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

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 tonight 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, “Goodbye!” 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