 Chapter IV. Book the First of Little Dorit Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff. Little Dorit by Charles Dickens. Book the First. Chapter IV. Mrs. Flintwinch has a dream. When Mrs. Flintwinch dreamed, she usually dreamed unlike the son of her old mistress with her eyes shut. She had a curiously vivid dream that night before she had left the son of her old mistress many hours. In fact, it was not at all like a dream. It was so very real in every respect. It happened in this wise. The bed chamber occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Flintwinch was within a few paces of that to which Mrs. Clannum had been so long confined. It was not on the same floor, for it was a room at the side of the house approached by a steep descent of a few odd steps diverging from the main staircase nearly opposite to Mrs. Clannum's door. It could scarcely be said to be within call. The walls, doors and panelling of the old place were so cumbersome, but it was within easy reach, in any undress, at any hour of the night, in any temperature. At the head of the bed and within a foot of Mrs. Flintwinch here was a bell, the line of which hung ready to Mrs. Clannum's hand. Whenever this bell rang, up started Afery and was in the sick room before she was awake. Having got her mistress into bed, lighted her lamp and given her good night, Mrs. Flintwinch went to Roost as usual, saving that her lord had not yet appeared. It was her lord himself who became, unlike the last theme in the mind, according to the observation of most philosophers, the subject of Mrs. Flintwinch's dream. It seemed to her that she awoke after sleeping some hours and found Jeremiah not yet a bed. That she looked at the candle she had left burning and measuring the time like King Alfred the Great was confirmed by its wasted state in her belief that she had been asleep for some considerable period. That she arose thereupon, muffled herself up in a wrapper, put on her shoes and went out on the staircase much surprised to look for Jeremiah. The staircase was as wooden and solid as need be and Afery went straight down it without any of those deviations peculiar to dreams. She did not skim over it, but walked down it and guided herself by the banisters on account of her candle having died out. In one corner of the hall, behind the house door, there was a little waiting room, like a well shaft, with a long narrow window in it, as if it had been ripped up. In this room, which was never used, a light was burning. Mrs. Flintwinch crossed the hall, feeling its pavement cold to her stockingless feet and peeped in between the rusty hinges on the door, which stood a little open. She expected to see Jeremiah fast asleep or in a fit, but he was calmly seated in a chair, awake, and in his usual health. But what? Hey, Lord forgive us! Mrs. Flintwinch muttered some ejaculation to this effect and turned giddy. For, Mr. Flintwinch awake was watching Mr. Flintwinch asleep. He sat on one side of the small table, looking keenly at himself on the other side with his chin sunk on his breast, snoring. The waking Flintwinch had his full front face presented to his wife. The sleeping Flintwinch was in profile. The waking Flintwinch was the old original. The sleeping Flintwinch was the double. Just as she might have distinguished between a tangible object and its reflection in a glass, Arthur made out this difference with her head going round and round. If she had had any doubt, which was her own Jeremiah, it would have been resolved by his impatience. He looked about him for an offensive weapon, caught up the snuffers, just before applying them to the cabbage-headed candle, lunged at the sleeper as though he would have run him through the body. Who's that? What's the matter? cried the sleeper, starting. Mr. Flintwinch made a movement with the snuffers as if he would have enforced silence on his companion by putting them down his throat. The companion, coming to himself, said, rubbing his eyes, I forgot where I was. You have been asleep? It's now Jeremiah, referring to his watch. Two hours. You said you would be rested enough if you had a short nap. I have had a short nap, said Double. Half past two o'clock in the morning, muttered Jeremiah. Where's your hat? Where's your coat? Where's the box? All here, said Double, tying up his throat with sleepy carefulness in a shawl. Stop a minute. Now give me the sleeve. Not that sleeve. The other one. I'm not as young as I was. Mr. Flintwinch had pulled him into his coat with vehement energy. You promised me a second glass after I was rested. Drink it, returned Jeremiah, and choke yourself, I was going to say, but go I mean. At the same time he produced the identical port wine bottle and filled a wine glass. Her port wine, I believe, said Double, tasting it as if you were in the docks with hours to spare. Her health. He took a sip. Your health. He took another sip. His health. He took another sip. And all friends round same paws. He emptied and put down the wine glass halfway through this ancient civic toast and took up the box. Then iron box some two feet square, which he carried under his arms pretty easily. Jeremiah watched his manner of adjusting it with jealous eyes. Tried it with his hands to be sure that he had a firm hold of it, let him for his life be careful what he was about, and then stole out on tiptoe to open the door for him. Avery, anticipating the last movement, was on the staircase. The sequence of things was so ordinary and natural that, standing there, she could hear the door open, feel the night air and see the stars outside. But now came the most remarkable part of the dream. She felt so afraid of her husband that being on the staircase she had not the power to retreat to her room, which she might easily have done before he had fastened the door, but stood there staring. Consequently, when he came up the staircase to bed, candle in hand, he came full upon her. He looked astonished, but said not a word. He kept his eyes upon her and kept advancing, and she, completely under his influence, kept retiring before him. Thus, she walking backward and he walking forward, they came into their own room. There were no sooner shot there than Mr. Flintwinch took her by the throat and shook her until she was black in the face. Why, Avery woman, Avery, said Mr. Flintwinch, what have you been dreaming of? Wake up, wake up! What's the matter? The, the matter, Jeremiah, gasped Mrs. Flintwinch, rolling her eyes. Why, Avery woman, Avery, you have been getting out of bed in your sleep, my dear. I come up after having fallen asleep myself below and find you in your upper hair with the nightmare. Avery woman, said Mr. Flintwinch, with a friendly grin on his expressive countenance. If you ever have a dream of this sort again, it'll be a sign of your being in want of physics, and I'll give you such a dose, old woman, such a dose. Mrs. Flintwinch thanked him and crept into bed. End of chapter the fourth. Book the first. This recording is in the public domain. Chapter the fifth. Book the first of Little Dorit. Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff. Little Dorit by Charles Dickens. Book the first. Chapter the fifth. Family affairs. As the city clocks struck nine on Monday morning, Mrs. Clenum was wheeled by Jeremiah Flintwinch of the cut-down aspect to her tall cabinet. When she had unlocked and opened it, and had settled herself at its desk, Jeremiah withdrew, as it might be to hang himself more effectually, and her son appeared. Are you any better this morning, mother? She shook her head with the same austere air of luxuriousness that she had shown overnight when speaking of the weather. I shall never be better any more. It is well for me, Arthur, that I know it and can bear it. Sitting with her hands laid separately upon the desk, and the tall cabinet towering before her, she looked as if she were performing on a dumb church organ. Her son thought so. It was an old thought with him, while he took his seat beside it. She opened the drawer, too, looked over some business papers, and put them back again. Her severe face had no thread of relaxation in it, by which any explorer could have been guided to the gloomy labyrinth of her thoughts. Shall I speak of our affairs, mother? Are you inclined to enter upon business? Am I inclined, Arthur? Rather, are you? Your father has been dead a year and more. I have been at your disposal and waiting your pleasure ever since. There was much to arrange before I could leave, and when I did leave, I travelled a little for rest and relief. She turned her face towards him, as not having heard or understood his last words. For rest and relief! She glanced round the somber room and appeared from the motion of her lips to repeat the words to herself, as calling it to witness how little of either it afforded her. Besides, mother, you being sole executrix and having the direction and management of the estate, there remained little business, or I might say none that I could transact until you had had time to arrange matters to your satisfaction. The accounts are made out. She returned, I have them here. The vouchers have all been examined and passed. You can inspect them when you like, Arthur. Now, if you please. It is quite enough, mother, to know that the business is completed. Shall I proceed then? Why not? She said in her frozen way. Mother, our house has done less and less for some years past, and our dealings have been progressively on the decline. We have never shown much confidence or invited much. We have attached no people to us. The track we have kept is not the track of the time, and we have been left far behind. I need not dwell on this to you, mother. You know it necessarily. I know what you mean, she answered in a qualified tone. Even this old house in which we speak, pursued her son, is an instance of what I say. In my father's earlier time and in his uncle's time before him, it was a place of business, really a place of business and