A frequently recurring doubt, whether Mr Pancks’s desire to collect
information relative to the Dorrit family could have any possible
bearing on the misgivings he had imparted to his mother on his return
from his long exile, caused Arthur Clennam much uneasiness at this
period. What Mr Pancks already knew about the Dorrit family, what more
he really wanted to find out, and why he should trouble his busy head
about them at all, were questions that often perplexed him. Mr Pancks
was not a man to waste his time and trouble in researches prompted by
idle curiosity. That he had a specific object Clennam could not doubt.
And whether the attainment of that object by Mr Pancks’s industry might
bring to light, in some untimely way, secret reasons which had induced
his mother to take Little Dorrit by the hand, was a serious speculation.
Not that he ever wavered either in his desire or his determination to
repair a wrong that had been done in his father’s time, should a
wrong come to light, and be reparable. The shadow of a supposed act
of injustice, which had hung over him since his father’s death, was
so vague and formless that it might be the result of a reality widely
remote from his idea of it. But, if his apprehensions should prove to
be well founded, he was ready at any moment to lay down all he had, and
begin the world anew. As the fierce dark teaching of his childhood had
never sunk into his heart, so that first article in his code of morals
was, that he must begin, in practical humility, with looking well to
his feet on Earth, and that he could never mount on wings of words to
Heaven. Duty on earth, restitution on earth, action on earth; these
first, as the first steep steps upward. Strait was the gate and narrow
was the way; far straiter and narrower than the broad high road paved
with vain professions and vain repetitions, motes from other men’s eyes
and liberal delivery of others to the judgment--all cheap materials
costing absolutely nothing.
No. It was not a selfish fear or hesitation that rendered him
uneasy, but a mistrust lest Pancks might not observe his part of the
understanding between them, and, making any discovery, might take some
course upon it without imparting it to him. On the other hand, when he
recalled his conversation with Pancks, and the little reason he had to
suppose that there was any likelihood of that strange personage being
on that track at all, there were times when he wondered that he made so
much of it. Labouring in this sea, as all barks labour in cross seas, he
tossed about and came to no haven.
The removal of Little Dorrit herself from their customary association,
did not mend the matter. She was so much out, and so much in her own
room, that he began to miss her and to find a blank in her place. He had
written to her to inquire if she were better, and she had written
back, very gratefully and earnestly telling him not to be uneasy on her
behalf, for she was quite well; but he had not seen her, for what, in
their intercourse, was a long time.
He returned home one evening from an interview with her father, who had
mentioned that she was out visiting--which was what he always said
when she was hard at work to buy his supper--and found Mr Meagles in an
excited state walking up and down his room. On his opening the door, Mr
Meagles stopped, faced round, and said:
‘Clennam!--Tattycoram!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Lost!’
‘Why, bless my heart alive!’ cried Clennam in amazement. ‘What do you
mean?’
‘Wouldn’t count five-and-twenty, sir; couldn’t be got to do it; stopped
at eight, and took herself off.’
‘Left your house?’
‘Never to come back,’ said Mr Meagles, shaking his head. ‘You don’t know
that girl’s passionate and proud character. A team of horses couldn’t
draw her back now; the bolts and bars of the old Bastille couldn’t keep
her.’
‘How did it happen? Pray sit down and tell me.’
‘As to how it happened, it’s not so easy to relate: because you must
have the unfortunate temperament of the poor impetuous girl herself,
before you can fully understand it. But it came about in this way. Pet
and Mother and I have been having a good deal of talk together of late.
I’ll not disguise from you, Clennam, that those conversations have not
been of as bright a kind as I could wish; they have referred to our
going away again. In proposing to do which, I have had, in fact, an
object.’
Nobody’s heart beat quickly.
‘An object,’ said Mr Meagles, after a moment’s pause, ‘that I will not
disguise from you, either, Clennam. There’s an inclination on the part
of my dear child which I am sorry for. Perhaps you guess the person.
Henry Gowan.’
‘I was not unprepared to hear it.’
