BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY - CHAPTER 8 The Lock

Arthur Clennam stood in the street, waiting to ask some passer-by

what place that was. He suffered a few people to pass him in whose

face there was no encouragement to make the inquiry, and still

stood pausing in the street, when an old man came up and turned

into the courtyard.

He stooped a good deal, and plodded along in a slow pre-occupied

manner, which made the bustling London thoroughfares no very safe

resort for him. He was dirtily and meanly dressed, in a threadbare

coat, once blue, reaching to his ankles and buttoned to his chin,

where it vanished in the pale ghost of a velvet collar. A piece of

red cloth with which that phantom had been stiffened in its

lifetime was now laid bare, and poked itself up, at the back of the

old man's neck, into a confusion of grey hair and rusty stock and

buckle which altogether nearly poked his hat off. A greasy hat it

was, and a napless; impending over his eyes, cracked and crumpled

at the brim, and with a wisp of pocket-handkerchief dangling out

below it. His trousers were so long and loose, and his shoes so

clumsy and large, that he shuffled like an elephant; though how

much of this was gait, and how much trailing cloth and leather, no

one could have told. Under one arm he carried a limp and worn-out

case, containing some wind instrument; in the same hand he had a

pennyworth of snuff in a little packet of whitey-brown paper, from

which he slowly comforted his poor blue old nose with a lengthened-

out pinch, as Arthur Clennam looked at him.

To this old man crossing the court-yard, he preferred his inquiry,

touching him on the shoulder. The old man stopped and looked

round, with the expression in his weak grey eyes of one whose

thoughts had been far off, and who was a little dull of hearing

also.

'Pray, sir,' said Arthur, repeating his question, 'what is this

place?'

'Ay! This place?' returned the old man, staying his pinch of snuff

on its road, and pointing at the place without looking at it.

'This is the Marshalsea, sir.'

'The debtors' prison?'

'Sir,' said the old man, with the air of deeming it not quite

necessary to insist upon that designation, 'the debtors' prison.'

He turned himself about, and went on.

'I beg your pardon,' said Arthur, stopping him once more, 'but will

you allow me to ask you another question? Can any one go in here?'

'Any one can go IN,' replied the old man; plainly adding by the

significance of his emphasis, 'but it is not every one who can go

out.'

'Pardon me once more. Are you familiar with the place?'

'Sir,' returned the old man, squeezing his little packet of snuff

in his hand, and turning upon his interrogator as if such questions

hurt him. 'I am.'

'I beg you to excuse me. I am not impertinently curious, but have

a good object. Do you know the name of Dorrit here?'

'My name, sir,' replied the old man most unexpectedly, 'is Dorrit.'

Arthur pulled off his hat to him. 'Grant me the favour of half-a-

dozen words. I was wholly unprepared for your announcement, and

hope that assurance is my sufficient apology for having taken the

liberty of addressing you. I have recently come home to England

after a long absence. I have seen at my mother's--Mrs Clennam in

the city--a young woman working at her needle, whom I have only

heard addressed or spoken of as Little Dorrit. I have felt

sincerely interested in her, and have had a great desire to know

something more about her. I saw her, not a minute before you came

up, pass in at that door.'

The old man looked at him attentively. 'Are you a sailor, sir?' he

asked. He seemed a little disappointed by the shake of the head

that replied to him. 'Not a sailor? I judged from your sunburnt

face that you might be. Are you in earnest, sir?'

'I do assure you that I am, and do entreat you to believe that I

am, in plain earnest.'

'I know very little of the world, sir,' returned the other, who had

a weak and quavering voice. 'I am merely passing on, like the

shadow over the sun-dial. It would be worth no man's while to

mislead me; it would really be too easy--too poor a success, to

yield any satisfaction. The young woman whom you saw go in here is

my brother's child. My brother is William Dorrit; I am Frederick.

You say you have seen her at your mother's (I know your mother

befriends her), you have felt an interest in her, and you wish to

know what she does here. Come and see.'

He went on again, and Arthur accompanied him.

'My brother,' said the old man, pausing on the step and slowly

facing round again, 'has been here many years; and much that

happens even among ourselves, out of doors, is kept from him for

reasons that I needn't enter upon now. Be so good as to say

nothing of my niece's working at her needle. Be so good as to say

nothing that goes beyond what is said among us. If you keep within

our bounds, you cannot well be wrong. Now! Come and see.'

