第 56 页

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.'