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you find me temporarily and cheaply lodging in an empty London house, or

in a Calais apartment, you find Harriet with me. You may like to see

her before you leave. Harriet, come in!' She called Harriet again. The

second call produced Harriet, once Tattycoram.

'Here is Mr Clennam,' said Miss Wade; 'not come for you; he has given

you up,--I suppose you have, by this time?'

'Having no authority, or influence--yes,' assented Clennam.

'Not come in search of you, you see; but still seeking some one. He

wants that Blandois man.'

'With whom I saw you in the Strand in London,' hinted Arthur. 'If you

know anything of him, Harriet, except that he came from Venice--which

we all know--tell it to Mr Clennam freely.' 'I know nothing more about

him,' said the girl.

'Are you satisfied?' Miss Wade inquired of Arthur.

He had no reason to disbelieve them; the girl's manner being so natural

as to be almost convincing, if he had had any previous doubts. He

replied, 'I must seek for intelligence elsewhere.'

He was not going in the same breath; but he had risen before the girl

entered, and she evidently thought he was. She looked quickly at him,

and said:

'Are they well, sir?'

'Who?'

She stopped herself in saying what would have been 'all of them;'

glanced at Miss Wade; and said 'Mr and Mrs Meagles.'

'They were, when I last heard of them. They are not at home. By the way,

let me ask you. Is it true that you were seen there?'

'Where? Where does any one say I was seen?' returned the girl, sullenly

casting down her eyes.

'Looking in at the garden gate of the cottage.'

'No,' said Miss Wade. 'She has never been near it.'

'You are wrong, then,' said the girl. 'I went down there the last time

we were in London. I went one afternoon when you left me alone. And I

did look in.'

'You poor-spirited girl,' returned Miss Wade with infinite contempt;

'does all our companionship, do all our conversations, do all your old

complainings, tell for so little as that?'

'There was no harm in looking in at the gate for an instant,' said the

girl. 'I saw by the windows that the family were not there.'

'Why should you go near the place?'

'Because I wanted to see it. Because I felt that I should like to look

at it again.'

As each of the two handsome faces looked at the other, Clennam felt how

each of the two natures must be constantly tearing the other to pieces.

'Oh!' said Miss Wade, coldly subduing and removing her glance; 'if you

had any desire to see the place where you led the life from which I

rescued you because you had found out what it was, that is another

thing. But is that your truth to me? Is that your fidelity to me? Is

that the common cause I make with you? You are not worth the confidence

I have placed in you. You are not worth the favour I have shown you. You

are no higher than a spaniel, and had better go back to the people who

did worse than whip you.'

'If you speak so of them with any one else by to hear, you'll provoke me

to take their part,' said the girl.

'Go back to them,' Miss Wade retorted. 'Go back to them.'

'You know very well,' retorted Harriet in her turn, 'that I won't go

back to them. You know very well that I have thrown them off, and never

can, never shall, never will, go back to them. Let them alone, then,

Miss Wade.'

'You prefer their plenty to your less fat living here,' she rejoined.

'You exalt them, and slight me. What else should I have expected? I

ought to have known it.'

'It's not so,' said the girl, flushing high, 'and you don't say what you

mean. I know what you mean. You are reproaching me, underhanded, with

having nobody but you to look to. And because I have nobody but you

to look to, you think you are to make me do, or not do, everything you

please, and are to put any affront upon me. You are as bad as they were,

every bit. But I will not be quite tamed, and made submissive. I will

say again that I went to look at the house, because I had often thought

that I should like to see it once more. I will ask again how they are,

because I once liked them and at times thought they were kind to me.'

Hereupon Clennam said that he was sure they would still receive her

kindly, if she should ever desire to return.

'Never!' said the girl passionately. 'I shall never do that. Nobody

knows that better than Miss Wade, though she taunts me because she has

made me her dependent. And I know I am so; and I know she is overjoyed

when she can bring it to my mind.'

'A good pretence!' said Miss Wade, with no less anger, haughtiness, and

bitterness; 'but too threadbare to cover what I plainly see in this. My

poverty will not bear competition with their money. Better go back at

once, better go back at once, and have done with it!'

Arthur Clennam looked at them, standing a little distance asunder in the

dull confined room, each proudly cherishing her own anger; each, with

a fixed determination, torturing her own breast, and torturing the

other's. He said a word or two of leave-taking; but Miss Wade barely

inclined her head, and Harriet, with the assumed humiliation of an

abject dependent and serf (but not without defiance for all that), made

as if she were too low to notice or to be noticed.

He came down the dark winding stairs into the yard with an increased

sense upon him of the gloom of the wall that was dead, and of the shrubs

that were dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the statue that

was gone. Pondering much on what he had seen and heard in that house,

as well as on the failure of all his efforts to trace the suspicious

character who was lost, he returned to London and to England by the

packet that had taken him over. On the way he unfolded the sheets of

paper, and read in them what is reproduced in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 21. The History of a Self-Tormentor

I have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age I have

detected what those about me thought they hid from me. If I could have

been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually discerning the

truth, I might have lived as smoothly as most fools do.

My childhood was passed with a grandmother; that is to say, with a lady

who represented that relative to me, and who took that title on herself.