business resort. Now it is a mere anomaly and incongruity here, out of date and out of purpose. All our consignments have long been made to Rovingham's the commission merchants, and although, as a check upon them, and in the stewardship of my father's resources, your judgment and watchfulness have been actively exerted. Still those qualities would have influenced my father's fortunes equally, if you had lived in any private dwelling. Would they not? Do you consider, she returned without answering his question, that a house serves no purpose, Arthur, in sheltering your infirm and afflicted, justly infirm and righteously afflicted mother? I was speaking only of business purposes. With what object? I am coming to it. I foresee, she returned fixing her eyes upon him, what it is. The Lord forbid that I should repine under any visitation. In my sinfulness I merit bitter disappointment, and I accept it. Mother, I grieve to hear you speak like this, though I have had my apprehensions that you would. You knew I would. You knew me, she interrupted. Her son paused for a moment. He had struck fire out of her, and was surprised. Well, she said, relapsing into stone. Go on, let me hear. You have anticipated, mother, that I decide for my part to abandon the business. I have done with it. I will not take upon myself to advise you. You will continue it, I see. If I had any influence with you, I would simply use it to soften your judgment of me in causing you this disappointment, to represent to you that I have lived off of a long term of life and have never before set my own will against yours. I cannot say that I have been able to conform myself in heart and spirit to your rules. I cannot say that I believe my forty years have been profitable or pleasant to myself or anyone, but I have habitually submitted, and I only ask you to remember it. Woe to the suppliant, if such a one there were or ever had been, any concession to look for in the inexorable face of the cabinet. Woe to the defaulter, whose appeal lay to the tribunal where those severe eyes presided. Great need had the rigid woman of her mystical religion veiled in gloom and darkness, with lightnings of cursing, vengeance and destruction, lashing through the sable clouds. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, as a prayer too poor in spirit for her. Smite thou my debtors, Lord, or wither them, crush them, do thou as I would do, and thou shalt have my worship. This was the empires tower of stone she built up to scale heaven. Have you finished Arthur, or have you anything more to say to me? I think there can be nothing else. You have been short, but full of matter. Mother, I have yet something more to say. It has been upon my mind night and day this long time. It is far more difficult to say than what I have said, that concerned myself. This concerns us all. Us all? Who are us all? Yourself, myself, my dead father. She took her hands from the desk, folded them in her lap, and sat looking towards the fire, with the impenetrability of an old Egyptian sculpture. He knew my father infinitely better than I ever knew him, and his reserve with me yielded to you. You were much the stronger mother and directed him. As a child, I knew it as well as I know it now. I knew that your ascendancy over him was the cause of his going to China to take care of the business there, while he took care of it here, though I do not even now know whether these were really terms of separation that you agreed upon, and that it was your will that I should remain with you until I was twenty, and then go to him as I did. You will not be offended by my recalling this after twenty years. I am waiting to hear why you recall it. He lowered his voice and said, with manifest reluctance and against his will, I want to ask you, mother, whether it ever occurred to you to suspect? At the word suspect, she turned her eyes momentarily upon her son with a dark frown. She then suffered them to seek the fire as before, but with the frown fixed above them, as if the sculptor of old Egypt had intended it in the hard granite face to frown for ages. That he had any secret remembrance which caused him trouble of mind, remorse, whether you ever observed anything in his conduct suggesting that, or ever spoke to him upon it, or ever heard him hint at such a thing. I do not understand what kind of secret remembrance you mean to infer that your father was a prey to. She returned after a silence. You speak so mysteriously. Is it possible, mother, her son leaned forward to be the nearer to her while he whispered it, and laid his hand nervously upon her desk? Is it possible, mother, that he had unhappily wronged anyone and made no reparation? Looking at him wrathfully, she bent herself back in her chair to keep him farther off, but gave him no reply. I am deeply sensible, mother, that if this thought has never at any time flashed upon you, it must seem cruel and unnatural in me, even in this confidence to breathe it, but I cannot shake it off. Time and change. I have tried both before breaking silence do nothing to wear it out. Remember, I was with my father. Remember, I saw his face when he gave the watch into my keeping and struggled to express that he sent it as a token you would understand to you. Remember, I saw him at the last with the pencil in his failing hand trying to write some word for you to read, but to which he could give no shape. The more remote and cruel this vague suspicion that I have, the stronger the circumstances that could give it any semblance of probability to me. For heaven's sake, let us examine sacredly whether there is any wrong entrusted to us to set right. No one can help towards it, mother, but you. Still so recoiling in her chair that her overpoised weight moved it from time to time a little on its wheels and gave her the appearance of a phantom of fierce aspect gliding away from him. She interposed her left arm bent at the elbow with a bag of her hand towards her face between herself and him and looked at him in a fixed silence. In grasping at money and in driving hard bargains I have begun and I must speak of such things now, mother. Someone may have been grievously deceived injured ruined. You were the moving power of all this machinery before my birth. Your stronger spirit has been infused into all my father's dealings for more than two score years. You can set these doubts at rest, I think, if you will really help me to discover the truth. Will you, mother? He stopped in the hope that she would speak, but her grey hair was not more removable in its two folds than were her firm lips. If reparation can be made to anyone, if restitution can be made to anyone, let us know it and make it. Nay, mother, if within my means let me make it. I have seen so little happiness come of money, it has brought within my knowledge so little peace to this house or to anyone belonging to it that it is worth less to me than to another. It can buy me nothing that will not be a reproach and misery to me if I am haunted by a suspicion that it darkened my father's last hours with remorse and that it is not honestly unjustly mine. There was a bellrope hanging on the panelled wall, some two or three yards from the cabinet. By a swift and sudden action of her foot, she drove her wheeled chair rapidly back to it and pulled it violently, still holding her arm up in its shield-like posture as if he were striking at her and she warding off the blow. A girl came hurrying in frightened, sent Flintwinch here. In a moment the girl had withdrawn and the old man stood within the door. What? You're hammer and tongs already too? He said, coolly stroking his face. I thought you would be. I was pretty sure of it. Flintwinch, said the mother, look at my son, look at him. Well, I am looking at him, sent Flintwinch. She stretched out the arm with which she had shielded herself and as she went on pointed at the object of her anger. In the very hour of his return, almost before the shoe upon his foot is dry, he esperses his father's memory to his mother, asks his mother to become with him a spy upon his father's transactions through a lifetime, has misgivings that the goods of this world which we have painfully got together early and late, with wear and tear and toil and self-denial are so much plunder and asks to whom they shall be given up as reparation and restitution. Although she said this raging, she said it in a voice so far from being beyond her control that it was even lower than her usual tone. She also spoke with great distinctness. Reparation, said she, yes, truly, it is easy for him to talk of reparation, fresh from journeying and junketing in foreign lands and living a life of vanity and pleasure, but let him look at me in prison and in bonds here. I endure without murmuring because it is appointed that I shall so make reparation for my sins. Reparation, is there none in this room? Has there been none here these fifteen years? Thus was she always balancing her bargains with the majesty of heaven, posting up the entries to her credit, strictly keeping her set off and claiming her due. She was only remarkable in this for the force and emphasis with which she did it. Thousands upon thousands do it according to their varying manner every day. Flintwinch, give me that book. The old man handed it to her from the table. She put two fingers between the leaves, closed the book upon them and held it up to her son in a threatening way. In the days of old Arthur treated of in this commentary, there were pious men, beloved of the Lord, who would have cursed their sons for less than this, who would have sent them forth and sent whole nations forth if such had supported them to be avoided of God and man and perish down to the baby at the breast. But I only tell you that if you ever renew that theme with me I will renounce you. I will so dismiss you through that doorway that you had better have been motherless from your cradle. I will never see or know you more and if after all you were to come