Чарльз Диккенс
Tales from Dickens
II
THE CHILD OF THE MARSHALSEA
On the first night of his return to the house of his childhood Arthur had noticed there a little seamstress, with pale, transparent face, hazel eyes and a figure as small as a child's. She wore a spare thin dress, spoke little, and passed through the rooms noiselessly and shy. They called her "Little Dorrit." She came in the morning and sewed quietly till nightfall, when she vanished. It had been so rare in the old days for any one to please the mistress of that gloomy house that the little creature's presence there interested Arthur greatly and he longed to know something of her history.
He soon found there was nothing to be learned from Flintwinch, and so one night he followed Little Dorrit when she left the house. To his great surprise he saw her finally enter a great bare building surrounded with spiked walls and called The Marshalsea.
This was a famous prison where debtors were kept. In those days the law not only permitted a man to be put in jail for debt, but compelled him to stay there till all he owed was paid – a strange custom, since while he was in jail he was unable to earn any money to pay with. In fact, in many cases poor debtors had to stay there all their lives.
Inside the walls of the Marshalsea the wives and children of unfortunate prisoners were allowed to come to live with them just as in a boarding-house or hotel, but the debtors themselves could never pass out of the gate. Arthur entered the prison ignorant of its rules and so stayed too long, for presently the bell for closing rang, the gates were shut, and he had to stay inside all night. This was not so pleasant, but it gave him a chance easily to find out all he wished to learn of Little Dorrit's history.
Her father, before she was born, had lost all his money through a business failure, and had thus been thrown into the Marshalsea. There Amy, or Little Dorrit, as they came to call her, was born; there her mother had languished away, and there she herself had always lived, mothering her pretty frivolous sister Fanny, and her lazy, ne'er-do-well brother, "Tip."
Her father had been an inmate of the prison so many years that he was called "The Father of the Marshalsea." From being a haughty man of wealth, he had become a shabby old white-haired dignitary with a soft manner, who took little gifts of money which any one gave him half-shame-facedly and to the mortification of Little Dorrit alone.
The child had grown up the favorite of the turnkeys and of all the prison, calling the high, blank walls "home." When she was a little slip of a girl she had her sister and brother sent to night-school for a time, and later taught herself fine sewing, so that at the time Arthur Clennam returned to London she was working every day outside the walls, for small wages. Each night she returned to the prison to prepare her father's supper, bringing him whatever she could hide from her own dinner at the house where she sewed, loving him devotedly through all.
She even had a would-be lover, too. The son of one of the turnkeys, a young man with weak legs and weak, light hair, soft-hearted and soft-headed, had long pursued her in vain. He was now engaged in seeking comfort for his hopeless love by composing epitaphs for his own tombstone, such as:
Here Lie the Mortal Remains of
JOHN CHIVERY
Never Anything Worth Mentioning
Who Died of a Broken Heart, Requesting With
His Last Breath that the Word
AMY
Might be Inscribed Over His Ashes
Which Was Done by His Afflicted Parents
Old Mr. Dorrit held his position among the Marshalsea prisoners with great fancied dignity and received all visitors and new-comers in his room like a man of society at home. During that evening Arthur called on him and treated the old man so courteously and talked to Little Dorrit with such kindness that she began to love him from that moment.
Many things of Little Dorrit's pathetic story Arthur learned that night. His first surprise at finding her in the Clennam house mingled strangely with his old thought that his father on his death-bed seemed to be troubled by some remorseful memory; and as he slept in the gloomy prison he dreamed that the little seamstress was in some mysterious way mingled with this wrong and remorse.
There was more truth than fancy in this dream. Not knowing the true history of his parentage, and wholly ignorant of the sad life and death of the poor singer, his own unhappy mother, Arthur had never heard the name Dorrit. He did not know, to be sure, that it was the name of the wealthy patron who had once educated her. As a matter of fact, this patron had been Little Dorrit's own uncle, who now was living in poverty. It was to his youngest niece that the will Mrs. Clennam had wickedly hidden declared the money should go. And as Little Dorrit was this niece, it rightfully belonged to her. The real reason of Mrs. Clennam's apparent kindness to Little Dorrit was the pricking of her conscience, which gave her no rest.
