small in the palm of his hand, he began to flat- | no, why should I say I hadn't if I ever had, any ten it between both his hands, and to eye Clennam attentively. "I wonder," he at length said, compressing his green packet with some force, "that if it's not worth your while to take care of yourself for your own sake, it's not worth doing for some one else's." "Truly," returned Arthur, with a sigh and a smile, "I don't know for whose." hope that it was possible to be so blessed, not after the words that passed, not even if barriers insurmountable had not been raised! But is that a reason why I am to have no memory, why I am to have no thoughts, why I am to have no sacred spots, nor any thing?" "What can you mean?" cried Arthur. "It's all very well to trample on it, Sir," John went on, scouring a very prairie of wild words, "if a person can make up his mind to be guilty of the action. It's all very well to trample on it, but it's there. It may be that it couldn't be trampled upon if it wasn't there. But that doesn't make it gentlemanly, that doesn't make “Mr. Clennam," said John, warmly, "I'm surprised that a gentleman who is capable of the straightforwardness that you are capable of, should be capable of the mean action of making me such an answer. Mr. Clennam, I am surprised that a gentleman who is capable of hav-it honorable, that doesn't justify throwing a pering a heart of his own should be capable of the heartlessness of treating mine in that way. I am astonished at it, Sir. Really and truly I am astonished!" Having got upon his feet to emphasize his concluding words, Young John sat down again, and fell to rolling his green packet on his right leg, never taking his eyes off Clennam, but surveying him with a fixed look of indignant reproach. "I had got over it, Sir," said John. "I had conquered it, knowing that it must be conquered, and had come to the resolution to think no more about it. I shouldn't have given my mind to it again, I hope, if to this prison you had not been brought, and in an hour unfortunate for me, this day!" (In his agitation Young John | adopted his mother's powerful construction of sentences.) "When you first came upon me, Sir, in the Lodge, this day, more as if a Upas tree had been made a capture of than a private defendant, such mingled streams of feelings broke loose again within me that every thing was for the first few minutes swept away before them, and I was going round and round in a vortex. I got out of it. I struggled, and got out of it. If it was the last word I had to speak, against that vortex with my utmost powers I strove, and out of it I came. I argued that if I had been rude apologies was due, and those apologies, without a question of demeaning, I did make. And now, when I've been so wishful to show that one thought is next to being a holy one with me and goes before all othersnow, after all, you dodge me when I ever so gently hint at it, and evadingly throw me back upon myself. For, do not, Sir," said Young John, "do not be so base as to deny that dodge you do, and thrown me back upon myself you have !" All amazement, Arthur gazed at him, like one lost, only saying, "What is it? What do you mean, John?" But John being in that state of mind in which nothing would seem to be more impossible to a certain class of people than the giving of an answer, went ahead blindly. "I hadn't," said John, "no, I hadn't and I never had, the audaciousness to think, I am sure, that all was any thing but lost. I hadn't, son back upon himself after he has struggled and strived out of himself, like a butterfly. The world may sneer at a turnkey, but he's a man -when he isn't a woman, which among female criminals he's expected to be." Ridiculous as the incoherence of his talk was, there was yet a truthfulness in Young John's simple, sentimental character, and a sense of being wounded in some very tender respect, expressed in his burning face and in the agitation of his voice and manner, which Arthur must have been cruel to disregard. He turned his thoughts back to the starting-point of this unknown injury; and in the mean time Young John, having rolled his green packet pretty round, cut it carefully into three pieces, and laid it on a plate as if it were some particular delicacy. "It seems to me just possible," said Arthur, when he had retraced the conversation to the water-cresses and back again, “that you have made some reference to Miss Dorrit ?" ery. แ "It is just possible, Sir," returned John Chiv 66 "I don't understand it. I hope I may not be so unlucky as to make you think I mean to offend you again, for I never have meant to offend you yet, when I say I don't understand it." Sir," said Young John, "will you have the perfidy to deny that you know, and long have known, that I felt toward Miss Dorrit, call it not the presumption of love, but adoration and sacrifice ?" “Indeed, John, I will not have any perfidy if I know it; why you should suspect me of it, I am at a loss to think. Did you ever hear from Mrs. Chivery, your mother, that I went to see her once?" "No, Sir," returned John, shortly. "Never heard of such a thing." "But I did. Can you imagine why?" "No, Sir," returned John, shortly. "I can't imagine why." "I will tell you. I was solicitous to promote Miss Dorrit's