She had no claim to it, but I--being to that extent a little fool--had

no suspicion of her. She had some children of her own family in her

house, and some children of other people. All girls; ten in number,

including me. We all lived together and were educated together.

I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see how

determinedly those girls patronised me. I was told I was an orphan.

There was no other orphan among us; and I perceived (here was the

first disadvantage of not being a fool) that they conciliated me in an

insolent pity, and in a sense of superiority. I did not set this down

as a discovery, rashly. I tried them often. I could hardly make them

quarrel with me. When I succeeded with any of them, they were sure to

come after an hour or two, and begin a reconciliation. I tried them over

and over again, and I never knew them wait for me to begin. They were

always forgiving me, in their vanity and condescension. Little images of

grown people!

One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a

passionate way that she could no more deserve than I can remember

without feeling ashamed of, though I was but a child. She had what they

called an amiable temper, an affectionate temper. She could distribute,

and did distribute pretty looks and smiles to every one among them. I

believe there was not a soul in the place, except myself, who knew that

she did it purposely to wound and gall me!

Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was made stormy

by my fondness for her. I was constantly lectured and disgraced for what

was called 'trying her;' in other words charging her with her little

perfidy and throwing her into tears by showing her that I read her

heart. However, I loved her faithfully; and one time I went home with

her for the holidays.

She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a crowd of

cousins and acquaintances, and we had dances at her house, and went out

to dances at other houses, and, both at home and out, she tormented my

love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to make them all fond of her--and

so drive me wild with jealousy. To be familiar and endearing with them

all--and so make me mad with envying them. When we were left alone in

our bedroom at night, I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of

her baseness; and then she would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and

then I would hold her in my arms till morning: loving her as much as

ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold

her in my arms and plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still

hold her after we were both dead.

It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an aunt

who was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked me much; but

I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up in the one

girl. The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious way with her

eyes of watching me. She was an audacious woman, and openly looked

compassionately at me. After one of the nights that I have spoken of, I

came down into a greenhouse before breakfast. Charlotte (the name of

my false young friend) had gone down before me, and I heard this aunt

speaking to her about me as I entered. I stopped where I was, among the

leaves, and listened.

The aunt said, 'Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and this

must not continue.' I repeat the very words I heard.

Now, what did she answer? Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her to

death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner, yet she

tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what

I make her undergo?' No; my first memorable experience was true to

what I knew her to be, and to all my experience. She began sobbing and

weeping (to secure the aunt's sympathy to herself), and said, 'Dear

aunt, she has an unhappy temper; other girls at school, besides I, try

hard to make it better; we all try hard.'

Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something noble

instead of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous pretence by

replying, 'But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to everything,

and I see that this poor miserable girl causes you more constant and

useless distress than even so good an effort justifies.'

The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may be

prepared to hear, and said, 'Send me home.' I never said another word

to either of them, or to any of them, but 'Send me home, or I will

walk home alone, night and day!' When I got home, I told my supposed

grandmother that, unless I was sent away to finish my education

somewhere else before that girl came back, or before any one of them

came back, I would burn my sight away by throwing myself into the fire,

rather than I would endure to look at their plotting faces.

I went among young women next, and I found them no better. Fair

words and fair pretences; but I penetrated below those assertions of

themselves and depreciations of me, and they were no better. Before

I left them, I learned that I had no grandmother and no recognised

relation. I carried the light of that information both into my past

and into my future. It showed me many new occasions on which people

triumphed over me, when they made a pretence of treating me with

consideration, or doing me a service.

A man of business had a small property in trust for me. I was to be

a governess; I became a governess; and went into the family of a poor

nobleman, where there were two daughters--little children, but the

parents wished them to grow up, if possible, under one instructress. The

mother was young and pretty. From the first, she made a show of behaving

to me with great delicacy. I kept my resentment to myself; but I knew

very well that it was her way of petting the knowledge that she was my

Mistress, and might have behaved differently to her servant if it had

been her fancy.

I say I did not resent it, nor did I; but I showed her, by not

gratifying her, that I understood her. When she pressed me to take wine,

I took water. If there happened to be anything choice at table, she

always sent it to me: but I always declined it, and ate of the rejected

dishes. These disappointments of her patronage were a sharp retort, and

made me feel independent.

I liked the children. They were timid, but on the whole disposed to

attach themselves to me. There was a nurse, however, in the house, a

rosy-faced woman always making an obtrusive pretence of being gay and

good-humoured, who had nursed them both, and who had secured their

affections before I saw them. I could almost have settled down to my

fate but for this woman. Her artful devices for keeping herself before

the children in constant competition with me, might have blinded many

in my place; but I saw through them from the first. On the pretext of

arranging my rooms and waiting on me and taking care of my wardrobe (all

of which she did busily), she was never absent. The most crafty of her

many subtleties was her feint of seeking to make the children fonder of

me. She would lead them to me and coax them to me. 'Come to good Miss

Wade, come to dear Miss Wade, come to pretty Miss Wade. She loves you

very much. Miss Wade is a clever lady, who has read heaps of books, and

can tell you far better and more interesting stories than I know. Come

and hear Miss Wade!' How could I engage their attentions, when my heart