into this darkened room to look upon me lying dead, my body should bleed if I could make it when you came near me. In part relieved by the intensity of this threat and in part monstrous as the fact is by a general impression that it was in some sort a religious proceeding she handed back the book to the old man and was silent. Now, said Jeremiah, primising that I'm not going to stand between you two will you let me ask, as I have been called in and made a third, what is all this about? Take your version of it, returned Arthur finding it left to him to speak, from my mother, let it rest there. What I have said was said to my mother only. Oh, returned the old man, from your mother? Take it from your mother? Well, but your mother mentioned that you had been suspecting your father. That's not you, dearful Mr. Arthur. Who will you be suspecting next? Enough, said Mrs. Clenham turning her face so that it was addressed for the moment to the old man only. Let no more be said about this. Yes, but stop a bit, stop a bit. The old man persisted. Let us see how we stand. Have you told Mr. Arthur that he mustn't lay offences at his father's door? That he has no right to do it? That he has no ground to go upon? I tell him so now. Ah, exactly, said the old man. You tell him so now. You hadn't told him so before and you tell him so now. Aye, aye, that's right. You know I stood between you and his father so long that it seems as if death had made no difference and I was still standing between you. So I will and so in fairness I require to have that plainly put forward. Arthur, you pleased to hear that you have no right to mistrust your father and have no ground to go upon? He put his hands to the back of the wheeled chair and, mattering to himself, slowly wheeled his mistrust back to her cabinet. Now, he resumed standing behind her, in case I should go away leaving things half done and so should be wanted again when you come to the other half and get into one of your flights, has Arthur told you what he means to do about the business? He has relinquished it. In favour of nobody, I suppose? Mrs. Clenum glanced at her son, leaning against one of the windows. He observed the look and said, To my mother, of course, she does what she pleases. And if any pleasure, she said after a short pause, could arise for me out of the disappointment of my expectations that my son, in the prime of his life, would infuse new youth and strengthen to it and make it of great profit and power, it would be in advancing an old and faithful servant. Jeremiah, the captain, deserts the ship, but you and I will sink or float with it. Jeremiah, whose eyes glistened as if they saw money, darted a sudden look at the sun, which seemed to say, I owe you no thanks for this. You have done nothing towards it. And then told the mother that he thanked her and that Aphry thanked her that he would never desert her and that Aphry would never desert her. Finally he holed up his watch from its depths and said, Eleven, time for your roasters. And with that change of subject, which involved no change of expression or manner, rang the bell. But Mrs. Clenum resolved to treat herself with a greater rigor for having been supposed to be unacquainted with reparation, used to eat her roasters when they were brought. They looked tempting. Eight in number, circularly set out on a white plate on a tray covered with a white napkin, lined by a slice of buttered French roll and a little compact glass of cool wine and water. But she resisted all persuasions and sent them down again, placing the act to her credit, no doubt, in her eternal day book. This refection of oysters was not presided over by Aphry, but by the girl who had appeared when the bell was rung, the same who had been in the dimly lighted room last night. Now that he had an opportunity of observing her, Arthur found that her diminutive figure, small features and slight spare dress gave her the appearance of being much younger than she was. A woman probably of not less than two and twenty, she might have been passed in the street for little more than half that age. Not that her face was very youthful, for in truth there was more consideration and care in it than naturally belonged to her utmost ears. But she was so little and light, so noiseless and shy, and appeared so conscious of being out of place among the three hard elders, that she had all the manner and much of the appearance of a subdued child. In a hard way, and in an uncertain way that fluctuated between patronage and putting down the sprinkling from a watering pot and hydraulic pressure, Mrs. Clannum showed an interest in this dependent. Even in the moment of her entrance, upon the violent ringing of the bell, when the mother shielded herself with that singular action from the sun, Mrs. Clannum's eyes had had some individual recognition in them, which seemed reserved for her. As there are degrees of hardness in the hardest metal, and shades of colour in black itself, so even in the asperity of Mrs. Clannum's demeanour towards all the rest of humanity and towards little Dorit, there was a fine gradation. Little Dorit let herself out to do needlework. At so much a day, or at so little, from eight to eight, little Dorit was to be hired. Punctual to the moment little Dorit appeared, punctual to the moment little Dorit vanished. What became of little Dorit between the two eights was a mystery. Another of the moral phenomena of little Dorit. Besides her consideration money, her daily contract included meals. She had an extraordinary repugnance to dining in company. Would never do so if it were possible to escape. Would always plead that she had this bit of work to begin first, or that bit of work to finish first. And would, of a certainty, scheme and plan, not very cunningly it would seem, for she deceived no one, to dine alone. Successful in this, happy in carrying of her plate anywhere to make a table of her lap, or a box, or the ground, or even as was supposed to stand on tiptoe, dining moderately at a mantle shelf. The great anxiety of little Dorit's day was set at rest. It was not easy to make out little Dorit's face. She was so retiring, blight her needle in such removed corners, and started away so scared if encountered on the stairs. But it seemed to be a pale transparent face, quick in expression, though not beautiful in feature. It soft hazel eyes accepted. A delicately bent head, a tiny form, a quick little pair of busy hands, and a shabby dress. It must needs have been very shabby to look at all so. Being so neat, were little Dorit as she sat at work. For these particulars or generalities concerning little Dorit, Mr. Arthur was indebted in the cause of the day to his own eyes, and to Mrs. Aphry's tongue. If Mrs. Aphry had had any wheel or way of her own, it would probably have been unfavorable to little Dorit. But as them do clever ones, Mrs. Aphry's perpetual reference in whom her personality was swallowed up, were agreed to accept little Dorit as a matter of course, she had nothing for it but to follow suit. Similarly, if the two clever ones had agreed to murder little Dorit by candlelight, Mrs. Aphry being required to hold the candle would no doubt have done it. In the intervals of roasting the partridge for the invalid chamber, and preparing a baking dish of beef and pudding for the dining room, Mrs. Aphry made the communications above set forth, invariably putting her head in at the door again after she had taken it out to enforce resistance to the two clever ones. It appeared to have become a perfect passion with Mrs. Flintwinch that the only son should be pitted against them. In the cause of the day to, Arthur looked through the whole house, dull and dark he found it. The gaunt rooms, deserted for years upon years, seemed to have settled down into a gloomy lethargy, from which nothing could rouse them again. The furniture, at once spare and lumbering, hid in the rooms rather than furnished them, and there was no colour in all the house. Such colour as could ever been there, had long ago started away on lost sand beams, got itself absorbed, perhaps into flowers, butterflies, plumage of birds, precious stones, what not. There was not one straight floor from the foundation to the roof. The ceilings were so fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, that old women might have told fortunes in them better than in grouts of tea. The dead, cold hearts showed no traces of having ever been warmed but in heaps of soot that had tumbled down the chimneys, and eddied about in little dusky whirlwinds when the doors were opened. In what had once been a drawing room, there were a pair of meagre mirrors with dismal processions of black figures carrying black garlands, walking round the frames. But even these were short of heads and legs, and one undertaker like Cupid had swung round on its own axes and got upside down, and another had fallen off altogether. The room Arthur Clenham's deceased father had occupied for business purposes when he first remembered him was so unaltered that he might have been imagined still to keep it invisibly, as his visible relict kept her room upstairs. Jeremiah Flintwinch still going between them negotiating. His picture, dark and gloomy, earnestly speechless on the wall with the eyes intently looking at his son as they had looked when life departed from them, seemed to urge him awfully to the task he had attempted. But as to any yielding on the part of his mother, he had now no hope, and as to any other means of setting his distrust at rest, he had abandoned hope a long time. Down in the cellars, as up in the bed chambers, old objects that he well remembered were changed by age and decay, but were still in their old places, even to empty beer casks quarry with cobwebs and empty wine bottles with fur and fungus choking up their throats. There, too, among unusual bottle racks and pale slants of light from the yard above, was the strong room stored with old ledgers, which had as musty and