If Young John Chivery had had the inclination and the power to write a
satire on family pride, he would have had no need to go for an avenging
illustration out of the family of his beloved. He would have found it
amply in that gallant brother and that dainty sister, so steeped in mean
experiences, and so loftily conscious of the family name; so ready
to beg or borrow from the poorest, to eat of anybody’s bread, spend
anybody’s money, drink from anybody’s cup and break it afterwards.
To have painted the sordid facts of their lives, and they throughout
invoking the death’s head apparition of the family gentility to come and
scare their benefactors, would have made Young John a satirist of the
first water.
Tip had turned his liberty to hopeful account by becoming a
billiard-marker. He had troubled himself so little as to the means of
his release, that Clennam scarcely needed to have been at the pains of
impressing the mind of Mr Plornish on that subject. Whoever had paid
him the compliment, he very readily accepted the compliment with _his_
compliments, and there was an end of it. Issuing forth from the gate
on these easy terms, he became a billiard-marker; and now occasionally
looked in at the little skittle-ground in a green Newmarket coat
(second-hand), with a shining collar and bright buttons (new), and drank
the beer of the Collegians.
One solid stationary point in the looseness of this gentleman’s
character was, that he respected and admired his sister Amy. The feeling
had never induced him to spare her a moment’s uneasiness, or to put
himself to any restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that
Marshalsea taint upon his love, he loved her. The same rank Marshalsea
flavour was to be recognised in his distinctly perceiving that she
sacrificed her life to her father, and in his having no idea that she
had done anything for himself.
When this spirited young man and his sister had begun systematically
to produce the family skeleton for the overawing of the College, this
narrative cannot precisely state. Probably at about the period when
they began to dine on the College charity. It is certain that the more
reduced and necessitous they were, the more pompously the skeleton
emerged from its tomb; and that when there was anything particularly
shabby in the wind, the skeleton always came out with the ghastliest
flourish.
Little Dorrit was late on the Monday morning, for her father slept
late, and afterwards there was his breakfast to prepare and his room to
arrange. She had no engagement to go out to work, however, and therefore
stayed with him until, with Maggy’s help, she had put everything right
about him, and had seen him off upon his morning walk (of twenty yards
or so) to the coffee-house to read the paper. She then got on her bonnet
and went out, having been anxious to get out much sooner. There was, as
usual, a cessation of the small-talk in the Lodge as she passed through
it; and a Collegian who had come in on Saturday night, received the
intimation from the elbow of a more seasoned Collegian, ‘Look out. Here
she is!’
She wanted to see her sister, but when she got round to Mr Cripples’s,
she found that both her sister and her uncle had gone to the theatre
where they were engaged. Having taken thought of this probability by
the way, and having settled that in such case she would follow them, she
set off afresh for the theatre, which was on that side of the river, and
not very far away.
Little Dorrit was almost as ignorant of the ways of theatres as of the
ways of gold mines, and when she was directed to a furtive sort of door,
with a curious up-all-night air about it, that appeared to be ashamed of
itself and to be hiding in an alley, she hesitated to approach it; being
further deterred by the sight of some half-dozen close-shaved gentlemen
with their hats very strangely on, who were lounging about the door,
looking not at all unlike Collegians. On her applying to them, reassured
by this resemblance, for a direction to Miss Dorrit, they made way for
her to enter a dark hall--it was more like a great grim lamp gone out
than anything else--where she could hear the distant playing of music
and the sound of dancing feet. A man so much in want of airing that he
had a blue mould upon him, sat watching this dark place from a hole in
a corner, like a spider; and he told her that he would send a message
up to Miss Dorrit by the first lady or gentleman who went through. The
first lady who went through had a roll of music, half in her muff and
half out of it, and was in such a tumbled condition altogether, that it
seemed as if it would be an act of kindness to iron her. But as she was
very good-natured, and said, ‘Come with me; I’ll soon find Miss Dorrit
for you,’ Miss Dorrit’s sister went with her, drawing nearer and nearer
at every step she took in the darkness to the sound of music and the
sound of dancing feet.
