Little Dorrit Vol.1 f.033 recto

“How is my mother?”

“Well! She is as she always is now. She Keeps her room when not actually bedridden, and hasn’t been out of it fifteen [?????teen] times [?] [???????? y????? ????t] in as many years , Arthur”[,??i?]. They had walked into [??????????] a [d??g?] spare, meagre dining-room. The old man had put the candlestick upon the table, and, supporting his right elbow with his left hand, was smoothing [????] his leathern jaws [??????????????] while he looked at the visitor. The visitor [??? ??? ?????] offered his hand. The old man [??? ????] [???? ????] took it coldly enough, and [???] seemed to prefer his jaws, to which he returned as soon as he could.

“I doubt if your mother will approve of your coming home on the Sabbath, Arthur,” he said, shaking his head warily.

“You wouldn’t have me go away again?”

“Oh! I? I? I am not the master. It’s not what I would have. I have stood between your father and mother for a number of years. I don’t pretend to stand between your mother and you.”

“Will you tell her that I have come home?”

“Yes, Arthur, yes. Oh, to be sure! I’ll tell her that you have come home. Please to wait here. You won’t find the room changed.” He took another candle from a cupboard, lighted it, left the first on the table, and went upon his errand. He was a short, bald old man, in a high-shouldered black coat and waistcoat, drab breeches, and long drab gaiters. He might, from his dress, have been either clerk or servant, and in fact had long been both. There was nothing about him in the way of decoration but a watch, which was lowered into the depths of its proper pocket by an old black ribbon, and had a tarnished copper key moored above it, to show where it was sunk. His head was awry, and he had a one-sided, crab-like way with him, as if his foundations had yielded at about the same time as those of the house, and he ought to have been propped up in a similar manner.

“How weak am I,” said Arthur Clennam, when he was gone, “that I could shed tears at this reception! I, who have never experienced anything else; who have never expected anything else.”

He not only could, but did. It was the momentary yielding of a nature that had been disappointed from the dawn of its perceptions, but had not quite given up all its hopeful yearnings yet. He subdued it, took up the candle, and examined the room. The old articles of furniture were in their old places; the Plagues of Egypt, much the dimmer for the fly and smoke plagues of London, were framed and glazed upon the walls. There was the old cellaret with nothing in it, lined with lead, like a sort of coffin in compartments; there was the old dark closet, also with nothing in it, of which he had been many a time the sole contents, in days of punishment, when he had regarded it as the veritable entrance to that bourne to which the tract had found him galloping. There was the large, hard-featured clock on the sideboard, which he used to see bending its figured brows upon him with a savage joy when he was behind-hand with his lessons, and which, when it was wound up once a week with an iron handle, used to sound as if it were growling in ferocious anticipation of the miseries into which it would bring him. But here was the old man come back, saying, “Arthur, I’ll go before and light you.”