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

‘I think,’ said the gentleman in a subdued tone, ‘I had best carry her straight to her room. Will you call to some one to bring a light?’ addressing his companion, ‘and to show the way? In this strange rambling place I don’t know that I could find it.’

‘Pray, let me call my maid,’ cried the taller of the young ladies.

‘Pray, let me put this water to her lips,’ said the shorter, who had not spoken yet.

Each doing what she suggested, there was no want of assistance. Indeed, when the two maids came in (escorted by the courier, lest any one should strike them dumb by addressing a foreign language to them on the road), there was a prospect of too much assistance. Seeing this, and saying as much in a few words to the slighter and younger of the two ladies, the gentleman put his wife’s arm over his shoulder, lifted her up, and carried her away.

His friend, being left alone with the other visitors, walked slowly up and down the room without coming to the fire again, pulling his black moustache in a contemplative manner, as if he felt himself committed to the late retort. While the subject of it was breathing injury in a corner, the Chief loftily addressed this gentleman.

‘Your friend, sir,’ said he, ‘is—ha—is a little impatient; and, in his impatience, is not perhaps fully sensible of what he owes to—hum—to—but we will waive that, we will waive that. Your friend is a little impatient, sir.’

‘It may be so, sir,’ returned the other. ‘But having had the honour of making that gentleman’s acquaintance at the hotel at Geneva, where we and much good company met some time ago, and having had the honour of exchanging company and conversation with that gentleman on several subsequent excursions, I can hear nothing—no, not even from one of your appearance and station, sir—detrimental to that gentleman.’

‘You are in no danger, sir, of hearing any such thing from me. In remarking that your friend has shown impatience, I say no such thing. I make that remark, because it is not to be doubted that my son, being by birth and by—ha—by education a—hum—a gentleman, would have readily adapted himself to any obligingly expressed wish on the subject of the fire being equally accessible to the whole of the present circle. Which, in principle, I—ha—for all are—hum— equal on these occasions—I consider right.’

‘Good,’ was the reply. ‘And there it ends! I am your son’s obedient servant. I beg your son to receive the assurance of my profound consideration. And now, sir, I may admit, freely admit, that my friend is sometimes of a sarcastic temper.’

‘The lady is your friend’s wife, sir?’

‘The lady is my friend’s wife, sir.’ ‘She is very handsome.’

‘Sir, she is peerless. They are still in the first year of their marriage. They are still partly on a marriage, and partly on an artistic, tour.’

‘Your friend is an artist, sir?’

The gentleman replied by kissing the fingers of his right hand, and wafting the kiss the length of his arm towards Heaven. As who should say, I devote him to the celestial Powers as an immortal artist!

‘But he is a man of family,’ he added. ‘His connections are of the best. He is more than an artist: he is highly connected. He may, in effect, have repudiated his connections, proudly, impatiently, sarcastically (I make the concession of both words); but he has them. Sparks that have been struck out during our intercourse have shown me this.’

‘Well! I hope,’ said the lofty gentleman, with the air of finally disposing of the subject, ‘that the lady’s indisposition may be only temporary.’

‘Sir, I hope so.’

‘Mere fatigue, I dare say.’

‘Not altogether mere fatigue, sir, for her mule stumbled to-day, and she fell from the saddle. She fell lightly, and was up again without assistance, and rode from us laughing; but she complained towards evening of a slight bruise in the side. She spoke of it more than once, as we followed your party up the mountain.’

The head of the large retinue, who was gracious but not familiar, appeared by this time to think that he had condescended more than enough. He said no more, and there was silence for some quarter of an hour until supper appeared.

With the supper came one of the young Fathers (there seemed to be no old Fathers) to take the head of the table. It was like the supper of an ordinary Swiss hotel, and good red wine grown by the convent in more genial air was not wanting. The artist traveller calmly came and took his place at table when the rest sat down, with no apparent sense upon him of his late skirmish with the completely dressed traveller.

‘Pray,’ he inquired of the host, over his soup, ‘has your convent many of its famous dogs now?’

‘Monsieur, it has three.’

‘I saw three in the gallery below. Doubtless the three in question.’ The host, a slender, bright-eyed, dark young man of polite manners, whose garment was a black gown with strips of white crossed over it like braces, and who no more resembled the conventional breed of Saint Bernard monks than he resembled the conventional breed of Saint Bernard dogs, replied, doubtless those were the three in question.

‘And I think,’ said the artist traveller, ‘I have seen one of them before.’

It was possible. He was a dog sufficiently well known. Monsieur might have easily seen him in the valley or somewhere on the lake, when he (the dog) had gone down with one of the order to solicit aid for the convent.

‘Which is done in its regular season of the year, I think?’

Monsieur was right.

