Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

and Clennam said, Here was Maggy coming! Little Dorrit looked up, surprised, and they confronted Maggy, who brought herself at sight of them to a dead stop. She had been trotting along, so preoccupied and busy that she had not recognised them until they turned upon her. She was now in a moment so conscience-stricken that her very basket partook of the change.

“Maggy, you promised me to stop near father.”

“So I would, Little Mother, only he wouldn’t let me. If he takes and sends me out I must go. If he takes and says, ‘Maggy, you hurry away and back with that letter, and you shall have a sixpence if the answer’s a good ’un,’ I must take it. Lor, Little Mother, what’s a poor thing of ten year old to do? And if Mr. Tip⁠—if he happens to be a coming in as I come out, and if he says ‘Where are you going, Maggy?’ and if I says, ‘I’m a going So-and-So,’ and if he says, ‘I’ll have a Try too,’ and if he goes into the George and writes a letter and if he gives it me and says, ‘Take that one to the same place, and if the answer’s a good ’un I’ll give you a shilling,’ it ain’t my fault, mother!”

Arthur read, in Little Dorrit’s downcast eyes, to whom she foresaw that the letters were addressed.

“I’m a going So-and-So. There! That’s where I am a going to,” said Maggy. “I’m a going So-and-So. It ain’t you, Little Mother, that’s got anything to do with it⁠—it’s you, you know,” said Maggy, addressing Arthur. “You’d better come, So-and-So, and let me take and give ’em to you.”

“We will not be so particular as that, Maggy. Give them me here,” said Clennam in a low voice.

“Well, then, come across the road,” answered Maggy in a very loud whisper. “Little Mother wasn’t to know nothing of it, and she would never have known nothing of it if you had only gone So-and-So, instead of bothering and loitering about. It ain’t my fault. I must do what I am told. They ought to be ashamed of themselves for telling me.”

Clennam crossed to the other side, and hurriedly opened the letters. That from the father mentioned that most unexpectedly finding himself in the novel position of having been disappointed of a remittance from the City on which he had confidently counted, he took up his pen, being restrained by the unhappy circumstance of his incarceration during three-and-twenty years (doubly underlined), from coming himself, as he would otherwise certainly have done⁠—took up his pen to entreat Mr. Clennam to advance him the sum of Three Pounds Ten Shillings upon his I.O.U., which he begged to enclose. That from the son set forth that Mr. Clennam would, he knew, be gratified to hear that he had at length obtained permanent employment of a highly satisfactory nature, accompanied with every prospect of complete success in life; but that the temporary inability of his employer to pay him his arrears of salary to that date (in which condition said employer had appealed to that generous forbearance in which he trusted he should never be wanting towards a fellow-creature), combined with the fraudulent conduct of a false friend and the present high price of provisions, had reduced him to the verge of ruin, unless he could by a quarter before six that evening raise the sum of eight pounds. This sum, Mr. Clennam would be happy to learn, he had, through the promptitude of several friends who had a lively confidence in his probity, already raised, with the exception of a trifling balance of one pound seventeen and fourpence; the loan of which balance, for the period of one month, would be fraught with the usual beneficent consequences.

These letters Clennam answered with the aid of his pencil and pocketbook, on the spot; sending the father what he asked for, and excusing himself from compliance with the demand of the son. He then commissioned Maggy to return with his replies, and gave her the shilling of which the failure of her supplemental enterprise would have disappointed her otherwise.

When he rejoined Little Dorrit, and they had begun walking as before, she said all at once:

“I think I had better go. I had better go home.”

“Don’t be distressed,” said Clennam, “I have answered the letters. They were nothing. You know what they were. They were nothing.”

“But I am afraid,” she returned, “to leave him, I am afraid to leave any of them. When I am gone, they pervert⁠—but they don’t mean it⁠—even Maggy.”

“It was a very innocent commission that she undertook, poor thing. And in keeping it secret from you, she supposed, no doubt, that she was only saving you uneasiness.”

“Yes, I hope so, I hope so. But I had better go home! It was but the other day that my sister told me I had become so used to the prison that I had its tone and character. It must be so. I am sure it must be when I see these things. My place is there. I am better there, it is unfeeling in me to be here, when I can do the least thing there. Goodbye. I had far better stay at home!”

The agonised way in which she poured this out, as if it burst of itself from her suppressed heart, made it difficult for Clennam to keep the tears from his eyes as he saw and heard her.

“Don’t call it home, my child!” he entreated. “It is always painful to me to hear you call it home.”

“But it is home! What else can I call home? Why should I ever forget it for a single moment?”

“You never do, dear Little Dorrit, in any good and true service.”

“I hope not, O I hope not! But it is better for me to stay there; much better, much more dutiful, much happier. Please don’t go with me, let me go by myself. Goodbye, God bless you. Thank you, thank you.”

He felt