With the set expression of her face all torn away by the explosion

of her passion, and with a bursting, from every rent feature, of the

smouldering fire so long pent up, she cried out: ‘I will tell it myself!

I will not hear it from your lips, and with the taint of your wickedness

upon it. Since it must be seen, I will have it seen by the light I stood

in. Not another word. Hear me!’

‘Unless you are a more obstinate and more persisting woman than even

I know you to be,’ Mr Flintwinch interposed, ‘you had better leave Mr

Rigaud, Mr Blandois, Mr Beelzebub, to tell it in his own way. What does

it signify when he knows all about it?’

‘He does not know all about it.’

‘He knows all he cares about it,’ Mr Flintwinch testily urged.

‘He does not know _me_.’

‘What do you suppose he cares for you, you conceited woman?’ said Mr

Flintwinch.

‘I tell you, Flintwinch, I will speak. I tell you when it has come

to this, I will tell it with my own lips, and will express myself

throughout it. What! Have I suffered nothing in this room, no

deprivation, no imprisonment, that I should condescend at last to

contemplate myself in such a glass as _that_. Can you see him? Can you

hear him? If your wife were a hundred times the ingrate that she is, and

if I were a thousand times more hopeless than I am of inducing her to be

silent if this man is silenced, I would tell it myself, before I would

bear the torment of the hearing it from him.’

Rigaud pushed his chair a little back; pushed his legs out straight

before him; and sat with his arms folded over against her.

‘You do not know what it is,’ she went on addressing him, ‘to be brought

up strictly and straitly. I was so brought up. Mine was no light youth

of sinful gaiety and pleasure. Mine were days of wholesome repression,

punishment, and fear. The corruption of our hearts, the evil of our

ways, the curse that is upon us, the terrors that surround us--these

were the themes of my childhood. They formed my character, and filled me

with an abhorrence of evil-doers. When old Mr Gilbert Clennam proposed

his orphan nephew to my father for my husband, my father impressed upon

me that his bringing-up had been, like mine, one of severe restraint.

He told me, that besides the discipline his spirit had undergone, he

had lived in a starved house, where rioting and gaiety were unknown, and

where every day was a day of toil and trial like the last. He told me

that he had been a man in years long before his uncle had acknowledged

him as one; and that from his school-days to that hour, his uncle’s roof

has been a sanctuary to him from the contagion of the irreligious

and dissolute. When, within a twelvemonth of our marriage, I found

my husband, at that time when my father spoke of him, to have sinned

against the Lord and outraged me by holding a guilty creature in my

place, was I to doubt that it had been appointed to me to make the

discovery, and that it was appointed to me to lay the hand of punishment

upon that creature of perdition? Was I to dismiss in a moment--not my

own wrongs--what was I! but all the rejection of sin, and all the war

against it, in which I had been bred?’

She laid her wrathful hand upon the watch on the table.

‘No! “Do not forget.” The initials of those words are within here now,

and were within here then. I was appointed to find the old letter that

referred to them, and that told me what they meant, and whose work they

were, and why they were worked, lying with this watch in his secret

drawer. But for that appointment there would have been no discovery.

“Do not forget.” It spoke to me like a voice from an angry cloud. Do

not forget the deadly sin, do not forget the appointed discovery, do not

forget the appointed suffering. I did not forget. Was it my own wrong I

remembered? Mine! I was but a servant and a minister. What power could I

have over them, but that they were bound in the bonds of their sin, and

delivered to me!’

More than forty years had passed over the grey head of this determined

woman, since the time she recalled. More than forty years of strife

and struggle with the whisper that, by whatever name she called her

vindictive pride and rage, nothing through all eternity could change

their nature. Yet, gone those more than forty years, and come this

Nemesis now looking her in the face, she still abided by her old

impiety--still reversed the order of Creation, and breathed her own

breath into a clay image of her Creator. Verily, verily, travellers have

seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but no human eyes have ever

seen more daring, gross, and shocking images of the Divine nature than

we creatures of the dust make in our own likenesses, of our own bad

passions.

‘When I forced him to give her up to me, by her name and place of

abode,’ she went on in her torrent of indignation and defence; ‘when I

accused her, and she fell hiding her face at my feet, was it my injury

that I asserted, were they my reproaches that I poured upon her? Those

who were appointed of old to go to wicked kings and accuse them--were

they not ministers and servants? And had not I, unworthy and far-removed

from them, sin to denounce? When she pleaded to me her youth, and his

wretched and hard life (that was her phrase for the virtuous training he

had belied), and the desecrated ceremony of marriage there had

secretly been between them, and the terrors of want and shame that had

overwhelmed them both when I was first appointed to be the instrument of

their punishment, and the love (for she said the word to me, down at my

feet) in which she had abandoned him and left him to me, was it _my_

enemy that became my footstool, were they the words of my wrath that

made her shrink and quiver! Not unto me the strength be ascribed; not

unto me the wringing of the expiation!’

Many years had come and gone since she had had the free use even of

her fingers; but it was noticeable that she had already more than once

struck her clenched hand vigorously upon the table, and that when she

said these words she raised her whole arm in the air, as though it had

been a common action with her.

‘And what was the repentance that was extorted from the hardness of her

heart and the blackness of her depravity? I, vindictive and implacable?

It may be so, to such as you who know no righteousness, and no

appointment except Satan’s. Laugh; but I will be known as I know

myself, and as Flintwinch knows me, though it is only to you and this

half-witted woman.’

‘Add, to yourself, madame,’ said Rigaud. ‘I have my little suspicions

that madame is rather solicitous to be justified to herself.’

‘It is false. It is not so. I have no need to be,’ she said, with great

energy and anger.

‘Truly?’ retorted Rigaud. ‘Hah!’

‘I ask, what was the penitence, in works, that was demanded of her?

“You have a child; I have none. You love that child. Give him to me. He

shall believe himself to be my son, and he shall be believed by every

one to be my son. To save you from exposure, his father shall swear

never to see or communicate with you more; equally to save him from

being stripped by his uncle, and to save your child from being a beggar,

you shall swear never to see or communicate with either of them more.

That done, and your present means, derived from my husband, renounced,

I charge myself with your support. You may, with your place of retreat

unknown, then leave, if you please, uncontradicted by me, the lie that

when you passed out of all knowledge but mine, you merited a good name.”

That was all. She had to sacrifice her sinful and shameful affections;

no more. She was then free to bear her load of guilt in secret, and to

break her heart in secret; and through such present misery (light enough

for her, I think!) to purchase her redemption from endless misery, if

she could. If, in this, I punished her here, did I not open to her a way

hereafter? If she knew herself to be surrounded by insatiable vengeance

and unquenchable fires, were they mine? If I threatened her, then and

afterwards, with the terrors that encompassed her, did I hold them in my

right hand?’

She turned the watch upon the table, and opened it, and, with an

unsoftening face, looked at the worked letters within.

‘They did _not_ forget. It is appointed against such offences that the

offenders shall not be able to forget. If the presence of Arthur was a

daily reproach to his father, and if the absence of Arthur was a daily

agony to his mother, that was the just dispensation of Jehovah. As well

might it be charged upon me, that the stings of an awakened conscience

drove her mad, and that it was the will of the Disposer of all things

that she should live so, many years. I devoted myself to reclaim the

otherwise predestined and lost boy; to give him the reputation of an

honest origin; to bring him up in fear and trembling, and in a life of

practical contrition for the sins that were heavy on his head before his

entrance into this condemned world. Was that a cruelty? Was I, too,

not visited with consequences of the original offence in which I had no

complicity? Arthur’s father and I lived no further apart, with half the

globe between us, than when we were together in this house. He died,

and sent this watch back to me, with its Do not forget. I do NOT forget,

though I do not read it as he did. I read in it, that I was appointed

to do these things. I have so read these three letters since I have

had them lying on this table, and I did so read them, with equal

distinctness, when they were thousands of miles away.’

As she took the watch-case in her hand, with that new freedom in the use

of her hand of which she showed no consciousness whatever, bending her

eyes upon it as if she were defying it to move her, Rigaud cried with a

loud and contemptuous snapping of his fingers. ‘Come, madame! Time runs

out. Come, lady of piety, it must be! You can tell nothing I don’t know.

Come to the money stolen, or I will! Death of my soul, I have had enough

of your other jargon. Come straight to the stolen money!’

‘Wretch that you are,’ she answered, and now her hands clasped her head:

‘through what fatal error of Flintwinch’s, through what incompleteness

on his part, who was the only other person helping in these things and

trusted with them, through whose and what bringing together of the ashes

of a burnt paper, you have become possessed of that codicil, I know no

more than how you acquired the rest of your power here--’

‘And yet,’ interrupted Rigaud, ‘it is my odd fortune to have by me, in a

convenient place that I know of, that same short little addition to the

will of Monsieur Gilbert Clennam, written by a lady and witnessed by the

same lady and our old intriguer! Ah, bah, old intriguer, crooked little

puppet! Madame, let us go on. Time presses. You or I to finish?’

‘I!’ she answered, with increased determination, if it were possible.

‘I, because I will not endure to be shown myself, and have myself

shown to any one, with your horrible distortion upon me. You, with your

practices of infamous foreign prisons and galleys would make it the

money that impelled me. It was not the money.’

‘Bah, bah, bah! I repudiate, for the moment, my politeness, and say,

Lies, lies, lies. You know you suppressed the deed and kept the money.’

‘Not for the money’s sake, wretch!’ She made a struggle as if she were

starting up; even as if, in her vehemence, she had almost risen on her

disabled feet. ‘If Gilbert Clennam, reduced to imbecility, at the point

of death, and labouring under the delusion of some imaginary relenting

towards a girl of whom he had heard that his nephew had once had a fancy

for her which he had crushed out of him, and that she afterwards drooped

away into melancholy and withdrawal from all who knew her--if, in that

state of weakness, he dictated to me, whose life she had darkened with

her sin, and who had been appointed to know her wickedness from her

own hand and her own lips, a bequest meant as a recompense to her

for supposed unmerited suffering; was there no difference between my

spurning that injustice, and coveting mere money--a thing which you, and

your comrades in the prisons, may steal from anyone?’

‘Time presses, madame. Take care!’

‘If this house was blazing from the roof to the ground,’ she returned,

‘I would stay in it to justify myself against my righteous motives being

classed with those of stabbers and thieves.’

Rigaud snapped his fingers tauntingly in her face. ‘One thousand guineas

to the little beauty you slowly hunted to death. One thousand guineas

to the youngest daughter her patron might have at fifty, or (if he

had none) brother’s youngest daughter, on her coming of age, “as the

remembrance his disinterestedness may like best, of his protection of

a friendless young orphan girl.” Two thousand guineas. What! You will

never come to the money?’

‘That patron,’ she was vehemently proceeding, when he checked her.

‘Names! Call him Mr Frederick Dorrit. No more evasions.’

‘That Frederick Dorrit was the beginning of it all. If he had not been

a player of music, and had not kept, in those days of his youth and

prosperity, an idle house where singers, and players, and such-like

children of Evil turned their backs on the Light and their faces to the

Darkness, she might have remained in her lowly station, and might not

have been raised out of it to be cast down. But, no. Satan entered into

that Frederick Dorrit, and counselled him that he was a man of innocent

and laudable tastes who did kind actions, and that here was a poor girl

with a voice for singing music with. Then he is to have her taught. Then

Arthur’s father, who has all along been secretly pining in the ways of

virtuous ruggedness for those accursed snares which are called the Arts,

becomes acquainted with her. And so, a graceless orphan, training to be

a singing girl, carries it, by that Frederick Dorrit’s agency, against

me, and I am humbled and deceived!--Not I, that is to say,’ she added

quickly, as colour flushed into her face; ‘a greater than I. What am I?’

Jeremiah Flintwinch, who had been gradually screwing himself towards

her, and who was now very near her elbow without her knowing it, made a

specially wry face of objection when she said these words, and moreover

twitched his gaiters, as if such pretensions were equivalent to little

barbs in his legs.

‘Lastly,’ she continued, ‘for I am at the end of these things, and I

will say no more of them, and you shall say no more of them, and all

that remains will be to determine whether the knowledge of them can

be kept among us who are here present; lastly, when I suppressed that

paper, with the knowledge of Arthur’s father--’

‘But not with his consent, you know,’ said Mr Flintwinch.

‘Who said with his consent?’ She started to find Jeremiah so near her,

and drew back her head, looking at him with some rising distrust. ‘You

were often enough between us when he would have had me produce it and

I would not, to have contradicted me if I had said, with his consent. I

say, when I suppressed that paper, I made no effort to destroy it, but

kept it by me, here in this house, many years. The rest of the Gilbert

property being left to Arthur’s father, I could at any time, without

unsettling more than the two sums, have made a pretence of finding

it. But, besides that I must have supported such pretence by a direct

falsehood (a great responsibility), I have seen no new reason, in

all the time I have been tried here, to bring it to light. It was a

rewarding of sin; the wrong result of a delusion. I did what I was

appointed to do, and I have undergone, within these four walls, what

I was appointed to undergo. When the paper was at last destroyed--as

I thought--in my presence, she had long been dead, and her patron,

Frederick Dorrit, had long been deservedly ruined and imbecile. He had

no daughter. I had found the niece before then; and what I did for her,

was better for her far than the money of which she would have had no

good.’ She added, after a moment, as though she addressed the watch:

‘She herself was innocent, and I might not have forgotten to relinquish

it to her at my death:’ and sat looking at it.