happiness; and if I could have supposed that Miss Dorrit returned your affection-" Poor John Chivery turned erimson to the tips of his ears. "Miss Dorrit never did, Sir. I wish to be honorable and true, so far as in my | humble way I can, and I would scorn to pretend for a moment that she ever did, or that she ever led me to believe she did; no, nor even that it was ever to be expected in any cool reason that she would or could. She was far above me in all respects at all times. As likewise," added John, "similarly was her gen-teel family." His chivalrous feeling toward all that belonged to her made him so very respectable, in spite of his small stature and his rather weak legs, and his very weak hair and his poetical temperament, that a Goliath might have sat in his place demanding less consideration at Arthur's hands. "You speak, John," he said, with cordial admiration, like a man.' "Well, Sir," returned John, brushing his hand across his eyes, "then I wish you'd do the same." He was quick with this unexpected retort, and it again made Arthur regard him with a wondering expression of face. "Leastways," said John, stretching his hand across the tea-tray, "if too strong a remark, withdrawn! But, why not, why not? When I say to you, Mr. Clennam, take care of yourself for some one else's sake, why not be open though a turnkey? Why did I get you the room which I knew you'd like best? Why did I carry up your things? Not that I found 'em heavy; I don't mention 'em on that accounts; far from it. Why have I cultivated you in the manner I have done since the morning? On the ground of your own merits? No. They're very great, I've no doubt at all; but not on the ground of them. Another's merits have had their weight, and have had far more weight with Me. Then why not speak free!" Clennam looked at the spikes, and looked at John. "He says, What! And what is more," exclaimed Young John, surveying him in a doleful maze, "he appears to mean it! Do you see this window, Sir?" "Of course, I see this window." "See this room?" 66 'Why, of course I see this room." "That wall opposite, and that yard down below? They have all been witnesses of it, from day to day, from night to night, from week to week, from month to month. For, how often have I seen Miss Dorrit here when she has not seen me!" "Witnesses of what?" said Clennam. "You!" said John. And touched him with the back of his hand upon the breast, and backed to his chair, and sat down in it with a pale face, holding the arms, and shaking his head at him. If he had dealt Clennam a heavy blow, instead of laying that light touch upon him, its effect could not have been to shake him more. He stood amazed; his eyes looking at John; his lips parted, and seeming now and then to form the word "Me!" without uttering it; his hands dropped at his sides: his whole appearance that of a man who has been awakened from sleep, and stupefied by intelligence beyond his full comprehension. "Me!" he at length said, aloud. "Ah!" groaned Young John. "You!" He did what he could to muster a smile, and returned, "Your fancy. You are completely mistaken." "I mistaken, Sir!" said Young John. "I completely mistaken on that subject! No, Mr. Clennam, don't tell me so. On any other, if you like, for I don't set up to be a penetrating character, and am well aware of my own deficiencies. But, I mistaken on a point that has caused me more smart in my breast than a flight of savages' arrows could have done! I mistaken "Unaffectedly, John," said Clennam, "you are so good a fellow, and I have so true a respect for your character, that if I have appeared to be less sensible than I really am, of the fact that the kind services you have rendered me today are attributable to my having been trusted by Miss Dorrit as her friend-I confess it to be a fault, and I ask your forgiveness." "Oh! why not," John repeated, with return-on a point that almost sent me into my grave, ing scorn, "why not speak free!" "I declare to you," returned Arthur, "that I don't understand you. Look at me. Consider the trouble I have been in. Is it likely that I would willfully add to my other self-reproaches that of being ungrateful or treacherous to you? I do not understand you." John's incredulous face slowly softened into a face of doubt. He rose, backed into the garret-window of the room, beckoned Arthur to come there, and stood looking at him thoughtfully with quivering lips. 66 as I sometimes wished it would, if the grave could only have been made compatible with the tobacco-business and father and mother's feelings! I mistaken on a point that, even at the present moment, makes me take out my pocket handkercher like a great girl, as people say; though I am sure I don't know why a great girl should be a term of reproach, for every rightly constituted male mind loves 'em great and small! Don't tell me so, don't tell me so!" Still highly respectable at bottom, though absurd enough upon the surface, Young John took "Mr. Clennam, do you mean to say that you out his pocket handkerchief, with a genuine don't know?" 66 What, John ?" "Lord," said Young John, appealing with a gasp to the spikes on the wall. "He says, What!" absence both of display and concealment, which is only to be seen in a man with a great deal of good in him, when he takes out his pocket handkerchief for the purpose of wiping his eyes. Having dried them, and indulged in the harm less luxury of a sob and a sniff, he put it up a thing as her loving him; that he must not again. The touch was still in its influence so like a blow, that Arthur could not get many words together to close the subject with. He assured John Chivery when he had returned his handkerchief to his pocket, that he did all honor to his disinterestedness and to the fidelity of his remembrance of Miss Dorrit. As to the impression on his mind, of which he had just relieved it Here John interposed, and said, "No impression! certainty !"