Little Dorrit

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'So Pancks said,' he murmured to himself, as he stopped before a
dull house answering to the address. 'I suppose his information to
be correct and his discovery, among Mr Casby's loose papers,
indisputable; but, without it, I should hardly have supposed this
to be a likely place.'

A dead sort of house, with a dead wall over the way and a dead
gateway at the side, where a pendant bell-handle produced two dead
tinkles, and a knocker produced a dead, flat, surface-tapping, that
seemed not to have depth enough in it to penetrate even the cracked
door. However, the door jarred open on a dead sort of spring; and
he closed it behind him as he entered a dull yard, soon brought to
a close by another dead wall, where an attempt had been made to
train some creeping shrubs, which were dead; and to make a little
fountain in a grotto, which was dry; and to decorate that with a
little statue, which was gone.

The entry to the house was on the left, and it was garnished as the
outer gateway was, with two printed bills in French and English,
announcing Furnished Apartments to let, with immediate possession.
A strong cheerful peasant woman, all stocking, petticoat, white
cap, and ear-ring, stood here in a dark doorway, and said with a
pleasant show of teeth, 'Ice-say! Seer! Who?'

Clennam, replying in French, said the English lady; he wished to
see the English lady. 'Enter then and ascend, if you please,'
returned the peasant woman, in French likewise. He did both, and
followed her up a dark bare staircase to a back room on the first-
floor. Hence, there was a gloomy view of the yard that was dull,
and of the shrubs that were dead, and of the fountain that was dry,
and of the pedestal of the statue that was gone.

'Monsieur Blandois,' said Clennam.

'With pleasure, Monsieur.'

Thereupon the woman withdrew and left him to look at the room. It
was the pattern of room always to be found in such a house. Cool,
dull, and dark. Waxed floor very slippery. A room not large
enough to skate in; nor adapted to the easy pursuit of any other
occupation. Red and white curtained windows, little straw mat,
little round table with a tumultuous assemblage of legs underneath,
clumsy rush-bottomed chairs, two great red velvet arm-chairs
affording plenty of space to be uncomfortable in, bureau, chimney-
glass in several pieces pretending to be in one piece, pair of
gaudy vases of very artificial flowers; between them a Greek
warrior with his helmet off, sacrificing a clock to the Genius of
France.

After some pause, a door of communication with another room was
opened, and a lady entered. She manifested great surprise on
seeing Clennam, and her glance went round the room in search of
some one else.

'Pardon me, Miss Wade. I am alone.'

'It was not your name that was brought to me.'

'No; I know that. Excuse me. I have already had experience that
my name does not predispose you to an interview; and I ventured to
mention the name of one I am in search of.'

'Pray,' she returned, motioning him to a chair so coldly that he
remained standing, 'what name was it that you gave?'

'I mentioned the name of Blandois.'

'Blandois?'

'A name you are acquainted with.'

'It is strange,' she said, frowning, 'that you should still press
an undesired interest in me and my acquaintances, in me and my
affairs, Mr Clennam. I don't know what you mean.'

'Pardon me. You know the name?'

'What can you have to do with the name? What can I have to do with
the name? What can you have to do with my knowing or not knowing
any name? I know many names and I have forgotten many more. This
may be in the one class, or it may be in the other, or I may never
have heard it. I am acquainted with no reason for examining
myself, or for being examined, about it.'

'If you will allow me,' said Clennam, 'I will tell you my reason
for pressing the subject. I admit that I do press it, and I must
beg you to forgive me if I do so, very earnestly. The reason is
all mine, I do not insinuate that it is in any way yours.'

'Well, sir,' she returned, repeating a little less haughtily than
before her former invitation to him to be seated: to which he now
deferred, as she seated herself. 'I am at least glad to know that
this is not another bondswoman of some friend of yours, who is
bereft of free choice, and whom I have spirited away. I will hear
your reason, if you please.'

'First, to identify the person of whom we speak,' said Clennam,
'let me observe that it is the person you met in London some time
back. You will remember meeting him near the river--in the
Adelphi!'

'You mix yourself most unaccountably with my business,' she
replied, looking full at him with stern displeasure. 'How do you
know that?'

