Chapter: The sun had set, and the streets were dim in the dusty twilight, when
the figure so long unused to them hurried on its way. In the immediate
neighbourhood of the old house it attracted little attention, for there
were only a few straggling people to notice it; but, ascending from the
river by the crooked ways that led to London Bridge, and passing into
the great main road, it became surrounded by astonishment.

Resolute and wild of look, rapid of foot and yet weak and uncertain,
         conspicuously dressed in its black garments and with its hurried
         head-covering, gaunt and of an unearthly paleness, it pressed forward,
         taking no more heed of the throng than a sleep-walker. More remarkable
         by being so removed from the crowd it was among than if it had been
         lifted on a pedestal to be seen, the figure attracted all eyes.
         Saunterers pricked up their attention to observe it; busy people,
         crossing it, slackened their pace and turned their heads; companions
         pausing and standing aside, whispered one another to look at this
         spectral woman who was coming by; and the sweep of the figure as it
         passed seemed to create a vortex, drawing the most idle and most curious
         after it.

         Made giddy by the turbulent irruption of this multitude of staring faces
         into her cell of years, by the confusing sensation of being in the air,
         and the yet more confusing sensation of being afoot, by the unexpected
         changes in half-remembered objects, and the want of likeness between the
         controllable pictures her imagination had often drawn of the life from
         which she was secluded and the overwhelming rush of the reality, she
         held her way as if she were environed by distracting thoughts, rather
         than by external humanity and observation. But, having crossed the
         bridge and gone some distance straight onward, she remembered that she
         must ask for a direction; and it was only then, when she stopped and
         turned to look about her for a promising place of inquiry, that she
         found herself surrounded by an eager glare of faces.

         'Why are you encircling me?' she asked, trembling.

         None of those who were nearest answered; but from the outer ring there
         arose a shrill cry of ''Cause you're mad!'

         'I am sure as sane as any one here. I want to find the Marshalsea
         prison.'

         The shrill outer circle again retorted, 'Then that 'ud show you was mad
         if nothing else did, 'cause it's right opposite!'

         A short, mild, quiet-looking young man made his way through to her, as
         a whooping ensued on this reply, and said: 'Was it the Marshalsea you
         wanted? I'm going on duty there. Come across with me.'

         She laid her hand upon his arm, and he took her over the way; the crowd,
         rather injured by the near prospect of losing her, pressing before and
         behind and on either side, and recommending an adjournment to Bedlam.
         After a momentary whirl in the outer court-yard, the prison-door opened,
         and shut upon them. In the Lodge, which seemed by contrast with the
         outer noise a place of refuge and peace, a yellow lamp was already
         striving with the prison shadows.

         'Why, John!' said the turnkey who admitted them. 'What is it?'

         'Nothing, father; only this lady not knowing her way, and being badgered
         by the boys. Who did you want, ma'am?'

         'Miss Dorrit. Is she here?'

         The young man became more interested. 'Yes, she is here. What might your
         name be?'

         'Mrs Clennam.'

         'Mr Clennam's mother?' asked the young man.

         She pressed her lips together, and hesitated. 'Yes. She had better be
         told it is his mother.'

         'You see,' said the young man,'the Marshal's family living in the
         country at present, the Marshal has given Miss Dorrit one of the rooms
         in his house to use when she likes. Don't you think you had better come
         up there, and let me bring Miss Dorrit?'

         She signified her assent, and he unlocked a door and conducted her up
         a side staircase into a dwelling-house above. He showed her into a
         darkening room, and left her. The room looked down into the darkening
         prison-yard, with its inmates strolling here and there, leaning out
         of windows communing as much apart as they could with friends who were
         going away, and generally wearing out their imprisonment as they best
         might that summer evening. The air was heavy and hot; the closeness
         of the place, oppressive; and from without there arose a rush of
         free sounds, like the jarring memory of such things in a headache and
         heartache. She stood at the window, bewildered, looking down into this
         prison as it were out of her own different prison, when a soft word or
         two of surprise made her start, and Little Dorrit stood before her.

