, and you shall say no more of them, and all that remains will be to determine whether the knowledge of them can be kept among us who are here present. Lastly, when I suppressed that paper with the knowledge of Arthur's father. But not with his consent, you know, said Mr Flintwinch. Who said with his consent? She started to find Jeremiah so near her, and drew back her head, looking at him with some rising distrust. You were often enough between us, when he would have had me produce it and I would not, to have contradicted me if I had said with his consent. I say, when I suppressed that paper, I made no effort to destroy it, but kept it by me, here in this house, many years. The rest of the Gilbert property being left to Arthur's father, I could at any time, without unsettling more than the two sums, have made a pretence of finding it. But besides that I must have supported such pretence by direct falsehood, a great responsibility, I have seen no new reason in all the time I have been tried here to bring it to light. It was a rewarding of sin, the wrong result of a delusion. I did what I was appointed to do, and I have undergone, within these four walls, what I was appointed to undergo. When the paper was at last destroyed, as I thought, in my presence, she had long been dead, and her patron, Frederick Dorit, had long been deservedly ruined and imbecile. He had no daughter. I had found the niece before then. And what I did for her, was better for her far than the money, of which she would have had no good. She added, after a moment, as though she addressed the watch. She herself was innocent, and I might not have forgotten to relinquish it to her at my death, and sat looking at it. Shall I recall something to you, worthy madame? said Rigo. The little paper was in this house on the night, when our friends the prisoner, jail comrade of my soul, came home from foreign countries. Shall I recall yet something more to you? The little singing bird, that never was fledged, was long kept in a cage, by a guardian of your appointing, well enough known to our old intrigue here. Shall we coax our old intrigue to tell us, when he saw him last? I'll tell you, cried Afari, unstopping her mouth. I dreamed it. First of all my dreams, Jeremiah, if you come and nigh me now, I'll scream to be heard at St. Paul's. The person as this man has spoken of, was Jeremiah's own twin brother, and he was here in the dead of the night, on the night when Arthur come home, and Jeremiah with his own hands give him this paper, along with I don't know what more, and he took it away in an iron box. Help, murder, save me from Jeremiah! Mr. Flintwinge had made a run at her, but Rigo had caught him in his arms midway. After a moment's wrestle with him, Flintwinge gave up, and put his hands in his pockets. What? cried Rigo, rallying him as he poked and jerked him back with his elbows. Assault a lady with such a genius for dreaming. Why, she'll be a fortune to you as an exhibition. All that she dreams comes true. You're so like him, little Flintwinge. So like him as I knew him. When I first spoke English for him to the host, in the cabaret of the three billiard tables, in the little street of the high roofs, by the wharf at Antwerp, ah, but he was a brave boy to drink, ah, but he was a brave boy to smoke, ah, but he lived in a sweet bachelor apartment, furnished on the fifth floor above the wooden charcoal merchants, and the dressmakers, and the chairmakers, and the maker of tubs, where I knew him too, and where with his cognac and tobacco, he had twelve sleeps a day in one fit, until he had a fit too much and ascended to the skies. Ha, ha, ha, what does it matter how I took possession of the papers in his iron box? Perhaps he confided it to my hands for you. Perhaps it was locked and my curiosity was peaked. Perhaps I suppressed it. Ha, ha, ha, what does it matter? So that I have it safe. We are not particular here, eh, Flintwinge? We are not particular here. Is it not so, madame? Retiring before him, with vicious counter-jokes of his own elbows, Mr. Flintwinge had got back into his corner, where he now stood with his hands in his pockets, taking breath, and returning Mrs. Clenham's stare. Ha, ha, ha, but what's this? cried Rigo. It appears as if you don't know one the other. Permit me, madame Clenham, who suppresses to present Mr. Flintwinge who intrigues. Mr. Flintwinge, and pocketing one of his hands to scrape his jaw, advanced a step or so in that attitude, still returning Mrs. Clenham's look, and thus addressed her. Now, I know what you mean by opening your eyes so wide at May, but you needn't take the trouble because I don't care for it. I've been telling you for how many years that you're one of the most opinionated and obstinate of women. That's what you are. You call yourself humble and sinful, but you're the most bumptious of your sex. That's what you are. I have told you, over and over again, when we have had a tiff that you wanted to make everything go down before you, but I wouldn't be swallowed up alive. Why didn't you destroy the paper when you first laid hands upon it? I advised you to, but no, it's not your way to take advice. You must keep it for soothe. Perhaps you may carry it out at some other time for soothe. As if I