第 79 页

the prospect, no matter how widely diversified, and misery throwing

magnificence with the strength of fate. To this would succeed a

labyrinth of bare passages and pillared galleries, with the family

procession already preparing in the quadrangle below, through the

carriages and luggage being brought together by the servants for the

day's journey. Then breakfast in another painted chamber, damp-stained

and of desolate proportions; and then the departure, which, to her

timidity and sense of not being grand enough for her place in the

ceremonies, was always an uneasy thing. For then the courier (who

himself would have been a foreign gentleman of high mark in the

Marshalsea) would present himself to report that all was ready; and then

her father's valet would pompously induct him into his travelling-cloak;

and then Fanny's maid, and her own maid (who was a weight on Little

Dorrit's mind--absolutely made her cry at first, she knew so little

what to do with her), would be in attendance; and then her brother's man

would complete his master's equipment; and then her father would give

his arm to Mrs General, and her uncle would give his to her, and,

escorted by the landlord and Inn servants, they would swoop down-stairs.

There, a crowd would be collected to see them enter their carriages,

which, amidst much bowing, and begging, and prancing, and lashing, and

clattering, they would do; and so they would be driven madly through

narrow unsavoury streets, and jerked out at the town gate.

Among the day's unrealities would be roads where the bright red vines

were looped and garlanded together on trees for many miles; woods of

olives; white villages and towns on hill-sides, lovely without, but

frightful in their dirt and poverty within; crosses by the way; deep

blue lakes with fairy islands, and clustering boats with awnings of

bright colours and sails of beautiful forms; vast piles of building

mouldering to dust; hanging-gardens where the weeds had grown so strong

that their stems, like wedges driven home, had split the arch and rent

the wall; stone-terraced lanes, with the lizards running into and out

of every chink; beggars of all sorts everywhere: pitiful, picturesque,

hungry, merry; children beggars and aged beggars. Often at

posting-houses and other halting places, these miserable creatures would

appear to her the only realities of the day; and many a time, when the

money she had brought to give them was all given away, she would sit

with her folded hands, thoughtfully looking after some diminutive girl

leading her grey father, as if the sight reminded her of something in

the days that were gone.

Again, there would be places where they stayed the week together in

splendid rooms, had banquets every day, rode out among heaps of wonders,

walked through miles of palaces, and rested in dark corners of great

churches; where there were winking lamps of gold and silver among

pillars and arches, kneeling figures dotted about at confessionals and

on the pavements; where there was the mist and scent of incense; where

there were pictures, fantastic images, gaudy altars, great heights and

distances, all softly lighted through stained glass, and the massive

curtains that hung in the doorways. From these cities they would go on

again, by the roads of vines and olives, through squalid villages, where

there was not a hovel without a gap in its filthy walls, not a window

with a whole inch of glass or paper; where there seemed to be nothing to

support life, nothing to eat, nothing to make, nothing to grow, nothing

to hope, nothing to do but die.

Again they would come to whole towns of palaces, whose proper inmates

were all banished, and which were all changed into barracks: troops

of idle soldiers leaning out of the state windows, where their

accoutrements hung drying on the marble architecture, and showing to the

mind like hosts of rats who were (happily) eating away the props of the

edifices that supported them, and must soon, with them, be smashed on

the heads of the other swarms of soldiers and the swarms of priests, and

the swarms of spies, who were all the ill-looking population left to be

ruined, in the streets below.

Through such scenes, the family procession moved on to Venice. And here

it dispersed for a time, as they were to live in Venice some few months

in a palace (itself six times as big as the whole Marshalsea) on the

Grand Canal.

In this crowning unreality, where all the streets were paved with water,

and where the deathlike stillness of the days and nights was broken by

no sound but the softened ringing of church-bells, the rippling of

the current, and the cry of the gondoliers turning the corners of the

flowing streets, Little Dorrit, quite lost by her task being done, sat

down to muse. The family began a gay life, went here and there, and

turned night into day; but she was timid of joining in their gaieties,

and only asked leave to be left alone.

Sometimes she would step into one of the gondolas that were always kept

in waiting, moored to painted posts at the door--when she could escape

from the attendance of that oppressive maid, who was her mistress, and

a very hard one--and would be taken all over the strange city. Social

people in other gondolas began to ask each other who the little solitary

girl was whom they passed, sitting in her boat with folded hands,

looking so pensively and wonderingly about her. Never thinking that

it would be worth anybody's while to notice her or her doings, Little

Dorrit, in her quiet, scared, lost manner, went about the city none the

less.

But her favourite station was the balcony of her own room, overhanging

the canal, with other balconies below, and none above. It was of massive

stone darkened by ages, built in a wild fancy which came from the East

to that collection of wild fancies; and Little Dorrit was little indeed,

leaning on the broad-cushioned ledge, and looking over. As she liked no

place of an evening half so well, she soon began to be watched for, and

many eyes in passing gondolas were raised, and many people said, There

was the little figure of the English girl who was always alone.

Such people were not realities to the little figure of the English girl;

such people were all unknown to her. She would watch the sunset, in its

long low lines of purple and red, and its burning flush high up into

the sky: so glowing on the buildings, and so lightening their structure,

that it made them look as if their strong walls were transparent, and

they shone from within. She would watch those glories expire; and then,

after looking at the black gondolas underneath, taking guests to music

and dancing, would raise her eyes to the shining stars. Was there no

party of her own, in other times, on which the stars had shone? To think

of that old gate now! She would think of that old gate, and of herself

sitting at it in the dead of the night, pillowing Maggy's head; and of

other places and of other scenes associated with those different times.

