BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY - CHAPTER 27 Five-and-Twenty

A frequently recurring doubt, whether Mr Pancks's desire to collect

information relative to the Dorrit family could have any possible

bearing on the misgivings he had imparted to his mother on his

return from his long exile, caused Arthur Clennam much uneasiness

at this period. What Mr Pancks already knew about the Dorrit

family, what more he really wanted to find out, and why he should

trouble his busy head about them at all, were questions that often

perplexed him. Mr Pancks was not a man to waste his time and

trouble in researches prompted by idle curiosity. That he had a

specific object Clennam could not doubt. And whether the

attainment of that object by Mr Pancks's industry might bring to

light, in some untimely way, secret reasons which had induced his

mother to take Little Dorrit by the hand, was a serious

speculation.

Not that he ever wavered either in his desire or his determination

to repair a wrong that had been done in his father's time, should

a wrong come to light, and be reparable. The shadow of a supposed

act of injustice, which had hung over him since his father's death,

was so vague and formless that it might be the result of a reality

widely remote from his idea of it. But, if his apprehensions

should prove to be well founded, he was ready at any moment to lay

down all he had, and begin the world anew. As the fierce dark

teaching of his childhood had never sunk into his heart, so that

first article in his code of morals was, that he must begin, in

practical humility, with looking well to his feet on Earth, and

that he could never mount on wings of words to Heaven. Duty on

earth, restitution on earth, action on earth; these first, as the

first steep steps upward. Strait was the gate and narrow was the

way; far straiter and narrower than the broad high road paved with

vain professions and vain repetitions, motes from other men's eyes

and liberal delivery of others to the judgment--all cheap materials

costing absolutely nothing.

No. It was not a selfish fear or hesitation that rendered him

uneasy, but a mistrust lest Pancks might not observe his part of

the understanding between them, and, making any discovery, might

take some course upon it without imparting it to him. On the other

hand, when he recalled his conversation with Pancks, and the little

reason he had to suppose that there was any likelihood of that

strange personage being on that track at all, there were times when

he wondered that he made so much of it. Labouring in this sea, as

all barks labour in cross seas, he tossed about and came to no

haven.

The removal of Little Dorrit herself from their customary

association, did not mend the matter. She was so much out, and so

much in her own room, that he began to miss her and to find a blank

in her place. He had written to her to inquire if she were better,

and she had written back, very gratefully and earnestly telling him

not to be uneasy on her behalf, for she was quite well; but he had

not seen her, for what, in their intercourse, was a long time.

He returned home one evening from an interview with her father, who

had mentioned that she was out visiting--which was what he always

said when she was hard at work to buy his supper--and found Mr

Meagles in an excited state walking up and down his room. On his

opening the door, Mr Meagles stopped, faced round, and said:

'Clennam!--Tattycoram!'

'What's the matter?'

'Lost!'

'Why, bless my heart alive!' cried Clennam in amazement. 'What do

you mean?'

'Wouldn't count five-and-twenty, sir; couldn't be got to do it;

stopped at eight, and took herself off.'

'Left your house?'

'Never to come back,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head. 'You

don't know that girl's passionate and proud character. A team of

horses couldn't draw her back now; the bolts and bars of the old

Bastille couldn't keep her.'

'How did it happen? Pray sit down and tell me.'

'As to how it happened, it's not so easy to relate: because you

must have the unfortunate temperament of the poor impetuous girl

herself, before you can fully understand it. But it came about in

this way. Pet and Mother and I have been having a good deal of

talk together of late. I'll not disguise from you, Clennam, that

those conversations have not been of as bright a kind as I could

wish; they have referred to our going away again. In proposing to

do which, I have had, in fact, an object.'

Nobody's heart beat quickly.

'An object,' said Mr Meagles, after a moment's pause, 'that I will

not disguise from you, either, Clennam. There's an inclination on

the part of my dear child which I am sorry for. Perhaps you guess

the person. Henry Gowan.'

'I was not unprepared to hear it.'