‘Shall I recall something to you, worthy madame?’ said Rigaud. ‘The

little paper was in this house on the night when our friend the

prisoner--jail-comrade of my soul--came home from foreign countries.

Shall I recall yet something more to you? The little singing-bird

that never was fledged, was long kept in a cage by a guardian of your

appointing, well enough known to our old intriguer here. Shall we coax

our old intriguer to tell us when he saw him last?’

‘I’ll tell you!’ cried Affery, unstopping her mouth. ‘I dreamed it,

first of all my dreams. Jeremiah, if you come a-nigh me now, I’ll scream

to be heard at St Paul’s! The person as this man has spoken of, was

Jeremiah’s own twin brother; and he was here in the dead of the night,

on the night when Arthur come home, and Jeremiah with his own hands give

him this paper, along with I don’t know what more, and he took it away

in an iron box--Help! Murder! Save me from Jere-_mi_-ah!’

Mr Flintwinch had made a run at her, but Rigaud had caught him in his

arms midway. After a moment’s wrestle with him, Flintwinch gave up, and

put his hands in his pockets.

‘What!’ cried Rigaud, rallying him as he poked and jerked him back with

his elbows, ‘assault a lady with such a genius for dreaming! Ha, ha, ha!

Why, she’ll be a fortune to you as an exhibition. All that she dreams

comes true. Ha, ha, ha! You’re so like him, Little Flintwinch. So like

him, as I knew him (when I first spoke English for him to the host) in

the Cabaret of the Three Billiard Tables, in the little street of the

high roofs, by the wharf at Antwerp! Ah, but he was a brave boy to

drink. Ah, but he was a brave boy to smoke! Ah, but he lived in a sweet

bachelor-apartment--furnished, on the fifth floor, above the wood and

charcoal merchant’s, and the dress-maker’s, and the chair-maker’s, and

the maker of tubs--where I knew him too, and wherewith his cognac and

tobacco, he had twelve sleeps a day and one fit, until he had a fit too

much, and ascended to the skies. Ha, ha, ha! What does it matter how I

took possession of the papers in his iron box? Perhaps he confided it

to my hands for you, perhaps it was locked and my curiosity was piqued,

perhaps I suppressed it. Ha, ha, ha! What does it matter, so that I

have it safe? We are not particular here; hey, Flintwinch? We are not

particular here; is it not so, madame?’

Retiring before him with vicious counter-jerks of his own elbows, Mr

Flintwinch had got back into his corner, where he now stood with his

hands in his pockets, taking breath, and returning Mrs Clennam’s stare.

‘Ha, ha, ha! But what’s this?’ cried Rigaud. ‘It appears as if you

don’t know, one the other. Permit me, Madame Clennam who suppresses, to

present Monsieur Flintwinch who intrigues.’

Mr Flintwinch, unpocketing one of his hands to scrape his jaw, advanced

a step or so in that attitude, still returning Mrs Clennam’s look, and

thus addressed her:

‘Now, I know what you mean by opening your eyes so wide at me, but you

needn’t take the trouble, because I don’t care for it. I’ve been telling

you for how many years that you’re one of the most opinionated and

obstinate of women. That’s what _you_ are. You call yourself humble and

sinful, but you are the most Bumptious of your sex. That’s what _you_

are. I have told you, over and over again when we have had a tiff, that

you wanted to make everything go down before you, but I wouldn’t go down

before you--that you wanted to swallow up everybody alive, but I

wouldn’t be swallowed up alive. Why didn’t you destroy the paper when

you first laid hands upon it? I advised you to; but no, it’s not your

way to take advice. You must keep it forsooth. Perhaps you may carry it

out at some other time, forsooth. As if I didn’t know better than that!

I think I see your pride carrying it out, with a chance of being

suspected of having kept it by you. But that’s the way you cheat

yourself. Just as you cheat yourself into making out that you didn’t do

all this business because you were a rigorous woman, all slight, and

spite, and power, and unforgiveness, but because you were a servant and

a minister, and were appointed to do it. Who are you, that you should be

appointed to do it? That may be your religion, but it’s my gammon. And

to tell you all the truth while I am about it,’ said Mr Flintwinch,

crossing his arms, and becoming the express image of irascible

doggedness, ‘I have been rasped--rasped these forty years--by your

taking such high ground even with me, who knows better; the effect of it

being coolly to put me on low ground. I admire you very much; you are a

woman of strong head and great talent; but the strongest head, and the

greatest talent, can’t rasp a man for forty years without making him

sore. So I don’t care for your present eyes. Now, I am coming to the

paper, and mark what I say. You put it away somewhere, and you kept your

own counsel where. You’re an active woman at that time, and if you want

to get that paper, you can get it. But, mark. There comes a time when

you are struck into what you are now, and then if you want to get that

paper, you can’t get it. So it lies, long years, in its hiding-place. At

last, when we are expecting Arthur home every day, and when any day may

bring him home, and it’s impossible to say what rummaging he may make

about the house, I recommend you five thousand times, if you can’t get

at it, to let me get at it, that it may be put in the fire. But no--no

one but you knows where it is, and that’s power; and, call yourself

whatever humble names you will, I call you a female Lucifer in appetite

for power! On a Sunday night, Arthur comes home. He has not been in this

room ten minutes, when he speaks of his father’s watch. You know very

well that the Do Not Forget, at the time when his father sent that watch

to you, could only mean, the rest of the story being then all dead and

over, Do Not Forget the suppression. Make restitution! Arthur’s ways

have frightened you a bit, and the paper shall be burnt after all. So,

before that jumping jade and Jezebel,’ Mr Flintwinch grinned at his

wife, ‘has got you into bed, you at last tell me where you have put the

paper, among the old ledgers in the cellars, where Arthur himself went

prowling the very next morning. But it’s not to be burnt on a Sunday

night. No; you are strict, you are; we must wait over twelve o’clock,

and get into Monday. Now, all this is a swallowing of me up alive that

rasps me; so, feeling a little out of temper, and not being as strict as

yourself, I take a look at the document before twelve o’clock to refresh

my memory as to its appearance--fold up one of the many yellow old

papers in the cellars like it--and afterwards, when we have got into

Monday morning, and I have, by the light of your lamp, to walk from you,

lying on that bed, to this grate, make a little exchange like the

conjuror, and burn accordingly. My brother Ephraim, the lunatic-keeper

(I wish he had had himself to keep in a strait-waistcoat), had had many

jobs since the close of the long job he got from you, but had not done

well. His wife died (not that that was much; mine might have died

instead, and welcome), he speculated unsuccessfully in lunatics, he got

into difficulty about over-roasting a patient to bring him to reason,

and he got into debt. He was going out of the way, on what he had been

able to scrape up, and a trifle from me. He was here that early Monday

morning, waiting for the tide; in short, he was going to Antwerp, where

(I am afraid you’ll be shocked at my saying, And be damned to him!) he

made the acquaintance of this gentleman. He had come a long way, and, I

thought then, was only sleepy; but, I suppose now, was drunk. When

Arthur’s mother had been under the care of him and his wife, she had

been always writing, incessantly writing,--mostly letters of confession

to you, and Prayers for forgiveness. My brother had handed, from time to

time, lots of these sheets to me. I thought I might as well keep them to

myself as have them swallowed up alive too; so I kept them in a box,

looking over them when I felt in the humour. Convinced that it was

advisable to get the paper out of the place, with Arthur coming about

it, I put it into this same box, and I locked the whole up with two

locks, and I trusted it to my brother to take away and keep, till I

should write about it. I did write about it, and never got an answer. I

didn’t know what to make of it, till this gentleman favoured us with his

first visit. Of course, I began to suspect how it was, then; and I don’t

want his word for it now to understand how he gets his knowledge from my

papers, and your paper, and my brother’s cognac and tobacco talk (I wish

he’d had to gag himself). Now, I have only one thing more to say, you

hammer-headed woman, and that is, that I haven’t altogether made up my

mind whether I might, or might not, have ever given you any trouble

about the codicil. I think not; and that I should have been quite

satisfied with knowing I had got the better of you, and that I held the

power over you. In the present state of circumstances, I have no more

explanation to give you till this time to-morrow night. So you may as

well,’ said Mr Flintwinch, terminating his oration with a screw, ‘keep

your eyes open at somebody else, for it’s no use keeping ‘em open at

me.’

She slowly withdrew them when he had ceased, and dropped her forehead on

her hand. Her other hand pressed hard upon the table, and again the

curious stir was observable in her, as if she were going to rise.

‘This box can never bring, elsewhere, the price it will bring here. This

knowledge can never be of the same profit to you, sold to any other

person, as sold to me. But I have not the present means of raising the

sum you have demanded. I have not prospered. What will you take now, and

what at another time, and how am I to be assured of your silence?’

‘My angel,’ said Rigaud, ‘I have said what I will take, and time

presses. Before coming here, I placed copies of the most important of

these papers in another hand. Put off the time till the Marshalsea gate

shall be shut for the night, and it will be too late to treat. The

prisoner will have read them.’

She put her two hands to her head again, uttered a loud exclamation, and

started to her feet. She staggered for a moment, as if she would have

fallen; then stood firm.

‘Say what you mean. Say what you mean, man!’

Before her ghostly figure, so long unused to its erect attitude, and so

stiffened in it, Rigaud fell back and dropped his voice. It was, to all

the three, almost as if a dead woman had risen.

‘Miss Dorrit,’ answered Rigaud, ‘the little niece of Monsieur Frederick,

whom I have known across the water, is attached to the prisoner. Miss

Dorrit, little niece of Monsieur Frederick, watches at this moment over

the prisoner, who is ill. For her I with my own hands left a packet

at the prison, on my way here, with a letter of instructions, “_for his

sake_”--she will do anything for his sake--to keep it without breaking

the seal, in case of its being reclaimed before the hour of shutting up

to-night--if it should not be reclaimed before the ringing of the prison

bell, to give it to him; and it encloses a second copy for herself,

which he must give to her. What! I don’t trust myself among you, now we

have got so far, without giving my secret a second life. And as to its

not bringing me, elsewhere, the price it will bring here, say then,

madame, have you limited and settled the price the little niece will

give--for his sake--to hush it up? Once more I say, time presses. The

packet not reclaimed before the ringing of the bell to-night, you cannot

buy. I sell, then, to the little girl!’

Once more the stir and struggle in her, and she ran to a closet, tore

the door open, took down a hood or shawl, and wrapped it over her head.

Affery, who had watched her in terror, darted to her in the middle of

the room, caught hold of her dress, and went on her knees to her.

‘Don’t, don’t, don’t! What are you doing? Where are you going? You’re a

fearful woman, but I don’t bear you no ill-will. I can do poor Arthur

no good now, that I see; and you needn’t be afraid of me. I’ll keep your

secret. Don’t go out, you’ll fall dead in the street. Only promise me,

that, if it’s the poor thing that’s kept here secretly, you’ll let me

take charge of her and be her nurse. Only promise me that, and never be

afraid of me.’

Mrs Clennam stood still for an instant, at the height of her rapid

haste, saying in stern amazement:

‘Kept here? She has been dead a score of years or more. Ask

Flintwinch--ask _him_. They can both tell you that she died when Arthur

went abroad.’

‘So much the worse,’ said Affery, with a shiver, ‘for she haunts the

house, then. Who else rustles about it, making signals by dropping

dust so softly? Who else comes and goes, and marks the walls with

long crooked touches when we are all a-bed? Who else holds the door

sometimes? But don’t go out--don’t go out! Mistress, you’ll die in the

street!’

Her mistress only disengaged her dress from the beseeching hands, said

to Rigaud, ‘Wait here till I come back!’ and ran out of the room. They

saw her, from the window, run wildly through the court-yard and out at

the gateway.

For a few moments they stood motionless. Affery was the first to move,

and she, wringing her hands, pursued her mistress. Next, Jeremiah

Flintwinch, slowly backing to the door, with one hand in a pocket, and

the other rubbing his chin, twisted himself out in his reticent way,

speechlessly. Rigaud, left alone, composed himself upon the window-seat

of the open window, in the old Marseilles-jail attitude. He laid his

cigarettes and fire-box ready to his hand, and fell to smoking.

‘Whoof! Almost as dull as the infernal old jail. Warmer, but almost as

dismal. Wait till she comes back? Yes, certainly; but where is she gone,

and how long will she be gone? No matter! Rigaud Lagnier Blandois, my

amiable subject, you will get your money. You will enrich yourself. You

have lived a gentleman; you will die a gentleman. You triumph, my little

boy; but it is your character to triumph. Whoof!’

In the hour of his triumph, his moustache went up and his nose came

down, as he ogled a great beam over his head with particular

satisfaction.

