 Little Dorit, Preface This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Little Dorit by Charles Dickens, Preface to the 1857 edition. I have been occupied with this story during many working hours of two years. I must have been very ill-employed, if I could not leave its merits and demerits as a whole, to express themselves on its being right as a whole. But as it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may have held its threats with a more continuous attention than anyone else can have given them during its desalter republication, it is not unreasonable to ask that the weaving may be looked at in its completed state, and with the pattern finished. If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the barnacles and the circumlocution office, I would seek it in the common experience of an Englishman, without presuming to mention the unimportant fact of my having done that violence to good manners in the days of a Russian war and of a court of inquiry at Chelsea. If I might make so bold as to defend that extravagant conception, Mr. Mardal, I would hint that it originated after the railroad cherry-pock in the times of a certain Irish bank and of one or two other equally laudable enterprises. If I were to plead anything in mitigation of the preposterous fancy that a bad design will sometimes claim to be a good and an expressly religious design, it would be the curious coincidence that it has been brought to its climax in these pages in the days of the public examination of late directors of a Royal British Bank. But I submit myself to stop a judgement to go by default on all these counts, if need be, and to accept the assurance on good authority that nothing like them was ever known in this land. Some of my readers may have an interest in being informed whether or no any portions of the Marshallsea prison I had standing. I did not know myself until the sixth of this present month when I went to look. I found the outer front courtyard, often mentioned here, metamorphosed into a butter shop. And I then almost gave up every brick of the jail for lost, wondering, however, down a certain adjacent angel court leading to Bermond Sea. I came to Marshallsea Place, the houses in which I recognized not only as the great block of the former prison, but as preserving the rooms that arose in my mind's eye when I became little Dorrid's biographer. The smallest boy I ever conversed with, carrying the largest baby I ever saw, heard a supernatural intelligent explanation of the locality in its old uses, and was very nearly correct. How this young Newton, for such a judge him to be, came by his information I don't know. He was a quarter of a century too young to know anything about it of himself. I pointed to the window of the room where little Dorrid was born, and where her father lived so long, and asked him what was the name of the lodger who tenanted that apartment at present. He said, Tom Pithic. I asked him who was Tom Pithic. And he said, Joe Pithic's uncle. A little further on, I found the older and smaller wall, which used to enclose the pent-up in a prison where nobody was put, except for ceremony. But whosoever goes into Marshallsea Place, turning out of angel court leading to Bermond Sea, will find his feet on the very paving stones of the extinct Marshallsea jail. We'll see its narrow yard to the right and to the left, very little altered if at all, except that the walls were lower to when the place got free. We'll look upon rooms in which the debtors lived, and we'll stand among the crowding ghosts of many miserable years. In the preface to Bleak House I remarked that I had never had so many readers. In the preface to its next successor, Little Dorrit, I have still to repeat the same words. Deeply sensible of the affection and confidence that have grown up between us, I add to this preface, as I add it to that, may we meet again. London, May 1857 End of preface This recording is in the public domain. Chapter the first, book the first of Little Dorrit. Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. Book the first. Chapter the first. Sun and Shadow Thirty years ago, Marseille lay burning in the sun one day. A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France than at any other time before our sins. Everything in Marseille and about Marseille had stared at the fervid sky and been stared at in return until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white walls, staring white streets, staring tracks of arid road, staring hills from which Virgil was burnt away. The only things to be seen not fixedly staring and glaring were the vines drooping under their load of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little as the hot air barely moved their faint leaves. There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbour and on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two colours, black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not pass. But it lay as quiet as the abominable pool with which it never mixed. Boats without awnings were too hot to touch. Ships blistered at their moorings. The stones of the caves had not cooled night or day for months. Hindus, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Nepolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseille, sort the shade alike, taking refuge in any hiding, place from a sea too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple set with one great flaming jewel of fire. The universal stair made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea. But it softened nowhere else. Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hillside, stared from the hollow, stared from the interminable plain. Far away the dust-divines overhanging wayside cottages and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped beneath the stair of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts creeping slowly towards the interior. So did their recumbent drivers, when they were awake which rarely happened. So did the exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or grew was oppressed by the glare, except the lizard passing swiftly over rough stone walls and the sicala, chirping his dry hot chirp like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were panting. Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings were all closed and drawn to keep out the stair. Granted but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a white hot arrow, the churches were the freest from it. Come out of the twilight of pillars and arches, dreamily dotted with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting and begging, was to plunge into a fiery river and swim for life to the nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, with occasional jangling of discordant church bells, and rattling of vicious drums, Marseille, a fact to be strongly smelled and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day. In Marseille that day there was a villainous prison. In one of its chambers, saw repulsive a place that even the obtrusive stair blinked at it and left it to such refuse of reflected light as it could find for itself were two men. Besides the two men, a notched and disfigured bench, immovable from the wall, with a draught board rudely hacked upon it with a knife, a set of draughts made of old buttons and soup bones, a set of dominoes, two mats and two or three wine bottles. That was all the chamber held, exclusive of rats and other unseen vermin, in addition to the seen vermin, the two men. It received such light as it got through a grating of iron bars fashioned like a pretty large window, by means of which it could be always inspected from the gloomy staircase on which the grating gave. There was a broad strong ledge of stone to this grating, where the bottom of it was led into the masonry, three or four feet above the ground. Upon it one of the two men lulled, half sitting and half lying, with his knees drawn up and his feet and shoulders planted against the opposite sides of the aperture. The bars were wide enough apart to admit of his thrusting his arm through to the elbow, and so he held on negligently for his greater ease. A prisoned taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned dams, the imprisoned men were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was feigned, the light was dim. Like a well, like a ward, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact in one of the space islands of the Indian Ocean. The man who lay on the ledge of the grating was even chilled. He jerked his great cloak more heavily upon him by an impatient movement of one shoulder and growled to the devil with this brigand of a sun that never shines in here. He was waiting to be fed, looking sideways through the bars that he might see the further down the stairs with much of the expression of a wild beast in similar expectation. But his eyes, too close together, were not so nobly set in his head as those of the king of beasts high in his, and they were sharp rather than bright, pointed weapons with little service to betray them. They had no depth or change, they glittered and they opened and shut. So far, and waving their use to himself, a clockmaker could have made a better pair. He had a hook nose, handsome after its kind, but too high between the eyes by probably just as much as his eyes were too near to one another. For the rest, he was large and tall in frame, had thin lips where his thick moustache showed them at all and a quantity of dry hair of no definable colour and its shaggy state but shot with red. The hand with which he held the grating, seemed all over the black with ugly scratches newly healed, was unusually small and plump, would have been unusually white but for the prison grime. The other man was lying on the stone floor covered with a coarse brown coat. Get up pig, growled the first. Don't sleep while I am hungry. It's all one muster, said the pig in a submissive manner and not without cheerfulness. I can wake when I will, I can sleep when I will, it's all the same. As he said it, he rose, shook himself, scratched himself, tied his brown coat loosely round his neck by the sleeves, he had previously used it as a coverlet and sat down upon the pavement yawning with his back against the wall opposite the grating. Say what the hour is, grumbled the first man. The midday bells will ring in forty minutes. When he made the little pause, he had looked around the prison room as if for certain information. You are a clock. How is it that you always know? How can I say? I always know what the hour is and where I am. I was brought in here at night and out of a boat but I know where I am. See here, Marseilles Harbour on his knees on the pavement mapping it all out with a swarthy forefinger. Toulon, where the galleys are, Spain over there, Algiers over there, creeping away here to the left knees, round by the cornice to Genois, Genois Mall and Harbour, Quarantine Ground, city there, terrace gardens blushing with the belladonna. Here Portofino, stand out for Lake Horn, out again for Civita Vecchia, sell way to, hey, there is no room for Naples. He had got to the wall by this time. But it's all one. It's in there. He remained on his knees, looking up at his fellow prisoner with a lively look for a prison. A sunburned, quick, lithe little man, though rather thick set, earrings in his brown