'I entreat you not to take it ill. By mere accident.'
'What accident?'

'Solely the accident of coming upon you in the street and seeing
the meeting.'

'Do you speak of yourself, or of some one else?'

'Of myself. I saw it.'

'To be sure it was in the open street,' she observed, after a few
moments of less and less angry reflection. 'Fifty people might
have seen it. It would have signified nothing if they had.'

'Nor do I make my having seen it of any moment, nor (otherwise than
as an explanation of my coming here) do I connect my visit with it
or the favour that I have to ask.'

'Oh! You have to ask a favour! It occurred to me,' and the
handsome face looked bitterly at him, 'that your manner was
softened, Mr Clennam.'

He was content to protest against this by a slight action without
contesting it in words. He then referred to Blandois'
disappearance, of which it was probable she had heard? However
probable it was to him, she had heard of no such thing. Let him
look round him (she said) and judge for himself what general
intelligence was likely to reach the ears of a woman who had been
shut up there while it was rife, devouring her own heart. When she
had uttered this denial, which he believed to be true, she asked
him what he meant by disappearance? That led to his narrating the
circumstances in detail, and expressing something of his anxiety to
discover what had really become of the man, and to repel the dark
suspicions that clouded about his mother's house. She heard him
with evident surprise, and with more marks of suppressed interest
than he had seen in her; still they did not overcome her distant,
proud, and self-secluded manner. When he had finished, she said
nothing but these words:

'You have not yet told me, sir, what I have to do with it, or what
the favour is? Will you be so good as come to that?'

'I assume,' said Arthur, persevering, in his endeavour to soften
her scornful demeanour, 'that being in communication--may I say,
confidential communication?--with this person--'

'You may say, of course, whatever you like,' she remarked; 'but I
do not subscribe to your assumptions, Mr Clennam, or to any one's.'

'--that being, at least in personal communication with him,' said
Clennam, changing the form of his position in the hope of making it
unobjectionable, 'you can tell me something of his antecedents,
pursuits, habits, usual place of residence. Can give me some
little clue by which to seek him out in the likeliest manner, and
either produce him, or establish what has become of him. This is
the favour I ask, and I ask it in a distress of mind for which I
hope you will feel some consideration. If you should have any
reason for imposing conditions upon me, I will respect it without
asking what it is.'

'You chanced to see me in the street with the man,' she observed,
after being, to his mortification, evidently more occupied with her
own reflections on the matter than with his appeal. 'Then you knew
the man before?'

'Not before; afterwards. I never saw him before, but I saw him
again on this very night of his disappearance. In my mother's
room, in fact. I left him there. You will read in this paper all
that is known of him.'

He handed her one of the printed bills, which she read with a
steady and attentive face.

'This is more than I knew of him,' she said, giving it back.

Clennam's looks expressed his heavy disappointment, perhaps his
incredulity; for she added in the same unsympathetic tone: 'You
don't believe it. Still, it is so. As to personal communication:
it seems that there was personal communication between him and your
mother. And yet you say you believe her declaration that she knows
no more of him!'

A sufficiently expressive hint of suspicion was conveyed in these
words, and in the smile by which they were accompanied, to bring
the blood into Clennam's cheeks.

'Come, sir,' she said, with a cruel pleasure in repeating the stab,
'I will be as open with you as you can desire. I will confess that
if I cared for my credit (which I do not), or had a good name to
preserve (which I have not, for I am utterly indifferent to its
being considered good or bad), I should regard myself as heavily
compromised by having had anything to do with this fellow. Yet he
never passed in at MY door--never sat in colloquy with ME until
midnight.'

She took her revenge for her old grudge in thus turning his subject
against him. Hers was not the nature to spare him, and she had no
compunction.