At last they came into a maze of dust, where a quantity of people were
tumbling over one another, and where there was such a confusion of
unaccountable shapes of beams, bulkheads, brick walls, ropes, and
rollers, and such a mixing of gaslight and daylight, that they seemed
to have got on the wrong side of the pattern of the universe. Little
Dorrit, left to herself, and knocked against by somebody every moment,
was quite bewildered, when she heard her sister’s voice.
‘Why, good gracious, Amy, what ever brought you here?’
‘I wanted to see you, Fanny dear; and as I am going out all day
to-morrow, and knew you might be engaged all day to-day, I thought--’
‘But the idea, Amy, of _you_ coming behind! I never did!’ As her sister
said this in no very cordial tone of welcome, she conducted her to a
more open part of the maze, where various golden chairs and tables were
heaped together, and where a number of young ladies were sitting on
anything they could find, chattering. All these young ladies wanted
ironing, and all had a curious way of looking everywhere while they
chattered.
Just as the sisters arrived here, a monotonous boy in a Scotch cap put
his head round a beam on the left, and said, ‘Less noise there, ladies!’
and disappeared. Immediately after which, a sprightly gentleman with a
quantity of long black hair looked round a beam on the right, and said,
‘Less noise there, darlings!’ and also disappeared.
‘The notion of you among professionals, Amy, is really the last thing
I could have conceived!’ said her sister. ‘Why, how did you ever get
here?’
‘I don’t know. The lady who told you I was here, was so good as to bring
me in.’
‘Like you quiet little things! You can make your way anywhere, I
believe. _I_ couldn’t have managed it, Amy, though I know so much more of
the world.’
It was the family custom to lay it down as family law, that she was a
plain domestic little creature, without the great and sage experience of
the rest. This family fiction was the family assertion of itself against
her services. Not to make too much of them.
‘Well! And what have you got on your mind, Amy? Of course you have
got something on your mind about me?’ said Fanny. She spoke as if her
sister, between two and three years her junior, were her prejudiced
grandmother.
‘It is not much; but since you told me of the lady who gave you the
bracelet, Fanny--’
The monotonous boy put his head round the beam on the left, and said,
‘Look out there, ladies!’ and disappeared. The sprightly gentleman with
the black hair as suddenly put his head round the beam on the right, and
said, ‘Look out there, darlings!’ and also disappeared. Thereupon all
the young ladies rose and began shaking their skirts out behind.
‘Well, Amy?’ said Fanny, doing as the rest did; ‘what were you going to
say?’
‘Since you told me a lady had given you the bracelet you showed me,
Fanny, I have not been quite easy on your account, and indeed want to
know a little more if you will confide more to me.’
‘Now, ladies!’ said the boy in the Scotch cap. ‘Now, darlings!’ said the
gentleman with the black hair. They were every one gone in a moment, and
the music and the dancing feet were heard again.
Little Dorrit sat down in a golden chair, made quite giddy by these
rapid interruptions. Her sister and the rest were a long time gone; and
during their absence a voice (it appeared to be that of the gentleman
with the black hair) was continually calling out through the music,
‘One, two, three, four, five, six--go! One, two, three, four, five,
six--go! Steady, darlings! One, two, three, four, five, six--go!’
Ultimately the voice stopped, and they all came back again, more or less
out of breath, folding themselves in their shawls, and making ready
for the streets. ‘Stop a moment, Amy, and let them get away before
us,’ whispered Fanny. They were soon left alone; nothing more important
happening, in the meantime, than the boy looking round his old beam, and
saying, ‘Everybody at eleven to-morrow, ladies!’ and the gentleman with
the black hair looking round his old beam, and saying, ‘Everybody at
eleven to-morrow, darlings!’ each in his own accustomed manner.
When they were alone, something was rolled up or by other means got out
of the way, and there was a great empty well before them, looking down
into the depths of which Fanny said, ‘Now, uncle!’ Little Dorrit, as her
eyes became used to the darkness, faintly made him out at the bottom of
the well, in an obscure corner by himself, with his instrument in its
ragged case under his arm.