‘Well!’ said Mr Meagles, with a heavy sigh, ‘I wish to God you had never
had to hear it. However, so it is. Mother and I have done all we could
to get the better of it, Clennam. We have tried tender advice, we
have tried time, we have tried absence. As yet, of no use. Our late
conversations have been upon the subject of going away for another year
at least, in order that there might be an entire separation and breaking
off for that term. Upon that question, Pet has been unhappy, and
therefore Mother and I have been unhappy.’
Clennam said that he could easily believe it.
‘Well!’ continued Mr Meagles in an apologetic way, ‘I admit as a
practical man, and I am sure Mother would admit as a practical woman,
that we do, in families, magnify our troubles and make mountains of our
molehills in a way that is calculated to be rather trying to people who
look on--to mere outsiders, you know, Clennam. Still, Pet’s happiness
or unhappiness is quite a life or death question with us; and we may be
excused, I hope, for making much of it. At all events, it might have
been borne by Tattycoram. Now, don’t you think so?’
‘I do indeed think so,’ returned Clennam, in most emphatic recognition
of this very moderate expectation.
‘No, sir,’ said Mr Meagles, shaking his head ruefully. ‘She couldn’t
stand it. The chafing and firing of that girl, the wearing and tearing
of that girl within her own breast, has been such that I have
softly said to her again and again in passing her, “Five-and-twenty,
Tattycoram, five-and-twenty!” I heartily wish she could have gone
on counting five-and-twenty day and night, and then it wouldn’t have
happened.’
Mr Meagles with a despondent countenance in which the goodness of his
heart was even more expressed than in his times of cheerfulness and
gaiety, stroked his face down from his forehead to his chin, and shook
his head again.
‘I said to Mother (not that it was necessary, for she would have thought
it all for herself), we are practical people, my dear, and we know her
story; we see in this unhappy girl some reflection of what was raging in
her mother’s heart before ever such a creature as this poor thing was
in the world; we’ll gloss her temper over, Mother, we won’t notice it at
present, my dear, we’ll take advantage of some better disposition in her
another time. So we said nothing. But, do what we would, it seems as if
it was to be; she broke out violently one night.’
‘How, and why?’
‘If you ask me Why,’ said Mr Meagles, a little disturbed by the
question, for he was far more intent on softening her case than the
family’s, ‘I can only refer you to what I have just repeated as having
been pretty near my words to Mother. As to How, we had said Good night
to Pet in her presence (very affectionately, I must allow), and she
had attended Pet up-stairs--you remember she was her maid. Perhaps Pet,
having been out of sorts, may have been a little more inconsiderate than
usual in requiring services of her: but I don’t know that I have any
right to say so; she was always thoughtful and gentle.’
‘The gentlest mistress in the world.’
‘Thank you, Clennam,’ said Mr Meagles, shaking him by the hand; ‘you
have often seen them together. Well! We presently heard this unfortunate
Tattycoram loud and angry, and before we could ask what was the matter,
Pet came back in a tremble, saying she was frightened of her. Close
after her came Tattycoram in a flaming rage. “I hate you all three,”
says she, stamping her foot at us. “I am bursting with hate of the whole
house.”’
‘Upon which you--?’
‘I?’ said Mr Meagles, with a plain good faith that might have commanded
the belief of Mrs Gowan herself. ‘I said, count five-and-twenty,
Tattycoram.’
Mr Meagles again stroked his face and shook his head, with an air of
profound regret.
‘She was so used to do it, Clennam, that even then, such a picture of
passion as you never saw, she stopped short, looked me full in the face,
and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn’t control herself
to go any further. There she broke down, poor thing, and gave the other
seventeen to the four winds. Then it all burst out. She detested us, she
was miserable with us, she couldn’t bear it, she wouldn’t bear it, she
was determined to go away. She was younger than her young mistress, and
would she remain to see her always held up as the only creature who was
young and interesting, and to be cherished and loved? No. She wouldn’t,
she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t! What did we think she, Tattycoram, might
have been if she had been caressed and cared for in her childhood, like
her young mistress? As good as her? Ah! Perhaps fifty times as good.
