The Father of the Marshalsea in the meantime took his younger daughter to his breast, and patted her head.
‘There, there! Say no more, Amy, say no more, my child. I will forget it as soon as I can. I,’ with hysterical cheerfulness, ‘I – shall soon be able to dismiss it. It is perfectly true, my dear, that I am always glad to see my old pensioner – as such, as such – and that I do – ha – extend as much protection and kindness to the – hum – the bruised reed – I trust I may so call him without impropriety – as in my circumstances, I can. It is quite true that this is the case, my dear child. At the same time, I preserve in doing this, if I may – ha – if I may use the expression – Spirit. Becoming Spirit. And there are some things which are,’ he stopped to sob, ‘irreconcilable with that, and wound that – wound it deeply. It is not that I have seen my good Amy attentive, and – ha – condescending to my old pensioner – it is not that that hurts me. It is, if I am to close the painful subject by being explicit, that I have seen my child, my own child, my own daughter, coming into this College out of the public streets – smiling! smiling! – arm in arm with – O my God, a livery!’
This reference to the coat of no cut and no time, the unfortunate gentleman gasped forth, in a scarcely audible voice, and with his clenched pocket-handkerchief raised in the air. His excited feelings might have found some further painful utterance, but for a knock at the door, which had been already twice repeated, and to which Fanny (still wishing herself dead, and indeed now going so far as to add, buried) cried ‘Come in!’
‘Ah, Young John!’ said the Father, in an altered and calmed voice. ‘What is it, Young John?’
‘A letter for you, sir, being left in the Lodge just this minute, and a message with it, I thought, happening to be there myself, sir, I would bring it to your room.’ The speaker’s attention was much distracted by the piteous spectacle of Little Dorrit at her father’s feet, with her head turned away.
‘Indeed, John? Thank you.’
‘The letter is from Mr Clennam, sir – it’s the answer – and the message was, sir, that Mr Clennam also sent his compliments, and word that he would do himself the pleasure of calling this afternoon, hoping to see you, and likewise,’ attention more distracted than before, ‘Miss Amy.’
‘Oh!’ As the Father glanced into the letter (there was a bank-note in it), he reddened a little, and patted Amy on the head afresh. ‘Thank you, Young John. Quite right. Much obliged to you for your attention. No one waiting?’
‘No, sir, no one waiting.’
‘Thank you, John. How is your mother, Young John?’
‘Thank you, sir, she’s not quite as well as we could wish – in fact, we none of us are, except father – but she’s pretty well, sir.’
‘Say we sent our remembrances, will you? Say kind remembrances, if you please, Young John.’
‘Thank you, sir, I will.’ And Mr Chivery junior went his way, having spontaneously composed on the spot an entirely new epitaph for himself, to the effect that Here lay the body of John Chivery, Who, Having at such a date, Beheld the idol of his life, In grief and tears, And feeling unable to bear the harrowing spectacle, Immediately repaired to the abode of his inconsolable parents, And terminated his existence by his own rash act.
‘There, there, Amy!’ said the Father, when Young John had closed the door, ‘let us say no more about it.’ The last few minutes had improved his spirits remarkably, and he was quite lightsome. ‘Where is my old pensioner all this while? We must not leave him by himself any longer, or he will begin to suppose he is not welcome, and that would pain me. Will you fetch him, my child, or shall I?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind, father,’ said Little Dorrit, trying to bring her sobbing to a close.
‘Certainly I will go, my dear. I forgot; your eyes are rather red. There! Cheer up, Amy. Don’t be uneasy about me. I am quite myself again, my love, quite myself. Go to your room, Amy, and make yourself look comfortable and pleasant to receive Mr Clennam.’
‘I would rather stay in my own room, Father,’ returned Little Dorrit, finding it more difficult than before to regain her composure. ‘I would far rather not see Mr Clennam.’
‘Oh, fie, fie, my dear, that’s folly. Mr Clennam is a very gentlemanly man – very gentlemanly. A little reserved at times; but I will say extremely gentlemanly. I couldn’t think of your not being here to receive Mr Clennam, my dear, especially this afternoon. So go and freshen yourself up, Amy; go and freshen yourself up, like a good girl.’
Thus directed, Little Dorrit dutifully rose and obeyed: only pausing for a moment as she went out of the room, to give her sister a kiss of reconciliation. Upon which, that young lady, feeling much harassed in her mind, and having for the time worn out the wish with which she generally relieved it, conceived and executed the brilliant idea of wishing Old Nandy dead, rather than that he should come bothering there like a disgusting, tiresome, wicked wretch, and making mischief between two sisters.
