第 4 页

shone with a bright reflection of them.

'There! Never mind, Father, never mind!' said Mrs Meagles. 'For goodness

sake content yourself with Pet.'

'With Pet?' repeated Mr Meagles in his injured vein. Pet, however,

being close behind him, touched him on the shoulder, and Mr Meagles

immediately forgave Marseilles from the bottom of his heart.

Pet was about twenty. A fair girl with rich brown hair hanging free in

natural ringlets. A lovely girl, with a frank face, and wonderful eyes;

so large, so soft, so bright, set to such perfection in her kind good

head. She was round and fresh and dimpled and spoilt, and there was in

Pet an air of timidity and dependence which was the best weakness in

the world, and gave her the only crowning charm a girl so pretty and

pleasant could have been without.

'Now, I ask you,' said Mr Meagles in the blandest confidence, falling

back a step himself, and handing his daughter a step forward to

illustrate his question: 'I ask you simply, as between man and man,

you know, DID you ever hear of such damned nonsense as putting Pet in

quarantine?'

'It has had the result of making even quarantine enjoyable.' 'Come!'

said Mr Meagles, 'that's something to be sure. I am obliged to you for

that remark. Now, Pet, my darling, you had better go along with Mother

and get ready for the boat. The officer of health, and a variety of

humbugs in cocked hats, are coming off to let us out of this at last:

and all we jail-birds are to breakfast together in something approaching

to a Christian style again, before we take wing for our different

destinations. Tattycoram, stick you close to your young mistress.'

He spoke to a handsome girl with lustrous dark hair and eyes, and very

neatly dressed, who replied with a half curtsey as she passed off in the

train of Mrs Meagles and Pet. They crossed the bare scorched terrace

all three together, and disappeared through a staring white archway.

Mr Meagles's companion, a grave dark man of forty, still stood looking

towards this archway after they were gone; until Mr Meagles tapped him

on the arm.

'I beg your pardon,' said he, starting.

'Not at all,' said Mr Meagles.

They took one silent turn backward and forward in the shade of the wall,

getting, at the height on which the quarantine barracks are placed, what

cool refreshment of sea breeze there was at seven in the morning. Mr

Meagles's companion resumed the conversation.

'May I ask you,' he said, 'what is the name of--'

'Tattycoram?' Mr Meagles struck in. 'I have not the least idea.'

'I thought,' said the other, 'that--'

'Tattycoram?' suggested Mr Meagles again.

'Thank you--that Tattycoram was a name; and I have several times

wondered at the oddity of it.'

'Why, the fact is,' said Mr Meagles, 'Mrs Meagles and myself are, you

see, practical people.'

'That you have frequently mentioned in the course of the agreeable and

interesting conversations we have had together, walking up and down on

these stones,' said the other, with a half smile breaking through the

gravity of his dark face.

'Practical people. So one day, five or six years ago now, when we took

Pet to church at the Foundling--you have heard of the Foundling Hospital

in London? Similar to the Institution for the Found Children in Paris?'

'I have seen it.'

'Well! One day when we took Pet to church there to hear the

music--because, as practical people, it is the business of our lives to

show her everything that we think can please her--Mother (my usual name

for Mrs Meagles) began to cry so, that it was necessary to take her out.

"What's the matter, Mother?" said I, when we had brought her a little

round: "you are frightening Pet, my dear." "Yes, I know that, Father,"

says Mother, "but I think it's through my loving her so much, that it

ever came into my head." "That ever what came into your head, Mother?"

"O dear, dear!" cried Mother, breaking out again, "when I saw all those

children ranged tier above tier, and appealing from the father none of

them has ever known on earth, to the great Father of us all in Heaven,

I thought, does any wretched mother ever come here, and look among those

young faces, wondering which is the poor child she brought into this

forlorn world, never through all its life to know her love, her kiss,

her face, her voice, even her name!" Now that was practical in Mother,

and I told her so. I said, "Mother, that's what I call practical in you,

my dear."'

The other, not unmoved, assented.

'So I said next day: Now, Mother, I have a proposition to make that I

think you'll approve of. Let us take one of those same little children

to be a little maid to Pet. We are practical people. So if we should

find her temper a little defective, or any of her ways a little wide

of ours, we shall know what we have to take into account. We shall

know what an immense deduction must be made from all the influences and

experiences that have formed us--no parents, no child-brother or sister,

no individuality of home, no Glass Slipper, or Fairy Godmother. And

that's the way we came by Tattycoram.'

'And the name itself--'

'By George!' said Mr Meagles, 'I was forgetting the name itself. Why,

she was called in the Institution, Harriet Beadle--an arbitrary name,

of course. Now, Harriet we changed into Hattey, and then into Tatty,

because, as practical people, we thought even a playful name might be

a new thing to her, and might have a softening and affectionate kind of

effect, don't you see? As to Beadle, that I needn't say was wholly out

of the question. If there is anything that is not to be tolerated on

any terms, anything that is a type of Jack-in-office insolence and

absurdity, anything that represents in coats, waistcoats, and big sticks

our English holding on by nonsense after every one has found it out, it

is a beadle. You haven't seen a beadle lately?'

'As an Englishman who has been more than twenty years in China, no.'

'Then,' said Mr Meagles, laying his forefinger on his companion's breast

with great animation, 'don't you see a beadle, now, if you can help it.

Whenever I see a beadle in full fig, coming down a street on a Sunday

at the head of a charity school, I am obliged to turn and run away, or

I should hit him. The name of Beadle being out of the question, and the

originator of the Institution for these poor foundlings having been a

blessed creature of the name of Coram, we gave that name to Pet's little

maid. At one time she was Tatty, and at one time she was Coram, until we

got into a way of mixing the two names together, and now she is always

Tattycoram.'