CHAPTER 31. Closed

The sun had set, and the streets were dim in the dusty twilight, when

the figure so long unused to them hurried on its way. In the immediate

neighbourhood of the old house it attracted little attention, for there

were only a few straggling people to notice it; but, ascending from the

river by the crooked ways that led to London Bridge, and passing into

the great main road, it became surrounded by astonishment.

Resolute and wild of look, rapid of foot and yet weak and uncertain,

conspicuously dressed in its black garments and with its hurried

head-covering, gaunt and of an unearthly paleness, it pressed forward,

taking no more heed of the throng than a sleep-walker. More remarkable

by being so removed from the crowd it was among than if it had been

lifted on a pedestal to be seen, the figure attracted all eyes.

Saunterers pricked up their attention to observe it; busy people,

crossing it, slackened their pace and turned their heads; companions

pausing and standing aside, whispered one another to look at this

spectral woman who was coming by; and the sweep of the figure as it

passed seemed to create a vortex, drawing the most idle and most curious

after it.

Made giddy by the turbulent irruption of this multitude of staring faces

into her cell of years, by the confusing sensation of being in the air,

and the yet more confusing sensation of being afoot, by the unexpected

changes in half-remembered objects, and the want of likeness between the

controllable pictures her imagination had often drawn of the life from

which she was secluded and the overwhelming rush of the reality, she

held her way as if she were environed by distracting thoughts, rather

than by external humanity and observation. But, having crossed the

bridge and gone some distance straight onward, she remembered that she

must ask for a direction; and it was only then, when she stopped and

turned to look about her for a promising place of inquiry, that she

found herself surrounded by an eager glare of faces.

‘Why are you encircling me?’ she asked, trembling.

None of those who were nearest answered; but from the outer ring there

arose a shrill cry of ‘’Cause you’re mad!’

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

prison.’

The shrill outer circle again retorted, ‘Then that ‘ud show you was mad

if nothing else did, ‘cause it’s right opposite!’

A short, mild, quiet-looking young man made his way through to her, as

a whooping ensued on this reply, and said: ‘Was it the Marshalsea you

wanted? I’m going on duty there. Come across with me.’

She laid her hand upon his arm, and he took her over the way; the crowd,

rather injured by the near prospect of losing her, pressing before and

behind and on either side, and recommending an adjournment to Bedlam.

After a momentary whirl in the outer court-yard, the prison-door opened,

and shut upon them. In the Lodge, which seemed by contrast with the

outer noise a place of refuge and peace, a yellow lamp was already

striving with the prison shadows.

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

‘Nothing, father; only this lady not knowing her way, and being badgered

by the boys. Who did you want, ma’am?’

‘Miss Dorrit. Is she here?’

The young man became more interested. ‘Yes, she is here. What might your

name be?’

‘Mrs Clennam.’

‘Mr Clennam’s mother?’ asked the young man.

She pressed her lips together, and hesitated. ‘Yes. She had better be

told it is his mother.’

‘You see,’ said the young man, ‘the Marshal’s family living in the

country at present, the Marshal has given Miss Dorrit one of the rooms

in his house to use when she likes. Don’t you think you had better come

up there, and let me bring Miss Dorrit?’

She signified her assent, and he unlocked a door and conducted her up

a side staircase into a dwelling-house above. He showed her into a

darkening room, and left her. The room looked down into the darkening

prison-yard, with its inmates strolling here and there, leaning out

of windows communing as much apart as they could with friends who were

going away, and generally wearing out their imprisonment as they best

might that summer evening. The air was heavy and hot; the closeness

of the place, oppressive; and from without there arose a rush of

free sounds, like the jarring memory of such things in a headache and

heartache. She stood at the window, bewildered, looking down into this

prison as it were out of her own different prison, when a soft word or

two of surprise made her start, and Little Dorrit stood before her.

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

Little Dorrit stopped, for there was neither happiness nor health in the

face that turned to her.

‘This is not recovery; it is not strength; I don’t know what it is.’

With an agitated wave of her hand, she put all that aside. ‘You have a

packet left with you which you were to give to Arthur, if it was not

reclaimed before this place closed to-night.’

‘Yes.’

‘I reclaim it.’

Little Dorrit took it from her bosom, and gave it into her hand, which

remained stretched out after receiving it.

‘Have you any idea of its contents?’

Frightened by her being there with that new power Of Movement in her,

which, as she said herself, was not strength, and which was unreal

to look upon, as though a picture or statue had been animated, Little

Dorrit answered ‘No.’

‘Read them.’

Little Dorrit took the packet from the still outstretched hand, and

broke the seal. Mrs Clennam then gave her the inner packet that was

addressed to herself, and held the other. The shadow of the wall and of

the prison buildings, which made the room sombre at noon, made it too

dark to read there, with the dusk deepening apace, save in the window.

In the window, where a little of the bright summer evening sky

could shine upon her, Little Dorrit stood, and read. After a broken

exclamation or so of wonder and of terror, she read in silence. When

she had finished, she looked round, and her old mistress bowed herself

before her.

‘You know, now, what I have done.’

‘I think so. I am afraid so; though my mind is so hurried, and so sorry,

and has so much to pity that it has not been able to follow all I have

read,’ said Little Dorrit tremulously.

‘I will restore to you what I have withheld from you. Forgive me. Can

you forgive me?’

‘I can, and Heaven knows I do! Do not kiss my dress and kneel to me; you

are too old to kneel to me; I forgive you freely without that.’

‘I have more yet to ask.’

‘Not in that posture,’ said Little Dorrit. ‘It is unnatural to see your

grey hair lower than mine. Pray rise; let me help you.’ With that she

raised her up, and stood rather shrinking from her, but looking at her

earnestly.

‘The great petition that I make to you (there is another which grows

out of it), the great supplication that I address to your merciful and

gentle heart, is, that you will not disclose this to Arthur until I am

dead. If you think, when you have had time for consideration, that it

can do him any good to know it while I am yet alive, then tell him. But

you will not think that; and in such case, will you promise me to spare

me until I am dead?’

‘I am so sorry, and what I have read has so confused my thoughts,’

returned Little Dorrit, ‘that I can scarcely give you a steady answer.

If I should be quite sure that to be acquainted with it will do Mr

Clennam no good--’

‘I know you are attached to him, and will make him the first

consideration. It is right that he should be the first consideration. I

ask that. But, having regarded him, and still finding that you may spare

me for the little time I shall remain on earth, will you do it?’

‘I will.’

‘GOD bless you!’

She stood in the shadow so that she was only a veiled form to Little

Dorrit in the light; but the sound of her voice, in saying those three

grateful words, was at once fervent and broken--broken by emotion as

unfamiliar to her frozen eyes as action to her frozen limbs.

‘You will wonder, perhaps,’ she said in a stronger tone, ‘that I can

better bear to be known to you whom I have wronged, than to the son

of my enemy who wronged me.--For she did wrong me! She not only sinned

grievously against the Lord, but she wronged me. What Arthur’s father

was to me, she made him. From our marriage day I was his dread, and that

she made me. I was the scourge of both, and that is referable to her.

You love Arthur (I can see the blush upon your face; may it be the dawn

of happier days to both of you!), and you will have thought already that

he is as merciful and kind as you, and why do I not trust myself to him

as soon as to you. Have you not thought so?’

‘No thought,’ said Little Dorrit, ‘can be quite a stranger to my heart,

that springs out of the knowledge that Mr Clennam is always to be relied

upon for being kind and generous and good.’

‘I do not doubt it. Yet Arthur is, of the whole world, the one person

from whom I would conceal this, while I am in it. I kept over him as

a child, in the days of his first remembrance, my restraining and

correcting hand. I was stern with him, knowing that the transgressions

of the parents are visited on their offspring, and that there was an

angry mark upon him at his birth. I have sat with him and his father,

seeing the weakness of his father yearning to unbend to him; and forcing

it back, that the child might work out his release in bondage and

hardship. I have seen him, with his mother’s face, looking up at me in

awe from his little books, and trying to soften me with his mother’s

ways that hardened me.’

The shrinking of her auditress stopped her for a moment in her flow of

words, delivered in a retrospective gloomy voice.

‘For his good. Not for the satisfaction of my injury. What was I, and

what was the worth of that, before the curse of Heaven! I have seen that

child grow up; not to be pious in a chosen way (his mother’s influence

lay too heavy on him for that), but still to be just and upright, and

to be submissive to me. He never loved me, as I once half-hoped he

might--so frail we are, and so do the corrupt affections of the flesh

war with our trusts and tasks; but he always respected me and ordered

himself dutifully to me. He does to this hour. With an empty place in

his heart that he has never known the meaning of, he has turned

away from me and gone his separate road; but even that he has done

considerately and with deference. These have been his relations towards

me. Yours have been of a much slighter kind, spread over a much shorter

time. When you have sat at your needle in my room, you have been in fear

of me, but you have supposed me to have been doing you a kindness; you

are better informed now, and know me to have done you an injury. Your

misconstruction and misunderstanding of the cause in which, and the

motives with which, I have worked out this work, is lighter to endure

than his would be. I would not, for any worldly recompense I can

imagine, have him in a moment, however blindly, throw me down from the

station I have held before him all his life, and change me altogether

into something he would cast out of his respect, and think detected and

exposed. Let him do it, if it must be done, when I am not here to see

it. Let me never feel, while I am still alive, that I die before his

face, and utterly perish away from him, like one consumed by lightning

and swallowed by an earthquake.’

Her pride was very strong in her, the pain of it and of her old passions

was very sharp with her, when she thus expressed herself. Not less so,

when she added:

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

Little Dorrit could not gainsay it. She tried not to show it, but she

recoiled with dread from the state of mind that had burnt so fiercely

and lasted so long. It presented itself to her, with no sophistry upon

it, in its own plain nature.

‘I have done,’ said Mrs Clennam, ‘what it was given to me to do. I have

set myself against evil; not against good. I have been an instrument

of severity against sin. Have not mere sinners like myself been

commissioned to lay it low in all time?’

‘In all time?’ repeated Little Dorrit.

‘Even if my own wrong had prevailed with me, and my own vengeance had

moved me, could I have found no justification? None in the old days

when the innocent perished with the guilty, a thousand to one? When the

wrath of the hater of the unrighteous was not slaked even in blood, and

yet found favour?’

‘O, Mrs Clennam, Mrs Clennam,’ said Little Dorrit, ‘angry feelings and

unforgiving deeds are no comfort and no guide to you and me. My life

has been passed in this poor prison, and my teaching has been very

defective; but let me implore you to remember later and better days.

Be guided only by the healer of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the

friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who

shed tears of compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if

we put all the rest away, and do everything in remembrance of Him. There

is no vengeance and no infliction of suffering in His life, I am sure.

There can be no confusion in following Him, and seeking for no other

footsteps, I am certain.’

In the softened light of the window, looking from the scene of her early

trials to the shining sky, she was not in stronger opposition to the

black figure in the shade than the life and doctrine on which she rested

were to that figure’s history. It bent its head low again, and said not

a word. It remained thus, until the first warning bell began to ring.

‘Hark!’ cried Mrs Clennam starting, ‘I said I had another petition.

It is one that does not admit of delay. The man who brought you this

packet and possesses these proofs, is now waiting at my house to be

bought off. I can keep this from Arthur, only by buying him off. He

asks a large sum; more than I can get together to pay him without having

time. He refuses to make any abatement, because his threat is, that if

he fails with me, he will come to you. Will you return with me and show

him that you already know it? Will you return with me and try to prevail

with him? Will you come and help me with him? Do not refuse what I ask

in Arthur’s name, though I dare not ask it for Arthur’s sake!’

Little Dorrit yielded willingly. She glided away into the prison for a

few moments, returned, and said she was ready to go. They went out

by another staircase, avoiding the lodge; and coming into the front

court-yard, now all quiet and deserted, gained the street.

It was one of those summer evenings when there is no greater darkness

than a long twilight. The vista of street and bridge was plain to see,

and the sky was serene and beautiful. People stood and sat at their

doors, playing with children and enjoying the evening; numbers were

walking for air; the worry of the day had almost worried itself out, and

few but themselves were hurried. As they crossed the bridge, the clear

steeples of the many churches looked as if they had advanced out of the

murk that usually enshrouded them, and come much nearer. The smoke that

rose into the sky had lost its dingy hue and taken a brightness upon it.

The beauties of the sunset had not faded from the long light films of

cloud that lay at peace in the horizon. From a radiant centre, over

the whole length and breadth of the tranquil firmament, great shoots of

light streamed among the early stars, like signs of the blessed later

covenant of peace and hope that changed the crown of thorns into a

glory.

Less remarkable, now that she was not alone and it was darker, Mrs

Clennam hurried on at Little Dorrit’s side, unmolested. They left the

great thoroughfare at the turning by which she had entered it, and wound

their way down among the silent, empty, cross-streets. Their feet were

at the gateway, when there was a sudden noise like thunder.

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

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

back.