The Father of the Marshalsea, even humming a tune, and wearing his black velvet cap a little on one side, so much improved were his spirits, went down into the yard, and found his old pensioner standing there hat in hand just within the gate, as he had stood all this time. ‘Come, Nandy!’ said he, with great suavity. ‘Come up-stairs, Nandy; you know the way; why don’t you come up-stairs?’ He went the length, on this occasion, of giving him his hand and saying, ‘How are you, Nandy? Are you pretty well?’ To which that vocalist returned, ‘I thank you, honoured sir, I am all the better for seeing your honour.’ As they went along the yard, the Father of the Marshalsea presented him to a Collegian of recent date. ‘An old acquaintance of mine, sir, an old pensioner.’ And then said, ‘Be covered, my good Nandy; put your hat on,’ with great consideration.
His patronage did not stop here; for he charged Maggy to get the tea ready, and instructed her to buy certain tea-cakes, fresh butter, eggs, cold ham, and shrimps: to purchase which collation he gave her a bank-note for ten pounds, laying strict injunctions on her to be careful of the change. These preparations were in an advanced stage of progress, and his daughter Amy had come back with her work, when Clennam presented himself; whom he most graciously received, and besought to join their meal.
‘Amy, my love, you know Mr Clennam even better than I have the happiness of doing. Fanny, my dear, you are acquainted with Mr Clennam.’ Fanny acknowledged him haughtily; the position she tacitly took up in all such cases being that there was a vast conspiracy to insult the family by not understanding it, or sufficiently deferring to it, and here was one of the conspirators. ‘This, Mr Clennam, you must know, is an old pensioner of mine, Old Nandy, a very faithful old man.’ (He always spoke of him as an object of great antiquity, but he was two or three years younger than himself.) ‘Let me see. You know Plornish, I think? I think my daughter Amy has mentioned to me that you know poor Plornish?’
‘O yes!’ said Arthur Clennam.
‘Well, sir, this is Mrs Plornish’s father.’
‘Indeed? I am glad to see him.’
‘You would be more glad if you knew his many good qualities, Mr Clennam.’
‘I hope I shall come to know them through knowing him,’ said Arthur, secretly pitying the bowed and submissive figure.
‘It is a holiday with him, and he comes to see his old friends, who are always glad to see him,’ observed the Father of the Marshalsea. Then he added behind his hand, (‘Union, poor old fellow. Out for the day.’)
By this time Maggy, quietly assisted by her Little Mother, had spread the board, and the repast was ready. It being hot weather and the prison very close, the window was as wide open as it could be pushed. ‘If Maggy will spread that newspaper on the window-sill, my dear,’ remarked the Father complacently and in a half whisper to Little Dorrit, ‘my old pensioner can have his tea there, while we are having ours.’
So, with a gulf between him and the good company of about a foot in width, standard measure, Mrs Plornish’s father was handsomely regaled. Clennam had never seen anything like his magnanimous protection by that other Father, he of the Marshalsea; and was lost in the contemplation of its many wonders.
The most striking of these was perhaps the relishing manner in which he remarked on the pensioner’s infirmities and failings, as if he were a gracious Keeper making a running commentary on the decline of the harmless animal he exhibited.
‘Not ready for more ham yet, Nandy? Why, how slow you are! (His last teeth,’ he explained to the company, ‘are going, poor old boy.’)
At another time, he said, ‘No shrimps, Nandy?’ and on his not instantly replying, observed, (‘His hearing is becoming very defective. He’ll be deaf directly.’)
At another time he asked him, ‘Do you walk much, Nandy, about the yard within the walls of that place of yours?’
‘No, sir; no. I haven’t any great liking for that.’
‘No, to be sure,’ he assented. ‘Very natural.’ Then he privately informed the circle (‘Legs going.’)
Once he asked the pensioner, in that general clemency which asked him anything to keep him afloat, how old his younger grandchild was?
‘John Edward,’ said the pensioner, slowly laying down his knife and fork to consider. ‘How old, sir? Let me think now.’
The Father of the Marshalsea tapped his forehead (‘Memory weak.’)
‘John Edward, sir? Well, I really forget. I couldn’t say at this minute, sir, whether it’s two and two months, or whether it’s two and five months. It’s one or the other.’
