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