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

Wade before me all this time, as if it was my own self grown ripe⁠—turning everything the wrong way, and twisting all good into evil. I have had her before me all this time, finding no pleasure in anything but keeping me as miserable, suspicious, and tormenting as herself. Not that she had much to do, to do that,” cried Tattycoram, in a closing great burst of distress, “for I was as bad as bad could be. I only mean to say, that, after what I have gone through, I hope I shall never be quite so bad again, and that I shall get better by very slow degrees. I’ll try very hard. I won’t stop at five-and-twenty, sir, I’ll count five-and-twenty hundred, five-and-twenty thousand!”

Another opening of the door, and Tattycoram subsided, and Little Dorrit came in, and Mr. Meagles with pride and joy produced the box, and her gentle face was lighted up with grateful happiness and joy. The secret was safe now! She could keep her own part of it from him; he should never know of her loss; in time to come he should know all that was of import to himself; but he should never know what concerned her only. That was all passed, all forgiven, all forgotten.

“Now, my dear Miss Dorrit,” said Mr. Meagles; “I am a man of business⁠—or at least was⁠—and I am going to take my measures promptly, in that character. Had I better see Arthur tonight?”

“I think not tonight. I will go to his room and ascertain how he is. But I think it will be better not to see him tonight.”

“I am much of your opinion, my dear,” said Mr. Meagles, “and therefore I have not been any nearer to him than this dismal room. Then I shall probably not see him for some little time to come. But I’ll explain what I mean when you come back.”

She left the room. Mr. Meagles, looking through the bars of the window, saw her pass out of the Lodge below him into the prison-yard. He said gently, “Tattycoram, come to me a moment, my good girl.”

She went up to the window.

“You see that young lady who was here just now⁠—that little, quiet, fragile figure passing along there, Tatty? Look. The people stand out of the way to let her go by. The men⁠—see the poor, shabby fellows⁠—pull off their hats to her quite politely, and now she glides in at that doorway. See her, Tattycoram?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I have heard tell, Tatty, that she was once regularly called the child of this place. She was born here, and lived here many years. I can’t breathe here. A doleful place to be born and bred in, Tattycoram?”

“Yes indeed, sir!”

“If she had constantly thought of herself, and settled with herself that everybody visited this place upon her, turned it against her, and cast it at her, she would have led an irritable and probably an useless existence. Yet I have heard tell, Tattycoram, that her young life has been one of active resignation, goodness, and noble service. Shall I tell you what I consider those eyes of hers, that were here just now, to have always looked at, to get that expression?”

“Yes, if you please, sir.”

“Duty, Tattycoram. Begin it early, and do it well; and there is no antecedent to it, in any origin or station, that will tell against us with the Almighty, or with ourselves.”

They remained at the window, Mother joining them and pitying the prisoners, until she was seen coming back. She was soon in the room, and recommended that Arthur, whom she had left calm and composed, should not be visited that night.

“Good!” said Mr. Meagles, cheerily. “I have not a doubt that’s best. I shall trust my remembrances then, my sweet nurse, in your hands, and I well know they couldn’t be in better. I am off again tomorrow morning.”

Little Dorrit, surprised, asked him where?

“My dear,” said Mr. Meagles, “I can’t live without breathing. This place has taken my breath away, and I shall never get it back again until Arthur is out of this place.”

“How is that a reason for going off again tomorrow morning?”

“You shall understand,” said Mr. Meagles. “Tonight we three will put up at a City Hotel. Tomorrow morning, Mother and Tattycoram will go down to Twickenham, where Mrs. Tickit, sitting attended by Dr. Buchan in the parlour-window, will think them a couple of ghosts; and I shall go abroad again for Doyce. We must have Dan here. Now, I tell you, my love, it’s of no use writing and planning and conditionally speculating upon this and that and the other, at uncertain intervals and distances; we must have Doyce here. I devote myself at daybreak tomorrow morning, to bringing Doyce here. It’s nothing to me to go and find him. I’m an old traveller, and all foreign languages and customs are alike to me⁠—I never understand anything about any of ’em. Therefore I can’t be put to any inconvenience. Go at once I must, it stands to reason; because I can’t live without breathing freely; and I can’t breathe freely until Arthur is out of this Marshalsea. I am stifled at the present moment, and have scarcely breath enough to say this much, and to carry this precious box downstairs for you.”

They got into the street as the bell began to ring, Mr. Meagles carrying the box. Little Dorrit had no conveyance there: which rather surprised him. He called a coach for her and she got into it, and he placed the box beside her when she was seated. In her joy and gratitude she kissed his hand.

“I don’t like that, my dear,” said Mr. Meagles. “It goes against my feeling of what’s right, that you should do homage to me⁠—at the Marshalsea Gate.”

She bent forward, and kissed his cheek.

“You remind me of the days,” said Mr. Meagles, suddenly drooping⁠—“but she’s very fond of him, and hides his faults, and thinks that no one sees them⁠—and he certainly is well connected and of a very good family!”

It was