ears, white teeth lighting up his grotesque brown face, intensely black hair clustering about his brown throat, a ragged red shirt open at his brown breast, loose, seaman-like trousers, decent shoes, a long red cap, a red sash round his waist, and a knife in it. Judge if I come back from Naples as I went. See here, my master. Civita Vecchia, Lake Horn, Portofino, Genoa, Cornice, off knees. Which is in there. Marseille, you and me. The apartment of the jailer and his keys is where I put this thumb. And here at my wrist they keep the national razor in its case, the guillotine locked up. The other man spat suddenly on the pavement and gurgled in his throat. Some luck below gurgled in its throat immediately afterwards, and then a door crashed. Slow steps began ascending the stairs. The prattle of a sweet little voice mingled with the noise they made, and the prisonkeeper appeared carrying his daughter, three or four years old, and a basket. How goes the world, this forlorn gentleman? My little one, you see, going round with me to have a peep at her father's birds. Bye, then. Look at the birds, my pretty. Look at the birds. He looked sharply at the birds himself as he held the child up at the grate, especially at the little bird whose activity he seemed to mistrust. I have brought your bread, Signore John Baptist, said he. They all spoke in French, but the little man was an Italian. And if I might recommend you not to game, you don't recommend the master, said John Baptist, showing his teeth as he smiled. Oh, but the master wins. Return the jailer with a passing look of no particular liking at the other man. And you lose. It's quite another thing. You get husky bread and sour drink by it. And he gets sausage of lion, veal and savory jelly, white bread, strachino cheese, and good wine by it. Look at the birds, my pretty. Poor birds, said the child. The fair little face, touched with divine compassion and dipped shrinkingly through the grate, was like an angel's in the prison. John Baptist rose and moved towards it, as if it had a good attraction for him. The other bird remained as before, except for an impatient glance at the basket. Stay, said the jailer, putting his little daughter on the outer ledge of the grate. She shall feed the birds. This big loaf is for Signore John Baptist. We must break it to get it through into the cage. So, there is a timber to kiss the little hand. This sausage and a vine leaf is for Monsieur Igor. Again, this veal and savory jelly is for Monsieur Igor. Again, these three white little loaves are for Monsieur Igor. Again, this cheese. Again, this wine. Again, this tobacco. All for Monsieur Igor. Lucky bird. The child put all these things between the bars into the soft, smooth, well-shaped hand with evident dread, more than once drawing back her own and looking at the man with her fair brow roughened into an expression half of fright and half of anger. Whereas she had put the lamp, of course, bred into the sword, scaled, not at hands of John Baptist, who had scarcely as much nail on his eight fingers and two thumbs, as would have made out one for Monsieur Igor, with ready confidence. And when he kissed her hand, had herself past it caressingly over his face. Monsieur Igor, indifferent to this distinction, propitiated the father by laughing and nodding at the daughter as often as she gave him anything. And so soon as he had all his vines about him in convenient nooks on the ledge on which he rested, began to eat with an appetite. When Monsieur Igor laughed, a change took place in his face that was more remarkable than pre-possessing. His moustache went up under his nose, and his nose came down over his moustache in a very sinister and cruel manner. There, said the jailer, turning his basket upside down to beat the crumbs out, I have expended all the money I received. Here is the note of it. And that's the thing accomplished. Monsieur Igor, as I expected yesterday, the president would look for the pleasure of your society at an hour after midday today. To try me, eh? said Igor, pausing, knife in hand and morsel in mouth. You have said it, to try you. There is no news for me, asked John Baptist, who had begun contentedly to munch his bread. The jailer shracked his shoulders. Lady of mine, am I to lie here all my life, my father? What do I know? cried the jailer, turning upon him with a southern quickness and gesticulating in both his hands and all his fingers, as if you were threatening to tear him to pieces. My friend, how is it possible for me to tell how long you are to lie here? What do I know, John Baptist Cavaletto, death of my life? There are prisoners here sometimes who are not in such a devil of a hurry to be tried. He seemed to glance obliquely at Monsieur Igor in this remark, but Monsieur Igor had already resumed his meal, though not with quite so quick an appetite as before. Adieu, my birds, said the keeper of the prison taking his pretty child in his arms and dictating the words with a kiss. Adieu, my birds, the pretty child repeated. Her innocent face looked back so brightly over his shoulder, as he walked away with her, singing her the song of the child's game. Who passes by this road so late, compagnon de la Mageolaine? Who passes by this road so late, always gay, that John Baptist felt it a point of honour to reply at the great and in good time and tune, though a little hoarsely? Of all the king's knights dis the flower, compagnon de la Mageolaine, of all the king's knights dis the flower, always gay, which accompanied them so far down the few steep stairs that the prison keeper had to stop at last for his little daughter to hear the song out and repeat the refrain while they were yet in sight. Then the child's head disappeared and the prison keeper's head disappeared, but the little voice prolonged the strain until the door clashed. Monsieur Igor, finding the listening John Baptist in his way before the echoes had ceased, even the echoes were the weaker for imprisonment and seemed to lag, reminded him with a push of his foot that he had better resume his own darker place. The little man sat down again upon the pavement with the negligent ease of one who was thoroughly accustomed to pavements and placing three hunks of course bread before himself and falling two upon a fourth began contentedly to work his way through them, as if to clear them off were a sort of game. Perhaps he glanced at the lion's sausage and perhaps he glanced at the veal in savory jelly, but they were not there long to make his mouth water. Monsieur Igor soon dispatched them in spite of the president and tribunal and proceeded to suck his fingers as clean as he could and to wipe them on his fine leaves. Then, as he paused in his drink to contemplate his fellow prisoner, his moustache went up and his nose came down. How do you find the bread? A little dry, but I have my old sauce here. returned John Baptist holding up his knife. How sauce? I can cut my bread so like a melon or so like an omelet or so like a fried fish or so like lion sausage. Said John Baptist demonstrating the various cuts of the bread he held and soberly chewing what he had in his mouth. Here, cried Monsieur Igor, you may drink, you may finish this. It was no great gift, for there was mighty little wine left, but Signor Cavalletto jumping to his feet received the bottle gratefully, turned it upside down at his mouth and smacked his lips. Put the bottle by with the rest, said Igor. The little man obeyed his orders and stood ready to give him a lighted match, for he was now rolling his tobacco into cigarettes by the aid of little squares of paper which had been brought in with it. Here, you may have one. A thousand thanks, my master. John Baptist said in his own language and with a quick conciliatory manner of his own countrymen. Monsieur Igor arose, lighted a cigarette, put the rest of his stock into a breast pocket and stretched himself out at full length upon the bench. Cavalletto sat down on the pavement, holding one of his ankles in each hand and smoking peacefully. There seemed to be some uncomfortable attraction of Monsieur Igor's eyes to the immediate neighborhood of that part of the pavement where the thumb had been in the plan. They were so drawn in that direction that the Italian more than once followed them to and back from the pavement in some surprise. What an infernal hole this is, said Monsieur Igor, breaking a long pause. Look at the light of day, day, the light of yesterday week, the light of six months ago, the light of six years ago, so slack and dead. It came languishing down a square funnel that blinded a window in the staircase wall through which the sky was never seen nor anything else. Cavalletto, said Monsieur Igor, suddenly withdrawing his gaze from this funnel to which they had both involuntarily turned their eyes. You know me for a gentleman? Surely, surely. How long have we been here? I, eleven weeks, tomorrow night at midnight. You, nine weeks and three days, at five this afternoon. Have I ever done anything here? Ever touched the broom, or spread the mats, or pulled them up, or found the drafts, or collected the dominoes, or put my hand to any kind of work? Never. Have you ever thought of looking to me to do any kind of work? John Baptist answered with that peculiar backhanded shake of the right forefinger which is the most expressive negative in the Italian language. No, you knew from the first moment when you saw me here that I was a gentleman, outro returned John Baptist closing his eyes and giving his head a most vehement toss. The word being, according to its genoese emphasis, a confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt, a compliment, a joke, and fifty other things became in the present instance with the significance beyond all power of written expression, our familiar English, I believe you. Ha ha, you are right, a gentleman I am, and a gentleman I live, and a gentleman I'll die. It's my intent to be a gentleman. It's my game, death of my soul, I played out wherever I go. He changed his posture to a sitting one, crying with a triumphant air. Here I am, see me. Shaken out of destiny's dice, box into the company of a mere smuggler, shut up with a poor little contraband trader, whose papers are wrong, and whom the police lay hold of besides, for placing his boat as a means of getting beyond the frontier at the disposition of other little people whose papers are wrong, and he instinctively recognizes my position, even by this light and in this place. It's well done, by heaven. I win, however the game goes. Again his moustache went up, and his nose came down. What's the hour now? He asked with a dry hot pallor upon him, rather difficult of association with merriment. A little half hour after midday. Good. The president will have a gentleman before him soon. Come. Shall I tell you on what accusation? It must be now or never, for I shall not return here. Either I shall go free, or I shall go to be made ready for shaving. You know where they keep the razor. Signor Cavalletto took his cigarette from between his parted lips, and showed more momentary disconfiture than might have been expected. I am a... Musurigo stood up to say it. I am a cosmopolitan gentleman. I own no particular country. My father was Swiss, Canton du Vaux. My mother was French by blood, and English by birth. I myself was born in Belgium. I am a citizen of the