‘Don’t distress yourself by worrying your mind about it,’ he returned, with infinite forbearance. (‘Faculties evidently decaying – old man rusts in the life he leads!’)
The more of these discoveries that he persuaded himself he made in the pensioner, the better he appeared to like him; and when he got out of his chair after tea to bid the pensioner good-bye, on his intimating that he feared, honoured sir, his time was running out, he made himself look as erect and strong as possible.
‘We don’t call this a shilling, Nandy, you know,’ he said, putting one in his hand. ‘We call it tobacco.’
‘Honoured sir, I thank you. It shall buy tobacco. My thanks and duty to Miss Amy and Miss Fanny. I wish you good night, Mr Clennam.’
‘And mind you don’t forget us, you know, Nandy,’ said the Father. ‘You must come again, mind, whenever you have an afternoon. You must not come out without seeing us, or we shall be jealous. Good night, Nandy. Be very careful how you descend the stairs, Nandy; they are rather uneven and worn.’ With that he stood on the landing, watching the old man down: and when he came into the room again, said, with a solemn satisfaction on him, ‘A melancholy sight that, Mr Clennam, though one has the consolation of knowing that he doesn’t feel it himself. The poor old fellow is a dismal wreck. Spirit broken and gone – pulverised – crushed out of him, sir, completely!’
As Clennam had a purpose in remaining, he said what he could responsive to these sentiments, and stood at the window with their enunciator, while Maggy and her Little Mother washed the tea-service and cleared it away. He noticed that his companion stood at the window with the air of an affable and accessible Sovereign, and that, when any of his people in the yard below looked up, his recognition of their salutes just stopped short of a blessing.
When Little Dorrit had her work on the table, and Maggy hers on the bedstead, Fanny fell to tying her bonnet as a preliminary to her departure. Arthur, still having his purpose, still remained. At this time the door opened, without any notice, and Mr Tip came in. He kissed Amy as she started up to meet him, nodded to Fanny, nodded to his father, gloomed on the visitor without further recognition, and sat down.
‘Tip, dear,’ said Little Dorrit, mildly, shocked by this, ‘don’t you see – ’
‘Yes, I see, Amy. If you refer to the presence of any visitor you have here – I say, if you refer to that,’ answered Tip, jerking his head with emphasis towards his shoulder nearest Clennam, ‘I see!’
‘Is that all you say?’
‘That’s all I say. And I suppose,’ added the lofty young man, after a moment’s pause, ‘that visitor will understand me, when I say that’s all I say. In short, I suppose the visitor will understand that he hasn’t used me like a gentleman.’
‘I do not understand that,’ observed the obnoxious personage referred to with tranquillity.
‘No? Why, then, to make it clearer to you, sir, I beg to let you know that when I address what I call a properly-worded appeal, and an urgent appeal, and a delicate appeal, to an individual, for a small temporary accommodation, easily within his power – easily within his power, mind! – and when that individual writes back word to me that he begs to be excused, I consider that he doesn’t treat me like a gentleman.’
The Father of the Marshalsea, who had surveyed his son in silence, no sooner heard this sentiment, than he began in angry voice: —
‘How dare you – ’ But his son stopped him.
‘Now, don’t ask me how I dare, father, because that’s bosh. As to the fact of the line of conduct I choose to adopt towards the individual present, you ought to be proud of my showing a proper spirit.’
‘I should think so!’ cried Fanny.
‘A proper spirit?’ said the Father. ‘Yes, a proper spirit; a becoming spirit. Is it come to this that my son teaches me —me– spirit!’
‘Now, don’t let us bother about it, father, or have any row on the subject. I have fully made up my mind that the individual present has not treated me like a gentleman. And there’s an end of it.’
‘But there is not an end of it, sir,’ returned the Father. ‘But there shall not be an end of it. You have made up your mind? You have made up your mind?’
‘Yes, I have. What’s the good of keeping on like that?’
‘Because,’ returned the Father, in a great heat, ‘you had no right to make up your mind to what is monstrous, to what is – ha – immoral, to what is – hum – parricidal. No, Mr Clennam, I beg, sir. Don’t ask me to desist; there is a – hum – a general principle involved here, which rises even above considerations of – ha – hospitality. I object to the assertion made by my son. I – ha – I personally repel it.’
‘Why, what is it to you, father?’ returned the son, over his shoulder.