'Well!' said Mr Meagles, with a heavy sigh, 'I wish to God you had

never had to hear it. However, so it is. Mother and I have done

all we could to get the better of it, Clennam. We have tried

tender advice, we have tried time, we have tried absence. As yet,

of no use. Our late conversations have been upon the subject of

going away for another year at least, in order that there might be

an entire separation and breaking off for that term. Upon that

question, Pet has been unhappy, and therefore Mother and I have

been unhappy.'

Clennam said that he could easily believe it.

'Well!' continued Mr Meagles in an apologetic way, 'I admit as a

practical man, and I am sure Mother would admit as a practical

woman, that we do, in families, magnify our troubles and make

mountains of our molehills in a way that is calculated to be rather

trying to people who look on--to mere outsiders, you know, Clennam.

Still, Pet's happiness or unhappiness is quite a life or death

question with us; and we may be excused, I hope, for making much of

it. At all events, it might have been borne by Tattycoram. Now,

don't you think so?'

'I do indeed think so,' returned Clennam, in most emphatic

recognition of this very moderate expectation.

'No, sir,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head ruefully. 'She

couldn't stand it. The chafing and firing of that girl, the

wearing and tearing of that girl within her own breast, has been

such that I have softly said to her again and again in passing her,

'Five-and-twenty, Tattycoram, five-and-twenty!" I heartily wish she

could have gone on counting five-and-twenty day and night, and then

it wouldn't have happened.'

Mr Meagles with a despondent countenance in which the goodness of

his heart was even more expressed than in his times of cheerfulness

and gaiety, stroked his face down from his forehead to his chin,

and shook his head again.

'I said to Mother (not that it was necessary, for she would have

thought it all for herself), we are practical people, my dear, and

we know her story; we see in this unhappy girl some reflection of

what was raging in her mother's heart before ever such a creature

as this poor thing was in the world; we'll gloss her temper over,

Mother, we won't notice it at present, my dear, we'll take

advantage of some better disposition in her another time. So we

said nothing. But, do what we would, it seems as if it was to be;

she broke out violently one night.'

'How, and why?'

'If you ask me Why,' said Mr Meagles, a little disturbed by the

question, for he was far more intent on softening her case than the

family's, 'I can only refer you to what I have just repeated as

having been pretty near my words to Mother. As to How, we had said

Good night to Pet in her presence (very affectionately, I must

allow), and she had attended Pet up-stairs--you remember she was

her maid. Perhaps Pet, having been out of sorts, may have been a

little more inconsiderate than usual in requiring services of her:

but I don't know that I have any right to say so; she was always

thoughtful and gentle.'

'The gentlest mistress in the world.'

'Thank you, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, shaking him by the hand;

'you have often seen them together. Well! We presently heard this

unfortunate Tattycoram loud and angry, and before we could ask what

was the matter, Pet came back in a tremble, saying she was

frightened of her. Close after her came Tattycoram in a flaming

rage. "I hate you all three," says she, stamping her foot at us.

"I am bursting with hate of the whole house."'

'Upon which you--?'

'I?' said Mr Meagles, with a plain good faith that might have

commanded the belief of Mrs Gowan herself. 'I said, count five-

and-twenty, Tattycoram.'

Mr Meagles again stroked his face and shook his head, with an air

of profound regret.

'She was so used to do it, Clennam, that even then, such a picture

of passion as you never saw, she stopped short, looked me full in

the face, and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn't

control herself to go any further. There she broke down, poor

thing, and gave the other seventeen to the four winds. Then it all

burst out. She detested us, she was miserable with us, she

couldn't bear it, she wouldn't bear it, she was determined to go

away. She was younger than her young mistress, and would she

remain to see her always held up as the only creature who was young

and interesting, and to be cherished and loved? No. She wouldn't,

she wouldn't, she wouldn't! What did we think she, Tattycoram,

might have been if she had been caressed and cared for in her

childhood, like her young mistress? As good as her? Ah! Perhaps

fifty times as good. When we pretended to be so fond of one

another, we exulted over her; that was what we did; we exulted over

her and shamed her. And all in the house did the same. They

talked about their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters;

they liked to drag them up before her face. There was Mrs Tickit,

only yesterday, when her little grandchild was with her, had been

amused by the child's trying to call her (Tattycoram) by the

wretched name we gave her; and had laughed at the name. Why, who

didn't; and who were we that we should have a right to name her

like a dog or a cat? But she didn't care. She would take no more

benefits from us; she would fling us her name back again, and she

would go. She would leave us that minute, nobody should stop her,

and we should never hear of her again.'