In one swift instant the old house was before them, with the man lying

smoking in the window; another thundering sound, and it heaved, surged

outward, opened asunder in fifty places, collapsed, and fell. Deafened

by the noise, stifled, choked, and blinded by the dust, they hid their

faces and stood rooted to the spot. The dust storm, driving between them

and the placid sky, parted for a moment and showed them the stars. As

they looked up, wildly crying for help, the great pile of chimneys,

which was then alone left standing like a tower in a whirlwind, rocked,

broke, and hailed itself down upon the heap of ruin, as if every

tumbling fragment were intent on burying the crushed wretch deeper.

So blackened by the flying particles of rubbish as to be unrecognisable,

they ran back from the gateway into the street, crying and shrieking.

There, Mrs Clennam dropped upon the stones; and she never from that hour

moved so much as a finger again, or had the power to speak one word.

For upwards of three years she reclined in a wheeled chair, looking

attentively at those about her and appearing to understand what they

said; but the rigid silence she had so long held was evermore enforced

upon her, and except that she could move her eyes and faintly express a

negative and affirmative with her head, she lived and died a statue.

Affery had been looking for them at the prison, and had caught sight

of them at a distance on the bridge. She came up to receive her old

mistress in her arms, to help to carry her into a neighbouring house,

and to be faithful to her. The mystery of the noises was out now;

Affery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and

always wrong in the theories she deduced from them.

When the storm of dust had cleared away and the summer night was calm

again, numbers of people choked up every avenue of access, and parties

of diggers were formed to relieve one another in digging among the

ruins. There had been a hundred people in the house at the time of its

fall, there had been fifty, there had been fifteen, there had been

two. Rumour finally settled the number at two; the foreigner and Mr

Flintwinch.

The diggers dug all through the short night by flaring pipes of gas, and

on a level with the early sun, and deeper and deeper below it as it rose

into its zenith, and aslant of it as it declined, and on a level with it

again as it departed. Sturdy digging, and shovelling, and carrying away,

in carts, barrows, and baskets, went on without intermission, by night

and by day; but it was night for the second time when they found the

dirty heap of rubbish that had been the foreigner before his head had

been shivered to atoms, like so much glass, by the great beam that lay

upon him, crushing him.

Still, they had not come upon Flintwinch yet; so the sturdy digging and

shovelling and carrying away went on without intermission by night and

by day. It got about that the old house had had famous cellarage (which

indeed was true), and that Flintwinch had been in a cellar at the

moment, or had had time to escape into one, and that he was safe under

its strong arch, and even that he had been heard to cry, in hollow,

subterranean, suffocated notes, ‘Here I am!’ At the opposite extremity

of the town it was even known that the excavators had been able to open

a communication with him through a pipe, and that he had received both

soup and brandy by that channel, and that he had said with admirable

fortitude that he was All right, my lads, with the exception of his

collar-bone. But the digging and shovelling and carrying away went on

without intermission, until the ruins were all dug out, and the cellars

opened to the light; and still no Flintwinch, living or dead, all right

or all wrong, had been turned up by pick or spade.

It began then to be perceived that Flintwinch had not been there at the

time of the fall; and it began then to be perceived that he had been

rather busy elsewhere, converting securities into as much money as could

be got for them on the shortest notice, and turning to his own exclusive

account his authority to act for the Firm. Affery, remembering that the

clever one had said he would explain himself further in four-and-twenty

hours’ time, determined for her part that his taking himself off within

that period with all he could get, was the final satisfactory sum and

substance of his promised explanation; but she held her peace, devoutly

thankful to be quit of him. As it seemed reasonable to conclude that a

man who had never been buried could not be unburied, the diggers gave

him up when their task was done, and did not dig down for him into the

depths of the earth.

This was taken in ill part by a great many people, who persisted

in believing that Flintwinch was lying somewhere among the London

geological formation. Nor was their belief much shaken by repeated

intelligence which came over in course of time, that an old man who wore

the tie of his neckcloth under one ear, and who was very well known to

be an Englishman, consorted with the Dutchmen on the quaint banks of the

canals of the Hague and in the drinking-shops of Amsterdam, under the

style and designation of Mynheer von Flyntevynge.

CHAPTER 32. Going

Arthur continuing to lie very ill in the Marshalsea, and Mr Rugg

descrying no break in the legal sky affording a hope of his enlargement,

Mr Pancks suffered desperately from self-reproaches. If it had not been

for those infallible figures which proved that Arthur, instead of pining

in imprisonment, ought to be promenading in a carriage and pair, and

that Mr Pancks, instead of being restricted to his clerkly wages, ought

to have from three to five thousand pounds of his own at his immediate

disposal, that unhappy arithmetician would probably have taken to his

bed, and there have made one of the many obscure persons who turned

their faces to the wall and died, as a last sacrifice to the late Mr

Merdle’s greatness. Solely supported by his unimpugnable calculations,

Mr Pancks led an unhappy and restless life; constantly carrying his

figures about with him in his hat, and not only going over them himself

on every possible occasion, but entreating every human being he could

lay hold of to go over them with him, and observe what a clear case it

was. Down in Bleeding Heart Yard there was scarcely an inhabitant of

note to whom Mr Pancks had not imparted his demonstration, and, as

figures are catching, a kind of cyphering measles broke out in that

locality, under the influence of which the whole Yard was light-headed.

The more restless Mr Pancks grew in his mind, the more impatient he

became of the Patriarch. In their later conferences his snorting assumed

an irritable sound which boded the Patriarch no good; likewise, Mr

Pancks had on several occasions looked harder at the Patriarchal bumps

than was quite reconcilable with the fact of his not being a painter, or

a peruke-maker in search of the living model.

However, he steamed in and out of his little back Dock according as he

was wanted or not wanted in the Patriarchal presence, and business had

gone on in its customary course. Bleeding Heart Yard had been harrowed

by Mr Pancks, and cropped by Mr Casby, at the regular seasons; Mr Pancks

had taken all the drudgery and all the dirt of the business as _his_

share; Mr Casby had taken all the profits, all the ethereal vapour, and

all the moonshine, as his share; and, in the form of words which that

benevolent beamer generally employed on Saturday evenings, when he

twirled his fat thumbs after striking the week’s balance, ‘everything

had been satisfactory to all parties--all parties--satisfactory, sir, to

all parties.’

The Dock of the Steam-Tug, Pancks, had a leaden roof, which, frying in

the very hot sunshine, may have heated the vessel. Be that as it

may, one glowing Saturday evening, on being hailed by the lumbering

bottle-green ship, the Tug instantly came working out of the Dock in a

highly heated condition.

‘Mr Pancks,’ was the Patriarchal remark, ‘you have been remiss, you have

been remiss, sir.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ was the short rejoinder.

The Patriarchal state, always a state of calmness and composure, was

so particularly serene that evening as to be provoking. Everybody else

within the bills of mortality was hot; but the Patriarch was perfectly

cool. Everybody was thirsty, and the Patriarch was drinking. There was

a fragrance of limes or lemons about him; and he made a drink of golden

sherry, which shone in a large tumbler as if he were drinking the

evening sunshine. This was bad, but not the worst. The worst was, that

with his big blue eyes, and his polished head, and his long white hair,

and his bottle-green legs stretched out before him, terminating in his

easy shoes easily crossed at the instep, he had a radiant appearance

of having in his extensive benevolence made the drink for the human

species, while he himself wanted nothing but his own milk of human

kindness.

Wherefore, Mr Pancks said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ and put his hair

up with both hands, in a highly portentous manner.

‘I mean, Mr Pancks, that you must be sharper with the people, sharper

with the people, much sharper with the people, sir. You don’t squeeze

them. You don’t squeeze them. Your receipts are not up to the mark. You

must squeeze them, sir, or our connection will not continue to be as

satisfactory as I could wish it to be to all parties. All parties.’

‘_Don’t_ I squeeze ‘em?’ retorted Mr Pancks. ‘What else am I made for?’

‘You are made for nothing else, Mr Pancks. You are made to do your

duty, but you don’t do your duty. You are paid to squeeze, and you

must squeeze to pay.’ The Patriarch so much surprised himself by this

brilliant turn, after Dr Johnson, which he had not in the least

expected or intended, that he laughed aloud; and repeated with great

satisfaction, as he twirled his thumbs and nodded at his youthful

portrait, ‘Paid to squeeze, sir, and must squeeze to pay.’

‘Oh,’ said Pancks. ‘Anything more?’

‘Yes, sir, yes, sir. Something more. You will please, Mr Pancks, to

squeeze the Yard again, the first thing on Monday morning.’

‘Oh!’ said Pancks. ‘Ain’t that too soon? I squeezed it dry to-day.’

‘Nonsense, sir. Not near the mark, not near the mark.’

‘Oh!’ said Pancks, watching him as he benevolently gulped down a good

draught of his mixture. ‘Anything more?’

‘Yes, sir, yes, sir, something more. I am not at all pleased, Mr Pancks,

with my daughter; not at all pleased. Besides calling much too often

to inquire for Mrs Clennam, Mrs Clennam, who is not just now in

circumstances that are by any means calculated to--to be satisfactory to

all parties, she goes, Mr Pancks, unless I am much deceived, to inquire

for Mr Clennam in jail. In jail.’

‘He’s laid up, you know,’ said Pancks. ‘Perhaps it’s kind.’

‘Pooh, pooh, Mr Pancks. She has nothing to do with that, nothing to do

with that. I can’t allow it. Let him pay his debts and come out, come

out; pay his debts, and come out.’

Although Mr Pancks’s hair was standing up like strong wire, he gave it

another double-handed impulse in the perpendicular direction, and smiled

at his proprietor in a most hideous manner.

‘You will please to mention to my daughter, Mr Pancks, that I can’t

allow it, can’t allow it,’ said the Patriarch blandly.

‘Oh!’ said Pancks. ‘You couldn’t mention it yourself?’

‘No, sir, no; you are paid to mention it,’ the blundering old booby

could not resist the temptation of trying it again, ‘and you must

mention it to pay, mention it to pay.’

‘Oh!’ said Pancks. ‘Anything more?’

‘Yes, sir. It appears to me, Mr Pancks, that you yourself are too often

and too much in that direction, that direction. I recommend you, Mr

Pancks, to dismiss from your attention both your own losses and other

people’s losses, and to mind your business, mind your business.’

Mr Pancks acknowledged this recommendation with such an extraordinarily

abrupt, short, and loud utterance of the monosyllable ‘Oh!’ that even

the unwieldy Patriarch moved his blue eyes in something of a hurry, to

look at him. Mr Pancks, with a sniff of corresponding intensity, then

added, ‘Anything more?’

‘Not at present, sir, not at present. I am going,’ said the Patriarch,

finishing his mixture, and rising with an amiable air, ‘to take a little

stroll, a little stroll. Perhaps I shall find you here when I come back.

If not, sir, duty, duty; squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, on Monday; squeeze

on Monday!’

Mr Pancks, after another stiffening of his hair, looked on at the

Patriarchal assumption of the broad-brimmed hat, with a momentary

appearance of indecision contending with a sense of injury. He was also

hotter than at first, and breathed harder. But he suffered Mr Casby to

go out, without offering any further remark, and then took a peep at

him over the little green window-blinds. ‘I thought so,’ he observed. ‘I

knew where you were bound to. Good!’ He then steamed back to his Dock,

put it carefully in order, took down his hat, looked round the Dock,

said ‘Good-bye!’ and puffed away on his own account. He steered straight

for Mrs Plornish’s end of Bleeding Heart Yard, and arrived there, at the

top of the steps, hotter than ever.

At the top of the steps, resisting Mrs Plornish’s invitations to come

and sit along with father in Happy Cottage--which to his relief were not

so numerous as they would have been on any other night than Saturday,

when the connection who so gallantly supported the business with

everything but money gave their orders freely--at the top of the steps

Mr Pancks remained until he beheld the Patriarch, who always entered

the Yard at the other end, slowly advancing, beaming, and surrounded

by suitors. Then Mr Pancks descended and bore down upon him, with his

utmost pressure of steam on.

The Patriarch, approaching with his usual benignity, was surprised to

see Mr Pancks, but supposed him to have been stimulated to an immediate

squeeze instead of postponing that operation until Monday. The

population of the Yard were astonished at the meeting, for the two

powers had never been seen there together, within the memory of the

oldest Bleeding Heart. But they were overcome by unutterable amazement

when Mr Pancks, going close up to the most venerable of men and halting

in front of the bottle-green waistcoat, made a trigger of his right

thumb and forefinger, applied the same to the brim of the broad-brimmed

hat, and, with singular smartness and precision, shot it off the

polished head as if it had been a large marble.

Having taken this little liberty with the Patriarchal person, Mr Pancks

further astounded and attracted the Bleeding Hearts by saying in an

audible voice, ‘Now, you sugary swindler, I mean to have it out with

you!’

Mr Pancks and the Patriarch were instantly the centre of a press, all

eyes and ears; windows were thrown open, and door-steps were thronged.

‘What do you pretend to be?’ said Mr Pancks. ‘What’s your moral game?