But all this Arthur could not guess. Nevertheless, he had gained such an interest in the little seamstress that next day he determined to find out all he could about her father's unfortunate affairs.
He had great difficulty in this. The Government had taken charge of old Mr. Dorrit's debts, and his affairs were in the hands of a department which some people sneeringly called the "Circumlocution Office" – because it took so much time and talk for it to accomplish anything. This department had a great many clerks, every one of whom seemed to have nothing to do but to keep people from troubling them by finding out anything.
Arthur went to one clerk, who sent him to a Mr. Tite Barnacle, a fat, pompous man with a big collar, a big watch chain and stiff boots. Mr. Barnacle treated him quite as an outsider and would give him no information whatever. Then he tried another department, where they said they knew nothing of the matter. Still a third advised him not to bother about it. So at last he had to give up, quite discouraged.
Though he could do nothing for Little Dorrit's father, Arthur did what he could for her lazy brother. He paid his debts so that he was released from the Marshalsea, and this kindness, though Tip himself was ungrateful to the last degree, endeared him still more to Little Dorrit, who needed his friendship so greatly.
The night her brother was released she came to Arthur to thank him – alone save for a half-witted woman named Maggie, who believed she herself was only ten years old, and called Little Dorrit "Little Mother," and who used to go with her when she went through the streets at night. Little Dorrit was dressed so thinly and looked so slight and helpless that when she left, Arthur felt as if he would like to take her up in his arms and carry her home again.
It would have been better if he had. For when they got back to the Marshalsea the prison gates had closed for the night and they had to stay out till morning. They wandered in the cold street till nearly dawn; then a kind-hearted sexton who was opening a church let them come in and made Little Dorrit a bed of pew cushions, and there she slept a while with a big church-book for a pillow. Arthur did not know of this adventure till long afterward, for Little Dorrit would not tell him for fear he should blame himself for letting them go home alone.
Little Dorrit had one other valuable friend beside Arthur at this time. This was a rent collector named Pancks, who was really kind-hearted, but who was compelled to squeeze rent money out of the poor by his master. The latter looked so good and benevolent that people called him "The Patriarch," but he was at heart a genuine skinflint, for whose meanness Pancks got all the credit. Pancks was a short, wiry man, with a scrubby chin and jet-black eyes, and when he walked or talked he puffed and blew and snorted like a little steam-engine.
Little Dorrit used sometimes to go to sew at the house of "The Patriarch," and Pancks often saw her there. One day he greatly surprised her by asking to see the palm of her hand, and then he pretended to read her fortune. He told her all about herself (which astonished her, for she did not know that he knew anything of her history), and then, with many mysterious puffs and winks, he told her she would finally be happy. After that she seemed to meet Pancks wherever she went – at Mrs. Clennam's and at the Marshalsea as well – but at such meetings he would pretend not to know her. Only sometimes, when no one else was near, he would whisper:
"I'm Pancks, the gipsy – fortune-telling."
These strange actions puzzled Little Dorrit very much. But she was far from guessing the truth: that Pancks had for some time been interested (as had Arthur Clennam) in finding out how her father's affairs stood. He had discovered thus, accidentally, that old Mr. Dorrit was probably the heir at law to a great estate that had lain for years forgotten, unclaimed and growing larger all the time. The question now was to prove this, and this, Pancks, out of friendship for Little Dorrit, was busily trying to do.
One day the rent-collector came to Arthur to tell him that he had succeeded. The proof was all found. Mr. Dorrit's right was clear; all he had to do was to sign his name to a paper, and the Marshalsea gates would open and he would be free and a rich man.
Arthur found Little Dorrit and told her the glad tidings. They made her almost faint for joy, although all her rejoicing was for her father. Then he put her in a carriage and drove as fast as possible with her to the prison to carry her father the great news.
