Little Dorrit

He heard the thrill in her voice, he saw her earnest face, he saw her clear true eyes, he saw the quickened bosom that would have joyfully thrown itself before him to receive a mortal wound directed at his breast, with the dying cry, ‘I love him!’ and the remotest suspicion of the truth never dawned upon his mind. No. He saw the devoted little creature with her worn shoes, in her common dress, in her jail-home; a slender child in body, a strong heroine in soul; and the light of her domestic story made all else dark to him.

‘For those reasons assuredly, Little Dorrit, but for another too. So far removed, so different, and so much older, I am the better fitted for your friend and adviser. I mean, I am the more easily to be trusted; and any little constraint that you might feel with another, may vanish before me. Why have you kept so retired from me? Tell me.’

‘I am better here. My place and use are here. I am much better here,’ said Little Dorrit, faintly.

‘So you said that day upon the bridge. I thought of it much afterwards. Have you no secret you could entrust to me, with hope and comfort, if you would!’

‘Secret? No, I have no secret,’ said Little Dorrit in some trouble.

They had been speaking in low voices; more because it was natural to what they said to adopt that tone, than with any care to reserve it from Maggy at her work. All of a sudden Maggy stared again, and this time spoke:

‘I say! Little Mother!’

‘Yes, Maggy.’

‘If you an’t got no secret of your own to tell him, tell him that about the Princess. She had a secret, you know.’

‘The Princess had a secret?’ said Clennam, in some surprise. ‘What Princess was that, Maggy?’

‘Lor! How you do go and bother a gal of ten,’ said Maggy, ‘catching the poor thing up in that way. Whoever said the Princess had a secret? I never said so.’

‘I beg your pardon. I thought you did.’

‘No, I didn’t. How could I, when it was her as wanted to find it out? It was the little woman as had the secret, and she was always a spinning at her wheel. And so she says to her, why do you keep it there? And so the t’other one says to her, no I don’t; and so the t’other one says to her, yes you do; and then they both goes to the cupboard, and there it is. And she wouldn’t go into the Hospital, and so she died. You know, Little Mother; tell him that. For it was a reg’lar good secret, that was!’ cried Maggy, hugging herself.

Arthur looked at Little Dorrit for help to comprehend this, and was struck by seeing her so timid and red. But, when she told him that it was only a Fairy Tale she had one day made up for Maggy, and that there was nothing in it which she wouldn’t be ashamed to tell again to anybody else, even if she could remember it, he left the subject where it was.

However, he returned to his own subject by first entreating her to see him oftener, and to remember that it was impossible to have a stronger interest in her welfare than he had, or to be more set upon promoting it than he was. When she answered fervently, she well knew that, she never forgot it, he touched upon his second and more delicate point – the suspicion he had formed.

‘Little Dorrit,’ he said, taking her hand again, and speaking lower than he had spoken yet, so that even Maggy in the small room could not hear him, ‘another word. I have wanted very much to say this to you; I have tried for opportunities. Don’t mind me, who, for the matter of years, might be your father or your uncle. Always think of me as quite an old man. I know that all your devotion centres in this room, and that nothing to the last will ever tempt you away from the duties you discharge here. If I were not sure of it, I should, before now, have implored you, and implored your father, to let me make some provision for you in a more suitable place. But you may have an interest – I will not say, now, though even that might be – may have, at another time, an interest in some one else; an interest not incompatible with your affection here.’

She was very, very pale, and silently shook her head.

‘It may be, dear Little Dorrit.’

‘No. No. No.’ She shook her head, after each slow repetition of the word, with an air of quiet desolation that he remembered long afterwards. The time came when he remembered it well, long afterwards, within those prison walls; within that very room.

‘But, if it ever should be, tell me so, my dear child. Entrust the truth to me, point out the object of such an interest to me, and I will try with all the zeal, and honour, and friendship and respect that I feel for you, good Little Dorrit of my heart, to do you a lasting service.’

‘O thank you, thank you! But, O no, O no, O no!’ She said this, looking at him with her work-worn hands folded together, and in the same resigned accents as before.

‘I press for no confidence now. I only ask you to repose unhesitating trust in me.’

‘Can I do less than that, when you are so good!’

‘Then you will trust me fully? Will have no secret unhappiness, or anxiety, concealed from me?’

‘Almost none.’

‘And you have none now?’

She shook her head. But she was very pale.