What do you go in for? Benevolence, an’t it? You benevolent!’ Here Mr

Pancks, apparently without the intention of hitting him, but merely to

relieve his mind and expend his superfluous power in wholesome exercise,

aimed a blow at the bumpy head, which the bumpy head ducked to

avoid. This singular performance was repeated, to the ever-increasing

admiration of the spectators, at the end of every succeeding article of

Mr Pancks’s oration.

‘I have discharged myself from your service,’ said Pancks, ‘that I may

tell you what you are. You’re one of a lot of impostors that are the

worst lot of all the lots to be met with. Speaking as a sufferer by

both, I don’t know that I wouldn’t as soon have the Merdle lot as your

lot. You’re a driver in disguise, a screwer by deputy, a wringer, and

squeezer, and shaver by substitute. You’re a philanthropic sneak. You’re

a shabby deceiver!’

(The repetition of the performance at this point was received with a

burst of laughter.)

‘Ask these good people who’s the hard man here. They’ll tell you Pancks,

I believe.’

This was confirmed with cries of ‘Certainly,’ and ‘Hear!’

‘But I tell you, good people--Casby! This mound of meekness, this lump

of love, this bottle-green smiler, this is your driver!’ said Pancks.

‘If you want to see the man who would flay you alive--here he is! Don’t

look for him in me, at thirty shillings a week, but look for him in

Casby, at I don’t know how much a year!’

‘Good!’ cried several voices. ‘Hear Mr Pancks!’

‘Hear Mr Pancks?’ cried that gentleman (after repeating the popular

performance). ‘Yes, I should think so! It’s almost time to hear Mr

Pancks. Mr Pancks has come down into the Yard to-night on purpose that

you should hear him. Pancks is only the Works; but here’s the Winder!’

The audience would have gone over to Mr Pancks, as one man, woman, and

child, but for the long, grey, silken locks, and the broad-brimmed hat.

‘Here’s the Stop,’ said Pancks, ‘that sets the tune to be ground. And

there is but one tune, and its name is Grind, Grind, Grind! Here’s the

Proprietor, and here’s his Grubber. Why, good people, when he comes

smoothly spinning through the Yard to-night, like a slow-going

benevolent Humming-Top, and when you come about him with your complaints

of the Grubber, you don’t know what a cheat the Proprietor is! What do

you think of his showing himself to-night, that I may have all the blame

on Monday? What do you think of his having had me over the coals this

very evening, because I don’t squeeze you enough? What do you think of

my being, at the present moment, under special orders to squeeze you dry

on Monday?’

The reply was given in a murmur of ‘Shame!’ and ‘Shabby!’

‘Shabby?’ snorted Pancks. ‘Yes, I should think so! The lot that your

Casby belongs to, is the shabbiest of all the lots. Setting their

Grubbers on, at a wretched pittance, to do what they’re ashamed and

afraid to do and pretend not to do, but what they will have done, or

give a man no rest! Imposing on you to give their Grubbers nothing but

blame, and to give them nothing but credit! Why, the worst-looking

cheat in all this town who gets the value of eighteenpence under false

pretences, an’t half such a cheat as this sign-post of The Casby’s Head

here!’

Cries of ‘That’s true!’ and ‘No more he an’t!’

‘And see what you get of these fellows, besides,’ said Pancks. ‘See what

more you get of these precious Humming-Tops, revolving among you with

such smoothness that you’ve no idea of the pattern painted on ‘em, or

the little window in ‘em. I wish to call your attention to myself for a

moment. I an’t an agreeable style of chap, I know that very well.’

The auditory were divided on this point; its more uncompromising members

crying, ‘No, you are not,’ and its politer materials, ‘Yes, you are.’

‘I am, in general,’ said Mr Pancks, ‘a dry, uncomfortable, dreary

Plodder and Grubber. That’s your humble servant. There’s his full-length

portrait, painted by himself and presented to you, warranted a likeness!

But what’s a man to be, with such a man as this for his Proprietor?

What can be expected of him? Did anybody ever find boiled mutton and

caper-sauce growing in a cocoa-nut?’

None of the Bleeding Hearts ever had, it was clear from the alacrity of

their response.

‘Well,’ said Mr Pancks, ‘and neither will you find in Grubbers like

myself, under Proprietors like this, pleasant qualities. I’ve been a

Grubber from a boy. What has my life been? Fag and grind, fag and grind,

turn the wheel, turn the wheel! I haven’t been agreeable to myself,

and I haven’t been likely to be agreeable to anybody else. If I was a

shilling a week less useful in ten years’ time, this impostor would give

me a shilling a week less; if as useful a man could be got at sixpence

cheaper, he would be taken in my place at sixpence cheaper. Bargain and

sale, bless you! Fixed principles! It’s a mighty fine sign-post, is The

Casby’s Head,’ said Mr Pancks, surveying it with anything rather than

admiration; ‘but the real name of the House is the Sham’s Arms. Its

motto is, Keep the Grubber always at it. Is any gentleman present,’ said

Mr Pancks, breaking off and looking round, ‘acquainted with the English

Grammar?’

Bleeding Heart Yard was shy of claiming that acquaintance.

‘It’s no matter,’ said Mr Pancks, ‘I merely wish to remark that the task

this Proprietor has set me, has been never to leave off conjugating the

Imperative Mood Present Tense of the verb To keep always at it. Keep

thou always at it. Let him keep always at it. Keep we or do we keep

always at it. Keep ye or do ye or you keep always at it. Let them keep

always at it. Here is your benevolent Patriarch of a Casby, and there is

his golden rule. He is uncommonly improving to look at, and I am not

at all so. He is as sweet as honey, and I am as dull as ditch-water. He

provides the pitch, and I handle it, and it sticks to me. Now,’ said

Mr Pancks, closing upon his late Proprietor again, from whom he had

withdrawn a little for the better display of him to the Yard; ‘as I am

not accustomed to speak in public, and as I have made a rather lengthy

speech, all circumstances considered, I shall bring my observations to a

close by requesting you to get out of this.’

The Last of the Patriarchs had been so seized by assault, and required

so much room to catch an idea in, an so much more room to turn it in,

that he had not a word to offer in reply. He appeared to be meditating

some Patriarchal way out of his delicate position, when Mr Pancks, once

more suddenly applying the trigger to his hat, shot it off again with

his former dexterity. On the preceding occasion, one or two of the

Bleeding Heart Yarders had obsequiously picked it up and handed it to

its owner; but Mr Pancks had now so far impressed his audience, that the

Patriarch had to turn and stoop for it himself.

Quick as lightning, Mr Pancks, who, for some moments, had had his right

hand in his coat pocket, whipped out a pair of shears, swooped upon the

Patriarch behind, and snipped off short the sacred locks that flowed

upon his shoulders. In a paroxysm of animosity and rapidity, Mr Pancks

then caught the broad-brimmed hat out of the astounded Patriarch’s hand,

cut it down into a mere stewpan, and fixed it on the Patriarch’s head.

Before the frightful results of this desperate action, Mr Pancks himself

recoiled in consternation. A bare-polled, goggle-eyed, big-headed

lumbering personage stood staring at him, not in the least impressive,

not in the least venerable, who seemed to have started out of the

earth to ask what was become of Casby. After staring at this phantom in

return, in silent awe, Mr Pancks threw down his shears, and fled for a

place of hiding, where he might lie sheltered from the consequences of

his crime. Mr Pancks deemed it prudent to use all possible despatch in

making off, though he was pursued by nothing but the sound of laughter

in Bleeding Heart Yard, rippling through the air and making it ring

again.

CHAPTER 33. Going!

The changes of a fevered room are slow and fluctuating; but the changes

of the fevered world are rapid and irrevocable.

It was Little Dorrit’s lot to wait upon both kinds of change. The

Marshalsea walls, during a portion of every day, again embraced her in

their shadows as their child, while she thought for Clennam, worked for

him, watched him, and only left him, still to devote her utmost love and

care to him. Her part in the life outside the gate urged its pressing

claims upon her too, and her patience untiringly responded to them.

Here was Fanny, proud, fitful, whimsical, further advanced in that

disqualified state for going into society which had so much fretted

her on the evening of the tortoise-shell knife, resolved always to want

comfort, resolved not to be comforted, resolved to be deeply wronged,

and resolved that nobody should have the audacity to think her so. Here

was her brother, a weak, proud, tipsy, young old man, shaking from

head to foot, talking as indistinctly as if some of the money he plumed

himself upon had got into his mouth and couldn’t be got out, unable to

walk alone in any act of his life, and patronising the sister whom he

selfishly loved (he always had that negative merit, ill-starred and

ill-launched Tip!) because he suffered her to lead him. Here was Mrs

Merdle in gauzy mourning--the original cap whereof had possibly been

rent to pieces in a fit of grief, but had certainly yielded to a highly

becoming article from the Parisian market--warring with Fanny foot to

foot, and breasting her with her desolate bosom every hour in the day.

Here was poor Mr Sparkler, not knowing how to keep the peace between

them, but humbly inclining to the opinion that they could do no better

than agree that they were both remarkably fine women, and that there was

no nonsense about either of them--for which gentle recommendation they

united in falling upon him frightfully. Then, too, here was Mrs General,

got home from foreign parts, sending a Prune and a Prism by post every

other day, demanding a new Testimonial by way of recommendation to some

vacant appointment or other. Of which remarkable gentlewoman it may be

finally observed, that there surely never was a gentlewoman of whose

transcendent fitness for any vacant appointment on the face of this

earth, so many people were (as the warmth of her Testimonials evinced)

so perfectly satisfied--or who was so very unfortunate in having a

large circle of ardent and distinguished admirers, who never themselves

happened to want her in any capacity.

On the first crash of the eminent Mr Merdle’s decease, many important

persons had been unable to determine whether they should cut Mrs Merdle,

or comfort her. As it seemed, however, essential to the strength of

their own case that they should admit her to have been cruelly deceived,

they graciously made the admission, and continued to know her. It

followed that Mrs Merdle, as a woman of fashion and good breeding who

had been sacrificed to the wiles of a vulgar barbarian (for Mr Merdle

was found out from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, the

moment he was found out in his pocket), must be actively championed by

her order for her order’s sake. She returned this fealty by causing it

to be understood that she was even more incensed against the felonious

shade of the deceased than anybody else was; thus, on the whole, she

came out of her furnace like a wise woman, and did exceedingly well.

Mr Sparkler’s lordship was fortunately one of those shelves on which a

gentleman is considered to be put away for life, unless there should be

reasons for hoisting him up with the Barnacle crane to a more lucrative

height. That patriotic servant accordingly stuck to his colours (the

Standard of four Quarterings), and was a perfect Nelson in respect

of nailing them to the mast. On the profits of his intrepidity, Mrs

Sparkler and Mrs Merdle, inhabiting different floors of the genteel

little temple of inconvenience to which the smell of the day before

yesterday’s soup and coach-horses was as constant as Death to man,

arrayed themselves to fight it out in the lists of Society, sworn

rivals. And Little Dorrit, seeing all these things as they developed

themselves, could not but wonder, anxiously, into what back corner of

the genteel establishment Fanny’s children would be poked by-and-by, and

who would take care of those unborn little victims.

Arthur being far too ill to be spoken with on subjects of emotion or

anxiety, and his recovery greatly depending on the repose into which

his weakness could be hushed, Little Dorrit’s sole reliance during this

heavy period was on Mr Meagles. He was still abroad; but she had written

to him through his daughter, immediately after first seeing Arthur in

the Marshalsea and since, confiding her uneasiness to him on the points

on which she was most anxious, but especially on one. To that one,

the continued absence of Mr Meagles abroad, instead of his comforting

presence in the Marshalsea, was referable.

Without disclosing the precise nature of the documents that had fallen

into Rigaud’s hands, Little Dorrit had confided the general outline of

that story to Mr Meagles, to whom she had also recounted his fate. The

old cautious habits of the scales and scoop at once showed Mr Meagles

the importance of recovering the original papers; wherefore he wrote

back to Little Dorrit, strongly confirming her in the solicitude she

expressed on that head, and adding that he would not come over to

England ‘without making some attempt to trace them out.’

By this time Mr Henry Gowan had made up his mind that it would be

agreeable to him not to know the Meagleses. He was so considerate as to

lay no injunctions on his wife in that particular; but he mentioned

to Mr Meagles that personally they did not appear to him to get on

together, and that he thought it would be a good thing if--politely, and

without any scene, or anything of that sort--they agreed that they were

the best fellows in the world, but were best apart. Poor Mr Meagles, who

was already sensible that he did not advance his daughter’s happiness by

being constantly slighted in her presence, said ‘Good, Henry! You are

my Pet’s husband; you have displaced me, in the course of nature; if

you wish it, good!’ This arrangement involved the contingent advantage,

which perhaps Henry Gowan had not foreseen, that both Mr and Mrs

Meagles were more liberal than before to their daughter, when their

communication was only with her and her young child: and that his high

spirit found itself better provided with money, without being under the

degrading necessity of knowing whence it came.