corrupt a smell as if they were regularly balanced in the dead small hours of the nightly resurrection of old bookkeepers. The baking dish was served up in a penitential manner on a shrunken cloth at an end of the dining table at two o'clock, when he died with Mr. Flintwinch, the new partner. Mr. Flintwinch informed him that his mother had recovered her equanimity now and that he need not fear her again alluding to what had passed in the morning. And don't you lay offences at your father's door, Mr. Arthur? Added Jeremiah, once for all, don't do it. Now we have done with the subject. Mr. Flintwinch had been already rearranging and dusting his own particular little office, as if to do honour to his accession to new dignity. He resumed this occupation when he was replete with beef, had sucked up all the gravy in the baking dish with the flat of his knife and had drawn liberally on a barrel of small beer in the scullery. Thus refreshed, he tucked up his shirt sleeves and went to work again. And Mr. Arthur, watching him as he set about it, plainly saw that his father's picture, or his father's grave, would be as communicative with him as this old man. Now, a free woman, said Mr. Flintwinch as she crossed the hall. You hadn't made Mr. Arthur's bed when I was up there last. Stir yourself, bustle! But Mr. Arthur found the house so blank and dreary and was so unwilling to assist at another implacable consignment of his mother's enemies, perhaps himself among them, to mortal disfigurement and immortal ruin that he announced his intention of lodging at the coffee house where he had left his luggage. Mr. Flintwinch taking kindly to the idea of getting rid of him and his mother being indifferent beyond considerations of saving to most domestic arrangements that were not bounded by the walls of her own chamber, he easily carried this point without new offence. Daily business hours were agreed upon, which his mother, Mr. Flintwinch, and he, were to devote together to a necessary checking of books and papers, and he left the home he had so lately found with depressed heart. But little Dorit! The business hours, allowing for intervals of invalid regimen of oysters and partridges during which Clenum refreshed himself with a walk, were from ten to six for about a fortnight. Sometimes little Dorit was employed at her needle, sometimes not, sometimes appeared as a humble visitor, which must have been her character on the occasion of his arrival. His original curiosity augmented every day as he watched for her, saw, or did not see her, and speculated about her. Influenced by his predominant idea, he even fell into a habit of discussing with himself the possibility of her being in some way associated with it. At last he resolved to watch little Dorit and know more of her story. End of chapter the fifth, book the first. This recording is in the public domain. Chapter the sixth, book the first of little Dorit. Read for LibriVox.org by Ellis Christoff. Little Dorit by Charles Dickens. Book the first. Chapter the sixth, The Father of the Marshall Sea. Thirty years ago there stood a few doors short of the Church of Saint George in the borough of Southwark on the left-hand side of the way going southward, the Marshall Sea prison. It had stood there many years before and it remained there some years afterwards but it is gone now and the world is none the worse without it. It was an oblong pile of barrack building partitioned into squalid houses standing back to back so that there were no back rooms invariant by a narrow paved yard hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top itself a closed and confined prison for debtors it contained within it a much closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws and defaulters to excise or customs who had incurred fines which they were unable to pay were supposed to be incarcerated behind an iron-plated door closing up a second prison consisting of a strong cell or two and a blind alley some yard and a half wide which formed the mysterious termination of the very limited skittle ground in which the Marshall Sea debtors bowed down their troubles supposed to be incarcerated there because the time had rather outgrown the strong cells and the blind alley. In practice they had come to be considered a little too bad though in theory they were quite as good as ever which may be observed to be the case at the present day with other cells that are not at all strong and with other blind alleys that are stone blind Hence the smugglers habitually consorted with the debtors who received them with open arms accepted certain constitutional moments when somebody came from some office to go through some form of overlooking something which neither he nor anybody else knew anything about. On these truly British occasions the smugglers, if any, made a faint of walking into the strong cells and the blind alley while this somebody pretended to do his something and made a reality of walking out again as soon as he hadn't done it neatly epitomising the administration of most of the public affairs in our right little, tight little island. There had been taken to the Marshall Sea prison long before the day when the sun shone on Marseille and on the opening of this narrative a debtor with whom this narrative had some concern. Who was, at that time, a very amiable and very helpless middle-aged gentleman who was going out again directly. Necessarily he was going out again directly because the Marshall Sea lock never turned upon a debtor who was not. He brought in a portmanteau with him which he doubted it's being worth while to unpack. He was so perfectly clear like all the rest of them the turnkey on the lock said that he was going out again directly. He was a shy, retiring man, still looking, though in an infeminate style, with a mild voice, curling hair and irresolute hands, rings upon the fingers in those days which nervously wandered to his trembling lip a hundred times in the first half-hour of his acquaintance with the jail. His principal anxiety was about his wife. Do you think, sir? he asked the turnkey that she will be very much shocked if she should come to the gate tomorrow morning. The turnkey gave it as the result of his experience that some of them was and some of them wasn't. In general, more no than yes. What like is she, you see? He philosophically asked. That's what it hinges on. She is very delicate and inexperienced indeed. That, said the turnkey, is again her. She is so little used to go out alone, said the debtor, that I am at a loss to think how she will ever make her way here if she walks. Perhaps, quote the turnkey, she will take her acne couch. Perhaps. The irresolute fingers went to the trembling lip. I hope she will. She may not think of it. Or perhaps, said the turnkey, offering his suggestions from the top of his well-worn wooden stool, as he might have offered them to a child for whose weakness he felt a compassion. Perhaps, she'll get her brother or her sister to come along with her. She has no brother or sister. Nice, navvy, cousin, servant, young woman, gringrocer, dash it. One or another on him, said the turnkey, repudiating beforehand the refusal of all his suggestions. I fear. I hope it is not against the rules that she will bring the children. The children, said the turnkey, and the rules. Why, Lord, set you up like a cornerpin with a regular playground of children here. Children, why we swarm with them? How many are you got? Two, said the debtor, lifting his irresolute hand to his lip again and turning into the prison. The turnkey followed him with his eyes. And you, another, he observed to himself, which makes three on you. And your wife, another, I'll lay a crown, which makes four on you. And another coming, I'll lay half a crown, which will make five on you. And I'll go another seven and sixpence to Naim, which is the helplessest, the unborn baby of you. He was right in all his particulars. She came next day with a little boy of three years old and a little girl of two. And he stood entirely corroborated. Got a room now, haven't you? The turnkey asked the debtor after a week or two. Yes, I have got a very good room. Any little sticks are coming to furnish it? said the turnkey. I expect a few necessary articles of furniture to be delivered by the carrier this afternoon. Mrs. and little ones are coming to keep you company? asked the turnkey. Why, yes, we think it better that we should not be scattered even for a few weeks. Even for a few weeks, of course! replied the turnkey. And he followed him again with his eyes and nodded his head seven times when he was gone. The affairs of this debtor were perplexed by a partnership of which he knew no more than he had invested money in it. By legal matters of assignment and settlement, conveyance here and conveyance there, suspicion of unlawful preference of creditors in this direction and of mysterious spiriting away of property in that, and as nobody on the face of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in the heap of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible could be made of his case. To question him in detail and endeavour to reconcile his answers, to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners learned in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy was only to put the case out at compound interest and incomprehensibility. The irresolute fingers fluttered more and more ineffectually about the trembling lip on every such occasion and the sharpest practitioners gave him up as a hopeless job. Out, said the turnkey, he'll never get out unless his creditors take him by the shoulders and shove him out. He had been there five or six months when he came running to this turnkey one forenoon to tell him, breathless and pale that his wife was ill. As anybody might have known she would be, said the turnkey. We intended, he returned, that she should go to her country lodging only tomorrow. What am I to do? Oh, good heaven, what am I to do? Don't waste