The old man looked as if the remote high gallery windows, with their
little strip of sky, might have been the point of his better fortunes,
from which he had descended, until he had gradually sunk down below
there to the bottom. He had been in that place six nights a week for
many years, but had never been observed to raise his eyes above his
music-book, and was confidently believed to have never seen a play.
There were legends in the place that he did not so much as know the
popular heroes and heroines by sight, and that the low comedian had
‘mugged’ at him in his richest manner fifty nights for a wager, and he
had shown no trace of consciousness. The carpenters had a joke to the
effect that he was dead without being aware of it; and the frequenters
of the pit supposed him to pass his whole life, night and day, and
Sunday and all, in the orchestra. They had tried him a few times with
pinches of snuff offered over the rails, and he had always responded to
this attention with a momentary waking up of manner that had the pale
phantom of a gentleman in it: beyond this he never, on any occasion, had
any other part in what was going on than the part written out for the
clarionet; in private life, where there was no part for the clarionet,
he had no part at all. Some said he was poor, some said he was a wealthy
miser; but he said nothing, never lifted up his bowed head, never varied
his shuffling gait by getting his springless foot from the ground.
Though expecting now to be summoned by his niece, he did not hear her
until she had spoken to him three or four times; nor was he at all
surprised by the presence of two nieces instead of one, but merely said
in his tremulous voice, ‘I am coming, I am coming!’ and crept forth by
some underground way which emitted a cellarous smell.
‘And so, Amy,’ said her sister, when the three together passed out at
the door that had such a shame-faced consciousness of being different
from other doors: the uncle instinctively taking Amy’s arm as the arm to
be relied on: ‘so, Amy, you are curious about me?’
She was pretty, and conscious, and rather flaunting; and the
condescension with which she put aside the superiority of her charms,
and of her worldly experience, and addressed her sister on almost equal
terms, had a vast deal of the family in it.
‘I am interested, Fanny, and concerned in anything that concerns you.’
‘So you are, so you are, and you are the best of Amys. If I am ever a
little provoking, I am sure you’ll consider what a thing it is to
occupy my position and feel a consciousness of being superior to it. I
shouldn’t care,’ said the Daughter of the Father of the Marshalsea, ‘if
the others were not so common. None of them have come down in the world
as we have. They are all on their own level. Common.’
Little Dorrit mildly looked at the speaker, but did not interrupt her.
Fanny took out her handkerchief, and rather angrily wiped her eyes. ‘I
was not born where you were, you know, Amy, and perhaps that makes a
difference. My dear child, when we get rid of Uncle, you shall know all
about it. We’ll drop him at the cook’s shop where he is going to dine.’
They walked on with him until they came to a dirty shop window in a
dirty street, which was made almost opaque by the steam of hot meats,
vegetables, and puddings. But glimpses were to be caught of a roast leg
of pork bursting into tears of sage and onion in a metal reservoir full
of gravy, of an unctuous piece of roast beef and blisterous Yorkshire
pudding, bubbling hot in a similar receptacle, of a stuffed fillet of
veal in rapid cut, of a ham in a perspiration with the pace it was going
at, of a shallow tank of baked potatoes glued together by their own
richness, of a truss or two of boiled greens, and other substantial
delicacies. Within, were a few wooden partitions, behind which such
customers as found it more convenient to take away their dinners in
stomachs than in their hands, Packed their purchases in solitude. Fanny
opening her reticule, as they surveyed these things, produced from that
repository a shilling and handed it to Uncle. Uncle, after not looking
at it a little while, divined its object, and muttering ‘Dinner? Ha!
Yes, yes, yes!’ slowly vanished from them into the mist.
‘Now, Amy,’ said her sister, ‘come with me, if you are not too tired to
walk to Harley Street, Cavendish Square.’
