Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (e ink manga reader .txt) 📕

a certain small capital. I proposed to him to lend me the money on my note. Which he did, at twenty; sticking the twenty on in a businesslike way, and putting it into the note, to look like a part of the principal. If I had broken down after that, I should have been his grubber for the next seven years at half wages and double grind. But he’s a perfect Patriarch; and it would do a man good to serve him on such terms—on any terms.’

Arthur for his life could not have said with confidence whether Pancks really thought so or not.

‘When that was gone, sir,’ resumed Pancks, ‘and it did go, though I dribbled it out like so much blood, I had taken Mr Rugg into the secret. I proposed to borrow of Mr Rugg (or of Miss Rugg; it’s the same thing; she made a little money by a speculation in the Common Pleas once). He lent it at ten, and thought that pretty high. But Mr Rugg’s a red-haired man, sir, and gets his hair cut. And as to the crown of his hat, it’s high. And as to the brim of his hat, it’s narrow. And there’s no more benevolence bubbling out of him, than out of a ninepin.’

‘Your own recompense for all this, Mr Pancks,’ said Clennam, ‘ought to be a large one.’

‘I don’t mistrust getting it, sir,’ said Pancks. ‘I have made no bargain. I owed you one on that score; now I have paid it. Money out of pocket made good, time fairly allowed for, and Mr Rugg’s bill settled, a thousand pounds would be a fortune to me. That matter I place in your hands. I authorize you now to break all this to the family in any way you think best. Miss Amy Dorrit will be with Mrs Finching this morning. The sooner done the better. Can’t be done too soon.’

This conversation took place in Clennam’s bedroom, while he was yet in bed. For Mr Pancks had knocked up the house and made his way in, very early in the morning; and, without once sitting down or standing still, had delivered himself of the whole of his details (illustrated with a variety of documents) at the bedside. He now said he would ‘go and look up Mr Rugg’, from whom his excited state of mind appeared to require another back; and bundling up his papers, and exchanging one more hearty shake of the hand with Clennam, he went at full speed downstairs, and steamed off.

Clennam, of course, resolved to go direct to Mr Casby’s. He dressed and got out so quickly that he found himself at the corner of the patriarchal street nearly an hour before her time; but he was not sorry to have the opportunity of calming himself with a leisurely walk.

When he returned to the street, and had knocked at the bright brass knocker, he was informed that she had come, and was shown upstairs to Flora’s breakfast-room. Little Dorrit was not there herself, but Flora was, and testified the greatest amazement at seeing him.

‘Good gracious, Arthur—Doyce and Clennam!’ cried that lady, ‘who would have ever thought of seeing such a sight as this and pray excuse a wrapper for upon my word I really never and a faded check too which is worse but our little friend is making me a, not that I need mind mentioning it to you for you must know that there are such things a skirt, and having arranged that a trying on should take place after breakfast is the reason though I wish not so badly starched.’

‘I ought to make an apology,’ said Arthur, ‘for so early and abrupt a visit; but you will excuse it when I tell you the cause.’

‘In times for ever fled Arthur,’ returned Mrs Finching, ‘pray excuse me Doyce and Clennam infinitely more correct and though unquestionably distant still ‘tis distance lends enchantment to the view, at least I don’t mean that and if I did I suppose it would depend considerably on the nature of the view, but I’m running on again and you put it all out of my head.’

She glanced at him tenderly, and resumed:

‘In times for ever fled I was going to say it would have sounded strange indeed for Arthur Clennam—Doyce and Clennam naturally quite different—to make apologies for coming here at any time, but that is past and what is past can never be recalled except in his own case as poor Mr F. said when he was in spirits Cucumber and therefore never ate it.’

She was making the tea when Arthur came in, and now hastily finished that operation.

‘Papa,’ she said, all mystery and whisper, as she shut down the tea-pot lid, ‘is sitting prosingly breaking his new laid egg in the back parlour over the City article exactly like the Woodpecker Tapping and need never know that you are here, and our little friend you are well aware may be fully trusted when she comes down from cutting out on the large table overhead.’

Arthur then told her, in the fewest words, that it was their little friend he came to see; and what he had to announce to their little friend. At which astounding intelligence, Flora clasped her hands, fell into a tremble, and shed tears of sympathy and pleasure, like the good-natured creature she really was.

‘For goodness sake let me get out of the way first,’ said Flora, putting her hands to her ears and moving towards the door, ‘or I know I shall go off dead and screaming and make everybody worse, and the dear little thing only this morning looking so nice and neat and good and yet so poor and now a fortune is she really and deserves it too! and might I mention it to Mr F.‘s Aunt Arthur not Doyce and Clennam for this once or if objectionable not on any account.’