Mr Meagles had recited all this with such a vivid remembrance of

his original, that he was almost as flushed and hot by this time as

he described her to have been.

'Ah, well!' he said, wiping his face. 'It was of no use trying

reason then, with that vehement panting creature (Heaven knows what

her mother's story must have been); so I quietly told her that she

should not go at that late hour of night, and I gave her MY hand

and took her to her room, and locked the house doors. But she was

gone this morning.'

'And you know no more of her?'

'No more,' returned Mr Meagles. 'I have been hunting about all

day. She must have gone very early and very silently. I have

found no trace of her down about us.'

'Stay! You want,' said Clennam, after a moment's reflection, 'to

see her? I assume that?'

'Yes, assuredly; I want to give her another chance; Mother and Pet

want to give her another chance; come! You yourself,' said Mr

Meagles, persuasively, as if the provocation to be angry were not

his own at all, 'want to give the poor passionate girl another

chance, I know, Clennam.'

'It would be strange and hard indeed if I did not,' said Clennam,

'when you are all so forgiving. What I was going to ask you was,

have you thought of that Miss Wade?'

'I have. I did not think of her until I had pervaded the whole of

our neighbourhood, and I don't know that I should have done so then

but for finding Mother and Pet, when I went home, full of the idea

that Tattycoram must have gone to her. Then, of course, I recalled

what she said that day at dinner when you were first with US.'

'Have you any idea where Miss Wade is to be found?'

'To tell you the truth,' returned Mr Meagles, 'it's because I have

an addled jumble of a notion on that subject that you found me

waiting here. There is one of those odd impressions in my house,

which do mysteriously get into houses sometimes, which nobody seems

to have picked up in a distinct form from anybody, and yet which

everybody seems to have got hold of loosely from somebody and let

go again, that she lives, or was living, thereabouts.' Mr Meagles

handed him a slip of paper, on which was written the name of one of

the dull by-streets in the Grosvenor region, near Park Lane.

'Here is no number,' said Arthur looking over it.

'No number, my dear Clennam?' returned his friend. 'No anything!

The very name of the street may have been floating in the air; for,

as I tell you, none of my people can say where they got it from.

However, it's worth an inquiry; and as I would rather make it in

company than alone, and as you too were a fellow-traveller of that

immovable woman's, I thought perhaps--' Clennam finished the

sentence for him by taking up his hat again, and saying he was

ready.

It was now summer-time; a grey, hot, dusty evening. They rode to

the top of Oxford Street, and there alighting, dived in among the

great streets of melancholy stateliness, and the little streets

that try to be as stately and succeed in being more melancholy, of

which there is a labyrinth near Park Lane. Wildernesses of corner

houses, with barbarous old porticoes and appurtenances; horrors

that came into existence under some wrong-headed person in some

wrong-headed time, still demanding the blind admiration of all

ensuing generations and determined to do so until they tumbled

down; frowned upon the twilight. Parasite little tenements, with

the cramp in their whole frame, from the dwarf hall-door on the

giant model of His Grace's in the Square to the squeezed window of

the boudoir commanding the dunghills in the Mews, made the evening

doleful. Rickety dwellings of undoubted fashion, but of a capacity

to hold nothing comfortably except a dismal smell, looked like the

last result of the great mansions' breeding in-and-in; and, where

their little supplementary bows and balconies were supported on

thin iron columns, seemed to be scrofulously resting upon crutches.