world. His theatrical air, as he stood with one arm on his hip within the folds of his cloak, together with his manner of disregarding his companion and addressing the opposite wall instead, seemed to intimate that he was rehearsing for the president, whose examination he was shortly to undergo, rather than troubling himself merely to enlighten so smaller person John Baptist Cavalletto. Call me five and thirty years of age. I have seen the world. I have lived here, and lived there, and lived like a gentleman everywhere. I have been treated and respected as a gentleman universally. If you try to prejudice me by making out that I have lived by my wits, how do your lawyers live, your politicians, your intrigers, your men of the exchange? He kept his small, smooth hand in constant requisition, as if it were a witness to his gentility that had often done him good service before. Two years ago I came to Marseille. I admit that I was poor. I had been ill. When your lawyers, your politicians, your intrigers, your men of the exchange fall ill and have not scraped money together, they become poor. I put up at the cross of gold, kept then by M. Henri Baronneux, sixty-five at least, and in a failing state of health. I had lived in the house some four months when M. Henri Baronneux had the misfortune to die, at any rate, not a rare misfortune that it happens without any aid of mine pretty often. Joan Baptist, having smoked his cigarette down to his finger's ends, M. Rigoir had the magnanimity to throw him another. He lighted the second at the ashes of the first and smoked on looking sideways at his companion who, preoccupied with his own case, hardly looked at him. M. Baronneux left a widow. She was two and twenty. She had gained a reputation for beauty and, which is often another thing, was beautiful. I continued to live at the cross of gold. I married M. Baronneux. It is not for me to say whether there was any great disparity in such a match. Here I stand, with a contamination of a jail upon me, but it is possible that you may think me better suited to her than her former husband was. He had a certain air of being a handsome man, which he was not, and a certain air of being a well-bred man, which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge, but in this particular, as in many others, restring assertion goes for proof, half over the world. Be it as it may, M. Baronneux approved of me. That is not to prejudice me, I hope. Is I happening to light upon John Baptist with this inquiry, that little man briskly shook his head in the negative, and repeated in an argumentative tone under his breath, ultra, ultra, ultra, an infinite number of times. Now came the difficulties of our position. I am proud. I say nothing in defense of pride, but I am proud. It is also my character to govern. I can't submit. I must govern. Unfortunately, the property of M. Rigor was settled upon herself. Such was the insane act of her late husband. More unfortunately still, she had relations. When a wife's relations interpose her husband who is a gentleman, who is proud and who must govern, the consequences are inimical to peace. There was yet another source of difference between us. M. Rigor was unfortunately a little vulgar. I sought to improve her manners and ameliorate her general tone. She, supported in this likewise by her relations, resented my endeavours. Quarrels began to arise between us, and propagated exaggerated by the slanders of the relations of M. Rigor to become notorious to the neighbors. It has been said that I treated M. Rigor with cruelty. I may have been seen to slap her face, nothing more. I have a light hand, and if I have been seen apparently to correct M. Rigor in that manner, I have done it almost playfully. If the playfulness of M. Rigor were at all expressed by his smile at this point, the relations of M. Rigor might have said that they would have much preferred his correcting that unfortunate woman seriously. I am sensitive and brave. I do not advance it as a merit to be sensitive and brave, but it is my character. If the male relations of M. Rigor had put themselves forward openly, I should have known how to deal with them. They knew that, and their machinations were conducted secretly. Consequently, M. Rigor and I were brought into frequent and unfortunate collision. Even when I wanted any little sum of money for my personal expenses, I could not obtain it without collision. And I, too, a man whose character it is to govern. One night, M. Rigor and myself were walking amicably, I may say like lovers, on a hideover hanging the sea. An evil star occasioned M. Rigor to advert to her relations. I reasoned with her on that subject, and demonstrated on the want of duty and devotion manifested in her allowing herself to be influenced by their jealous animosity towards her husband. M. Rigor retorted. I retorted. M. Rigor grew warm. I grew warm and provoked her. I admit it. Frankness is a part of my character. At length M. Rigor, with fury that I must ever deplore, threw herself upon me with screams of passion. No doubt those that were overheard at some distance, tore my clothes, tore my hair, lacerated my hands, trampled and trod the dust, and finally leaped over, dashing herself to death upon the rocks below. Such is the train of incidents which M. Rigor has perverted into my endeavouring to force from M. Rigor's words, and on her persistence in a refusal to make the concession I required, struggling with her, assassinating her. He stepped aside to the ledge where the vine leaves he had lay strewn about, collected two or three, and stood wiping his hands upon them, with his back to the light. Well, he demanded after a silence, have you nothing to say to all that? It's ugly, returned the little man who had risen and was brightening his knife upon his shoe as he leaned an arm against the wall. What do you mean? John Baptist polished his knife in silence. Do you mean that I have not represented the case correctly? I'll draw. Returned John Baptist. The word was an apology now and stood for, oh, by no means. What then? The tribunals are so prejudiced. Well! cried the other and easily flinging the end of his cloak over his shoulder with an oath. Let them do their worst. Truly I think they will. murmured John Baptist to himself as he bent his head to put his knife in his sash. Nothing more was said on either side though they both began walking to and fro and necessarily crossed at every turn. Missouri Gore sometimes stopped as if he were going to put his case in a new light or make some irate remonstrance. But Senior Cavalletto continuing to go slowly to and fro at a grotesque kind of jock-trot pace with his eyes turned downward. Nothing came of these inclinings. By and by the noise of the key in the lock arrested them both. The sound of voices succeeded and the tread of feet. The door clashed, the voices and the feet came on and the prison keeper slowly ascended the stairs, followed by a guard of soldiers. Now Missouri Gore said he posing for a moment at the grate with his keys in his hands. Have the goodness to come out! I am to depart in state I see. Why unless you did return the jailer you might depart in so many pieces that it would be difficult to get you together again. There is a crowd Missouri Gore and it doesn't love you. He passed on out of sight and unlocked and unbarred a low door in the corner of the chamber. Now, said he, as he opened it and appeared within come out! There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under the sun at all like the whiteness of Missouri Gore's face as it was then. Neither is there any expression of the human countenance at all like that expression in every little line of which the frightened heart is seen to beat. Both are conventionally compared with death. But the difference is the whole deep gulf between the struggle done and the fight at its most desperate extremity. He lighted another of his paper cigars at his companions, put it tightly between his teeth, covered his head with a soft slouched hat, threw the end of his cloak over his shoulder again and walked out into the side gallery on which the door opened, without taking any further notice of Signore Cavalletto. As to that little man himself, his cold attention had become absorbed in getting near the door and looking out at it. Precisely as a beast might approach the opened gate of his den and either freedom beyond, a few moments in watching and peering until the door was closed upon him. There was an officer in command of the soldiers, a stout, serviceable, profoundly calm man with his drawn sword in his hand smoking a cigar. He very briefly directed the placing of Monsieur Rigaud in the midst of the party, but himself with consummate indifference at their head, gave the word march and so they all began jingling down the staircase. The door clashed, the key turned, an array of unusual light and a breath of unusual air seemed to have passed through the jail, vanishing in a tiny wreath of smoke from the cigar. Still, in his captivity like a lower animal, like some impatient ape or roused bear of the smaller species, the prisoner now left solitary had jumped upon the ledge to lose no glimpse of this departure. As yet he stood clasping the grate with both hands an uproar broke upon his hearing, yells, shrieks, oaths, threats, execrations, all comprehended in it, though as in a storm nothing but a raging swell of sound distinctly heard. Excited into a still greater resemblance to a caged wild animal by his anxiety to know more, the prisoner leaped nimbly down, ran round the chamber, leaped nimbly up again, clasped the grate and tried to shake it, leaped down and ran, leaped up and listened and never rested until the noise becoming more and more distant had died away. How many better prisoners have worn their noble hearts out so? No man thinking of it, not even the beloved of their souls realising it. Great kings and governors who had made them captive careering in the sunlight jauntily and men cheering them on, even the said great personages dying in bed, making exemplary ends and sounding speeches and polite history more servile than their instruments embalming them. At last John Baptist now able to choose his own spot within the compass of those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep when he would lay down upon the bench with his face turned over on his crossed arms and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his good humour, in his short lived passion, in his easy contentment with hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts altogether a true son of the land that gave him birth. The white stair stared itself out for one while. The sun went down in a red, green, golden glory. The stars came out in the heavens and the fireflies mimicked them in the lower air. As men may feebly imitate the goodness of a better order of things, the long dusty roads and the interminable plains were in repose, the rush was on the sea that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead. End of chapter the first Book the first This recording is in the public domain. Chapter the second Book the first of Little Dorit Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff Little Dorit by Charles Dickens Book the first Chapter the second Fellow travelers No more of yesterday's howling over yonder today, sir, is there? I have heard