She tried to care for her father as she used to do, but he was afraid
people would think he had not been used to servants (foolish man!) so
she lost even the little pleasure of her old prison life in the
Marshalsea. There were valets and maids now to do all the little things
she had once loved to do with her own hands, and she seemed to be no
longer of use to him. She loved her father as dearly as she always had,
but now she had begun to feel that she could never see him as he used to
be before his prison days, because first poverty and now wealth had
changed him. The old sad shadow came over her. He grew angry at her and
chid her, and hurt her. It seemed he had entirely forgotten the old days
when she slaved so for him.
Poor little Dorrit! She was far lonelier now than she had ever been
before in the debtors' prison--lonelier and unhappier than Arthur
Clennam in London could have guessed. The gay, fashionable life of her
brother and sister did not attract her. She was timid of joining in
their gaieties. She asked leave only to be left alone, and went about
the city in a gondola in a quiet, scared, lost manner. It often seemed
to her as if the Marshalsea must be just behind the next big building,
or Mrs. Clennam's house, where she had first met Arthur, just around
the next corner. And she used to look into gondolas as they passed, as
if she might see Arthur any minute.
In the days of their prison-poverty Fanny had occasionally earned some
money by dancing at a theater. There she had met a silly, chuckle-headed
young man, the son of a Mrs. Merdle, and he had been fascinated by her
beauty. Now, in their wealth, he saw Fanny again and fell even more
deeply in love with her. Mrs. Merdle was a cold-hearted, artificial
woman, who kept a parrot that was always shrieking, and who thought of
nothing but riches and society. She would have refused to let her son
marry Fanny in the old days, but now it was another matter. He proposed,
and Fanny, who had been made angry a thousand times by Mrs. Merdle's
insolence and patronizing ways, made up her mind to marry him if only to
take her revenge on his mother.
Mrs. Merdle's husband always stayed in London. He was immensely rich--so
rich that people said everything he touched turned into gold. He was a
quiet, dull man, with dull red cheeks, and cared nothing at all for
society, though everybody flattered and courted him.
When old Mr. Dorrit saw Mrs. Merdle's son was in love with Fanny he was
greatly pleased. He had by this time grown so selfish that he considered
much less her happiness than his own profit, and he thought if they were
married he could persuade Mr. Merdle to invest his own great fortune
for him, so that he would be even richer than he was now. Mr. Merdle's
name had been growing bigger and bigger every day. Nobody believed the
great man could make a mistake, but that he was going to keep on getting
richer and richer (though nobody knew how he did it) as long as he
lived.
So, before long, Fanny married Mrs. Merdle's son, and went back to
London to take up life in the magnificent Merdle mansion with her silly,
chuckle-headed husband. Mr. Merdle had got a very rich position for him
in the "Circumlocution Office" with which Arthur Clennam had had so much
trouble once on a time.
Old Mr. Dorrit went to London, too, and, as he had schemed, gave the
famous Mr. Merdle all his fortune to invest. Then he returned to Italy,
where, in Rome, his faithful and lonely Little Dorrit waited lovingly
for him.
On the night after he reached Rome Mrs. Merdle gave a dinner party to a
large company, and Little Dorrit and her father attended.
In the midst of the dinner he suddenly called to her across the table.
His voice was so loud and excited that all the guests were frightened
and rose to their feet. Little Dorrit ran to him and put her arms about
him, for she saw at once that he was not himself.
He began to address the company, and his first words showed that his
mind had failed. He imagined he was still in the debtors' prison and
that all the rich people about him were the other poor prisoners. He
made them a speech, welcoming them to its walls, thanking them in
advance for any money they might give to him as "The Father of the
Marshalsea." And he ended by calling for the old turnkey he had known
there to help him up the narrow stair to bed, as he had been used to do
in the prison.
Little Dorrit was not ashamed--she loved him too much for that. Her only
wish was to soothe him, and with a pale, frightened face, she begged him
to come with her.
They got him away at last and carried him to his house. Once laid on his
bed, he never rose from it again. Nor did he regain his memory of the
immediate present. That, with its show and its servants, its riches and
power, in which Little Dorrit had had so small a part, had faded out for
ever, and now his mind, back in the Marshalsea, recognized his daughter
as his only stay and faithful comfort.
