LITMIR.BIZ

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They were walking slowly towards the east, already looking for the first pale streak of day, when a woman came after them.

      ‘What are you doing with the child?’ she said to Maggy.

      She was young – far too young to be there, Heaven knows! – and neither ugly nor wicked-looking. She spoke coarsely, but with no naturally coarse voice; there was even something musical in its sound.

      ‘What are you doing with yourself?’ retorted Maggy, for want of a better answer.

      ‘Can’t you see, without my telling you?’

      ‘I don’t know as I can,’ said Maggy.

      ‘Killing myself! Now I have answered you, answer me. What are you doing with the child?’

      The supposed child kept her head drooped down, and kept her form close at Maggy’s side.

      ‘Poor thing!’ said the woman. ‘Have you no feeling, that you keep her out in the cruel streets at such a time as this? Have you no eyes, that you don’t see how delicate and slender she is? Have you no sense (you don’t look as if you had much) that you don’t take more pity on this cold and trembling little hand?’

      She had stepped across to that side, and held the hand between her own two, chafing it. ‘Kiss a poor lost creature, dear,’ she said, bending her face, ‘and tell me where’s she taking you.’

      Little Dorrit turned towards her.

      ‘Why, my God!’ she said, recoiling, ‘you’re a woman!’

      ‘Don’t mind that!’ said Little Dorrit, clasping one of her hands that had suddenly released hers. ‘I am not afraid of you.’

      ‘Then you had better be,’ she answered. ‘Have you no mother?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘No father?’

      ‘Yes, a very dear one.’

      ‘Go home to him, and be afraid of me. Let me go. Good night!’

      ‘I must thank you first; let me speak to you as if I really were a child.’

      ‘You can’t do it,’ said the woman. ‘You are kind and innocent; but you can’t look at me out of a child’s eyes. I never should have touched you, but I thought that you were a child.’ And with a strange, wild cry, she went away.

      No day yet in the sky, but there was day in the resounding stones of the streets; in the waggons, carts, and coaches; in the workers going to various occupations; in the opening of early shops; in the traffic at markets; in the stir of the riverside. There was coming day in the flaring lights, with a feebler colour in them than they would have had at another time; coming day in the increased sharpness of the air, and the ghastly dying of the night.

      They went back again to the gate, intending to wait there now until it should be opened; but the air was so raw and cold that Little Dorrit, leading Maggy about in her sleep, kept in motion. Going round by the Church, she saw lights there, and the door open; and went up the steps and looked in.

      ‘Who’s that?’ cried a stout old man, who was putting on a nightcap as if he were going to bed in a vault.

      ‘It’s no one particular, sir,’ said Little Dorrit.

      ‘Stop!’ cried the man. ‘Let’s have a look at you!’

      This caused her to turn back again in the act of going out, and to present herself and her charge before him.

      ‘I thought so!’ said he. ‘I know you.’

      ‘We have often seen each other,’ said Little Dorrit, recognising the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was, ‘when I have been at church here.’

      ‘More than that, we’ve got your birth in our Register, you know; you’re one of our curiosities.’

      ‘Indeed!’ said Little Dorrit.

      ‘To be sure. As the child of the – by-the-bye, how did you get out so early?’

      ‘We were shut out last night, and are waiting to get in.’

      ‘You don’t mean it? And there’s another hour good yet! Come into the vestry. You’ll find a fire in the vestry, on account of the painters. I’m waiting for the painters, or I shouldn’t be here, you may depend upon it. One of our curiosities mustn’t be cold when we have it in our power to warm her up comfortable. Come along.’

      He was a very good old fellow, in his familiar way; and having stirred the vestry fire, he looked round the shelves of registers for a particular volume. ‘Here you are, you see,’ he said, taking it down and turning the leaves. ‘Here you’ll find yourself, as large as life. Amy, daughter of William and Fanny Dorrit. Born, Marshalsea Prison, Parish of St George. And we tell people that you have lived there, without so much as a day’s or a night’s absence, ever since. Is it true?’

      ‘Quite true, till last night.’

      ‘Lord!’ But his surveying her with an admiring gaze suggested Something else to him, to wit: ‘I am sorry to see, though, that you are faint and tired. Stay a bit. I’ll get some cushions out of the church, and you and your friend shall lie down before the fire. Don’t be afraid of not going in to join your father when the gate opens. I’ll call you.’

      He soon brought in the cushions, and strewed them on the ground.

      ‘There you are, you see. Again as large as life. Oh, never mind thanking. I’ve daughters of my own. And though they weren’t born in the Marshalsea Prison, they might have been, if I had been, in my ways of carrying on, of your father’s breed. Stop a bit. I must put something under the cushion for your head. Here’s a burial volume, just the thing! We have got Mrs Bangham in this book. But what makes these books interesting to most people is – not who’s in ‘em, but who isn’t – who’s coming, you know, and when. That’s the interesting question.’

      Commendingly looking back at the pillow he had improvised, he left them to their hour’s repose. Maggy was snoring already, and Little Dorrit was soon fast asleep with her head resting on that sealed book of Fate, untroubled by its mysterious blank leaves.

      This was Little Dorrit’s party. The shame, desertion, wretchedness, and exposure of the great capital; the wet, the cold, the slow hours, and the swift clouds of the dismal night. This was the party from which Little Dorrit went home, jaded, in the first grey mist of a rainy morning.

      CHAPTER 15. Mrs Flintwinch has another Dream

      The debilitated old house in the city, wrapped in its mantle of soot, and leaning heavily on the crutches that had partaken of its decay and worn out with it, never knew a healthy or a cheerful interval, let what would betide. If the sun ever touched it, it was but with a ray, and that was gone in half an hour; if the moonlight ever fell upon it, it was only to put a few patches on its doleful cloak, and make it look more wretched. The stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when the nights and the smoke were clear enough; and all bad weather stood by it with a rare fidelity. You should alike find rain, hail, frost, and thaw lingering in that dismal enclosure when they had vanished from other places; and as to snow, you should see it there for weeks, long after it had changed from yellow to black, slowly weeping away its grimy life. The place had no other adherents. As to street noises, the rumbling of wheels in the lane merely rushed in at the gateway in going past, and rushed out again: making the listening Mistress Affery feel as if she were deaf, and recovered the sense of hearing by instantaneous flashes. So with whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all pleasant human sounds. They leaped the gap in a moment, and went upon their way.

      The varying light of fire and candle in Mrs Clennam’s room made the greatest change that ever broke the dead monotony of the spot. In her two long narrow windows, the fire shone sullenly all day, and sullenly all night. On rare occasions it flashed up passionately, as she did; but for the most part it was suppressed, like her, and preyed upon itself evenly and slowly. During many hours of the short winter days, however, when it was dusk there early in the afternoon, changing distortions of herself in her wheeled chair, of Mr Flintwinch with his wry

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