-as to that, they might perhaps speak of it at another time, but would say no more now. Feeling low-spirited and weary he would go back to his room, with John's leave, and come out no more that night. John assented, and he crept back in the shadow of the wall to his own lodging. The feeling of the blow was still so strong upon him, that when the dirty old woman was gone whom he found sitting on the stairs outside his door waiting to make his bed, and who gave him to understand while doing it that she had received her instructions from Mr. Chivery "not the old 'un but the young 'un," he sat down in the faded arm-chair, pressing his head between his hands as if he had been stunned. Little Dorrit love him! More bewildering to him than his misery, far. Consider the improbability. He had been accustomed to call her his child, and his dear child, and to invite her confidence by dwelling upon the difference in their respective ages, and to speak of himself as one who was turning old. Yet she might not have thought him old. Something reminded him that he had not thought himself so, until the roses had floated away upon the river. He had her two letters among other papers in his box, and he took them out and read them. There seemed to be a sound in them like the sound of her sweet voice. It fell upon his ear with many tones of tenderness that were not insusceptible of the new meaning. Now it was that the quiet desolation of her answer, “No, No, No," made to him that night in that very room-that night, when he had been shown the dawn of her altered fortune, and when other words had passed between them which he had been destined to remember, in humiliation and a prisoner-rushed into his mind. Consider the improbability. But it had a preponderating tendency, when considered, to become fainter. There was another and a curious inquiry of his own heart's that concurrently became stronger. In the reluctance he had felt to believe that she loved any one; in his desire to set that question at rest; in a half-formed consciousness he had had that there would be a kind of nobleness in his helping her love for any one; was there no suppressed something on his own side that he had hushed as it arose? Had he ever whispered to himself that he must not think of such take advantage of her gratitude; that he must keep his experience in remembrance as a warning and reproof; that he must regard such youthful hopes as having passed away, as his friend's dead daughter had passed away; that he must be steady in saying to himself that the time had gone by him, and he was too saddened and old? He had kissed her when he lifted her from the ground, on the day when she had been so consistently and expressively forgotten. Quite as he might have kissed her if she had been conscious? No difference? The darkness found him occupied with these thoughts. The darkness also found Mr. and Mrs. Plornish knocking at his door. They brought with them a basket, filled with choice selections from that stock in trade which met with such a quick sale, and produced such a slow return. Mrs. Plornish was affected to tears. Mr. Plornish amiably growled, in his philosophical but not lucid manner, that there was ups, you see, and there was downs. It was in wain to ask why ups, why downs; there they was, you know. He had heerd it given for a truth that accordin' as the world went round, which round it did rewolve undoubted, even the best of gentlemen must take his turn of standing with his ed upside down, and all his air a flying the wrong way, into what you might call Space. Wery well then. What Mr. Plornish said was, wery well then. That gentleman's ed would come up'ards when his turn come, that gentleman's air would be a pleasure to look upon, being all smooth again, and wery well then! It has been already stated that Mrs. Plornish, not being philosophical, wept. It further happened that Mrs. Plornish, not being philosophical, was intelligible. It may have arisen out of her softened state of mind, out of her sex's wit, out of a woman's quick association of ideas, or out of a woman's no association of ideas, but it further happened somehow that Mrs. Plornish's intelligibility displayed itself upon the very subject of Arthur's meditations. "The way father has been talking about you, Mr. Clennam," said Mrs. Plornish, "you hardly would believe. It's made him quite poorly. As to his voice, this misfortune has took it away. You know what a sweet singer father is; but he couldn't get a note out for the children at tea, if you'll credit what I tell you." While speaking, Mrs. Plornish shook her head and wiped her eyes, and