didn't know better than that. I think I see your pride carrying it out with a chance of being suspected of having kept it by you. But that's the way you cheat yourself. Just as you cheat yourself into making out that you didn't do all this business because you were a rigorous woman, all slight and spite and power and unforgiveness, but because you were a servant and a minister and were appointed to do it. Who are you that you should be appointed to do it? That may be your religion, but it's my gammon, and to tell you all the truth while I am about it, said Mr. Flintwinge crossing his arms and becoming the express image of irascible doggedness. I have been rasped, rasped these forty years, by your taking such high ground even with me, who knows better, the effects of it being coolly to put me on low ground. I admire you very much. You are a woman of strong head and great talent, but the strongest head and the greatest talent can't rasp a man for forty years without making him sore. So I don't care for your present eyes. Now I am coming to the paper and mark what I say. You put it away somewhere, and you kept your own counsel where. You're an active woman at that time, and if you want to get that paper, you can get it. But mark, there comes a time when you are struck into what you are now, and then if you want to get that paper, you can't get it. So it lies long years in its hiding place. At last, when we were expecting Arthur home every day, and when any day may bring him home, and it's impossible to say what rummaging he may about the house, I recommend you five thousand times, if you can't get at it, to let me get at it, that it may be put in the fire. But no, no one but you knows where it is, and that's power. And call yourself whatever humble names you will. I call you a female lucifer in appetite for power. On a Sunday night Arthur comes home. He has not been in this room ten minutes when he speaks of his father's watch. You know very well, that they do not forget at the time when his father sent that watch to you could only mean the rest of the story being then all dead and over. Do not forget the suppression. Make restitution. Arthur's ways have frightened you a bit, and the paper shall be burnt after all. So before that jumping jade and Jezebel, Mr. Flintwinge grinned at his wife, has got you into bed. You at last tell me where you have put the paper, among the old ledgers in the cellars, where Arthur himself went prowling the very next morning. But it's not to be burnt on a Sunday night. No, you are strict, you are. We must wait over twelve o'clock and get into Monday. Now, all this is a swallowing of me up alive that rasps me. So, feeling a little out of temper, and not being as strict as yourself, I take a look at the document before twelve o'clock to refresh my memory as to its appearance, fold up one of the many yellow old papers in the cellars like it, and afterwards, when we have got into Monday morning, and I have, by the light of your lamp, to walk from you lying on that bed to this great, make a little exchange like the conjurer, and burn accordingly. My brother Ephraim, the lunatic keeper. I wish he had had himself to keep in a straight west cut, had had many jobs since the close of the long job he got from you, but had not done well. His wife died, not that that was much. Mine might have died instead and welcome. He speculated unsuccessfully in lunatics. He got into difficulty about overroasting a patient to bring him to reason, and he got into debt. He was going out of the way, on what he had been able to scrape up, and a trifle from me. He was here that early Monday morning, waiting for the tide. In short, he was going to Antwerp, where I am afraid you'll be shocked at my saying, and be damned to him. He made the acquaintance of this gentleman. He had come a long way, and I thought then was only sleepy. But I suppose now was drunk. When Arthur's mother had been under the care of him and his wife, she had been always writing, incessantly writing mostly letters of confession to you, and prayers for forgiveness. My brother had handed, from time to time, lots of these sheets to me. I thought I might as well keep them to myself, as have them swallowed up alive too. So I kept them in a box, looking over them when I felt in the humour, convinced that it was advisable to get the paper out of the place, with Arthur coming about it. I put it in this same box, and I locked the whole up with two locks, and I trusted it to my brother to take away and keep, till I should write about it. I did write about it, and never got an answer. I didn't know what to make of it, till this gentleman favoured us with his first visit. Of course, I began to suspect how it was then, and I don't want his word for it now to understand how he gets his knowledge from my papers, and your paper, and my brother's cognac, and tobacco talk. I wish he'd had to gag himself. Now, I have only one thing more to say, you hammer-headed woman, and that is, that I haven't altogether made up my mind whether I might, or might not, have ever given you any trouble about the codicell. I think not, and that I should have been quite satisfied with knowing I had got the better of you, and that I held the power over you. In the present