‘When I lie down to-night, and my thoughts come back – as they will, for they do every night, even when I have not seen you – to this sad place, I may believe that there is no grief beyond this room, now, and its usual occupants, which preys on Little Dorrit’s mind?’

She seemed to catch at these words – that he remembered, too, long afterwards – and said, more brightly, ‘Yes, Mr Clennam; yes, you may!’

The crazy staircase, usually not slow to give notice when any one was coming up or down, here creaked under a quick tread, and a further sound was heard upon it, as if a little steam-engine with more steam than it knew what to do with, were working towards the room. As it approached, which it did very rapidly, it laboured with increased energy; and, after knocking at the door, it sounded as if it were stooping down and snorting in at the keyhole.

Before Maggy could open the door, Mr Pancks, opening it from without, stood without a hat and with his bare head in the wildest condition, looking at Clennam and Little Dorrit, over her shoulder. He had a lighted cigar in his hand, and brought with him airs of ale and tobacco smoke.

‘Pancks the gipsy,’ he observed out of breath, ‘fortune-telling.’

He stood dingily smiling, and breathing hard at them, with a most curious air; as if, instead of being his proprietor’s grubber, he were the triumphant proprietor of the Marshalsea, the Marshal, all the turnkeys, and all the Collegians. In his great self-satisfaction he put his cigar to his lips (being evidently no smoker), and took such a pull at it, with his right eye shut up tight for the purpose, that he underwent a convulsion of shuddering and choking. But even in the midst of that paroxysm, he still essayed to repeat his favourite introduction of himself, ‘Pa-ancks the gi-ipsy, fortune-telling.’

‘I am spending the evening with the rest of ‘em,’ said Pancks. ‘I’ve been singing. I’ve been taking a part in White sand and grey sand. I don’t know anything about it. Never mind. I’ll take any part in anything. It’s all the same, if you’re loud enough.’

At first Clennam supposed him to be intoxicated. But he soon perceived that though he might be a little the worse (or better) for ale, the staple of his excitement was not brewed from malt, or distilled from any grain or berry.

‘How d’ye do, Miss Dorrit?’ said Pancks. ‘I thought you wouldn’t mind my running round, and looking in for a moment. Mr Clennam I heard was here, from Mr Dorrit. How are you, Sir?’

Clennam thanked him, and said he was glad to see him so gay.

‘Gay!’ said Pancks. ‘I’m in wonderful feather, sir. I can’t stop a minute, or I shall be missed, and I don’t want ‘em to miss me. – Eh, Miss Dorrit?’

He seemed to have an insatiate delight in appealing to her and looking at her; excitedly sticking his hair up at the same moment, like a dark species of cockatoo.

‘I haven’t been here half an hour. I knew Mr Dorrit was in the chair, and I said, “I’ll go and support him!” I ought to be down in Bleeding Heart Yard by rights; but I can worry them to-morrow. – Eh, Miss Dorrit?’

His little black eyes sparkled electrically. His very hair seemed to sparkle as he roughened it. He was in that highly-charged state that one might have expected to draw sparks and snaps from him by presenting a knuckle to any part of his figure.

‘Capital company here,’ said Pancks. – ‘Eh, Miss Dorrit?’

She was half afraid of him, and irresolute what to say. He laughed, with a nod towards Clennam.

‘Don’t mind him, Miss Dorrit. He’s one of us. We agreed that you shouldn’t take on to mind me before people, but we didn’t mean Mr Clennam. He’s one of us. He’s in it. An’t you, Mr Clennam? – Eh, Miss Dorrit?’

The excitement of this strange creature was fast communicating itself to Clennam. Little Dorrit with amazement, saw this, and observed that they exchanged quick looks.

‘I was making a remark,’ said Pancks, ‘but I declare I forget what it was. Oh, I know! Capital company here. I’ve been treating ‘em all round. – Eh, Miss Dorrit?’

‘Very generous of you,’ she returned, noticing another of the quick looks between the two.

‘Not at all,’ said Pancks. ‘Don’t mention it. I’m coming into my property, that’s the fact. I can afford to be liberal. I think I’ll give ‘em a treat here. Tables laid in the yard. Bread in stacks. Pipes in faggots. Tobacco in hayloads. Roast beef and plum-pudding for every one. Quart of double stout a head. Pint of wine too, if they like it, and the authorities give permission. – Eh, Miss Dorrit?’

