Arthur Clennam rose hastily, and saw her standing at the door. This history must sometimes see with Little Dorrit’s eyes, and shall begin that course by seeing him. Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which seemed a spacious one to her, and grandly furnished. Courtly ideas of Covent Garden, as a place with famous coffee-houses, where gentlemen wearing gold-laced coats and swords had quarrelled and fought duels; costly ideas of Covent Garden, as a place where there were flowers in winter at guineas a-piece, pine-apples at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a pint; picturesque ideas of Covent Garden, as a place where there was a mighty theatre, showing wonderful and beautiful sights to richly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and which was for ever far beyond the reach of poor Fanny or poor uncle; desolate ideas of Covent Garden, as having all those arches in it, where the miserable children in rags among whom she had just now passed, like young rats, slunk and hid, fed on offal, huddled together for warmth, and were hunted about (look to the rats young and old, all ye Barnacles, for before God they are eating away our foundations, and will bring the roofs on our heads!); teeming ideas of Covent Garden, as a place of past and present mystery, romance, abundance, want, beauty, ugliness, fair country gardens, and foul street gutters; all confused together,—made the room dimmer than it was in Little Dorrit’s eyes, as they timidly saw it from the door.
At first in the chair before the gone-out fire, and then turned round wondering to see her, was the gentleman whom she sought. The brown, grave gentleman, who smiled so pleasantly, who was so frank and considerate in his manner, and yet in whose earnestness there was something that reminded her of his mother, with the great difference that she was earnest in asperity and he in gentleness. Now he regarded her with that attentive and inquiring look before which Little Dorrit’s eyes had always fallen, and before which they fell still.
‘My poor child! Here at midnight?’
‘I said Little Dorrit, sir, on purpose to prepare you. I knew you must be very much surprised.’
‘Are you alone?’
‘No sir, I have got Maggy with me.’
Considering her entrance sufficiently prepared for by this mention of her name, Maggy appeared from the landing outside, on the broad grin. She instantly suppressed that manifestation, however, and became fixedly solemn.
‘And I have no fire,’ said Clennam. ‘And you are—’ He was going to say so lightly clad, but stopped himself in what would have been a reference to her poverty, saying instead, ‘And it is so cold.’
Putting the chair from which he had risen nearer to the grate, he made her sit down in it; and hurriedly bringing wood and coal, heaped them together and got a blaze.
‘Your foot is like marble, my child;’ he had happened to touch it, while stooping on one knee at his work of kindling the fire; ‘put it nearer the warmth.’ Little Dorrit thanked him hastily. It was quite warm, it was very warm! It smote upon his heart to feel that she hid her thin, worn shoe.
Little Dorrit was not ashamed of her poor shoes. He knew her story, and it was not that. Little Dorrit had a misgiving that he might blame her father, if he saw them; that he might think, ‘why did he dine to-day, and leave this little creature to the mercy of the cold stones!’ She had no belief that it would have been a just reflection; she simply knew, by experience, that such delusions did sometimes present themselves to people. It was a part of her father’s misfortunes that they did.
‘Before I say anything else,’ Little Dorrit began, sitting before the pale fire, and raising her eyes again to the face which in its harmonious look of interest, and pity, and protection, she felt to be a mystery far above her in degree, and almost removed beyond her guessing at; ‘may I tell you something, sir?’
‘Yes, my child.’
A slight shade of distress fell upon her, at his so often calling her a child. She was surprised that he should see it, or think of such a slight thing; but he said directly:
‘I wanted a tender word, and could think of no other. As you just now gave yourself the name they give you at my mother’s, and as that is the name by which I always think of you, let me call you Little Dorrit.’
‘Thank you, sir, I should like it better than any name.’
‘Little Dorrit.’
‘Little mother,’ Maggy (who had been falling asleep) put in, as a correction.
‘It’s all the same, Maggy,’ returned Little Dorrit, ‘all the same.’
‘Is it all the same, mother?’