state of circumstances, I have no more explanation to give you till this time tomorrow night. So you may as well, said Mr. Flintwinch, terminating his oration with a screw, keep your eyes open at somebody else, for it's no use keeping him open at me. He slowly withdrew them when he had seized, and dropped her forehead on her hand, her other hand pressed hard upon the table, and again the curious stir was observable in her, as if she were going to rise. This box can never bring elsewhere the price it will bring here. This knowledge can never be of the same profit to you, sold to any other person as sold to me. But I have not the present means of raising the sum you have demanded. I have not prospered. What will you take now, and what at another time, and how am I to be assured of your silence? My angel, said Rigo, I have said what I will take, and time presses. Before coming here, I placed copies of the most important of these papers in another hand. Put off the time till the Marshall Sea Gate shall be shut for the night, and it will be too late to treat. The prisoner will have read them. She put her two hands to her head again, uttered a loud exclamation, and started to her feet. She staggered for a moment, as if she would have fallen, then stood firm. Say what you mean, say what you mean, man! Before her ghostly figure, so long unused to its erect attitude, and so stiffened in it, Rigo fell back and dropped his voice. It was to all the three, almost as if a dead woman had risen. Miss Dorit, and said Rigo, the little niece of Monsieur Frederick, whom I have known across the water, is attached to the prisoner. Miss Dorit, little niece of Monsieur Frederick, watches at this moment over the prisoner, who is ill. For her, I with my own hands left a packet at the prison on my way here, with a letter of instruction, for his sake. She will do anything for his sake, to keep it without breaking the seal, in case of its being reclaimed before the hour of shutting up tonight. If it should not be reclaimed before the ringing of the prison bell, to give it to him. And it encloses a second copy for herself, which he must give to her. What? I don't trust myself among you, now we have got so far, without giving my secret a second life. And as to its not bringing me elsewhere the prize it will bring here, say then, madame, have you limited and settled the prize the little niece will give, for his sake, to hash it up? Once more, I say, time presses, the packet not reclaimed before the ringing of the bell tonight, you cannot buy. I sell then to the little girl. Once more the stir and struggle in her, and she ran to a closet, tore the door open, took down a hood or shawl, and wrapped it over her head. Afari, who had watched her in terror, darted to her in the middle of the room, caught hold of her dress, and went on her knees to her. Don't, don't, don't, what are you doing? Where are you going? You're a fearful woman, but I don't bear you no ill will. I can do poor Arthur no good now that I say. And you needn't be afraid of me, I'll keep your secret. Don't go out, you'll fall dead in the street. Only promise me that, if it's the poor thing that's kept here secretly, you'll let me take charge of her and be her nurse. Only promise me that and never be afraid of me. Mrs. Clenham stood still for an instant, at the height of her rapid haste, saying in stern amazement, kept here? She has been dead a score of years or more. Ask Flintwinch, ask him. They can both tell you that she died when Arthur went abroad. So much the worse, said Afery with a shiver. But she haunts the house then. Who else wrestles about it, making signals by dropping dust so softly? Where else comes uncouth and marks the walls with long crooked touches when we are all a bed? Who else holds the door sometimes? But don't go out, don't go out, Mistress, you'll die in the street. A mistress only disengaged her dress from the beseeching hands, said to Rigo. Wait here till I come back. And ran out of the room. They saw her from the window, run wildly through the courtyard and out at the gateway. For a few moments they stood motionless. Afery was the first to move, and she, wringing her hands, pursued her mistress. Next, Jeremiah Flintwinch slowly backing to the door with one hand in a pocket, and the other rubbing his chin, twisted himself out in his reticent way, speechlessly. Rigo, left alone, composed himself upon the window seat of the open window in the old Marseille jail attitude. He laid his cigarettes and firebox ready to his hand, and fell to smoking. Whoa! Almost as dull as the infernal old jail, warmer but almost as dismal. Wait till she comes back. Yes, certainly. But where is she gone, and how long will she be gone? No matter, Rigo, Lanie, Blandois, my amiable subject, you will get your money. You will enrich yourself. You have lived a gentleman. You will die a gentleman. You triumph, my little boy. But it is your character to triumph. Ugh! In the hour of his triumph, his moustache went up and his nose came down, as he ogled a great beam over his head with particular satisfaction. End of part two of chapter the 30th, Book II of Little Dorit. This recording is in the public domain. Chapter the 31st, Book II of Little Dorit. Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff. Little Dorit by Charles Dickens. Book II, Chapter the 31st. Closed. The sun had set, and the streets were dim in the dusty twilight, when the figures so long and used to them hurried on its way. In the immediate neighborhood of the old house, it attracted little attention, for there were only a few struggling people to notice it. But ascending from the river by the crooked ways that led to London Bridge, and passing into the great main road, it became surrounded by astonishment. Resolute and wild of look, rapid of food, and yet weak and uncertain, conspicuously dressed in its black garments and with its hurried head covering, gaunt and of an unearthly paleness, it pressed forward, taking no more heed of the throng than a sleepwalker. More remarkable by being so removed from the crowd it was among, than if it had been lifted on a pedestal to be seen. The figure attracted all eyes. Saunteress pricked up their attention to observe it. Busy people crossing it, slackened their pace and turned their heads. Companions pausing and standing aside, whispered one another to look at this spectral woman who was coming by. And the sweep of the figure as it passed seemed to create a vortex, drawing the most idle and most curious after it. Made giddy by the turbulent eruption of this multitude of staring faces into her cell of years by the confusing sensation of being in the air, and the yet more confusing sensation of being a food, by the unexpected changes in half-remembered objects, and the want of likeness between the controllable pictures her imagination had often drawn of the life from which she was secluded and the overwhelming rush of the reality. She held her way as if she were environed by distracting thoughts, rather than by external humanity and observation. But having crossed the bridge and gone some distance straight onward, she remembered that she must ask for a direction. And it was only then, when she stopped and turned to look about her for a promising place of inquiry, that she found herself surrounded by an eager glare of faces. Why are you encircling me? She asked trembling. None of those who were nearest answered. But from the outer ring there arose a shrill cry of cause you're mad. I am sure as sane as anyone here, I want to find the Marshall Sea Prison. The shrill outer circle again retorted. Then thou did show you was mad if nothing else did, because it's right opposite. A short, mild, quiet-looking young man made his way through to her, as a whooping ensued on this reply and said, Was it the Marshall Sea you wanted? I'm going on duty there, come across with me. She laid her hand upon his arm, and he took her over the way. The crowd, rather injured by the near prospect of losing her, pressing before and behind and on either side, and recommending an adjournment to Bedlam. After a momentary whirl in the outer courtyard, the prison door opened and shat upon them. In the lodge, which seemed by contrast with the outer noise a place of refuge and peace, a yellow lamp was already striving with the prison shadows. Why, John, said the turnkey who admitted them, what is it? Nothing, Father, only this lady not knowing her way and being badgered by the boys. Who did you want, ma'am? Miss Dorrit, is she here? The young man became more interested. Yes, she is here. What might your name be? Mrs. Clenham. Mr. Clenham's mother? Asked the young man. She pressed her lips together and hesitated. Yes, she had better be told it is his mother. You say, said the young man, the Marshal's family living in the country present, the Marshal has given Miss Dorrit one of the rooms in his house to use when she likes. Don't you think you had better come up there and let me bring Miss Dorrit? She signified her ascent, and he unlocked the door and conducted her up a side staircase into a dwelling house above. He showed her into a darkening room and left her. The room looked down into the darkening prison yard, with its inmates strolling here and there, leaning out of windows, communing as much apart as they could with friends who were going away, and generally wearing out their imprisonment as their best might that summer evening. The air was heavy and hot, the closeness of the place oppressive, and from without there arose a rush of free sounds, like the jarring memory of such things in a headache and heartache. She stood at the window, bewildered, looking down into this prison, as it were out of her own different prison, when a soft word or two of surprise made her start, and little Dorrit stood before her. Is it possible, Mrs. Clenham, that you are so happily recovered as little Dorrit stopped, for there was neither happiness nor health in the face that turned to her? This is not recovery, it is not strength, I don't know what it is. With an agitated wave of her hand, she put all that aside. You have a packet left with you, which you were to give to Arthur, if it was not reclaimed before this place close tonight? Yes, I reclaim it. Little Dorrit took it from her bosom, and gave it into her hand, which remained stretched out after receiving it. Have you any idea of its contents? Frightened by her being there with that new power of movement in her, which, as she said herself, was not strength, and