none. Then you may be sure there is none, when these people howl they howl to be heard. Most people do I suppose Ah, but these people are always howling! Never-happy otherwise? Do you mean the Marseille people? I mean the French people. always at it. As to Marseille, we know what Marseille is. It sent the most insurrectionary tune into the world that was ever composed. It couldn't exist without a longing and mashonging to something or other, victory or death, or blazes or something. The speaker, with a whimsical good humour upon him all the time, looked over the parapet wall with the greatest disparagement of Marseille, and taking up a determined position by putting his cans in his pockets and rattling his money at it, apostrophised it with a short laugh. How long and mashong indeed! It would be more creditable to you, I think, to let other people along and mashong about their lawful business, instead of shutting them up in quarantine. Tires seem enough, said the other, but we shall be out today. Out today, repeated the first, it's almost an aggravation of the enormity that we shall be out today. Out! What have we ever been in for? For no very strong reason, I must say, but as we come from the east, and as the east is the country of the plague, repeated the other. That's my grievance. I have had the plague continually, ever since I have been here. I am like a sane man shut up in a madhouse. I can't stand the suspicion of the thing. I came here as well as ever I was in my life, but to suspect me of the plague is to give me the plague. I have had it, and I have got it. You bear it very well, Mr. Meagles? said the second speaker, smiling. No, if you knew the real state of the case, that's the last observation you would think of making. I have been waking up night after night, and saying, now I have got it. Now it has developed itself. Now I am in for it. Now these fellows are making out their case for their precautions. Why, I'd as soon have a spit put through me, and be stuck upon a card in a collection of beetles, as lead the life I have been leading here. Well, Mr. Meagles, say no more about it, now it's over. Urged a cheerful feminine voice. Over? repeated Mr. Meagles, who appeared, though without any ill nature, to be in that peculiar state of mind in which the last word spoken by anybody else is a new injury. Over? And why should I say no more about it, because it's over? It was Mrs. Meagles who had spoken to Mr. Meagles. And Mrs. Meagles was, like Mr. Meagles, comely and healthy, with a pleasant English face, which had been looking at homely things for five and fifty years or more, and shown with a bright reflection of them. There, never mind, Father, never mind, said Mrs. Meagles. For goodness sake, content yourself with Pet. With Pet? repeated Mr. Meagles in his injured vein. Pet, however, being close behind him, touched him on the shoulder and Mr. Meagles immediately forgave Marseille from the bottom of his heart. Pet was about twenty. A fair girl with rich brown hair hanging free in natural ringlets. A lovely girl with a frank face and wonderful eyes. So large, so soft, so bright, said to such perfection in her kind good head. She was round and fresh and dimpled and spoiled, and there was in Pet an air of timidity and dependence, which was the best weakness in the world, and gave her the only crowning charm a girl so pretty and pleasant could have been without. Now, I ask you, said Mr. Meagles, in the blandest confidence, falling back a step himself and handing his daughter a step forward to illustrate his question. I ask you simply, as between man and man, you know, did you ever hear of such damned nonsense as putting Pet in quarantine? It has had the result of making even quarantine enjoyable. Arm, said Mr. Meagles, that's something to be sure. I am obliged to you for that remark. Now Pet, my darling, you had better go along with mother and get ready for the boat. The officer of health and a variety of humbugs and cocked hats are coming off to let us out of this at last. And all we jailbirds are to breakfast together in something approaching to a Christian style again before we take wing for our different destinations. Attic Horem, stick you close to your young mistress. He spoke to a handsome girl with lastrous dark hair and eyes, and very neatly dressed, who replied with a half curtsy as she passed off in the train of Mrs. Meagles and Pet. They crossed the bear-scorched terrace all three together, and disappeared through a staring white archway. Mr. Meagles' companion, a grave dark man of forty, still stood looking towards this archway after they were gone, until Mr. Meagles stabbed him on the arm. I beg your pardon, said he, starting. Not at all, said Mr. Meagles. They took one silent turn backward and forward in the shade of the wall, getting at the height on which the quarantine barracks are placed what cool refreshment of sea breeze there was at seven in the morning. Mr. Meagles' companion resumed the conversation. May I ask you, he said, what is the name of Tatic Horem? Mr. Meagles struck in. I have not the least idea. I thought, said the other, that Tatic Horem? Suggested Mr. Meagles again. Thank you. That Tatic Horem was a name, and I have several times wondered at the oddity of it. Why, the fact is, said Mr. Meagles. Mrs. Meagles and myself are, you see, practical people. That you have frequently mentioned in the course of the agreeable and interesting conversations we have had together, walking up and down on these stones, said the other with a half-smile breaking through the gravity of his dark face. Practical people. So one day, five or six years ago now, when we took pet to church at the Foundling, you have heard of the Foundling Hospital in London? Similar to the institution for the found children in Paris? I have seen it. Well, one day when we took pet to church there to hear the music, because as practical people it is the business of our lives to show her everything that we think and please her. Mother, my usual name for Mrs. Meagles, began to cry so, that it was necessary to take her out. What's the matter, mother? said I, when we had brought her a little round. You are frightening pet, my dear. Yes, I know that, Father, says Mother, but I think it's through my loving her so much that it ever came into my head. That ever what came into your head, Mother? Oh, dear, dear, cried Mother, breaking out again. When I saw all those children range tear above tear, and appealing from the Father none of them has ever known on earth, to the great Father of us all in heaven, I thought, does any wretched Mother ever come here and look among those young faces, wondering which is the poor child she brought into this forlorn world, never through all its life to know her love, her kiss, her face, her voice, even her name. Now that was practical in Mother, and I told her so. I said, Mother, that's what I call practical in you, my dear. The other, not unmoved, assented. So I said next day, now, Mother, I have a proposition to make that I think you'll approve of. Let us take one of those same little children to be a little maid to pet. We are practical people, so if we should find her temper a little defective, or any of her ways a little wider ours, we shall know what we have to take into account. We shall know what an immense deduction must be made from all the influences and experiences that have formed us. No parents, no child, brother or sister, no individuality of home, no glass slipper, or fairy godmother. And that's the way we came by Tati Korum. And the name itself? By George, said Mr. Meagles. I was forgetting the name itself. Why, she was called in the institution Harriet Beedle, an arbitrary name, of course. Now Harriet we changed into Hattie, and then into Tattie, because as practical people we thought even a playful name might be a new thing to her, and might have a softening and affectionate kind of effect. Don't you see? As to Beedle, that I need and say was wholly out of the question. If there is anything that is not to be tolerated on any terms, anything that is a type of jack-in-office, insolence and absurdity, anything that represents encodes, baskets and big sticks our English holding on by nonsense after everyone has found it out, it is a Beedle. You haven't seen a Beedle lately? As an Englishman who has been more than 20 years in China, no. Then, said Mr. Meagles, laying his forefinger on his companion's breast with great animation, don't you see a Beedle now if you can help it? Whenever I see a Beedle in full fig, coming down a street on a Sunday at the head of a charity school, I am obliged to turn and run away, or I should hit him, the name of Beedle being out of the question, and the originator of the institution for these poor foundlings having been a blessed creature of the name of Corum, we gave that name to Petzlittle Maid. At one time she was Stati, and at one time she was Corum, until we got into a way of mixing the two names together, and now she is always Stati Corum. Your daughter, said the other when they had taken another silent turn to and fro, and after standing for a moment at the wall glancing down at the sea, had resumed their walk. Is your only child, I know, Mr. Meagles. May I ask you, in no impertinent curiosity, but because I have had so much pleasure in your society, may never in this labyrinth of a world exchange a quiet word with you again, and wish to preserve an accurate remembrance of you and yours, may I ask you, if I have not gathered from your good wife that you have had other children? No, no, said Mr. Meagles, not exactly other children, one other child. I am afraid I have inadvertently touched upon a tender theme. Never mind, said Mr. Meagles, if I am grave about it, I am not at all sorrowful. It quiets me for a moment, but does not make me unhappy. Pet had a twin sister who died when we could just see her eyes, exactly like Pet's, above the table, as she stood on tiptoe holding by it. Oh, indeed, indeed. Yes, and being practical people, a result has gradually sprung up in the minds of Mrs. Meagles and myself, which perhaps you may, or perhaps you may not understand. Pet and her baby sister were so exactly alike, and so completely one, that in our thoughts we have never been able to separate them since. It would be of no use to tell us that our dead child was a mere infant. We have changed that child according to the changes in the child spared to us and always with us. As Pet has grown, that child has grown. As Pet has become more sensible and womanly, her sister has become more sensible and womanly by just the same degrees. It would be as hard to convince me that if I was to pass into the other world tomorrow, I should not, through the mercy of God, be received there by a daughter, just like Pet, as to persuade me that Pet herself is not a reality at my side. I understand you, said the other gently. As to her, pursued her father, the sudden loss of her little picture and playfellow, and her early association with that mystery in which we all have our equal share, but which is not often so forcibly presented to a child, has necessarily had some influence on her character. Then, her mother and I were not young when we married, and Pet has always had a sort of grown-up life with us, though we have tried to adapt ourselves to her. We have been advised more than once when she has been a little ailing, to change climate and air for her as often as we could, especially at about this time of her life, and to keep her amused. So, as I have no need to stick at a bank desk now, though I have been poor enough in my life, I assure you, or I should have married Mrs. Meagles long before, we go trotting about the world. This is how you found us staring at the Nile, and the Pyramids, and the Sphinxes, and the Desert, and all the rest of it, and this is how Taticorum will be a greater traveller in cause of time than Captain Cook. I thank you, said the other, very heartily for your confidence. Don't mention it. Returned Mr. Meagles, I am sure you are quite welcome, and now, Mr. Clenum, perhaps I may ask you whether you have yet come to a decision where to go next. Indeed, no. I am such a wave and stray everywhere that I am liable to be drifted where any current may sit. It's extraordinary to me, if you will excuse my freedom in saying so, that you don't go straight to London, said Mr. Meagles, in the tone of a confidential advisor. Perhaps I shall. I, but I mean with a will. I have no will, that is to say, he coloured a little, next to none that I can put in action now. Trained by main force, broken, not bent, heavily ironed with an object on which I was never consulted and which was never mine, shipped away to the other end of the world before I was of age, and exiled there until my father's death there a year ago, always grinding in a mill I always hated. What is to be expected from me in middle life? Will, purpose, hope. All those lights were extinguished before I could sound the words. Light them up again, said Mr. Meagles. Ah, easily said. I am the son, Mr. Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured and priced everything, for whom what could not be weighed, measured and priced, had no existence. Strict people as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their possessions, or steer faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next, nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere. This was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life. Really, though, said Mr. Meagles, made very uncomfortable by the picture offered to his imagination. That was a tough commencement, but come, you must now study and profit by all that lies beyond it like a practical man. If the people who are usually called practical were practical in your direction, why so they are, said Mr. Meagles. Are they indeed? Well, I suppose so, returned Mr. Meagles thinking about it, eh? One can but be practical, and Mrs. Meagles and myself are nothing else. My unknown cause is easier and more helpful than I had expected to find it then, said Clenham, shaking his head with his grave smile. Enough of me, here is the boat. The boat was filled with the cocked hats to which Mr. Meagles entertained a national objection, and the wearers of those cocked hats landed and came up the steps, and all the impounded travellers congregated together. There was then a mighty production of papers on the part of the cocked hats and a calling over of names and great work of signing, sealing, stamping, inking and sanding, with exceedingly blurred, gritty and undecipherable results. Finally, everything was done according to rule, and the travellers were at liberty to depart with the so ever they would. They made little account of stare and glare in the new pleasure of recovering their freedom, but flitted across the harbour in gay boats and reassembled at a great hotel, whence the sun was excluded by closed lattices, and where bare paved floors, lofty ceilings and resounding corridors tempered the intense heat. There, a great table in a great room was soon profusely covered with a superb repast, and the quarantine quarters became bare indeed, remembered among dainty dishes, southern fruits, cooled wines, flowers from Genoa, snow from the mountain tops, and all the colours of the rainbow flashing in the mirrors. But I bear those monotonous walls no ill will now, said Mr. Meagles. One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind. I dare say a prisoner begins to relent towards his prison after he's let out. They were about thirteen company and all talking, but necessarily in groups. Father and mother Meagles sat with their daughter between them, the last three on one side of the table. On the opposite side sat Mr. Clannum, a tall French gentleman with raven hair and beard, of a swart and terrible, not to say gentilly diabolical aspect, but who had shown himself the mildest of men, and a handsome young English woman travelling quite alone, who had a proud observant face, and had either withdrawn herself from the rest or been avoided by the rest. Nobody, herself accepted perhaps, could have quite decided which. The rest of the party were of the usual materials, travellers on business, and travellers for pleasure, officers from India on leave, merchants in the Greek and Turkey trades, a clerical English husband in a meagre straight west cut, on a waiting trip with his young wife, a majestic English mama and papa of the patrician order with a family of three growing up daughters, who were keeping a journal for the confusion of their fellow creatures, and a deaf old English mother, tough in trouble, with a very decidedly grown up daughter indeed, which daughter went sketching about the universe in the expectation of ultimately toning herself off into the married state. The reserved English woman took up Mr. Migos in his last remark. Do you mean that a prisoner forgives his prison? said she slowly, and with emphasis. That was my speculation, Miss Wade. I don't pretend to know positively how a prisoner might feel. I never was one before. Mademoiselle doubts, said the French gentleman in his own language, it's being so easy to forgive. I do. Pat had to translate this passage to Mr. Migos, who never by any accident acquired any knowledge whatever of the language of any country into which he travelled. Oh, said he. Dear me, but that's a pity, isn't it? That I am not credulous, said Miss Wade. Not exactly that. Put it another way, that you can't believe it's easy to forgive. My experience, she quietly returned, has been correcting my belief in many respects for some years. It is our natural progress I have heard. Well, well, but it's not natural to bear malice, I hope, said Mr. Migos cheerly. If I had been shut up in any place to pine and suffer, I should always hate that place and wish to burn it down or raise it to the ground. I know no more. Strong sir, said Mr. Migos to the Frenchman. It being another of his habits to address individuals of all nations in idiomatic English, with a perfect conviction that they were bound to understand it somehow. Rather forcible in our fair friend, you'll agree with me, I think? The French gentleman courteously replied, Plétille, to which Mr. Migos returned with much satisfaction. You're right, my opinion. The breakfast beginning by and by to language, Mr. Migos made the company a speech. It was short enough and sensible enough, considering that it was a speech at all, and hearty. It merely went to the effect that as they had all been thrown together by chance, and had all preserved a good understanding together, and were now about to disperse, and were not likely ever to find themselves all together again, what could they do better than bid farewell to one another, and give one another good speed in a simultaneous glass of cool champagne all around the table? It was done, and with a general shaking of hands, the assembly broke up forever. The solitary young lady all this time had said no more. She rose with the rest and silently withdrew to a remote corner of the great room, where she sat herself on a couch in a window, seeming to watch the reflection of the water as it made a silver quivering on the bars of the lattice. She sat, turned away from the whole length of the apartment, as if she were lonely of her own hearty choice. And yet it would have been as difficult as ever to say, positively, whether she avoided the rest or was avoided. The shadow in which she sat, falling like a gloomy veil across her forehead, accorded very well with the character of her beauty. One could hardly see the face, so still and scornful, set off by the arched dark eyebrows, and the folds of dark hair, without wondering what its expression would be if a change came over it. That it could soften or relent, appeared next to impossible. That it could deepen into anger or any extreme of defiance, and that it must change in that direction when it changed at all, would have been its peculiar impression upon most observers. It was dressed and trimmed into no ceremony of expression, although not an open face, there was no pretense in it. I am self-contained and self-reliant, your opinion is nothing to me. I have no interest in you, care nothing for you, and see and hear you within difference. This it said plainly. It said so in the proud eyes, in the lifted nostril, in the handsome but compressed and even cruel mouth, cover either two of those channels of expression, and the third would have said so still. Masked them all, and the mere turn of the head would have shown an unsubduable nature. Pet had moved up to her, she had been the subject of remark among her family and Mr. Clenum, who are now the only other occupants of the room, and was standing at her side. Are you? She turned her eyes and pet-fortered, expecting anyone to meet you here, Ms. Wade? I? No. Father is sending to the post-restaurant. Shall he have the pleasure of directing the messenger to ask if there are any letters for you? I thank him, but I know there can be none. We are afraid, said Pet, sitting down beside her shyly and half tenderly, that you will feel quite deserted when we are all gone. Indeed. Not, said Pet, apologetically and embarrassed by her eyes. Not, of course, that we are any company to you, or that we have been able to be so, or that we thought you wished it. I have not intended to make it understood that I did wish it. No, of course, but in short, said Pet, timidly touching her hand as it lay impassive on the sofa between them. Will you not allow Father to tender you any slight assistance or service? You will be very glad. Very glad, said Mr. Meagles, coming forward with his wife and Clenum. Anything short of speaking the language, I shall be delighted to undertake, I am sure. I am obliged to you, she returned, but my arrangements are made, and I prefer to go my own way in my own manner. Do you? said Mr. Meagles to himself, as he surveyed her with a puzzled look. Well, there's character in that, too. I am not much used to the society of young ladies, and I am afraid I may not show my appreciation of it as others might. A pleasant journey to you. Goodbye. She would not have put out her hand, it seemed, but had Mr. Meagles put out his so straight before her that she could not pass it. She put hers in it, and it lay there just as it had lain upon the couch. Goodbye, said Mr. Meagles. This is the last goodbye upon the list, for Mother and I have just said it to Mr. Clenum here, and he only waits to say it to Pet. Goodbye, we may never meet again. In our course through life we shall meet the people who are coming to meet us, from many strange places and by many strange roads, was the composed reply. And what it is said to us to do to them, and what it is said