When we pretended to be so fond of one another, we exulted over her;
that was what we did; we exulted over her and shamed her. And all in
the house did the same. They talked about their fathers and mothers, and
brothers and sisters; they liked to drag them up before her face. There
was Mrs Tickit, only yesterday, when her little grandchild was with her,
had been amused by the child’s trying to call her (Tattycoram) by the
wretched name we gave her; and had laughed at the name. Why, who didn’t;
and who were we that we should have a right to name her like a dog or a
cat? But she didn’t care. She would take no more benefits from us; she
would fling us her name back again, and she would go. She would leave
us that minute, nobody should stop her, and we should never hear of her
again.’
Mr Meagles had recited all this with such a vivid remembrance of his
original, that he was almost as flushed and hot by this time as he
described her to have been.
‘Ah, well!’ he said, wiping his face. ‘It was of no use trying reason
then, with that vehement panting creature (Heaven knows what her
mother’s story must have been); so I quietly told her that she should
not go at that late hour of night, and I gave her my hand and took her
to her room, and locked the house doors. But she was gone this morning.’
‘And you know no more of her?’
‘No more,’ returned Mr Meagles. ‘I have been hunting about all day. She
must have gone very early and very silently. I have found no trace of
her down about us.’
‘Stay! You want,’ said Clennam, after a moment’s reflection, ‘to see
her? I assume that?’
‘Yes, assuredly; I want to give her another chance; Mother and Pet
want to give her another chance; come! You yourself,’ said Mr Meagles,
persuasively, as if the provocation to be angry were not his own at all,
‘want to give the poor passionate girl another chance, I know, Clennam.’
‘It would be strange and hard indeed if I did not,’ said Clennam, ‘when
you are all so forgiving. What I was going to ask you was, have you
thought of that Miss Wade?’
‘I have. I did not think of her until I had pervaded the whole of our
neighbourhood, and I don’t know that I should have done so then but
for finding Mother and Pet, when I went home, full of the idea that
Tattycoram must have gone to her. Then, of course, I recalled what she
said that day at dinner when you were first with us.’
‘Have you any idea where Miss Wade is to be found?’
‘To tell you the truth,’ returned Mr Meagles, ‘it’s because I have an
addled jumble of a notion on that subject that you found me waiting
here. There is one of those odd impressions in my house, which do
mysteriously get into houses sometimes, which nobody seems to have
picked up in a distinct form from anybody, and yet which everybody seems
to have got hold of loosely from somebody and let go again, that she
lives, or was living, thereabouts.’ Mr Meagles handed him a slip of
paper, on which was written the name of one of the dull by-streets in
the Grosvenor region, near Park Lane.
‘Here is no number,’ said Arthur looking over it.
‘No number, my dear Clennam?’ returned his friend. ‘No anything! The
very name of the street may have been floating in the air; for, as I
tell you, none of my people can say where they got it from. However,
it’s worth an inquiry; and as I would rather make it in company than
alone, and as you too were a fellow-traveller of that immovable woman’s,
I thought perhaps--’ Clennam finished the sentence for him by taking up
his hat again, and saying he was ready.
It was now summer-time; a grey, hot, dusty evening. They rode to the top
of Oxford Street, and there alighting, dived in among the great streets
of melancholy stateliness, and the little streets that try to be as
stately and succeed in being more melancholy, of which there is a
labyrinth near Park Lane. Wildernesses of corner houses, with barbarous
old porticoes and appurtenances; horrors that came into existence under
some wrong-headed person in some wrong-headed time, still demanding
the blind admiration of all ensuing generations and determined to do
so until they tumbled down; frowned upon the twilight. Parasite little
tenements, with the cramp in their whole frame, from the dwarf hall-door
on the giant model of His Grace’s in the Square to the squeezed window
of the boudoir commanding the dunghills in the Mews, made the evening
doleful. Rickety dwellings of undoubted fashion, but of a capacity to
hold nothing comfortably except a dismal smell, looked like the last
result of the great mansions’ breeding in-and-in; and, where their
little supplementary bows and balconies were supported on thin iron
columns, seemed to be scrofulously resting upon crutches. Here and
there a Hatchment, with the whole science of Heraldry in it, loomed down
upon the street, like an Archbishop discoursing on Vanity. The shops,
few in number, made no show; for popular opinion was as nothing to them.
