menu_book Chapter 2

book one chapter two of little dorrit this librivox recording is in the public domain recorded by mill nicholson little dorrit by charles dickens book one poverty chapter two fellow-travellers no more of yesterday's howling over yonder to-day sir is there i have heard none then you may be sure there is none when these people howl they howl to be heard most people do i suppose ah but these people are always howling never happy otherwise do you mean the marseilles people i mean the french people they're always at it as to marseilles we know what marseilles is it sent the most insurrectionary tune into the world that was ever composed it couldn't exist without alonging and marshogging to something or other victory or death or blazes or something

the speaker with a whimsical good-humour upon him all the time looked over the parapet wall with the greatest disparagement of marseilles and taking up a determined position by putting his hands in his pockets and rattling his money at it apostrophized it with a short laugh along and marshong indeed it would be more credible to you i think to let other people along and marshong about their lawful business instead of shutting them up in quarantine tiresome enough said the other but we shall be out to-day out to-day repeated the first it's almost an aggravation of the enormity that we shall be out to-day out what have we ever been in for for no very strong reason i must say but as we come from the east and as the east is the country of the plague the plague repeated the other that's my grievance i have had the plague continually ever since i have been here i am like a sane man shut up in a mad-house i can't stand the suspicion of the thing

i came here as well as ever i was in my life but to suspect me of the plague is to give me the plague and i have had it and i have got it you bear it very well mr meagles said the second speaker smiling no if you knew the real state of the case that's the last observation you would think of making i have been waking up night after night and saying now i have got it now it has developed itself now i am in for it now these fellows are making out their case for their precautions why i'd as soon have a spit put through me and be stuck upon a card in a collection of beetles as lead the life i have been leading here well mr meagles say no more about it now it's over urged a cheerful feminine voice over repeated mr meagles who appeared though without any ill-nature to be in that peculiar state of mind in which the last word spoken by anybody else is a new injury over

and why should i say no more about it because it's over it was mrs meagles who had spoken to mr meagles and mrs meagles was like mr meagles comely and healthy with a pleasant english face which had been looking at homely things for five-and-fifty years or more and shone with a bright reflection of them there never mind father never mind said mrs meagles for goodness sake content yourself with pet with pet repeated mr meagles in his injured vein pet however being close behind him touched him on the shoulder and mr meagles immediately forgave marseilles from the bottom of his heart pet was about twenty a fair girl with rich brown hair hanging free in natural ringlets a lovely girl with a frank face and wonderful eyes so large so soft so bright set to such perfection in her kind good head she was round and fresh and dimpled and spoilt and there was in pet an air of timidity and dependence which was the best weakness in the world and gave her the only crowning charm a girl so pretty and pleasant could have been without

now i ask you said mr meagles in the blandest confidence falling back a step himself and handing his daughter a step forward to illustrate his question i ask you simply as between man and man you know did you ever hear of such damned nonsense as putting pet in quarantine it has had the result of making even quarantine enjoyable come said mr meagles that's something to be sure i am obliged to you for that remark now pet my darling you had better go along with mother and get ready for the boat the officer of health and a variety of humbugs in cocked hats are coming off to let us out of this at last and all we jail-birds are to breakfast together in something approaching to a christian style again before we take wing for our different destinations tatticorum stick you close to your young mistress he spoke to a handsome girl with lustrous dark hair and eyes and very neatly dressed who replied with a half-courtsy as she passed off in the train of mrs meagles and pet

they crossed the bare scorched terrace all three together and disappeared through a staring white archway mr meagles's companion a grave dark man of forty still stood looking towards this archway after they were gone until mr meagles tapped him on the arm i beg your pardon said he starting not at all said mr meagles they took one silent turn backward and forward in the shade of the wall getting at the height on which the quarantine barracks are placed what cool refreshment of sea-breeze there was at seven in the morning mr meagles's companion resumed the conversation may i ask you he said what is the name of tattycorum mr meagles struck in i have not the least idea i thought said the other that tattycoram suggested mr meagles again thank you that tattycoram was a name and i have several times wondered at the oddity of it why the fact is said mr meagles mrs meagles and myself are you see practical people that you have frequently mentioned in the course of the agreeable and interesting conversations we have had together walking up and down on these stones