to them to do to us, will all be done. There was something in the manner of these words that jarred upon Petsia. It implied that what was to be done was necessarily evil, and it caused her to say in a whisper, O Father, and to shrink childishly, in her spoiled way, a little closer to him. This was not lost on the speaker. You're pretty daughter, she said, starts to think of such things. Yet, looking full upon her, you may be sure that there are men and women already on their road, who have their business to do with you, and who will do it. Of a certainty they will do it. They may be coming hundreds, thousands of miles over the sea there. They may be close at hand now. They may be coming, or anything you know or anything you can do to prevent it, from the vilest sweepings of this very town. With the coldest of farewells, and with a certain worn expression on her beauty that gave it, though scarcely yet in its prime, a wasted look, she left the room. Now there were many stairs and passages that she had to traverse in passing from that part of the spacious house to the chamber she had secured for her own occupation. When she had almost completed the journey, and was passing along the gallery in which her room was, she heard an angry sound of muttering and sobbing. A door stood open, and within she saw the attendant upon the girl she had just left, the maid with the curious name. She stood still to look at this maid, a sullen, passionate girl. Her rich black hair was all about her face. Her face was flashed and hot, and as she sobbed and raged, she blacked at her lips with an unsparing hand. Selfish brutes, said the girl sobbing and heaving between wiles, not caring what becomes of me, leaving me ear hungry and thirsty and tired, to starve for anything they care, beasts, devils, wretches. My poor girl, what is the matter? She looked up suddenly with reddened eyes, and with her hand suspended in the act of pinching her neck, freshly disfigured with great scarlet blots. It's nothing to you what's the matter, it don't signify to anyone. Oh yes it does, I am sorry to see you so. You are not sorry, said the girl, you are glad, you know you are glad, I never was like this but twice over in the quarantine yonder, and both times you found me, I am afraid of you. Afraid of me? Yes, you seem to come like my own anger, my own malice, my own whatever it is, I don't know what it is, but I am ill-used, I am ill-used, I am ill-used. Hear the sobs and the tears, and the tearing hand which had all been suspended together since the first surprise went on together anew. The visitor stood looking at her with a strange attentive smile. It was wonderful to see the fury of the contest in the girl, and the bodily struggle she made as if she were rent by the demons of old. I am younger than she is by two or three years, and yet it's me that looks after her, as if I was old, and it's she that's always pet and called baby. I detest the name, I hate her, they make a fool of her, they spoil her, she thinks of nothing but herself, she thinks no more of me than if I was a stock on a stone. So the girl went on. You must have patience. I will have patience. If they take much care of themselves, and little or none of you, you must not mind it. I will mind it. Hush, be more prudent, you forget your dependent position. I don't care for that, I'll run away, I'll do some mischief, I won't bear it, I can't bear it, I shall die if I try to bear it. The observer stood with her hand upon her own bosom, looking at the girl, as one afflicted with the diseased part might curiously watch the dissection and exposition of an analogous case. The girl raged and battled with all the force of her youth and fullness of life, until by little and little her passionate exclamations trailed off into broken murmurs, as if she were in pain. By corresponding degrees she sank into a chair, then upon her knees, then upon the ground beside the bed, drawing the covalet with her, half to hide her shamed head and wet hair in it, and half, as it seemed, to embrace it, rather than have nothing to take to her repentant breast. Go away from me, go away from me. When my temper comes upon me I am mad. I know I might keep it off if I only tried hard enough, and sometimes I do try hard enough, and at other times I don't and won't. What have I said? I knew when I said it, it was all lies. They think I am being taken care of somewhere, and have all I want. They are nothing but good to me. I love them dearly. No people could ever be kinder to a thankless creature than they always are to me. Do, do go away for I am afraid of you. I am afraid of myself when I feel my temper coming, and I am as much afraid of you. Go away from me, and let me pray and cry myself better. The day passed on, and again the white stare stared itself out, and the hot night was on Marseille, and through it the caravan of the morning, all dispersed, went their appointed ways. And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life. End of chapter the second, book the first. This recording is in the public domain. Chapter the third, book the first, of Little Dorit. Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff. Little Dorit by Charles Dickens. Book the first, chapter the third, home. It was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the soles of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the plague were in the city and the dead carts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient world. All taboo with that enlightened strictness that the ugly South Sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed themselves at home again. Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind or raise it up. Nothing for the spent toiler to do, but to compare the monotony of his seventh day with the monotony of his six days, think what a weary life he led and make the best of it, or the worst, according to the probabilities. At such a happy time, so propitious to the interests of religion and morality, Mr. Arthur Clenham, newly arrived from Marseille by way of Dover, and by Dover coached the blue-eyed maid, sat in the window of a coffee house on Ludgert Hill. Ten thousand responsible houses surrounded him. Browning as heavily on the streets they composed, as if they were everyone inhabited by the ten young men of the calendar's story, who blackened their faces and bemoaned their miseries every night. Fifty thousand layers surrounded him where people lived so unwholesomely that fair water put into their crowded rooms on Saturday night would be corrupt on Sunday morning. Albeit, my lord, their county member was amazed that they failed to sleep in company with their butchers' meat. Miles of close wells and pits of houses, where the inhabitants gasped for air, stretched far away towards every point of the compass. Through the heart of the town, a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed in the place of a fine fresh river. What secular want could the millioner soul of human beings, whose daily labour, six days in the week, lay among these Arcadian objects, from the sweet sameness of which they had no escape between the cradle and the grave? What secular want could they possibly have upon their seventh day? Clearly they could want nothing but a stringent policeman. Mr. Arthur Clenham sat in the window of the coffee house on Ludgert Hill, counting one of the neighbouring bells, making sentences and burdens of songs out of it in spite of himself, and wondering how many sick people it might be the death of in the cause of the year. As the hour approached, its changes of measure made it more and more exasperating. At the quarter, it went off into a condition of deadly lively opportunity, urging the populace in a voluble manner to come to church, come to church, come to church. At the ten minutes it became aware that the congregation would be scanty and slowly hammered out in low spirits, they won't come, they won't come, they won't come. At the five minutes it abandoned hope, and took every house in the neighbourhood for 300 seconds, with one dismal swing per second, as a groan of despair. Thank heaven! said Clenham when the hour struck, and the bell stopped. But its sound had revived a long train of miserable Sundays, and the procession would not stop with the bell, but continued to march on. Heaven forgive me, said he, and those who trained me, how I have hated this day. There was the dreary Sunday of his childhood, when he sat with his hands before him, scared out of his senses by a horrible tract which commenced business with the poor child, by asking him in its title why he was going to perdition. A piece of curiosity that he really, in a frock and draws, was not in a condition to satisfy, and which for the further attraction of his infant mind, had a parenthesis in every other line with some such hiccuping references to ep.thes.c.iii, v.6 and 7. There was the sleepy Sunday of his boyhood, when like a military deserter, he was marched to chapel by a peaked of teachers three times a day, morally handcuffed to another boy, and when he would willingly have bartered two meals of indigestible sermon for another round so too of inferior mutton at his candy dinner in the flesh. There was the interminable Sunday of his known age, when his mother, stern of face and unrelenting of heart, would sit all day behind a Bible bound, like her own construction of it, in the hardest, barest and straightest boards, with one dinted ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain, and a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the leaves, as if it, of all books, were a fortification against sweetness of temper, natural affection and gentle intercourse. There was the resentful Sunday of a little later, when he sat down glowering and glooming through the tidy length of the day, with a silent sense of injury in his heart, and no more real knowledge of the benefits and history of the New Testament, than if he had been bred among idolaters. There was a legion of Sundays, all days of unserviceable bitterness and modification, slowly passing before him. Beg pardon, sir? said a brisk waiter robbing the table. Wish-see-bedroom? Yes, I have just made up my mind to do it. Chai-mate? cried the waiter. Jellumbox nam-seven, wish-see-room. Stay! said Clenham, rousing himself. I was not thinking of what I said. I answered mechanically. I am not going to sleep here. I am going home. Ditsa? Chai-mate! Jellumbox nam-seven, not going to sleep here. Go home! He sat in the same place as the day died, looking at the dull houses opposite, and thinking if the disembodied spirits of former inhabitants were ever conscious of them, how they must pity themselves for their old places of imprisonment. Sometimes a face would appear behind the dingy glass of a window, and would fade away into the gloom as if it had seen enough of life and had vanished out of it. Presently the rain began to fall in slanting lines between him and those houses, and people began to collect undercover of the public passage opposite, and to look out hopelessly at the sky as the rain dropped thicker and faster. Then wet umbrellas began to appear, draggled skirts and mud. What the mud had been doing with itself or where it came from, who could say? But it seemed to collect in a moment as a crowd will, and in five minutes to have splashed all the sons and daughters of Adam. The