The air with which she threw off this distinguished address and the toss
she gave to her new bonnet (which was more gauzy than serviceable), made
her sister wonder; however, she expressed her readiness to go to Harley
Street, and thither they directed their steps. Arrived at that grand
destination, Fanny singled out the handsomest house, and knocking at the
door, inquired for Mrs Merdle. The footman who opened the door, although
he had powder on his head and was backed up by two other footmen
likewise powdered, not only admitted Mrs Merdle to be at home, but asked
Fanny to walk in. Fanny walked in, taking her sister with her; and they
went up-stairs with powder going before and powder stopping behind,
and were left in a spacious semicircular drawing-room, one of several
drawing-rooms, where there was a parrot on the outside of a golden cage
holding on by its beak, with its scaly legs in the air, and putting
itself into many strange upside-down postures. This peculiarity has been
observed in birds of quite another feather, climbing upon golden wires.
The room was far more splendid than anything Little Dorrit had ever
imagined, and would have been splendid and costly in any eyes. She
looked in amazement at her sister and would have asked a question,
but that Fanny with a warning frown pointed to a curtained doorway of
communication with another room. The curtain shook next moment, and a
lady, raising it with a heavily ringed hand, dropped it behind her again
as she entered.
The lady was not young and fresh from the hand of Nature, but was young
and fresh from the hand of her maid. She had large unfeeling handsome
eyes, and dark unfeeling handsome hair, and a broad unfeeling handsome
bosom, and was made the most of in every particular. Either because she
had a cold, or because it suited her face, she wore a rich white
fillet tied over her head and under her chin. And if ever there were
an unfeeling handsome chin that looked as if, for certain, it had never
been, in familiar parlance, ‘chucked’ by the hand of man, it was the
chin curbed up so tight and close by that laced bridle.
‘Mrs Merdle,’ said Fanny. ‘My sister, ma’am.’
‘I am glad to see your sister, Miss Dorrit. I did not remember that you
had a sister.’
‘I did not mention that I had,’ said Fanny.
‘Ah!’ Mrs Merdle curled the little finger of her left hand as who should
say, ‘I have caught you. I know you didn’t!’ All her action was usually
with her left hand because her hands were not a pair; and left being
much the whiter and plumper of the two. Then she added: ‘Sit down,’ and
composed herself voluptuously, in a nest of crimson and gold cushions,
on an ottoman near the parrot.
‘Also professional?’ said Mrs Merdle, looking at Little Dorrit through
an eye-glass.
Fanny answered No. ‘No,’ said Mrs Merdle, dropping her glass. ‘Has not a
professional air. Very pleasant; but not professional.’
‘My sister, ma’am,’ said Fanny, in whom there was a singular mixture
of deference and hardihood, ‘has been asking me to tell her, as between
sisters, how I came to have the honour of knowing you. And as I had
engaged to call upon you once more, I thought I might take the liberty
of bringing her with me, when perhaps you would tell her. I wish her to
know, and perhaps you will tell her?’
‘Do you think, at your sister’s age--’ hinted Mrs Merdle.
‘She is much older than she looks,’ said Fanny; ‘almost as old as I am.’
‘Society,’ said Mrs Merdle, with another curve of her little finger, ‘is
so difficult to explain to young persons (indeed is so difficult to
explain to most persons), that I am glad to hear that. I wish Society
was not so arbitrary, I wish it was not so exacting--Bird, be quiet!’
The parrot had given a most piercing shriek, as if its name were Society
and it asserted its right to its exactions.
‘But,’ resumed Mrs Merdle, ‘we must take it as we find it. We know it is
hollow and conventional and worldly and very shocking, but unless we
are Savages in the Tropical seas (I should have been charmed to be one
myself--most delightful life and perfect climate, I am told), we
must consult it. It is the common lot. Mr Merdle is a most extensive
merchant, his transactions are on the vastest scale, his wealth and
influence are very great, but even he--Bird, be quiet!’
The parrot had shrieked another shriek; and it filled up the sentence so
expressively that Mrs Merdle was under no necessity to end it.
‘Since your sister begs that I would terminate our personal
acquaintance,’ she began again, addressing Little Dorrit, ‘by relating
the circumstances that are much to her credit, I cannot object to comply
with her request, I am sure. I have a son (I was first married extremely
young) of two or three-and-twenty.’