         'Is it possible, Mrs Clennam, that you are so happily recovered as--'

         Little Dorrit stopped, for there was neither happiness nor health in the
         face that turned to her.

         'This is not recovery; it is not strength; I don't know what it is.'
         With an agitated wave of her hand, she put all that aside. 'You have a
         packet left with you which you were to give to Arthur, if it was not
         reclaimed before this place closed to-night.'

         'Yes.'

         'I reclaim it.'

         Little Dorrit took it from her bosom, and gave it into her hand, which
         remained stretched out after receiving it.

         'Have you any idea of its contents?'

         Frightened by her being there with that new power Of Movement in her,
         which, as she said herself, was not strength, and which was unreal
         to look upon, as though a picture or statue had been animated, Little
         Dorrit answered 'No.'

         'Read them.'

         Little Dorrit took the packet from the still outstretched hand, and
         broke the seal. Mrs Clennam then gave her the inner packet that was
         addressed to herself, and held the other. The shadow of the wall and of
         the prison buildings, which made the room sombre at noon, made it too
         dark to read there, with the dusk deepening apace, save in the window.
         In the window, where a little of the bright summer evening sky
         could shine upon her, Little Dorrit stood, and read. After a broken
         exclamation or so of wonder and of terror, she read in silence. When
         she had finished, she looked round, and her old mistress bowed herself
         before her.

         'You know, now, what I have done.'

         'I think so. I am afraid so; though my mind is so hurried, and so sorry,
         and has so much to pity that it has not been able to follow all I have
         read,' said Little Dorrit tremulously.

         'I will restore to you what I have withheld from you. Forgive me. Can
         you forgive me?'

         'I can, and Heaven knows I do! Do not kiss my dress and kneel to me; you
         are too old to kneel to me; I forgive you freely without that.'

         'I have more yet to ask.'

         'Not in that posture,' said Little Dorrit. 'It is unnatural to see your
         grey hair lower than mine. Pray rise; let me help you.' With that she
         raised her up, and stood rather shrinking from her, but looking at her
         earnestly.

         'The great petition that I make to you (there is another which grows
                 out of it), the great supplication that I address to your merciful and
         gentle heart, is, that you will not disclose this to Arthur until I am
         dead. If you think, when you have had time for consideration, that it
         can do him any good to know it while I am yet alive, then tell him. But
         you will not think that; and in such case, will you promise me to spare
         me until I am dead?'

         'I am so sorry, and what I have read has so confused my thoughts,'
         returned Little Dorrit, 'that I can scarcely give you a steady answer.
         If I should be quite sure that to be acquainted with it will do Mr
         Clennam no good--'

         'I know you are attached to him, and will make him the first
         consideration. It is right that he should be the first consideration. I
         ask that. But, having regarded him, and still finding that you may spare
         me for the little time I shall remain on earth, will you do it?'

         'I will.'

         'GOD bless you!'

         She stood in the shadow so that she was only a veiled form to Little
         Dorrit in the light; but the sound of her voice, in saying those three
         grateful words, was at once fervent and broken--broken by emotion as
         unfamiliar to her frozen eyes as action to her frozen limbs.

         'You will wonder, perhaps,' she said in a stronger tone, 'that I can
         better bear to be known to you whom I have wronged, than to the son
         of my enemy who wronged me.--For she did wrong me! She not only sinned
         grievously against the Lord, but she wronged me. What Arthur's father
         was to me, she made him. From our marriage day I was his dread, and that
         she made me. I was the scourge of both, and that is referable to her.
         You love Arthur (I can see the blush upon your face; may it be the dawn
                 of happier days to both of you!), and you will have thought already that
         he is as merciful and kind as you, and why do I not trust myself to him
         as soon as to you. Have you not thought so?'

         'No thought,' said Little Dorrit, 'can be quite a stranger to my heart,
         that springs out of the knowledge that Mr Clennam is always to be relied
         upon for being kind and generous and good.'

