"I hate him," she returned. "Worse than his wife, because I was once dupe enough, and false enough to myself, almost to love him. You have seen me, sir, only on common-place occasions, when I dare say you have thought me a common-place woman, a little more self-willed than the generality. You don"t know what I mean by hating, if you know me no better than that; you can"t know, without knowing with what care I have studied myself and people about me. For this reason I have for some time inclined to tell you what my life has been--not to propitiate your opinion, for I set no value on it; but that you may comprehend, when you think of your dear friend and his dear wife, what I mean by hating.
Shall I give you something I have written and put by for your perusal, or shall I hold my hand?"
Arthur begged her to give it to him. She went to the bureau, unlocked it, and took from an inner drawer a few folded sheets of paper. Without any conciliation of him, scarcely addressing him, rather speaking as if she were speaking to her own looking-gla.s.s for the justification of her own stubbornness, she said, as she gave them to him:
"Now you may know what I mean by hating! No more of that. Sir, whether you find me temporarily and cheaply lodging in an empty London house, or in a Calais apartment, you find Harriet with me. You may like to see her before you leave. Harriet, come in!" She called Harriet again. The second call produced Harriet, once Tattycoram.
"Here is Mr Clennam," said Miss Wade; "not come for you; he has given you up,--I suppose you have, by this time?"
"Having no authority, or influence--yes," a.s.sented Clennam.
"Not come in search of you, you see; but still seeking some one. He wants that Blandois man."
"With whom I saw you in the Strand in London," hinted Arthur. "If you know anything of him, Harriet, except that he came from Venice--which we all know--tell it to Mr Clennam freely." "I know nothing more about him," said the girl.
"Are you satisfied?" Miss Wade inquired of Arthur.
He had no reason to disbelieve them; the girl"s manner being so natural as to be almost convincing, if he had had any previous doubts. He replied, "I must seek for intelligence elsewhere."
He was not going in the same breath; but he had risen before the girl entered, and she evidently thought he was. She looked quickly at him, and said:
"Are they well, sir?"
"Who?"
She stopped herself in saying what would have been "all of them;"
glanced at Miss Wade; and said "Mr and Mrs Meagles."
"They were, when I last heard of them. They are not at home. By the way, let me ask you. Is it true that you were seen there?"
"Where? Where does any one say I was seen?" returned the girl, sullenly casting down her eyes.
"Looking in at the garden gate of the cottage."
"No," said Miss Wade. "She has never been near it."
"You are wrong, then," said the girl. "I went down there the last time we were in London. I went one afternoon when you left me alone. And I did look in."
"You poor-spirited girl," returned Miss Wade with infinite contempt; "does all our companionship, do all our conversations, do all your old complainings, tell for so little as that?"
"There was no harm in looking in at the gate for an instant," said the girl. "I saw by the windows that the family were not there."
"Why should you go near the place?"
"Because I wanted to see it. Because I felt that I should like to look at it again."
As each of the two handsome faces looked at the other, Clennam felt how each of the two natures must be constantly tearing the other to pieces.
"Oh!" said Miss Wade, coldly subduing and removing her glance; "if you had any desire to see the place where you led the life from which I rescued you because you had found out what it was, that is another thing. But is that your truth to me? Is that your fidelity to me? Is that the common cause I make with you? You are not worth the confidence I have placed in you. You are not worth the favour I have shown you. You are no higher than a spaniel, and had better go back to the people who did worse than whip you."
"If you speak so of them with any one else by to hear, you"ll provoke me to take their part," said the girl.
"Go back to them," Miss Wade retorted. "Go back to them."
"You know very well," retorted Harriet in her turn, "that I won"t go back to them. You know very well that I have thrown them off, and never can, never shall, never will, go back to them. Let them alone, then, Miss Wade."
"You prefer their plenty to your less fat living here," she rejoined.
"You exalt them, and slight me. What else should I have expected? I ought to have known it."
"It"s not so," said the girl, flushing high, "and you don"t say what you mean. I know what you mean. You are reproaching me, underhanded, with having n.o.body but you to look to. And because I have n.o.body but you to look to, you think you are to make me do, or not do, everything you please, and are to put any affront upon me. You are as bad as they were, every bit. But I will not be quite tamed, and made submissive. I will say again that I went to look at the house, because I had often thought that I should like to see it once more. I will ask again how they are, because I once liked them and at times thought they were kind to me."