‘What is it to me, sir? I have a – hum – a spirit, sir, that will not endure it. I,’ he took out his pocket-handkerchief again and dabbed his face. ‘I am outraged and insulted by it. Let me suppose the case that I myself may at a certain time – ha – or times, have made a – hum – an appeal, and a properly-worded appeal, and a delicate appeal, and an urgent appeal to some individual for a small temporary accommodation. Let me suppose that that accommodation could have been easily extended, and was not extended, and that that individual informed me that he begged to be excused. Am I to be told by my own son, that I therefore received treatment not due to a gentleman, and that I – ha – I submitted to it?’
His daughter Amy gently tried to calm him, but he would not on any account be calmed. He said his spirit was up, and wouldn’t endure this.
Was he to be told that, he wished to know again, by his own son on his own hearth, to his own face? Was that humiliation to be put upon him by his own blood?
‘You are putting it on yourself, father, and getting into all this injury of your own accord!’ said the young gentleman morosely. ‘What I have made up my mind about has nothing to do with you. What I said had nothing to do with you. Why need you go trying on other people’s hats?’
‘I reply it has everything to do with me,’ returned the Father. ‘I point out to you, sir, with indignation, that – hum – the – ha – delicacy and peculiarity of your father’s position should strike you dumb, sir, if nothing else should, in laying down such – ha – such unnatural principles. Besides; if you are not filial, sir, if you discard that duty, you are at least – hum – not a Christian? Are you – ha – an Atheist? And is it Christian, let me ask you, to stigmatise and denounce an individual for begging to be excused this time, when the same individual may – ha – respond with the required accommodation next time? Is it the part of a Christian not to – hum – not to try him again?’ He had worked himself into quite a religious glow and fervour.
‘I see precious well,’ said Mr Tip, rising, ‘that I shall get no sensible or fair argument here to-night, and so the best thing I can do is to cut. Good night, Amy. Don’t be vexed. I am very sorry it happens here, and you here, upon my soul I am; but I can’t altogether part with my spirit, even for your sake, old girl.’
With those words he put on his hat and went out, accompanied by Miss Fanny; who did not consider it spirited on her part to take leave of Clennam with any less opposing demonstration than a stare, importing that she had always known him for one of the large body of conspirators.
When they were gone, the Father of the Marshalsea was at first inclined to sink into despondency again, and would have done so, but that a gentleman opportunely came up within a minute or two to attend him to the Snuggery. It was the gentleman Clennam had seen on the night of his own accidental detention there, who had that impalpable grievance about the misappropriated Fund on which the Marshal was supposed to batten. He presented himself as deputation to escort the Father to the Chair, it being an occasion on which he had promised to preside over the assembled Collegians in the enjoyment of a little Harmony.
‘Such, you see, Mr Clennam,’ said the Father, ‘are the incongruities of my position here. But a public duty! No man, I am sure, would more readily recognise a public duty than yourself.’
Clennam besought him not to delay a moment.
‘Amy, my dear, if you can persuade Mr Clennam to stay longer, I can leave the honours of our poor apology for an establishment with confidence in your hands, and perhaps you may do something towards erasing from Mr Clennam’s mind the – ha – untoward and unpleasant circumstance which has occurred since tea-time.’
Clennam assured him that it had made no impression on his mind, and therefore required no erasure.
‘My dear sir,’ said the Father, with a removal of his black cap and a grasp of Clennam’s hand, combining to express the safe receipt of his note and enclosure that afternoon, ‘Heaven ever bless you!’
So, at last, Clennam’s purpose in remaining was attained, and he could speak to Little Dorrit with nobody by. Maggy counted as nobody, and she was by.
CHAPTER 32. More Fortune-Telling
Maggy sat at her work in her great white cap with its quantity of opaque frilling hiding what profile she had (she had none to spare), and her serviceable eye brought to bear upon her occupation, on the window side of the room. What with her flapping cap, and what with her unserviceable eye, she was quite partitioned off from her Little Mother, whose seat was opposite the window. The tread and shuffle of feet on the pavement of the yard had much diminished since the taking of the Chair, the tide of Collegians having set strongly in the direction of Harmony. Some few who had no music in their souls, or no money in their pockets, dawdled about; and the old spectacle of the visitor-wife and the depressed unseasoned prisoner still lingered in corners, as broken cobwebs and such unsightly discomforts draggle in corners of other places. It was the quietest time the College knew, saving the night hours when the Collegians took the benefit of the act of sleep. The occasional rattle of applause upon the tables of the Snuggery, denoted the successful termination of a morsel of Harmony; or the responsive acceptance, by the united children, of some toast or sentiment offered to them by their Father. Occasionally, a vocal strain more sonorous than the generality informed the listener that some boastful bass was in blue water, or in the hunting field, or with the reindeer, or on the mountain, or among the heather; but the Marshal of the Marshalsea knew better, and had got him hard and fast.