She was thrown into such a confusion by his manner, or rather by Clennam’s growing understanding of his manner (for she looked to him after every fresh appeal and cockatoo demonstration on the part of Mr Pancks), that she only moved her lips in answer, without forming any word.

‘And oh, by-the-bye!’ said Pancks, ‘you were to live to know what was behind us on that little hand of yours. And so you shall, you shall, my darling. – Eh, Miss Dorrit?’

He had suddenly checked himself. Where he got all the additional black prongs from, that now flew up all over his head like the myriads of points that break out in the large change of a great firework, was a wonderful mystery.

‘But I shall be missed;’ he came back to that; ‘and I don’t want ‘em to miss me. Mr Clennam, you and I made a bargain. I said you should find me stick to it. You shall find me stick to it now, sir, if you’ll step out of the room a moment. Miss Dorrit, I wish you good night. Miss Dorrit, I wish you good fortune.’

He rapidly shook her by both hands, and puffed down stairs. Arthur followed him with such a hurried step, that he had very nearly tumbled over him on the last landing, and rolled him down into the yard.

‘What is it, for Heaven’s sake!’ Arthur demanded, when they burst out there both together.

‘Stop a moment, sir. Mr Rugg. Let me introduce him.’

With those words he presented another man without a hat, and also with a cigar, and also surrounded with a halo of ale and tobacco smoke, which man, though not so excited as himself, was in a state which would have been akin to lunacy but for its fading into sober method when compared with the rampancy of Mr Pancks.

‘Mr Clennam, Mr Rugg,’ said Pancks. ‘Stop a moment. Come to the pump.’

They adjourned to the pump. Mr Pancks, instantly putting his head under the spout, requested Mr Rugg to take a good strong turn at the handle. Mr Rugg complying to the letter, Mr Pancks came forth snorting and blowing to some purpose, and dried himself on his handkerchief.

‘I am the clearer for that,’ he gasped to Clennam standing astonished. ‘But upon my soul, to hear her father making speeches in that chair, knowing what we know, and to see her up in that room in that dress, knowing what we know, is enough to – give me a back, Mr Rugg – a little higher, sir, – that’ll do!’

Then and there, on that Marshalsea pavement, in the shades of evening, did Mr Pancks, of all mankind, fly over the head and shoulders of Mr Rugg of Pentonville, General Agent, Accountant, and Recoverer of Debts. Alighting on his feet, he took Clennam by the button-hole, led him behind the pump, and pantingly produced from his pocket a bundle of papers.

Mr Rugg, also, pantingly produced from his pocket a bundle of papers.

‘Stay!’ said Clennam in a whisper.‘You have made a discovery.’

Mr Pancks answered, with an unction which there is no language to convey, ‘We rather think so.’

‘Does it implicate any one?’

‘How implicate, sir?’

‘In any suppression or wrong dealing of any kind?’

‘Not a bit of it.’

‘Thank God!’ said Clennam to himself. ‘Now show me.’

‘You are to understand’ – snorted Pancks, feverishly unfolding papers, and speaking in short high-pressure blasts of sentences, ‘Where’s the Pedigree? Where’s Schedule number four, Mr Rugg? Oh! all right! Here we are. – You are to understand that we are this very day virtually complete. We shan’t be legally for a day or two. Call it at the outside a week. We’ve been at it night and day for I don’t know how long. Mr Rugg, you know how long? Never mind. Don’t say. You’ll only confuse me. You shall tell her, Mr Clennam. Not till we give you leave. Where’s that rough total, Mr Rugg? Oh! Here we are! There sir! That’s what you’ll have to break to her. That man’s your Father of the Marshalsea!’

CHAPTER 33. Mrs Merdle’s Complaint

Resigning herself to inevitable fate by making the best of those people, the Miggleses, and submitting her philosophy to the draught upon it, of which she had foreseen the likelihood in her interview with Arthur, Mrs Gowan handsomely resolved not to oppose her son’s marriage. In her progress to, and happy arrival at, this resolution, she was possibly influenced, not only by her maternal affections but by three politic considerations.