The pastrycook knew who was on his books, and in that knowledge could be
calm, with a few glass cylinders of dowager peppermint-drops in his
window, and half-a-dozen ancient specimens of currant-jelly. A few
oranges formed the greengrocer’s whole concession to the vulgar mind. A
single basket made of moss, once containing plovers’ eggs, held all that
the poulterer had to say to the rabble. Everybody in those streets
seemed (which is always the case at that hour and season) to be gone out
to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving the dinners they had gone to.
On the doorsteps there were lounging footmen with bright parti-coloured
plumage and white polls, like an extinct race of monstrous birds; and
butlers, solitary men of recluse demeanour, each of whom appeared
distrustful of all other butlers. The roll of carriages in the Park was
done for the day; the street lamps were lighting; and wicked little
grooms in the tightest fitting garments, with twists in their legs
answering to the twists in their minds, hung about in pairs, chewing
straws and exchanging fraudulent secrets. The spotted dogs who went out
with the carriages, and who were so associated with splendid equipages
that it looked like a condescension in those animals to come out without
them, accompanied helpers to and fro on messages. Here and there was a
retiring public-house which did not require to be supported on the
shoulders of the people, and where gentlemen out of livery were not much
wanted.
This last discovery was made by the two friends in pursuing their
inquiries. Nothing was there, or anywhere, known of such a person as
Miss Wade, in connection with the street they sought. It was one of the
parasite streets; long, regular, narrow, dull and gloomy; like a brick
and mortar funeral. They inquired at several little area gates, where
a dejected youth stood spiking his chin on the summit of a precipitous
little shoot of wooden steps, but could gain no information. They walked
up the street on one side of the way, and down it on the other, what
time two vociferous news-sellers, announcing an extraordinary event that
had never happened and never would happen, pitched their hoarse voices
into the secret chambers; but nothing came of it. At length they stood
at the corner from which they had begun, and it had fallen quite dark,
and they were no wiser.
It happened that in the street they had several times passed a dingy
house, apparently empty, with bills in the windows, announcing that it
was to let. The bills, as a variety in the funeral procession, almost
amounted to a decoration. Perhaps because they kept the house separated
in his mind, or perhaps because Mr Meagles and himself had twice agreed
in passing, ‘It is clear she don’t live there,’ Clennam now proposed
that they should go back and try that house before finally going away.
Mr Meagles agreed, and back they went.
They knocked once, and they rang once, without any response. ‘Empty,’
said Mr Meagles, listening. ‘Once more,’ said Clennam, and knocked
again. After that knock they heard a movement below, and somebody
shuffling up towards the door.
The confined entrance was so dark that it was impossible to make out
distinctly what kind of person opened the door; but it appeared to be an
old woman. ‘Excuse our troubling you,’ said Clennam. ‘Pray can you
tell us where Miss Wade lives?’ The voice in the darkness unexpectedly
replied, ‘Lives here.’
‘Is she at home?’
No answer coming, Mr Meagles asked again. ‘Pray is she at home?’
After another delay, ‘I suppose she is,’ said the voice abruptly; ‘you
had better come in, and I’ll ask.’
They were summarily shut into the close black house; and the figure
rustling away, and speaking from a higher level, said, ‘Come up, if you
please; you can’t tumble over anything.’ They groped their way up-stairs
towards a faint light, which proved to be the light of the street
shining through a window; and the figure left them shut in an airless
room.
‘This is odd, Clennam,’ said Mr Meagles, softly.
‘Odd enough,’ assented Clennam in the same tone, ‘but we have succeeded;
that’s the main point. Here’s a light coming!’
The light was a lamp, and the bearer was an old woman: very dirty, very
wrinkled and dry. ‘She’s at home,’ she said (and the voice was the same
that had spoken before); ‘she’ll come directly.’ Having set the lamp
down on the table, the old woman dusted her hands on her apron, which
she might have done for ever without cleaning them, looked at the
visitors with a dim pair of eyes, and backed out.
The lady whom they had come to see, if she were the present occupant
of the house, appeared to have taken up her quarters there as she might
have established herself in an Eastern caravanserai. A small square
of carpet in the middle of the room, a few articles of furniture that
evidently did not belong to the room, and a disorder of trunks and
travelling articles, formed the whole of her surroundings. Under some
former regular inhabitant, the stifling little apartment had broken out
into a pier-glass and a gilt table; but the gilding was as faded as last
year’s flowers, and the glass was so clouded that it seemed to hold in
magic preservation all the fogs and bad weather it had ever reflected.