Arthur followed him down a narrow entry, at the end of which a key

was turned, and a strong door was opened from within. It admitted

them into a lodge or lobby, across which they passed, and so

through another door and a grating into the prison. The old man

always plodding on before, turned round, in his slow, stiff,

stooping manner, when they came to the turnkey on duty, as if to

present his companion. The turnkey nodded; and the companion

passed in without being asked whom he wanted.

The night was dark; and the prison lamps in the yard, and the

candles in the prison windows faintly shining behind many sorts of

wry old curtain and blind, had not the air of making it lighter.

A few people loitered about, but the greater part of the population

was within doors. The old man, taking the right-hand side of the

yard, turned in at the third or fourth doorway, and began to ascend

the stairs. 'They are rather dark, sir, but you will not find

anything in the way.'

He paused for a moment before opening a door on the second story.

He had no sooner turned the handle than the visitor saw Little

Dorrit, and saw the reason of her setting so much store by dining

alone.

She had brought the meat home that she should have eaten herself,

and was already warming it on a gridiron over the fire for her

father, clad in an old grey gown and a black cap, awaiting his

supper at the table. A clean cloth was spread before him, with

knife, fork, and spoon, salt-cellar, pepper-box, glass, and pewter

ale-pot. Such zests as his particular little phial of cayenne

pepper and his pennyworth of pickles in a saucer, were not wanting.

She started, coloured deeply, and turned white. The visitor, more

with his eyes than by the slight impulsive motion of his hand,

entreated her to be reassured and to trust him.

'I found this gentleman,' said the uncle--'Mr Clennam, William, son

of Amy's friend--at the outer gate, wishful, as he was going by, of

paying his respects, but hesitating whether to come in or not.

This is my brother William, sir.'

'I hope,' said Arthur, very doubtful what to say, 'that my respect

for your daughter may explain and justify my desire to be presented

to you, sir.'

'Mr Clennam,' returned the other, rising, taking his cap off in the

flat of his hand, and so holding it, ready to put on again, 'you do

me honour. You are welcome, sir;' with a low bow. 'Frederick, a

chair. Pray sit down, Mr Clennam.'

He put his black cap on again as he had taken it off, and resumed

his own seat. There was a wonderful air of benignity and patronage

in his manner. These were the ceremonies with which he received

the collegians.

'You are welcome to the Marshalsea, sir. I have welcomed many

gentlemen to these walls. Perhaps you are aware--my daughter Amy

may have mentioned that I am the Father of this place.'

'I--so I have understood,' said Arthur, dashing at the assertion.

'You know, I dare say, that my daughter Amy was born here. A good

girl, sir, a dear girl, and long a comfort and support to me. Amy,

my dear, put this dish on; Mr Clennam will excuse the primitive

customs to which we are reduced here. Is it a compliment to ask

you if you would do me the honour, sir, to--'

'Thank you,' returned Arthur. 'Not a morsel.'

He felt himself quite lost in wonder at the manner of the man, and

that the probability of his daughter's having had a reserve as to

her family history, should be so far out of his mind.

She filled his glass, put all the little matters on the table ready

to his hand, and then sat beside him while he ate his supper.

Evidently in observance of their nightly custom, she put some bread

before herself, and touched his glass with her lips; but Arthur saw

she was troubled and took nothing. Her look at her father, half

admiring him and proud of him, half ashamed for him, all devoted

and loving, went to his inmost heart.

The Father of the Marshalsea condescended towards his brother as an

amiable, well-meaning man; a private character, who had not arrived

at distinction. 'Frederick,' said he, 'you and Fanny sup at your

lodgings to-night, I know. What have you done with Fanny,

Frederick?'

'She is walking with Tip.'

'Tip--as you may know--is my son, Mr Clennam. He has been a little

wild, and difficult to settle, but his introduction to the world

was rather'--he shrugged his shoulders with a faint sigh, and

looked round the room--'a little adverse. Your first visit here,

sir?'

'my first.'

'You could hardly have been here since your boyhood without my

knowledge. It very seldom happens that anybody--of any

pretensions-any pretensions--comes here without being presented to

me.'

'As many as forty or fifty in a day have been introduced to my

brother,' said Frederick, faintly lighting up with a ray of pride.

'Yes!' the Father of the Marshalsea assented. 'We have even

exceeded that number. On a fine Sunday in term time, it is quite

a Levee--quite a Levee. Amy, my dear, I have been trying half the

day to remember the name of the gentleman from Camberwell who was

introduced to me last Christmas week by that agreeable coal-

merchant who was remanded for six months.'

