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

“How did it happen? Pray sit down and tell me.”

“As to how it happened, it’s not so easy to relate: because you must have the unfortunate temperament of the poor impetuous girl herself, before you can fully understand it. But it came about in this way. Pet and Mother and I have been having a good deal of talk together of late. I’ll not disguise from you, Clennam, that those conversations have not been of as bright a kind as I could wish; they have referred to our going away again. In proposing to do which, I have had, in fact, an object.”

Nobody’s heart beat quickly.

“An object,” said Mr. Meagles, after a moment’s pause, “that I will not disguise from you, either, Clennam. There’s an inclination on the part of my dear child which I am sorry for. Perhaps you guess the person. Henry Gowan.”

“I was not unprepared to hear it.”

“Well!” said Mr. Meagles, with a heavy sigh, “I wish to God you had never had to hear it. However, so it is. Mother and I have done all we could to get the better of it, Clennam. We have tried tender advice, we have tried time, we have tried absence. As yet, of no use. Our late conversations have been upon the subject of going away for another year at least, in order that there might be an entire separation and breaking off for that term. Upon that question, Pet has been unhappy, and therefore Mother and I have been unhappy.”

Clennam said that he could easily believe it.

“Well!” continued Mr. Meagles in an apologetic way, “I admit as a practical man, and I am sure Mother would admit as a practical woman, that we do, in families, magnify our troubles and make mountains of our molehills in a way that is calculated to be rather trying to people who look on⁠—to mere outsiders, you know, Clennam. Still, Pet’s happiness or unhappiness is quite a life or death question with us; and we may be excused, I hope, for making much of it. At all events, it might have been borne by Tattycoram. Now, don’t you think so?”

“I do indeed think so,” returned Clennam, in most emphatic recognition of this very moderate expectation.

“No, sir,” said Mr. Meagles, shaking his head ruefully. “She couldn’t stand it. The chafing and firing of that girl, the wearing and tearing of that girl within her own breast, has been such that I have softly said to her again and again in passing her, ‘Five-and-twenty, Tattycoram, five-and-twenty!’ I heartily wish she could have gone on counting five-and-twenty day and night, and then it wouldn’t have happened.”

Mr. Meagles with a despondent countenance in which the goodness of his heart was even more expressed than in his times of cheerfulness and gaiety, stroked his face down from his forehead to his chin, and shook his head again.

“I said to Mother (not that it was necessary, for she would have thought it all for herself), we are practical people, my dear, and we know her story; we see in this unhappy girl some reflection of what was raging in her mother’s heart before ever such a creature as this poor thing was in the world; we’ll gloss her temper over, Mother, we won’t notice it at present, my dear, we’ll take advantage of some better disposition in her another time. So we said nothing. But, do what we would, it seems as if it was to be; she broke out violently one night.”

“How, and why?”

“If you ask me Why,” said Mr. Meagles, a little disturbed by the question, for he was far more intent on softening her case than the family’s, “I can only refer you to what I have just repeated as having been pretty near my words to Mother. As to How, we had said Good night to Pet in her presence (very affectionately, I must allow), and she had attended Pet upstairs⁠—you remember she was her maid. Perhaps Pet, having been out of sorts, may have been a little more inconsiderate than usual in requiring services of her: but I don’t know that I have any right to say so; she was always thoughtful and gentle.”

“The gentlest mistress in the world.”

“Thank you, Clennam,” said Mr. Meagles, shaking him by the hand; “you have often seen them together. Well! We presently heard this unfortunate Tattycoram loud and angry, and before we could ask what was the matter, Pet came back in a tremble, saying she was frightened of her. Close after her came Tattycoram in a flaming rage. ‘I hate you all three,’ says she, stamping her foot at us. ‘I am bursting with hate of the whole house.’ ”

“Upon which you⁠—?”

“I?” said Mr. Meagles, with a plain good faith that might have commanded the belief of Mrs. Gowan herself. “I said, count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.”

Mr. Meagles again stroked his face and shook his head, with an air of profound regret.

“She was so used to do it, Clennam, that even then, such a picture of passion as you never saw, she stopped short, looked me full in the face, and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn’t control herself to go any further. There she broke down, poor thing, and gave the other seventeen to the four winds. Then it all burst out. She detested us, she was miserable with us, she couldn’t bear it, she wouldn’t bear it, she was determined to go away. She was younger than her young mistress, and would she remain to see her always held up as the only creature who was young and interesting, and to be cherished and loved? No. She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t! What did we think she, Tattycoram, might have been if she had been caressed and cared for in her childhood, like her young mistress? As good as her? Ah! Perhaps fifty times as good. When we pretended to be so fond of one another, we exulted over her; that was what we did; we exulted over her and shamed