第 137 页

managing, not to say coaxing voice, 'it is possible that you may be able

to throw a light upon a little something that is at present dark. Any

unpleasant bygones between us are bygones, I hope. Can't be helped now.

You recollect my daughter? Time changes so! A mother!'

In his innocence, Mr Meagles could not have struck a worse key-note. He

paused for any expression of interest, but paused in vain.

'That is not the subject you wished to enter on?' she said, after a cold

silence.

'No, no,' returned Mr Meagles. 'No. I thought your good nature might--'

'I thought you knew,' she interrupted, with a smile, 'that my good

nature is not to be calculated upon?'

'Don't say so,' said Mr Meagles; 'you do yourself an injustice. However,

to come to the point.' For he was sensible of having gained nothing

by approaching it in a roundabout way. 'I have heard from my friend

Clennam, who, you will be sorry to hear, has been and still is very

ill--'

He paused again, and again she was silent.

'--that you had some knowledge of one Blandois, lately killed in London

by a violent accident. Now, don't mistake me! I know it was a slight

knowledge,' said Mr Meagles, dexterously forestalling an angry

interruption which he saw about to break. 'I am fully aware of that. It

was a slight knowledge, I know. But the question is,' Mr Meagles's voice

here became comfortable again, 'did he, on his way to England last time,

leave a box of papers, or a bundle of papers, or some papers or other in

some receptacle or other--any papers--with you: begging you to allow him

to leave them here for a short time, until he wanted them?'

'The question is?' she repeated. 'Whose question is?'

'Mine,' said Mr Meagles. 'And not only mine but Clennam's question, and

other people's question. Now, I am sure,' continued Mr Meagles, whose

heart was overflowing with Pet, 'that you can't have any unkind feeling

towards my daughter; it's impossible. Well! It's her question, too;

being one in which a particular friend of hers is nearly interested.

So here I am, frankly to say that is the question, and to ask, Now, did

he?'

'Upon my word,' she returned, 'I seem to be a mark for everybody who

knew anything of a man I once in my life hired, and paid, and dismissed,

to aim their questions at!'

'Now, don't,' remonstrated Mr Meagles, 'don't! Don't take offence,

because it's the plainest question in the world, and might be asked

of any one. The documents I refer to were not his own, were wrongfully

obtained, might at some time or other be troublesome to an innocent

person to have in keeping, and are sought by the people to whom they

really belong. He passed through Calais going to London, and there were

reasons why he should not take them with him then, why he should wish

to be able to put his hand upon them readily, and why he should distrust

leaving them with people of his own sort. Did he leave them here? I

declare if I knew how to avoid giving you offence, I would take any

pains to do it. I put the question personally, but there's nothing

personal in it. I might put it to any one; I have put it already to many

people. Did he leave them here? Did he leave anything here?'

'No.'

'Then unfortunately, Miss Wade, you know nothing about them?'

'I know nothing about them. I have now answered your unaccountable

question. He did not leave them here, and I know nothing about them.'

'There!' said Mr Meagles rising. 'I am sorry for it; that's over; and I

hope there is not much harm done.--Tattycoram well, Miss Wade?'

'Harriet well? O yes!'

'I have put my foot in it again,' said Mr Meagles, thus corrected. 'I

can't keep my foot out of it here, it seems. Perhaps, if I had thought

twice about it, I might never have given her the jingling name. But,

when one means to be good-natured and sportive with young people, one

doesn't think twice. Her old friend leaves a kind word for her, Miss

Wade, if you should think proper to deliver it.'

She said nothing as to that; and Mr Meagles, taking his honest face out

of the dull room, where it shone like a sun, took it to the Hotel where

he had left Mrs Meagles, and where he made the Report: 'Beaten, Mother;

no effects!' He took it next to the London Steam Packet, which sailed in

the night; and next to the Marshalsea.

The faithful John was on duty when Father and Mother Meagles presented

themselves at the wicket towards nightfall. Miss Dorrit was not there

then, he said; but she had been there in the morning, and invariably

came in the evening. Mr Clennam was slowly mending; and Maggy and Mrs

Plornish and Mr Baptist took care of him by turns. Miss Dorrit was sure

to come back that evening before the bell rang. There was the room the

Marshal had lent her, up-stairs, in which they could wait for her, if

they pleased. Mistrustful that it might be hazardous to Arthur to see

him without preparation, Mr Meagles accepted the offer; and they were

left shut up in the room, looking down through its barred window into

the jail.

The cramped area of the prison had such an effect on Mrs Meagles that

she began to weep, and such an effect on Mr Meagles that he began to

gasp for air. He was walking up and down the room, panting, and making

himself worse by laboriously fanning himself with her handkerchief, when

he turned towards the opening door.

'Eh? Good gracious!' said Mr Meagles, 'this is not Miss Dorrit! Why,

Mother, look! Tattycoram!'

No other. And in Tattycoram's arms was an iron box some two feet square.

Such a box had Affery Flintwinch seen, in the first of her dreams, going

out of the old house in the dead of the night under Double's arm. This,

Tattycoram put on the ground at her old master's feet: this, Tattycoram

fell on her knees by, and beat her hands upon, crying half in exultation

and half in despair, half in laughter and half in tears, 'Pardon, dear

Master; take me back, dear Mistress; here it is!'

'Tatty!' exclaimed Mr Meagles.

'What you wanted!' said Tattycoram. 'Here it is! I was put in the next

room not to see you. I heard you ask her about it, I heard her say she

hadn't got it, I was there when he left it, and I took it at bedtime and

brought it away. Here it is!'

'Why, my girl,' cried Mr Meagles, more breathless than before, 'how did

you come over?'

'I came in the boat with you. I was sitting wrapped up at the other end.

When you took a coach at the wharf, I took another coach and followed

you here. She never would have given it up after what you had said to

her about its being wanted; she would sooner have sunk it in the sea, or

burnt it. But, here it is!'

The glow and rapture that the girl was in, with her 'Here it is!'

'She never wanted it to be left, I must say that for her; but he left

it, and I knew well that after what you said, and after her denying

it, she never would have given it up. But here it is! Dear Master, dear

Mistress, take me back again, and give me back the dear old name! Let

this intercede for me. Here it is!'

Father and Mother Meagles never deserved their names better than when

they took the headstrong foundling-girl into their protection again.

'Oh! I have been so wretched,' cried Tattycoram, weeping much more,

'always so unhappy, and so repentant! I was afraid of her from the first

time I saw her. I knew she had got a power over me through understanding

what was bad in me so well. It was a madness in me, and she could raise

it whenever she liked. I used to think, when I got into that state, that

people were all against me because of my first beginning; and the kinder

they were to me, the worse fault I found in them. I made it out that

they triumphed above me, and that they wanted to make me envy them, when

I know--when I even knew then--that they never thought of such a thing.

And my beautiful young mistress not so happy as she ought to have been,

and I gone away from her! Such a brute and a wretch as she must think

me! But you'll say a word to her for me, and ask her to be as forgiving

as you two are? For I am not so bad as I was,' pleaded Tattycoram; 'I am

bad enough, but not so bad as I was, indeed. I have had Miss 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 to-night?'

'I think not to-night. I will go to his room and ascertain how he is.

But I think it will be better not to see him to-night.'

'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 to-morrow 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 to-morrow morning?'

'You shall understand,' said Mr Meagles. 'To-night we three will put up

at a City Hotel. To-morrow 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 to-morrow 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 down-stairs 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