which was unreal to look upon, as though a picture or statue had been animated, Little Dorrit answered, No. Read them. Little Dorrit took the packet from the still outstretched hand, and broke the seal. Mrs. Clenum then gave her the inner packet that was addressed to herself, and held the other. The shadow of the wall, and of the prison buildings, which made the room sombre at noon, made it too dark to read there, with the dusk deepening apace, safe in the window. In the window, where a little of the bright summer evening sky could shine upon her, Little Dorrit stood, and read. After a broken exclamation or so of wonder and of terror, she read in silence. When she had finished, she looked round, and her old mistress bowed herself before her. You know now what I have done. I think so. I am afraid so, though my mind is so hurried, and so sorry, and has so much to pity that it has not been able to follow all I have read, said Little Dorrit tremulously. I will restore to you what I have withheld from you. Forgive me. Can you forgive me? I can, and heaven knows I do. Do not kiss my dress and kneel to me. You are too old to kneel to me. I forgive you freely without that. I have more yet to ask. Not in that posture, said Little Dorrit. It is unnatural to see your gray hair lower than mine. Pray rise, let me help you. With that, she raised her up, and stood rather shrinking from her, but looking at her earnestly. The great petition that I make to you, there is another which grows out of it. The great supplication that I address to your merciful and gentle heart is, that you will not disclose this to Arthur until I am dead. If you think, when you have had time for consideration, that I can do him any good to know it while I am yet alive, then tell him. But you will not think that. And in such case, will you promise me to spare me until I am dead? I am so sorry, and what I have read has so confused my thoughts, return, Little Dorrit, that I can scarcely give you a steady answer. If I should be quite sure that to be acquainted with it will do Mr. Clenham no good. I know you are attached to him, and will make him the first consideration. It is right that he should be the first consideration. I ask that. But, having regarded him, and still finding that you may spare me for the little time I shall remain on earth, will you do it? I will. God bless you. She stood in the shadow, so that she was only a veiled form to Little Dorrit in the light. But the sound of her voice, in saying those three grateful words, was at once fervent and broken, broken by emotion as unfamiliar to her frozen eyes, as action to her frozen limbs. You will wonder, perhaps, she said in a stronger tone, that I can better bear to be known to you whom I have wronged, than to the son of my enemy who wronged me. For she did wrong me. She not only sinned grievously against the Lord, but she wronged me. What Arthur's father was to me she made him. From our marriage day I was his dread, and that she made me. I was the scourge of both, and that is referable to her. You love Arthur. I can see the blush upon your face, made be the dawn of happier days to both of you, and you will have thought already that he is as merciful and kind as you. And why do I not trust myself to him as soon as to you? Have you not thought so? No thought, said Little Dorrit, can be quite a stranger to my heart, that springs out of the knowledge that Mr. Clenum is always to be relied upon for being kind and generous and good. I do not doubt it. Yet Arthur is, of the whole world, the one person from whom I would conceal this, while I am in it. I kept over him as a child, in the days of his first remembrance, my restraining and correcting hand. I was stern with him, knowing that the transgressions of the parents are visited on their offspring, and that there was an angry mark upon him at his birth. I have sat with him and his father, seeing the weakness of his father yearning to unbend to him, and forcing it back that the child might work out his release in bondage and hardship. I have seen him, with his mother's face, looking up at me in awe from his little books, and trying to soften me with his mother's ways that hardened me. The shrinking of her auditoria stopped her for a moment in her flow of words, delivered in a retrospective gloomy voice. For he is good, not for the satisfaction of my injury. What was I, and what was the worth of that, before the curse of heaven? I have seen that child grow up, not to be pious in a chosen way, his mother's influence lay too heavy on him for that, but still to be just and upright, and to be submissive to me. He never loved me, as I once half hoped he might. So frail we are, and so do the corrupt affections of the flesh war with our trusts and tasks. But he always respected me and ordered himself dutifully to me. He does to this hour. With an empty place in his heart that he has never known the meaning of, he has turned away from me and gone his separate road. But even that he has done considerably and with deference. These have been his relations towards me. Yours have been of a much lighter kind, spread over a much shorter time. When you have sadded your needle in my room, you have been in fear of me, but you have supposed me to have