looked retrospectively about the room. "As to Mr. Baptist," pursued Mrs. Plornish, "whatever he'll do when he comes to know of it, I can't conceive nor yet imagine. He'd have been here before now, you may be sure, but that he's away on confidential business of your own. The persevering manner in which he follows up that business, and gives himself no rest from it-it really do," said Mrs. Plornish, winding up LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE in the Italian manner, " as I say to him, Moosh- soon be, married (vague rumors of her father's attonisha padrona." Though not conceited, Mrs. Plornish felt that she had turned this Tuscan sentence with peculiar elegance. Mr. Plornish could not conceal his exultation in her accomplishments as a linguist. "But what I say is, Mr. Clennam," the good woman went on, "there's always something to be thankful for, as I am sure you will yourself admit. Speaking in this room, it's not hard to think what the present something is. It's a thing to be thankful for, indeed, that Miss Dorrit is not here to know it." projects in that direction had reached Bleeding Heart Yard, with the news of her sister's marriage); and that the Marshalsea gate had shut forever on all those perplexed possibilities of a time that was gone. Dear Little Dorrit! Looking back upon his own poor story, she was its vanishing-point. Every thing in its perspective led to her innocent figure. He had traveled thousands of miles toward it; previous unquiet hopes and doubts had worked themselves out before it; it was the centre of the interest of his life; it was the termination of every Arthur thought she looked at him with par- thing that was good and pleasant in it; beyond ticular expression. there was nothing but mere waste, and darkened sky. "It's a thing," reiterated Mrs. Plornish, “to be thankful for, indeed, that Miss Dorritt is far away. It's to be hoped she is not likely to hear of it. If she had been here to see it, Sir, it's not to be doubted that the sight of you," Mrs. Plornish repeated those words-"not to be doubted, that the sight of you-in misfortune and trouble, would have been almost too much for her affectionate heart. There's nothing I can think of that would have touched Miss Dorrit so bad as that." As ill at ease as on the first night of his lying down to sleep within those dreary walls, he wore the night out with such thoughts. What time, Young John lay wrapt in peaceful slumber, after composing and arranging the following monumental inscription on his pillow: STRANGER! RESPECT THE TOMB OF Of a certainty, Mrs. Plornish did look at him HE ENCOUNTERED HIS RIVAL, IN A DISTRESSED STATE, now, with a sort of quivering defiance in her friendly emotion. "Yes!" said she. "And it shows what notice father takes, though at his time of life, that he says to me, this afternoon, which Happy Cottage knows I neither make it up nor anyways enlarge, Mary, it's much to be rejoiced in that Miss Dorrit is not on the spot to behold it.' Those were father's words. Father's own words was, 'Much to be rejoiced in, Mary, that Miss Dorrit is not on the spot to behold it.' I says to father then, I says to him, 'Father, you are right! That," Mrs. Plornish concluded with the air of a very precise legal witness, "is what passed betwixt father and me. And I tell you nothing but what did pass betwixt me and father." AND FELT INCLINED TO HAVE A ROUND WITH HIM; MAGNANIMOUS. CHAPTER LXIV.-AN APPEARANCE IN THE MARSHALSEA. THE opinion of the community outside the prison gates bore hard on Clennam as time went on, and he made no friends among the community within. Too depressed to associate with the herd in the yard, who got together to forget their cares, too retiring and too unhappy to join in the poor socialities of the tavern, he kept his own room, and was held in distrust. Some said he was proud; some objected that he was sullen and reserved; some were contemptuous of him, for that he was a poor-spirited dog who pined under his debts. The whole popula,"tion were shy of him on these various counts of indictment, but especially the last, which involved a species of domestic treason; and he soon became so confirmed in his seclusion, that his only time for walking up and down was when the evening Club were assembled at their Mr. Plornish, as being of a more laconic temperament, embraced this opportunity of interposing with the suggestion that she should now leave Mr. Clennam to himself. "For, you see," said Mr. Plornish, gravely, "I know what it is, old gal;" repeating that valuable remark several times, as if it appeared to him to include some great moral secret. Finally the worthy couple went away arm in arm. Little Dorrit, Little Dorrit. Again, for hours. songs, and toasts, and sentiments, and when the Always Little Dorrit! Happily, if it ever had been so, it was over, and better over. Granted, that she had loved him, and he had known it and had suffered himself to love her, what a road to have led her away upon the road that would have brought her back to this miserable place! He ought to be much comforted by the reflection that she was quit of it forever; that she was, or would yard was nearly left to the women and children. Imprisonment began to tell upon him. He knew that he idled and moped. After