Mr Meagles, at such a period, naturally seized an occupation with great

ardour. He knew from his daughter the various towns which Rigaud had

been haunting, and the various hotels at which he had been living for

some time back. The occupation he set himself was to visit these with

all discretion and speed, and, in the event of finding anywhere that he

had left a bill unpaid, and a box or parcel behind, to pay such bill,

and bring away such box or parcel.

With no other attendant than Mother, Mr Meagles went upon his

pilgrimage, and encountered a number of adventures. Not the least of his

difficulties was, that he never knew what was said to him, and that he

pursued his inquiries among people who never knew what he said to them.

Still, with an unshaken confidence that the English tongue was somehow

the mother tongue of the whole world, only the people were too stupid

to know it, Mr Meagles harangued innkeepers in the most voluble manner,

entered into loud explanations of the most complicated sort, and utterly

renounced replies in the native language of the respondents, on the

ground that they were ‘all bosh.’ Sometimes interpreters were called

in; whom Mr Meagles addressed in such idiomatic terms of speech, as

instantly to extinguish and shut up--which made the matter worse. On a

balance of the account, however, it may be doubted whether he lost much;

for, although he found no property, he found so many debts and various

associations of discredit with the proper name, which was the only word

he made intelligible, that he was almost everywhere overwhelmed with

injurious accusations. On no fewer than four occasions the police

were called in to receive denunciations of Mr Meagles as a Knight of

Industry, a good-for-nothing, and a thief, all of which opprobrious

language he bore with the best temper (having no idea what it meant),

and was in the most ignominious manner escorted to steam-boats and

public carriages, to be got rid of, talking all the while, like a

cheerful and fluent Briton as he was, with Mother under his arm.

But, in his own tongue, and in his own head, Mr Meagles was a clear,

shrewd, persevering man. When he had ‘worked round,’ as he called it, to

Paris in his pilgrimage, and had wholly failed in it so far, he was not

disheartened. ‘The nearer to England I follow him, you see, Mother,’

argued Mr Meagles, ‘the nearer I am likely to come to the papers,

whether they turn up or no. Because it is only reasonable to conclude

that he would deposit them somewhere where they would be safe from

people over in England, and where they would yet be accessible to

himself, don’t you see?’

At Paris Mr Meagles found a letter from Little Dorrit, lying waiting for

him; in which she mentioned that she had been able to talk for a minute

or two with Mr Clennam about this man who was no more; and that when she

told Mr Clennam that his friend Mr Meagles, who was on his way to see

him, had an interest in ascertaining something about the man if he

could, he had asked her to tell Mr Meagles that he had been known

to Miss Wade, then living in such a street at Calais. ‘Oho!’ said Mr

Meagles.

As soon afterwards as might be in those Diligence days, Mr Meagles

rang the cracked bell at the cracked gate, and it jarred open, and the

peasant-woman stood in the dark doorway, saying, ‘Ice-say! Seer! Who?’

In acknowledgment of whose address, Mr Meagles murmured to himself that

there was some sense about these Calais people, who really did know

something of what you and themselves were up to; and returned, ‘Miss

Wade, my dear.’ He was then shown into the presence of Miss Wade.

‘It’s some time since we met,’ said Mr Meagles, clearing his throat; ‘I

hope you have been pretty well, Miss Wade?’

Without hoping that he or anybody else had been pretty well, Miss Wade

asked him to what she was indebted for the honour of seeing him again?

Mr Meagles, in the meanwhile, glanced all round the room without

observing anything in the shape of a box.

‘Why, the truth is, Miss Wade,’ said Mr Meagles, in a comfortable,

managing, not to say coaxing voice, ‘it is possible that you may be able

to throw a light upon a little something that is at present dark. Any

unpleasant bygones between us are bygones, I hope. Can’t be helped now.

You recollect my daughter? Time changes so! A mother!’

In his innocence, Mr Meagles could not have struck a worse key-note. He

paused for any expression of interest, but paused in vain.

‘That is not the subject you wished to enter on?’ she said, after a cold

silence.

‘No, no,’ returned Mr Meagles. ‘No. I thought your good nature might--’

‘I thought you knew,’ she interrupted, with a smile, ‘that my good

nature is not to be calculated upon?’

‘Don’t say so,’ said Mr Meagles; ‘you do yourself an injustice. However,

to come to the point.’ For he was sensible of having gained nothing

by approaching it in a roundabout way. ‘I have heard from my friend

Clennam, who, you will be sorry to hear, has been and still is very

ill--’

He paused again, and again she was silent.

‘--that you had some knowledge of one Blandois, lately killed in London

by a violent accident. Now, don’t mistake me! I know it was a slight

knowledge,’ said Mr Meagles, dexterously forestalling an angry

interruption which he saw about to break. ‘I am fully aware of that. It

was a slight knowledge, I know. But the question is,’ Mr Meagles’s voice

here became comfortable again, ‘did he, on his way to England last time,

leave a box of papers, or a bundle of papers, or some papers or other in

some receptacle or other--any papers--with you: begging you to allow him

to leave them here for a short time, until he wanted them?’

‘The question is?’ she repeated. ‘Whose question is?’

‘Mine,’ said Mr Meagles. ‘And not only mine but Clennam’s question, and

other people’s question. Now, I am sure,’ continued Mr Meagles, whose

heart was overflowing with Pet, ‘that you can’t have any unkind feeling

towards my daughter; it’s impossible. Well! It’s her question, too;

being one in which a particular friend of hers is nearly interested.

So here I am, frankly to say that is the question, and to ask, Now, did

he?’

‘Upon my word,’ she returned, ‘I seem to be a mark for everybody who

knew anything of a man I once in my life hired, and paid, and dismissed,

to aim their questions at!’

‘Now, don’t,’ remonstrated Mr Meagles, ‘don’t! Don’t take offence,

because it’s the plainest question in the world, and might be asked

of any one. The documents I refer to were not his own, were wrongfully

obtained, might at some time or other be troublesome to an innocent

person to have in keeping, and are sought by the people to whom they

really belong. He passed through Calais going to London, and there were

reasons why he should not take them with him then, why he should wish

to be able to put his hand upon them readily, and why he should distrust

leaving them with people of his own sort. Did he leave them here? I

declare if I knew how to avoid giving you offence, I would take any

pains to do it. I put the question personally, but there’s nothing

personal in it. I might put it to any one; I have put it already to many

people. Did he leave them here? Did he leave anything here?’

‘No.’

‘Then unfortunately, Miss Wade, you know nothing about them?’

‘I know nothing about them. I have now answered your unaccountable

question. He did not leave them here, and I know nothing about them.’

‘There!’ said Mr Meagles rising. ‘I am sorry for it; that’s over; and I

hope there is not much harm done.--Tattycoram well, Miss Wade?’

‘Harriet well? O yes!’

‘I have put my foot in it again,’ said Mr Meagles, thus corrected. ‘I

can’t keep my foot out of it here, it seems. Perhaps, if I had thought

twice about it, I might never have given her the jingling name. But,

when one means to be good-natured and sportive with young people, one

doesn’t think twice. Her old friend leaves a kind word for her, Miss

Wade, if you should think proper to deliver it.’

She said nothing as to that; and Mr Meagles, taking his honest face out

of the dull room, where it shone like a sun, took it to the Hotel where

he had left Mrs Meagles, and where he made the Report: ‘Beaten, Mother;

no effects!’ He took it next to the London Steam Packet, which sailed in

the night; and next to the Marshalsea.

The faithful John was on duty when Father and Mother Meagles presented

themselves at the wicket towards nightfall. Miss Dorrit was not there

then, he said; but she had been there in the morning, and invariably

came in the evening. Mr Clennam was slowly mending; and Maggy and Mrs

Plornish and Mr Baptist took care of him by turns. Miss Dorrit was sure

to come back that evening before the bell rang. There was the room the

Marshal had lent her, up-stairs, in which they could wait for her, if

they pleased. Mistrustful that it might be hazardous to Arthur to see

him without preparation, Mr Meagles accepted the offer; and they were

left shut up in the room, looking down through its barred window into

the jail.

The cramped area of the prison had such an effect on Mrs Meagles that

she began to weep, and such an effect on Mr Meagles that he began to

gasp for air. He was walking up and down the room, panting, and making

himself worse by laboriously fanning himself with her handkerchief, when

he turned towards the opening door.

‘Eh? Good gracious!’ said Mr Meagles, ‘this is not Miss Dorrit! Why,

Mother, look! Tattycoram!’

No other. And in Tattycoram’s arms was an iron box some two feet square.

Such a box had Affery Flintwinch seen, in the first of her dreams, going

out of the old house in the dead of the night under Double’s arm. This,

Tattycoram put on the ground at her old master’s feet: this, Tattycoram

fell on her knees by, and beat her hands upon, crying half in exultation

and half in despair, half in laughter and half in tears, ‘Pardon, dear

Master; take me back, dear Mistress; here it is!’

‘Tatty!’ exclaimed Mr Meagles.

‘What you wanted!’ said Tattycoram. ‘Here it is! I was put in the next

room not to see you. I heard you ask her about it, I heard her say she

hadn’t got it, I was there when he left it, and I took it at bedtime and

brought it away. Here it is!’

‘Why, my girl,’ cried Mr Meagles, more breathless than before, ‘how did

you come over?’

‘I came in the boat with you. I was sitting wrapped up at the other end.

When you took a coach at the wharf, I took another coach and followed

you here. She never would have given it up after what you had said to

her about its being wanted; she would sooner have sunk it in the sea, or

burnt it. But, here it is!’

The glow and rapture that the girl was in, with her ‘Here it is!’

‘She never wanted it to be left, I must say that for her; but he left

it, and I knew well that after what you said, and after her denying

it, she never would have given it up. But here it is! Dear Master, dear

Mistress, take me back again, and give me back the dear old name! Let

this intercede for me. Here it is!’

Father and Mother Meagles never deserved their names better than when

they took the headstrong foundling-girl into their protection again.

‘Oh! I have been so wretched,’ cried Tattycoram, weeping much more,

‘always so unhappy, and so repentant! I was afraid of her from the first

time I saw her. I knew she had got a power over me through understanding

what was bad in me so well. It was a madness in me, and she could raise

it whenever she liked. I used to think, when I got into that state, that

people were all against me because of my first beginning; and the kinder

they were to me, the worse fault I found in them. I made it out that

they triumphed above me, and that they wanted to make me envy them, when

I know--when I even knew then--that they never thought of such a thing.

And my beautiful young mistress not so happy as she ought to have been,

and I gone away from her! Such a brute and a wretch as she must think

me! But you’ll say a word to her for me, and ask her to be as forgiving

as you two are? For I am not so bad as I was,’ pleaded Tattycoram; ‘I am

bad enough, but not so bad as I was, indeed. I have had Miss Wade

before me all this time, as if it was my own self grown ripe--turning

everything the wrong way, and twisting all good into evil. I have had

her before me all this time, finding no pleasure in anything but keeping

me as miserable, suspicious, and tormenting as herself. Not that she had

much to do, to do that,’ cried Tattycoram, in a closing great burst of

distress, ‘for I was as bad as bad could be. I only mean to say, that,

after what I have gone through, I hope I shall never be quite so bad

again, and that I shall get better by very slow degrees. I’ll try very

hard. I won’t stop at five-and-twenty, sir, I’ll count five-and-twenty

hundred, five-and-twenty thousand!’

Another opening of the door, and Tattycoram subsided, and Little Dorrit

came in, and Mr Meagles with pride and joy produced the box, and her

gentle face was lighted up with grateful happiness and joy. The secret

was safe now! She could keep her own part of it from him; he should

never know of her loss; in time to come he should know all that was of

import to himself; but he should never know what concerned her only.

That was all passed, all forgiven, all forgotten.

‘Now, my dear Miss Dorrit,’ said Mr Meagles; ‘I am a man of business--or

at least was--and I am going to take my measures promptly, in that

character. Had I better see Arthur to-night?’

‘I think not to-night. I will go to his room and ascertain how he is.

But I think it will be better not to see him to-night.’

‘I am much of your opinion, my dear,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘and therefore

I have not been any nearer to him than this dismal room. Then I shall

probably not see him for some little time to come. But I’ll explain what

I mean when you come back.’

She left the room. Mr Meagles, looking through the bars of the window,

saw her pass out of the Lodge below him into the prison-yard. He said

gently, ‘Tattycoram, come to me a moment, my good girl.’

She went up to the window.

‘You see that young lady who was here just now--that little, quiet,

fragile figure passing along there, Tatty? Look. The people stand out

of the way to let her go by. The men--see the poor, shabby fellows--pull

off their hats to her quite politely, and now she glides in at that

doorway. See her, Tattycoram?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I have heard tell, Tatty, that she was once regularly called the child

of this place. She was born here, and lived here many years. I can’t

breathe here. A doleful place to be born and bred in, Tattycoram?’

‘Yes indeed, sir!’

‘If she had constantly thought of herself, and settled with herself that

everybody visited this place upon her, turned it against her, and cast

it at her, she would have led an irritable and probably an useless

existence. Yet I have heard tell, Tattycoram, that her young life has

been one of active resignation, goodness, and noble service. Shall I

tell you what I consider those eyes of hers, that were here just now, to

have always looked at, to get that expression?’