'That he is a low, mercenary wretch; that I first saw him prowling
about Italy (where I was, not long ago), and that I hired him
there, as the suitable instrument of a purpose I happened to have;
I have no objection to tell you. In short, it was worth my while,
for my own pleasure--the gratification of a strong feeling--to pay
a spy who would fetch and carry for money. I paid this creature.
And I dare say that if I had wanted to make such a bargain, and if
I could have paid him enough, and if he could have done it in the
dark, free from all risk, he would have taken any life with as
little scruple as he took my money. That, at least, is my opinion
of him; and I see it is not very far removed from yours. Your
mother's opinion of him, I am to assume (following your example of
assuming this and that), was vastly different.'

'My mother, let me remind you,' said Clennam, 'was first brought
into communication with him in the unlucky course of business.'

'It appears to have been an unlucky course of business that last
brought her into communication with him,' returned Miss Wade; 'and
business hours on that occasion were late.'

'You imply,' said Arthur, smarting under these cool-handed thrusts,
of which he had deeply felt the force already, 'that there was
something--'

'Mr Clennam,' she composedly interrupted, 'recollect that I do not
speak by implication about the man. He is, I say again without
disguise, a low mercenary wretch. I suppose such a creature goes
where there is occasion for him. If I had not had occasion for
him, you would not have seen him and me together.'

Wrung by her persistence in keeping that dark side of the case
before him, of which there was a half-hidden shadow in his own
breast, Clennam was silent.

'I have spoken of him as still living,' she added, 'but he may have
been put out of the way for anything I know. For anything I care,
also. I have no further occasion for him.'

With a heavy sigh and a despondent air, Arthur Clennam slowly rose.

She did not rise also, but said, having looked at him in the
meanwhile with a fixed look of suspicion, and lips angrily
compressed:

'He was the chosen associate of your dear friend, Mr Gowan, was he
not? Why don't you ask your dear friend to help you?'

The denial that he was a dear friend rose to Arthur's lips; but he
repressed it, remembering his old struggles and resolutions, and
said:

'Further than that he has never seen Blandois since Blandois set
out for England, Mr Gowan knows nothing additional about him. He
was a chance acquaintance, made abroad.'

'A chance acquaintance made abroad!' she repeated. 'Yes. Your
dear friend has need to divert himself with all the acquaintances
he can make, seeing what a wife he has. I hate his wife, sir.'

The anger with which she said it, the more remarkable for being so
much under her restraint, fixed Clennam's attention, and kept him
on the spot. It flashed out of her dark eyes as they regarded him,
quivered in her nostrils, and fired the very breath she exhaled;
but her face was otherwise composed into a disdainful serenity; and
her attitude was as calmly and haughtily graceful as if she had
been in a mood of complete indifference.

'All I will say is, Miss Wade,' he remarked, 'that you can have
received no provocation to a feeling in which I believe you have no
sharer.'

'You may ask your dear friend, if you choose,' she returned, 'for
his opinion upon that subject.'

'I am scarcely on those intimate terms with my dear friend,' said
Arthur, in spite of his resolutions, 'that would render my
approaching the subject very probable, Miss Wade.'

'I hate him,' she returned. 'Worse than his wife, because I was
once dupe enough, and false enough to myself, almost to love him.
You have seen me, sir, only on common-place occasions, when I dare
say you have thought me a common-place woman, a little more self-
willed than the generality. You don't know what I mean by hating,
if you know me no better than that; you can't know, without knowing
with what care I have studied myself and people about me. For this
reason I have for some time inclined to tell you what my life has
been--not to propitiate your opinion, for I set no value on it; but
that you may comprehend, when you think of your dear friend and his
dear wife, what I mean by hating. Shall I give you something I
have written and put by for your perusal, or shall I hold my hand?'

Arthur begged her to give it to him. She went to the bureau,
unlocked it, and took from an inner drawer a few folded sheets of
paper. Without any conciliation of him, scarcely addressing him,
rather speaking as if she were speaking to her own looking-glass
for the justification of her own stubbornness, she said, as she
gave them to him:

'Now you may know what I mean by hating! No more of that. Sir,
whether you find me temporarily and cheaply lodging in an empty
London house, or in a Calais apartment, you find Harriet with me.
You may like to see her before you leave. Harriet, come in!' She
called Harriet again. The second call produced Harriet, once
Tattycoram.

'Here is Mr Clennam,' said Miss Wade; 'not come for you; he has
given you up,--I suppose you have, by this time?'

