Little Dorrit
she said. It had been mentioned at the Daybreak, she remarked, on the
authority of the journals, that he had been kept in prison for his own
safety. However that might be, he had escaped his deserts; so much the
worse.
The guest sat looking at her as he smoked out his final cigarette, and
as she sat with her head bent over her work, with an expression that
might have resolved her doubts, and brought her to a lasting conclusion
on the subject of his good or bad looks if she had seen it. When she did
look up, the expression was not there. The hand was smoothing his shaggy
moustache.
‘May one ask to be shown to bed, madame?’
Very willingly, monsieur. Hola, my husband! My husband would conduct him
up-stairs. There was one traveller there, asleep, who had gone to bed
very early indeed, being overpowered by fatigue; but it was a large
chamber with two beds in it, and space enough for twenty. This the
landlady of the Break of Day chirpingly explained, calling between
whiles, ‘Hola, my husband!’ out at the side door.
My husband answered at length, ‘It is I, my wife!’ and presenting
himself in his cook’s cap, lighted the traveller up a steep and narrow
staircase; the traveller carrying his own cloak and knapsack, and
bidding the landlady good night with a complimentary reference to the
pleasure of seeing her again to-morrow. It was a large room, with a
rough splintery floor, unplastered rafters overhead, and two bedsteads
on opposite sides. Here ‘my husband’ put down the candle he carried, and
with a sidelong look at his guest stooping over his knapsack, gruffly
gave him the instruction, ‘The bed to the right!’ and left him to his
repose. The landlord, whether he was a good or a bad physiognomist, had
fully made up his mind that the guest was an ill-looking fellow.
The guest looked contemptuously at the clean coarse bedding prepared for
him, and, sitting down on the rush chair at the bedside, drew his money
out of his pocket, and told it over in his hand. ‘One must eat,’ he
muttered to himself, ‘but by Heaven I must eat at the cost of some other
man to-morrow!’
As he sat pondering, and mechanically weighing his money in his palm,
the deep breathing of the traveller in the other bed fell so regularly
upon his hearing that it attracted his eyes in that direction. The man
was covered up warm, and had drawn the white curtain at his head, so
that he could be only heard, not seen. But the deep regular breathing,
still going on while the other was taking off his worn shoes and
gaiters, and still continuing when he had laid aside his coat and
cravat, became at length a strong provocative to curiosity, and
incentive to get a glimpse of the sleeper’s face.
The waking traveller, therefore, stole a little nearer, and yet a little
nearer, and a little nearer to the sleeping traveller’s bed, until he
stood close beside it. Even then he could not see his face, for he had
drawn the sheet over it. The regular breathing still continuing, he put
his smooth white hand (such a treacherous hand it looked, as it went
creeping from him!) to the sheet, and gently lifted it away.
‘Death of my soul!’ he whispered, falling back, ‘here’s Cavalletto!’
The little Italian, previously influenced in his sleep, perhaps, by the
stealthy presence at his bedside, stopped in his regular breathing, and
with a long deep respiration opened his eyes. At first they were not
awake, though open. He lay for some seconds looking placidly at his
old prison companion, and then, all at once, with a cry of surprise and
alarm, sprang out of bed.
‘Hush! What’s the matter? Keep quiet! It’s I. You know me?’ cried the
other, in a suppressed voice.
But John Baptist, widely staring, muttering a number of invocations
and ejaculations, tremblingly backing into a corner, slipping on
his trousers, and tying his coat by the two sleeves round his neck,
manifested an unmistakable desire to escape by the door rather than
renew the acquaintance. Seeing this, his old prison comrade fell back
upon the door, and set his shoulders against it.
‘Cavalletto! Wake, boy! Rub your eyes and look at me. Not the name you
used to call me--don’t use that--Lagnier, say Lagnier!’
John Baptist, staring at him with eyes opened to their utmost width,
made a number of those national, backhanded shakes of the right
forefinger in the air, as if he were resolved on negativing beforehand
everything that the other could possibly advance during the whole term
of his life.
‘Cavalletto! Give me your hand. You know Lagnier, the gentleman. Touch
the hand of a gentleman!’
Submitting himself to the old tone of condescending authority, John
Baptist, not at all steady on his legs as yet, advanced and put his
hand in his patron’s. Monsieur Lagnier laughed; and having given it a
squeeze, tossed it up and let it go.
‘Then you were--’ faltered John Baptist.
‘Not shaved? No. See here!’ cried Lagnier, giving his head a twirl; ‘as
tight on as your own.’
John Baptist, with a slight shiver, looked all round the room as if to
recall where he was. His patron took that opportunity of turning the key
in the door, and then sat down upon his bed.
‘Look!’ he said, holding up his shoes and gaiters. ‘That’s a poor trim
for a gentleman, you’ll say. No matter, you shall see how soon I’ll mend
it. Come and sit down. Take your old place!’
John Baptist, looking anything but reassured, sat down on the floor at
the bedside, keeping his eyes upon his patron all the time.
‘That’s well!’ cried Lagnier. ‘Now we might be in the old infernal hole
again, hey? How long have you been out?’
‘Two days after you, my master.’
‘How do you come here?’