‘Yes, if you please, sir.’

‘Duty, Tattycoram. Begin it early, and do it well; and there is no

antecedent to it, in any origin or station, that will tell against us

with the Almighty, or with ourselves.’

They remained at the window, Mother joining them and pitying the

prisoners, until she was seen coming back. She was soon in the room, and

recommended that Arthur, whom she had left calm and composed, should not

be visited that night.

‘Good!’ said Mr Meagles, cheerily. ‘I have not a doubt that’s best. I

shall trust my remembrances then, my sweet nurse, in your hands, and I

well know they couldn’t be in better. I am off again to-morrow morning.’

Little Dorrit, surprised, asked him where?

‘My dear,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘I can’t live without breathing. This place

has taken my breath away, and I shall never get it back again until

Arthur is out of this place.’

‘How is that a reason for going off again to-morrow morning?’

‘You shall understand,’ said Mr Meagles. ‘To-night we three will put up

at a City Hotel. To-morrow morning, Mother and Tattycoram will go down

to Twickenham, where Mrs Tickit, sitting attended by Dr Buchan in the

parlour-window, will think them a couple of ghosts; and I shall go

abroad again for Doyce. We must have Dan here. Now, I tell you, my love,

it’s of no use writing and planning and conditionally speculating upon

this and that and the other, at uncertain intervals and distances; we

must have Doyce here. I devote myself at daybreak to-morrow morning, to

bringing Doyce here. It’s nothing to me to go and find him. I’m an old

traveller, and all foreign languages and customs are alike to me--I

never understand anything about any of ‘em. Therefore I can’t be put

to any inconvenience. Go at once I must, it stands to reason; because

I can’t live without breathing freely; and I can’t breathe freely until

Arthur is out of this Marshalsea. I am stifled at the present moment,

and have scarcely breath enough to say this much, and to carry this

precious box down-stairs for you.’

They got into the street as the bell began to ring, Mr Meagles carrying

the box. Little Dorrit had no conveyance there: which rather surprised

him. He called a coach for her and she got into it, and he placed the

box beside her when she was seated. In her joy and gratitude she kissed

his hand.

‘I don’t like that, my dear,’ said Mr Meagles. ‘It goes against my

feeling of what’s right, that _you_ should do homage to _me_--at the

Marshalsea Gate.’

She bent forward, and kissed his cheek.

‘You remind me of the days,’ said Mr Meagles, suddenly drooping--‘but

she’s very fond of him, and hides his faults, and thinks that no

one sees them--and he certainly is well connected and of a very good

family!’

It was the only comfort he had in the loss of his daughter, and if he

made the most of it, who could blame him?

CHAPTER 34. Gone

On a healthy autumn day, the Marshalsea prisoner, weak but otherwise

restored, sat listening to a voice that read to him. On a healthy autumn

day; when the golden fields had been reaped and ploughed again, when the

summer fruits had ripened and waned, when the green perspectives of hops

had been laid low by the busy pickers, when the apples clustering in the

orchards were russet, and the berries of the mountain ash were crimson

among the yellowing foliage. Already in the woods, glimpses of the hardy

winter that was coming were to be caught through unaccustomed openings

among the boughs where the prospect shone defined and clear, free from

the bloom of the drowsy summer weather, which had rested on it as the

bloom lies on the plum. So, from the seashore the ocean was no longer to

be seen lying asleep in the heat, but its thousand sparkling eyes were

open, and its whole breadth was in joyful animation, from the cool sand

on the beach to the little sails on the horizon, drifting away like

autumn-tinted leaves that had drifted from the trees.

Changeless and barren, looking ignorantly at all the seasons with its

fixed, pinched face of poverty and care, the prison had not a touch of

any of these beauties on it. Blossom what would, its bricks and bars

bore uniformly the same dead crop. Yet Clennam, listening to the voice

as it read to him, heard in it all that great Nature was doing, heard in

it all the soothing songs she sings to man. At no Mother’s knee but hers

had he ever dwelt in his youth on hopeful promises, on playful fancies,

on the harvests of tenderness and humility that lie hidden in the

early-fostered seeds of the imagination; on the oaks of retreat from

blighting winds, that have the germs of their strong roots in nursery

acorns. But, in the tones of the voice that read to him, there were

memories of an old feeling of such things, and echoes of every merciful

and loving whisper that had ever stolen to him in his life.

When the voice stopped, he put his hand over his eyes, murmuring that

the light was strong upon them.

Little Dorrit put the book by, and presently arose quietly to shade

the window. Maggy sat at her needlework in her old place. The light

softened, Little Dorrit brought her chair closer to his side.

‘This will soon be over now, dear Mr Clennam. Not only are Mr Doyce’s

letters to you so full of friendship and encouragement, but Mr Rugg says

his letters to him are so full of help, and that everybody (now a little

anger is past) is so considerate, and speaks so well of you, that it

will soon be over now.’

‘Dear girl. Dear heart. Good angel!’

‘You praise me far too much. And yet it is such an exquisite pleasure

to me to hear you speak so feelingly, and to--and to see,’ said Little

Dorrit, raising her eyes to his, ‘how deeply you mean it, that I cannot

say Don’t.’

He lifted her hand to his lips.

‘You have been here many, many times, when I have not seen you, Little

Dorrit?’

‘Yes, I have been here sometimes when I have not come into the room.’

‘Very often?’

‘Rather often,’ said Little Dorrit, timidly.

‘Every day?’

‘I think,’ said Little Dorrit, after hesitating, ‘that I have been here

at least twice every day.’

He might have released the little light hand after fervently kissing it

again; but that, with a very gentle lingering where it was, it seemed to

court being retained. He took it in both of his, and it lay softly on his

breast.

‘Dear Little Dorrit, it is not my imprisonment only that will soon be

over. This sacrifice of you must be ended. We must learn to part again,

and to take our different ways so wide asunder. You have not forgotten

what we said together, when you came back?’

‘O no, I have not forgotten it. But something has been--You feel quite

strong to-day, don’t you?’

‘Quite strong.’

The hand he held crept up a little nearer his face.

‘Do you feel quite strong enough to know what a great fortune I have

got?’

‘I shall be very glad to be told. No fortune can be too great or good

for Little Dorrit.’

‘I have been anxiously waiting to tell you. I have been longing and

longing to tell you. You are sure you will not take it?’

‘Never!’

‘You are quite sure you will not take half of it?’

‘Never, dear Little Dorrit!’

As she looked at him silently, there was something in her affectionate

face that he did not quite comprehend: something that could have broken

into tears in a moment, and yet that was happy and proud.

‘You will be sorry to hear what I have to tell you about Fanny. Poor

Fanny has lost everything. She has nothing left but her husband’s

income. All that papa gave her when she married was lost as your money

was lost. It was in the same hands, and it is all gone.’

Arthur was more shocked than surprised to hear it. ‘I had hoped it might

not be so bad,’ he said: ‘but I had feared a heavy loss there, knowing

the connection between her husband and the defaulter.’

‘Yes. It is all gone. I am very sorry for Fanny; very, very, very sorry

for poor Fanny. My poor brother too!’

‘Had _he_ property in the same hands?’

‘Yes! And it’s all gone.--How much do you think my own great fortune

is?’

As Arthur looked at her inquiringly, with a new apprehension on him,

she withdrew her hand, and laid her face down on the spot where it had

rested.

‘I have nothing in the world. I am as poor as when I lived here. When

papa came over to England, he confided everything he had to the same

hands, and it is all swept away. O my dearest and best, are you quite

sure you will not share my fortune with me now?’

Locked in his arms, held to his heart, with his manly tears upon her own

cheek, she drew the slight hand round his neck, and clasped it in its

fellow-hand.

‘Never to part, my dearest Arthur; never any more, until the last!

I never was rich before, I never was proud before, I never was happy

before, I am rich in being taken by you, I am proud in having been

resigned by you, I am happy in being with you in this prison, as I

should be happy in coming back to it with you, if it should be the will

of GOD, and comforting and serving you with all my love and truth. I am

yours anywhere, everywhere! I love you dearly! I would rather pass my

life here with you, and go out daily, working for our bread, than I

would have the greatest fortune that ever was told, and be the greatest

lady that ever was honoured. O, if poor papa may only know how blest at

last my heart is, in this room where he suffered for so many years!’

Maggy had of course been staring from the first, and had of course been

crying her eyes out long before this. Maggy was now so overjoyed that,

after hugging her little mother with all her might, she went down-stairs

like a clog-hornpipe to find somebody or other to whom to impart her

gladness. Whom should Maggy meet but Flora and Mr F.’s Aunt opportunely

coming in? And whom else, as a consequence of that meeting, should

Little Dorrit find waiting for herself, when, a good two or three hours

afterwards, she went out?

Flora’s eyes were a little red, and she seemed rather out of spirits.

Mr F.’s Aunt was so stiffened that she had the appearance of being past

bending by any means short of powerful mechanical pressure. Her bonnet

was cocked up behind in a terrific manner; and her stony reticule was as

rigid as if it had been petrified by the Gorgon’s head, and had got it

at that moment inside. With these imposing attributes, Mr F.’s Aunt,

publicly seated on the steps of the Marshal’s official residence, had

been for the two or three hours in question a great boon to the younger

inhabitants of the Borough, whose sallies of humour she had considerably

flushed herself by resenting at the point of her umbrella, from time to

time.

‘Painfully aware, Miss Dorrit, I am sure,’ said Flora, ‘that to propose

an adjournment to any place to one so far removed by fortune and so

courted and caressed by the best society must ever appear intruding

even if not a pie-shop far below your present sphere and a back-parlour

though a civil man but if for the sake of Arthur--cannot overcome it

more improper now than ever late Doyce and Clennam--one last remark I

might wish to make one last explanation I might wish to offer perhaps

your good nature might excuse under pretence of three kidney ones the

humble place of conversation.’

Rightly interpreting this rather obscure speech, Little Dorrit returned

that she was quite at Flora’s disposition. Flora accordingly led the

way across the road to the pie-shop in question: Mr F.’s Aunt stalking

across in the rear, and putting herself in the way of being run over,

with a perseverance worthy of a better cause.

When the ‘three kidney ones,’ which were to be a blind to the

conversation, were set before them on three little tin platters, each

kidney one ornamented with a hole at the top, into which the civil man

poured hot gravy out of a spouted can as if he were feeding three lamps,

Flora took out her pocket-handkerchief.

‘If Fancy’s fair dreams,’ she began, ‘have ever pictured that when

Arthur--cannot overcome it pray excuse me--was restored to freedom even

a pie as far from flaky as the present and so deficient in kidney as to

be in that respect like a minced nutmeg might not prove unacceptable if

offered by the hand of true regard such visions have for ever fled

and all is cancelled but being aware that tender relations are in

contemplation beg to state that I heartily wish well to both and find

no fault with either not the least, it may be withering to know that ere

the hand of Time had made me much less slim than formerly and dreadfully

red on the slightest exertion particularly after eating I well know when

it takes the form of a rash, it might have been and was not through the

interruption of parents and mental torpor succeeded until the mysterious

clue was held by Mr F. still I would not be ungenerous to either and I

heartily wish well to both.’

Little Dorrit took her hand, and thanked her for all her old kindness.

‘Call it not kindness,’ returned Flora, giving her an honest kiss, ‘for

you always were the best and dearest little thing that ever was if I

may take the liberty and even in a money point of view a saving being

Conscience itself though I must add much more agreeable than mine ever

was to me for though not I hope more burdened than other people’s yet

I have always found it far readier to make one uncomfortable than

comfortable and evidently taking a greater pleasure in doing it but I am

wandering, one hope I wish to express ere yet the closing scene draws

in and it is that I do trust for the sake of old times and old sincerity

that Arthur will know that I didn’t desert him in his misfortunes but

that I came backwards and forwards constantly to ask if I could do

anything for him and that I sat in the pie-shop where they very civilly

fetched something warm in a tumbler from the hotel and really very nice

hours after hours to keep him company over the way without his knowing

it.’

Flora really had tears in her eyes now, and they showed her to great

advantage.

‘Over and above which,’ said Flora, ‘I earnestly beg you as the dearest

thing that ever was if you’ll still excuse the familiarity from one who

moves in very different circles to let Arthur understand that I don’t

know after all whether it wasn’t all nonsense between us though pleasant

at the time and trying too and certainly Mr F. did work a change and

the spell being broken nothing could be expected to take place without

weaving it afresh which various circumstances have combined to prevent

of which perhaps not the least powerful was that it was not to be, I

am not prepared to say that if it had been agreeable to Arthur and had

brought itself about naturally in the first instance I should not have

been very glad being of a lively disposition and moped at home where

papa undoubtedly is the most aggravating of his sex and not improved

since having been cut down by the hand of the Incendiary into something

of which I never saw the counterpart in all my life but jealousy is not

my character nor ill-will though many faults.’