It was well so, for this was the father she had most loved.
So she watched beside him day and night, while every day his life grew
weaker and weaker. Every day the shadow of death stole deeper and deeper
over his face, until one morning, when the dawn came, they saw that he
would never wake again.
IV
WHAT HAPPENED TO ARTHUR CLENNAM
Arthur, meanwhile, had missed Little Dorrit greatly. He was very
friendly with a couple named Meagles--a comely, healthy, good-humored
and kind-hearted pair, and he was so lonely he almost thought himself in
love with their daughter "Pet" for a while. But Pet soon married a
portrait-painter and went to live abroad.
Mr. and Mrs. Meagles had a little orphan maid whom they called
"Tattycoram," for no particular reason except that her first name had
been Hattie, and the name of the man who founded the asylum where they
found her was "Coram." Tattycoram had a very bad temper, so that Mr.
Meagles, when he saw one of these fits coming on, used to stop and say,
"Count twenty-five, Tattycoram." And Tattycoram would count twenty-five,
and by that time the fit of temper was over.
But one day she had an attack that was very much worse than usual--so
much worse that she couldn't wait to count twenty-five, and ran away.
And it was a long time before they saw Tattycoram again.
At Mr. Meagles's house Arthur met an inventor named Doyce, a quiet,
straightforward man, whom he soon came to like. Doyce had made a useful
invention and for twelve years had been trying to bring it to the notice
of the British Government. But this matter, too, had to go through the
famous "Circumlocution Office," and so there it had stuck just as
Arthur's inquiry had done.
Arthur having chosen no new business as yet, before long proposed a
partnership between himself and Doyce. The latter agreed readily, and
the new firm was established. Soon after this Doyce went abroad on
business, leaving Arthur to manage the affairs.
All might have gone well but for the fame of Mr. Merdle. His wealth
seemed so enormous, and his plans so sure, that many people throughout
England, just as old Mr. Dorrit had done, put their money in his care.
Even Pancks, the rent collector, did so, and strongly advised Arthur to
do the same. Convinced by such advice Arthur was unhappily led to invest
the money of the new firm in Merdle's schemes.
One day soon after, Mr. Merdle, whom every one had looked up to and
respected, killed himself, and then to every one's astonishment it was
found that his money was all gone, that his schemes were all exploded,
and that the famous man who had dined and wined with the great was
simply the greatest forger and the greatest thief that had ever cheated
the gallows.
But it was too late then. Arthur's firm was utterly ruined with all the
rest. What hurt him most was the knowledge that by using the firm's
money he had ruined his honest partner, Doyce.
In order to set the latter as near right as he could, Arthur turned over
every cent of his own personal fortune to pay as much of the firm's debt
as it would, keeping nothing of value but his clothes and his books.
Beside doing this, he wrote out a statement, declaring that he, Arthur
Clennam, had of his own act and against his partner's express caution,
used the firm's money for this purpose, and that he alone, and not
Doyce, was to blame. He declared also that his own share (if any
remained out of the wreck) should go to his partner, and that he himself
would work as a mere clerk, at as small a salary as he could live on.
He published this statement at once, unwisely no doubt, when all London
was so enraged against Merdle and glad to have some one on whom to vent
its madness. In the public anger and excitement the generosity of his
act was lost sight of. A few hours later a man who had invested some of
his money in Arthur's firm, and thus lost it, had him arrested for debt,
and that night he entered the dismal iron gates of the Marshalsea
prison, not now as a visitor, but as one whom the pitiless bars locked
in from liberty.
The turnkey took him up the old familiar staircase and into the old
familiar room in which he had so often been. And as he sat down in its
loneliness, thinking of the fair, slight form that had dwelt in it so
long, he turned his face to the wall and sobbed aloud, "Oh, my Little
Dorrit!"
Wherever he looked he seemed to see her, and just as she herself in a
foreign country found herself looking and listening for his step and
voice, so, too, it was with him.
In the days that followed he thought of her all the while. He was too
depressed and too retiring and unhappy to mingle with the other
prisoners, so he kept his own room and made no friends. The rest
disliked him and said he was proud or sullen.