'Your daughter,' said the other, when they had taken another silent turn

to and fro, and, after standing for a moment at the wall glancing down

at the sea, had resumed their walk, 'is your only child, I know, Mr

Meagles. May I ask you--in no impertinent curiosity, but because I have

had so much pleasure in your society, may never in this labyrinth of

a world exchange a quiet word with you again, and wish to preserve an

accurate remembrance of you and yours--may I ask you, if I have not

gathered from your good wife that you have had other children?'

'No. No,' said Mr Meagles. 'Not exactly other children. One other

child.'

'I am afraid I have inadvertently touched upon a tender theme.'

'Never mind,' said Mr Meagles. 'If I am grave about it, I am not at all

sorrowful. It quiets me for a moment, but does not make me unhappy. Pet

had a twin sister who died when we could just see her eyes--exactly like

Pet's--above the table, as she stood on tiptoe holding by it.'

'Ah! indeed, indeed!'

'Yes, and being practical people, a result has gradually sprung up in

the minds of Mrs Meagles and myself which perhaps you may--or perhaps

you may not--understand. Pet and her baby sister were so exactly alike,

and so completely one, that in our thoughts we have never been able

to separate them since. It would be of no use to tell us that our dead

child was a mere infant. We have changed that child according to the

changes in the child spared to us and always with us. As Pet has grown,

that child has grown; as Pet has become more sensible and womanly, her

sister has become more sensible and womanly by just the same degrees.

It would be as hard to convince me that if I was to pass into the other

world to-morrow, I should not, through the mercy of God, be received

there by a daughter, just like Pet, as to persuade me that Pet herself

is not a reality at my side.' 'I understand you,' said the other,

gently.

'As to her,' pursued her father, 'the sudden loss of her little picture

and playfellow, and her early association with that mystery in which we

all have our equal share, but which is not often so forcibly presented

to a child, has necessarily had some influence on her character. Then,

her mother and I were not young when we married, and Pet has always had

a sort of grown-up life with us, though we have tried to adapt ourselves

to her. We have been advised more than once when she has been a

little ailing, to change climate and air for her as often as we

could--especially at about this time of her life--and to keep her

amused. So, as I have no need to stick at a bank-desk now (though I have

been poor enough in my time I assure you, or I should have married Mrs

Meagles long before), we go trotting about the world. This is how you

found us staring at the Nile, and the Pyramids, and the Sphinxes, and

the Desert, and all the rest of it; and this is how Tattycoram will be a

greater traveller in course of time than Captain Cook.'

'I thank you,' said the other, 'very heartily for your confidence.'

'Don't mention it,' returned Mr Meagles, 'I am sure you are quite

welcome. And now, Mr Clennam, perhaps I may ask you whether you have yet

come to a decision where to go next?'

'Indeed, no. I am such a waif and stray everywhere, that I am liable to

be drifted where any current may set.'

'It's extraordinary to me--if you'll excuse my freedom in saying

so--that you don't go straight to London,' said Mr Meagles, in the tone

of a confidential adviser.

'Perhaps I shall.'

'Ay! But I mean with a will.'

'I have no will. That is to say,'--he coloured a little,--'next to none

that I can put in action now. Trained by main force; broken, not bent;

heavily ironed with an object on which I was never consulted and which

was never mine; shipped away to the other end of the world before I

was of age, and exiled there until my father's death there, a year ago;

always grinding in a mill I always hated; what is to be expected from me

in middle life? Will, purpose, hope? All those lights were extinguished

before I could sound the words.'

'Light 'em up again!' said Mr Meagles.

'Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr Meagles, of a hard father and

mother. I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced

everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced,

had no existence. Strict people as the phrase is, professors of a stern

religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and

sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain

for the security of their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable

discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next--nothing

graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart

everywhere--this was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to

apply it to such a beginning of life.'

'Really though?' said Mr Meagles, made very uncomfortable by the picture

offered to his imagination. 'That was a tough commencement. But come!

You must now study, and profit by, all that lies beyond it, like a

practical man.'

'If the people who are usually called practical, were practical in your

direction--'

'Why, so they are!' said Mr Meagles.

'Are they indeed?'

'Well, I suppose so,' returned Mr Meagles, thinking about it. 'Eh?

One can but be practical, and Mrs Meagles and myself are nothing else.'

'My unknown course is easier and more helpful than I had expected to

find it, then,' said Clennam, shaking his head with his grave smile.

'Enough of me. Here is the boat.'

The boat was filled with the cocked hats to which Mr Meagles entertained

a national objection; and the wearers of those cocked hats landed

and came up the steps, and all the impounded travellers congregated

together. There was then a mighty production of papers on the part of

the cocked hats, and a calling over of names, and great work of signing,

sealing, stamping, inking, and sanding, with exceedingly blurred,

gritty, and undecipherable results. Finally, everything was done

according to rule, and the travellers were at liberty to depart

whithersoever they would.

They made little account of stare and glare, in the new pleasure of

recovering their freedom, but flitted across the harbour in gay boats,

and reassembled at a great hotel, whence the sun was excluded by closed

lattices, and where bare paved floors, lofty ceilings, and resounding

corridors tempered the intense heat. There, a great table in a great

room was soon profusely covered with a superb repast; and the quarantine

quarters became bare indeed, remembered among dainty dishes, southern

fruits, cooled wines, flowers from Genoa, snow from the mountain tops,

and all the colours of the rainbow flashing in the mirrors.

'But I bear those monotonous walls no ill-will now,' said Mr Meagles.