As Arthur Clennam moved to sit down by the side of Little Dorrit, she trembled so that she had much ado to hold her needle. Clennam gently put his hand upon her work, and said, ‘Dear Little Dorrit, let me lay it down.’
She yielded it to him, and he put it aside. Her hands were then nervously clasping together, but he took one of them.
‘How seldom I have seen you lately, Little Dorrit!’
‘I have been busy, sir.’
‘But I heard only to-day,’ said Clennam, ‘by mere accident, of your having been with those good people close by me. Why not come to me, then?’
‘I – I don’t know. Or rather, I thought you might be busy too. You generally are now, are you not?’
He saw her trembling little form and her downcast face, and the eyes that drooped the moment they were raised to his – he saw them almost with as much concern as tenderness.
‘My child, your manner is so changed!’
The trembling was now quite beyond her control. Softly withdrawing her hand, and laying it in her other hand, she sat before him with her head bent and her whole form trembling.
‘My own Little Dorrit,’ said Clennam, compassionately.
She burst into tears. Maggy looked round of a sudden, and stared for at least a minute; but did not interpose. Clennam waited some little while before he spoke again.
‘I cannot bear,’ he said then, ‘to see you weep; but I hope this is a relief to an overcharged heart.’
‘Yes it is, sir. Nothing but that.’
‘Well, well! I feared you would think too much of what passed here just now. It is of no moment; not the least. I am only unfortunate to have come in the way. Let it go by with these tears. It is not worth one of them. One of them? Such an idle thing should be repeated, with my glad consent, fifty times a day, to save you a moment’s heart-ache, Little Dorrit.’
She had taken courage now, and answered, far more in her usual manner, ‘You are so good! But even if there was nothing else in it to be sorry for and ashamed of, it is such a bad return to you – ’
‘Hush!’ said Clennam, smiling and touching her lips with his hand. ‘Forgetfulness in you who remember so many and so much, would be new indeed. Shall I remind you that I am not, and that I never was, anything but the friend whom you agreed to trust? No. You remember it, don’t you?’
‘I try to do so, or I should have broken the promise just now, when my mistaken brother was here. You will consider his bringing-up in this place, and will not judge him hardly, poor fellow, I know!’ In raising her eyes with these words, she observed his face more nearly than she had done yet, and said, with a quick change of tone, ‘You have not been ill, Mr Clennam?’
‘No.’
‘Nor tried? Nor hurt?’ she asked him, anxiously.
It fell to Clennam now, to be not quite certain how to answer. He said in reply:
‘To speak the truth, I have been a little troubled, but it is over. Do I show it so plainly? I ought to have more fortitude and self-command than that. I thought I had. I must learn them of you. Who could teach me better!’
He never thought that she saw in him what no one else could see. He never thought that in the whole world there were no other eyes that looked upon him with the same light and strength as hers.
‘But it brings me to something that I wish to say,’ he continued, ‘and therefore I will not quarrel even with my own face for telling tales and being unfaithful to me. Besides, it is a privilege and pleasure to confide in my Little Dorrit. Let me confess then, that, forgetting how grave I was, and how old I was, and how the time for such things had gone by me with the many years of sameness and little happiness that made up my long life far away, without marking it – that, forgetting all this, I fancied I loved some one.’
‘Do I know her, sir?’ asked Little Dorrit.
‘No, my child.’
‘Not the lady who has been kind to me for your sake?’
‘Flora. No, no. Do you think – ’
‘I never quite thought so,’ said Little Dorrit, more to herself than him. ‘I did wonder at it a little.’
‘Well!’ said Clennam, abiding by the feeling that had fallen on him in the avenue on the night of the roses, the feeling that he was an older man, who had done with that tender part of life, ‘I found out my mistake, and I thought about it a little – in short, a good deal – and got wiser. Being wiser, I counted up my years and considered what I am, and looked back, and looked forward, and found that I should soon be grey. I found that I had climbed the hill, and passed the level ground upon the top, and was descending quickly.’
If he had known the sharpness of the pain he caused the patient heart, in speaking thus! While doing it, too, with the purpose of easing and serving her.
‘I found that the day when any such thing would have been graceful in me, or good in me, or hopeful or happy for me or any one in connection with me, was gone, and would never shine again.’
