Chapter 21: The History of a Self-Tormentor

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

I have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age
I have detected what those about me thought they hid from me. If I
could have been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually
discerning the truth, I might have lived as smoothly as most fools
do.

My childhood was passed with a grandmother; that is to say, with
a lady who represented that relative to me, and who took that title
on herself. She had no claim to it, but I--being to that extent a
little fool--had no suspicion of her. She had some children of her
own family in her house, and some children of other people. All
girls; ten in number, including me. We all lived together and were
educated together.

I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see how
determinedly those girls patronised me. I was told I was an orphan.
There was no other orphan among us; and I perceived (here was the
first disadvantage of not being a fool) that they conciliated me in
an insolent pity, and in a sense of superiority. I did not set this
down as a discovery, rashly. I tried them often. I could hardly
make them quarrel with me. When I succeeded with any of them, they
were sure to come after an hour or two, and begin a reconciliation.
I tried them over and over again, and I never knew them wait for me
to begin. They were always forgiving me, in their vanity and
condescension. Little images of grown people!

One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a
passionate way that she could no more deserve than I can remember
without feeling ashamed of, though I was but a child. She had what
they called an amiable temper, an affectionate temper. She could
distribute, and did distribute pretty looks and smiles to every one
among them. I believe there was not a soul in the place, except
myself, who knew that she did it purposely to wound and gall me!

Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was
made stormy by my fondness for her. I was constantly lectured and
disgraced for what was called 'trying her;' in other words charging
her with her little perfidy and throwing her into tears by showing
her that I read her heart. However, I loved her faithfully; and one
time I went home with her for the holidays.

She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a
crowd of cousins and acquaintances, and we had dances at her house,
and went out to dances at other houses, and, both at home and out,
she tormented my love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to make them
all fond of her--and so drive me wild with jealousy. To be familiar
and endearing with them all--and so make me mad with envying them.
When we were left alone in our bedroom at night, I would reproach her
with my perfect knowledge of her baseness; and then she would cry and
cry and say I was cruel, and then I would hold her in my arms till
morning: loving her as much as ever, and often feeling as if, rather
than suffer so, I could so hold her in my arms and plunge to the
bottom of a river--where I would still hold her after we were both
dead.

It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was
an aunt who was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked
me much; but I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound
up in the one girl. The aunt was a young woman, and she had a
serious way with her eyes of watching me. She was an audacious
woman, and openly looked compassionately at me. After one of the
nights that I have spoken of, I came down into a greenhouse before
breakfast. Charlotte (the name of my false young friend) had gone
down before me, and I heard this aunt speaking to her about me as I
entered. I stopped where I was, among the leaves, and listened.

The aunt said, 'Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death,
and this must not continue.' I repeat the very words I heard.

Now, what did she answer? Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing
her to death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner,
yet she tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she
knows what I make her undergo?' No; my first memorable experience
was true to what I knew her to be, and to all my experience. She
began sobbing and weeping (to secure the aunt's sympathy to herself),
and said, 'Dear aunt, she has an unhappy temper; other girls at
school, besides I, try hard to make it better; we all try hard.'

Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something
noble instead of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous
pretence by replying, 'But there are reasonable limits, my dear love,
to everything, and I see that this poor miserable girl causes you
more constant and useless distress than even so good an effort
justifies.'

The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may
be prepared to hear, and said, 'Send me home.' I never said another
word to either of them, or to any of them, but 'Send me home, or I
will walk home alone, night and day!' When I got home, I told my
supposed grandmother that, unless I was sent away to finish my
education somewhere else before that girl came back, or before any
one of them came back, I would burn my sight away by throwing myself
into the fire, rather than I would endure to look at their plotting
faces.

I went among young women next, and I found them no better. Fair
words and fair pretences; but I penetrated below those assertions of
themselves and depreciations of me, and they were no better. Before
I left them, I learned that I had no grandmother and no recognised
relation. I carried the light of that information both into my past
and into my future. It showed me many new occasions on which people
triumphed over me, when they made a pretence of treating me with
consideration, or doing me a service.