‘And never without a dog. The dog is very important.’ Again Monsieur was right. The dog was very important. People were justly interested in the dog. As one of the dogs celebrated everywhere, Ma’amselle would observe.

Ma’amselle was a little slow to observe it, as though she were not yet well accustomed to the French tongue. Mrs General, however, observed it for her.

‘Ask him if he has saved many lives?’ said, in his native English, the young man who had been put out of countenance.

The host needed no translation of the question. He promptly replied in French, ‘No. Not this one.’

‘Why not?’ the same gentleman asked.

‘Pardon,’ returned the host composedly, ‘give him the opportunity and he will do it without doubt. For example, I am well convinced,’ smiling sedately, as he cut up the dish of veal to be handed round, on the young man who had been put out of countenance, ‘that if you, Monsieur, would give him the opportunity, he would hasten with great ardour to fulfil his duty.’

The artist traveller laughed. The insinuating traveller (who evinced a provident anxiety to get his full share of the supper), wiping some drops of wine from his moustache with a piece of bread, joined the conversation.

‘It is becoming late in the year, my Father,’ said he, ‘for tourist-travellers, is it not?’

‘Yes, it is late. Yet two or three weeks, at most, and we shall be left to the winter snows.’ ‘And then,’ said the insinuating traveller, ‘for the scratching dogs and the buried children, according to the pictures!’

‘Pardon,’ said the host, not quite understanding the allusion. ‘How, then the scratching dogs and the buried children according to the pictures?’

The artist traveller struck in again before an answer could be given.

‘Don’t you know,’ he coldly inquired across the table of his companion, ‘that none but smugglers come this way in the winter or can have any possible business this way?’

‘Holy blue! No; never heard of it.’

‘So it is, I believe. And as they know the signs of the weather tolerably well, they don’t give much employment to the dogs—who have consequently died out rather—though this house of entertainment is conveniently situated for themselves. Their young families, I am told, they usually leave at home. But it’s a grand idea!’ cried the artist traveller, unexpectedly rising into a tone of enthusiasm. ‘It’s a sublime idea. It’s the finest idea in the world, and brings tears into a man’s eyes, by Jupiter!’ He then went on eating his veal with great composure.

There was enough of mocking inconsistency at the bottom of this speech to make it rather discordant, though the manner was refined and the person well-favoured, and though the depreciatory part of it was so skilfully thrown off as to be very difficult for one not perfectly acquainted with the English language to understand, or , even understanding, to take offence at: so simple and dispassionate was its tone. After finishing his veal in the midst of silence, the speaker again addressed his friend.

‘Look,’ said he, in his former tone, ‘at this gentleman our host, not yet in the prime of life, who in so graceful a way and with such courtly urbanity and modesty presides over us! Manners fit for a crown! Dine with the Lord Mayor of London (if you can get an invitation) and observe the contrast. This dear fellow, with the finest cut face I ever saw, a face in perfect drawing, leaves some laborious life and comes up here I don’t know how many feet above the level of the sea, for no other purpose on earth (except enjoying himself, I hope, in a capital refectory) than to keep an hotel for idle poor devils like you and me, and leave the bill to our consciences! Why, isn’t it a beautiful sacrifice? What do we want more to touch us? Because rescued people of interesting appearance are not, for eight or nine months out of every twelve, holding on here round the necks of the most sagacious of dogs carrying wooden bottles, shall we disparage the place? No! Bless the place. It’s a great place, a glorious place!’

The chest of the grey-haired gentleman who was the Chief of the important party, had swelled as if with a protest against his being numbered among poor devils. No sooner had the artist traveller ceased speaking than he himself spoke with great dignity, as having it incumbent on him to take the lead in most places, and having deserted that duty for a little while.

He weightily communicated his opinion to their host, that his life must be a very dreary life here in the winter.

The host allowed to Monsieur that it was a little monotonous. The air was difficult to breathe for a length of time consecutively. The cold was very severe. One needed youth and strength to bear it. However, having them and the blessing of Heaven—

Yes, that was very good. ‘But the confinement,’ said the grey-haired gentleman.

There were many days, even in bad weather, when it was possible to walk about outside. It was the custom to beat a little track, and take exercise there.

‘But the space,’ urged the grey-haired gentleman. ‘So small. So— ha—very limited.’

Monsieur would recall to himself that there were the refuges to visit, and that tracks had to be made to them also.

Monsieur still urged, on the other hand, that the space was so— ha—hum—so very contracted. More than that, it was always the same, always the same.

With a deprecating smile, the host gently raised and gently lowered his shoulders. That was true, he remarked, but permit him to say that almost all objects had their various points of view. Monsieur and he did not see this poor life of his from the same point of view. Monsieur was not used to confinement.

‘I—ha—yes, very true,’ said the grey-haired gentleman. He