The visitors had had a minute or two to look about them, when the door
opened and Miss Wade came in.
She was exactly the same as when they had parted, just as handsome, just
as scornful, just as repressed. She manifested no surprise in seeing
them, nor any other emotion. She requested them to be seated; and
declining to take a seat herself, at once anticipated any introduction
of their business.
‘I apprehend,’ she said, ‘that I know the cause of your favouring me
with this visit. We may come to it at once.’
‘The cause then, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘is Tattycoram.’
‘So I supposed.’
‘Miss Wade,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘will you be so kind as to say whether you
know anything of her?’
‘Surely. I know she is here with me.’
‘Then, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘allow me to make known to you that I
shall be happy to have her back, and that my wife and daughter will
be happy to have her back. She has been with us a long time: we don’t
forget her claims upon us, and I hope we know how to make allowances.’
‘You hope to know how to make allowances?’ she returned, in a level,
measured voice. ‘For what?’
‘I think my friend would say, Miss Wade,’ Arthur Clennam interposed,
seeing Mr Meagles rather at a loss, ‘for the passionate sense that
sometimes comes upon the poor girl, of being at a disadvantage. Which
occasionally gets the better of better remembrances.’
The lady broke into a smile as she turned her eyes upon him. ‘Indeed?’
was all she answered.
She stood by the table so perfectly composed and still after this
acknowledgment of his remark that Mr Meagles stared at her under a sort
of fascination, and could not even look to Clennam to make another move.
After waiting, awkwardly enough, for some moments, Arthur said:
‘Perhaps it would be well if Mr Meagles could see her, Miss Wade?’
‘That is easily done,’ said she. ‘Come here, child.’ She had opened a
door while saying this, and now led the girl in by the hand. It was
very curious to see them standing together: the girl with her disengaged
fingers plaiting the bosom of her dress, half irresolutely, half
passionately; Miss Wade with her composed face attentively regarding
her, and suggesting to an observer, with extraordinary force, in her
composure itself (as a veil will suggest the form it covers), the
unquenchable passion of her own nature.
‘See here,’ she said, in the same level way as before. ‘Here is your
patron, your master. He is willing to take you back, my dear, if you are
sensible of the favour and choose to go. You can be, again, a foil to
his pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant wilfulness, and a toy in
the house showing the goodness of the family. You can have your droll
name again, playfully pointing you out and setting you apart, as it is
right that you should be pointed out and set apart. (Your birth, you
know; you must not forget your birth.) You can again be shown to this
gentleman’s daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, as a living reminder
of her own superiority and her gracious condescension. You can recover
all these advantages and many more of the same kind which I dare say
start up in your memory while I speak, and which you lose in taking
refuge with me--you can recover them all by telling these gentlemen how
humbled and penitent you are, and by going back to them to be forgiven.
What do you say, Harriet? Will you go?’
The girl who, under the influence of these words, had gradually risen
in anger and heightened in colour, answered, raising her lustrous black
eyes for the moment, and clenching her hand upon the folds it had been
puckering up, ‘I’d die sooner!’
Miss Wade, still standing at her side holding her hand, looked quietly
round and said with a smile, ‘Gentlemen! What do you do upon that?’
Poor Mr Meagles’s inexpressible consternation in hearing his motives and
actions so perverted, had prevented him from interposing any word until
now; but now he regained the power of speech.
‘Tattycoram,’ said he, ‘for I’ll call you by that name still, my good
girl, conscious that I meant nothing but kindness when I gave it to you,
and conscious that you know it--’
‘I don’t!’ said she, looking up again, and almost rending herself with
the same busy hand.