Little Dorrit told the old man with her arms around his neck, and as she clasped him, thinking that she had never yet in her life known him as he had once been, before his prison years, she cried:
"I shall see him as I never saw him yet – my dear love, with the dark cloud cleared away! I shall see him, as my poor mother saw him long ago! O my dear, my dear! O father, father! O thank God, thank God!"
So "The Father of the Marshalsea" left the old prison, in which he had lived so long, and all the prisoners held a mass-meeting and gave him a farewell address and a dinner.
On the last day, when they drove away from the iron gates, old Mr. Dorrit was in fine, new clothing, and Tip and Fanny were clad in the height of fashion. Poor Little Dorrit, in joy for her father and grief at parting from Arthur (for they were to go abroad at once), did not appear at the last moment, and Arthur, who had come to see them off, hastening to her room, found that she had fainted away. He carried her gently down to the carriage, and as he lifted her in, he saw she had put on the same thin little dress that she had worn on the day he had first seen her.
So, amid cheers and good wishes, they drove away, and Arthur, as he walked back through the crowded streets, somehow felt very lonely.
III
WHAT RICHES BROUGHT TO THE DORRITS
Great changes came to old Mr. Dorrit with his money. As they traveled slowly through Switzerland and into Italy, he put on greater dignity daily. He lived each day suspecting that every one was in some way trying to slight him and grew very much ashamed of his past years in the Marshalsea, and forbade all mention of them. He hired a great number of servants, and, to improve the manners of Fanny and Little Dorrit, he employed a woman named Mrs. General, who had many silly notions of society.
Little Dorrit could not even say "father" without being reproved by Mrs. General. "Papa is preferable, my dear," the lady would insist, "and, besides, it gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prisms are all good words for the lips. You will find it serviceable in the formation of a demeanor, if you say to yourself in company – on entering a room, for instance – 'Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prisms!'"
Fanny and Tip were as spoiled as possible. Fanny, morning and night, thought of nothing but wearing costly dresses and "going into society," and Tip did little but play cards and bet on horse-races. Only Little Dorrit, through all, kept her old sweet self unchanged.
Wherever they went they lived in splendid hotels. In Venice the palace they occupied was six times as big as the whole Marshalsea. Mr. Dorrit, when he remembered Arthur Clennam at all, spoke of him as an upstart who had intruded his presence upon them in their poverty, and quickly forgot all his kindness and his efforts to help and comfort them.
But Little Dorrit never forgot. Her present existence seemed a dream. She tried to care for her father as she used to do, but he was afraid people would think he had not been used to servants (foolish man!) so she lost even the little pleasure of her old prison life in the Marshalsea. There were valets and maids now to do all the little things she had once loved to do with her own hands, and she seemed to be no longer of use to him. She loved her father as dearly as she always had, but now she had begun to feel that she could never see him as he used to be before his prison days, because first poverty and now wealth had changed him. The old sad shadow came over her. He grew angry at her and chid her, and hurt her. It seemed he had entirely forgotten the old days when she slaved so for him.
Poor little Dorrit! She was far lonelier now than she had ever been before in the debtors' prison – lonelier and unhappier than Arthur Clennam in London could have guessed. The gay, fashionable life of her brother and sister did not attract her. She was timid of joining in their gaieties. She asked leave only to be left alone, and went about the city in a gondola in a quiet, scared, lost manner. It often seemed to her as if the Marshalsea must be just behind the next big building, or Mrs. Clennam's house, where she had first met Arthur, just around the next corner. And she used to look into gondolas as they passed, as if she might see Arthur any minute.
In the days of their prison-poverty Fanny had occasionally earned some money by dancing at a theater. There she had met a silly, chuckle-headed young man, the son of a Mrs. Merdle, and he had been fascinated by her beauty. Now, in their wealth, he saw Fanny again and fell even more deeply in love with her. Mrs. Merdle was a cold-hearted, artificial woman, who kept a parrot that was always shrieking, and who thought of nothing but riches and society. She would have refused to let her son marry Fanny in the old days, but now it was another matter. He proposed, and Fanny, who had been made angry a thousand times by Mrs. Merdle's insolence and patronizing ways, made up her mind to marry him if only to take her revenge on his mother.