your time in clasping your hands and biting your fingers, responded the practical turnkey, taking him by the elbow, but come along with me. The turnkey conducted him, trembling from head to foot and constantly crying under his breath. What was he to do? While his irresolute fingers bedoubled the tears upon his face, up one of the common staircases in the prison to a door on the garret's tory, upon which door the turnkey knocked with the handle of his key. Come in, cried a voice inside. The turnkey, opening the door, disclosed in a wretched, ill-smelling little room, two horse, puffy, red-faced personages seated in a rickety table, playing at all fours, smoking pipes and drinking brandy. Doctor, said the turnkey, his a gentleman's wife in want of you without a minute's loss of time. Doctor's friend was in the positive degree of hoarseness, puffiness, red-facedness, all fours, tobacco, dirt and brandy. The doctor in the comparative, horser, puffier, more red-faced, more all-fory, tobacco-er, dirtier and brandier. The doctor was amazingly shabby. In a torn and darned, rough-weather sea-jacket, out at elbows and eminently short of buttons, he had been in his time, the experienced surgeon carried by a passenger ship, the dirtiest white trousers conceivable by mortal man, carpet slippers and no visible linen. Child-bed, said the doctor. I'm the boy. With that, the doctor took a comb from the chimney-piece and stuck his hair upright, which appeared to be his way of washing himself, produced a professional chest or case of most abject appearance from the cupboard where his cup and saucer and calls were, settled his chin in a frowsy wrap around his neck and became a ghastly medical scare-crow. The doctor and the debtor ran downstairs, leaving the turnkey to return to the lock and made for the debtor's room. All the ladies in the prison had got hold of the news and were in the yard. Some of them had already taken possession of the two children and were hospitably carrying them off. Others were offering loans of little comforts from their own scanty store. Others were sympathizing with the greatest volubility. The gentlemen prisoners, feeling themselves at a disadvantage, had for the most part retired, not to say sneaked, to their rooms. From the open windows of which some of them now complimented the doctor with whistles as he passed below, while others, with several stories between them, interchanged sarcastic references to the prevalent excitement. It was a hot summer day and the prison rooms were baking between the high walls. In the debtor's confined chamber, Mrs. Bangum, charwoman and messenger, who was not a prisoner, though she had been once, but was the popular medium of communication with the outer world, had volunteered her services as flycatcher and general attendant. The walls and ceiling were blackened with flies. Mrs. Bangum, expert in sudden device, with one hand fanned the patient with a cabbage leaf and with the other set traps of vinegar and sugar in calipods, at the same time enunciating sentiments of an encouraging and congratulatory nature adapted to the occasion. The flies trouble you, don't they, my dear? said Mrs. Bangum. But perhaps they'll take your mind off of it. And do you good? What between the burying ground, the grocers, the wagon's tables and the pawn's trade, the marshal's sea flies gets very large. Perhaps they're sent as a consolation if we only know did. How are you now, my dear? No better? No, my dear, it ain't to be expected. You'll be worse before you're better and you know it, don't you? Yes, that's right. And to think of a sweet little cherub being born inside the lock. Now, ain't it pretty? Ain't that something to carry you through it pleasant? Why, we ain't had such a thing happen here, my dear, not for I couldn't name the time when. And you're crying too, said Mrs. Bangum, to rally the patient more and more. You, making yourself so famous with the flies are falling into the calipods by fifties and everything are going on so well. And here, if there ain't, said Mrs. Bangum as the door opened, if there ain't your dear gentleman along with Dr. Haggage, and now indeed we are complete, I think. The doctor was scarcely the kind of apparition to inspire a patient with a sense of absolute completeness, but as he presently delivered the opinion, we are as right as we can be, Mrs. Bangum, and we shall come out of this like a house of fire. And as he and Mrs. Bangum took possession of the poor helpless pair, as everybody else and anybody else had always done, the means at hand were as good on the whole as better would have been. The special feature in Dr. Haggage's treatment of the case was his determination to keep Mrs. Bangum up to the mark, as thus. Mrs. Bangum said the doctor before he had been there twenty minutes, go outside and fetch a little brandy or we shall have you giving in. Thank you, sir, but none on my accounts, said Mrs. Bangum. Mrs. Bangum, returned the doctor, I am in professional attendance on this lady and don't choose to allow any discussion on your part. Go outside and fetch a little brandy or I foresee that you'll break down. You are to be obeyed, sir, said Mrs. Bangum, rising. If you were to put your own lips to it, I think you wouldn't be the worse, for you look but poorly, sir. Mrs. Bangum, returned the doctor, I am not your business, thank you, but you are mine. Never you mind me, if you please. What you have got to do is to do as you are told and to go and get what I bid you. Mrs. Bangum submitted. And the doctor, having administered her potion, took his own. He repeated the treatment every hour, being very determined with Mrs. Bangum. Three or four hours passed. The flies fell into the traps by hundreds and at length one little life, hardly stronger than theirs, appeared among the multitude of lesser deaths. A very nice little girl indeed, said the doctor, little but well-formed. Hello, Mrs. Bangum, you're looking queer. You be off, ma'am, this minute and fetch a little more brandy, or we shall have you in hysterics. By this time, the rings had begun to fall from the debtor's irresolute hands, like leaves from a wintry tree. Not one was left upon them that night, when he put something that chinked into the doctor's greasy palm. In the meantime, Mrs. Bangum had been out on an errand to a neighbouring establishment decorated with three golden balls, where she was very well known. Thank you, said the doctor. Thank you, your good lady is quite composed, doing charmingly. I am very happy and very thankful to know it, said the debtor, though a little thought once that, that a child would be born to you in a place like this, said the doctor. Bah, bah, sir. What does it signify? A little more elbow room is all we want here. We are quiet here. We don't get badgered here. There is no knocker here, sir, to be hammered at by creditors and bring a man's heart into his mouth. Nobody comes here to ask if a man's at home and to say he'll stand on the doormat till he is. Nobody writes threatening letters about money to this place. It's freedom, sir. It's freedom. I have had today's practice at home and abroad on a march and aboard ship, and I'll tell you this. I don't know that I have ever pursued it under such quiet circumstances as here this day. Elsewhere, people are restless, worried, hurried about, anxious respecting one thing, anxious respecting another. Nothing of the kind here, sir. We have done all that. We know the worst of it. We have got to the bottom. We can't fall. And what have we found? Peace. That's the word for it. Peace. With this profession of faith, the doctor, who was an old jailbird, and was more sodden than usual and had the additional and unusual stimulus of money in his pocket, returned to his associate and chum in hoarseness, puffiness, red-facedness, all-force, tobacco, dirt and brandy. Now, the debtor was a very different man from the doctor, but he had already begun to travel by his opposite segment of the circle to the same point. Crashed at first by his imprisonment, he had soon found a dull relief in it. He was under lock and key, but the lock and key that kept him in kept numbers of his troubles out. If he had been a man with strength of purpose to face those troubles and fight them, he might have broken the net that held him or broken his heart, but being what he was, he languidly slipped into this smooth descent and nevermore took one step upward. When he was relieved of the perplexed affairs that nothing would make plain, through having them returned upon his hands by a dozen agents in succession who could make neither beginning, middle, nor end of them or him, he found his miserable place of refuge, a quieter refuge than it had been before. He had unpacked the portmanteau long ago and his elder children now played regularly about the yard and everybody knew the baby and claimed a kind of proprietorship in her. Why I'm getting proud of you, said his friend the turnkey one day. You'll be the oldest inhabitant soon. The marshal see wouldn't be like the marshal see now without you and your family. The turnkey really was proud of him. He would mention him in laudatory terms to newcomers when his back was turned. You took notice of him, he would say, that went out of the lodge just now. Newcomer would probably answer, yes. Brought up as a gentleman he was, if ever a man was, educated at no end of expense, went into the marshal's house once to try a new piano for him, played it, I understand, like one o'clock. As to languages speaks anything. We've had a Frenchman here in his time and it's my opinion he knowed more French than the Frenchman did. We've had an Italian here in his time and he shut him up in about half a minute. You'll find some characters behind other locks, I don't say you won't, but if you want the topsoil in such respects as I have mentioned, you must come to the marshal see. When his youngest child was 80 years old, his wife, who had long been languishing away of her own inherent weakness, not