Of these, the first may have been that her son had never signified the smallest intention to ask her consent, or any mistrust of his ability to dispense with it; the second, that the pension bestowed upon her by a grateful country (and a Barnacle) would be freed from any little filial inroads, when her Henry should be married to the darling only child of a man in very easy circumstances; the third, that Henry’s debts must clearly be paid down upon the altar-railing by his father-in-law. When, to these three-fold points of prudence there is added the fact that Mrs Gowan yielded her consent the moment she knew of Mr Meagles having yielded his, and that Mr Meagles’s objection to the marriage had been the sole obstacle in its way all along, it becomes the height of probability that the relict of the deceased Commissioner of nothing particular, turned these ideas in her sagacious mind.

Among her connections and acquaintances, however, she maintained her individual dignity and the dignity of the blood of the Barnacles, by diligently nursing the pretence that it was a most unfortunate business; that she was sadly cut up by it; that this was a perfect fascination under which Henry laboured; that she had opposed it for a long time, but what could a mother do; and the like. She had already called Arthur Clennam to bear witness to this fable, as a friend of the Meagles family; and she followed up the move by now impounding the family itself for the same purpose. In the first interview she accorded to Mr Meagles, she slided herself into the position of disconsolately but gracefully yielding to irresistible pressure. With the utmost politeness and good-breeding, she feigned that it was she – not he – who had made the difficulty, and who at length gave way; and that the sacrifice was hers – not his. The same feint, with the same polite dexterity, she foisted on Mrs Meagles, as a conjuror might have forced a card on that innocent lady; and, when her future daughter-in-law was presented to her by her son, she said on embracing her, ‘My dear, what have you done to Henry that has bewitched him so!’ at the same time allowing a few tears to carry before them, in little pills, the cosmetic powder on her nose; as a delicate but touching signal that she suffered much inwardly for the show of composure with which she bore her misfortune.

Among the friends of Mrs Gowan (who piqued herself at once on being Society, and on maintaining intimate and easy relations with that Power), Mrs Merdle occupied a front row. True, the Hampton Court Bohemians, without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an upstart; but they turned them down again, by falling flat on their faces to worship his wealth. In which compensating adjustment of their noses, they were pretty much like Treasury, Bar, and Bishop, and all the rest of them.

To Mrs Merdle, Mrs Gowan repaired on a visit of self-condolence, after having given the gracious consent aforesaid. She drove into town for the purpose in a one-horse carriage irreverently called at that period of English history, a pill-box. It belonged to a job-master in a small way, who drove it himself, and who jobbed it by the day, or hour, to most of the old ladies in Hampton Court Palace; but it was a point of ceremony, in that encampment, that the whole equipage should be tacitly regarded as the private property of the jobber for the time being, and that the job-master should betray personal knowledge of nobody but the jobber in possession. So the Circumlocution Barnacles, who were the largest job-masters in the universe, always pretended to know of no other job but the job immediately in hand.

Mrs Merdle was at home, and was in her nest of crimson and gold, with the parrot on a neighbouring stem watching her with his head on one side, as if he took her for another splendid parrot of a larger species. To whom entered Mrs Gowan, with her favourite green fan, which softened the light on the spots of bloom.

‘My dear soul,’ said Mrs Gowan, tapping the back of her friend’s hand with this fan after a little indifferent conversation, ‘you are my only comfort. That affair of Henry’s that I told you of, is to take place. Now, how does it strike you? I am dying to know, because you represent and express Society so well.’

Mrs Merdle reviewed the bosom which Society was accustomed to review; and having ascertained that show-window of Mr Merdle’s and the London jewellers’ to be in good order, replied:

‘As to marriage on the part of a man, my dear, Society requires that he should retrieve his fortunes by marriage. Society requires that he should gain by marriage. Society requires that he should found a handsome establishment by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise, what he has to do with marriage. Bird, be quiet!’

For the parrot on his cage above them, presiding over the conference as if he were a judge (and indeed he looked rather like one), had wound up the exposition with a shriek.

‘Cases there are,’ said Mrs Merdle, delicately crooking the little finger of her favourite hand, and making her remarks neater by that neat action; ‘cases there are where a man is not young or elegant, and is rich, and has a handsome establishment already. Those are of a different kind. In such cases – ’

Mrs Merdle shrugged her snowy shoulders and put her hand upon the jewel-stand, checking a little cough, as though to add, ‘why, a man looks out for this sort of thing, my dear.’ Then the parrot shrieked again, and she put up her glass to look at him, and said, ‘Bird! Do be quiet!’

