"Maggy, you promised me to stop near father."
"So I would, Little Mother, only he wouldn"t let me. If he takes and sends me out I must go. If he takes and says, "Maggy, you hurry away and back with that letter, and you shall have a sixpence if the answer"s a good "un," I must take it. Lor, Little Mother, what"s a poor thing of ten year old to do? And if Mr Tip--if he happens to be a coming in as I come out, and if he says "Where are you going, Maggy?" and if I says, "I"m a going So and So," and if he says, "I"ll have a Try too," and if he goes into the George and writes a letter and if he gives it me and says, "Take that one to the same place, and if the answer"s a good "un I"ll give you a shilling," it ain"t my fault, mother!"
Arthur read, in Little Dorrit"s downcast eyes, to whom she foresaw that the letters were addressed.
"I"m a going So and So. There! That"s where I am a going to," said Maggy. "I"m a going So and So. It ain"t you, Little Mother, that"s got anything to do with it--it"s you, you know," said Maggy, addressing Arthur. "You"d better come, So and So, and let me take and give "em to you."
"We will not be so particular as that, Maggy. Give them me here," said Clennam in a low voice.
"Well, then, come across the road," answered Maggy in a very loud whisper. "Little Mother wasn"t to know nothing of it, and she would never have known nothing of it if you had only gone So and So, instead of bothering and loitering about. It ain"t my fault. I must do what I am told. They ought to be ashamed of themselves for telling me."
Clennam crossed to the other side, and hurriedly opened the letters.
That from the father mentioned that most unexpectedly finding himself in the novel position of having been disappointed of a remittance from the City on which he had confidently counted, he took up his pen, being restrained by the unhappy circ.u.mstance of his incarceration during three-and-twenty years (doubly underlined), from coming himself, as he would otherwise certainly have done--took up his pen to entreat Mr Clennam to advance him the sum of Three Pounds Ten Shillings upon his I.O.U., which he begged to enclose. That from the son set forth that Mr Clennam would, he knew, be gratified to hear that he had at length obtained permanent employment of a highly satisfactory nature, accompanied with every prospect of complete success in life; but that the temporary inability of his employer to pay him his arrears of salary to that date (in which condition said employer had appealed to that generous forbearance in which he trusted he should never be wanting towards a fellow-creature), combined with the fraudulent conduct of a false friend and the present high price of provisions, had reduced him to the verge of ruin, unless he could by a quarter before six that evening raise the sum of eight pounds. This sum, Mr Clennam would be happy to learn, he had, through the prompt.i.tude of several friends who had a lively confidence in his probity, already raised, with the exception of a trifling balance of one pound seventeen and fourpence; the loan of which balance, for the period of one month, would be fraught with the usual beneficent consequences.
These letters Clennam answered with the aid of his pencil and pocket-book, on the spot; sending the father what he asked for, and excusing himself from compliance with the demand of the son. He then commissioned Maggy to return with his replies, and gave her the shilling of which the failure of her supplemental enterprise would have disappointed her otherwise.
When he rejoined Little Dorrit, and they had begun walking as before, she said all at once:
"I think I had better go. I had better go home."
"Don"t be distressed," said Clennam, "I have answered the letters. They were nothing. You know what they were. They were nothing."
"But I am afraid," she returned, "to leave him, I am afraid to leave any of them. When I am gone, they pervert--but they don"t mean it--even Maggy."
"It was a very innocent commission that she undertook, poor thing. And in keeping it secret from you, she supposed, no doubt, that she was only saving you uneasiness."
"Yes, I hope so, I hope so. But I had better go home! It was but the other day that my sister told me I had become so used to the prison that I had its tone and character. It must be so. I am sure it must be when I see these things. My place is there. I am better there, it is unfeeling in me to be here, when I can do the least thing there. Good-bye. I had far better stay at home!"
The agonised way in which she poured this out, as if it burst of itself from her suppressed heart, made it difficult for Clennam to keep the tears from his eyes as he saw and heard her.
"Don"t call it home, my child!" he entreated. "It is always painful to me to hear you call it home."
"But it is home! What else can I call home? Why should I ever forget it for a single moment?"
"You never do, dear Little Dorrit, in any good and true service."
"I hope not, O I hope not! But it is better for me to stay there; much better, much more dutiful, much happier. Please don"t go with me, let me go by myself. Good-bye, G.o.d bless you. Thank you, thank you."
He felt that it was better to respect her entreaty, and did not move while her slight form went quickly away from him. When it had fluttered out of sight, he turned his face towards the water and stood thinking.
She would have been distressed at any time by this discovery of the letters; but so much so, and in that unrestrainable way?
No.
When she had seen her father begging with his threadbare disguise on, when she had entreated him not to give her father money, she had been distressed, but not like this. Something had made her keenly and additionally sensitive just now. Now, was there some one in the hopeless unattainable distance? Or had the suspicion been brought into his mind, by his own a.s.sociations of the troubled river running beneath the bridge with the same river higher up, its changeless tune upon the prow of the ferry-boat, so many miles an hour the peaceful flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet?
