Dorrie

“ In the privacy of their own study, the three monitresses discussed the matter at some length.
"I rather like them both," said Dorrie. "Katrine's quite an interesting sort of girl, only she has at present far too high an idea of her own importance."
"She's inclined to be a little patronizing," commented Viola. "Of course that won't do. I'm Captain here, and she'll have quite to realize that. We can't let a girl come into the school at seventeen and begin to boss the whole show."
"Rather not! There ought to be a rule to admit no one over fifteen." ”

“ The hall door shut behind him with an angry slam, and thus Roland Dorrien went out from the presence of his father—never to look upon him again in this world.
Mrs Dorrien found her husband sitting in the study in a state of terrible exhaustion. He was a strong man for his age, but the frightful passion to which he had given way had seriously shaken him. ”

“ Dorrien’s uneasiness and worldly care chained him to the earth, and he was a restant—but, being a spirit, he was inevitably inducted into some of the inherent properties of spirit; matter to him was no impediment, neither doors nor walls could keep him out; he had the intuitive perception of whom he could most easily communicate with, or he was brought into rapport with Oeder by the latter’s seeking him ”

“ Mr Dorrit, though he had his castle-building to engage his mind, could not be quite easy in that desolate place. He was far more curious, in every swerve of the carriage, and every cry of the postilions, than he had been since he quitted London. ”

“ I’m waiting for my hero, Max.”
“For your hero? Yes; I thought you were. And what is he like? A fairy prince like the Sleeping Beauty’s?”
“Don’t be satirical: it doesn’t suit you, Max,” retorts Dorris.
“Satirical? I’m in the deepest earnest. Won’t you describe him? I really wish to know.”
“Well,” began Dorris, “it is not exactly an easy thing to describe an imaginary person. He is no fairy prince, Max, but a strong and earnest man, a true and noble soul; a man who, for a good cause, would peril anything, a knight like Bayard of old: sans peur et sans reproche.” ”

“ A man so much in want of airing that he had a blue mould upon him, sat watching this dark place from a hole in a corner, like a spider; and he told her that he would send a message up to Miss Dorrit by the first lady or gentleman who went through. The first lady who went through had a roll of music, half in her muff and half out of it, and was in such a tumbled condition altogether, that it seemed as if it would be an act of kindness to iron her. ”

“ A Castle in the Air
Manifold are the cares of wealth and state. Mr Dorrit’s satisfaction in remembering that it had not been necessary for him to announce himself to Clennam and Co., or to make an allusion to his having had any knowledge of the intrusive person of that name, had been damped over-night, while it was still fresh, by a debate that arose within him whether or no he should take the Marshalsea in his way back, and look at the old gate. ”

“ Many combinations did those spikes upon the wall assume, many light shapes did the strong iron weave itself into, many golden touches fell upon the rust, while Little Dorrit sat there musing. New zig-zags sprung into the cruel pattern sometimes, when she saw it through a burst of tears; but beautified or hardened still, always over it and under it and through it, she was fain to look in her solitude, seeing everything with that ineffaceable brand.
A garret, and a Marshalsea garret without compromise, was Little Dorrit’s room. ”

“ No,’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘I am—hum—sure of that. Ha. Give me your hand, Young John, give me your hand.’
Young John gave it; but Mr Dorrit had driven his heart out of it, and nothing could change his face now, from its white, shocked look. ”

“ Little Dorrit’s Lover
Little Dorrit had not attained her twenty-second birthday without finding a lover. Even in the shallow Marshalsea, the ever young Archer shot off a few featherless arrows now and then from a mouldy bow, and winged a Collegian or two.
Little Dorrit’s lover, however, was not a Collegian. He was the sentimental son of a turnkey. His father hoped, in the fulness of time, to leave him the inheritance of an unstained key; and had from his early youth familiarised him with the duties of his office, and with an ambition to retain the prison-lock in the family. ”

“ You have always (as I have informed Mrs General) been my favourite child; I have always made you a—hum—a friend and companion; in return, I beg—I—ha—I do beg, that you accommodate yourself better to—hum—circumstances, and dutifully do what becomes your—your station.’
Mr Dorrit was even a little more fragmentary than usual, being excited on the subject and anxious to make himself particularly emphatic. ”

“ Little Dorrit is coming, and will find me in the dark.’
Mr Flintwinch lighted the candle briskly, and said as he put it down upon the table:
‘What are you going to do with Little Dorrit? Is she to come to work here for ever? To come to tea here for ever? To come backwards and forwards here, in the same way, for ever?’
‘How can you talk about “for ever” to a maimed creature like me? ”

“ Dorris makes a charming little hostess as she flits from room to room, and at last pauses on the porch before a group of three, L’Estrange, Endicott, and Lieut. Allen, an old friend who is home on sick-leave, who welcome warmly and admiringly the slight, graceful figure in its white dress, with a bag of red, white, and blue hanging from her dimpled elbow, a fancy of Dorris, enhanced by the red and white roses and blue forget-me-nots in her hair,—flowers which she found on her spinning-wheel, with no clew to the giver. ”

“ At the close of the evening, when she rose to retire, Mr Dorrit took her by the hand as if he were going to lead her out into the Piazza of the people to walk a minuet by moonlight, and with great solemnity conducted her to the room door, where he raised her knuckles to his lips. Having parted from her with what may be conjectured to have been a rather bony kiss of a cosmetic flavour, he gave his daughter his blessing, graciously. ”

“ They were come into the High Street, where the prison stood, when a voice cried, ‘Little mother, little mother!’ Little Dorrit stopping and looking back, an excited figure of a strange kind bounced against them (still crying ‘little mother’) , fell down, and scattered the contents of a large basket, filled with potatoes, in the mud. ”