‘I was cautioned not to stay there, and so I left the town at once,
and since then I have changed about. I have been doing odds and ends at
Avignon, at Pont Esprit, at Lyons; upon the Rhone, upon the Saone.’ As
he spoke, he rapidly mapped the places out with his sunburnt hand upon
the floor.
‘And where are you going?’
‘Going, my master?’
‘Ay!’
John Baptist seemed to desire to evade the question without knowing how.
‘By Bacchus!’ he said at last, as if he were forced to the admission, ‘I
have sometimes had a thought of going to Paris, and perhaps to England.’
‘Cavalletto. This is in confidence. I also am going to Paris and perhaps
to England. We’ll go together.’
The little man nodded his head, and showed his teeth; and yet seemed not
quite convinced that it was a surpassingly desirable arrangement.
‘We’ll go together,’ repeated Lagnier. ‘You shall see how soon I will
force myself to be recognised as a gentleman, and you shall profit by
it. It is agreed? Are we one?’
‘Oh, surely, surely!’ said the little man.
‘Then you shall hear before I sleep--and in six words, for I want
sleep--how I appear before you, I, Lagnier. Remember that. Not the
other.’
‘Altro, altro! Not Ri----’ Before John Baptist could finish the name, his
comrade had got his hand under his chin and fiercely shut up his mouth.
‘Death! what are you doing? Do you want me to be trampled upon and
stoned? Do _you_ want to be trampled upon and stoned? You would be. You
don’t imagine that they would set upon me, and let my prison chum go?
Don’t think it!’
There was an expression in his face as he released his grip of his
friend’s jaw, from which his friend inferred that if the course of
events really came to any stoning and trampling, Monsieur Lagnier would
so distinguish him with his notice as to ensure his having his full
share of it. He remembered what a cosmopolitan gentleman Monsieur
Lagnier was, and how few weak distinctions he made.
‘I am a man,’ said Monsieur Lagnier, ‘whom society has deeply wronged
since you last saw me. You know that I am sensitive and brave, and that
it is my character to govern. How has society respected those qualities
in me? I have been shrieked at through the streets. I have been guarded
through the streets against men, and especially women, running at me
armed with any weapons they could lay their hands on. I have lain in
prison for security, with the place of my confinement kept a secret,
lest I should be torn out of it and felled by a hundred blows. I have
been carted out of Marseilles in the dead of night, and carried leagues
away from it packed in straw. It has not been safe for me to go near my
house; and, with a beggar’s pittance in my pocket, I have walked through
vile mud and weather ever since, until my feet are crippled--look at
them! Such are the humiliations that society has inflicted upon me,
possessing the qualities I have mentioned, and which you know me to
possess. But society shall pay for it.’
All this he said in his companion’s ear, and with his hand before his
lips.
‘Even here,’ he went on in the same way, ‘even in this mean
drinking-shop, society pursues me. Madame defames me, and her guests
defame me. I, too, a gentleman with manners and accomplishments
to strike them dead! But the wrongs society has heaped upon me are
treasured in this breast.’
To all of which John Baptist, listening attentively to the suppressed
hoarse voice, said from time to time, ‘Surely, surely!’ tossing his
head and shutting his eyes, as if there were the clearest case against
society that perfect candour could make out.
‘Put my shoes there,’ continued Lagnier. ‘Hang my cloak to dry there
by the door. Take my hat.’ He obeyed each instruction, as it was given.
‘And this is the bed to which society consigns me, is it? Hah. _Very_
well!’
As he stretched out his length upon it, with a ragged handkerchief
bound round his wicked head, and only his wicked head showing above the
bedclothes, John Baptist was rather strongly reminded of what had so
very nearly happened to prevent the moustache from any more going up as
it did, and the nose from any more coming down as it did.
‘Shaken out of destiny’s dice-box again into your company, eh? By
Heaven! So much the better for you. You’ll profit by it. I shall need a
long rest. Let me sleep in the morning.’
John Baptist replied that he should sleep as long as he would, and
wishing him a happy night, put out the candle. One might have supposed
that the next proceeding of the Italian would have been to undress;
but he did exactly the reverse, and dressed himself from head to foot,
saving his shoes. When he had so done, he lay down upon his bed with
some of its coverings over him, and his coat still tied round his neck,
to get through the night.
When he started up, the Godfather Break of Day was peeping at its
namesake. He rose, took his shoes in his hand, turned the key in the
door with great caution, and crept downstairs. Nothing was astir there
but the smell of coffee, wine, tobacco, and syrups; and madame’s little
counter looked ghastly enough. But he had paid madame his little note
at it over night, and wanted to see nobody--wanted nothing but to get on
his shoes and his knapsack, open the door, and run away.
He prospered in his object. No movement or voice was heard when he
opened the door; no wicked head tied up in a ragged handkerchief looked
out of the upper window. When the sun had raised his full disc above the
flat line of the horizon, and was striking fire out of the long muddy
vista of paved road with its weary avenue of little trees, a black speck
moved along the road and splashed among the flaming pools of rain-water,
which black speck was John Baptist Cavalletto running away from his
patron.
CHAPTER 12. Bleeding Heart Yard
In London itself, though in the old rustic road towards a suburb of note
where in the days of William Shakespeare, author and stage-player, there
were Royal hunting-seats--howbeit no sport is left there now but for
hunters of men--Bleeding Heart Yard was to be found; a place much