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

that it was better to respect her entreaty, and did not move while her slight form went quickly away from him. When it had fluttered out of sight, he turned his face towards the water and stood thinking.

She would have been distressed at any time by this discovery of the letters; but so much so, and in that unrestrainable way?

No.

When she had seen her father begging with his threadbare disguise on, when she had entreated him not to give her father money, she had been distressed, but not like this. Something had made her keenly and additionally sensitive just now. Now, was there someone in the hopeless unattainable distance? Or had the suspicion been brought into his mind, by his own associations of the troubled river running beneath the bridge with the same river higher up, its changeless tune upon the prow of the ferryboat, so many miles an hour the peaceful flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet?

He thought of his poor child, Little Dorrit, for a long time there; he thought of her going home; he thought of her in the night; he thought of her when the day came round again. And the poor child Little Dorrit thought of him⁠—too faithfully, ah, too faithfully!⁠—in the shadow of the Marshalsea wall.

XXIII Machinery in Motion

Mr. Meagles bestirred himself with such prompt activity in the matter of the negotiation with Daniel Doyce which Clennam had entrusted to him, that he soon brought it into business train, and called on Clennam at nine o’clock one morning to make his report.

“Doyce is highly gratified by your good opinion,” he opened the business by saying, “and desires nothing so much as that you should examine the affairs of the Works for yourself, and entirely understand them. He has handed me the keys of all his books and papers⁠—here they are jingling in this pocket⁠—and the only charge he has given me is ‘Let Mr. Clennam have the means of putting himself on a perfect equality with me as to knowing whatever I know. If it should come to nothing after all, he will respect my confidence. Unless I was sure of that to begin with, I should have nothing to do with him.’ And there, you see,” said Mr. Meagles, “you have Daniel Doyce all over.”

“A very honourable character.”

“Oh, yes, to be sure. Not a doubt of it. Odd, but very honourable. Very odd though. Now, would you believe, Clennam,” said Mr. Meagles, with a hearty enjoyment of his friend’s eccentricity, “that I had a whole morning in What’s-his-name Yard⁠—”

“Bleeding Heart?”

“A whole morning in Bleeding Heart Yard, before I could induce him to pursue the subject at all?”

“How was that?”

“How was that, my friend? I no sooner mentioned your name in connection with it than he declared off.”

“Declared off on my account?”

“I no sooner mentioned your name, Clennam, than he said, ‘That will never do!’ What did he mean by that? I asked him. No matter, Meagles; that would never do. Why would it never do? You’ll hardly believe it, Clennam,” said Mr. Meagles, laughing within himself, “but it came out that it would never do, because you and he, walking down to Twickenham together, had glided into a friendly conversation in the course of which he had referred to his intention of taking a partner, supposing at the time that you were as firmly and finally settled as St. Paul’s Cathedral. ‘Whereas,’ says he, ‘Mr. Clennam might now believe, if I entertained his proposition, that I had a sinister and designing motive in what was open free speech. Which I can’t bear,’ says he, ‘which I really am too proud to bear.’ ”

“I should as soon suspect⁠—”

“Of course you would,” interrupted Mr. Meagles, “and so I told him. But it took a morning to scale that wall; and I doubt if any other man than myself (he likes me of old) could have got his leg over it. Well, Clennam. This businesslike obstacle surmounted, he then stipulated that before resuming with you I should look over the books and form my own opinion. I looked over the books, and formed my own opinion. ‘Is it, on the whole, for, or against?’ says he. ‘For,’ says I. ‘Then,’ says he, ‘you may now, my good friend, give Mr. Clennam the means of forming his opinion. To enable him to do which, without bias and with perfect freedom, I shall go out of town for a week.’ And he’s gone,” said Mr. Meagles; “that’s the rich conclusion of the thing.”

“Leaving me,” said Clennam, “with a high sense, I must say, of his candour and his⁠—”

“Oddity,” Mr. Meagles struck in. “I should think so!”

It was not exactly the word on Clennam’s lips, but he forbore to interrupt his good-humoured friend.

“And now,” added Mr. Meagles, “you can begin to look into matters as soon as you think proper. I have undertaken to explain where you may want explanation, but to be strictly impartial, and to do nothing more.”

They began their perquisitions in Bleeding Heart Yard that same forenoon. Little peculiarities were easily to be detected by experienced eyes in Mr. Doyce’s way of managing his affairs, but they almost always involved some ingenious simplification of a difficulty, and some plain road to the desired end. That his papers were in arrear, and that he stood in need of assistance to develop the capacity of his business, was clear enough; but all the results of his undertakings during many years were distinctly set forth, and were ascertainable with ease. Nothing had been done for the purposes of the pending investigation; everything was in its genuine working dress, and in a certain honest rugged order. The calculations and entries, in his own hand, of which there were many, were bluntly written, and with no very neat precision; but were always plain and directed straight to the purpose. It occurred to Arthur that a far more elaborate and taking show of business⁠—such as the records of the Circumlocution Office made perhaps⁠—might be