‘But, young men,’ resumed Mrs Merdle, ‘and by young men you know what I mean, my love – I mean people’s sons who have the world before them – they must place themselves in a better position towards Society by marriage, or Society really will not have any patience with their making fools of themselves. Dreadfully worldly all this sounds,’ said Mrs Merdle, leaning back in her nest and putting up her glass again, ‘does it not?’

‘But it is true,’ said Mrs Gowan, with a highly moral air.

‘My dear, it is not to be disputed for a moment,’ returned Mrs Merdle; ‘because Society has made up its mind on the subject, and there is nothing more to be said. If we were in a more primitive state, if we lived under roofs of leaves, and kept cows and sheep and creatures instead of banker’s accounts (which would be delicious; my dear, I am pastoral to a degree, by nature), well and good. But we don’t live under leaves, and keep cows and sheep and creatures. I perfectly exhaust myself sometimes, in pointing out the distinction to Edmund Sparkler.’

Mrs Gowan, looking over her green fan when this young gentleman’s name was mentioned, replied as follows:

‘My love, you know the wretched state of the country – those unfortunate concessions of John Barnacle’s! – and you therefore know the reasons for my being as poor as Thingummy.’

‘A church mouse?’ Mrs Merdle suggested with a smile.

‘I was thinking of the other proverbial church person – Job,’ said Mrs Gowan. ‘Either will do. It would be idle to disguise, consequently, that there is a wide difference between the position of your son and mine. I may add, too, that Henry has talent – ’

‘Which Edmund certainly has not,’ said Mrs Merdle, with the greatest suavity.

‘ – and that his talent, combined with disappointment,’ Mrs Gowan went on, ‘has led him into a pursuit which – ah dear me! You know, my dear. Such being Henry’s different position, the question is what is the most inferior class of marriage to which I can reconcile myself.’

Mrs Merdle was so much engaged with the contemplation of her arms (beautiful-formed arms, and the very thing for bracelets), that she omitted to reply for a while. Roused at length by the silence, she folded the arms, and with admirable presence of mind looked her friend full in the face, and said interrogatively, ‘Ye-es? And then?’

‘And then, my dear,’ said Mrs Gowan not quite so sweetly as before, ‘I should be glad to hear what you have to say to it.’

Here the parrot, who had been standing on one leg since he screamed last, burst into a fit of laughter, bobbed himself derisively up and down on both legs, and finished by standing on one leg again, and pausing for a reply, with his head as much awry as he could possibly twist it.

‘Sounds mercenary to ask what the gentleman is to get with the lady,’ said Mrs Merdle; ‘but Society is perhaps a little mercenary, you know, my dear.’

‘From what I can make out,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘I believe I may say that Henry will be relieved from debt – ’

‘Much in debt?’ asked Mrs Merdle through her eyeglass.

‘Why tolerably, I should think,’ said Mrs Gowan.

‘Meaning the usual thing; I understand; just so,’ Mrs Merdle observed in a comfortable sort of way.

‘And that the father will make them an allowance of three hundred a-year, or perhaps altogether something more, which, in Italy-’

‘Oh! Going to Italy?’ said Mrs Merdle.

‘For Henry to study. You need be at no loss to guess why, my dear. That dreadful Art – ’

True. Mrs Merdle hastened to spare the feelings of her afflicted friend. She understood. Say no more!

‘And that,’ said Mrs Gowan, shaking her despondent head, ‘that’s all. That,’ repeated Mrs Gowan, furling her green fan for the moment, and tapping her chin with it (it was on the way to being a double chin; might be called a chin and a half at present), ‘that’s all! On the death of the old people, I suppose there will be more to come; but how it may be restricted or locked up, I don’t know. And as to that, they may live for ever. My dear, they are just the kind of people to do it.’

Now, Mrs Merdle, who really knew her friend Society pretty well, and who knew what Society’s mothers were, and what Society’s daughters were, and what Society’s matrimonial market was, and how prices ruled in it, and what scheming and counter-scheming took place for the high buyers, and what bargaining and huckstering went on, thought in the depths of her capacious bosom that this was a sufficiently good catch. Knowing, however, what was expected of her, and perceiving the exact nature of the fiction to be nursed, she took it delicately in her arms, and put her required contribution of gloss upon it.

‘And that is all, my dear?’ said she, heaving a friendly sigh. ‘Well, well! The fault is not yours. You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You must exercise the strength of mind for which you are renowned, and make the best of it.’

‘The girl’s family have made,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘of course, the most strenuous endeavours to – as the lawyers say – to have and to hold Henry.’