         'I do not doubt it. Yet Arthur is, of the whole world, the one person
         from whom I would conceal this, while I am in it. I kept over him as
         a child, in the days of his first remembrance, my restraining and
         correcting hand. I was stern with him, knowing that the transgressions
         of the parents are visited on their offspring, and that there was an
         angry mark upon him at his birth. I have sat with him and his father,
         seeing the weakness of his father yearning to unbend to him; and forcing
         it back, that the child might work out his release in bondage and
         hardship. I have seen him, with his mother's face, looking up at me in
         awe from his little books, and trying to soften me with his mother's
         ways that hardened me.'

         The shrinking of her auditress stopped her for a moment in her flow of
         words, delivered in a retrospective gloomy voice.

         'For his good. Not for the satisfaction of my injury. What was I, and
         what was the worth of that, before the curse of Heaven! I have seen that
         child grow up; not to be pious in a chosen way (his mother's influence
                 lay too heavy on him for that), but still to be just and upright, and
         to be submissive to me. He never loved me, as I once half-hoped he
         might--so frail we are, and so do the corrupt affections of the flesh
         war with our trusts and tasks; but he always respected me and ordered
         himself dutifully to me. He does to this hour. With an empty place in
         his heart that he has never known the meaning of, he has turned
         away from me and gone his separate road; but even that he has done
         considerately and with deference. These have been his relations towards
         me. Yours have been of a much slighter kind, spread over a much shorter
         time. When you have sat at your needle in my room, you have been in fear
         of me, but you have supposed me to have been doing you a kindness; you
         are better informed now, and know me to have done you an injury. Your
         misconstruction and misunderstanding of the cause in which, and the
         motives with which, I have worked out this work, is lighter to endure
         than his would be. I would not, for any worldly recompense I can
         imagine, have him in a moment, however blindly, throw me down from the
         station I have held before him all his life, and change me altogether
         into something he would cast out of his respect, and think detected and
         exposed. Let him do it, if it must be done, when I am not here to see
         it. Let me never feel, while I am still alive, that I die before his
         face, and utterly perish away from him, like one consumed by lightning
         and swallowed by an earthquake.'

         Her pride was very strong in her, the pain of it and of her old passions
         was very sharp with her, when she thus expressed herself. Not less so,
         when she added:

         'Even now, I see _you_ shrink from me, as if I had been cruel.'

         Little Dorrit could not gainsay it. She tried not to show it, but she
         recoiled with dread from the state of mind that had burnt so fiercely
         and lasted so long. It presented itself to her, with no sophistry upon
         it, in its own plain nature.

         'I have done,' said Mrs Clennam,'what it was given to me to do. I have
         set myself against evil; not against good. I have been an instrument
         of severity against sin. Have not mere sinners like myself been
         commissioned to lay it low in all time?'

         'In all time?' repeated Little Dorrit.

         'Even if my own wrong had prevailed with me, and my own vengeance had
         moved me, could I have found no justification? None in the old days
         when the innocent perished with the guilty, a thousand to one? When the
         wrath of the hater of the unrighteous was not slaked even in blood, and
         yet found favour?'

         'O, Mrs Clennam, Mrs Clennam,' said Little Dorrit, 'angry feelings and
         unforgiving deeds are no comfort and no guide to you and me. My life
         has been passed in this poor prison, and my teaching has been very
         defective; but let me implore you to remember later and better days.
         Be guided only by the healer of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the
         friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who
         shed tears of compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if
         we put all the rest away, and do everything in remembrance of Him. There
         is no vengeance and no infliction of suffering in His life, I am sure.
         There can be no confusion in following Him, and seeking for no other
         footsteps, I am certain.'

         In the softened light of the window, looking from the scene of her early
         trials to the shining sky, she was not in stronger opposition to the
         black figure in the shade than the life and doctrine on which she rested
         were to that figure's history. It bent its head low again, and said not
         a word. It remained thus, until the first warning bell began to ring.