A man of business had a small property in trust for me. I was
to be a governess; I became a governess; and went into the family of
a poor nobleman, where there were two daughters--little children, but
the parents wished them to grow up, if possible, under one
instructress. The mother was young and pretty. From the first, she
made a show of behaving to me with great delicacy. I kept my
resentment to myself; but I knew very well that it was her way of
petting the knowledge that she was my Mistress, and might have
behaved differently to her servant if it had been her fancy.

I say I did not resent it, nor did I; but I showed her, by not
gratifying her, that I understood her. When she pressed me to take
wine, I took water. If there happened to be anything choice at
table, she always sent it to me: but I always declined it, and ate of
the rejected dishes. These disappointments of her patronage were a
sharp retort, and made me feel independent.

I liked the children. They were timid, but on the whole
disposed to attach themselves to me. There was a nurse, however, in
the house, a rosy-faced woman always making an obtrusive pretence of
being gay and good-humoured, who had nursed them both, and who had
secured their affections before I saw them. I could almost have
settled down to my fate but for this woman. Her artful devices for
keeping herself before the children in constant competition with me,
might have blinded many in my place; but I saw through them from the
first. On the pretext of arranging my rooms and waiting on me and
taking care of my wardrobe (all of which she did busily), she was
never absent. The most crafty of her many subtleties was her feint
of seeking to make the children fonder of me. She would lead them to
me and coax them to me. 'Come to good Miss Wade, come to dear Miss
Wade, come to pretty Miss Wade. She loves you very much. Miss Wade
is a clever lady, who has read heaps of books, and can tell you far
better and more interesting stories than I know. Come and hear Miss
Wade!' How could I engage their attentions, when my heart was
burning against these ignorant designs? How could I wonder, when I
saw their innocent faces shrinking away, and their arms twining round
her neck, instead of mine? Then she would look up at me, shaking
their curls from her face, and say, 'They'll come round soon, Miss
Wade; they're very simple and loving, ma'am; don't be at all cast
down about it, ma'am'--exulting over me!

There was another thing the woman did. At times, when she saw
that she had safely plunged me into a black despondent brooding by
these means, she would call the attention of the children to it, and
would show them the difference between herself and me. 'Hush! Poor
Miss Wade is not well. Don't make a noise, my dears, her head aches.
Come and comfort her. Come and ask her if she is better; come and
ask her to lie down. I hope you have nothing on your mind, ma'am.
Don't take on, ma'am, and be sorry!'

It became intolerable. Her ladyship, my Mistress, coming in one
day when I was alone, and at the height of feeling that I could
support it no longer, I told her I must go. I could not bear the
presence of that woman Dawes.

'Miss Wade! Poor Dawes is devoted to you; would do anything for
you!'

I knew beforehand she would say so; I was quite prepared for it;
I only answered, it was not for me to contradict my Mistress; I must
go.

'I hope, Miss Wade,' she returned, instantly assuming the tone
of superiority she had always so thinly concealed, 'that nothing I
have ever said or done since we have been together, has justified
your use of that disagreeable word, "Mistress." It must have been
wholly inadvertent on my part. Pray tell me what it is.'

I replied that I had no complaint to make, either of my Mistress
or to my Mistress; but I must go.

She hesitated a moment, and then sat down beside me, and laid
her hand on mine. As if that honour would obliterate any
remembrance!

'Miss Wade, I fear you are unhappy, through causes over which I
have no influence.'

I smiled, thinking of the experience the word awakened, and
said, 'I have an unhappy temper, I suppose.' 'I did not say that.'

'It is an easy way of accounting for anything,' said I.

'It may be; but I did not say so. What I wish to approach is
something very different. My husband and I have exchanged some
remarks upon the subject, when we have observed with pain that you
have not been easy with us.'

'Easy? Oh! You are such great people, my lady,' said I.

'I am unfortunate in using a word which may convey a
meaning--and evidently does--quite opposite to my intention.' (She
had not expected my reply, and it shamed her.) 'I only mean, not
happy with us. It is a difficult topic to enter on; but, from one
young woman to another, perhaps--in short, we have been apprehensive
that you may allow some family circumstances of which no one can be
more innocent than yourself, to prey upon your spirits. If so, let
us entreat you not to make them a cause of grief. My husband
himself, as is well known, formerly had a very dear sister who was
not in law his sister, but who was universally beloved and respected
.