O! If he had known, if he had known! If he could have seen the dagger in his hand, and the cruel wounds it struck in the faithful bleeding breast of his Little Dorrit!
‘All that is over, and I have turned my face from it. Why do I speak of this to Little Dorrit? Why do I show you, my child, the space of years that there is between us, and recall to you that I have passed, by the amount of your whole life, the time that is present to you?’
‘Because you trust me, I hope. Because you know that nothing can touch you without touching me; that nothing can make you happy or unhappy, but it must make me, who am so grateful to you, the same.’
He heard the thrill in her voice, he saw her earnest face, he saw her clear true eyes, he saw the quickened bosom that would have joyfully thrown itself before him to receive a mortal wound directed at his breast, with the dying cry, ‘I love him!’ and the remotest suspicion of the truth never dawned upon his mind. No. He saw the devoted little creature with her worn shoes, in her common dress, in her jail-home; a slender child in body, a strong heroine in soul; and the light of her domestic story made all else dark to him.
‘For those reasons assuredly, Little Dorrit, but for another too. So far removed, so different, and so much older, I am the better fitted for your friend and adviser. I mean, I am the more easily to be trusted; and any little constraint that you might feel with another, may vanish before me. Why have you kept so retired from me? Tell me.’
‘I am better here. My place and use are here. I am much better here,’ said Little Dorrit, faintly.
‘So you said that day upon the bridge. I thought of it much afterwards. Have you no secret you could entrust to me, with hope and comfort, if you would!’
‘Secret? No, I have no secret,’ said Little Dorrit in some trouble.
They had been speaking in low voices; more because it was natural to what they said to adopt that tone, than with any care to reserve it from Maggy at her work. All of a sudden Maggy stared again, and this time spoke:
‘I say! Little Mother!’
‘Yes, Maggy.’
‘If you an’t got no secret of your own to tell him, tell him that about the Princess. She had a secret, you know.’
‘The Princess had a secret?’ said Clennam, in some surprise. ‘What Princess was that, Maggy?’
‘Lor! How you do go and bother a gal of ten,’ said Maggy, ‘catching the poor thing up in that way. Whoever said the Princess had a secret? I never said so.’
‘I beg your pardon. I thought you did.’
‘No, I didn’t. How could I, when it was her as wanted to find it out? It was the little woman as had the secret, and she was always a spinning at her wheel. And so she says to her, why do you keep it there? And so the t’other one says to her, no I don’t; and so the t’other one says to her, yes you do; and then they both goes to the cupboard, and there it is. And she wouldn’t go into the Hospital, and so she died. You know, Little Mother; tell him that. For it was a reg’lar good secret, that was!’ cried Maggy, hugging herself.
Arthur looked at Little Dorrit for help to comprehend this, and was struck by seeing her so timid and red. But, when she told him that it was only a Fairy Tale she had one day made up for Maggy, and that there was nothing in it which she wouldn’t be ashamed to tell again to anybody else, even if she could remember it, he left the subject where it was.
However, he returned to his own subject by first entreating her to see him oftener, and to remember that it was impossible to have a stronger interest in her welfare than he had, or to be more set upon promoting it than he was. When she answered fervently, she well knew that, she never forgot it, he touched upon his second and more delicate point – the suspicion he had formed.
‘Little Dorrit,’ he said, taking her hand again, and speaking lower than he had spoken yet, so that even Maggy in the small room could not hear him, ‘another word. I have wanted very much to say this to you; I have tried for opportunities. Don’t mind me, who, for the matter of years, might be your father or your uncle. Always think of me as quite an old man. I know that all your devotion centres in this room, and that nothing to the last will ever tempt you away from the duties you discharge here. If I were not sure of it, I should, before now, have implored you, and implored your father, to let me make some provision for you in a more suitable place. But you may have an interest – I will not say, now, though even that might be – may have, at another time, an interest in some one else; an interest not incompatible with your affection here.’
She was very, very pale, and silently shook her head.
‘It may be, dear Little Dorrit.’
‘No. No. No.’ She shook her head, after each slow repetition of the word, with an air of quiet desolation that he remembered long afterwards. The time came when he remembered it well, long afterwards, within those prison walls; within that very room.
‘But, if it ever should be, tell me so, my dear child. Entrust the truth to me, point out the object of such an interest to me, and I will try with all the zeal, and honour, and friendship and respect that I feel for you, good Little Dorrit of my heart, to do you a lasting service.’