         'Hark!' cried Mrs Clennam starting, 'I said I had another petition.
         It is one that does not admit of delay. The man who brought you this
         packet and possesses these proofs, is now waiting at my house to be
         bought off. I can keep this from Arthur, only by buying him off. He
         asks a large sum; more than I can get together to pay him without having
         time. He refuses to make any abatement, because his threat is, that if
         he fails with me, he will come to you. Will you return with me and show
         him that you already know it? Will you return with me and try to prevail
         with him? Will you come and help me with him? Do not refuse what I ask
         in Arthur's name, though I dare not ask it for Arthur's sake!'

         Little Dorrit yielded willingly. She glided away into the prison for a
         few moments, returned, and said she was ready to go. They went out
         by another staircase, avoiding the lodge; and coming into the front
         court-yard, now all quiet and deserted, gained the street.

         It was one of those summer evenings when there is no greater darkness
         than a long twilight. The vista of street and bridge was plain to see,
         and the sky was serene and beautiful. People stood and sat at their
         doors, playing with children and enjoying the evening; numbers were
         walking for air; the worry of the day had almost worried itself out, and
         few but themselves were hurried. As they crossed the bridge, the clear
         steeples of the many churches looked as if they had advanced out of the
         murk that usually enshrouded them, and come much nearer. The smoke that
         rose into the sky had lost its dingy hue and taken a brightness upon it.
         The beauties of the sunset had not faded from the long light films of
         cloud that lay at peace in the horizon. From a radiant centre, over
         the whole length and breadth of the tranquil firmament, great shoots of
         light streamed among the early stars, like signs of the blessed later
         covenant of peace and hope that changed the crown of thorns into a
         glory.

         Less remarkable, now that she was not alone and it was darker, Mrs
         Clennam hurried on at Little Dorrit's side, unmolested. They left the
         great thoroughfare at the turning by which she had entered it, and wound
         their way down among the silent, empty, cross-streets. Their feet were
         at the gateway, when there was a sudden noise like thunder.

         'What was that! Let us make haste in,' cried Mrs Clennam.

         They were in the gateway. Little Dorrit, with a piercing cry, held her
         back.

         In one swift instant the old house was before them, with the man lying
         smoking in the window; another thundering sound, and it heaved, surged
         outward, opened asunder in fifty places, collapsed, and fell. Deafened
         by the noise, stifled, choked, and blinded by the dust, they hid their
         faces and stood rooted to the spot. The dust storm, driving between them
         and the placid sky, parted for a moment and showed them the stars. As
         they looked up, wildly crying for help, the great pile of chimneys,
         which was then alone left standing like a tower in a whirlwind, rocked,
         broke, and hailed itself down upon the heap of ruin, as if every
         tumbling fragment were intent on burying the crushed wretch deeper.

         So blackened by the flying particles of rubbish as to be unrecognisable,
         they ran back from the gateway into the street, crying and shrieking.
         There, Mrs Clennam dropped upon the stones; and she never from that hour
         moved so much as a finger again, or had the power to speak one word.
         For upwards of three years she reclined in a wheeled chair, looking
         attentively at those about her and appearing to understand what they
         said; but the rigid silence she had so long held was evermore enforced
         upon her, and except that she could move her eyes and faintly express a
         negative and affirmative with her head, she lived and died a statue.

         Affery had been looking for them at the prison, and had caught sight
         of them at a distance on the bridge. She came up to receive her old
         mistress in her arms, to help to carry her into a neighbouring house,
         and to be faithful to her. The mystery of the noises was out now;
Affery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and
always wrong in the theories she deduced from them.

When the storm of dust had cleared away and the summer night was calm
again, numbers of people choked up every avenue of access, and parties
of diggers were formed to relieve one another in digging among the
ruins. There had been a hundred people in the house at the time of its
fall, there had been fifty, there had been fifteen, there had been
two. Rumour finally settled the number at two; the foreigner and Mr
Flintwinch.