Here and there a Hatchment, with the whole science of Heraldry in

it, loomed down upon the street, like an Archbishop discoursing on

Vanity. The shops, few in number, made no show; for popular

opinion was as nothing to them. The pastrycook knew who was on his

books, and in that knowledge could be calm, with a few glass

cylinders of dowager peppermint-drops in his window, and half-a-

dozen ancient specimens of currant-jelly. A few oranges formed the

greengrocer's whole concession to the vulgar mind. A single basket

made of moss, once containing plovers' eggs, held all that the

poulterer had to say to the rabble. Everybody in those streets

seemed (which is always the case at that hour and season) to be

gone out to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving the dinners they

had gone to. On the doorsteps there were lounging footmen with

bright parti-coloured plumage and white polls, like an extinct race

of monstrous birds; and butlers, solitary men of recluse demeanour,

each of whom appeared distrustful of all other butlers. The roll

of carriages in the Park was done for the day; the street lamps

were lighting; and wicked little grooms in the tightest fitting

garments, with twists in their legs answering to the twists in

their minds, hung about in pairs, chewing straws and exchanging

fraudulent secrets. The spotted dogs who went out with the

carriages, and who were so associated with splendid equipages that

it looked like a condescension in those animals to come out without

them, accompanied helpers to and fro on messages. Here and there

was a retiring public-house which did not require to be supported

on the shoulders of the people, and where gentlemen out of livery

were not much wanted.

This last discovery was made by the two friends in pursuing their

inquiries. Nothing was there, or anywhere, known of such a person

as Miss Wade, in connection with the street they sought. It was

one of the parasite streets; long, regular, narrow, dull and

gloomy; like a brick and mortar funeral. They inquired at several

little area gates, where a dejected youth stood spiking his chin on

the summit of a precipitous little shoot of wooden steps, but could

gain no information. They walked up the street on one side of the

way, and down it on the other, what time two vociferous news-

sellers, announcing an extraordinary event that had never happened

and never would happen, pitched their hoarse voices into the secret

chambers; but nothing came of it. At length they stood at the

corner from which they had begun, and it had fallen quite dark, and

they were no wiser.

It happened that in the street they had several times passed a

dingy house, apparently empty, with bills in the windows,

announcing that it was to let. The bills, as a variety in the

funeral procession, almost amounted to a decoration. Perhaps

because they kept the house separated in his mind, or perhaps

because Mr Meagles and himself had twice agreed in passing, 'It is

clear she don't live there,' Clennam now proposed that they should

go back and try that house before finally going away. Mr Meagles

agreed, and back they went.

They knocked once, and they rang once, without any response.

'Empty,' said Mr Meagles, listening. 'Once more,' said Clennam,

and knocked again. After that knock they heard a movement below,

and somebody shuffling up towards the door.

The confined entrance was so dark that it was impossible to make

out distinctly what kind of person opened the door; but it appeared

to be an old woman. 'Excuse our troubling you,' said Clennam.

'Pray can you tell us where Miss Wade lives?' The voice in the

darkness unexpectedly replied, 'Lives here.'

'Is she at home?'

No answer coming, Mr Meagles asked again. 'Pray is she at home?'

After another delay, 'I suppose she is,' said the voice abruptly;

'you had better come in, and I'll ask.'

They 'were summarily shut into the close black house; and the

figure rustling away, and speaking from a higher level, said, 'Come

up, if you please; you can't tumble over anything.' They groped

their way up-stairs towards a faint light, which proved to be the

light of the street shining through a window; and the figure left

them shut in an airless room.

'This is odd, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, softly.

'Odd enough,' assented Clennam in the same tone, 'but we have

succeeded; that's the main point. Here's a light coming!'

The light was a lamp, and the bearer was an old woman: very dirty,

very wrinkled and dry. 'She's at home,' she said (and the voice

was the same that had spoken before); 'she'll come directly.'

Having set the lamp down on the table, the old woman dusted her

hands on her apron, which she might have done for ever without

cleaning them, looked at the visitors with a dim pair of eyes, and

backed out.

The lady whom they had come to see, if she were the present

occupant of the house, appeared to have taken up her quarters there

as she might have established herself in an Eastern caravanserai.