'I don't remember his name, father.'

'Frederick, do you remember his name?'

Frederick doubted if he had ever heard it. No one could doubt that

Frederick was the last person upon earth to put such a question to,

with any hope of information.

'I mean,' said his brother, 'the gentleman who did that handsome

action with so much delicacy. Ha! Tush! The name has quite

escaped me. Mr Clennam, as I have happened to mention handsome and

delicate action, you may like, perhaps, to know what it was.'

'Very much,' said Arthur, withdrawing his eyes from the delicate

head beginning to droop and the pale face with a new solicitude

stealing over it.

'It is so generous, and shows so much fine feeling, that it is

almost a duty to mention it. I said at the time that I always

would mention it on every suitable occasion, without regard to

personal sensitiveness. A--well--a--it's of no use to disguise the

fact--you must know, Mr Clennam, that it does sometimes occur that

people who come here desire to offer some little--Testimonial--to

the Father of the place.'

To see her hand upon his arm in mute entreaty half-repressed, and

her timid little shrinking figure turning away, was to see a sad,

sad sight.

'Sometimes,' he went on in a low, soft voice, agitated, and

clearing his throat every now and then; 'sometimes--hem--it takes

one shape and sometimes another; but it is generally--ha--Money.

And it is, I cannot but confess it, it is too often--hem--

acceptable. This gentleman that I refer to, was presented to me,

Mr Clennam, in a manner highly gratifying to my feelings, and

conversed not only with great politeness, but with great--ahem--

information.' All this time, though he had finished his supper, he

was nervously going about his plate with his knife and fork, as if

some of it were still before him. 'It appeared from his

conversation that he had a garden, though he was delicate of

mentioning it at first, as gardens are--hem--are not accessible to

me. But it came out, through my admiring a very fine cluster of

geranium--beautiful cluster of geranium to be sure--which he had

brought from his conservatory. On my taking notice of its rich

colour, he showed me a piece of paper round it, on which was

written, "For the Father of the Marshalsea," and presented it to

me. But this was--hem--not all. He made a particular request, on

taking leave, that I would remove the paper in half an hour. I--

ha--I did so; and I found that it contained--ahem--two guineas. I

assure you, Mr Clennam, I have received--hem--Testimonials in many

ways, and of many degrees of value, and they have always been--ha--

unfortunately acceptable; but I never was more pleased than with

this--ahem--this particular Testimonial.'

Arthur was in the act of saying the little he could say on such a

theme, when a bell began to ring, and footsteps approached the

door. A pretty girl of a far better figure and much more developed

than Little Dorrit, though looking much younger in the face when

the two were observed together, stopped in the doorway on seeing a

stranger; and a young man who was with her, stopped too.

'Mr Clennam, Fanny. My eldest daughter and my son, Mr Clennam.

The bell is a signal for visitors to retire, and so they have come

to say good night; but there is plenty of time, plenty of time.

Girls, Mr Clennam will excuse any household business you may have

together. He knows, I dare say, that I have but one room here.'

'I only want my clean dress from Amy, father,' said the second

girl.

'And I my clothes,' said Tip.

Amy opened a drawer in an old piece of furniture that was a chest

of drawers above and a bedstead below, and produced two little

bundles, which she handed to her brother and sister. 'Mended and

made up?' Clennam heard the sister ask in a whisper. To which Amy

answered 'Yes.' He had risen now, and took the opportunity of

glancing round the room. The bare walls had been coloured green,

evidently by an unskilled hand, and were poorly decorated with a

few prints. The window was curtained, and the floor carpeted; and

there were shelves and pegs, and other such conveniences, that had

accumulated in the course of years. It was a close, confined room,

poorly furnished; and the chimney smoked to boot, or the tin screen

at the top of the fireplace was superfluous; but constant pains and

care had made it neat, and even, after its kind, comfortable.

All the while the bell was ringing, and the uncle was anxious to

go. 'Come, Fanny, come, Fanny,' he said, with his ragged clarionet

case under his arm; 'the lock, child, the lock!'

Fanny bade her father good night, and whisked off airily. Tip had

already clattered down-stairs. 'Now, Mr Clennam,' said the uncle,

looking back as he shuffled out after them, 'the lock, sir, the

lock.'

Mr Clennam had two things to do before he followed; one, to offer

his testimonial to the Father of the Marshalsea, without giving

pain to his child; the other to say something to that child, though

it were but a word, in explanation of his having come there.