that she retained any greater sensitiveness as to her place of abode than he did, went upon a visit to a poor friend and old nurse in the country and died there. He remained shut up in his room for a fortnight afterwards and an attorney's clerk who was going through the insolvent court and grossed an address of condolence to him, which looked like a lease which all the prisoners signed. When he appeared again, he was grayer, he had soon began to turn gray and the turnkey noticed that his hands went often to his trembling lips again as they had used to do when he first came in. But he got pretty well over it in a month or two and in the meantime the children played about the yard as regularly as ever, but in black. Then Mrs. Bangum, long popular medium of communication throughout her world, began to be infirm and to be found oftener than usual comatose and pavements with her basket of purchases spilt and the change of her client's ninepence short. His son began to supersede Mrs. Bangum and to execute commissions in a knowing manner and to be of the prison-prisonous of the street's streetie. Time went on and the turnkey began to fail. His chest swelled and his legs got weak and he was short of breath. The well-worn wooden stool was beyond him, he complained. He sat in an armchair with a cushion and sometimes weased so for minutes together that he couldn't turn the key. When he was overpowered by these fits, the debtor often turned it for him. You and me, said the turnkey once snowy winter's night when the lodge with a bright fire in it was pretty full of company. Is the oldest inhabitants? I wasn't here myself about seven years before you. I shan't last long. When I am off the lodge for good and all, you'll be the father of the Marshall Sea. The turnkey went off the lodge of this world next day. His words were remembered and repeated. And tradition afterwards handed down from generation to generation a Marshall Sea generation might be calculated as about three months that the shabby old debtor with a soft manner and a white hair was the father of the Marshall Sea. And he grew to be proud of the title. If any imposter had a reason to claim it, he would have shed tears in resentment of the attempt to deprive him of his rights. A disposition began to be perceived in him to exaggerate the number of years he had been there. It was generally understood that you must deduct a few from his account. He was vain, the fleeting generations of debtors said. All new comers were presented to him. He was spontaneous in the exaction of this ceremony. The wits would perform the office of introduction with overcharged pomp and politeness, but they could not easily overstep his sense of its gravity. He received them in his poor room. He disliked an introduction in the room as informal, a thing that might happen to anybody with a kind of bowed-down beneficence. They were welcome to the Marshall Sea he would tell them. Yes, he was the father of the place. So the world was kind enough to call him. And so he was, if more than 20 years of residence gave him a claim to the title. It looked small at first, but there was very good company there among a mixture, and very good air. It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his door at night in closing half a crown, two half crowns, now and then at long intervals, even half a sovereign, for the father of the Marshall Sea. With the compliments of a collegian taking leave, he received the gifts as tributes from admirers to a public character. Sometimes these correspondents assumed prestigious names as The Brick, Bellows, Old Gooseberry, Wide Awake, Snooks, Mops, Cutaway, The Dog Meat Man. But he considered this in bad taste and was always a little hurt by it. In the fullness of time, these correspondents showing signs of wearing out and seeming to require an effort on the part of the correspondents to which in the hurried circumstances he established the custom of attending collegians of a certain standing to the gate and taking leave of them there. The collegian under treatment after shaking hands would occasionally stop to wrap up something in a bit of paper and would come back again calling, Hi! He would look round surprised, Me? He would say with a smile. By this time the collegian would be up with him and he would paternally add What have you forgotten? What can I do for you? I forgot to leave this. The collegian would usually return for the father of the Marshal C. My good sir! He would rejoin. He is infinitely obliged to you but to the last, the irresolute hand of the old would remain in the pocket into which he had slipped the money during two or three turns about the yard lest the transaction should be too conspicuous to the general body of collegians. One afternoon he had been doing the honors of the place to a rather large part of collegians who happened to be going out when, as he was coming back he encountered one from the poor side who had been taken in execution for a small summer week before had settled in the cause of that afternoon and was going out too. The man was a mere plasterer in his working dress had his wife with him and a bundle of high spirits. God bless you sir, he said in passing, and you, benignantly returned the father of the Marshal C. They were pretty far divided going there several ways when the plasterer called out I say sir and came back to him. It ain't much, said the plasterer putting a little pile of haypence in his hand but it's well meant. The father of the Marshal C. had never been offered tribute in copper yet. His children often had and with his perfect acquiescence it had gone into the common purse to buy meat that he had eaten and drink that he had drunk. But Faustians splashed with white lime bestowing haypence on him front to front was new. How dare you! He said to the man and feebly burst into tears. The plasterer turned him towards the wall that his face might not be seen and the action was so delicate that the man was so penetrated with repentance and asked pardon so honestly that he could make him no less acknowledgment than I know you meant it kindly, say no more. Bless you so sir heard the plasterer I did indeed, I'd do more by you than the rest of them do I fancy. What would you do? he asked I'd come back to see you after I was let out give me the money again said the other eagerly and I'll keep it and never spend it thank you for it thank you I shall see you again if I live a week you shall they shook hands and parted the collegians assembled in symposium in the snaggery that night marbled what had happened to their father he walked so late in the shadows of the yard and seemed so downcast end of chapter the sixth book the first this recording is in the public domain chapter the seventh book the first of Little Dorit redfullybrewox.org by Ellis Christoff Little Dorit by Charles Dickens book the first chapter the seventh the child of the Marshall sea the baby whose first draft of air had been tinctured with Dr. Haggidge's brandy was handed down among the generations of collegians like the tradition of their common parent in the earlier stages of her existence she was handed down in a literal and prosaic sense it being almost a part of the entrance footing of every new collegian to nurse the child who had been born in the college by writes remark the turn key when she was first shown to him I ought to be her godfather the debtor resolutely thought of it for a minute and said perhaps you wouldn't object to really being her godfather Oh I don't object reply the turn key if you don't thus it came to pass that she was christened one Sunday afternoon when the turn key being relieved was off the lock the turn key went up to the font of St. George's church and promised and vowed and renounced on her behalf as he himself related when he came back like a goodon this invested the turn key with the new proprietary chair in the child over and above his former official one when she began to walk and talk he became fond of her bought a little arm chair and stood it by the high fender of the lodge fireplace liked to have her company when he was on the lock and used to bribe her with cheap toys to come and talk to him the child for her part soon grew so fond of the turn key that she would come climbing up the lodge steps of her own accord at all hours of the day when she fell asleep in the little arm chair by the high fender the turn key would cover her with his pocket handkerchief and when she sat in it dressing and dressing a doll which soon came to be unlike dolls on the other side of the lock and to bear a horrible family resemblance to Mrs. Bangum would contemplate her from the top of his stool with exceeding gentleness witnessing these things the collegians would express an opinion that the turn key who was a bachelor had been cut out by nature for a family man but the turn key thanked them and said no on the whole it was enough to see other people's children there at what period of her early life the little creature began to perceive that it was not the habit of all the world to live locked up in narrow yards surrounded by high walls with spikes at the top would be a difficult question to settle but she was a very very little creature indeed when she had somehow gained the knowledge that her clasp of her father's hand was to be always loosened at the door which the great key opened and that while her own light steps were free to pass beyond it his feet must never cross that line a pitiful and plaintive look with which she had begun to regard him when she was still extremely young was perhaps a part of this discovery with a pitiful and plaintive look for everything indeed but with something in it for only him that was like protection this child of the marshall sea and the child of the father of the marshall sea sat by her friend the turn key in the lodge kept the family room or wondered about the prison yard for the first eight years of her life with a pitiful and plaintive look for her wayward