mrfakename/libritts-texts · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Rosa Dartle sprang up from her seat; recoiled; and in recoiling struck at her, with a face of such malignity, so darkened and disfigured by passion, that I had almost thrown myself between them.
It was a broad panelled staircase, with massive balustrades of some dark wood; cornices above the doors, ornamented with carved fruit and flowers; and broad seats in the windows.
'But mark!' she added, slowly and sternly, opening the other door to go away, 'I am resolved, for reasons that I have and hatreds that I entertain, to cast you out, unless you withdraw from my reach altogether, or drop your pretty mask.
I saw her, distinctly, and the whole power of her face and character seemed forced into that expression.---Would he never come?
I was walking alone in the garden, one evening, about a fortnight afterwards.
This piece of pollution, picked up from the water-side, to be made much of for an hour, and then tossed back to her original place!'
There had been rain all day, and there was a damp feeling in the air.
By this time, some months had passed since our interview on the bank of the river with Martha.
We alighted at one of the entrances to the Square she had mentioned, where I directed the coach to wait, not knowing but that we might have some occasion for it.
'Listen to what I say!' she said; 'and reserve your false arts for your dupes.
His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more.
Such speculations as it engendered within me I kept to myself, and those were faint enough.
Certainly, my companion could not, for my position was the best.
One evening, at this hour, he told me that he had found Martha waiting near his lodging on the preceding night when he came out, and that she had asked him not to leave London on any account, until he should have seen her again.
When it's all gone, you can believe, and trust, and love again, you know!
I happened to turn my eyes towards this place, as I was thinking of many things; and I saw a figure beyond, dressed in a plain cloak.
'Whoever you are, you know my pitiable story, and for Heaven's sake spare me, if you would be spared yourself!'
Therefore, I will have it cleared; I will have it purified of you.
At the sound of it, a thrill went through my frame.
Here we stopped, breathless with our ascent, and she placed her hand lightly on my lips.
Several of the back windows on the staircase had been darkened or wholly blocked up.
'I have been to him, and he is not at home.
'Oh me, oh me!' exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that might have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there was no relenting in Rosa Dartle's smile.
'Say anything of me; but don't visit my disgrace and shame, more than I have done, on folks who are as honourable as you!
Let it be somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life--or, better still, in some obscure death.
If I could order it to be done, I would have this girl whipped to death.'
He had been a man of sturdy action all his life, and he knew that in all things wherein he wanted help he must do his own part faithfully, and help himself.
When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and with a stamp upon the ground.
'It would be no great penance,' said Rosa Dartle, 'for your crimes.
Entering at the open door of one of these, and releasing my arm, she beckoned me to follow her up the common staircase, which was like a tributary channel to the street.
All his journeys were ruggedly performed; for he was always steadfast in a purpose of saving money for Emily's sake, when she should be found.
Of the two, I would have much preferred to be the object of the latter.
'I came here, you pure fountain of love,' she said, 'to see--as I began by telling you--what such a thing as you was like.
As we went up, doors of rooms were opened and people's heads put out; and we passed other people on the stairs, who were coming down.
Her lips were tightly compressed, as if she knew that she must keep a strong constraint upon herself--I write what I sincerely believe--or she would be tempted to strike the beautiful form with her foot.
The leaves were thick upon the trees, and heavy with wet; but the rain had ceased, though the sky was still dark; and the hopeful birds were singing cheerfully.
As she now stood panting, looking at her with the utmost detestation that she was capable of expressing, and trembling from head to foot with rage and scorn, I thought I had never seen such a sight, and never could see such another.
'Nothing but our sex,' said Emily, with a burst of tears.
You are not ashamed of the face that has done so much?'
If you live here tomorrow, I'll have your story and your character proclaimed on the common stair.
'The miserable vanity of these earth-worms!' she said, when she had so far controlled the angry heavings of her breast, that she could trust herself to speak.
'Can you come with me?' she inquired, in an agitated whisper.
I have known him, on reading something in the newspaper that might apply to her, take up his stick, and go forth on a journey of three--or four-score miles.
I confess that I began to despair of her recovery, and gradually to sink deeper and deeper into the belief that she was dead.
And, although I trembled for the agony it might one day be to him to have his strong assurance shivered at a blow, there was something so religious in it, so affectingly expressive of its anchor being in the purest depths of his fine nature, that the respect and honour in which I held him were exalted every day.
'It matters little to me her not being at home,' said Rosa Dartle haughtily, 'I know nothing of her.
This is what I had to say; and what I say, I mean to do!'
A low crying, on the part of Emily, interrupted her here.
In all this long pursuit, I never heard him repine; I never heard him say he was fatigued, or out of heart.
And quick!'--then shrunk into a corner, with one trembling hand before her face, and the other making the former gesture, as if she could not bear a voice.
Nothing had come of her zealous intervention; nor could I infer, from what he told me, that any clue had been obtained, for a moment, to Emily's fate.
'I have come to see,' she said, 'James Steerforth's fancy; the girl who ran away with him, and is the town-talk of the commonest people of her native place; the bold, flaunting, practised companion of persons like James Steerforth.
I wrote down where he was to come, and left it on his table with my own hand.
I have none, none, no comfort upon earth, for all of them were always fond of me!' She dropped on her face, before the imperious figure in the chair, with an imploring effort to clasp the skirt of her dress.
