Little Dorrit

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Unwilling, even under this discomfiture, to resign the ingrate and
leave her hopeless, in case of her better dispositions obtaining
the mastery over the darker side of her character, Mr Meagles, for
six successive days, published a discreetly covert advertisement in
the morning papers, to the effect that if a certain young person
who had lately left home without reflection, would at any time
apply to his address at Twickenham, everything would be as it had
been before, and no reproaches need be apprehended. The unexpected
consequences of this notification suggested to the dismayed Mr
Meagles for the first time that some hundreds of young persons must
be leaving their homes without reflection every day; for shoals of
wrong young people came down to Twickenham, who, not finding
themselves received with enthusiasm, generally demanded
compensation by way of damages, in addition to coach-hire there and
back. Nor were these the only uninvited clients whom the
advertisement produced. The swarm of begging-letter writers, who
would seem to be always watching eagerly for any hook, however
small, to hang a letter upon, wrote to say that having seen the
advertisement, they were induced to apply with confidence for
various sums, ranging from ten shillings to fifty pounds: not
because they knew anything about the young person, but because they
felt that to part with those donations would greatly relieve the
advertiser's mind. Several projectors, likewise, availed
themselves of the same opportunity to correspond with Mr Meagles;
as, for example, to apprise him that their attention having been
called to the advertisement by a friend, they begged to state that
if they should ever hear anything of the young person, they would
not fail to make it known to him immediately, and that in the
meantime if he would oblige them with the funds necessary for
bringing to perfection a certain entirely novel description of
Pump, the happiest results would ensue to mankind.

Mr Meagles and his family, under these combined discouragements,
had begun reluctantly to give up Tattycoram as irrecoverable, when
the new and active firm of Doyce and Clennam, in their private
capacities, went down on a Saturday to stay at the cottage until
Monday. The senior partner took the coach, and the junior partner
took his walking-stick.

A tranquil summer sunset shone upon him as he approached the end of
his walk, and passed through the meadows by the river side. He had
that sense of peace, and of being lightened of a weight of care,
which country quiet awakens in the breasts of dwellers in towns.
Everything within his view was lovely and placid. The rich foliage
of the trees, the luxuriant grass diversified with wild flowers,
the little green islands in the river, the beds of rushes, the
water-lilies floating on the surface of the stream, the distant
voices in boats borne musically towards him on the ripple of the
water and the evening air, were all expressive of rest. In the
occasional leap of a fish, or dip of an oar, or twittering of a
bird not yet at roost, or distant barking of a dog, or lowing of a
cow--in all such sounds, there was the prevailing breath of rest,
which seemed to encompass him in every scent that sweetened the
fragrant air. The long lines of red and gold in the sky, and the
glorious track of the descending sun, were all divinely calm. Upon
the purple tree-tops far away, and on the green height near at hand
up which the shades were slowly creeping, there was an equal hush.
Between the real landscape and its shadow in the water, there was
no division; both were so untroubled and clear, and, while so
fraught with solemn mystery of life and death, so hopefully
reassuring to the gazer's soothed heart, because so tenderly and
mercifully beautiful.

Clennam had stopped, not for the first time by many times, to look
about him and suffer what he saw to sink into his soul, as the
shadows, looked at, seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the
water. He was slowly resuming his way, when he saw a figure in the
path before him which he had, perhaps, already associated with the
evening and its impressions.

Minnie was there, alone. She had some roses in her hand, and
seemed to have stood still on seeing him, waiting for him. Her
face was towards him, and she appeared to have been coming from the
opposite direction. There was a flutter in her manner, which
Clennam had never seen in it before; and as he came near her, it
entered his mind all at once that she was there of a set purpose to
speak to him.

She gave him her hand, and said, 'You wonder to see me here by
myself? But the evening is so lovely, I have strolled further than
I meant at first. I thought it likely I might meet you, and that
made me more confident. You always come this way, do you not?'

As Clennam said that it was his favourite way, he felt her hand
falter on his arm, and saw the roses shake.

'Will you let me give you one, Mr Clennam? I gathered them as I
came out of the garden. Indeed, I almost gathered them for you,
thinking it so likely I might meet you. Mr Doyce arrived more than
an hour ago, and told us you were walking down.'

His own hand shook, as he accepted a rose or two from hers and
thanked her. They were now by an avenue of trees. Whether they
turned into it on his movement or on hers matters little. He never
knew how that was.