A small square of carpet in the middle of the room, a few articles

of furniture that evidently did not belong to the room, and a

disorder of trunks and travelling articles, formed the whole of her

surroundings. Under some former regular inhabitant, the stifling

little apartment had broken out into a pier-glass and a gilt table;

but the gilding was as faded as last year's flowers, and the glass

was so clouded that it seemed to hold in magic preservation all the

fogs and bad weather it had ever reflected. The visitors had had

a minute or two to look about them, when the door opened and Miss

Wade came in.

She was exactly the same as when they had parted. just as

handsome, just as scornful, just as repressed. She manifested no

surprise in seeing them, nor any other emotion. She requested them

to be seated; and declining to take a seat herself, at once

anticipated any introduction of their business.

'I apprehend,' she said, 'that I know the cause of your favouring

me with this visit. We may come to it at once.'

'The cause then, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'is Tattycoram.'

'So I supposed.'

'Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, 'will you be so kind as to say

whether you know anything of her?'

'Surely. I know she is here with me.'

'Then, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'allow me to make known to you that

I shall be happy to have her back, and that my wife and daughter

will be happy to have her back. She has been with us a long time:

we don't forget her claims upon us, and I hope we know how to make

allowances.'

'You hope to know how to make allowances?' she returned, in a

level, measured voice. 'For what?'

'I think my friend would say, Miss Wade,' Arthur Clennam

interposed, seeing Mr Meagles rather at a loss, 'for the passionate

sense that sometimes comes upon the poor girl, of being at a

disadvantage. Which occasionally gets the better of better

remembrances.'

The lady broke into a smile as she turned her eyes upon him.

'Indeed?' was all she answered.

She stood by the table so perfectly composed and still after this

acknowledgment of his remark that Mr Meagles stared at her under a

sort of fascination, and could not even look to Clennam to make

another move. After waiting, awkwardly enough, for some moments,

Arthur said:

'Perhaps it would be well if Mr Meagles could see her, Miss Wade?'

'That is easily done,' said she. 'Come here, child.' She had

opened a door while saying this, and now led the girl in by the

hand. It was very curious to see them standing together: the girl

with her disengaged fingers plaiting the bosom of her dress, half

irresolutely, half passionately; Miss Wade with her composed face

attentively regarding her, and suggesting to an observer, with

extraordinary force, in her composure itself (as a veil will

suggest the form it covers), the unquenchable passion of her own

nature.

'See here,' she said, in the same level way as before. 'Here is

your patron, your master. He is willing to take you back, my dear,

if you are sensible of the favour and choose to go. You can be,

again, a foil to his pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant

wilfulness, and a toy in the house showing the goodness of the

family. You can have your droll name again, playfully pointing you

out and setting you apart, as it is right that you should be

pointed out and set apart. (Your birth, you know; you must not

forget your birth.) You can again be shown to this gentleman's

daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, as a living reminder of her

own superiority and her gracious condescension. You can recover

all these advantages and many more of the same kind which I dare

say start up in your memory while I speak, and which you lose in

taking refuge with me--you can recover them all by telling these

gentlemen how humbled and penitent you are, and by going back to

them to be forgiven. What do you say, Harriet? Will you go?'

The girl who, under the influence of these words, had gradually

risen in anger and heightened in colour, answered, raising her

lustrous black eyes for the moment, and clenching her hand upon the

folds it had been puckering up, 'I'd die sooner!'

Miss Wade, still standing at her side holding her hand, looked

quietly round and said with a smile, 'Gentlemen! What do you do

upon that?'

Poor Mr Meagles's inexpressible consternation in hearing his

motives and actions so perverted, had prevented him from

interposing any word until now; but now he regained the power of

speech.

'Tattycoram,' said he, 'for I'll call you by that name still, my

good girl, conscious that I meant nothing but kindness when I gave

it to you, and conscious that you know it--'

'I don't!' said she, looking up again, and almost rending herself

with the same busy hand.

'No, not now, perhaps,' said Mr Meagles; 'not with that lady's eyes

so intent upon you, Tattycoram,' she glanced at them for a moment,

'and that power over you, which we see she exercises; not now,

perhaps, but at another time. Tattycoram, I'll not ask that lady

whether she believes what she has said, even in the anger and ill

blood in which I and my friend here equally know she has spoken,

though she subdues herself, with a determination that any one who

has once seen her is not likely to forget. I'll not ask you, with

your remembrance of my house and all belonging to it, whether you

believe it. I'll only say that you have no profession to make to

me or mine, and no forgiveness to entreat; and that all in the

world that I ask you to do, is, to count five-and-twenty,

Tattycoram.'