'Allow me,' said the Father, 'to see you down-stairs.'

She had slipped out after the rest, and they were alone. 'Not on

any account,' said the visitor, hurriedly. 'Pray allow me to--'

chink, chink, chink.

'Mr Clennam,' said the Father, 'I am deeply, deeply--' But his

visitor had shut up his hand to stop the clinking, and had gone

down-stairs with great speed.

He saw no Little Dorrit on his way down, or in the yard. The last

two or three stragglers were hurrying to the lodge, and he was

following, when he caught sight of her in the doorway of the first

house from the entrance. He turned back hastily.

'Pray forgive me,' he said, 'for speaking to you here; pray forgive

me for coming here at all! I followed you to-night. I did so,

that I might endeavour to render you and your family some service.

You know the terms on which I and my mother are, and may not be

surprised that I have preserved our distant relations at her house,

lest I should unintentionally make her jealous, or resentful, or do

you any injury in her estimation. What I have seen here, in this

short time, has greatly increased my heartfelt wish to be a friend

to you. It would recompense me for much disappointment if I could

hope to gain your confidence.'

She was scared at first, but seemed to take courage while he spoke

to her.

'You are very good, sir. You speak very earnestly to me. But I--

but I wish you had not watched me.'

He understood the emotion with which she said it, to arise in her

father's behalf; and he respected it, and was silent.

'Mrs Clennam has been of great service to me; I don't know what we

should have done without the employment she has given me; I am

afraid it may not be a good return to become secret with her; I can

say no more to-night, sir. I am sure you mean to be kind to us.

Thank you, thank you.'

'Let me ask you one question before I leave. Have you known my

mother long?'

'I think two years, sir,--The bell has stopped.'

'How did you know her first? Did she send here for you?'

'No. She does not even know that I live here. We have a friend,

father and I--a poor labouring man, but the best of friends--and I

wrote out that I wished to do needlework, and gave his address.

And he got what I wrote out displayed at a few places where it cost

nothing, and Mrs Clennam found me that way, and sent for me. The

gate will be locked, sir!'

She was so tremulous and agitated, and he was so moved by

compassion for her, and by deep interest in her story as it dawned

upon him, that he could scarcely tear himself away. But the

stoppage of the bell, and the quiet in the prison, were a warning

to depart; and with a few hurried words of kindness he left her

gliding back to her father.

But he remained too late. The inner gate was locked, and the lodge

closed. After a little fruitless knocking with his hand, he was

standing there with the disagreeable conviction upon him that he

had got to get through the night, when a voice accosted him from

behind.

'Caught, eh?' said the voice. 'You won't go home till morning.

Oh! It's you, is it, Mr Clennam?'

The voice was Tip's; and they stood looking at one another in the

prison-yard, as it began to rain.

'You've done it,' observed Tip; 'you must be sharper than that next

time.'

'But you are locked in too,' said Arthur.

'I believe I am!' said Tip, sarcastically. 'About! But not in

your way. I belong to the shop, only my sister has a theory that

our governor must never know it. I don't see why, myself.'

'Can I get any shelter?' asked Arthur. 'What had I better do?'

'We had better get hold of Amy first of all,' said Tip, referring

any difficulty to her as a matter of course.

'I would rather walk about all night--it's not much to do--than

give that trouble.'

'You needn't do that, if you don't mind paying for a bed. If you

don't mind paying, they'll make you up one on the Snuggery table,

under the circumstances. If you'll come along, I'll introduce you

there.'

As they passed down the yard, Arthur looked up at the window of the

room he had lately left, where the light was still burning. 'Yes,

sir,' said Tip, following his glance. 'That's the governor's.

She'll sit with him for another hour reading yesterday's paper to

him, or something of that sort; and then she'll come out like a

little ghost, and vanish away without a sound.'

'I don't understand you.'

'The governor sleeps up in the room, and she has a lodging at the

turnkey's. First house there,' said Tip, pointing out the doorway

into which she had retired. 'First house, sky parlour. She pays

twice as much for it as she would for one twice as good outside.

But she stands by the governor, poor dear girl, day and night.'

This brought them to the tavern-establishment at the upper end of

the prison, where the collegians had just vacated their social

evening club. The apartment on the ground-floor in which it was

held, was the Snuggery in question; the presidential tribune of the

chairman, the pewter-pots, glasses, pipes, tobacco-ashes, and

general flavour of members, were still as that convivial

institution had left them on its adjournment. The Snuggery had two

of the qualities popularly held to be essential to grog for ladies,

in respect that it was hot and strong; but in the third point of

analogy, requiring plenty of it, the Snuggery was defective; being

but a cooped-up apartment.

