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

She was so earnest in the petition, that Clennam felt a delicacy in obtruding himself upon her: the rather, because he could well understand that Maggy’s lodging was of the obscurest sort. “Come, Maggy,” said Little Dorrit cheerily, “we shall do very well; we know the way by this time, Maggy?”

“Yes, yes, little mother; we know the way,” chuckled Maggy. And away they went. Little Dorrit turned at the door to say, “God bless you!” She said it very softly, but perhaps she may have been as audible above⁠—who knows!⁠—as a whole cathedral choir.

Arthur Clennam suffered them to pass the corner of the street before he followed at a distance; not with any idea of encroaching a second time on Little Dorrit’s privacy, but to satisfy his mind by seeing her secure in the neighbourhood to which she was accustomed. So diminutive she looked, so fragile and defenceless against the bleak damp weather, flitting along in the shuffling shadow of her charge, that he felt, in his compassion, and in his habit of considering her a child apart from the rest of the rough world, as if he would have been glad to take her up in his arms and carry her to her journey’s end.

In course of time she came into the leading thoroughfare where the Marshalsea was, and then he saw them slacken their pace, and soon turn down a by-street. He stopped, felt that he had no right to go further, and slowly left them. He had no suspicion that they ran any risk of being houseless until morning; had no idea of the truth until long, long afterwards.

But, said Little Dorrit, when they stopped at a poor dwelling all in darkness, and heard no sound on listening at the door, “Now, this is a good lodging for you, Maggy, and we must not give offence. Consequently, we will only knock twice, and not very loud; and if we cannot wake them so, we must walk about till day.”

Once, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. Twice, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. All was close and still. “Maggy, we must do the best we can, my dear. We must be patient, and wait for day.”

It was a chill dark night, with a damp wind blowing, when they came out into the leading street again, and heard the clocks strike half-past one. “In only five hours and a half,” said Little Dorrit, “we shall be able to go home.” To speak of home, and to go and look at it, it being so near, was a natural sequence. They went to the closed gate, and peeped through into the courtyard. “I hope he is sound asleep,” said Little Dorrit, kissing one of the bars, “and does not miss me.”

The gate was so familiar, and so like a companion, that they put down Maggy’s basket in a corner to serve for a seat, and keeping close together, rested there for some time. While the street was empty and silent, Little Dorrit was not afraid; but when she heard a footstep at a distance, or saw a moving shadow among the street lamps, she was startled, and whispered, “Maggy, I see someone. Come away!” Maggy would then wake up more or less fretfully, and they would wander about a little, and come back again.

As long as eating was a novelty and an amusement, Maggy kept up pretty well. But that period going by, she became querulous about the cold, and shivered and whimpered. “It will soon be over, dear,” said Little Dorrit patiently. “Oh it’s all very fine for you, little mother,” returned Maggy, “but I’m a poor thing, only ten years old.” At last, in the dead of the night, when the street was very still indeed, Little Dorrit laid the heavy head upon her bosom, and soothed her to sleep. And thus she sat at the gate, as it were alone; looking up at the stars, and seeing the clouds pass over them in their wild flight⁠—which was the dance at Little Dorrit’s party.

“If it really was a party!” she thought once, as she sat there. “If it was light and warm and beautiful, and it was our house, and my poor dear was its master, and had never been inside these walls. And if Mr. Clennam was one of our visitors, and we were dancing to delightful music, and were all as gay and lighthearted as ever we could be! I wonder⁠—” Such a vista of wonder opened out before her, that she sat looking up at the stars, quite lost, until Maggy was querulous again, and wanted to get up and walk.

Three o’clock, and half-past three, and they had passed over London Bridge. They had heard the rush of the tide against obstacles; and looked down, awed, through the dark vapour on the river; had seen little spots of lighted water where the bridge lamps were reflected, shining like demon eyes, with a terrible fascination in them for guilt and misery. They had shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in nooks. They had run from drunkards. They had started from slinking men, whistling and signing to one another at bye corners, or running away at full speed. Though everywhere the leader and the guide, Little Dorrit, happy for once in her youthful appearance, feigned to cling to and rely upon Maggy. And more than once some voice, from among a knot of brawling or prowling figures in their path, had called out to the rest to “let the woman and the child go by!”

So, the woman and the child had gone by, and gone on, and five had sounded from the steeples. They were walking slowly towards the east, already looking for the first pale streak of day, when a woman came after them.

“What are you doing with the child?” she said to Maggy.

She was young⁠—far too young to be there, Heaven knows!⁠—and neither ugly nor wicked-looking. She spoke