'It is very grave here,' said Clennam, 'but very pleasant at this
hour. Passing along this deep shade, and out at that arch of light
at the other end, we come upon the ferry and the cottage by the
best approach, I think.'
In her simple garden-hat and her light summer dress, with her rich
brown hair naturally clustering about her, and her wonderful eyes
raised to his for a moment with a look in which regard for him and
trustfulness in him were strikingly blended with a kind of timid
sorrow for him, she was so beautiful that it was well for his
peace--or ill for his peace, he did not quite know which--that he
had made that vigorous resolution he had so often thought about.

She broke a momentary silence by inquiring if he knew that papa had
been thinking of another tour abroad? He said he had heard it
mentioned. She broke another momentary silence by adding, with
some hesitation, that papa had abandoned the idea.

At this, he thought directly, 'they are to be married.'

'Mr Clennam,' she said, hesitating more timidly yet, and speaking
so low that he bent his head to hear her. 'I should very much like
to give you my confidence, if you would not mind having the
goodness to receive it. I should have very much liked to have
given it to you long ago, because--I felt that you were becoming so
much our friend.'

'How can I be otherwise than proud of it at any time! Pray give it
to me. Pray trust me.'

'I could never have been afraid of trusting you,' she returned,
raising her eyes frankly to his face. 'I think I would have done
so some time ago, if I had known how. But I scarcely know how,
even now.'

'Mr Gowan,' said Arthur Clennam, 'has reason to be very happy. God
bless his wife and him!'

She wept, as she tried to thank him. He reassured her, took her
hand as it lay with the trembling roses in it on his arm, took the
remaining roses from it, and put it to his lips. At that time, it
seemed to him, he first finally resigned the dying hope that had
flickered in nobody's heart so much to its pain and trouble; and
from that time he became in his own eyes, as to any similar hope or
prospect, a very much older man who had done with that part of
life.

He put the roses in his breast and they walked on for a little
while, slowly and silently, under the umbrageous trees. Then he
asked her, in a voice of cheerful kindness, was there anything else
that she would say to him as her friend and her father's friend,
many years older than herself; was there any trust she would repose
in him, any service she would ask of him, any little aid to her
happiness that she could give him the lasting gratification of
believing it was in his power to render?

She was going to answer, when she was so touched by some little
hidden sorrow or sympathy--what could it have been?--that she said,
bursting into tears again: 'O Mr Clennam! Good, generous, Mr
Clennam, pray tell me you do not blame me.'

'I blame you?' said Clennam. 'My dearest girl! I blame you? No!'

After clasping both her hands upon his arm, and looking
confidentially up into his face, with some hurried words to the
effect that she thanked him from her heart (as she did, if it be
the source of earnestness), she gradually composed herself, with
now and then a word of encouragement from him, as they walked on
slowly and almost silently under the darkening trees.

'And, now, Minnie Gowan,' at length said Clennam, smiling; 'will
you ask me nothing?'

'Oh! I have very much to ask of you.'

'That's well! I hope so; I am not disappointed.'

'You know how I am loved at home, and how I love home. You can
hardly think it perhaps, dear Mr Clennam,' she spoke with great
agitation, 'seeing me going from it of my own free will and choice,
but I do so dearly love it!'

'I am sure of that,' said Clennam. 'Can you suppose I doubt it?'

'No, no. But it is strange, even to me, that loving it so much and
being so much beloved in it, I can bear to cast it away. It seems
so neglectful of it, so unthankful.'

'My dear girl,' said Clennam, 'it is in the natural progress and
change of time. All homes are left so.'

'Yes, I know; but all homes are not left with such a blank in them
as there will be in mine when I am gone. Not that there is any
scarcity of far better and more endearing and more accomplished
girls than I am; not that I am much, but that they have made so
much of me!'

Pet's affectionate heart was overcharged, and she sobbed while she
pictured what would happen.

'I know what a change papa will feel at first, and I know that at
first I cannot be to him anything like what I have been these many
years. And it is then, Mr Clennam, then more than at any time,
that I beg and entreat you to remember him, and sometimes to keep
him company when you can spare a little while; and to tell him that
you know I was fonder of him when I left him, than I ever was in
all my life. For there is nobody--he told me so himself when he
talked to me this very day--there is nobody he likes so well as
you, or trusts so much.'