A burning, reckless mood soon added its sufferings to his dread and
hatred of the place. The thought grew on him that he would in the end
break his heart and die there. He felt that he was being stifled, and at
times the longing to be free made him believe he must go mad. A week of
this suffering found him in his bed in the grasp of a slow, wasting
fever. He felt light-headed and delirious, and heard tunes playing that
he knew were only in his brain.
One day when he had dragged himself to his chair by the window, the door
of his room seemed to open to a quiet figure, which dropped a mantle it
wore; then it seemed to be Little Dorrit in her old dress, and it seemed
first to smile and then to burst into tears.
He roused himself, and all at once he saw that it was no dream. She was
really there, kneeling by him now with her tears falling on his hands
and her voice crying, "Oh, my best friend! Don't let me see you weep! I
am your own poor child come back!"
No one had told her he was ill, for she had just returned from Italy.
She made the room fresh and neat, sewed a white curtain for its window,
and sent out for grapes, roast chicken and jellies, and every good
thing. She sat by him all day, smoothing his hot pillow or giving him a
cooling drink.
Though he had been strangely blind, he knew at last that she must have
loved him all along. And to find her great heart turned to him thus in
his misfortune made him realize that during all those months in the
lonely prison he had been loving her, too, though he had not known it.
A feeling of peace came to him. Whenever he opened his eyes he saw her
at his side--the same trusting Little Dorrit that he had always known.
V
"ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL"
All the while these things were happening, Mrs. Clennam and Flintwinch
had continued their grim partnership.
Mrs. Clennam at last decided to burn the part of the will she had
hidden, so that her share in the wicked plan could never be found out.
Flintwinch, however, wishing for his own purposes to keep her in his
power, deceived her. He cunningly put in its place a worthless piece of
paper, and this Mrs. Clennam burned instead. Flintwinch then locked up
the real piece in an iron box, with a lot of private letters that had
been written by the poor crazed singer to Mrs. Clennam, begging her
forgiveness. The box he gave to his brother, who took it to Holland with
him for safe-keeping.
But Flintwinch, in this deception, overreached himself.
There was an adventurer in Holland named Rigaud, who used to drink and
smoke with this brother. He was an oily villain, who had been in jail in
France on suspicion of having murdered his wife. He had shaggy dry hair
streaked with red, and a thick mustache, and when he smiled his eyes
went close together, his mustache went up under his hooked nose, and his
nose came down over his mustache. Rigaud saw the box, concluded it
contained something valuable, and made up his mind to get it. His chance
came when the brother of Flintwinch died suddenly one day, and he lost
no time in making away with the iron box.
By means of the letters it contained, he soon guessed the secret which
Mrs. Clennam had been for so many years at such pains to conceal, and,
deciding that by this knowledge he could squeeze money out of her, he
came to London to find and threaten her.
But she, believing she had burned the part of the will which Rigaud
claimed to possess, refused to listen to him, until at last, maddened by
her refusals, he searched out the Dorrits.
He soon discovered that the man who had educated the singer (Arthur's
real mother) was Frederick Dorrit, Little Dorrit's dead uncle, and that
it was Little Dorrit herself, since she was his youngest niece, from
whom the money was now being unjustly kept.
Rigaud easily found Little Dorrit, for she was now in the Marshalsea
nursing Arthur, where he lay sick, and to her the cunning adventurer
sent a copy of the paper in a sealed packet, asking her, if it was not
reclaimed before the prison closed that same night, to open and read it
herself.
He then went to the Clennam house, told Mrs. Clennam and Flintwinch what
he had done and demanded money at once as the price of his reclaiming
the packet before Little Dorrit should learn the secret it held.
At this Flintwinch had to confess what he had done, and Mrs. Clennam
knew that the fatal paper had not been burned, after all.
The wretched woman, seeing this sharp end to all her scheming, was
almost distracted. She had not walked a step for twelve years, but now
her excitement and frenzy gave her unnatural strength. She rose from her
invalid chair and ran with all her speed from the house. Old Affery, the
servant, followed her mistress, wringing her hands as she tried vainly
to overtake her.
Mrs. Clennam did not pause till she had reached the prison and found
Little Dorrit. She told her to open the packet at once and to read what
it contained, and then, kneeling at her feet, she promised to restore to
her all she had withheld, and begged her to forgive and to come back
with her to tell Rigaud that she already knew the secret and that he
might do his worst.