Arthur nodded his free permission, since Flora shut out all verbal communication. Flora nodded in return to thank him, and hurried out of the room.

Little Dorrit’s step was already on the stairs, and in another moment she was at the door. Do what he could to compose his face, he could not convey so much of an ordinary expression into it, but that the moment she saw it she dropped her work, and cried, ‘Mr Clennam! What’s the matter?’

‘ Nothing, nothing. That is, no misfortune has happened. I have come to tell you something, but it is a piece of great good-fortune.’ ‘Good-fortune?’

‘Wonderful fortune!’

They stood in a window, and her eyes, full of light, were fixed upon his face. He put an arm about her, seeing her likely to sink down. She put a hand upon that arm, partly to rest upon it, and partly so to preserve their relative positions as that her intent look at him should be shaken by no change of attitude in either of them. Her lips seemed to repeat ‘Wonderful fortune?’ He repeated it again, aloud.

‘Dear Little Dorrit! Your father.’

The ice of the pale face broke at the word, and little lights and shoots of expression passed all over it. They were all expressions of pain. Her breath was faint and hurried. Her heart beat fast. He would have clasped the little figure closer, but he saw that the eyes appealed to him not to be moved.

‘Your father can be free within this week. He does not know it; we must go to him from here, to tell him of it. Your father will be free within a few days. Your father will be free within a few hours. Remember we must go to him from here, to tell him of it!’

That brought her back. Her eyes were closing, but they opened again.

‘This is not all the good-fortune. This is not all the wonderful good-fortune, my dear Little Dorrit. Shall I tell you more?’

Her lips shaped ‘Yes.’

‘Your father will be no beggar when he is free. He will want for nothing. Shall I tell you more? Remember! He knows nothing of it; we must go to him, from here, to tell him of it!’

She seemed to entreat him for a little time. He held her in his arm, and, after a pause, bent down his ear to listen.

‘Did you ask me to go on?’

‘Yes.’

‘He will be a rich man. He is a rich man. A great sum of money is waiting to be paid over to him as his inheritance; you are all henceforth very wealthy. Bravest and best of children, I thank Heaven that you are rewarded!’

As he kissed her, she turned her head towards his shoulder, and raised her arm towards his neck; cried out ‘Father! Father! Father!’ and swooned away.

Upon which Flora returned to take care of her, and hovered about her on a sofa, intermingling kind offices and incoherent scraps of conversation in a manner so confounding, that whether she pressed the Marshalsea to take a spoonful of unclaimed dividends, for it would do her good; or whether she congratulated Little Dorrit’s father on coming into possession of a hundred thousand smelling-bottles; or whether she explained that she put seventy-five thousand drops of spirits of lavender on fifty thousand pounds of lump sugar, and that she entreated Little Dorrit to take that gentle restorative; or whether she bathed the foreheads of Doyce and Clennam in vinegar, and gave the late Mr F. more air; no one with any sense of responsibility could have undertaken to decide. A tributary stream of confusion, moreover, poured in from an adjoining bedroom, where Mr F.‘s Aunt appeared, from the sound of her voice, to be in a horizontal posture, awaiting her breakfast; and from which bower that inexorable lady snapped off short taunts, whenever she could get a hearing, as, ‘Don’t believe it’s his doing!’ and ‘He needn’t take no credit to himself for it!’ and ‘It’ll be long enough, I expect, afore he’ll give up any of his own money!’ all designed to disparage Clennam’s share in the discovery, and to relieve those inveterate feelings with which Mr F.‘s Aunt regarded him.

But Little Dorrit’s solicitude to get to her father, and to carry the joyful tidings to him, and not to leave him in his jail a moment with this happiness in store for him and still unknown to him, did more for her speedy restoration than all the skill and attention on earth could have done. ‘Come with me to my dear father. Pray come and tell my dear father!’ were the first words she said. Her father, her father. She spoke of nothing but him, thought of nothing but him. Kneeling down and pouring out her thankfulness with uplifted hands, her thanks were for her father.

Flora’s tenderness was quite overcome by this, and she launched out among the cups and saucers into a wonderful flow of tears and speech.

‘I declare,’ she sobbed, ‘I never was so cut up since your mama and my papa not Doyce and Clennam for this once but give the precious little thing a cup of tea and make her put it to her lips at least pray Arthur do, not even Mr F.‘s last illness for that was of another kind and gout is not a child’s affection though very painful for all parties and Mr F. a martyr with his leg upon a rest and the wine trade in itself inflammatory for they will do it more or less among themselves and who can wonder, it seems like a dream I am sure to think of nothing at all this morning and now Mines of money is it really, but you must know my darling love because you never will be strong enough to tell him all about