Chapter 14: Little Dorrit's Party

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

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. Save him and spare him that, and you
will be able to think better of him!'

Clennam said--not very plainly, seeing those tears glistening in
her anxious eyes--that her wish should be sacred with him.

'You don't know what he is,' she said; 'you don't know what he
really is. How can you, seeing him there all at once, dear love, and
not gradually, as I have done! You have been so good to us, so
delicately and truly good, that I want him to be better in your eyes
than in anybody's. And I cannot bear to think,' cried Little Dorrit,
covering her tears with her hands, 'I cannot bear to think that you
of all the world should see him in his only moments of
degradation.'

'Pray,' said Clennam, 'do not be so distressed. Pray, pray,
Little Dorrit! This is quite understood now.'

'Thank you, sir. Thank you! I have tried very much to keep
myself from saying this; I have thought about it, days and nights;
but when I knew for certain you were coming again, I made up my mind
to speak to you. Not because I am ashamed of him,' she dried her
tears quickly, 'but because I know him better than any one does, and
love him, and am proud of him.'

Relieved of this weight, Little Dorrit was nervously anxious to
be gone. Maggy being broad awake, and in the act of distantly
gloating over the fruit and cakes with chuckles of anticipation,
Clennam made the best diversion in his power by pouring her out a
glass of wine, which she drank in a series of loud smacks; putting
her hand upon her windpipe after every one, and saying, breathless,
with her eyes in a prominent state, 'Oh, ain't it d'licious! Ain't
it hospitally!' When she had finished the wine and these encomiums,
he charged her to load her basket (she was never without her basket)
with every eatable thing upon the table, and to take especial care to
leave no scrap behind. Maggy's pleasure in doing this and her little
mother's pleasure in seeing Maggy pleased, was as good a turn as
circumstances could have given to the late conversation.

'But the gates will have been locked long ago,' said Clennam,
suddenly remembering it. 'Where are you going?'

'I am going to Maggy's lodging,' answered Little Dorrit. 'I
shall be quite safe, quite well taken care of.'

'I must accompany you there,' said Clennam, 'I cannot let you go
alone.'

'Yes, pray leave us to go there by ourselves. Pray do!' begged
Little Dorrit.

She was so earnest in the petition, that Clennam felt a delicacy
in obtruding himself upon her: the rather, because he could well
understand that Maggy's lodging was of the obscurest sort. 'Come,
Maggy,' said Little Dorrit cheerily, 'we shall do very well; we know
the way by this time, Maggy?'

'Yes, yes, little mother; we know the way,' chuckled Maggy. And
away they went. Little Dorrit turned at the door to say, 'God bless
you!' She said it very softly, but perhaps she may have been as
audible above--who knows!--as a whole cathedral choir.

Arthur Clennam suffered them to pass the corner of the street
before he followed at a distance; not with any idea of encroaching a
second time on Little Dorrit's privacy, but to satisfy his mind by
seeing her secure in the neighbourhood to which she was accustomed.
So diminutive she looked, so fragile and defenceless against the
bleak damp weather, flitting along in the shuffling shadow of her
charge, that he felt, in his compassion, and in his habit of
considering her a child apart from the rest of the rough world, as if
he would have been glad to take her up in his arms and carry her to
her journey's end.

In course of time she came into the leading thoroughfare where
the Marshalsea was, and then he saw them slacken their pace, and soon
turn down a by-street. He stopped, felt that he had no right to go
further, and slowly left them. He had no suspicion that they ran any
risk of being houseless until morning; had no idea of the truth until
long, long afterwards.

But, said Little Dorrit, when they stopped at a poor dwelling
all in darkness, and heard no sound on listening at the door, 'Now,
this is a good lodging for you, Maggy, and we must not give offence.
Consequently, we will only knock twice, and not very loud; and if we
cannot wake them so, we must walk about till day.'

Once, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened.
Twice, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. All
was close and still. 'Maggy, we must do the best we can, my dear.
We must be patient, and wait for day.'

It was a chill dark night, with a damp wind blowing, when they
came out into the leading street again, and heard the clocks strike
half-past one. 'In only five hours and a half,' said Little Dorrit,
'we shall be able to go home.' To speak of home, and to go and look
at it, it being so near, was a natural sequence. They went to the
closed gate, and peeped through into the court-yard. 'I hope he is
sound asleep,' said Little Dorrit, kissing one of the bars, 'and does
not miss me.'

The gate was so familiar, and so like a companion, that they put
down Maggy's basket in a corner to serve for a seat, and keeping
close together, rested there for some time. While the street was
empty and silent, Little Dorrit was not afraid; but when she heard a
footstep at a distance, or saw a moving shadow among the street
lamps, she was startled, and whispered, 'Maggy, I see some one. Come
away!' Maggy would then wake up more or less fretfully, and they
would wander about a little, and come back again.

As long as eating was a novelty and an amusement, Maggy kept up
pretty well. But that period going by, she became querulous about
the cold, and shivered and whimpered. 'It will soon be over, dear,'
said Little Dorrit patiently. 'Oh it's all very fine for you, little
mother,' returned Maggy, 'but I'm a poor thing, only ten years old.'
At last, in the dead of the night, when the street was very still
indeed, Little Dorrit laid the heavy head upon her bosom, and soothed
her to sleep. And thus she sat at the gate, as it were alone;
looking up at the stars, and seeing the clouds pass over them in
their wild flight--which was the dance at Little Dorrit's party.

'If it really was a party!' she thought once, as she sat there.
'If it was light and warm and beautiful, and it was our house, and my
poor dear was its master, and had never been inside these walls.

And if Mr Clennam was one of our visitors, and we were dancing
to delightful music, and were all as gay and light-hearted as ever we
could be! I wonder--' Such a vista of wonder opened out before her,
that she sat looking up at the stars, quite lost, until Maggy was
querulous again, and wanted to get up and walk.

Three o'clock, and half-past three, and they had passed over
London Bridge. They had heard the rush of the tide against
obstacles; and looked down, awed, through the dark vapour on the
river; had seen little spots of lighted water where the bridge lamps
were reflected, shining like demon eyes, with a terrible fascination
in them for guilt and misery. They had shrunk past homeless people,
lying coiled up in nooks. They had run from drunkards. They had
started from slinking men, whistling and signing to one another at
bye corners, or running away at full speed. Though everywhere the
leader and the guide, Little Dorrit, happy for once in her youthful
appearance, feigned to cling to and rely upon Maggy. And more than
once some voice, from among a knot of brawling or prowling figures in
their path, had called out to the rest to 'let the woman and the
child go by!'

So, the woman and the child had gone by, and gone on, and five
had sounded from the steeples. 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.