said the other with a half-smile breaking through the gravity of his dark face practical people so one day five or six years ago now when we took pet to church at the foundling you have heard of the foundling hospital in london similar to the institution for the found children in paris i have seen it well one day when we took pet to church there to hear the music because as practical people it is the business of our lives to show her everything that we think can please her mother my usual name for mrs meagles began to cry so that it was necessary to take her out what's the matter mother said i when we had brought her a little round you are a frightening pet my dear yes i know that father says mother but i think it's through my loving her so much that it ever came into my head that ever what came into your head mother oh dear dear cried mother breaking out again when i saw all those children ranged tier above tier and appealing from the father none of them has ever known on earth to the great father of us all in heaven i thought does any wretched mother ever come here

and look among those young faces wondering which is the poor child she brought into this forlorn world never through all its life to know her love her kiss her face her voice even her name now that was practical in mother and i told her so i said mother that's what i call practical in you my dear the other not unmoved assented so i said next day now mother i have a proposition to make that i think you'll approve of let us take one of those same little children to be a little maid to pet we are practical people so if we should find her temper a little defective or any of her ways a little wide of ours we shall know what we have to take into account we shall know what an immense deduction must be made from all the influences and experiences that have formed us no parents no child brother or sister no individuality of home no glass slipper or fairy godmother and that's the way we came by tatticorum

and the name itself by george said mr meagles i was forgetting the name itself why she was called in the institution harriet beadle an arbitrary name of course now harriet we changed into hattie and then into tatty because as practical people we thought even a playful name might be a new thing to her and might have a softening and affectionate kind of effect don't you see as to beadle that i needn't say was wholly out of the question if there is anything that is not to be tolerated on any terms anything that is a type of jack-in-office insolence and absurdity anything that represents in coats waistcoats and big sticks our english holding on by nonsense after every one has found it out it is a beadle you haven't seen a beadle lately as an englishman who has been more than twenty years in china no then said mr meagles laying his forefinger on his companion's breast with great animation don't you see a beadle now if you can help it

whenever i see a beadle and full fig coming down a street on a sunday at the head of a charity school i am obliged to turn and run away or i should hit him the name of beadle being out of the question and the originator of the institution for these poor foundlings having been a blessed creature of the name of coram we gave that name to pet's little maid at one time she was tatty and at one time she was coram until we got into a way of mixing the two names together and now she is always tatty your daughter said the other when they had taken another silent turn to and fro and after standing for a moment at the wall glancing down at the sea had resumed their walk is your only child i know mr meagles may i ask you in no impertinent curiosity but because i have had so much pleasure in your society may never in this labyrinth of a world exchange a quiet word with you again and wish to preserve an accurate remembrance of you and yours may i ask you if i have not gathered from your good wife that you have had other children no no said mr meagles not exactly other children one other child

oh i am afraid i have inadvertently touched upon a tender theme never mind said mr meagles if i am grave about it i am not at all sorrowful it quiets me for a moment but does not make me unhappy pet had a twin sister who died when we could just see her eyes exactly like pet's above the table as she stood on tiptoe holding by it ah indeed indeed yes and being practical people the result has gradually sprung up in the minds of mrs meagles and myself which perhaps you may or perhaps you may not understand pet and her baby sister were so exactly alike and so completely one that in our thoughts we have never been able to separate them since it would be of no use to tell us that our dead child was a mere infant we have changed that child according to the changes in the child spared to us and always with us as pet has grown that child has grown as pet has become more sensible and womanly her sister has become more sensible and womanly by just the same degrees

it would be as hard to convince me that if i was to pass into the other world to-morrow i should not through the mercy of god be received there by a daughter just like pet as to persuade me that pet herself is not a reality at my side i understand you said the other gently as to her pursued her father the sudden loss of her little picture and playfellow and her early association with that mystery in which we all have our equal share but which is not often so forcibly presented to a child has necessarily had some influence on her character then her mother and i were not young when we married and pet has always had a sort of grown-up life with us though we have tried to adapt ourselves to her we have been advised more than once when she has been a little ailing to change climate and air for her as often as we could especially at about this time of her life and to keep her amused so as i have no need to stick at a bank-desk now though i have been poor enough in my time i assure you or i should have married mrs meagles long before we go trotting about the world