been doing your kindness. You are better informed now, and know me to have done you an injury. Your misconstruction and misunderstanding of the cause in which, and the motives with which I have worked out this work, is lighter to endure than his would be. I would not, for any worldly recompense, I can imagine, have him in a moment. However blindly, throw me down from the station I have held before him all his life, and change me altogether into something he could cast out of his respect and thing detected and exposed. Let him do it, if it must be done, when I am not here to see it. Let me never feel, while I am still alive, that I die before his face, and utterly perish away from him, like one consumed by lightning and swallowed by an earthquake. Her pride was very strong in her, the pain of it, and of her old passions was very sharp with her, when she thus expressed herself, not less so, when she added, even now I see you shrink from me, as if I had been cruel. Little Dorrit could not gain say it. She tried not to show it, but she recoiled with dread from the state of mind that had burned so fiercely and lasted so long. It presented itself to her, with no surface-trip on it, in its own plain nature. I have done, said Mrs. Glennam, what it was given to me to do. I have set myself against evil, not against good. I have been an instrument of severity against sin. Have not mere sinners like myself been commissioned to lay it low, in old time? In old time? repeated Little Dorrit. Even if my own wrong had prevailed with me, and my own vengeance had moved me, could I have found no justification? None in the old days, when the innocent perish with the guilty, to a thousand to one. When the wrath of the hater of the unrighteous was not slaked even in blood, and yet found favor. Oh, Mrs. Glennam, Mrs. Glennam, said Little Dorrit, angry feelings and unforgiving deeds are no comfort and no guide to you and me. My life has been passed in this poor prison, and my teaching has been very defective. But let me implore you to remember later in better days, be guided only by the healer of the sick, the razor of the dead, the friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient master who shed tears of compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if we put all the rest away and do everything in remembrance of him. There is no vengeance and no inflection of suffering in his life, I am sure. There can be no confusion in following him and seeking for no other footsteps. I am certain. In the softened light of the window, looking from the scene of her early trials to the shining sky, she was not in stronger opposition to the black figure in the shade than the life and doctrine on which she rested were to that figure's history. It bent its head low again and said not a word. It remained thus until the first warning bell began to ring. Hark! cried Mrs. Glennam starting. I said I had another petition. It is one that does not admit of delay. The man who brought you this packet and possesses these proofs is now waiting at my house to be bought off. I can keep this from Arthur only by buying him off. He asks a large sum, more than I can get together to pay him without having time. He refuses to make any abatement because his threat is that if he fails with me, he will come to you. Will you return with me and show him that you already know it? Will you return with me and try to prevail with him? Will you come and help me with him? Do not refuse what I ask in Arthur's name, though I dare not ask it for Arthur's sake. Little Dorrid yielded willingly. She glided away into the prison for a few moments, returned, and said she was ready to go. They went out by another staircase, avoiding the lodge, and coming into the front courtyard, now all quiet and deserted, gained the street. It was one of those summer evenings when there is no greater darkness than a long twilight. The vista of street and bridge was plain to see, and the sky was serene and beautiful. People stood and sat at their doors, playing with children and enjoying the evening. Numbers were walking for air. The warrior of the day had almost worried itself out, and few but themselves were hurried. As they crossed the bridge, the clear steeples of the many churches looked as if they had advanced out of the murk that usually enshrouded them, and come much nearer. The smoke that rose into the sky had lost its dingy hue, and taken a brightness upon it. The beauties of the sunset had not faded from the long, light films of cloud that lay at peace in the horizon. From a radiant centre, over the whole length and breadth of the tranquil firmament, great shoots of light streamed among the early stars, like signs of the blessed later covenant of peace and hope that changed the crown of thorns into a glory. Less remarkable, now that she was not alone, and it was darker, Mrs. Clenham hurried on at Little Dorit's side, unmolested. They left the great thoroughfare at the turning by which she had entered it, and wound their way down among the silent, empty cross streets. Their feet were at the gateway, when there was a sudden noise like thunder. What was that? Let us make haste in, cried Mrs. Clenham. They were in the gateway. Little Dorit, with a piercing cry, held her