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

“You don’t mean Tatty⁠—”

“Coram yes I do!” quoth Mrs. Tickit, clearing the disclosure at a leap.

“Where?”

“Mr. Clennam,” returned Mrs. Tickit, “I was a little heavy in my eyes, being that I was waiting longer than customary for my cup of tea which was then preparing by Mary Jane. I was not sleeping, nor what a person would term correctly, dozing. I was more what a person would strictly call watching with my eyes closed.”

Without entering upon an inquiry into this curious abnormal condition, Clennam said, “Exactly. Well?”

“Well, sir,” proceeded Mrs. Tickit, “I was thinking of one thing and thinking of another, just as you yourself might. Just as anybody might.”

“Precisely so,” said Clennam. “Well?”

“And when I do think of one thing and do think of another,” pursued Mrs. Tickit, “I hardly need to tell you, Mr. Clennam, that I think of the family. Because, dear me! a person’s thoughts,” Mrs. Tickit said this with an argumentative and philosophic air, “however they may stray, will go more or less on what is uppermost in their minds. They will do it, sir, and a person can’t prevent them.”

Arthur subscribed to this discovery with a nod.

“You find it so yourself, sir, I’ll be bold to say,” said Mrs. Tickit, “and we all find it so. It an’t our stations in life that changes us, Mr. Clennam; thoughts is free!⁠—As I was saying, I was thinking of one thing and thinking of another, and thinking very much of the family. Not of the family in the present times only, but in the past times too. For when a person does begin thinking of one thing and thinking of another in that manner, as it’s getting dark, what I say is, that all times seem to be present, and a person must get out of that state and consider before they can say which is which.”

He nodded again; afraid to utter a word, lest it should present any new opening to Mrs. Tickit’s conversational powers.

“In consequence of which,” said Mrs. Tickit, “when I quivered my eyes and saw her actual form and figure looking in at the gate, I let them close again without so much as starting, for that actual form and figure came so pat to the time when it belonged to the house as much as mine or your own, that I never thought at the moment of its having gone away. But, sir, when I quivered my eyes again, and saw that it wasn’t there, then it all flooded upon me with a fright, and I jumped up.”

“You ran out directly?” said Clennam.

“I ran out,” assented Mrs. Tickit, “as fast as ever my feet would carry me; and if you’ll credit it, Mr. Clennam, there wasn’t in the whole shining Heavens, no not so much as a finger of that young woman.”

Passing over the absence from the firmament of this novel constellation, Arthur inquired of Mrs. Tickit if she herself went beyond the gate?

“Went to and fro, and high and low,” said Mrs. Tickit, “and saw no sign of her!”

He then asked Mrs. Tickit how long a space of time she supposed there might have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she had experienced? Mrs. Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her reply, had no settled opinion between five seconds and ten minutes. She was so plainly at sea on this part of the case, and had so clearly been startled out of slumber, that Clennam was much disposed to regard the appearance as a dream. Without hurting Mrs. Tickit’s feelings with that infidel solution of her mystery, he took it away from the cottage with him; and probably would have retained it ever afterwards if a circumstance had not soon happened to change his opinion.

He was passing at nightfall along the Strand, and the lamplighter was going on before him, under whose hand the street-lamps, blurred by the foggy air, burst out one after another, like so many blazing sunflowers coming into full-blow all at once⁠—when a stoppage on the pavement, caused by a train of coal-wagons toiling up from the wharves at the riverside, brought him to a standstill. He had been walking quickly, and going with some current of thought, and the sudden check given to both operations caused him to look freshly about him, as people under such circumstances usually do.

Immediately, he saw in advance⁠—a few people intervening, but still so near to him that he could have touched them by stretching out his arm⁠—Tattycoram and a strange man of a remarkable appearance: a swaggering man, with a high nose, and a black moustache as false in its colour as his eyes were false in their expression, who wore his heavy cloak with the air of a foreigner. His dress and general appearance were those of a man on travel, and he seemed to have very recently joined the girl. In bending down (being much taller than she was), listening to whatever she said to him, he looked over his shoulder with the suspicious glance of one who was not unused to be mistrustful that his footsteps might be dogged. It was then that Clennam saw his face; as his eyes lowered on the people behind him in the aggregate, without particularly resting upon Clennam’s face or any other.

He had scarcely turned his head about again, and it was still bent down, listening to the girl, when the stoppage ceased, and the obstructed stream of people flowed on. Still bending his head and listening to the girl, he went on at her side, and Clennam followed them, resolved to play this unexpected play out, and see where they went.

He had hardly made the determination (though he was not long about it), when he was again as suddenly brought up as he had been by the stoppage. They turned short into the Adelphi⁠—the girl evidently leading⁠—and went straight on, as if they were going to the Terrace which overhangs the river.

There is always, to this day, a sudden pause in that place to the roar of the great thoroughfare. The many sounds become