'Having no authority, or influence--yes,' assented Clennam.

'Not come in search of you, you see; but still seeking some one.
He wants that Blandois man.'

'With whom I saw you in the Strand in London,' hinted Arthur.
'If you know anything of him, Harriet, except that he came from
Venice--which we all know--tell it to Mr Clennam freely.'
'I know nothing more about him,' said the girl.

'Are you satisfied?' Miss Wade inquired of Arthur.

He had no reason to disbelieve them; the girl's manner being so
natural as to be almost convincing, if he had had any previous
doubts. He replied, 'I must seek for intelligence elsewhere.'

He was not going in the same breath; but he had risen before the
girl entered, and she evidently thought he was. She looked quickly
at him, and said:

'Are they well, sir?'

'Who?'

She stopped herself in saying what would have been 'all of them;'
glanced at Miss Wade; and said 'Mr and Mrs Meagles.'

'They were, when I last heard of them. They are not at home. By
the way, let me ask you. Is it true that you were seen there?'

'Where? Where does any one say I was seen?' returned the girl,
sullenly casting down her eyes.

'Looking in at the garden gate of the cottage.'

'No,' said Miss Wade. 'She has never been near it.'

'You are wrong, then,' said the girl. 'I went down there the last
time we were in London. I went one afternoon when you left me
alone. And I did look in.'

'You poor-spirited girl,' returned Miss Wade with infinite
contempt; 'does all our companionship, do all our conversations, do
all your old complainings, tell for so little as that?'

'There was no harm in looking in at the gate for an instant,' said
the girl. 'I saw by the windows that the family were not there.'

'Why should you go near the place?'

'Because I wanted to see it. Because I felt that I should like to
look at it again.'

As each of the two handsome faces looked at the other, Clennam felt
how each of the two natures must be constantly tearing the other to
pieces.

'Oh!' said Miss Wade, coldly subduing and removing her glance; 'if
you had any desire to see the place where you led the life from
which I rescued you because you had found out what it was, that is
another thing. But is that your truth to me? Is that your
fidelity to me? Is that the common cause I make with you? You are
not worth the confidence I have placed in you. You are not worth
the favour I have shown you. You are no higher than a spaniel, and
had better go back to the people who did worse than whip you.'

'If you speak so of them with any one else by to hear, you'll
provoke me to take their part,' said the girl.

'Go back to them,' Miss Wade retorted. 'Go back to them.'

'You know very well,' retorted Harriet in her turn, 'that I won't
go back to them. You know very well that I have thrown them off,
and never can, never shall, never will, go back to them. Let them
alone, then, Miss Wade.'

'You prefer their plenty to your less fat living here,' she
rejoined. 'You exalt them, and slight me. What else should I have
expected? I ought to have known it.'

'It's not so,' said the girl, flushing high, 'and you don't say
what you mean. I know what you mean. You are reproaching me,
underhanded, with having nobody but you to look to. And because I
have nobody but you to look to, you think you are to make me do, or
not do, everything you please, and are to put any affront upon me.
You are as bad as they were, every bit. But I will not be quite
tamed, and made submissive. I will say again that I went to look
at the house, because I had often thought that I should like to see
it once more. I will ask again how they are, because I once liked
them and at times thought they were kind to me.'

Hereupon Clennam said that he was sure they would still receive her
kindly, if she should ever desire to return.

'Never!' said the girl passionately. 'I shall never do that.
Nobody knows that better than Miss Wade, though she taunts me
because she has made me her dependent. And I know I am so; and I
know she is overjoyed when she can bring it to my mind.'

'A good pretence!' said Miss Wade, with no less anger, haughtiness,
and bitterness; 'but too threadbare to cover what I plainly see in
this. My poverty will not bear competition with their money.
Better go back at once, better go back at once, and have done with
it!'

Arthur Clennam looked at them, standing a little distance asunder
in the dull confined room, each proudly cherishing her own anger;
each, with a fixed determination, torturing her own breast, and
torturing the other's. He said a word or two of leave-taking; but
Miss Wade barely inclined her head, and Harriet, with the assumed
humiliation of an abject dependent and serf (but not without
defiance for all that), made as if she were too low to notice or to
be noticed.