‘Just the same.’
Maggy laughed, and immediately snored. In Little Dorrit’s eyes and ears, the uncouth figure and the uncouth sound were as pleasant as could be. There was a glow of pride in her big child, overspreading her face, when it again met the eyes of the grave brown gentleman. She wondered what he was thinking of, as he looked at Maggy and her. She thought what a good father he would be. How, with some such look, he would counsel and cherish his daughter.
‘What I was going to tell you, sir,’ said Little Dorrit, ‘is, that my brother is at large.’
Arthur was rejoiced to hear it, and hoped he would do well.
‘And what I was going to tell you, sir,’ said Little Dorrit, trembling in all her little figure and in her voice, ‘is, that I am not to know whose generosity released him—am never to ask, and am never to be told, and am never to thank that gentleman with all my grateful heart!’
He would probably need no thanks, Clennam said. Very likely he would be thankful himself (and with reason), that he had had the means and chance of doing a little service to her, who well deserved a great one.
‘And what I was going to say, sir, is,’ said Little Dorrit, trembling more and more, ‘that if I knew him, and I might, I would tell him that he can never, never know how I feel his goodness, and how my good father would feel it. And what I was going to say, sir, is, that if I knew him, and I might—but I don’t know him and I must not—I know that!—I would tell him that I shall never any more lie down to sleep without having prayed to Heaven to bless him and reward him. And if I knew him, and I might, I would go down on my knees to him, and take his hand and kiss it and ask him not to draw it away, but to leave it—O to leave it for a moment—and let my thankful tears fall on it; for I have no other thanks to give him!’
Little Dorrit had put his hand to her lips, and would have kneeled to him, but he gently prevented her, and replaced her in her chair. Her eyes, and the tones of her voice, had thanked him far better than she thought. He was not able to say, quite as composedly as usual, ‘There, Little Dorrit, there, there, there! We will suppose that you did know this person, and that you might do all this, and that it was all done. And now tell me, Who am quite another person—who am nothing more than the friend who begged you to trust him—why you are out at midnight, and what it is that brings you so far through the streets at this late hour, my slight, delicate,’ child was on his lips again, ‘Little Dorrit!’
‘Maggy and I have been to-night,’ she answered, subduing herself with the quiet effort that had long been natural to her, ‘to the theatre where my sister is engaged.’
‘And oh ain’t it a Ev’nly place,’ suddenly interrupted Maggy, who seemed to have the power of going to sleep and waking up whenever she chose. ‘Almost as good as a hospital. Only there ain’t no Chicking in it.’
Here she shook herself, and fell asleep again.
‘We went there,’ said Little Dorrit, glancing at her charge, ‘because I like sometimes to know, of my own knowledge, that my sister is doing well; and like to see her there, with my own eyes, when neither she nor Uncle is aware. It is very seldom indeed that I can do that, because when I am not out at work, I am with my father, and even when I am out at work, I hurry home to him. But I pretend to-night that I am at a party.’
As she made the confession, timidly hesitating, she raised her eyes to the face, and read its expression so plainly that she answered it.
‘Oh no, certainly! I never was at a party in my life.’
She paused a little under his attentive look, and then said, ‘I hope there is no harm in it. I could never have been of any use, if I had not pretended a little.’
She feared that he was blaming her in his mind for so devising to contrive for them, think for them, and watch over them, without their knowledge or gratitude; perhaps even with their reproaches for supposed neglect. But what was really in his mind, was the weak figure with its strong purpose, the thin worn shoes, the insufficient dress, and the pretence of recreation and enjoyment. He asked where the suppositious party was? At a place where she worked, answered Little Dorrit, blushing. She had said very little about it; only a few words to make her father easy. Her father did not believe it to be a grand party—indeed he might suppose that. And she glanced for an instant at the shawl she wore.
‘It is the first night,’ said Little Dorrit, ‘that I have ever been away from home. And London looks so large, so barren, and so wild.’ In Little Dorrit’s eyes, its vastness under the black sky was awful; a tremor passed over her as she said the words.