Little Dorrit was greatly moved to see the stern, gray-haired woman at
her feet. She raised and comforted her, assuring her that, come what
would, Arthur should never learn the truth from her lips. This return of
good for evil from the one she had most injured brought the tears to the
hard woman's eyes. "God bless you," she said in a broken voice.
Side by side they hastened back to the Clennam house, but as they
reached the entrance of its dark courtyard there came a sudden noise
like thunder. For one instant they saw the building, with the insolent
Rigaud waiting smoking in the window; then the walls heaved, surged
outward, opened and fell into pieces. Its great pile of chimneys rocked,
broke and tumbled on the fragments, and only a huge mass of timbers and
stone, with a cloud of dust hovering over it, marked the spot where it
had stood.
The rotten old building, propped up so long, had fallen at last. For
years old Affery had insisted that the house was haunted. She had often
heard mysterious rustlings and noises, and in the mornings sometimes she
would find little heaps of dust on the floors. Curious, crooked cracks
would appear, too, in the walls, and the doors would stick with no
apparent reason. These things, of course, had been caused by the gradual
settling of the crazy walls and timbers, which now finally had collapsed
all at once.
Frightened, they ran back to the street and there Mrs. Clennam's strange
strength left her, and she fell in a heap upon the pavement.
She never from that hour was able to speak a word or move a finger. She
lived for three years in a wheel-chair, but she lived--and died--like a
statue.
For two days workmen dug industriously in the ruins before they found
the body of Rigaud, with his head smashed to atoms beneath a huge beam.
They dug longer than that for the body of Flintwinch, and stopped at
last when they came to the conclusion that he was not there. By that
time, however, he had had a chance to get together all of the firm's
money he could lay his hands on and to decamp. He was never seen again
in England, but travelers claimed to have seen him in Holland, where he
lived comfortably under the name of "Mynheer Von Flyntevynge"--which is,
after all, about as near as one can come to saying "Flintwinch" in
Dutch.
No one grieved greatly over his loss. It was long before Arthur knew of
these events, and Little Dorrit was too happy in nursing him back to
health to think much about it.
She was not content with this, either, but wrote to Mr. and Mrs.
Meagles, who were abroad, of the sick man's misfortune. The former went
at once in search of Doyce and brought him back to London, where
together they set the firm of "Doyce and Clennam" on its feet again and
arranged to buy Arthur's liberty. They did not tell Arthur anything of
this, however, in order that they might surprise him.
Mr. Meagles, for Little Dorrit's sake, tried hard to find the fragment
of the will which Rigaud had kept in the iron box. But it was
Tattycoram, the little maid with the bad temper, who finally found it in
a lodging Rigaud had occupied, and brought it to Mr. Meagles, praying on
her knees that he take her back into his service, which, to be sure, he
was very glad to do.
Arthur, while he was slowly growing better, had thought much of his
condition. Though Little Dorrit had begged him again and again to take
her money and use it as his own, he had refused, telling her as gently
as he could that now that she was rich and he a ruined man, this could
never be, and that, as the time had long gone by when she and the
Marshalsea had anything in common, they two must soon part.
One day, however, when he was well enough to sit up, Little Dorrit came
to his room in the prison and told him she had received a very great
fortune and asked him again if he would not take it.
"Never," he told her.
"You will not take even half of it?" she asked pleadingly.
"Never, dear Little Dorrit!" he said emphatically.
Then, at last, she laid her face on his breast crying:
"I have nothing in the world. I am as poor as when I lived here in the
Marshalsea. I have just found that papa gave all we had to Mr. Merdle
and it is swept away with the rest. My great fortune now is poverty,
because it is all you will take. Oh, my dearest and best, are you quite
sure you will not share my fortune with me now?"
He had locked her in his arms, and his tears were falling on her cheek
as she said joyfully:
"I never was rich before, or proud, or happy. I would rather pass my
life here in prison with you, and work daily for my bread, than to have
the greatest fortune that ever was told and be the greatest lady that
ever was honored!"
But Arthur's prison life was to be short. For Mr. Meagles and Doyce
burst upon them with all the other good news at once. Arthur was free,
the firm had been reëstablished with him at its head, and to-morrow the
debtors' prison would be only a memory.