back. In one swift instant the old house was before them, with the man lying smoking in the window. Another thundering sound, and it heaved, surged outward, opened a thunder in 50 places, collapsed, and fell. Defend by the noise, stifled, choked, and blinded by the dust, they hid their faces and stood rooted to the spot. The dust storm driving between them and the placid sky parted for a moment, and showed them the stars. As they looked up, wildly crying for help, the great pile of chimneys, which was then alone left standing like a tower in a whirlwind, rocked, broke, and hailed itself down upon the heap of ruin, as if every tumbling fragment were intent on burying the crushed wretch deeper. So blackened by the flying particles of rubbish, as to be unrecognizable, they ran back from the gateway into the street, crying and shrieking. There Mrs. Clenham dropped upon the stones, and she never, from that hour, moved as much as a finger again, or had the power to speak one word. For upwards of three years she reclined in a wheeling chair, looking attentively at those about her, and appearing to understand what they said. But the rigid silence she had so long held was ever more enforced upon her, and except that she could move her eyes and faintly express a negative and affirmative with her head, she lived and died a statue. Afery had been looking for them at the prison, and had caught sight of them at a distance on the bridge. She came up to receive her old mistress in her arms, to help to carry her into a neighbouring house, and to be faithful to her. The mystery of the noises was out now. Afery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and always wrong in the theories she deduced from them. When the storm of dust had cleared away, and the summer night was calm again, numbers of people choked up every avenue of access, and parties of diggers were formed to relieve one another in digging among the ruins. There had been a hundred people in the house at the time of its fall, there had been fifty, there had been fifteen, there had been two. Rumour finally settled the number at two, the foreigner and Mr. Flintwinch. The diggers dug all through the short night by flaring pipes of gas, and on a level with the early sun, and deeper and deeper below it as it rose into its zenith, and a slant of it as it declined, and on a level with it again as it departed. Sturdy digging and shoveling and carrying away in carts, barrels and baskets, went on without intermission by night and by day. But it was night for the second time, when they found the dirty heap of rubbish that had been the foreigner, before his head had been shivered to atoms, like so much glass by the great beam that lay upon him, crushing him. Still, they had not come upon Flintwinch yet, so the sturdy digging and shoveling and carrying away went on without intermission by night and by day. It got about that the old house had had famous cellarage, which indeed was true, and that Flintwinch had been in a cellar at the moment, or had had time to escape into one, and that he was safe under its strong arch. And even that he had been hurt to cry in hollow, subterranean, suffocated tones, here I am! At the opposite extremity of the town, it was even known that the excavators had been able to open a communication with him through a pipe, and that he had received both soup and brandy by that channel, and that he had said with admirable fortitude that he was all right, my lads, with the exception of his collarbone. But the digging and shoveling and carrying away went on without intermission, until the ruins were all dug out, and the cellars opened to the light, and still no Flintwinch, living or dead, all right or all wrong, had been turned up by Pickle's spade. It began then to be perceived that Flintwinch had not been there at the time of the fall, and it began then to be perceived that he had been rather busy elsewhere, converting securities into as much money as could be got for them on the shortest notice, and turning to his own exclusive account his authority to act for the firm. Athery, remembering that the clever one had said he would explain himself further in four and twenty hours' time, determined for her part that he's taking himself off within that period with all he could get, was the final satisfactory sum and substance of his promised explanation. But she held her peace, devoutly thankful to be quit of him. As it seemed reasonable to conclude that a man who had never been buried could not be unburied, the diggers gave him up when their task was done, and did not dig down for him into the depths of the earth. This was taken in ill part by a great many people who persisted in believing that Flintwinch was lying somewhere among the London geological formation, nor was their belief much shaken by repeated intelligence, which came over in cause of time, that an old man who wore the tie of his neck cloth under one ear, and who was very well known to be an Englishman, consorted with the Dutch men on the quaint banks of the canals of the Hague, and in the drinking shops of Amsterdam, under the style and designation of Mein Herr von Flintewinger. End of chapter the 31st, book the second of Little Dorrid. This recording is in the public domain.