‘But this is not,’ she added, with the quiet effort again, ‘what I have come to trouble you with, sir. My sister’s having found a friend, a lady she has told me of and made me rather anxious about, was the first cause of my coming away from home. And being away, and coming (on purpose) round by where you lived and seeing a light in the window—’
Not for the first time. No, not for the first time. In Little Dorrit’s eyes, the outside of that window had been a distant star on other nights than this. She had toiled out of her way, tired and troubled, to look up at it, and wonder about the grave, brown gentleman from so far off, who had spoken to her as a friend and protector.
‘There were three things,’ said Little Dorrit, ‘that I thought I would like to say, if you were alone and I might come up-stairs. First, what I have tried to say, but never can—never shall—’
‘Hush, hush! That is done with, and disposed of. Let us pass to the second,’ said Clennam, smiling her agitation away, making the blaze shine upon her, and putting wine and cake and fruit towards her on the table.
‘I think,’ said Little Dorrit—‘this is the second thing, sir—I think Mrs Clennam must have found out my secret, and must know where I come from and where I go to. Where I live, I mean.’
‘Indeed!’ returned Clennam quickly. He asked her, after short consideration, why she supposed so.
‘I think,’ replied Little Dorrit, ‘that Mr Flintwinch must have watched me.’
And why, Clennam asked, as he turned his eyes upon the fire, bent his brows, and considered again; why did she suppose that?
‘I have met him twice. Both times near home. Both times at night, when I was going back. Both times I thought (though that may easily be my mistake), that he hardly looked as if he had met me by accident.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘No; he only nodded and put his head on one side.’
‘The devil take his head!’ mused Clennam, still looking at the fire; ‘it’s always on one side.’
He roused himself to persuade her to put some wine to her lips, and to touch something to eat—it was very difficult, she was so timid and shy—and then said, musing again:
‘Is my mother at all changed to you?’
‘Oh, not at all. She is just the same. I wondered whether I had better tell her my history. I wondered whether I might—I mean, whether you would like me to tell her. I wondered,’ said Little Dorrit, looking at him in a suppliant way, and gradually withdrawing her eyes as he looked at her, ‘whether you would advise me what I ought to do.’
‘Little Dorrit,’ said Clennam; and the phrase had already begun, between these two, to stand for a hundred gentle phrases, according to the varying tone and connection in which it was used; ‘do nothing. I will have some talk with my old friend, Mrs Affery. Do nothing, Little Dorrit—except refresh yourself with such means as there are here. I entreat you to do that.’
‘Thank you, I am not hungry. Nor,’ said Little Dorrit, as he softly put her glass towards her, ‘nor thirsty.—I think Maggy might like something, perhaps.’
‘We will make her find pockets presently for all there is here,’ said Clennam: ‘but before we awake her, there was a third thing to say.’
‘Yes. You will not be offended, sir?’
‘I promise that, unreservedly.’
‘It will sound strange. I hardly know how to say it. Don’t think it unreasonable or ungrateful in me,’ said Little Dorrit, with returning and increasing agitation.
‘No, no, no. I am sure it will be natural and right. I am not afraid that I shall put a wrong construction on it, whatever it is.’
‘Thank you. You are coming back to see my father again?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have been so good and thoughtful as to write him a note, saying that you are coming to-morrow?’
‘Oh, that was nothing! Yes.’
‘Can you guess,’ said Little Dorrit, folding her small hands tight in one another, and looking at him with all the earnestness of her soul looking steadily out of her eyes, ‘what I am going to ask you not to do?’
‘I think I can. But I may be wrong.’
‘No, you are not wrong,’ said Little Dorrit, shaking her head. ‘If we should want it so very, very badly that we cannot do without it, let me ask you for it.’
‘I Will,—I Will.’
‘Don’t encourage him to ask. Don’t understand him if he does ask. Don’t give it to him. Sav............