A clue to what had passed between the father and daughter dropped
like a heavy stone into the well of Clennam's heart, and swelled
the water to his eyes. He said, cheerily, but not quite so
cheerily as he tried to say, that it should be done--that he gave
her his faithful promise.

'If I do not speak of mama,' said Pet, more moved by, and more
pretty in, her innocent grief, than Clennam could trust himself
even to consider--for which reason he counted the trees between
them and the fading light as they slowly diminished in number--'it
is because mama will understand me better in this action, and will
feel my loss in a different way, and will look forward in a
different manner. But you know what a dear, devoted mother she is,
and you will remember her too; will you not?'

Let Minnie trust him, Clennam said, let Minnie trust him to do all
she wished.

'And, dear Mr Clennam,' said Minnie, 'because papa and one whom I
need not name, do not fully appreciate and understand one another
yet, as they will by-and-by; and because it will be the duty, and
the pride, and pleasure of my new life, to draw them to a better
knowledge of one another, and to be a happiness to one another, and
to be proud of one another, and to love one another, both loving me
so dearly; oh, as you are a kind, true man! when I am first
separated from home (I am going a long distance away), try to
reconcile papa to him a little more, and use your great influence
to keep him before papa's mind free from prejudice and in his real
form. Will you do this for me, as you are a noble-hearted friend?'

Poor Pet! Self-deceived, mistaken child! When were such changes
ever made in men's natural relations to one another: when was such
reconcilement of ingrain differences ever effected! It has been
tried many times by other daughters, Minnie; it has never
succeeded; nothing has ever come of it but failure.

So Clennam thought. So he did not say; it was too late. He bound
himself to do all she asked, and she knew full well that he would
do it.

They were now at the last tree in the avenue. She stopped, and
withdrew her arm. Speaking to him with her eyes lifted up to his,
and with the hand that had lately rested on his sleeve trembling by
touching one of the roses in his breast as an additional appeal to
him, she said:

'Dear Mr Clennam, in my happiness--for I am happy, though you have
seen me crying--I cannot bear to leave any cloud between us. If
you have anything to forgive me (not anything that I have wilfully
done, but any trouble I may have caused you without meaning it, or
having it in my power to help it), forgive me to-night out of your
noble heart!'

He stooped to meet the guileless face that met his without
shrinking. He kissed it, and answered, Heaven knew that he had
nothing to forgive. As he stooped to meet the innocent face once
again, she whispered, 'Good-bye!' and he repeated it. It was
taking leave of all his old hopes--all nobody's old restless
doubts. They came out of the avenue next moment, arm-in-arm as
they had entered it: and the trees seemed to close up behind them
in the darkness, like their own perspective of the past.

The voices of Mr and Mrs Meagles and Doyce were audible directly,
speaking near the garden gate. Hearing Pet's name among them,
Clennam called out, 'She is here, with me.' There was some little
wondering and laughing until they came up; but as soon as they had
all come together, it ceased, and Pet glided away.

Mr Meagles, Doyce, and Clennam, without speaking, walked up and
down on the brink of the river, in the light of the rising moon,
for a few minutes; and then Doyce lingered behind, and went into
the house. Mr Meagles and Clennam walked up and down together for
a few minutes more without speaking, until at length the former
broke silence.

'Arthur,' said he, using that familiar address for the first time
in their communication, 'do you remember my telling you, as we
walked up and down one hot morning, looking over the harbour at
Marseilles, that Pet's baby sister who was dead seemed to Mother
and me to have grown as she had grown, and changed as she had
changed?'

'Very well.'

'You remember my saying that our thoughts had never been able to
separate those twin sisters, and that, in our fancy, whatever Pet
was, the other was?'

'Yes, very well.'

'Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, much subdued, 'I carry that fancy
further to-night. I feel to-night, my dear fellow, as if you had
loved my dead child very tenderly, and had lost her when she was
like what Pet is now.'

'Thank you!' murmured Clennam, 'thank you!' And pressed his hand.

'Will you come in?' said Mr Meagles, presently.

'In a little while.'