sister for her idle brother for the high blank walls for the faded crowd they shut in for the games of the prison children as they whooped and ran and played at hide and seek and made the iron bars of the inner gate open and made the iron bars of the inner gateway home wistful and wondering she would sit in summer weather by the high fender in the lodge looking up at the sky through the barred window until when she turned her eyes away bars of light would arise between her and her friend and she would see him through a grating too thinking of the fields the turn key said once after watching her ain't you where are they she inquired why they're over there my dear said the turn key with a vague flourish of his key just about there does anybody open them and chat them are they locked the turn key was discomfited well he said not in general and they very pretty bob she called him bob by his own particular request and instruction lovely full of flowers there's butter cups and there's daisies and there's the turn key hesitated being short of floral nomenclature there's dandelions and all manner of games is it very pleasant to be there bob prime said the turn key was father ever there him coughed the turn key oh yes he was there sometimes is he sorry not to be there now not particular said the turn key nor any of the people she asked glancing at the listless crowd within are you quite sure and certain bob at this difficult point of the conversation bob gave in and changed the subject to hard bake always his last resource when he found his little friend getting him into a political social or theological corner but this was the origin of a series of Sunday excursions that these two curious companions made together they used to issue from the lodge an alternate Sunday afternoons with great gravity bound for some meadows or green lanes that had been elaborately appointed by the turn key in the cause of the week and there she picked grass and flowers to bring home while he smoked his pipe afterwards there were tea gardens shrimps ale and other delicacies and then they would come back hand in hand unless she was more than usually tired and had fallen asleep on his shoulder in those early days the turn key first began profoundly to consider a question which cost him so much mental labor that it remained undetermined on the day of his death he decided to will and bequeath his little property of savings to his godchild and the point arose how could it be so tied up as that only she should have the benefit of it his experience on the lock gave him such an acute perception of the enormous difficulty of tying up money with any approach to tightness and contrary wise of the remarkable ease with which it got loose that through a series of years he regularly propounded this naughty point to every new insolvent agent and other professional gentlemen who passed in and out supposing he would say stating the case with his key on the professional gentleman's waistcoat supposing a man wanted to leave his property to a young female and wanted to tie it up so that nobody else should ever be able to make a grab at it how would you tie up that property settle it strictly on herself the professional gentlemen would complacently answer but look here quote the turnkey supposing she had say a brother say a father say a husband who would be likely to make a grab at that property when she came into it how about that it would be settled on herself and they would have no more legal claim on it than you would be the professional answer stop a bit supposing she was tender hearted and they came over her where is your law for tying it up then the deepest character whom the turnkey sounded was unable to produce his law for tying such a knot as that so the turnkey thought about it all his life and died in test state after all but that was long afterwards when his daughter was past sixteen the first half of that space of her life was only just accomplished when her pitiful and plaintive look saw her father a widower from that time the protection that her wandering eyes had expressed towards him became embodied in action and the child of the marshal she took upon herself a new relation towards the father at first such a baby could do little more than sit with him, deserting her lively a place by the high vendor and quietly watching him but this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her and began to be sensible of missing her when she was not there through this little gate she passed out of childhood into the care laden world what her pitiful look saw at that early time in her father in her sister in her brother how much or how little of the wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her lies hidden with many mysteries it is enough that she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were and to be that something different and laborious for the sake of the rest inspired? yes, shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest and not the heart impelled by love and self devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life with no earthly friend to help her or so much as to see her but the one so strangely assorted with no knowledge even of the common daily tone and habits of the common members of the free community who are not shut up in prisons born and bred in a social condition pulse even with a reference to the falsest condition outside the walls looking from infancy ever well whose waters had their own peculiar stain their own and wholesome and unnatural taste the child of the Marshall sea began her womanly life no matter through what mistakes and discouragements what ridicule not unkindly meant but deeply felt of her youth and little figure what humble consciousness of her own babyhood and want of strength even in the matter of living and carrying through how much weariness and hopelessness and how many secret tears she dredged on until recognized as useful even indispensable that time came she took the place of eldest of the three in all things but precedence was the head of the fallen family and bore in her own heart its anxieties and shames she could read and keep accounts that is could put down in words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted would cost and how much less they had to buy them with she had been by snatches of a few weeks at a time to an evening school outside and got her sister and brother sent to day schools by desultory starts during three or four years there was no instruction for any of them at home no one better that a man so broken as to be the father of the marshal sea could be no father to his own children to these scanty means of improvement she added another of her own contriving once among the heterogeneous crowd of inmates there appeared a dancing master her sister had a great desire to learn the dancing masters art and seemed to have a taste that way at 13 years old the child of the marshal sea presented herself to the dancing master with a little bag in her hand and preferred her humble petition if you please I was born here sir oh you are the young lady are you said the dancing master surveying the small figure and uplifted face yes sir and what can I do for you said the dancing master nothing for me sir thank you anxiously and drawing the strings of the little bag but if while you stay here you could be so kind as to teach my sister cheap my child I'll teach her for nothing said the dancing master shutting up the bag he was as good natured a dancing master as ever danced to the insolvent court and he kept his word the sister was so apt a pupil and the dancing master had such an abundant leisure to bestow upon her for it took him a matter of 10 weeks to set to his creditors lead off turn the commissioners and right and left back to his professional pursuits that wonderful progress was made indeed the dancing master was so proud of it and so wishful to display it before he left to a few select friends among the collegians that at 6 o'clock on a certain fine morning a minuet de la cour came off in the yard the college rooms being of two confined proportions for the purpose in which so much ground was covered and the steps were so conscientiously executed that the dancing master having to play the kit besides was thoroughly blown the success of this beginning which led to the dancing masters continuing his instruction after his release emboldened the poor child to try again she watched and waited months for a seamstress in the fullness of time a milliner came in and to her she repaired on her own behalf I beg your pardon mom she said looking timidly around the door of the milliner whom she found in tears and in bed but I was born here everybody seemed to hear of her as soon as they arrived for the milliner sat up in bed drying her eyes and said just as the dancing master had said oh you are the child are you yes mom I am sorry I haven't got anything for you said the milliner shaking her head it's not that mom if you please I want to learn needlework why should you do that return the milliner with me before you it has not done me much good nothing whatever it is seems to have done anybody much good who comes here returned in all simplicity but I want to learn just the same I am afraid you are so weak you see the milliner objected I don't think I am weak mom and you are so very very little you see the milliner objected yes I am afraid I am very little indeed returned the child of the marshall sea and so began to sub over that unfortunate defect of hers that came so often in her way the milliner who was not morose or hard hearted only newly insolvent was touched took her in hand with goodwill found her the most patient and earnest of pupils and made her a cunning work woman in cause of time in cause of time and in the very self same cause of time the father of the marshall sea gradually developed a new flower of character the more fatherly he grew as to the marshall sea and the more dependent he became on the contributions of