Without having been able closely to follow Mrs Finching through this

labyrinth, Little Dorrit understood its purpose, and cordially accepted

the trust.

‘The withered chaplet my dear,’ said Flora, with great enjoyment, ‘is

then perished the column is crumbled and the pyramid is standing upside

down upon its what’s-his-name call it not giddiness call it not weakness

call it not folly I must now retire into privacy and look upon the ashes

of departed joys no more but taking a further liberty of paying for the

pastry which has formed the humble pretext of our interview will for

ever say Adieu!’

Mr F.’s Aunt, who had eaten her pie with great solemnity, and who had

been elaborating some grievous scheme of injury in her mind since her

first assumption of that public position on the Marshal’s steps, took

the present opportunity of addressing the following Sibyllic apostrophe

to the relict of her late nephew.

‘Bring him for’ard, and I’ll chuck him out o’ winder!’

Flora tried in vain to soothe the excellent woman by explaining that

they were going home to dinner. Mr F.’s Aunt persisted in replying,

‘Bring him for’ard and I’ll chuck him out o’ winder!’ Having reiterated

this demand an immense number of times, with a sustained glare of

defiance at Little Dorrit, Mr F.’s Aunt folded her arms, and sat down in

the corner of the pie-shop parlour; steadfastly refusing to budge until

such time as ‘he’ should have been ‘brought for’ard,’ and the chucking

portion of his destiny accomplished.

In this condition of things, Flora confided to Little Dorrit that she

had not seen Mr F.’s Aunt so full of life and character for weeks; that

she would find it necessary to remain there ‘hours perhaps,’ until the

inexorable old lady could be softened; and that she could manage her

best alone. They parted, therefore, in the friendliest manner, and with

the kindest feeling on both sides.

Mr F.’s Aunt holding out like a grim fortress, and Flora becoming in

need of refreshment, a messenger was despatched to the hotel for the

tumbler already glanced at, which was afterwards replenished. With the

aid of its content, a newspaper, and some skimming of the cream of the

pie-stock, Flora got through the remainder of the day in perfect good

humour; though occasionally embarrassed by the consequences of an

idle rumour which circulated among the credulous infants of the

neighbourhood, to the effect that an old lady had sold herself to the

pie-shop to be made up, and was then sitting in the pie-shop parlour,

declining to complete her contract. This attracted so many young persons

of both sexes, and, when the shades of evening began to fall, occasioned

so much interruption to the business, that the merchant became very

pressing in his proposals that Mr F.’s Aunt should be removed. A

conveyance was accordingly brought to the door, which, by the joint

efforts of the merchant and Flora, this remarkable woman was at last

induced to enter; though not without even then putting her head out of

the window, and demanding to have him ‘brought for’ard’ for the purpose

originally mentioned. As she was observed at this time to direct baleful

glances towards the Marshalsea, it has been supposed that this admirably

consistent female intended by ‘him,’ Arthur Clennam. This, however, is

mere speculation; who the person was, who, for the satisfaction of Mr

F.’s Aunt’s mind, ought to have been brought forward and never was

brought forward, will never be positively known.

The autumn days went on, and Little Dorrit never came to the Marshalsea

now and went away without seeing him. No, no, no.

One morning, as Arthur listened for the light feet that every morning

ascended winged to his heart, bringing the heavenly brightness of a new

love into the room where the old love had wrought so hard and been so

true; one morning, as he listened, he heard her coming, not alone.

‘Dear Arthur,’ said her delighted voice outside the door, ‘I have some

one here. May I bring some one in?’

He had thought from the tread there were two with her. He answered

‘Yes,’ and she came in with Mr Meagles. Sun-browned and jolly Mr

Meagles looked, and he opened his arms and folded Arthur in them, like a

sun-browned and jolly father.

‘Now I am all right,’ said Mr Meagles, after a minute or so. ‘Now it’s

over. Arthur, my dear fellow, confess at once that you expected me

before.’

‘I did,’ said Arthur; ‘but Amy told me--’

‘Little Dorrit. Never any other name.’ (It was she who whispered it.)

‘--But my Little Dorrit told me that, without asking for any further

explanation, I was not to expect you until I saw you.’

‘And now you see me, my boy,’ said Mr Meagles, shaking him by the hand

stoutly; ‘and now you shall have any explanation and every explanation.

The fact is, I _was_ here--came straight to you from the Allongers

and Marshongers, or I should be ashamed to look you in the face this

day,--but you were not in company trim at the moment, and I had to start

off again to catch Doyce.’

‘Poor Doyce!’ sighed Arthur.

‘Don’t call him names that he don’t deserve,’ said Mr Meagles. ‘_He’s_

not poor; _he’s_ doing well enough. Doyce is a wonderful fellow over

there. I assure you he is making out his case like a house a-fire. He

has fallen on his legs, has Dan. Where they don’t want things done and

find a man to do ‘em, that man’s off his legs; but where they do want

things done and find a man to do ‘em, that man’s on his legs. You won’t

have occasion to trouble the Circumlocution Office any more. Let me tell

you, Dan has done without ‘em!’

‘What a load you take from my mind!’ cried Arthur. ‘What happiness you

give me!’

‘Happiness?’ retorted Mr Meagles. ‘Don’t talk about happiness till you

see Dan. I assure you Dan is directing works and executing labours over

yonder, that it would make your hair stand on end to look at. He’s no

public offender, bless you, now! He’s medalled and ribboned, and starred

and crossed, and I don’t-know-what all’d, like a born nobleman. But we

mustn’t talk about that over here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, egad!’ said Mr Meagles, shaking his head very seriously, ‘he must

hide all those things under lock and key when he comes over here. They

won’t do over here. In that particular, Britannia is a Britannia in the

Manger--won’t give her children such distinctions herself, and won’t

allow them to be seen when they are given by other countries. No, no,

Dan!’ said Mr Meagles, shaking his head again. ‘That won’t do here!’

‘If you had brought me (except for Doyce’s sake) twice what I have

lost,’ cried Arthur, ‘you would not have given me the pleasure that you

give me in this news.’

‘Why, of course, of course,’ assented Mr Meagles. ‘Of course I know

that, my good fellow, and therefore I come out with it in the first

burst. Now, to go back, about catching Doyce. I caught Doyce. Ran

against him among a lot of those dirty brown dogs in women’s nightcaps a

great deal too big for ‘em, calling themselves Arabs and all sorts of

incoherent races. _You_ know ‘em! Well! He was coming straight to me,

and I was going to him, and so we came back together.’

‘Doyce in England!’ exclaimed Arthur.

‘There!’ said Mr Meagles, throwing open his arms. ‘I am the worst man

in the world to manage a thing of this sort. I don’t know what I should

have done if I had been in the diplomatic line--right, perhaps! The long

and short of it is, Arthur, we have both been in England this fortnight.

And if you go on to ask where Doyce is at the present moment, why, my

plain answer is--here he is! And now I can breathe again at last!’

Doyce darted in from behind the door, caught Arthur by both hands, and

said the rest for himself.

‘There are only three branches of my subject, my dear Clennam,’ said

Doyce, proceeding to mould them severally, with his plastic thumb, on

the palm of his hand, ‘and they’re soon disposed of. First, not a word

more from you about the past. There was an error in your calculations.

I know what that is. It affects the whole machine, and failure is the

consequence. You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another

time. I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every

failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too

sensible a man not to learn from this failure. So much for firstly.

Secondly. I was sorry you should have taken it so heavily to heart, and

reproached yourself so severely; I was travelling home night and day

to put matters right, with the assistance of our friend, when I fell in

with our friend as he has informed you. Thirdly. We two agreed, that,

after what you had undergone, after your distress of mind, and after

your illness, it would be a pleasant surprise if we could so far keep

quiet as to get things perfectly arranged without your knowledge, and

then come and say that all the affairs were smooth, that everything was

right, that the business stood in greater want of you than ever it did,

and that a new and prosperous career was opened before you and me as

partners. That’s thirdly. But you know we always make an allowance for

friction, and so I have reserved space to close in. My dear Clennam,

I thoroughly confide in you; you have it in your power to be quite as

useful to me as I have, or have had, it in my power to be useful to you;

your old place awaits you, and wants you very much; there is nothing to

detain you here one half-hour longer.’

There was silence, which was not broken until Arthur had stood for some

time at the window with his back towards them, and until his little wife

that was to be had gone to him and stayed by him.

‘I made a remark a little while ago,’ said Daniel Doyce then, ‘which I

am inclined to think was an incorrect one. I said there was nothing

to detain you here, Clennam, half an hour longer. Am I mistaken in

supposing that you would rather not leave here till to-morrow morning?

Do I know, without being very wise, where you would like to go, direct

from these walls and from this room?’

‘You do,’ returned Arthur. ‘It has been our cherished purpose.’

‘Very well!’ said Doyce. ‘Then, if this young lady will do me the honour

of regarding me for four-and-twenty hours in the light of a father, and

will take a ride with me now towards Saint Paul’s Churchyard, I dare say

I know what we want to get there.’

Little Dorrit and he went out together soon afterwards, and Mr Meagles

lingered behind to say a word to his friend.

‘I think, Arthur, you will not want Mother and me in the morning and

we will keep away. It might set Mother thinking about Pet; she’s a

soft-hearted woman. She’s best at the Cottage, and I’ll stay there and

keep her company.’

With that they parted for the time. And the day ended, and the night

ended, and the morning came, and Little Dorrit, simply dressed as usual

and having no one with her but Maggy, came into the prison with the

sunshine. The poor room was a happy room that morning. Where in the

world was there a room so full of quiet joy!

‘My dear love,’ said Arthur. ‘Why does Maggy light the fire? We shall be

gone directly.’

‘I asked her to do it. I have taken such an odd fancy. I want you to

burn something for me.’

‘What?’

‘Only this folded paper. If you will put it in the fire with your own

hand, just as it is, my fancy will be gratified.’

‘Superstitious, darling Little Dorrit? Is it a charm?’

‘It is anything you like best, my own,’ she answered, laughing with

glistening eyes and standing on tiptoe to kiss him, ‘if you will only

humour me when the fire burns up.’

So they stood before the fire, waiting: Clennam with his arm about her

waist, and the fire shining, as fire in that same place had often shone,

in Little Dorrit’s eyes. ‘Is it bright enough now?’ said Arthur. ‘Quite

bright enough now,’ said Little Dorrit. ‘Does the charm want any words

to be said?’ asked Arthur, as he held the paper over the flame. ‘You can

say (if you don’t mind) “I love you!”’ answered Little Dorrit. So he said

it, and the paper burned away.

They passed very quietly along the yard; for no one was there, though

many heads were stealthily peeping from the windows. Only one face,

familiar of old, was in the Lodge. When they had both accosted it, and

spoken many kind words, Little Dorrit turned back one last time with her

hand stretched out, saying, ‘Good-bye, good John! I hope you will live

very happy, dear!’

Then they went up the steps of the neighbouring Saint George’s Church,

and went up to the altar, where Daniel Doyce was waiting in his paternal

character. And there was Little Dorrit’s old friend who had given her

the Burial Register for a pillow; full of admiration that she should

come back to them to be married, after all.

And they were married with the sun shining on them through the painted

figure of Our Saviour on the window. And they went into the very room

where Little Dorrit had slumbered after her party, to sign the Marriage

Register. And there, Mr Pancks, (destined to be chief clerk to Doyce and

Clennam, and afterwards partner in the house), sinking the Incendiary

in the peaceful friend, looked in at the door to see it done, with Flora

gallantly supported on one arm and Maggy on the other, and a back-ground

of John Chivery and father and other turnkeys who had run round for the

moment, deserting the parent Marshalsea for its happy child. Nor had

Flora the least signs of seclusion upon her, notwithstanding her recent

declaration; but, on the contrary, was wonderfully smart, and enjoyed

the ceremonies mightily, though in a fluttered way.

Little Dorrit’s old friend held the inkstand as she signed her name, and

the clerk paused in taking off the good clergyman’s surplice, and all

the witnesses looked on with special interest. ‘For, you see,’ said

Little Dorrit’s old friend, ‘this young lady is one of our curiosities,

and has come now to the third volume of our Registers. Her birth is in

what I call the first volume; she lay asleep, on this very floor,

with her pretty head on what I call the second volume; and she’s now

a-writing her little name as a bride in what I call the third volume.’

They all gave place when the signing was done, and Little Dorrit and her

husband walked out of the church alone. They paused for a moment on the

steps of the portico, looking at the fresh perspective of the street in

the autumn morning sun’s bright rays, and then went down.

Went down into a modest life of usefulness and happiness. Went down

to give a mother’s care, in the fulness of time, to Fanny’s neglected

children no less than to their own, and to leave that lady going into

Society for ever and a day. Went down to give a tender nurse and friend

to Tip for some few years, who was never vexed by the great exactions he

made of her in return for the riches he might have given her if he had

ever had them, and who lovingly closed his eyes upon the Marshalsea

and all its blighted fruits. They went quietly down into the roaring

streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine

and shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the froward and

the vain, fretted and chafed, and made their usual uproar.