He thought of his poor child, Little Dorrit, for a long time there; he thought of her going home; he thought of her in the night; he thought of her when the day came round again. And the poor child Little Dorrit thought of him--too faithfully, ah, too faithfully!--in the shadow of the Marshalsea wall.
CHAPTER 23. Machinery in Motion
Mr Meagles bestirred himself with such prompt activity in the matter of the negotiation with Daniel Doyce which Clennam had entrusted to him, that he soon brought it into business train, and called on Clennam at nine o"clock one morning to make his report. "Doyce is highly gratified by your good opinion," he opened the business by saying, "and desires nothing so much as that you should examine the affairs of the Works for yourself, and entirely understand them. He has handed me the keys of all his books and papers--here they are jingling in this pocket--and the only charge he has given me is "Let Mr Clennam have the means of putting himself on a perfect equality with me as to knowing whatever I know.
If it should come to nothing after all, he will respect my confidence.
Unless I was sure of that to begin with, I should have nothing to do with him." And there, you see," said Mr Meagles, "you have Daniel Doyce all over."
"A very honourable character."
"Oh, yes, to be sure. Not a doubt of it. Odd, but very honourable. Very odd though. Now, would you believe, Clennam," said Mr Meagles, with a hearty enjoyment of his friend"s eccentricity, "that I had a whole morning in What"s-his-name Yard--"
"Bleeding Heart?"
"A whole morning in Bleeding Heart Yard, before I could induce him to pursue the subject at all?"
"How was that?"
"How was that, my friend? I no sooner mentioned your name in connection with it than he declared off."
"Declared off on my account?"
"I no sooner mentioned your name, Clennam, than he said, "That will never do!" What did he mean by that? I asked him. No matter, Meagles; that would never do. Why would it never do? You"ll hardly believe it, Clennam," said Mr Meagles, laughing within himself, "but it came out that it would never do, because you and he, walking down to Twickenham together, had glided into a friendly conversation in the course of which he had referred to his intention of taking a partner, supposing at the time that you were as firmly and finally settled as St Paul"s Cathedral.
"Whereas," says he, "Mr Clennam might now believe, if I entertained his proposition, that I had a sinister and designing motive in what was open free speech. Which I can"t bear," says he, "which I really am too proud to bear.""
"I should as soon suspect--"
"Of course you would," interrupted Mr Meagles, "and so I told him. But it took a morning to scale that wall; and I doubt if any other man than myself (he likes me of old) could have got his leg over it. Well, Clennam. This business-like obstacle surmounted, he then stipulated that before resuming with you I should look over the books and form my own opinion. I looked over the books, and formed my own opinion. "Is it, on the whole, for, or against?" says he. "For," says I. "Then," says he, "you may now, my good friend, give Mr Clennam the means of forming his opinion. To enable him to do which, without bias and with perfect freedom, I shall go out of town for a week." And he"s gone," said Mr Meagles; that"s the rich conclusion of the thing."
"Leaving me," said Clennam, "with a high sense, I must say, of his candour and his--"
"Oddity," Mr Meagles struck in. "I should think so!"
It was not exactly the word on Clennam"s lips, but he forbore to interrupt his good-humoured friend.
"And now," added Mr Meagles, "you can begin to look into matters as soon as you think proper. I have undertaken to explain where you may want explanation, but to be strictly impartial, and to do nothing more."
They began their perquisitions in Bleeding Heart Yard that same forenoon. Little peculiarities were easily to be detected by experienced eyes in Mr Doyce"s way of managing his affairs, but they almost always involved some ingenious simplification of a difficulty, and some plain road to the desired end. That his papers were in arrear, and that he stood in need of a.s.sistance to develop the capacity of his business, was clear enough; but all the results of his undertakings during many years were distinctly set forth, and were ascertainable with ease. Nothing had been done for the purposes of the pending investigation; everything was in its genuine working dress, and in a certain honest rugged order. The calculations and entries, in his own hand, of which there were many, were bluntly written, and with no very neat precision; but were always plain and directed straight to the purpose. It occurred to Arthur that a far more elaborate and taking show of business--such as the records of the Circ.u.mlocution Office made perhaps--might be far less serviceable, as being meant to be far less intelligible.
Three or four days of steady application tendered him master of all the facts it was essential to become acquainted with. Mr Meagles was at hand the whole time, always ready to illuminate any dim place with the bright little safety-lamp belonging to the scales and scoop. Between them they agreed upon the sum it would be fair to offer for the purchase of a half-share in the business, and then Mr Meagles unsealed a paper in which Daniel Doyce had noted the amount at which he valued it; which was even something less. Thus, when Daniel came back, he found the affair as good as concluded.
"And I may now avow, Mr Clennam," said he, with a cordial shake of the hand, "that if I had looked high and low for a partner, I believe I could not have found one more to my mind."
"I say the same," said Clennam.
"And I say of both of you," added Mr Meagles, "that you are well matched. You keep him in check, Clennam, with your common sense, and you stick to the Works, Dan, with your--"
"Uncommon sense?" suggested Daniel, with his quiet smile.