Fanny set her lips, and her eyes looked half triumphantly at her sister.
‘A son of two or three-and-twenty. He is a little gay, a thing Society
is accustomed to in young men, and he is very impressible. Perhaps he
inherits that misfortune. I am very impressible myself, by nature. The
weakest of creatures--my feelings are touched in a moment.’
She said all this, and everything else, as coldly as a woman of snow;
quite forgetting the sisters except at odd times, and apparently
addressing some abstraction of Society; for whose behoof, too, she
occasionally arranged her dress, or the composition of her figure upon
the ottoman.
‘So he is very impressible. Not a misfortune in our natural state I dare
say, but we are not in a natural state. Much to be lamented, no doubt,
particularly by myself, who am a child of nature if I could but show it;
but so it is. Society suppresses us and dominates us--Bird, be quiet!’
The parrot had broken into a violent fit of laughter, after twisting
divers bars of his cage with his crooked bill, and licking them with his
black tongue.
‘It is quite unnecessary to say to a person of your good sense, wide
range of experience, and cultivated feeling,’ said Mrs Merdle from her
nest of crimson and gold--and there put up her glass to refresh her
memory as to whom she was addressing,--‘that the stage sometimes has
a fascination for young men of that class of character. In saying the
stage, I mean the people on it of the female sex. Therefore, when I
heard that my son was supposed to be fascinated by a dancer, I knew what
that usually meant in Society, and confided in her being a dancer at the
Opera, where young men moving in Society are usually fascinated.’
She passed her white hands over one another, observant of the sisters
now; and the rings upon her fingers grated against each other with a
hard sound.
‘As your sister will tell you, when I found what the theatre was I was
much surprised and much distressed. But when I found that your sister,
by rejecting my son’s advances (I must add, in an unexpected manner),
had brought him to the point of proposing marriage, my feelings were
of the profoundest anguish--acute.’
She traced the outline of her left eyebrow, and put it right.
‘In a distracted condition, which only a mother--moving in Society--can
be susceptible of, I determined to go myself to the theatre, and
represent my state of mind to the dancer. I made myself known to your
sister. I found her, to my surprise, in many respects different from
my expectations; and certainly in none more so, than in meeting me
with--what shall I say--a sort of family assertion on her own part?’ Mrs
Merdle smiled.
‘I told you, ma’am,’ said Fanny, with a heightening colour, ‘that
although you found me in that situation, I was so far above the rest,
that I considered my family as good as your son’s; and that I had a
brother who, knowing the circumstances, would be of the same opinion,
and would not consider such a connection any honour.’
‘Miss Dorrit,’ said Mrs Merdle, after frostily looking at her through
her glass, ‘precisely what I was on the point of telling your sister,
in pursuance of your request. Much obliged to you for recalling it
so accurately and anticipating me. I immediately,’ addressing Little
Dorrit, ‘(for I am the creature of impulse), took a bracelet from my
arm, and begged your sister to let me clasp it on hers, in token of
the delight I had in our being able to approach the subject so far on
a common footing.’ (This was perfectly true, the lady having bought a
cheap and showy article on her way to the interview, with a general eye
to bribery.)
‘And I told you, Mrs Merdle,’ said Fanny, ‘that we might be unfortunate,
but we are not common.’
‘I think, the very words, Miss Dorrit,’ assented Mrs Merdle.
‘And I told you, Mrs Merdle,’ said Fanny, ‘that if you spoke to me
of the superiority of your son’s standing in Society, it was barely
possible that you rather deceived yourself in your suppositions about my
origin; and that my father’s standing, even in the Society in which
he now moved (what that was, was best known to myself), was eminently
superior, and was acknowledged by every one.’
‘Quite accurate,’ rejoined Mrs Merdle. ‘A most admirable memory.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. Perhaps you will be so kind as to tell my sister the
rest.’