what he had known of the influences of imprisonment within the four small walls of the very room he occupied, this consciousness made him afraid of himself. Shrinking from the observation of other men, and shrinking from his own, he began to change very sensibly. Any body might see that the shadow of the wall was dark upon | thing shall be left alone. That is what it means. him. That is what it's for. No doubt there's a certain form to be kept up that it's for something else, but it's only a form. Why, good Heaven, we are nothing but forms! Think what a lot of our forms you have gone through. And you have never got any nearer to an end?" "Never!" said Clennam. One day, when he might have been some ten or twelve weeks in jail, and when he had been trying to read, and had not been able to release even the imaginary people of the book from the Marshalsea, a footstep stopped at his door, and a hand tapped at it. He arose and opened it, and an agreeable voice accosted him with, "How do you do, Mr. Clennam? I hope I am not unwelcome in calling to see you." "Look at it from the right point of view, and there you have us-official and effectual. It's like a limited game of cricket. A field of outsiders are always going in to bowl at the Pub It was the sprightly young Barnacle, Ferdinand. He looked very good-natured and pre-lic Service, and we block the balls." possessing, though overpoweringly gay and free, in contrast with the squalid prison. "You are surprised to see me, Mr. Clennam," he said, taking the seat which Clennam offered him. "I must confess to being much surprised." "Thank you. Frankly," said the engaging "Our Circumlocution place." "I can not charge any part of my reverses upon that remarkable establishment." "Upon my life," said the vivacious young Barnacle, "I am heartily glad to know it. It is quite a relief to me to hear you say it. I should have so exceedingly regretted our place having had any thing to do with your difficulties." Clennam asked what became of the bowlers? The airy Young Barnacle replied that they grew tired, got dead beat, got lamed, got their backs broken, died off, gave it up, went in for other games. "And this occasions me to congratulate myself again," he pursued, "on the circumstance that our place has had nothing to do with your temporary retirement. It very easily might have had a hand in it; because it is undeniable that we are sometimes a most unlucky place, in our effects upon people who will not leave us alone. Mr. Clennam, I am quite unreserved with you. As between yourself and myself, I know I may be. I was so, when I first saw you making the mistake of not leaving us alone; because I perceived that you were inexperienced and sanguine, and had-I hope you'll not object to my saying-some simplicity ?" "Not at all." "Some simplicity. Therefore I felt what a pity it was, and I went out of my way to hint to you (which really was not official, but I never am official when I can help it), something to Clennam again assured him that he absolved the effect that if I were you, I wouldn't bother it of the responsibility. "That's right," said Ferdinand. "I am very happy to hear it. I was rather afraid in my own mind that we might have helped to floor you, because there is no doubt that it is our misfortune to do that kind of thing now and then. We don't want to do it; but if men will be graveled, why-we can't help it." "Without giving an unqualified assent to what you say, returned Arthur, gloomily, "I am much obliged to you for your interest in me." "No, but really! Our place is," said the easy Young Barnacle, "the most inoffensive place possible. You'll say we are a Humbug. I won't say we are not; but all that sort of thing is intended to be, and must be. Don't you see?" "I do not," said Clennam. myself. However, you did bother yourself, and you have since bothered yourself. Now, don't do it any more." "I am not likely to have the opportunity," said Clennam. "Oh yes, you are! You'll leave here. Every body leaves here. There are no ends of ways of leaving here. Now, don't come back to us. That entreaty is the second object of my call. Pray, don't come back to us. Upon my honor," said Ferdinand, in a very friendly and confiding way, "I shall be greatly vexed if you don't take warning by the past and keep away from us.” "And the invention ?" said Clennam. "My good fellow," returned Ferdinand, "if you'll excuse the freedom of that form of address, nobody wants to know of the invention, "You don't regard it from the right point of and nobody cares twopence-halfpenny about view. It is the point of view that is the essen-it." tial thing. Regard our place from the point of view that we only ask you to leave us alone, and we are as capital a Department as you'll find any where." "Nobody in the Office, that is to say?" "Nor out of it. Every body is ready to dislike and ridicule any invention. You have no idea how many people want to be left alone. "Is your place there to be left alone?" asked You have no idea how the Genius of the counClennam. try (overlook the Parliamentary nature of the "You exactly hit it," returned Ferdinand.phrase, and don't be bored by it) tends to being "It is there with the express intention that every left alone. Believe me, Mr. Clennam," said |