"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 crimson to the tips of his ears. "Miss Dorrit never did, sir. I wish to be honourable 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 towards 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"Leastways," said John, stretching his hand across the tea-tray, "if too strong a remark, withdrawn!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?"
"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 to-day 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 returning scorn, "why not speak free!"
"I declare to you," returned Arthur, "that I do not understand you.
Look at me. Consider the trouble I have been in. Is it likely that I would wilfully 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. "Mr Clennam, do you mean to say that you don"t know?"
"What, John?"
"Lord," said Young John, appealing with a gasp to the spikes on the wall. "He says, What!"
Clennam looked at the spikes, and looked at John; and 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?"
"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.
"Of Miss Dorrit"s love."
"For whom?"
"You," said John. And touched him with the back of his hand upon the breast, and backed to his chair, and sat down on 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 on a point that almost sent me into my grave, 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 const.i.tuted 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 out his pocket-handkerchief with a genuine 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 harmless luxury of a sob and a sniff, he put it up 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 a.s.sured John Chivery when he had returned his handkerchief to his pocket, that he did all honour 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 a.s.sented, 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.bleness 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 a thing as her loving him, that he must not take advantage of her grat.i.tude, that he must keep his experience in remembrance as a warning and reproof; that he must regard such youthful hopes as having pa.s.sed away, as his friend"s dead daughter had pa.s.sed 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 raised 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 vain 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.e.x"s wit, out of a woman"s quick a.s.sociation of ideas, or out of a woman"s no a.s.sociation 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 in the Italian manner, "as I say to him, Mooshattonisha 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."
Arthur thought she looked at him with particular expression.
"It"s a thing," reiterated Mrs Plornish, "to be thankful for, indeed, that Miss Dorrit 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."