There was a little green perspective of trellis-work and ivy at the side of our cottage, through which I could see, from the garden where I was walking, into the road before the house.
Have some respect for them, as you are a lady, if you have no mercy for me.'
I saw the flashing black eyes, and the passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white track cutting through her lips, quivering and throbbing as she spoke.
There are decent women in the house, I am told; and it is a pity such a light as you should be among them, and concealed.
Here,' she said, stretching out her hand with her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the prostrate girl, 'is a worthy cause of division between lady-mother and gentleman-son; of grief in a house where she wouldn't have been admitted as a kitchen-girl; of anger, and repining, and reproach.
I had never seen her since, but she had communicated with Mr. Peggotty on several occasions.
She stopped, and listened to it as if it were music.
I wonder, if your loving heart will not break, you have found no way of helping it to be still!
She moved slowly from before the door when she said this, and passed out of my sight.
I thought you a broken toy that had lasted its time; a worthless spangle that was tarnished, and thrown away.
'I am of a strange nature, perhaps,' Rosa Dartle went on; 'but I can't breathe freely in the air you breathe.
Dear, dear lady, think what I have suffered, and how I am fallen!
There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped these taunts, ran towards the door, and the speaker swiftly interposed herself before it.
Martha, with an astonished look, repeated her former action, and softly led me up the stairs; and then, by a little back-door which seemed to have no lock, and which she pushed open with a touch, into a small empty garret with a low sloping roof, little better than a cupboard.
She laid her hand on my arm, and hurried me on to one of the sombre streets, of which there are several in that part, where the houses were once fair dwellings in the occupation of single families, but have, and had, long degenerated into poor lodgings let off in rooms.
Do you ever think of the home you have laid waste?'
No more than you could charm me by your smiles, you purchased slave.'
But, finding you true gold, a very lady, and an ill-used innocent, with a fresh heart full of love and trustfulness--which you look like, and is quite consistent with your story!--I have something more to say.
There are doorways and dust-heaps for such deaths, and such despair--find one, and take your flight to Heaven!'
'I speak,' she said, not deigning to take any heed of this appeal, and drawing away her dress from the contamination of Emily's touch, 'I speak of HIS home--where I live.
On her motioning Yes, with the same hasty gesture as before, I stopped an empty coach that was coming by, and we got into it.
'So!' said Rosa Dartle, with a contemptuous laugh, 'I see her at last! Why, he was a poor creature to be taken by that delicate mock-modesty, and that hanging head!'
I have known him set out in the night, on a misgiving that the light might not be, by some accident, in the window of the old boat, and walk to Yarmouth.
When I asked her where the coachman was to drive, she answered, 'Anywhere near Golden Square!
If, leaving here, you seek any refuge in this town in any character but your true one (which you are welcome to bear, without molestation from me), the same service shall be done you, if I hear of your retreat.
Rosa Dartle sat looking down upon her, as inflexible as a figure of brass.
Being assisted by a gentleman who not long ago aspired to the favour of your hand, I am sanguine as to that.'
But all these tokens of past grandeur were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe.
Her rage got the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed over her face like a spasm, and left her smiling.
Now much disturbed, and dazzled with conflicting gleams of hope and dread, I looked at her for some explanation.
As I walked to and fro in the garden, and the twilight began to close around me, their little voices were hushed; and that peculiar silence which belongs to such an evening in the country when the lightest trees are quite still, save for the occasional droppings from their boughs, prevailed.
If you try to evade me, I'll stop you, if it's by the hair, and raise the very stones against you!'
'Did she say when you might expect to see her again?' I demanded.
Two or three times, by the way, I thought I observed in the indistinct light the skirts of a female figure going up before us.
Some attempts had been made, I noticed, to infuse new blood into this dwindling frame, by repairing the costly old wood-work here and there with common deal; but it was like the marriage of a reduced old noble to a plebeian pauper, and each party to the ill-assorted union shrunk away from the other.
So far as I know--and I believe his honest heart was transparent to me--he never wavered again, in his solemn certainty of finding her.
But seeing how strongly she desired to remain quiet, and feeling that it was my own natural inclination too, at such a time, I did not attempt to break the silence. We proceeded without a word being spoken.
'Yes,' returned Miss Dartle, 'I have come to look at you.
'I asked that too; but it was more (she said) than she could tell.'
The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had seen her standing in the light.
Martha kept one hand on my lips, and raised the other in a listening attitude.
If you live in his home and know him, you know, perhaps, what his power with a weak, vain girl might be.
In those that remained, there was scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the bad air seemed always to come in, and never to go out, I saw, through other glassless windows, into other houses in a similar condition, and looked giddily down into a wretched yard, which was the common dust-heap of the mansion.
Also to tell you, that you had best seek that home of yours, with all speed, and hide your head among those excellent people who are expecting you, and whom your money will console.
He made his way by sea to Naples, and back, after hearing the narrative to which Miss Dartle had assisted me.
'Live happy in your own reflections! Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth's tenderness--he would have made you his serving-man's wife, would he not?---or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving creature who would have taken you as his gift.