I saw directly that they had taken me in for the sake of the
dead woman, whoever she was, and to have that boast of me and
advantage of me; I saw, in the nurse's knowledge of it, an
encouragement to goad me as she had done; and I saw, in the
children's shrinking away, a vague impression, that I was not like
other people. I left that house that night.

After one or two short and very similar experiences, which are
not to the present purpose, I entered another family where I had but
one pupil: a girl of fifteen, who was the only daughter. The parents
here were elderly people: people of station, and rich. A nephew whom
they had brought up was a frequent visitor at the house, among many
other visitors; and he began to pay me attention.

I was resolute in repulsing him; for I had determined when I
went there, that no one should pity me or condescend to me. But he
wrote me a letter. It led to our being engaged to be married.

He was a year younger than I, and young-looking even when that
allowance was made. He was on absence from India, where he had a
post that was soon to grow into a very good one. In six months we
were to be married, and were to go to India. I was to stay in the
house, and was to be married from the house. Nobody objected to any
part of the plan.

I cannot avoid saying he admired me; but, if I could, I would.
Vanity has nothing to do with the declaration, for his admiration
worried me. He took no pains to hide it; and caused me to feel among
the rich people as if he had bought me for my looks, and made a show
of his purchase to justify himself. They appraised me in their own
minds, I saw, and were curious to ascertain what my full value was.
I resolved that they should not know. I was immovable and silent
before them; and would have suffered any one of them to kill me
sooner than I would have laid myself out to bespeak their
approval.

He told me I did not do myself justice. I told him I did, and
it was because I did and meant to do so to the last, that I would not
stoop to propitiate any of them. He was concerned and even shocked,
when I added that I wished he would not parade his attachment before
them; but he said he would sacrifice even the honest impulses of his
affection to my peace.

Under that pretence he began to retort upon me. By the hour
together, he would keep at a distance from me, talking to any one
rather than to me. I have sat alone and unnoticed, half an evening,
while he conversed with his young cousin, my pupil. I have seen all
the while, in people's eyes, that they thought the two looked nearer
on an equality than he and I. I have sat, divining their thoughts,
until I have felt that his young appearance made me ridiculous, and
have raged against myself for ever loving him.

For I did love him once. Undeserving as he was, and little as
he thought of all these agonies that it cost me--agonies which should
have made him wholly and gratefully mine to his life's end--I loved
him. I bore with his cousin's praising him to my face, and with her
pretending to think that it pleased me, but full well knowing that it
rankled in my breast; for his sake. While I have sat in his presence
recalling all my slights and wrongs, and deliberating whether I
should not fly from the house at once and never see him again--I have
loved him.

His aunt (my Mistress you will please to remember) deliberately,
wilfully, added to my trials and vexations. It was her delight to
expatiate on the style in which we were to live in India, and on the
establishment we should keep, and the company we should entertain
when he got his advancement. My pride rose against this barefaced
way of pointing out the contrast my married life was to present to my
then dependent and inferior position. I suppressed my indignation;
but I showed her that her intention was not lost upon me, and I
repaid her annoyance by affecting humility. What she described would
surely be a great deal too much honour for me, I would tell her. I
was afraid I might not be able to support so great a change. Think
of a mere governess, her daughter's governess, coming to that high
distinction! It made her uneasy, and made them all uneasy, when I
answered in this way. They knew that I fully understood her.

It was at the time when my troubles were at their highest, and
when I was most incensed against my lover for his ingratitude in
caring as little as he did for the innumerable distresses and
mortifications I underwent on his account, that your dear friend, Mr
Gowan, appeared at the house. He had been intimate there for a long
time, but had been abroad. He understood the state of things at a
glance, and he understood me.

He was the first person I had ever seen in my life who had
understood me. He was not in the house three times before I knew
that he accompanied every movement of my mind. In his coldly easy
way with all of them, and with me, and with the whole subject, I saw
it clearly. In his light protestations of admiration of my future
husband, in his enthusiasm regarding our engagement and our
prospects, in his hopeful congratulations on our future wealth and
his despondent references to his own poverty--all equally hollow, and
jesting, and full of mockery--I saw it clearly. He made me feel more
and more resentful, and more and more contemptible, by always
presenting to me everything that surrounded me with some new hateful
light upon it, while he pretended to exhibit it in its best aspect
for my admiration and his own. He was like the dressed-up Death in
the Dutch series; whatever figure he took upon his arm, whether it
was youth or age, beauty or ugliness, whether he danced with it, sang
with it, played with it, or prayed with it, he made it ghastly.