lamplighter was going his rounds now, and as the fiery jets sprang up under his touch, one might have fancied them astonished at being suffered to introduce any show of brightness into such a dismal scene. Mr. Arthur Clenham took up his cat and buttoned his coat, and walked out. In the country, the rain would have developed a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would have had its bright association with some beautiful form of growth or life. In the city, it had developed only foul stale smells, and was a sickly, lukewarm, dirt-stained, wretched addition to the gutters. He crossed by St. Paul's and went down at a long angle, almost to the water's edge, through some of the crooked and descending streets which lie, and blame more crookedly and closely, then, between the river and sheepside. Passing, now the multi-hole of some obsolete worshipful company, now the illuminated windows of a congregationless church that seemed to be waiting for some adventurous Belzoni to dig it out and discover its history. Passing silent warehouses and wharves, and here and there an arrow alley leading to the river, where a wretched little bill, found drowned, was weeping on the wet wall. He came at last to the house he sought, an old brick house so dingy as to be all but black, standing by itself within a gateway. Before it, a square courtyard, where a shrubble tool and a patch of grass were as rank, which is saying much, as the iron railings enclosing them were rusty. Behind it, a jumble of roots. It was a double house, with long, narrow, heavily framed windows. Many years ago, it had had it in its mind to slide down sideways. It had been propped up, however, and was leaning on some half-dozen gigantic crutches, with gymnasium for the neighbouring cats, weather-stained, smoke-blackened and overgrown with weeds, appeared in these latter days to be no very sure reliance. Nothing changed, said the traveller, stopping to look round, dark and miserable as ever. A light in my mother's window, which seems never to have been extinguished since I came home twice a year from school, and dragged my box over this pavement. Well, well, well. He went up to the door, which had a project in canopy and carved work of festooned jack-towels and children's heads with water on the brain, designed after a once popular monumental pattern, and knocked. A shuffling step was soon heard on the stone floor of the hall, and the door was opened by an old man, bent and dried, but with keen eyes. He had a candle in his hand, and he held it up for a moment to assist his keen eyes. Oh, Mr. Arthur, he said without any emotion, you are calm at last, step in. Mr. Arthur stepped in and shut the door. Your figure is filled out and set, said the old man, turning to look at him with the light erased again and shaking his head. But you don't come up to your father in my opinion, nor yet your mother. How is my mother? She, as she always is now, keeps her room when not actually bedridden, and hasn't been out of it fifteen times in as many years, Arthur. They had walked into a spare meagre dining room. The old man had put the candle stick upon the table, and, supporting his right elbow with his left hand, was smoothing his leather and jaws while he looked at the visitor. The visitor offered his hand. The old man took it coldly enough, and seemed to prefer his jaws, to which he returned as soon as he could. I doubt if your mother will approve of your coming home on the summer, Arthur. He said shaking his head warily. You wouldn't have me go away again. Oh, I, I, I am not the master. It's not what I would have. I have stood between your father and mother for a number of years. I don't pretend to stand between your mother and you. Will you tell her that I have come home? Yes, Arthur, yes. Oh, to be sure. I will tell her that you have come home. Please, to wait here. You won't find the room changed. He took another candle from a cupboard, lighted it, left the first on the table, and went upon his errand. It was a short, bold old man, in a high-shouldered black coat and waistcoat, drab breeches, and long drab gaiters. He might from his dress have been either clerk or servant, and in fact had long been both. There was nothing about him in the way of decoration but a watch, which was lowered into the depths of its proper pocket by an old black ribbon, and had a tarnished copper key moored above it, to show where it was sunk. His head was awry, and he had a one-sided, crab-like way with him, as if his foundations had yielded at about the same time as those of the house, and he ought to have been propped up in a similar manner. How weak am I, said Arthur Clannum when he was gone, that I could shed tears at this reception, I who have never experienced anything else, who have never expected anything else. He not only could, but did. It was the momentary yielding of a nature that had been disappointed from the dawn of its perceptions, but had not quite given up all its hopeful yearnings yet. He subdued it, took up the candle, and examined the room. The old articles of furniture were in their old places. The plagues of Egypt, much the dimmer for the fly-and-smoke plagues of London, were framed and glazed upon the walls. There was the old cellarette with nothing in it, lined with lead, like a sort of coffin in compartments. There was the old dark closet, also with nothing in it, of which he had been many a time the sole contents in days of punishment, when he had regarded it as the veritable entrance to that borne, to which the tract had found him galloping. There was the large, hard-featured clock on the sideboard, which he used to see bending its figured brows upon him with a savage joy when he was behind hand with his lessons, and which when it was wound up once a week with an iron handle used to sound as if it were growling in ferocious anticipation of the miseries, into which it would bring him. But here was the old man come back, saying, Arthur, I'll go before and light you. Arthur followed him up the staircase, which was paneled off into spaces like so many mourning tablets, into a dim-bed chamber, the floor of which had gradually so sunk and settled, that the fireplace was in a dell. On a black beer-like sofa in this hollow, propped up behind with one great angular black bolster like the block at a state execution in the good old times, sat his mother in a widow's dress. She and his father had been at variance from his earliest remembrance. To sit speechless himself in the midst of rigid silence, glancing in dread from the one averted face to the other, had been the peacefulest occupation of his childhood. She gave him one glassikis and four stiff fingers muffled in woosted. This embrace concluded, he sat down on the opposite side of her little table. There was a fire in the grate, as there had been night and day for 15 years. There was a kettle on the hob, as there had been night and day for 15 years. There was a little mound of damped ashes on the top of the fire, and another little mound swept together under the grate, as there had been night and day for 15 years. There was a smell of black dye in the airless room, which the fire had been drawing out of the crepe and stuff of the windows dress for 15 months, and out of the beer-like sofa for 15 years. Mother, this is a change from your old active habits. The world has narrowed to these dimensions, Arthur, she replied, glancing round the room. It is well for me that I never set my heart upon its hollow vanities. The old influence of her presence and her stern, strong voice so gathered about her son, that he felt conscious of a renewal of the timid chill and reserve of his childhood. Do you never leave your room, mother? What with my rheumatic affection, and what with its attendant debility or nervous weakness, names are of no matter now, I have lost the use of my limbs, I never leave my room. I have not been outside this door for, tell him for how long, she said speaking over her shoulder. A dozen year next Christmas, returned a cracket voice out of the dimness behind, is that Avery, said Arthur, looking towards it. The cracket voice replied that it was Avery, and an old woman came forward into what doubtful light there was, and kissed her hand once, then subsided again into the dimness. I am able, said Mrs. Clannum with a slight motion of hosted muffled right hand towards a chair on wheels, standing before a tall writing cabinet, closed shut up. I am able to attend to my business duties, and I am thankful for the privilege. It is a great privilege, but no more of business on this day. It is a bad night, is it not? Yes, Mother. Does it snow? Snow, Mother. And we only yet in September. All seasons are alike to me. She returned with a grim kind of luxuriousness. I know nothing of summer and winter shut up here. The Lord has been pleased to put me beyond all that. With her cold grey eyes and her cold grey hair, and her removable face, as stiff as the folds of her stony headdress, her being beyond the reach of the seasons seemed but a fit sequence to her being beyond the reach of all changing emotions. On her little table lay two or three books, her handkerchief, a pair of steel spectacles newly taken off, and an old-fashioned cold watch in a heavy double case. Upon this last object, her son's eyes and her own now rested together. I see that you received the packet I sent you on my father's death, safely, Mother. You see, I never knew my father to show so much anxiety on any subject, as that his watch should be sent straight to you. I keep it here as a remembrance of your father. It was not until the last that he expressed the wish, when he could only put his hand upon it, and very indistinctly say to me, your mother. A moment before I thought him wandering in his mind, as he had been for many hours, I think he had no consciousness of pain in his short illness, when I saw him turn himself in his bed and try to open it. Was your father then not wandering in his mind when he tried to open it? No, he was quite sensible at that time. Mrs. Clenham shook her head. Whether in dismissal of the deceased, or opposing herself to her son's opinion, was not clearly expressed. After my father's death I opened it myself, thinking there might be, for anything I knew, some memorandum there, some memorandum there. However, as I need not tell you, Mother, there was nothing but the old silk watch paper worked in beads, which you found no doubt in its place between the cases, where I found and left it. Mrs. Clenham signified a scent, then added. No more of business on this day. And then added, Avery, it is nine o'clock. Upon this, the old woman cleared the little table, went out of the room, and quickly returned with a tray on which was a dish of little rasks, and a small precise pat of butter, cool, symmetrical, white, and plump. The old man who had been standing by the door in one attitude during the whole interview, looking at the mother upstairs, as he had looked at the son downstairs, went out at the same time, and after a longer absence returned with another tray on which was the greater part of a bottle of port wine, which, to judge by his panting, he had brought from the cellar, a lemon, a sugar basin, and a spice box. With these materials and the aid of the kettle, he filled the tumbler with a hot and odorous mixture, measured out and compounded with as much