Rosa Dartle sprang up from her seat; recoiled; and in recoiling struck at her, with a face of such malignity, so darkened and disfigured by passion, that I had almost thrown myself between them.

It was a broad panelled staircase, with massive balustrades of some dark wood; cornices above the doors, ornamented with carved fruit and flowers; and broad seats in the windows.

'But mark!' she added, slowly and sternly, opening the other door to go away, 'I am resolved, for reasons that I have and hatreds that I entertain, to cast you out, unless you withdraw from my reach altogether, or drop your pretty mask.

I saw her, distinctly, and the whole power of her face and character seemed forced into that expression.---Would he never come?

I was walking alone in the garden, one evening, about a fortnight afterwards.

This piece of pollution, picked up from the water-side, to be made much of for an hour, and then tossed back to her original place!'

There had been rain all day, and there was a damp feeling in the air.

By this time, some months had passed since our interview on the bank of the river with Martha.

We alighted at one of the entrances to the Square she had mentioned, where I directed the coach to wait, not knowing but that we might have some occasion for it.

'Listen to what I say!' she said; 'and reserve your false arts for your dupes.

His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more.

Such speculations as it engendered within me I kept to myself, and those were faint enough.

Certainly, my companion could not, for my position was the best.

One evening, at this hour, he told me that he had found Martha waiting near his lodging on the preceding night when he came out, and that she had asked him not to leave London on any account, until he should have seen her again.

When it's all gone, you can believe, and trust, and love again, you know!

I happened to turn my eyes towards this place, as I was thinking of many things; and I saw a figure beyond, dressed in a plain cloak.

'Whoever you are, you know my pitiable story, and for Heaven's sake spare me, if you would be spared yourself!'

Therefore, I will have it cleared; I will have it purified of you.

At the sound of it, a thrill went through my frame.

Here we stopped, breathless with our ascent, and she placed her hand lightly on my lips.

Several of the back windows on the staircase had been darkened or wholly blocked up.

'I have been to him, and he is not at home.

'Oh me, oh me!' exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that might have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there was no relenting in Rosa Dartle's smile.