this is how you find us staring at the nile and the pyramids and the sphinxes and the desert and all the rest of it and this is how tattycoram will be a great traveller in course of time and captain cook i thank you said the other very heartily for your confidence don't mention it returned mr meagles i am sure you are quite welcome and now mr clennam perhaps i may ask you whether you have yet come to a decision where to go next indeed no i am such a waif and stray everywhere that i am liable to be drifted where any current may set it's extraordinary to me if you'll excuse my freedom in saying so that you don't go straight to london said mr meagles in the tone of a confidential adviser perhaps i shall ay but i mean with a will i have no will that is to say he coloured a little next to none that i can put in action now trained by main force broken not bent

heavily ironed with an object on which i was never consulted and which was never mine shipped away to the other end of the world before i was of age and exiled there until my father's death there a year ago always grinding in a mill i always hated what is to be expected from me in middle life will purpose hope all those lights were extinguished before i could sound the words light him up again said mr meagles ah easily said i am the son mr meagles of a hard father and mother i am the only child of parents who weighed measured and priced everything for whom what could not be weighed measured and priced had no existence strict people as the phrase is professors of a stern religion their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own offered up us part of a bargain for the security of their possessions austere faces inexorable discipline penance in this world and terror in the next nothing graceful or gentle anywhere and a void in my cowed heart everywhere this was my childhood

if i may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life really though said mr meagles made very uncomfortable by the picture offered to his imagination that was a tough commencement but come you must now study and profit by all that lies beyond it like a practical man if the people who are usually called practical were practical in your direction why so they are said mr meagles are they indeed well i suppose so returned mr meagles thinking about it eh one can but be practical and mrs meagles and myself are nothing else my unknown course is easier and more helpful than i had expected to find it then said clennam shaking his head with his grave smile enough of me here is the boat the boat was filled with the cocked hats to which mr meagles entertained a national objection and the wearers of those cocked hats landed and came up the steps and all the impounded travellers congregated together

there was then a mighty production of papers on the part of the cocked hats and a calling over of names and great work of signing sealing stamping inking and sanding with exceedingly blurred gritty and undecipherable results finally everything was done according to rule and the travellers were at liberty to depart whithersoever they would they made little account of stare and glare and the new pleasure of recovering their freedom but flitted across the harbour in gay boats and reassembled at a great hotel whence the sun was excluded by closed lattices and where bare paved floors lofty ceilings and resounding corridors tempered the intense heat there a great table in a great room was soon profusely covered with a superb repast and the quarantine quarters became bare indeed remembered among dainty dishes southern fruits cooled wines flowers from genoa snow from the mountain tops and all the colours of the rainbow flashing in the mirrors but i bear those monotonous walls no ill-will now said mr meagles

one always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind i dare say a prisoner begins to relent towards his prison after he is let out they were about thirty in company and all talking but necessarily in groups father and mother meagles sat with their daughter between them the last three on one side of the table on the opposite side sat mr a tall french gentleman with raven hair and a beard of a swart and terrible not to say genteelly diabolical aspect but who had shown himself the mildest of men and a handsome young englishwoman travelling quite alone who had a proud observant face and had either withdrawn herself from the rest or been avoided by the rest nobody herself excepted perhaps could have quite decided which the rest of the party were of the usual materials travellers on business and travellers for pleasure officers from india on leave merchants in the greek and turkey trades a clerical english husband in a meek straight waistcoat on a wedding-trip with his young wife