‘There is very little to tell,’ said Mrs Merdle, reviewing the breadth
of bosom which seemed essential to her having room enough to be
unfeeling in, ‘but it is to your sister’s credit. I pointed out to your
sister the plain state of the case; the impossibility of the Society
in which we moved recognising the Society in which she moved--though
charming, I have no doubt; the immense disadvantage at which she would
consequently place the family she had so high an opinion of, upon which
we should find ourselves compelled to look down with contempt, and
from which (socially speaking) we should feel obliged to recoil with
abhorrence. In short, I made an appeal to that laudable pride in your
sister.’
‘Let my sister know, if you please, Mrs Merdle,’ Fanny pouted, with a
toss of her gauzy bonnet, ‘that I had already had the honour of telling
your son that I wished to have nothing whatever to say to him.’
‘Well, Miss Dorrit,’ assented Mrs Merdle, ‘perhaps I might have
mentioned that before. If I did not think of it, perhaps it was because
my mind reverted to the apprehensions I had at the time that he might
persevere and you might have something to say to him. I also mentioned
to your sister--I again address the non-professional Miss Dorrit--that
my son would have nothing in the event of such a marriage, and would be
an absolute beggar. (I mention that merely as a fact which is part of
the narrative, and not as supposing it to have influenced your sister,
except in the prudent and legitimate way in which, constituted as our
artificial system is, we must all be influenced by such considerations.)
Finally, after some high words and high spirit on the part of your
sister, we came to the complete understanding that there was no danger;
and your sister was so obliging as to allow me to present her with a
mark or two of my appreciation at my dressmaker’s.’
Little Dorrit looked sorry, and glanced at Fanny with a troubled face.
‘Also,’ said Mrs Merdle, ‘as to promise to give me the present pleasure
of a closing interview, and of parting with her on the best of terms.
On which occasion,’ added Mrs Merdle, quitting her nest, and putting
something in Fanny’s hand, ‘Miss Dorrit will permit me to say Farewell
with best wishes in my own dull manner.’
The sisters rose at the same time, and they all stood near the cage of
the parrot, as he tore at a claw-full of biscuit and spat it out, seemed
to mock them with a pompous dance of his body without moving his feet,
and suddenly turned himself upside down and trailed himself all over
the outside of his golden cage, with the aid of his cruel beak and black
tongue.
‘Adieu, Miss Dorrit, with best wishes,’ said Mrs Merdle. ‘If we could
only come to a Millennium, or something of that sort, I for one might
have the pleasure of knowing a number of charming and talented persons
from whom I am at present excluded. A more primitive state of society
would be delicious to me. There used to be a poem when I learnt lessons,
something about Lo the poor Indians whose something mind! If a few
thousand persons moving in Society, could only go and be Indians, I
would put my name down directly; but as, moving in Society, we can’t be
Indians, unfortunately--Good morning!’
They came down-stairs with powder before them and powder behind, the
elder sister haughty and the younger sister humbled, and were shut out
into unpowdered Harley Street, Cavendish Square.
‘Well?’ said Fanny, when they had gone a little way without speaking.
‘Have you nothing to say, Amy?’
‘Oh, I don’t know what to say!’ she answered, distressed. ‘You didn’t
like this young man, Fanny?’
‘Like him? He is almost an idiot.’
‘I am so sorry--don’t be hurt--but, since you ask me what I have to
say, I am so very sorry, Fanny, that you suffered this lady to give you
anything.’
‘You little Fool!’ returned her sister, shaking her with the sharp pull
she gave her arm. ‘Have you no spirit at all? But that’s just the way!
You have no self-respect, you have no becoming pride, just as you allow
yourself to be followed about by a contemptible little Chivery of a
thing,’ with the scornfullest emphasis, ‘you would let your family be
trodden on, and never turn.’
‘Don’t say that, dear Fanny. I do what I can for them.’
‘You do what you can for them!’ repeated Fanny, walking her on very
fast. ‘Would you let a woman like this, whom you could see, if you had
any experience of anything, to be as false and insolent as a woman can
be--would you let her put her foot upon your family, and thank her for
it?’