The unaccustomed visitor from outside, naturally assumed everybody

here to be prisoners--landlord, waiter, barmaid, potboy, and all.

Whether they were or not, did not appear; but they all had a weedy

look. The keeper of a chandler's shop in a front parlour, who took

in gentlemen boarders, lent his assistance in making the bed. He

had been a tailor in his time, and had kept a phaeton, he said. He

boasted that he stood up litigiously for the interests of the

college; and he had undefined and undefinable ideas that the

marshal intercepted a 'Fund,' which ought to come to the

collegians. He liked to believe this, and always impressed the

shadowy grievance on new-comers and strangers; though he could not,

for his life, have explained what Fund he meant, or how the notion

had got rooted in his soul. He had fully convinced himself,

notwithstanding, that his own proper share of the Fund was three

and ninepence a week; and that in this amount he, as an individual

collegian, was swindled by the marshal, regularly every Monday.

Apparently, he helped to make the bed, that he might not lose an

opportunity of stating this case; after which unloading of his

mind, and after announcing (as it seemed he always did, without

anything coming of it) that he was going to write a letter to the

papers and show the marshal up, he fell into miscellaneous

conversation with the rest. It was evident from the general tone

of the whole party, that they had come to regard insolvency as the

normal state of mankind, and the payment of debts as a disease that

occasionally broke out.

In this strange scene, and with these strange spectres flitting

about him, Arthur Clennam looked on at the preparations as if they

were part of a dream. Pending which, the long-initiated Tip, with

an awful enjoyment of the Snuggery's resources, pointed out the

common kitchen fire maintained by subscription of collegians, the

boiler for hot water supported in like manner, and other premises

generally tending to the deduction that the way to be healthy,

wealthy, and wise, was to come to the Marshalsea.

The two tables put together in a corner, were, at length, converted

into a very fair bed; and the stranger was left to the Windsor

chairs, the presidential tribune, the beery atmosphere, sawdust,

pipe-lights, spittoons and repose. But the last item was long,

long, long, in linking itself to the rest. The novelty of the

place, the coming upon it without preparation, the sense of being

locked up, the remembrance of that room up-stairs, of the two

brothers, and above all of the retiring childish form, and the face

in which he now saw years of insufficient food, if not of want,

kept him waking and unhappy.

Speculations, too, bearing the strangest relations towards the

prison, but always concerning the prison, ran like nightmares

through his mind while he lay awake. Whether coffins were kept

ready for people who might die there, where they were kept, how

they were kept, where people who died in the prison were buried,

how they were taken out, what forms were observed, whether an

implacable creditor could arrest the dead? As to escaping, what

chances there were of escape? Whether a prisoner could scale the

walls with a cord and grapple, how he would descend upon the other

side? whether he could alight on a housetop, steal down a

staircase, let himself out at a door, and get lost in the crowd?

As to Fire in the prison, if one were to break out while he lay

there?

And these involuntary starts of fancy were, after all, but the

setting of a picture in which three people kept before him. His

father, with the steadfast look with which he had died,

prophetically darkened forth in the portrait; his mother, with her

arm up, warding off his suspicion; Little Dorrit, with her hand on

the degraded arm, and her drooping head turned away.

What if his mother had an old reason she well knew for softening to

this poor girl! What if the prisoner now sleeping quietly--Heaven

grant it!--by the light of the great Day of judgment should trace

back his fall to her. What if any act of hers and of his father's,

should have even remotely brought the grey heads of those two

brothers so low!

A swift thought shot into his mind. In that long imprisonment

here, and in her own long confinement to her room, did his mother

find a balance to be struck? 'I admit that I was accessory to that

man's captivity. I have suffered for it in kind. He has decayed

in his prison: I in mine. I have paid the penalty.'

When all the other thoughts had faded out, this one held possession

of him. When he fell asleep, she came before him in her wheeled

chair, warding him off with this justification. When he awoke, and

sprang up causelessly frightened, the words were in his ears, as if

her voice had slowly spoken them at his pillow, to break his rest:

'He withers away in his prison; I wither away in mine; inexorable

justice is done; what do I owe on this score!'

Read next: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 9 Little Mother

Read previous: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 7 The Child of the Marshalsea

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