nicety as a physician's prescription. Into this mixture, Mrs. Clenham dipped certain of the rasks and add them, while the old woman buttered certain other of the rasks, which were to be eaten alone. When the invalid had eaten all the rasks and drunk all the mixture, the two trays were removed, and the books and the candle, watch, handkerchief, and spectacles were replaced upon the table. She then put on the spectacles and read certain passages aloud from a book, sternly, fiercely, wrathfully, praying that her enemies, she made them by her tone and manner expressly hers, might be put to the edge of the sword, consumed by fire, smitten by plagues and leprosy, that their bones might be ground to dust, that they might be utterly exterminated. As she read on, ears seemed to fall away from her son like the imaginings of a dream, and all the old dark horrors of his usual preparation for the sleep of an innocent child to overshadow him. She shut the book and remained for a little time with her face shaded by her hand. So did the old man, otherwise still unchanged in attitude. So probably did the old woman in her dimmer part of the room. Then the sick woman was ready for bed. Good night, Arthur. After you will see to your accommodation. Only touch me, for my hand is tender. He touched the worsted muffling of her hand. That was nothing. If his mother had been sheathed in brass, there would have been no new barrier between them. And followed the old man and woman downstairs. The latter asked him, when they were alone together among the heavy shadows of the dining room, would he have some supper? No, Afari, no supper. You shall, if you like, said Afari. There is her tomorrow's partridge in the larder, her first this year. Say the word and I'll cook it. No, he had not long dined and could eat nothing. Have something to drink, then, said Afari. You shall have some of her bottle of port, if you like. I'll tell Jeremiah that you ordered me to bring you you. No, nor would he have that either. It's no reason, Arthur, said the old woman, bending over him to whisper, that because I am a feared of my life or am you should be. You've got half the property, haven't you? Yes, yes. Well, then, don't you be called your clever Arthur, aren't you? He nodded, as she seemed to expect an answer in the affirmative. Then stand up against them. She's awful clever, and number a clever one does say a word to Arthur. He's a clever one. Oh, he's a clever one. And he gives it all when he asks a mind to it. He does. Your husband does? Does. It makes me shake from head to foot to hear him give it up. My husband, Jeremiah, let which can conquer even your mother. What can he be by a clever one to do that? His shuffling food step coming towards them caused her to retreat to the other end of the room. Though at all hard-favoured, sinewy old woman who in her youth might have enlisted in the food guards without much fear of discovery, she collapsed before the little keen-eyed crab-like old man. Now, Afri, said he, now, woman, what are you doing? Can't you find, master Arthur, something or another to pick at? Master Arthur repeated his recent refusal to pick at anything. Very well, then, said the old man, make his bed, stir yourself. His neck was so twisted that the knotted ends of his white cravat usually dangled under one ear. His natural acerbity and energy, always contending with the second nature of habitual repression, gave his features a swollen and suffused look. And altogether, he had a weird appearance of having hanged himself at one time or other and of having gone about ever since, halter and all, exactly as some timely hand had cut him down. You will have bitter words together tomorrow, Arthur, you and your mother, said Jeremiah. You are having given up the business on your father's death, which she suspects, though we have left it to you to tell her, won't go off smoothly. I have given up everything in life for the business, and the time came for me to give up that. Good, cried Jeremiah, evidently meaning bad. Very good. Only don't expect me to stand between your mother and you, Arthur. I stood between your mother and your father, fending off this, and fending off that, and getting crushed and pounded between some. And I've done with such work. You will never be asked to begin it again for me, Jeremiah. Good, I'm glad to hear it, because I should have had to decline it if I had been. That's enough, as your mother says, and more than enough of such matters on a Sabbath night. Afri, woman, have you found what you want yet? She had been collecting sheets and blankets from a press, and hastened to gather them up and to reply, Yes, Jeremiah. Arthur Clenham helped her by carrying the load himself, wished the old man good night, and went upstairs with her to the top of the house. They mounted up and up through the musty smell of an old closed house, little used, to a large garret bedroom, meager and spare, like all the other rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer than the rest, by being the place of banishment for the worn out furniture. Its movables were ugly old chairs with worn out seats, and ugly old chairs without any seats. A threadbare patternless carpet, a maimed table, a crippled wardrobe, a lean set of fire irons like the skeleton of a set deceased, a washing stand that looked as if it had stood for ages in a hail of dirty soap sards, and a bedstead with four bare atomies of posts, each terminating in a spike, as if for the dismal accommodation of lodgers who might prefer to impale themselves. Arthur opened the long, low window, and looked out upon the old blasted and blackened forest of chimneys, and the old red glare in the sky, which had seemed to him once upon a time but a nightly reflection of the fiery environment that was presented to his childish fancy in all directions. Let it look where it would. He drew in his head again, sat down at the bedside, and looked on at Afari flintwinch making the bed. Afari, you were not married when I went away? She screwed her mouth into the form of saying no, shook her head, and proceeded to get a pillow into its case. How did it happen? Why, Jeremiah, cause, said Afari with an end of the pillow case between her teeth. Of course, he proposed it. But how did it all come about? I should have thought that neither of you would have married. Least of all, should I have thought of your marrying each other? No more should I, said Mrs. Flintwitch, tying the pillow tightly in its case. That's what I mean. When did you begin to think otherwise? Never began to think otherwise at all, said Mrs. Flintwitch. Seeing, as she patted the pillow into its place on the bolster, that he was still looking at her as if waiting for the rest of her reply, she gave it a great poke in the middle and asked, How could I help myself? How could you help yourself from being married? Of course, said Mrs. Flintwitch. It was no doing a mine. I'd never thought of it. I'd got something to do without thinking indeed. She kept me to it, as well as here, when she could go about, and she could go about then. Well, well, I called Mrs. Flintwitch. That's what I said myself. Well, what's the use of considering? If them two clever ones have made up their minds to it, what's left for me to do? Nothing. Was it my mother's project, then? The law bless you, Arthur, and forgive me the wish. Cried Aphorie, speaking always in a low tone. If they hadn't been both of a mind in it, how could it ever have been? Jeremiah never courted me. Tant likely that he would, after living in the house with me and ordering me about for as many years as it done, he said to me one day, he said, Aphorie said, now I am going to tell you something. What do you think of the name of Flintwitch? What do I think of it? I says, yes, he said, because you're going to take it. He said, take it? I says, Jeremiah, oh, he's a clever one. Mrs. Flintwitch went on to spread the upper sheet over the bed, and the blanket over that, and the counterpane over that, as if she had quite concluded her story. Well, said Arthur again. Well, echoed Mrs. Flintwitch again. How could I help myself? He said to me, Aphorie, you and me must be married, and I'll tell you why. She's filing in health, and she'll want pretty constant attendance up in her room, and we shall have to be much with her, and there'll be nobody about Naba ourselves when we are away from her, and altogether it will be more convenient. She's of my opinion, he said, so if you put your bunny on next Monday morning, I aid, we'll get it over. Mrs. Flintwitch tucked up the bed. Well? Well, repeated Mrs. Flintwitch, I think so. I sits me down and says it. Well? Jeremiah then says to me, as to Bans, next Sunday being the third time of asking, where I've put a map of Fortnight, is my reason for naming Monday. She'll speak to you about it herself, and now she'll find you prepared, Aphorie. That same day she spoke to me, and she said, so, Aphorie, I understand that you and Jeremiah are going to be married. I am glad of it, and so are you with reason. It is a very good thing for you, and very welcome under the circumstances to me. It is a sensible man, and a trustworthy man, and a persevering man, and a pious man. What could I say when it had come to that? Why, if it had been a smothering instead of a wedding? Mrs. Flintwitch cast about in her mind with great pains for this form of expression. I couldn't have said a word upon it against them two clever ones. In good faith I believe so, and so you may, Arthur. Aphorie, what girl was that in my mother's room just now? Girl? said Mrs. Flintwitch in a rather sharp key. It was a girl surely who might saw near you almost hidden in the dark corner. Oh, she? Little Dorrie? She's nothing. She's a whim of hers. It was a peculiarity of Aphorie Flintwitch that she never spoke of Mrs. Clennon by name. But there's another sort of girl's than that about. Have you forgot your old sweet art? Long and long ago I'll be bound. I suffered enough for my mother separating us to remember her. I recollect her very well. Have you got another? No. Here's news for you then. She's well to do now and a widow. And if you like to have her, why, you can. And how do you know that, Aphorie? Them two clever ones have been speaking about it. There's Jeremiah on the stars. She was gone in a moment. Mrs. Flintwitch had introduced him to the web that his mind was busily weaving. In that old workshop where the loom of his youth had stood, the last thread wanting to the pattern. The airy folly of a boy's love had found its way even into that house, and he had been as wretched under its hopelessness as if the house had been a castle of romance. Little more than a week ago at Marseilles, the face of the pretty girl from whom he had parted with regret had had an unusual interest for him, and a tender hold upon him, because of some resemblance real or imagined to this first face that had soared out of his gloomy life into the bright glories of fancy. He leaned upon the sill of the long, low window, and looking out upon the blackened forest of chimneys again, began to dream. For it had been the uniform tendency of this man's life, so much was wanting in it to think about, so much that might have been better directed and happier to speculate upon, to make him a dreamer after all. End of chapter the third, book the first. This recording is in the public domain.