Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (suggested reading .TXT) 📕

blaze and his coat tucked under his arms, something as if he were of the Poultry species and were trussed for roasting, lost countenance at this reply; he seemed about to demand further explanation, when it was discovered⁠—through all eyes turning on the speaker⁠—that the lady with him, who was young and beautiful, had not heard what had passed through having fainted with her head upon his shoulder.

“I think,” said the gentleman in a subdued tone, “I had best carry her straight to her room. Will you call to someone 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 anyone 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 today, 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