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

“Thank you, Amy,” pursued Mr. Dorrit, as she helped him to put off his wrappers. “I can do it without assistance. I⁠—ha⁠—need not trouble you, Amy. Could I have a morsel of bread and a glass of wine, or⁠—hum⁠—would it cause too much inconvenience?”

“Dear father, you shall have supper in a very few minutes.”

“Thank you, my love,” said Mr. Dorrit, with a reproachful frost upon him; “I⁠—ha⁠—am afraid I am causing inconvenience. Hum. Mrs. General pretty well?”

“Mrs. General complained of a headache, and of being fatigued; and so, when we gave you up, she went to bed, dear.”

Perhaps Mr. Dorrit thought that Mrs. General had done well in being overcome by the disappointment of his not arriving. At any rate, his face relaxed, and he said with obvious satisfaction, “Extremely sorry to hear that Mrs. General is not well.”

During this short dialogue, his daughter had been observant of him, with something more than her usual interest. It would seem as though he had a changed or worn appearance in her eyes, and he perceived and resented it; for he said with renewed peevishness, when he had divested himself of his travelling-cloak, and had come to the fire:

“Amy, what are you looking at? What do you see in me that causes you to⁠—ha⁠—concentrate your solicitude on me in that⁠—hum⁠—very particular manner?”

“I did not know it, father; I beg your pardon. It gladdens my eyes to see you again; that’s all.”

“Don’t say that’s all, because⁠—ha⁠—that’s not all. You⁠—hum⁠—you think,” said Mr. Dorrit, with an accusatory emphasis, “that I am not looking well.”

“I thought you looked a little tired, love.”

“Then you are mistaken,” said Mr. Dorrit. “Ha, I am not tired. Ha, hum. I am very much fresher than I was when I went away.”

He was so inclined to be angry that she said nothing more in her justification, but remained quietly beside him embracing his arm. As he stood thus, with his brother on the other side, he fell into a heavy doze, of not a minute’s duration, and awoke with a start.

“Frederick,” he said, turning to his brother: “I recommend you to go to bed immediately.”

“No, William. I’ll wait and see you sup.”

“Frederick,” he retorted, “I beg you to go to bed. I⁠—ha⁠—make it a personal request that you go to bed. You ought to have been in bed long ago. You are very feeble.”

“Hah!” said the old man, who had no wish but to please him. “Well, well, well! I dare say I am.”

“My dear Frederick,” returned Mr. Dorrit, with an astonishing superiority to his brother’s failing powers, “there can be no doubt of it. It is painful to me to see you so weak. Ha. It distresses me. Hum. I don’t find you looking at all well. You are not fit for this sort of thing. You should be more careful, you should be very careful.”

“Shall I go to bed?” asked Frederick.

“Dear Frederick,” said Mr. Dorrit, “do, I adjure you! Good night, brother. I hope you will be stronger tomorrow. I am not at all pleased with your looks. Good night, dear fellow.” After dismissing his brother in this gracious way, he fell into a doze again before the old man was well out of the room: and he would have stumbled forward upon the logs, but for his daughter’s restraining hold.

“Your uncle wanders very much, Amy,” he said, when he was thus roused. “He is less⁠—ha⁠—coherent, and his conversation is more⁠—hum⁠—broken, than I have⁠—ha, hum⁠—ever known. Has he had any illness since I have been gone?”

“No, father.”

“You⁠—ha⁠—see a great change in him, Amy?”

“I have not observed it, dear.”

“Greatly broken,” said Mr. Dorrit. “Greatly broken. My poor, affectionate, failing Frederick! Ha. Even taking into account what he was before, he is⁠—hum⁠—sadly broken!”

His supper, which was brought to him there, and spread upon the little table where he had seen her working, diverted his attention. She sat at his side as in the days that were gone, for the first time since those days ended. They were alone, and she helped him to his meat and poured out his drink for him, as she had been used to do in the prison. All this happened now, for the first time since their accession to wealth. She was afraid to look at him much, after the offence he had taken; but she noticed two occasions in the course of his meal, when he all of a sudden looked at her, and looked about him, as if the association were so strong that he needed assurance from his sense of sight that they were not in the old prison-room. Both times, he put his hand to his head as if he missed his old black cap⁠—though it had been ignominiously given away in the Marshalsea, and had never got free to that hour, but still hovered about the yards on the head of his successor.

He took very little supper, but was a long time over it, and often reverted to his brother’s declining state. Though he expressed the greatest pity for him, he was almost bitter upon him. He said that poor Frederick⁠—ha hum⁠—drivelled. There was no other word to express it; drivelled. Poor fellow! It was melancholy to reflect what Amy must have undergone from the excessive tediousness of his society⁠—wandering and babbling on, poor dear estimable creature, wandering and babbling on⁠—if it had not been for the relief she had had in Mrs. General. Extremely sorry, he then repeated with his former satisfaction, that that⁠—ha⁠—superior woman was poorly.

Little Dorrit, in her watchful love, would have remembered the lightest thing he said or did that night, though she had had no subsequent reason to recall that night. She always remembered that, when he looked about him under the strong influence of the old association, he tried to keep it out of her mind, and perhaps out of his own too, by immediately expatiating on the great riches and great company that had encompassed him in his absence, and on the lofty position he and his family had to sustain. Nor did