She looked at him for an instant, and then said frowningly, 'I

won't. Miss Wade, take me away, please.'

The contention that raged within her had no softening in it now; it

was wholly between passionate defiance and stubborn defiance. Her

rich colour, her quick blood, her rapid breath, were all setting

themselves against the opportunity of retracing their steps. 'I

won't. I won't. I won't!' she repeated in a low, thick voice.

'I'd be torn to pieces first. I'd tear myself to pieces first!'

Miss Wade, who had released her hold, laid her hand protectingly on

the girl's neck for a moment, and then said, looking round with her

former smile and speaking exactly in her former tone, 'Gentlemen!

What do you do upon that?'

'Oh, Tattycoram, Tattycoram!' cried Mr Meagles, adjuring her

besides with an earnest hand. 'Hear that lady's voice, look at

that lady's face, consider what is in that lady's heart, and think

what a future lies before you. My child, whatever you may think,

that lady's influence over you--astonishing to us, and I should

hardly go too far in saying terrible to us to see--is founded in

passion fiercer than yours, and temper more violent than yours.

What can you two be together? What can come of it?'

'I am alone here, gentlemen,' observed Miss Wade, with no change of

voice or manner. 'Say anything you will.'

'Politeness must yield to this misguided girl, ma'am,' said Mr

Meagles, 'at her present pass; though I hope not altogether to

dismiss it, even with the injury you do her so strongly before me.

Excuse me for reminding you in her hearing--I must say it--that you

were a mystery to all of us, and had nothing in common with any of

us when she unfortunately fell in your way. I don't know what you

are, but you don't hide, can't hide, what a dark spirit you have

within you. If it should happen that you are a woman, who, from

whatever cause, has a perverted delight in making a sister-woman as

wretched as she is (I am old enough to have heard of such), I warn

her against you, and I warn you against yourself.'

'Gentlemen!' said Miss Wade, calmly. 'When you have concluded--Mr

Clennam, perhaps you will induce your friend--'

'Not without another effort,' said Mr Meagles, stoutly.

'Tattycoram, my poor dear girl, count five-and-twenty.'

'Do not reject the hope, the certainty, this kind man offers you,'

said Clennam in a low emphatic voice. 'Turn to the friends you

have not forgotten. Think once more!'

'I won't! Miss Wade,' said the girl, with her bosom swelling high,

and speaking with her hand held to her throat, 'take me away!'

'Tattycoram,' said Mr Meagles. 'Once more yet! The only thing I

ask of you in the world, my child! Count five-and-twenty!'

She put her hands tightly over her ears, confusedly tumbling down

her bright black hair in the vehemence of the action, and turned

her face resolutely to the wall. Miss Wade, who had watched her

under this final appeal with that strange attentive smile, and that

repressing hand upon her own bosom with which she had watched her

in her struggle at Marseilles, then put her arm about her waist as

if she took possession of her for evermore.

And there was a visible triumph in her face when she turned it to

dismiss the visitors.

'As it is the last time I shall have the honour,' she said, 'and as

you have spoken of not knowing what I am, and also of the

foundation of my influence here, you may now know that it is

founded in a common cause. What your broken plaything is as to

birth, I am. She has no name, I have no name. Her wrong is my

wrong. I have nothing more to say to you.'

This was addressed to Mr Meagles, who sorrowfully went out. As

Clennam followed, she said to him, with the same external composure

and in the same level voice, but with a smile that is only seen on

cruel faces: a very faint smile, lifting the nostril, scarcely

touching the lips, and not breaking away gradually, but instantly

dismissed when done with:

'I hope the wife of your dear friend Mr Gowan, may be happy in the

contrast of her extraction to this girl's and mine, and in the high

good fortune that awaits her.'

Read next: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 28 Nobody's Disappearance

Read previous: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 26 Nobody's State of Mind

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