You will understand, then, that when your dear friend
complimented me, he really condoled with me; that when he soothed me
under my vexations, he laid bare every smarting wound I had; that
when he declared my 'faithful swain' to be 'the most loving young
fellow in the world, with the tenderest heart that ever beat,' he
touched my old misgiving that I was made ridiculous. These were not
great services, you may say. They were acceptable to me, because
they echoed my own mind, and confirmed my own knowledge. I soon
began to like the society of your dear friend better than any
other.

When I perceived (which I did, almost as soon) that jealousy was
growing out of this, I liked this society still better. Had I not
been subject to jealousy, and were the endurances to be all mine?
No. Let him know what it was! I was delighted that he should know
it; I was delighted that he should feel keenly, and I hoped he
did.

More than that. He was tame in comparison with Mr Gowan, who
knew how to address me on equal terms, and how to anatomise the
wretched people around us.

This went on, until the aunt, my Mistress, took it upon herself
to speak to me. It was scarcely worth alluding to; she knew I meant
nothing; but she suggested from herself, knowing it was only
necessary to suggest, that it might be better if I were a little less
companionable with Mr Gowan.

I asked her how she could answer for what I meant? She could
always answer, she replied, for my meaning nothing wrong. I thanked
her, but said I would prefer to answer for myself and to myself. Her
other servants would probably be grateful for good characters, but I
wanted none.

Other conversation followed, and induced me to ask her how she
knew that it was only necessary for her to make a suggestion to me,
to have it obeyed? Did she presume on my birth, or on my hire? I
was not bought, body and soul. She seemed to think that her
distinguished nephew had gone into a slave-market and purchased a
wife.

It would probably have come, sooner or later, to the end to
which it did come, but she brought it to its issue at once. She told
me, with assumed commiseration, that I had an unhappy temper. On
this repetition of the old wicked injury, I withheld no longer, but
exposed to her all I had known of her and seen in her, and all I had
undergone within myself since I had occupied the despicable position
of being engaged to her nephew. I told her that Mr Gowan was the
only relief I had had in my degradation; that I had borne it too
long, and that I shook it off too late; but that I would see none of
them more. And I never did. Your dear friend followed me to my
retreat, and was very droll on the severance of the connection;
though he was sorry, too, for the excellent people (in their way the
best he had ever met), and deplored the necessity of breaking mere
house-flies on the wheel. He protested before long, and far more
truly than I then supposed, that he was not worth acceptance by a
woman of such endowments, and such power of character; but--well,
well!--

Your dear friend amused me and amused himself as long as it
suited his inclinations; and then reminded me that we were both
people of the world, that we both understood mankind, that we both
knew there was no such thing as romance, that we were both prepared
for going different ways to seek our fortunes like people of sense,
and that we both foresaw that whenever we encountered one another
again we should meet as the best friends on earth. So he said, and I
did not contradict him.

It was not very long before I found that he was courting his
present wife, and that she had been taken away to be out of his
reach. I hated her then, quite as much as I hate her now; and
naturally, therefore, could desire nothing better than that she
should marry him. But I was restlessly curious to look at her--so
curious that I felt it to be one of the few sources of entertainment
left to me. I travelled a little: travelled until I found myself in
her society, and in yours. Your dear friend, I think, was not known
to you then, and had not given you any of those signal marks of his
friendship which he has bestowed upon you.

In that company I found a girl, in various circumstances of
whose position there was a singular likeness to my own, and in whose
character I was interested and pleased to see much of the rising
against swollen patronage and selfishness, calling themselves
kindness, protection, benevolence, and other fine names, which I have
described as inherent in my nature. I often heard it said, too, that
she had 'an unhappy temper.' Well understanding what was meant by
the convenient phrase, and wanting a companion with a knowledge of
what I knew, I thought I would try to release the girl from her
bondage and sense of injustice. I have no occasion to relate that I
succeeded.

We have been together ever since, sharing my small means.