He came down the dark winding stairs into the yard with an
increased sense upon him of the gloom of the wall that was dead,
and of the shrubs that were dead, and of the fountain that was dry,
and of the statue that was gone. Pondering much on what he had
seen and heard in that house, as well as on the failure of all his
efforts to trace the suspicious character who was lost, he returned
to London and to England by the packet that had taken him over. On
the way he unfolded the sheets of paper, and read in them what is
reproduced in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 21

The History of a Self-Tormentor

I have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age
I have detected what those about me thought they hid from me. If
I could have been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually
discerning the truth, I might have lived as smoothly as most fools
do.

My childhood was passed with a grandmother; that is to say, with a
lady who represented that relative to me, and who took that title
on herself. She had no claim to it, but I--being to that extent a
little fool--had no suspicion of her. She had some children of her
own family in her house, and some children of other people. All
girls; ten in number, including me. We all lived together and were
educated together.

I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see how
determinedly those girls patronised me. I was told I was an
orphan. There was no other orphan among us; and I perceived (here
was the first disadvantage of not being a fool) that they
conciliated me in an insolent pity, and in a sense of superiority.
I did not set this down as a discovery, rashly. I tried them
often. I could hardly make them quarrel with me. When I succeeded
with any of them, they were sure to come after an hour or two, and
begin a reconciliation. I tried them over and over again, and I
never knew them wait for me to begin. They were always forgiving
me, in their vanity and condescension. Little images of grown
people!

One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a
passionate way that she could no more deserve than I can remember
without feeling ashamed of, though I was but a child. She had what
they called an amiable temper, an affectionate temper. She could
distribute, and did distribute pretty looks and smiles to every one
among them. I believe there was not a soul in the place, except
myself, who knew that she did it purposely to wound and gall me!

Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was made
stormy by my fondness for her. I was constantly lectured and
disgraced for what was called 'trying her;' in other words charging
her with her little perfidy and throwing her into tears by showing
her that I read her heart. However, I loved her faithfully; and
one time I went home with her for the holidays.

She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a crowd
of cousins and acquaintances, and we had dances at her house, and
went out to dances at other houses, and, both at home and out, she
tormented my love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to make them all
fond of her--and so drive me wild with jealousy. To be familiar
and endearing with them all--and so make me mad with envying them.
When we were left alone in our bedroom at night, I would reproach
her with my perfect knowledge of her baseness; and then she would
cry and cry and say I was cruel, and then I would hold her in my
arms till morning: loving her as much as ever, and often feeling as
if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold her in my arms and
plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still hold her after
we were both dead.

It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an
aunt who was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked me
much; but I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up
in the one girl. The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious
way with her eyes of watching me. She was an audacious woman, and
openly looked compassionately at me. After one of the nights that
I have spoken of, I came down into a greenhouse before breakfast.
Charlotte (the name of my false young friend) had gone down before
me, and I heard this aunt speaking to her about me as I entered.
I stopped where I was, among the leaves, and listened.

The aunt said, 'Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and
this must not continue.' I repeat the very words I heard.

Now, what did she answer? Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her
to death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner,
yet she tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though
she knows what I make her undergo?' No; my first memorable
experience was true to what I knew her to be, and to all my
experience. She began sobbing and weeping (to secure the aunt's
sympathy to herself), and said, 'Dear aunt, she has an unhappy
temper; other girls at school, besides I, try hard to make it
better; we all try hard.'

Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something noble
instead of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous pretence
by replying, 'But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to
everything, and I see that this poor miserable girl causes you more
constant and useless distress than even so good an effort
justifies.'

The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may be
prepared to hear, and said, 'Send me home.' I never said another
word to either of them, or to any of them, but 'Send me home, or I
will walk home alone, night and day!' When I got home, I told my
supposed grandmother that, unless I was sent away to finish my
education somewhere else before that girl came back, or before any
one of them came back, I would burn my sight away by throwing
myself into the fire, rather than I would endure to look at their
plotting faces.