a majestic english mamma and papa of the patrician order with a family of three growing-up daughters who were keeping a journal for the confusion of their fellow-creatures and a deaf old english mother tough in travel with a very decidedly grown-up daughter indeed which daughter went sketching about the universe in the expectation of ultimately toning herself off into the married state the reserved englishwoman took up mr meagles in his last remark do you mean that a prisoner forgives his prison said she slowly and with emphasis that was my speculation miss wade i don't pretend to know positively how a prisoner might feel i never was one before mademoiselle doubts said the french gentleman in his own language it's being so easy to forgive i do pet had to translate this passage to mr meagles who never by any accident acquired any knowledge whatever of the language of any country into which he travelled oh said he dear me but that's a pity isn't it that i am not credulous said miss wade not exactly that put it another way that you can't believe it easy to forgive

my experience she quietly returned has been correcting my belief in many respects for some years it is our natural progress i have heard well well but it's not natural to bear malice i hope said mr meagles cheerily if i had been shut up in any place to pine and suffer i should always hate that place and wish to burn it down or raise it to the ground i know no more strong sir said mr meagles to the frenchman it being another of his habits to address individuals of all nations in idiomatic english with a perfect conviction that they were bound to understand it somehow rather forcible enough fair friend you'll agree with me i think the french gentleman courteously replied plait-il to which mr meagles returned with much satisfaction you are right my opinion the breakfast beginning by and by to languish mr meagles made the company a speech it was short enough and sensible enough considering that it was a speech at all and hearty

it merely went to the effect that as they had all been thrown together by chance and had all preserved a good understanding together and were now about to disperse and were not likely ever to find themselves all together again what could they do better than bid farewell to one another and give one another good speed in a simultaneous glass of cool champagne all round the table it was done and with a general shaking of hands the assembly broke up for ever the solitary young lady all this time had said no more she rose with the rest and silently withdrew to a remote corner of the great room where she sat herself on a couch in a window seeming to watch the reflection of the water as it made a silver quivering on the bars of the lattice she sat turned away from the whole length of the apartment as if she were lonely of her own haughty choice and yet it would have been as difficult as ever to say positively whether she avoided the rest or was avoided the shadow in which she sat falling like a gloomy veil across her forehead accorded very well with the character of her beauty one could hardly see the face so still and scornful set off by the arched dark eyebrows and the folds of dark hair without wondering what its expression would be if a change came over it

that it could soften or relent appeared next to impossible that it could deepen into anger or any extreme of defiance and that it must change in that direction when it changed at all would have been its peculiar impression upon most observers it was dressed and trimmed into no ceremony of expression although not an open face there was no pretence in it i am self-contained and self-reliant your opinion is nothing to me i have no interest in you care nothing for you and see and hear you with indifference this it said plainly it said so in the proud eyes in the lifted nostril in the handsome but compressed and even cruel mouth cover either two of those channels of expression and a third would have said so still mask them all and a mere turn of the head would have shown an unsubduable nature pet had moved up to her she had been the subject of remark among her family and mr clennam who were now the only other occupants of the room and were standing at her side are you she turned her eyes and pet faltered expecting any one to meet you here miss wade i no father is sending to the post restaurant shall he have the pleasure of directing the messenger to ask if there are any letters for you

i thank him but i know there can be none we are afraid said pet sitting down beside her shyly and half tenderly that you will feel quite deserted when we are all gone indeed not said pet apologetically and embarrassed by her eyes not of course that we are any company to you or that we have been able to be so or that we thought you wished it i have not intended to make it understood that i did wish it no of course but in short said pet timidly touching her hand as it lay impassive on the sofa between them will you not allow father to tender you any slight assistance or service he will be very glad very glad said mr meagles coming forward with his wife and clennam anything short of speaking the language i shall be delighted to undertake i am sure i am obliged to you she returned but my arrangements are made and i prefer to go my own way in my own manner do you said mr meagles to himself as he surveyed her with a puzzled look well there's character in that too

i am not much used to the society of young ladies and i am afraid i may not show my appreciation of it as others might a pleasant journey to you good-bye she would not have put out her hand it seemed but that mr meagles put out his so straight before her that she could not pass it she put hers in it and it lay there just as it had lain upon the couch good-bye said mr meagles this is the last good-bye upon the list for mother and i have just said it to mr clennam here and he only waits to say it to pet good-bye we may never meet again in our course through life we shall meet the people who are coming to meet us from many strange places and by many strange roads was the composed reply and what it is set to us to do to them and what it is set to them to do to us will all be done there was something in the manner of these words that jarred upon pet's ear