Mr Meagles fell away, and he was left alone. When he had walked on
the river's brink in the peaceful moonlight for some half an hour,
he put his hand in his breast and tenderly took out the handful of
roses. Perhaps he put them to his heart, perhaps he put them to
his lips, but certainly he bent down on the shore and gently
launched them on the flowing river. Pale and unreal in the
moonlight, the river floated them away.
The lights were bright within doors when he entered, and the faces
on which they shone, his own face not excepted, were soon quietly
cheerful. They talked of many subjects (his partner never had had
such a ready store to draw upon for the beguiling of the time), and
so to bed, and to sleep. While the flowers, pale and unreal in the
moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things
that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to
the eternal seas.

CHAPTER 29

Mrs Flintwinch goes on Dreaming

The house in the city preserved its heavy dulness through all these
transactions, and the invalid within it turned the same unvarying
round of life. Morning, noon, and night, morning, noon, and night,
each recurring with its accompanying monotony, always the same
reluctant return of the same sequences of machinery, like a
dragging piece of clockwork.

The wheeled chair had its associated remembrances and reveries, one
may suppose, as every place that is made the station of a human
being has. Pictures of demolished streets and altered houses, as
they formerly were when the occupant of the chair was familiar with
them, images of people as they too used to be, with little or no
allowance made for the lapse of time since they were seen; of
these, there must have been many in the long routine of gloomy
days. To stop the clock of busy existence at the hour when we were
personally sequestered from it, to suppose mankind stricken
motionless when we were brought to a stand-still, to be unable to
measure the changes beyond our view by any larger standard than the
shrunken one of our own uniform and contracted existence, is the
infirmity of many invalids, and the mental unhealthiness of almost
all recluses.

What scenes and actors the stern woman most reviewed, as she sat
from season to season in her one dark room, none knew but herself.
Mr Flintwinch, with his wry presence brought to bear upon her daily
like some eccentric mechanical force, would perhaps have screwed it
out of her, if there had been less resistance in her; but she was
too strong for him. So far as Mistress Affery was concerned, to
regard her liege-lord and her disabled mistress with a face of
blank wonder, to go about the house after dark with her apron over
her head, always to listen for the strange noises and sometimes to
hear them, and never to emerge from her ghostly, dreamy, sleep-
waking state, was occupation enough for her.

There was a fair stroke of business doing, as Mistress Affery made
out, for her husband had abundant occupation in his little office,
and saw more people than had been used to come there for some
years. This might easily be, the house having been long deserted;
but he did receive letters, and comers, and keep books, and
correspond. Moreover, he went about to other counting-houses, and
to wharves, and docks, and to the Custom House,' and to Garraway's
Coffee House, and the Jerusalem Coffee House, and on 'Change; so
that he was much in and out. He began, too, sometimes of an
evening, when Mrs Clennam expressed no particular wish for his
society, to resort to a tavern in the neighbourhood to look at the
shipping news and closing prices in the evening paper, and even to
exchange Small socialities with mercantile Sea Captains who
frequented that establishment. At some period of every day, he and
Mrs Clennam held a council on matters of business; and it appeared
to Affery, who was always groping about, listening and watching,
that the two clever ones were making money.

The state of mind into which Mr Flintwinch's dazed lady had fallen,
had now begun to be so expressed in all her looks and actions that
she was held in very low account by the two clever ones, as a
person, never of strong intellect, who was becoming foolish.
Perhaps because her appearance was not of a commercial cast, or
perhaps because it occurred to him that his having taken her to
wife might expose his judgment to doubt in the minds of customers,
Mr Flintwinch laid his commands upon her that she should hold her
peace on the subject of her conjugal relations, and should no
longer call him Jeremiah out of the domestic trio. Her frequent
forgetfulness of this admonition intensified her startled manner,
since Mr Flintwinch's habit of avenging himself on her remissness
by making springs after her on the staircase, and shaking her,
occasioned her to be always nervously uncertain when she might be
thus waylaid next.

Little Dorrit had finished a long day's work in Mrs Clennam's room,
and was neatly gathering up her shreds and odds and ends before
going home. Mr Pancks, whom Affery had just shown in, was
addressing an inquiry to Mrs Clennam on the subject of her health,
coupled with the remark that, 'happening to find himself in that
direction,' he had looked in to inquire, on behalf of his
proprietor, how she found herself. Mrs Clennam, with a deep
contraction of her brows, was looking at him.

'Mr Casby knows,' said she, 'that I am not subject to changes. The
change that I await here is the great change.'