Next morning, before they left the Marshalsea for ever, Little Dorrit
handed Arthur a folded paper, and asked him to please her by putting it
into the fire with his own hand.
"Is it a charm?" he asked.
"It is anything you like best," she answered, standing on tiptoe to kiss
him. "Only say 'I love you' as you do it!"
He said it, and the paper burned away. And so the will that had been the
cause of so much pain and wrong was turned to ashes. Little Dorrit kept
the promise she had made, and Arthur never learned of the sin of which
the woman he had always called his mother had been guilty.
Then, when all good-bys had been said, they walked together to the very
same church where Little Dorrit had slept on the cushions the night she
had been locked out of the Marshalsea, and there she and Arthur were
married. Doyce gave the bride away.
And among the many who came to witness the wedding were not only Pancks,
and Maggie, the half-witted woman, but even a group of Little Dorrit's
old turnkey friends from the prison--among whom was the disconsolate
Chivery, who had so long solaced himself by composing epitaphs for his
own tombstone, and who went home to meditate over his last inscription:
_________________________________________________
| |
| STRANGER! Respect the Tomb of |
| JOHN CHIVERY, JUNIOR |
| Who Died at an Advanced Age not Necessary to |
| Mention. He Encountered His Rival and |
| Felt Inclined |
| _To Have a Round with Him_; |
| But, for the Sake of the Loved One, Conquered |
| Those Feelings of Bitterness and Became |
| MAGNANIMOUS |
|_________________________________________________|
LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT
Published 1843-1844
_Scene_: London, Neighboring Towns, New York and the Mississippi Valley
_Time_: 1842
CHARACTERS
Martin Chuzzlewit A young gentleman
Chuzzlewit His grandfather. A rich old man
Mary Graham Old Chuzzlewit's nurse and secretary
Jonas His grasping nephew
Chuffey An aged clerk to Jonas's father
Pecksniff An architect and hypocrite
A distant relative of Old Chuzzlewit's
Charity His daughter
Mercy His daughter. Later, Jonas's wife
Tom Pinch A charity pupil of Pecksniff's
Ruth His sister
John Westlock One of Pecksniff's former pupils
Mark Tapley An assistant at a village inn
Later, Martin's comrade in the United States
Bevan An American
Mrs. Todgers The proprietress of a London boarding-house
Montague Tigg A penniless adventurer
Later known as "Tigg Montague," and president of the
Anglo-Bengalee Company
"Sairey" Gamp A nurse
"Mrs. Harris" An imaginary friend of Sairey Gamp's
Nadgett A police spy
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT
I
HOW MARTIN LEFT ENGLAND
Martin Chuzzlewit was the grandson of an old man who, from being poor,
became so rich that he found not only that people bowed low and
flattered him, but that many of his relatives were trying by every trick
to get some of his money.
The old man was naturally suspicious and obstinate, and when he saw this
he began to distrust everybody and to think the whole world selfish and
deceitful. He had loved most of all his grandson, Martin, but at length
his heart became hardened to him also.
This was partly Martin's own fault, for he was somewhat selfish, but he
had, nevertheless, a great deal of good in him. And perhaps his
selfishness was partly his grandfather's fault, too, because the latter
had brought him up to believe he would inherit all his money and would
sometime be very rich.
At last, ill and grown suspicious of every one he met, old Chuzzlewit
gave a home to a beautiful orphan girl named Mary Graham, and kept her
near him as his nurse and secretary. In order that she might not have
any selfish interest in being kind to him, he took an oath in her
presence that he would not leave her a cent when he died. He paid her
monthly wages and it was agreed that there should be no affection shown
between them.
In spite of his seeming harshness, Mary knew his heart was naturally
kind, and she soon loved him as a father. And he, softened by her
sympathy, came in spite of himself to love her as a daughter.
It was not long before young Martin, too, had fallen very deeply in love
with Mary. He concluded too hastily, however, that his grandfather would
not approve of his marrying her, and told the old man his intentions in
such a fiery way that Chuzzlewit resented it.
The old man accused Martin of a selfish attempt to steal from him Mary's
care, and at this, Martin, whose temper was as quick as his
grandfather's flew to anger. They quarreled and Martin left him,
declaring he would henceforth make his own way until he was able to
claim Mary for his wife.