Mrs. Merdle's husband always stayed in London. He was immensely rich – so rich that people said everything he touched turned into gold. He was a quiet, dull man, with dull red cheeks, and cared nothing at all for society, though everybody flattered and courted him.
When old Mr. Dorrit saw Mrs. Merdle's son was in love with Fanny he was greatly pleased. He had by this time grown so selfish that he considered much less her happiness than his own profit, and he thought if they were married he could persuade Mr. Merdle to invest his own great fortune for him, so that he would be even richer than he was now. Mr. Merdle's name had been growing bigger and bigger every day. Nobody believed the great man could make a mistake, but that he was going to keep on getting richer and richer (though nobody knew how he did it) as long as he lived.
So, before long, Fanny married Mrs. Merdle's son, and went back to London to take up life in the magnificent Merdle mansion with her silly, chuckle-headed husband. Mr. Merdle had got a very rich position for him in the "Circumlocution Office" with which Arthur Clennam had had so much trouble once on a time.
Old Mr. Dorrit went to London, too, and, as he had schemed, gave the famous Mr. Merdle all his fortune to invest. Then he returned to Italy, where, in Rome, his faithful and lonely Little Dorrit waited lovingly for him.
On the night after he reached Rome Mrs. Merdle gave a dinner party to a large company, and Little Dorrit and her father attended.
In the midst of the dinner he suddenly called to her across the table. His voice was so loud and excited that all the guests were frightened and rose to their feet. Little Dorrit ran to him and put her arms about him, for she saw at once that he was not himself.
He began to address the company, and his first words showed that his mind had failed. He imagined he was still in the debtors' prison and that all the rich people about him were the other poor prisoners. He made them a speech, welcoming them to its walls, thanking them in advance for any money they might give to him as "The Father of the Marshalsea." And he ended by calling for the old turnkey he had known there to help him up the narrow stair to bed, as he had been used to do in the prison.
Little Dorrit was not ashamed – she loved him too much for that. Her only wish was to soothe him, and with a pale, frightened face, she begged him to come with her.
They got him away at last and carried him to his house. Once laid on his bed, he never rose from it again. Nor did he regain his memory of the immediate present. That, with its show and its servants, its riches and power, in which Little Dorrit had had so small a part, had faded out for ever, and now his mind, back in the Marshalsea, recognized his daughter as his only stay and faithful comfort.
It was well so, for this was the father she had most loved.
So she watched beside him day and night, while every day his life grew weaker and weaker. Every day the shadow of death stole deeper and deeper over his face, until one morning, when the dawn came, they saw that he would never wake again.
IV
WHAT HAPPENED TO ARTHUR CLENNAM
Arthur, meanwhile, had missed Little Dorrit greatly. He was very friendly with a couple named Meagles – a comely, healthy, good-humored and kind-hearted pair, and he was so lonely he almost thought himself in love with their daughter "Pet" for a while. But Pet soon married a portrait-painter and went to live abroad.
Mr. and Mrs. Meagles had a little orphan maid whom they called "Tattycoram," for no particular reason except that her first name had been Hattie, and the name of the man who founded the asylum where they found her was "Coram." Tattycoram had a very bad temper, so that Mr. Meagles, when he saw one of these fits coming on, used to stop and say, "Count twenty-five, Tattycoram." And Tattycoram would count twenty-five, and by that time the fit of temper was over.
But one day she had an attack that was very much worse than usual – so much worse that she couldn't wait to count twenty-five, and ran away. And it was a long time before they saw Tattycoram again.
At Mr. Meagles's house Arthur met an inventor named Doyce, a quiet, straightforward man, whom he soon came to like. Doyce had made a useful invention and for twelve years had been trying to bring it to the notice of the British Government. But this matter, too, had to go through the famous "Circumlocution Office," and so there it had stuck just as Arthur's inquiry had done.
