Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Previous Page
–
Next Page
OCR
of life. '
"Idon’t care for that. I’ll run away. ‘ I’ll do some
mischief. I won’t bear it; I cau’t bear it ; I shall die if
Itrytobearitl” .. , .
The observer, stood with her hands upon her own
bosomflooking at the girl, as one aillicted with a diseased
part might curiously watch the dissection andgexposition
of an analogous case.
K, The girl raged and battled with all the force of her
youth andvfulness of life, until by little and little her
passionate exclamations trailed off into broken murmurs
as if she were in pain. By corresponding degrees she
sank into a chair, then upon her knees, then upon the
ground beside her bed, drawing the coverlet with her,
lialf.to'liide,her shamed head and wet hair in it, and
l1alf,,as it seemed, to embrace it, rather than have noth-
ing to take to her repentant breast.
“ Go away from me, go away from me I VVhen my
temper comes upon me, am mad. I know I might keep
it off if I ‘only tried hard enough, and sometimes I do try
hard enough, and at other times I don’t and won’t.
VVliat have I said! I knew when I said it, it was all
lies. They think] am being taken care of somewhere
and have all I want. They are nothing but good to me.
I'love.thein dearly; no people could ever be kinder to 9
thankless creature than they always are to me. Do, do
go away, for I am afraid of you. I am afraid of myself
when'I feel my temper coming, and I am as much afraid
of you. Go away from me, and let me pray and cry
myself better I"
The day passed on; and again the wide stare stared
itself out; and the hot night was on Marseilles; and
‘through it the caravan of the morning, all dispersed,
went their appointed ways. And thus ever, by day and
night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the
dustyhills and toiling along the weary plains, 'ourneying
by land and journeying by sea, coming an going so
strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another,
move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage
CHAPTER III.
Home.
IT was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close and
stale. Maddcning church bells of all degrees of disso-
nance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow,
made the brick and mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy
streets in a peniteiitial garb of soot, steeped the souls of
the people who were condemned to look at them out of
windows, in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare,
up almost every alley, and down almost every turning,
some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the
Plague ',wcre inthe city and the dead-carts were going
‘ round.‘ Everything was bolted and barred that could by
possibility furnish relief to an overworked people. No
pictures, no unfuiniliar animals, no rare plants or flowers,
no natural or artificial wonders of V the ancient world-all
taboo with that enlightened strictness, that the ugly South
sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed
themselves at home again. Nothing to see but streets,
-streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets,
streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind, or raise it
up.” Nothing'for the spent toiler to do, but to compare
the monotony of his seventh day with the monotony of
his six days, think what a weary life he lead, and'make
the best of it-or the worst, according to the probabilities.
At such a" happy time, so propitious to the interests of
religion and morality, Mr. Arthur Cleunarn, newly arrived
from Marseilles by way of Dover, and by Dover coach the
lue-eyed Maid, satin tliewindoivof a coffee house on
Linlgate Hill. Ten thousand responsible houses surround.
ed him, fro'wning'as heavily on the streets they composed,
as if they were every one inhabited by the ten young men
of the Calendcr’s story who blackened their faces and be-
nioaned their miseries every night. Fifty thousand lairs
surrounded him where people lived so unwliolesomel y,
that fair water put into their crowdedrooms on Saturday
“”s'ht. Would be corrupt on Sunday morning: albeit my
on], their county member, ‘was amazed that they failed to
S eel’ in company with their biitcher’s meat. Miles of
' LI TTDE D ORRI T. ' 7543
close wells and pits of houses, where the inhabitants gasped
for air, stretched far away towards every point of the
compass. Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer
ebbed and flowed, in the place of a fine fresh river. VVhat
secular want could the million or so of human bein
whose daily labour, six days in the week, lay among these
Arcadian objects, from the sweet sameness of which they
had no escape between the cradle and the rave,-what
secular want could they possibly have upon t eir seventh
day? Clearly they could want nothing but a stringent
policeman. .
Mr. Arthur Clennam sat in the window of the coffee
house on Ludgate Hill, counting one of the neighbouring-
bells, making sentences and burdens of songs out of itin
spite of himself, and wondering how many sick people it
might be the death of in the course of a year. As the
hour approached, its changes of measure made it more
and more exasperating. At the quarter, it went off into
a condition of deadly lively importunity, urging the pop-
ulace in a voluble manner to Come to church, Come to
church, Come to church 1 At the ten minutes, it became
aware that the congregation would be scanty, and slowly
hammered out in low spirits, They icon’): come, they won't
come, they won’! come! At the five minutes, it aban-
doned hope, and shook every house in the neighbourhood
for three hundred seconds, with one dismal swing per
second, as a groan of despair.
“ Thank Heaven I’’ said Clennam, when the hour
struck, and the bell stopped. "
But its sound had revived a long train of miserable
Sundays, and the procession would not stop with the hell,
but continued to march on. “Heaven forgive me,” said
lire, ‘I‘ and those who trained me. How I have hated this
uy )1
There was the dreary Sunday of his childhood, when
he sat with his hands before him, scared out of his senses
by a horrible tract which commenced business with the
poor child by asking him in its title, why he was going
to Perdition ?-a piece of curiosity that he really in a
frock and drawers was not in a condition to satisfy-and
which, for the further attraction of his infant mind, had
a parenthesis in every other line with some such hiccup-
ping reference as 2 Ep. Tlicss. c. iii. v. 6 & 7. There
was the sleepy Sunday of lils boyhood, when, like ii mili-
tary deserter, he was marched to chapel by a picquct of
teachers three times a day, morally liiindcufierl to an-
other boy ; and when he would willingly have bartered
two meals of indigestible sermon for another ounce or twp
of inferior niiittongit his scanty dinner in the flesh. There
was the interminable Sunday of his nonage; when his
mother, stern of face and unrelenting of heart, would sit
all day behind a bible-bound like her own construction
of it in the hardest, barest, and straitest boards, with one
dinted ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain,
and a wratliful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the
leaves-as if it, of all books ! werea fortification against
sweetness of temper, natural affection, and gentle inter-
course. There was the resentful Sunday of a little later,
when he sat glowcring and glooming through the tardy
length of the day, with a sullen sense of injury in his
heart, and no more real knowledge of the beneficent his-
tory of the New Testament, than if he had been bred
among idolatcrs. There was a legion of Sundays, all
days of unserviceablc bitterness and mortification. slowly
passing before him. ' .
“Beg ardon, sir,” said a brisk waiter, rubbing the
table. " VVish see bedroom ?” . ’
“ Yes. I have just made up my mind to do it.’
“ Chaymaid i” cried the waiter. " Galen b0X 1111111
seven wish see room !” .
“ Stay !” said Clennam, rousing himself. “I was not
thinking of what Isaid; I 13115“?-1'9.d m‘3ch3“,',C‘1n)'- I
am not going to sleep here. 1 am going Imme-
" Deed, sir? Cliaymaid! Geleu box num seven, not
0 slee here, cine.” ,
g He sgt in thg same place as the day died, looking at
the dull houses opposite, and thinking, if tliedisenibodicrl
spirits of former inhabitants were ever conscious of them,
how they must pity themselves for their old places. of
imprisonment. Sometimes a face would appear behind
the dingy glass of a window, and would fade away into
the gloom as if it had seen enough of life and had
:'.--.