And then she would lean upon her balcony, and look over at the water,

as though they all lay underneath it. When she got to that, she would

musingly watch its running, as if, in the general vision, it might run

dry, and show her the prison again, and herself, and the old room, and

the old inmates, and the old visitors: all lasting realities that had

never changed.

CHAPTER 4. A Letter from Little Dorrit

Dear Mr Clennam,

I write to you from my own room at Venice, thinking you will be glad to

hear from me. But I know you cannot be so glad to hear from me as I am

to write to you; for everything about you is as you have been accustomed

to see it, and you miss nothing--unless it should be me, which can only

be for a very little while together and very seldom--while everything in

my life is so strange, and I miss so much.

When we were in Switzerland, which appears to have been years ago,

though it was only weeks, I met young Mrs Gowan, who was on a mountain

excursion like ourselves. She told me she was very well and very happy.

She sent you the message, by me, that she thanked you affectionately and

would never forget you. She was quite confiding with me, and I loved her

almost as soon as I spoke to her. But there is nothing singular in that;

who could help loving so beautiful and winning a creature! I could not

wonder at any one loving her. No indeed.

It will not make you uneasy on Mrs Gowan's account, I hope--for I

remember that you said you had the interest of a true friend in her--if

I tell you that I wish she could have married some one better suited to

her. Mr Gowan seems fond of her, and of course she is very fond of him,

but I thought he was not earnest enough--I don't mean in that respect--I

mean in anything. I could not keep it out of my mind that if I was Mrs

Gowan (what a change that would be, and how I must alter to become like

her!) I should feel that I was rather lonely and lost, for the want of

some one who was steadfast and firm in purpose. I even thought she felt

this want a little, almost without knowing it. But mind you are not made

uneasy by this, for she was 'very well and very happy.' And she looked

most beautiful.

I expect to meet her again before long, and indeed have been expecting

for some days past to see her here. I will ever be as good a friend to

her as I can for your sake. Dear Mr Clennam, I dare say you think little

of having been a friend to me when I had no other (not that I have any

other now, for I have made no new friends), but I think much of it, and

I never can forget it.

I wish I knew--but it is best for no one to write to me--how Mr and Mrs

Plornish prosper in the business which my dear father bought for them,

and that old Mr Nandy lives happily with them and his two grandchildren,

and sings all his songs over and over again. I cannot quite keep back

the tears from my eyes when I think of my poor Maggy, and of the blank

she must have felt at first, however kind they all are to her, without

her Little Mother. Will you go and tell her, as a strict secret, with my

love, that she never can have regretted our separation more than I have

regretted it? And will you tell them all that I have thought of them

every day, and that my heart is faithful to them everywhere? O, if you

could know how faithful, you would almost pity me for being so far away

and being so grand!

You will be glad, I am sure, to know that my dear father is very well

in health, and that all these changes are highly beneficial to him, and

that he is very different indeed from what he used to be when you used

to see him. There is an improvement in my uncle too, I think, though he

never complained of old, and never exults now. Fanny is very graceful,

quick, and clever. It is natural to her to be a lady; she has adapted

herself to our new fortunes with wonderful ease.

This reminds me that I have not been able to do so, and that I sometimes

almost despair of ever being able to do so. I find that I cannot learn.

Mrs General is always with us, and we speak French and speak Italian,

and she takes pains to form us in many ways. When I say we speak French

and Italian, I mean they do. As for me, I am so slow that I scarcely

get on at all. As soon as I begin to plan, and think, and try, all my

planning, thinking, and trying go in old directions, and I begin to feel

careful again about the expenses of the day, and about my dear father,

and about my work, and then I remember with a start that there are no

such cares left, and that in itself is so new and improbable that it

sets me wandering again. I should not have the courage to mention this

to any one but you.

It is the same with all these new countries and wonderful sights.

They are very beautiful, and they astonish me, but I am not collected

enough--not familiar enough with myself, if you can quite understand

what I mean--to have all the pleasure in them that I might have. What

I knew before them, blends with them, too, so curiously. For instance,

when we were among the mountains, I often felt (I hesitate to tell such

an idle thing, dear Mr Clennam, even to you) as if the Marshalsea must

be behind that great rock; or as if Mrs Clennam's room where I have

worked so many days, and where I first saw you, must be just beyond that

snow. Do you remember one night when I came with Maggy to your lodging

in Covent Garden? That room I have often and often fancied I have seen

before me, travelling along for miles by the side of our carriage, when

I have looked out of the carriage-window after dark. We were shut out

that night, and sat at the iron gate, and walked about till morning.

I often look up at the stars, even from the balcony of this room, and

believe that I am in the street again, shut out with Maggy. It is the

same with people that I left in England.

When I go about here in a gondola, I surprise myself looking into other

gondolas as if I hoped to see them. It would overcome me with joy to

see them, but I don't think it would surprise me much, at first. In my

fanciful times, I fancy that they might be anywhere; and I almost expect

to see their dear faces on the bridges or the quays.

Another difficulty that I have will seem very strange to you. It must

seem very strange to any one but me, and does even to me: I often feel

the old sad pity for--I need not write the word--for him. Changed as he

is, and inexpressibly blest and thankful as I always am to know it, the

old sorrowful feeling of compassion comes upon me sometimes with such

strength that I want to put my arms round his neck, tell him how I love

him, and cry a little on his breast. I should be glad after that, and

proud and happy. But I know that I must not do this; that he would not

like it, that Fanny would be angry, that Mrs General would be amazed;

and so I quiet myself. Yet in doing so, I struggle with the feeling that

I have come to be at a distance from him; and that even in the midst of

all the servants and attendants, he is deserted, and in want of me.

Dear Mr Clennam, I have written a great deal about myself, but I must