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

had known the sharpness of the pain he caused the patient heart, in speaking thus! While doing it, too, with the purpose of easing and serving her.

“I found that the day when any such thing would have been graceful in me, or good in me, or hopeful or happy for me or anyone in connection with me, was gone, and would never shine again.”

O! If he had known, if he had known! If he could have seen the dagger in his hand, and the cruel wounds it struck in the faithful bleeding breast of his Little Dorrit!

“All that is over, and I have turned my face from it. Why do I speak of this to Little Dorrit? Why do I show you, my child, the space of years that there is between us, and recall to you that I have passed, by the amount of your whole life, the time that is present to you?”

“Because you trust me, I hope. Because you know that nothing can touch you without touching me; that nothing can make you happy or unhappy, but it must make me, who am so grateful to you, the same.”

He heard the thrill in her voice, he saw her earnest face, he saw her clear true eyes, he saw the quickened bosom that would have joyfully thrown itself before him to receive a mortal wound directed at his breast, with the dying cry, “I love him!” and the remotest suspicion of the truth never dawned upon his mind. No. He saw the devoted little creature with her worn shoes, in her common dress, in her jail-home; a slender child in body, a strong heroine in soul; and the light of her domestic story made all else dark to him.

“For those reasons assuredly, Little Dorrit, but for another too. So far removed, so different, and so much older, I am the better fitted for your friend and adviser. I mean, I am the more easily to be trusted; and any little constraint that you might feel with another, may vanish before me. Why have you kept so retired from me? Tell me.”

“I am better here. My place and use are here. I am much better here,” said Little Dorrit, faintly.

“So you said that day upon the bridge. I thought of it much afterwards. Have you no secret you could entrust to me, with hope and comfort, if you would!”

“Secret? No, I have no secret,” said Little Dorrit in some trouble.

They had been speaking in low voices; more because it was natural to what they said to adopt that tone, than with any care to reserve it from Maggy at her work. All of a sudden Maggy stared again, and this time spoke:

“I say! Little Mother!”

“Yes, Maggy.”

“If you an’t got no secret of your own to tell him, tell him that about the Princess. She had a secret, you know.”

“The Princess had a secret?” said Clennam, in some surprise. “What Princess was that, Maggy?”

“Lor! How you do go and bother a gal of ten,” said Maggy, “catching the poor thing up in that way. Whoever said the Princess had a secret? I never said so.”

“I beg your pardon. I thought you did.”

“No, I didn’t. How could I, when it was her as wanted to find it out? It was the little woman as had the secret, and she was always a spinning at her wheel. And so she says to her, why do you keep it there? And so the t’other one says to her, no I don’t; and so the t’other one says to her, yes you do; and then they both goes to the cupboard, and there it is. And she wouldn’t go into the Hospital, and so she died. You know, Little Mother; tell him that. For it was a reg’lar good secret, that was!” cried Maggy, hugging herself.

Arthur looked at Little Dorrit for help to comprehend this, and was struck by seeing her so timid and red. But, when she told him that it was only a Fairy Tale she had one day made up for Maggy, and that there was nothing in it which she wouldn’t be ashamed to tell again to anybody else, even if she could remember it, he left the subject where it was.

However, he returned to his own subject by first entreating her to see him oftener, and to remember that it was impossible to have a stronger interest in her welfare than he had, or to be more set upon promoting it than he was. When she answered fervently, she well knew that, she never forgot it, he touched upon his second and more delicate point⁠—the suspicion he had formed.

“Little Dorrit,” he said, taking her hand again, and speaking lower than he had spoken yet, so that even Maggy in the small room could not hear him, “another word. I have wanted very much to say this to you; I have tried for opportunities. Don’t mind me, who, for the matter of years, might be your father or your uncle. Always think of me as quite an old man. I know that all your devotion centres in this room, and that nothing to the last will ever tempt you away from the duties you discharge here. If I were not sure of it, I should, before now, have implored you, and implored your father, to let me make some provision for you in a more suitable place. But you may have an interest⁠—I will not say, now, though even that might be⁠—may have, at another time, an interest in someone else; an interest not incompatible with your affection here.”

She was very, very pale, and silently shook her head.

“It may be, dear Little Dorrit.”

“No. No. No.” She shook her head, after each slow repetition of the word, with an air of quiet desolation that he remembered long afterwards. The time came when he remembered it well, long afterwards, within those prison walls; within that very room.

“But, if it ever should be,