‘No, not now, perhaps,’ said Mr Meagles; ‘not with that lady’s eyes so
intent upon you, Tattycoram,’ she glanced at them for a moment, ‘and
that power over you, which we see she exercises; not now, perhaps, but
at another time. Tattycoram, I’ll not ask that lady whether she believes
what she has said, even in the anger and ill blood in which I and my
friend here equally know she has spoken, though she subdues herself,
with a determination that any one who has once seen her is not likely
to forget. I’ll not ask you, with your remembrance of my house and all
belonging to it, whether you believe it. I’ll only say that you have
no profession to make to me or mine, and no forgiveness to entreat;
and that all in the world that I ask you to do, is, to count
five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.’
She looked at him for an instant, and then said frowningly, ‘I won’t.
Miss Wade, take me away, please.’
The contention that raged within her had no softening in it now; it
was wholly between passionate defiance and stubborn defiance. Her rich
colour, her quick blood, her rapid breath, were all setting themselves
against the opportunity of retracing their steps. ‘I won’t. I won’t.
I won’t!’ she repeated in a low, thick voice. ‘I’d be torn to pieces
first. I’d tear myself to pieces first!’
Miss Wade, who had released her hold, laid her hand protectingly on the
girl’s neck for a moment, and then said, looking round with her former
smile and speaking exactly in her former tone, ‘Gentlemen! What do you
do upon that?’
‘Oh, Tattycoram, Tattycoram!’ cried Mr Meagles, adjuring her besides
with an earnest hand. ‘Hear that lady’s voice, look at that lady’s face,
consider what is in that lady’s heart, and think what a future lies
before you. My child, whatever you may think, that lady’s influence
over you--astonishing to us, and I should hardly go too far in saying
terrible to us to see--is founded in passion fiercer than yours, and
temper more violent than yours. What can you two be together? What can
come of it?’
‘I am alone here, gentlemen,’ observed Miss Wade, with no change of
voice or manner. ‘Say anything you will.’
‘Politeness must yield to this misguided girl, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles,
‘at her present pass; though I hope not altogether to dismiss it,
even with the injury you do her so strongly before me. Excuse me for
reminding you in her hearing--I must say it--that you were a mystery
to all of us, and had nothing in common with any of us when she
unfortunately fell in your way. I don’t know what you are, but you don’t
hide, can’t hide, what a dark spirit you have within you. If it should
happen that you are a woman, who, from whatever cause, has a perverted
delight in making a sister-woman as wretched as she is (I am old enough
to have heard of such), I warn her against you, and I warn you against
yourself.’
‘Gentlemen!’ said Miss Wade, calmly. ‘When you have concluded--Mr
Clennam, perhaps you will induce your friend--’
‘Not without another effort,’ said Mr Meagles, stoutly. ‘Tattycoram,
my poor dear girl, count five-and-twenty.’
‘Do not reject the hope, the certainty, this kind man offers you,’ said
Clennam in a low emphatic voice. ‘Turn to the friends you have not
forgotten. Think once more!’
‘I won’t! Miss Wade,’ said the girl, with her bosom swelling high, and
speaking with her hand held to her throat, ‘take me away!’
‘Tattycoram,’ said Mr Meagles. ‘Once more yet! The only thing I ask of
you in the world, my child! Count five-and-twenty!’
She put her hands tightly over her ears, confusedly tumbling down her
bright black hair in the vehemence of the action, and turned her face
resolutely to the wall. Miss Wade, who had watched her under this final
appeal with that strange attentive smile, and that repressing hand
upon her own bosom with which she had watched her in her struggle at
Marseilles, then put her arm about her waist as if she took possession
of her for evermore.
And there was a visible triumph in her face when she turned it to
dismiss the visitors.
‘As it is the last time I shall have the honour,’ she said, ‘and as you
have spoken of not knowing what I am, and also of the foundation of my
influence here, you may now know that it is founded in a common cause.
What your broken plaything is as to birth, I am. She has no name, I have
no name. Her wrong is my wrong. I have nothing more to say to you.’
This was addressed to Mr Meagles, who sorrowfully went out. As Clennam
followed, she said to him, with the same external composure and in the
same level voice, but with a smile that is only seen on cruel faces: a
very faint smile, lifting the nostril, scarcely touching the lips, and
not breaking away gradually, but instantly dismissed when done with:
‘I hope the wife of your dear friend Mr Gowan, may be happy in the
contrast of her extraction to this girl’s and mine, and in the high good
fortune that awaits her.’