'Say anything of me; but don't visit my disgrace and shame, more than I have done, on folks who are as honourable as you!

Let it be somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life--or, better still, in some obscure death.

If I could order it to be done, I would have this girl whipped to death.'

He had been a man of sturdy action all his life, and he knew that in all things wherein he wanted help he must do his own part faithfully, and help himself.

When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and with a stamp upon the ground.

'It would be no great penance,' said Rosa Dartle, 'for your crimes.

Entering at the open door of one of these, and releasing my arm, she beckoned me to follow her up the common staircase, which was like a tributary channel to the street.

All his journeys were ruggedly performed; for he was always steadfast in a purpose of saving money for Emily's sake, when she should be found.

Of the two, I would have much preferred to be the object of the latter.

'I came here, you pure fountain of love,' she said, 'to see--as I began by telling you--what such a thing as you was like.

As we went up, doors of rooms were opened and people's heads put out; and we passed other people on the stairs, who were coming down.

Her lips were tightly compressed, as if she knew that she must keep a strong constraint upon herself--I write what I sincerely believe--or she would be tempted to strike the beautiful form with her foot.

The leaves were thick upon the trees, and heavy with wet; but the rain had ceased, though the sky was still dark; and the hopeful birds were singing cheerfully.

As she now stood panting, looking at her with the utmost detestation that she was capable of expressing, and trembling from head to foot with rage and scorn, I thought I had never seen such a sight, and never could see such another.

'Nothing but our sex,' said Emily, with a burst of tears.

You are not ashamed of the face that has done so much?'

If you live here tomorrow, I'll have your story and your character proclaimed on the common stair.

'The miserable vanity of these earth-worms!' she said, when she had so far controlled the angry heavings of her breast, that she could trust herself to speak.

'Can you come with me?' she inquired, in an agitated whisper.

I have known him, on reading something in the newspaper that might apply to her, take up his stick, and go forth on a journey of three--or four-score miles.

I confess that I began to despair of her recovery, and gradually to sink deeper and deeper into the belief that she was dead.

And, although I trembled for the agony it might one day be to him to have his strong assurance shivered at a blow, there was something so religious in it, so affectingly expressive of its anchor being in the purest depths of his fine nature, that the respect and honour in which I held him were exalted every day.

'It matters little to me her not being at home,' said Rosa Dartle haughtily, 'I know nothing of her.

This is what I had to say; and what I say, I mean to do!'

A low crying, on the part of Emily, interrupted her here.

In all this long pursuit, I never heard him repine; I never heard him say he was fatigued, or out of heart.

And quick!'--then shrunk into a corner, with one trembling hand before her face, and the other making the former gesture, as if she could not bear a voice.

Nothing had come of her zealous intervention; nor could I infer, from what he told me, that any clue had been obtained, for a moment, to Emily's fate.

'I have come to see,' she said, 'James Steerforth's fancy; the girl who ran away with him, and is the town-talk of the commonest people of her native place; the bold, flaunting, practised companion of persons like James Steerforth.

I wrote down where he was to come, and left it on his table with my own hand.

I have none, none, no comfort upon earth, for all of them were always fond of me!' She dropped on her face, before the imperious figure in the chair, with an imploring effort to clasp the skirt of her dress.

There was a little green perspective of trellis-work and ivy at the side of our cottage, through which I could see, from the garden where I was walking, into the road before the house.

Have some respect for them, as you are a lady, if you have no mercy for me.'

I saw the flashing black eyes, and the passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white track cutting through her lips, quivering and throbbing as she spoke.

There are decent women in the house, I am told; and it is a pity such a light as you should be among them, and concealed.

Here,' she said, stretching out her hand with her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the prostrate girl, 'is a worthy cause of division between lady-mother and gentleman-son; of grief in a house where she wouldn't have been admitted as a kitchen-girl; of anger, and repining, and reproach.

I had never seen her since, but she had communicated with Mr. Peggotty on several occasions.

She stopped, and listened to it as if it were music.

I wonder, if your loving heart will not break, you have found no way of helping it to be still!

She moved slowly from before the door when she said this, and passed out of my sight.