“ Mr Merdle turned his tongue in his closed mouth—it seemed rather a stiff and unmanageable tongue—moistened his lips, passed his hand over his forehead again, and looked all round the room again, principally under the chairs.
‘But,’ he said, looking Mr Dorrit in the face for the first time, and immediately afterwards dropping his eyes to the buttons of Mr Dorrit’s waistcoat; ‘if we speak of attractions, your daughter ought to be the subject of our conversation. She is extremely beautiful. Both in face and figure, she is quite uncommon. ”

“ The brothers William and Frederick Dorrit, walking up and down the College-yard—of course on the aristocratic or Pump side, for the Father made it a point of his state to be chary of going among his children on the Poor side, except on Sunday mornings, Christmas Days, and other occasions of ceremony, in the observance whereof he was very punctual, and at which times he laid his hand upon the heads of their infants, and blessed those young Insolvents with a benignity that was highly edifying—the brothers, walking up and down the College-yard together, were a memorable sight. ”

“ While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily being sketched out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous clink of iron upon iron was heard there through the working hours.
The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into sound trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious devices, had done much to enhance the character of the factory. ”

“ Social people in other gondolas began to ask each other who the little solitary girl was whom they passed, sitting in her boat with folded hands, looking so pensively and wonderingly about her. Never thinking that it would be worth anybody’s while to notice her or her doings, Little Dorrit, in her quiet, scared, lost manner, went about the city none the less. ”

“ Lady so very much wishes no Row.’
Edward Dorrit, Esquire, led a little apart by the button, assumed a diplomatic expression of countenance in replying, ‘Why you must confess, that when you bespeak a lot of rooms beforehand, and they belong to you, it’s not pleasant to find other people in ’em.’
‘No,’ said the other, ‘I know it isn’t. I admit it. Still, let you and I try to make it all right, and avoid Row. The fault is not this chap’s at all, but my mother’s. Being a remarkably fine woman with no biggodd nonsense about her—well educated, too—she was too many for this chap. ”

“ The Storming of the Castle in the Air
The sun had gone down full four hours, and it was later than most travellers would like it to be for finding themselves outside the walls of Rome, when Mr Dorrit’s carriage, still on its last wearisome stage, rattled over the solitary Campagna. The savage herdsmen and the fierce-looking peasants who had chequered the way while the light lasted, had all gone down with the sun, and left the wilderness blank. At some turns of the road, a pale flare on the horizon, like an exhalation from the ruin-sown land, showed that the city was yet far off ”

“ But, said Little Dorrit, when they stopped at a poor dwelling all in darkness, and heard no sound on listening at the door, ‘Now, this is a good lodging for you, Maggy, and we must not give offence. Consequently, we will only knock twice, and not very loud; and if we cannot wake them so, we must walk about till day.’
Once, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. Twice, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. All was close and still. ‘Maggy, we must do the best we can, my dear. ”

“ CHAPTER 24 – Fortune-Telling
Little Dorrit received a call that same evening from Mr Plornish, who, having intimated that he wished to speak to her privately, in a series of coughs so very noticeable as to favour the idea that her father, as regarded her seamstress occupation, was an illustration of the axiom that there are no such stone-blind men as those who will not see, obtained an audience with her on the common staircase outside the door.
‘There’s been a lady at our place to-day, Miss Dorrit,’ Plornish growled, ‘and another one along with her as is a old vixen if ever I met with such. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And Mr Dorrit’s daughter that day began, in earnest, her competition with that woman not present; and began it so well that Mr Dorrit could all but have taken his affidavit, if required, that Mrs Sparkler had all her life been lying at full length in the lap of luxury, and had never heard of such a rough word in the English tongue as Marshalsea. ”

“ They had shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in nooks. They had run from drunkards. They had started from slinking men, whistling and signing to one another at bye corners, or running away at full speed. Though everywhere the leader and the guide, Little Dorrit, happy for once in her youthful appearance, feigned to cling to and rely upon Maggy. ”

“ There’s a gentleman to have run to seed in the Marshalsea Gaol! Why, perhaps you are not aware,’ said Plornish, lowering his voice, and speaking with a perverse admiration of what he ought to have pitied or despised, ‘not aware that Miss Dorrit and her sister dursn’t let him know that they work for a living. ”

“ Then, while Dorris tries to change the sob into words, he follows the others into the wide, long hall, where the breezes, sweeping [Pg 466] in through the open doors at either end, fill the summer air with delicious coolness, and the scent of roses mingles with that of newly-mown clover. The breezes, too, bring to Dorris bits of conversation from the hall; but they fall on unheeding ears until an abrupt speech from her uncle claims her attention.
“Endicott,” says his voice, “why don’t you join the army? Such men are being called for,—young, strong, and able. ”

“ Mr Dorrit, on the altar of whose dignity all this was incense, made a gracious reply; and said that his people should—ha—countermand his horses, and he would—hum—overlook what he had at first supposed to be an affront, but now regarded as an honour. Upon this the bosom bent to him; and its owner, with a wonderful command of feature, addressed a winning smile of adieu to the two sisters, as young ladies of fortune in whose favour she was much prepossessed, and whom she had never had the gratification of seeing before. ”

“ They sat in their equipage of state, with Mrs General on the box, for three weeks longer, and then he started for Florence to join Fanny. Little Dorrit would have been glad to bear him company so far, only for the sake of her own love, and then to have turned back alone, thinking of dear England. But, though the Courier had gone on with the Bride, the Valet was next in the line; and the succession would not have come to her, as long as any one could be got for money. ”