it implied that what was to be done was necessarily evil and it caused her to say in a whisper oh father and to shrink childishly in her spoilt way a little closer to him this was not lost on the speaker your pretty daughter she said start to think of such things yet looking full upon her you may be sure that there are men and women already on their road who have their business to do with you and who will do it of a certainty they will do it they may be coming hundreds thousands of miles over the sea there they may be close at hand now they may be coming for anything you know or anything you can do to prevent it from the vilest sweepings of this very town with the coldest of farewells and with a certain worn expression on her beauty that gave it though scarcely yet in its prime a wasted look she left the room now there were many stairs and passages that she had to traverse in passing from that part of the spacious house to the chamber she had secured for her own occupation when she had almost completed the journey and was passing along the gallery in which her room was she heard an angry sound of muttering and sobbing

a door stood open and within she saw the attendant upon the girl she had just left the maid with the curious name she stood still to look at this maid a sullen passionate girl her rich black hair was all about her face her face was flushed and hot and as she sobbed and raged she plucked at her lips with an unsparing hand selfish brutes said the girl sobbing and heaving between whiles not caring what becomes of me leaving me there hungry and thirsty and tired to starve for anything they care beasts devils wretches "'My poor girl, what is the matter?' She looked up suddenly with reddened eyes, and with her hand suspended in the act of pinching

her neck, freshly disfigured with great scarlet blots. "'It's nothing to you. What's the matter? It don't signify to anyone.' "'Oh, yes, it does.

I am sorry to see you so.' "'You are not sorry,' said the girl. "'You're glad. You know you are glad. I never was like this.

"'But twice over in the quarantine yonder, and both times you found me. "'I'm afraid of you.' "'Afraid of me?' "'Yes. You seem to come like me own anger, me own malice, me own—oh, whatever it is, I don't know what it is. But I am ill-used, I am ill-used, I am ill-used.'

Here the sobs and the tears and the tearing hand, which had all been suspended together since the first surprise went on together anew the visitor stood looking at her with a strange attentive smile it was wonderful to see the fury of the contest in the girl and the bodily struggle she made as if she were rent by the demons of old i am younger than she is by two or three years and yet it's me that looks after her as if i was old and it's she that's always petted and called baby how do you test the name they hate her they make a fool of her they spoil her she thinks of nothing but herself she thinks no more of me than if i was a stock and a stone so the girl went on you must have patience i won't have patience if they take much care of themselves and little or none of you you must not mind it i will mind it hush be more prudent you forget your dependent position

i don't care for that i'll run away i'll do some mischief i won't bear it i can't bear it i shall die if i try to bear it the observer stood with her hand upon her own bosom looking at the girl as one afflicted with the diseased part might curiously watch the dissection and exposition of an analogous case the girl raged and battled with all the force of her youth and fulness of life until by little and little her passionate exclamations trailed off into broken murmurs as if she were in pain by corresponding degrees she sank into a chair then upon her knees then upon the ground beside the bed drawing the coverlet with her half to hide her shamed head and wet hair in it and half as it seemed to embrace it rather than have nothing to take to her repentant breast go away from me go away from me when my temper comes upon me i am mad i know i might keep it off if i only tried hard enough and sometimes i do try hard enough and at other times i don't and won't

what have i said i knew when i said it it was all lies they think i am being taken care of somewhere and have all i want they are nothing but good to me i love them dearly no people could ever be kinder to a thankless creature than they always are to me do do go away for i am afraid of you i am afraid of myself when i feel my temper coming and i am as much afraid of you go away from me and let me pray and cry myself better the day passed on and again the wide stair stared itself out and the hot night was on marseilles and through it the caravan of the morning all dispersed went their appointed ways and thus ever by day and night under the sun and under the stars climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains journeying by land and journeying by sea coming and going so strangely to meet and to act and react on one another move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life chapter two