'Indeed, ma'am?' returned Mr Pancks, with a wandering eye towards
the figure of the little seamstress on her knee picking threads and
fraying of her work from the carpet. 'You look nicely, ma'am.'

'I bear what I have to bear,' she answered. 'Do you what you have
to do.'
'Thank you, ma'am,' said Mr Pancks, 'such is my endeavour.'

'You are often in this direction, are you not?' asked Mrs Clennam.

'Why, yes, ma'am,' said Pancks, 'rather so lately; I have lately
been round this way a good deal, owing to one thing and another.'
'Beg Mr Casby and his daughter not to trouble themselves, by
deputy, about me. When they wish to see me, they know I am here to
see them. They have no need to trouble themselves to send. You
have no need to trouble yourself to come.'
'Not the least trouble, ma'am,' said Mr Pancks. 'You really are
looking uncommonly nicely, ma'am.'

'Thank you. Good evening.'

The dismissal, and its accompanying finger pointed straight at the
door, was so curt and direct that Mr Pancks did not see his way to
prolong his visit. He stirred up his hair with his sprightliest
expression, glanced at the little figure again, said 'Good evening,
ma 'am; don't come down, Mrs Affery, I know the road to the door,'
and steamed out. Mrs Clennam, her chin resting on her hand,
followed him with attentive and darkly distrustful eyes; and Affery
stood looking at her as if she were spell-bound.

Slowly and thoughtfully, Mrs Clennam's eyes turned from the door by
which Pancks had gone out, to Little Dorrit, rising from the
carpet. With her chin drooping more heavily on her hand, and her
eyes vigilant and lowering, the sick woman sat looking at her until
she attracted her attention. Little Dorrit coloured under such a
gaze, and looked down. Mrs Clennam still sat intent.

'Little Dorrit,' she said, when she at last broke silence, 'what do
you know of that man?'

'I don't know anything of him, ma'am, except that I have seen him
about, and that he has spoken to me.'

'What has he said to you?'

'I don't understand what he has said, he is so strange. But
nothing rough or disagreeable.'

'Why does he come here to see you?'

'I don't know, ma'am,' said Little Dorrit, with perfect frankness.

'You know that he does come here to see you?'

'I have fancied so,' said Little Dorrit. 'But why he should come
here or anywhere for that, ma'am, I can't think.'

Mrs Clennam cast her eyes towards the ground, and with her strong,
set face, as intent upon a subject in her mind as it had lately
been upon the form that seemed to pass out of her view, sat
absorbed. Some minutes elapsed before she came out of this
thoughtfulness, and resumed her hard composure.

Little Dorrit in the meanwhile had been waiting to go, but afraid
to disturb her by moving. She now ventured to leave the spot where
she had been standing since she had risen, and to pass gently round
by the wheeled chair. She stopped at its side to say 'Good night,
ma'am.'

Mrs Clennam put out her hand, and laid it on her arm. Little
Dorrit, confused under the touch, stood faltering. Perhaps some
momentary recollection of the story of the Princess may have been
in her mind.

'Tell me, Little Dorrit,' said Mrs Clennam, 'have you many friends
now?'

'Very few, ma'am. Besides you, only Miss Flora and--one more.'

'Meaning,' said Mrs Clennam, with her unbent finger again pointing
to the door, 'that man?'

'Oh no, ma'am!'

'Some friend of his, perhaps?'

'No ma'am.' Little Dorrit earnestly shook her head. 'Oh no! No
one at all like him, or belonging to him.'

'Well!' said Mrs Clennam, almost smiling. 'It is no affair of
mine. I ask, because I take an interest in you; and because I
believe I was your friend when you had no other who could serve
you. Is that so?'

'Yes, ma'am; indeed it is. I have been here many a time when, but
for you and the work you gave me, we should have wanted
everything.'

'We,' repeated Mrs Clennam, looking towards the watch, once her
dead husband's, which always lay upon her table. 'Are there many
of you?'

'Only father and I, now. I mean, only father and I to keep
regularly out of what we get.'

'Have you undergone many privations? You and your father and who
else there may be of you?' asked Mrs Clennam, speaking
deliberately, and meditatively turning the watch over and over.

'Sometimes it has been rather hard to live,' said Little Dorrit, in
her soft voice, and timid uncomplaining way; 'but I think not
harder--as to that--than many people find it.'