The diggers dug all through the short night by flaring pipes of gas, and
on a level with the early sun, and deeper and deeper below it as it rose
into its zenith, and aslant of it as it declined, and on a level with it
again as it departed. Sturdy digging, and shovelling, and carrying away,
      in carts, barrows, and baskets, went on without intermission, by night
      and by day; but it was night for the second time when they found the
      dirty heap of rubbish that had been the foreigner before his head had
      been shivered to atoms, like so much glass, by the great beam that lay
      upon him, crushing him.

      Still, they had not come upon Flintwinch yet; so the sturdy digging and
      shovelling and carrying away went on without intermission by night and
      by day. It got about that the old house had had famous cellarage (which
              indeed was true), and that Flintwinch had been in a cellar at the
      moment, or had had time to escape into one, and that he was safe under
      its strong arch, and even that he had been heard to cry, in hollow,
      subterranean, suffocated notes, 'Here I am!' At the opposite extremity
      of the town it was even known that the excavators had been able to open
      a communication with him through a pipe, and that he had received both
      soup and brandy by that channel, and that he had said with admirable
      fortitude that he was All right, my lads, with the exception of his
      collar-bone. But the digging and shovelling and carrying away went on
      without intermission, until the ruins were all dug out, and the cellars
      opened to the light; and still no Flintwinch, living or dead, all right
      or all wrong, had been turned up by pick or spade.

      It began then to be perceived that Flintwinch had not been there at the
      time of the fall; and it began then to be perceived that he had been
      rather busy elsewhere, converting securities into as much money as could
      be got for them on the shortest notice, and turning to his own exclusive
      account his authority to act for the Firm. Affery, remembering that the
      clever one had said he would explain himself further in four-and-twenty
      hours' time, determined for her part that his taking himself off within
      that period with all he could get, was the final satisfactory sum and
      substance of his promised explanation; but she held her peace, devoutly
      thankful to be quit of him. As it seemed reasonable to conclude that a
      man who had never been buried could not be unburied, the diggers gave
      him up when their task was done, and did not dig down for him into the
      depths of the earth.

      This was taken in ill part by a great many people, who persisted
      in believing that Flintwinch was lying somewhere among the London
      geological formation. Nor was their belief much shaken by repeated
      intelligence which came over in course of time, that an old man who wore
      the tie of his neckcloth under one ear, and who was very well known to
      be an Englishman, consorted with the Dutchmen on the quaint banks of the
      canals of the Hague and in the drinking-shops of Amsterdam, under the
      style and designation of Mynheer von Flyntevynge.

 Mrs. Clennam makes her way to the Marshalsea but gets lost and heckled. John Chivery rescues her, takes her to the prison, and gets Little Dorrit. Amy is floored to see Mrs. Clennam out of her wheelchair. She offers congrats... but Mrs. Clennam is in no mood. Mrs. Clennam asks Amy to read the packet that Blandois had given her. Afterwards, Amy kind of backs away from Mrs. Clennam with disgust and fear. Mrs. Clennam is sorry, but she is also consumed with pride. She asks Amy not to tell Arthur any of this until after Mrs. Clennam's death, because she can't bear to see him discard her. She knows he's never loved her - and really, why would he, when she was never nice or kind or affectionate? - but he does respect her and she can't bear losing that. Amy agrees. Mrs. Clennam tells Amy more about her crazy God-assigned-me-to-punish-sins stuff. Amy isn't buying it and tries to correct her Christian theology as being off, since there's a lot of mercy and forgiveness that Mrs. Clennam isn't taking into account. Finally Mrs. Clennam asks Amy to come back to the house with her to show Blandois that she already knows the story, thereby buying Mrs. Clennam some time to come up with the money. They go, and just as they are about to get to the house they hear a very loud thundering noise. The house collapses into a heap of ruins! Blandois, whom they saw sitting in the window smoking, is crushed in the rubble! It turns out Affery was right about the crazy noises in the house! Mrs. Clennam collapses and is catatonic and paralyzed for the rest of her life . For a while they think Flintwinch was in there too, but after much digging no one can find his body. And then it turns out that while this all was happening, he was using his position as a partner in Clennam & Co. to cash out the all the firm's assets and go off to Amsterdam.