‘No, Fanny, I am sure.’
‘Then make her pay for it, you mean little thing. What else can you make
her do? Make her pay for it, you stupid child; and do your family some
credit with the money!’
They spoke no more all the way back to the lodging where Fanny and her
uncle lived. When they arrived there, they found the old man practising
his clarionet in the dolefullest manner in a corner of the room.
Fanny had a composite meal to make, of chops, and porter, and tea; and
indignantly pretended to prepare it for herself, though her sister did
all that in quiet reality. When at last Fanny sat down to eat and drink,
she threw the table implements about and was angry with her bread, much
as her father had been last night.
‘If you despise me,’ she said, bursting into vehement tears, ‘because I
am a dancer, why did you put me in the way of being one? It was your
doing. You would have me stoop as low as the ground before this Mrs
Merdle, and let her say what she liked and do what she liked, and hold
us all in contempt, and tell me so to my face. Because I am a dancer!’
‘O Fanny!’
‘And Tip, too, poor fellow. She is to disparage him just as much as she
likes, without any check--I suppose because he has been in the law, and
the docks, and different things. Why, it was your doing, Amy. You might
at least approve of his being defended.’
All this time the uncle was dolefully blowing his clarionet in the
corner, sometimes taking it an inch or so from his mouth for a moment
while he stopped to gaze at them, with a vague impression that somebody
had said something.
‘And your father, your poor father, Amy. Because he is not free to show
himself and to speak for himself, you would let such people insult him
with impunity. If you don’t feel for yourself because you go out to
work, you might at least feel for him, I should think, knowing what he
has undergone so long.’
Poor Little Dorrit felt the injustice of this taunt rather sharply.
The remembrance of last night added a barbed point to it. She said
nothing in reply, but turned her chair from the table towards the fire.
Uncle, after making one more pause, blew a dismal wail and went on
again.
Fanny was passionate with the tea-cups and the bread as long as her
passion lasted, and then protested that she was the wretchedest girl in
the world, and she wished she was dead. After that, her crying became
remorseful, and she got up and put her arms round her sister. Little
Dorrit tried to stop her from saying anything, but she answered that
she would, she must! Thereupon she said again, and again, ‘I beg your
pardon, Amy,’ and ‘Forgive me, Amy,’ almost as passionately as she had
said what she regretted.
‘But indeed, indeed, Amy,’ she resumed when they were seated in sisterly
accord side by side, ‘I hope and I think you would have seen this
differently, if you had known a little more of Society.’
‘Perhaps I might, Fanny,’ said the mild Little Dorrit.
‘You see, while you have been domestic and resignedly shut up there,
Amy,’ pursued her sister, gradually beginning to patronise, ‘I have
been out, moving more in Society, and may have been getting proud and
spirited--more than I ought to be, perhaps?’
Little Dorrit answered ‘Yes. O yes!’
‘And while you have been thinking of the dinner or the clothes, I may
have been thinking, you know, of the family. Now, may it not be so,
Amy?’
Little Dorrit again nodded ‘Yes,’ with a more cheerful face than heart.
‘Especially as we know,’ said Fanny, ‘that there certainly is a tone in
the place to which you have been so true, which does belong to it, and
which does make it different from other aspects of Society. So kiss me
once again, Amy dear, and we will agree that we may both be right, and
that you are a tranquil, domestic, home-loving, good girl.’
The clarionet had been lamenting most pathetically during this dialogue,
but was cut short now by Fanny’s announcement that it was time to go;
which she conveyed to her uncle by shutting up his scrap of music, and
taking the clarionet out of his mouth.
Little Dorrit parted from them at the door, and hastened back to the
Marshalsea. It fell dark there sooner than elsewhere, and going into it
that evening was like going into a deep trench. The shadow of the wall
was on every object. Not least upon the figure in the old grey gown and
the black velvet cap, as it turned towards her when she opened the door
of the dim room.
‘Why not upon me too!’ thought Little Dorrit, with the door yet in her
hand. ‘It was not unreasonable in Fanny.’