I thought you a broken toy that had lasted its time; a worthless spangle that was tarnished, and thrown away.

'I am of a strange nature, perhaps,' Rosa Dartle went on; 'but I can't breathe freely in the air you breathe.

Dear, dear lady, think what I have suffered, and how I am fallen!

There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped these taunts, ran towards the door, and the speaker swiftly interposed herself before it.

Martha, with an astonished look, repeated her former action, and softly led me up the stairs; and then, by a little back-door which seemed to have no lock, and which she pushed open with a touch, into a small empty garret with a low sloping roof, little better than a cupboard.

She laid her hand on my arm, and hurried me on to one of the sombre streets, of which there are several in that part, where the houses were once fair dwellings in the occupation of single families, but have, and had, long degenerated into poor lodgings let off in rooms.

Do you ever think of the home you have laid waste?'

No more than you could charm me by your smiles, you purchased slave.'

But, finding you true gold, a very lady, and an ill-used innocent, with a fresh heart full of love and trustfulness--which you look like, and is quite consistent with your story!--I have something more to say.

There are doorways and dust-heaps for such deaths, and such despair--find one, and take your flight to Heaven!'

'I speak,' she said, not deigning to take any heed of this appeal, and drawing away her dress from the contamination of Emily's touch, 'I speak of HIS home--where I live.

On her motioning Yes, with the same hasty gesture as before, I stopped an empty coach that was coming by, and we got into it.

'So!' said Rosa Dartle, with a contemptuous laugh, 'I see her at last! Why, he was a poor creature to be taken by that delicate mock-modesty, and that hanging head!'

I have known him set out in the night, on a misgiving that the light might not be, by some accident, in the window of the old boat, and walk to Yarmouth.

When I asked her where the coachman was to drive, she answered, 'Anywhere near Golden Square!

If, leaving here, you seek any refuge in this town in any character but your true one (which you are welcome to bear, without molestation from me), the same service shall be done you, if I hear of your retreat.

Rosa Dartle sat looking down upon her, as inflexible as a figure of brass.

Being assisted by a gentleman who not long ago aspired to the favour of your hand, I am sanguine as to that.'

But all these tokens of past grandeur were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe.

Her rage got the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed over her face like a spasm, and left her smiling.

Now much disturbed, and dazzled with conflicting gleams of hope and dread, I looked at her for some explanation.

As I walked to and fro in the garden, and the twilight began to close around me, their little voices were hushed; and that peculiar silence which belongs to such an evening in the country when the lightest trees are quite still, save for the occasional droppings from their boughs, prevailed.

If you try to evade me, I'll stop you, if it's by the hair, and raise the very stones against you!'

'Did she say when you might expect to see her again?' I demanded.

Two or three times, by the way, I thought I observed in the indistinct light the skirts of a female figure going up before us.

Some attempts had been made, I noticed, to infuse new blood into this dwindling frame, by repairing the costly old wood-work here and there with common deal; but it was like the marriage of a reduced old noble to a plebeian pauper, and each party to the ill-assorted union shrunk away from the other.

So far as I know--and I believe his honest heart was transparent to me--he never wavered again, in his solemn certainty of finding her.

But seeing how strongly she desired to remain quiet, and feeling that it was my own natural inclination too, at such a time, I did not attempt to break the silence. We proceeded without a word being spoken.

'Yes,' returned Miss Dartle, 'I have come to look at you.

'I asked that too; but it was more (she said) than she could tell.'

The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had seen her standing in the light.

Martha kept one hand on my lips, and raised the other in a listening attitude.

If you live in his home and know him, you know, perhaps, what his power with a weak, vain girl might be.

In those that remained, there was scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the bad air seemed always to come in, and never to go out, I saw, through other glassless windows, into other houses in a similar condition, and looked giddily down into a wretched yard, which was the common dust-heap of the mansion.

Also to tell you, that you had best seek that home of yours, with all speed, and hide your head among those excellent people who are expecting you, and whom your money will console.

He made his way by sea to Naples, and back, after hearing the narrative to which Miss Dartle had assisted me.

'Live happy in your own reflections! Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth's tenderness--he would have made you his serving-man's wife, would he not?---or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving creature who would have taken you as his gift.