Arthur having chosen no new business as yet, before long proposed a partnership between himself and Doyce. The latter agreed readily, and the new firm was established. Soon after this Doyce went abroad on business, leaving Arthur to manage the affairs.
All might have gone well but for the fame of Mr. Merdle. His wealth seemed so enormous, and his plans so sure, that many people throughout England, just as old Mr. Dorrit had done, put their money in his care. Even Pancks, the rent collector, did so, and strongly advised Arthur to do the same. Convinced by such advice Arthur was unhappily led to invest the money of the new firm in Merdle's schemes.
One day soon after, Mr. Merdle, whom every one had looked up to and respected, killed himself, and then to every one's astonishment it was found that his money was all gone, that his schemes were all exploded, and that the famous man who had dined and wined with the great was simply the greatest forger and the greatest thief that had ever cheated the gallows.
But it was too late then. Arthur's firm was utterly ruined with all the rest. What hurt him most was the knowledge that by using the firm's money he had ruined his honest partner, Doyce.
In order to set the latter as near right as he could, Arthur turned over every cent of his own personal fortune to pay as much of the firm's debt as it would, keeping nothing of value but his clothes and his books. Beside doing this, he wrote out a statement, declaring that he, Arthur Clennam, had of his own act and against his partner's express caution, used the firm's money for this purpose, and that he alone, and not Doyce, was to blame. He declared also that his own share (if any remained out of the wreck) should go to his partner, and that he himself would work as a mere clerk, at as small a salary as he could live on.
He published this statement at once, unwisely no doubt, when all London was so enraged against Merdle and glad to have some one on whom to vent its madness. In the public anger and excitement the generosity of his act was lost sight of. A few hours later a man who had invested some of his money in Arthur's firm, and thus lost it, had him arrested for debt, and that night he entered the dismal iron gates of the Marshalsea prison, not now as a visitor, but as one whom the pitiless bars locked in from liberty.
The turnkey took him up the old familiar staircase and into the old familiar room in which he had so often been. And as he sat down in its loneliness, thinking of the fair, slight form that had dwelt in it so long, he turned his face to the wall and sobbed aloud, "Oh, my Little Dorrit!"
Wherever he looked he seemed to see her, and just as she herself in a foreign country found herself looking and listening for his step and voice, so, too, it was with him.
In the days that followed he thought of her all the while. He was too depressed and too retiring and unhappy to mingle with the other prisoners, so he kept his own room and made no friends. The rest disliked him and said he was proud or sullen.
A burning, reckless mood soon added its sufferings to his dread and hatred of the place. The thought grew on him that he would in the end break his heart and die there. He felt that he was being stifled, and at times the longing to be free made him believe he must go mad. A week of this suffering found him in his bed in the grasp of a slow, wasting fever. He felt light-headed and delirious, and heard tunes playing that he knew were only in his brain.
One day when he had dragged himself to his chair by the window, the door of his room seemed to open to a quiet figure, which dropped a mantle it wore; then it seemed to be Little Dorrit in her old dress, and it seemed first to smile and then to burst into tears.
He roused himself, and all at once he saw that it was no dream. She was really there, kneeling by him now with her tears falling on his hands and her voice crying, "Oh, my best friend! Don't let me see you weep! I am your own poor child come back!"
No one had told her he was ill, for she had just returned from Italy. She made the room fresh and neat, sewed a white curtain for its window, and sent out for grapes, roast chicken and jellies, and every good thing. She sat by him all day, smoothing his hot pillow or giving him a cooling drink.
Though he had been strangely blind, he knew at last that she must have loved him all along. And to find her great heart turned to him thus in his misfortune made him realize that during all those months in the lonely prison he had been loving her, too, though he had not known it.
A feeling of peace came to him. Whenever he opened his eyes he saw her at his side – the same trusting Little Dorrit that he had always known.