Hereupon Clennam said that he was sure they would still receive her kindly, if she should ever desire to return.
"Never!" said the girl pa.s.sionately. "I shall never do that. n.o.body knows that better than Miss Wade, though she taunts me because she has made me her dependent. And I know I am so; and I know she is overjoyed when she can bring it to my mind."
"A good pretence!" said Miss Wade, with no less anger, haughtiness, and bitterness; "but too threadbare to cover what I plainly see in this. My poverty will not bear compet.i.tion with their money. Better go back at once, better go back at once, and have done with it!"
Arthur Clennam looked at them, standing a little distance asunder in the dull confined room, each proudly cherishing her own anger; each, with a fixed determination, torturing her own breast, and torturing the other"s. He said a word or two of leave-taking; but Miss Wade barely inclined her head, and Harriet, with the a.s.sumed humiliation of an abject dependent and serf (but not without defiance for all that), made as if she were too low to notice or to be noticed.
He came down the dark winding stairs into the yard with an increased sense upon him of the gloom of the wall that was dead, and of the shrubs that were dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the statue that was gone. Pondering much on what he had seen and heard in that house, as well as on the failure of all his efforts to trace the suspicious character who was lost, he returned to London and to England by the packet that had taken him over. On the way he unfolded the sheets of paper, and read in them what is reproduced in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 21. The History of a Self-Tormentor
I have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age I have detected what those about me thought they hid from me. If I could have been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually discerning the truth, I might have lived as smoothly as most fools do.
My childhood was pa.s.sed with a grandmother; that is to say, with a lady who represented that relative to me, and who took that t.i.tle on herself.
She had no claim to it, but I--being to that extent a little fool--had no suspicion of her. She had some children of her own family in her house, and some children of other people. All girls; ten in number, including me. We all lived together and were educated together.
I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see how determinedly those girls patronised me. I was told I was an orphan.
There was no other orphan among us; and I perceived (here was the first disadvantage of not being a fool) that they conciliated me in an insolent pity, and in a sense of superiority. I did not set this down as a discovery, rashly. I tried them often. I could hardly make them quarrel with me. When I succeeded with any of them, they were sure to come after an hour or two, and begin a reconciliation. I tried them over and over again, and I never knew them wait for me to begin. They were always forgiving me, in their vanity and condescension. Little images of grown people!
One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a pa.s.sionate way that she could no more deserve than I can remember without feeling ashamed of, though I was but a child. She had what they called an amiable temper, an affectionate temper. She could distribute, and did distribute pretty looks and smiles to every one among them. I believe there was not a soul in the place, except myself, who knew that she did it purposely to wound and gall me!
Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was made stormy by my fondness for her. I was constantly lectured and disgraced for what was called "trying her;" in other words charging her with her little perfidy and throwing her into tears by showing her that I read her heart. However, I loved her faithfully; and one time I went home with her for the holidays.
She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a crowd of cousins and acquaintances, and we had dances at her house, and went out to dances at other houses, and, both at home and out, she tormented my love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to make them all fond of her--and so drive me wild with jealousy. To be familiar and endearing with them all--and so make me mad with envying them. When we were left alone in our bedroom at night, I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of her baseness; and then she would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and then I would hold her in my arms till morning: loving her as much as ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold her in my arms and plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still hold her after we were both dead.
It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an aunt who was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked me much; but I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up in the one girl. The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious way with her eyes of watching me. She was an audacious woman, and openly looked compa.s.sionately at me. After one of the nights that I have spoken of, I came down into a greenhouse before breakfast. Charlotte (the name of my false young friend) had gone down before me, and I heard this aunt speaking to her about me as I entered. I stopped where I was, among the leaves, and listened.
The aunt said, "Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and this must not continue." I repeat the very words I heard.
Now, what did she answer? Did she say, "It is I who am wearing her to death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner, yet she tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what I make her undergo?" No; my first memorable experience was true to what I knew her to be, and to all my experience. She began sobbing and weeping (to secure the aunt"s sympathy to herself), and said, "Dear aunt, she has an unhappy temper; other girls at school, besides I, try hard to make it better; we all try hard."
Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something n.o.ble instead of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous pretence by replying, "But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to everything, and I see that this poor miserable girl causes you more constant and useless distress than even so good an effort justifies."