his changing family the greater stand he made by his fall on gentility with the same hand that he pocketed a collegian's half crown half an hour ago he would wipe away the tears that streamed over his cheeks if any reference were made to his daughters earning their bread so over and above other daily cares the child of the marshall sea had always upon her the care of preserving the genteel fiction that they were all idle beggars together the sister became a dancer there was a ruined uncle in the family group ruined by his brother the father of the marshall sea and knowing no more how than his ruin I did but accepting the fact as an inevitable certainty when whom her protection devolved naturally a retired and simple man it showed no particular sense of being ruined at the time when that calamity fell upon him further than that he left of washing himself when the shock was announced and never took to that luxury anymore he had been a very indifferent musical amateur in his better days and when he fell with his brother resorted for support to playing a clarionet as dirty as himself in a small theater orchestra it was the theater in which his niece became a dancer he had been a fixture there a long time when she took her poor station in it and he accepted the task of serving as her escort and guardian just as he would have accepted an illness a legacy a feast starvation anything but soap to enable this girl to earn her few weekly shillings it was necessary for the child of the marshall sea to go through an elaborate form with the father fanny is not going to live with us just now father she will be here a good deal in the day but she is going to live outside with ankle you surprise me why? i think ankle wants a companion father he would be attended to and looked after a companion passes much of his time here and you attend to him and look after him Amy a great deal more than ever your sister will you all go out so much you all go out so much this was to keep up the ceremony and pretence of his having no idea that Amy herself went out by the day to work but we are always glad to come home father now are we not? and as to fanny perhaps besides keeping uncle companion taking care of him it may be as well for her not quite to live here always she was not born here as i was well Amy well i don't quite follow you but it's natural i suppose that fanny should prefer to be outside and even that she often should too so you and fanny and your uncle my dear shall have your own way good good i'll not meddle don't mind me to get her brother out of the prison out of the succession to mrs. bangham in executing commissions and out of the slang interchanged with very doubtful companions consequent upon both was her hardest task at 18 he would have dragged on from hand to mouth from hour to hour from penny to penny until 80 nobody got into the prison from whom he derived anything useful or good and she could find no patron for him but her old friend and godfather dear Bob said she what is to become of poor tip his name was Edward and Ted had been transformed into tip within the walls the turnkey had strong private opinions as to what would become of poor tip and had even gone so far with the viewer averting their fulfillment as to sound tip in reference to the expediency of running away and going to serve his country but tip had thanked him and said he didn't seem to care for his country well my dear said the turnkey something ought to be done with him suppose I try and get him into the law that would be so good a view Bob the turnkey had now two points to put to the professional gentlemen as they passed in and out he put the second one so perseveringly that a stool and 12 shillings a week would at last found for tip in the office of an attorney in a great national palladium called the palace court at that time one of a considerable list of everlasting bulwarks to the dignity and safety of Albion whose places know them no more tip languished in Clifford's inns for six months and at the expiration of that term sauntered back one evening with his hands in his pockets and incidentally observed to his sister that he was not going back again not going back again said the poor little anxious child of the Marshall sea always calculating and planning for tip in the front rank of her charges I am so tired of it said tip that I have cut it tip tired of everything with intervals of Marshall sea lounging and mrs. bangham succession his small second mother aided by her trusty friend got him into a warehouse into a market garden into the hop trade into the law again into a brewery into a stockbrokers into the law again into a coach office into a wagon office into the law again into a general dealers into a distillery into the law again into a wool house into a dry goods house into the billingsgate trade into the foreign fruit trade and into the docks he came out of tired announcing that he had cut it wherever he went this foredoomed tip appeared to take the prison wars with him and to set them up in such trade or calling and to prowl about within their narrow limits in the old slip-shod, purposeless down at heel way until the really movable Marshall sea walls asserted their fascination over him and brought him back nevertheless the brave little creature did so fix her heart on her brother's rescue that while he was ringing out these doleful changes she pinched and scraped enough together to ship him for Canada when he was tired of nothing to do and disposed in its turn to cut even that he graciously consented to go to Canada and there was grief in her bosom over parting with him and joy in the hope of his being put in a straight cause at last God bless you dear tip don't be too proud to come and see us when you have made your fortune all right said tip and went but not all the way to Canada in fact not further than Liverpool after making the voyage to that port from London he found himself so strongly impelled to cut the vessel that he resolved to walk back again carrying out which intention he presented himself before her at the expiration of a month in rags without shoes and much more tired than ever at length after another interval of successorship to Mrs. Bangham he found a pursuit for himself and announced it Amy I have got a situation have you really and truly tip all right I shall do now you needn't look anxious about me anymore old girl what is it tip why you know slingo by sight not the man they call the dealer there's the chap he'll be out on Monday and he's going to give me a birth what is here dealer in tip horses all right I shall do now Amy she lost sight of him for months afterwards and only heard from him once a whisper passed among the elder collegians that he had been seen at a mock auction in Moorfields pretending to buy plated articles for massive silver and paying for them with the greatest liberality in banknotes but it never reached her ears one evening she was alone at work standing up at the window to save the twilight lingering above the wall when he opened the door and walked in she kissed and welcomed him but was afraid to ask him any questions he saw how anxious and timid she was scared sorry I'm afraid Amy you'll be vexed this time upon my life I am I am very sorry to hear you say so tip have you come back why yes not expecting this time that would you had found would answer very well I am less surprised and sorry than I might have been tip but that's not the worst of it not the worst of it don't look so startled I have come back in what I may call a new way I am off the volunteer list altogether I am in now as one of the regulars oh don't say you are a prisoner tip don't don't well I don't want to say it he returned in a reluctant tone but if you can't understand me without me saying it what am I saying what am I saying what am I saying what am I saying it what am I to do I am in for 40 pound odd for the first time in all those years she sunk under her cares she cried with her clasped hands lifted above her head that it would kill their father if he ever knew it and fell down at tip's graceless feet it was easier for tip to bring her to her senses than for her to bring him to understand that the father of the Marshallsea would be beside himself if he knew the truth the thing was incomprehensible to tip and altogether a fanciful notion he yielded to it in that light only when he submitted to her in treaties backed by those of his uncle and sister there was no want of precedent for his return it was accounted for to the father in the usual way and the collegians with a better comprehension of the pious fraud than tip supported it loyally this was the life and this the history of the child of the Marshallsea at 22 with a still surviving attachment to the one miserable yard and block of houses as her birthplace and home she passed to and fro in it shrinkingly now with a womanly consciousness that she was pointed out to everyone since she had begun to work beyond the walls and found it necessary to conceal where she lived and to come and go as secretly as she could between the free city and the iron gates outside of which she had never slept in her life her original timidity had grown with this concealment and her light step and her little figure shunned the thronged streets while they passed along them worldly wise in hard and poor necessities she was innocent in all things else innocent in the mist through which she saw her father and the prison and the turbid living river that flowed through it and flowed on this was the life and this the history of little Dorit now going home upon a dull September evening observed at a distance by Arthur Clenham this was the life and this the history of little Dorit turning at the end of London bridge recrossing it going back again passing on to St George's church turning back suddenly once more and flitting in at the open outer gate and little courtyard of the Marshall Sea end of chapter the 7th book the first this recording is in the public domain