Part 14

Ah! that was all the history, as Little Dorrit told it. But Arthur, reading between the lines, saw in Maggy's absolute love and devotion the weeks and months of toil and care on the part of a pitying faithful child whose own burden seemed great enough without carrying others. The dirty gateway with the wind and rain whistling through it, and the basket of muddy potatoes waiting to be spilt again or taken up, never seemed the common hole it really was, when he looked back to it by these lights. Never, never!

Thereafter, Arthur Clennam, who was a man of some means, devoted a great part of his time to tracing out the Dorrit records. He went from one government office to another--a long, weary round of them--before he could get any light on the matter. He employed an agent whose specialty was to search out lost estates. And at last, after several months, their combined efforts were rewarded.

Mr. Dorrit was found to be heir-at-law to a large estate that had long lain unknown, unclaimed, and growing greater. His right to it was cleared up by this skilful agent; so that all Mr. Dorrit had to do, now, would be to discharge his debts, and he would be a free man.

When Arthur was convinced of this surprising fortune, he hastened first to Little Dorrit, whom he wished to see alone. But before he could say a word, his face told her that something unusual was afoot.

Hastily dropping her sewing, she cried, "Mr. Clennam! What's the matter?"

"Nothing, nothing! That is--nothing bad. I have come to tell you good news."

"Good fortune?"

"Wonderful fortune!"

Her lips seemed to repeat the words, but no sound came.

"Dear Little Dorrit," he said, "your father--"

The ice of the pale face broke at the word, and little lights of expression passed all over it. They were all expressions of pain. Her breath was faint and hurried. Her heart beat fast, but he saw that the eyes appealed to him to go on.

"Your father can be free within this week. He does not know it; we must go to him from here, to tell him of it. Your father will be free within a few days. Remember we must go to him, from here, to tell him of it!"

That brought her back. Her eyes were closing, but they opened again.

"This is not all the good fortune. This is not all the wonderful good fortune, Little Dorrit. Shall I tell you more?"

Her lips shaped "Yes."

"He will be a rich man: A great sum of money is waiting to be paid over to him as his inheritance; you are all henceforth very wealthy. Bravest and best of children, I thank Heaven that you are rewarded!"

She turned her head towards his shoulder, and raised her arm towards his neck; then cried out, "Father! Father! Father!" and swooned away.

The housekeeper came running in at this, and Little Dorrit was soon revived, smiling bravely at her own weakness. But the news had been too much for her. It was the dream of her lifetime--come true!

"Come!" she exclaimed, "we must not lose a moment, but must hasten to my father!"

When the turnkey, who was on duty, admitted them into the lodge, he saw something in their faces which filled him with astonishment. He stood looking after them, when they hurried into the prison, as though he perceived that they had come back accompanied by a ghost apiece. Two or three debtors whom they passed, looked after them too, and presently joining the turnkey, formed a little group on the lodge steps, in the midst of which there originated a whisper that the Father was going to get his discharge. Within a few minutes it was heard in the remotest room in the prison.

Little Dorrit opened the door from without, and they both entered. Her father was sitting in his old gray gown, and his old black cap, in the sunlight by the window, reading his newspaper. His glasses were in his hand, and he had just looked round; surprised at first, no doubt, by her step upon the stairs, not expecting her until night; surprised again, by seeing Arthur Clennam in her company. As they came in, the same unwonted look in both of them, which had already caught attention in the yard below, struck him. He did not rise or speak, but laid down his glasses and his newspaper on the table beside him, and looked at them with his mouth a little open, and his lips trembling. When Arthur put out his hand, he touched it, but not with his usual state; and then he turned to his daughter, who had sat down close beside him with her hands upon his shoulder, and looked attentively in her face.

"Father! I have been made so happy this morning!"

"You have been made so happy, my dear?"

"By Mr. Clennam, father. He brought me such joyful and wonderful intelligence about you!"

Her agitation was great, and the tears rolled down her face. He put his hand suddenly to his heart, and looked at Clennam.

"Compose yourself, sir," said Clennam, "and take a little time to think. To think of the brightest and most fortunate accidents of life. We have all heard of great surprises of joy. They are not at an end."

"Mr. Clennam? Not at an end? Not at an end for--" He touched himself upon the breast, instead of saying "me."

"No," returned Clennam.

He looked at Clennam, and, so looking at him, seemed to change into a very old haggard man. The sun was bright upon the wall beyond the window, and on the spikes at the top. He slowly stretched out the hand that had been upon his heart, and pointed at the wall.

"It is down," said Clennam. "Gone!"

He remained in the same attitude, looking steadfastly at him.

"And in its place," said Clennam, slowly and distinctly, "are the means to possess and enjoy the utmost that they have so long shut out. Mr. Dorrit, there is not the smallest doubt that within a few days you will be free, and highly prosperous. I congratulate you with all my soul on this change of fortune, and on the happy future into which you are soon to carry the treasure you have been blessed with here--the best of all the riches you can have elsewhere--the treasure in the dear child at your side."

With those words, he pressed Mr. Dorrit's hand and released it; and his daughter, laying her face against his, encircled him in the hour of his prosperity with her arms, as she had in the long years of his adversity encircled him with her love and toil and truth; and poured out her full heart in gratitude, hope, joy, blissful ecstasy, and all for him.

"I shall see him, as I never saw him yet. I shall see my dear father, with the dark cloud cleared away. I shall see him, as my poor mother saw him long ago. Oh, my dear, my dear! Oh, father, father! Oh, thank God, thank God!"

Mr. Dorrit came slowly out of the daze into which he had seemed to fall. To divert his mind, Arthur told him how the good fortune had been found through the skill of an agent.

"He shall be rewarded!" he exclaimed, starting up. "Every one shall be--ha!--handsomely rewarded! Every cent I owe shall be paid. Oh! can this be true? A freeman, and all my debts paid! Give me my purse, Amy!"

He clutched it as if it were already overflowing with gold, and paced rapidly up and down the room. Just then a great cheering arose in the prison yard.

"The news has spread already," said Clennam, looking down from the window. "Will you show yourself to them, Mr. Dorrit? They are very earnest, and evidently wish it."

"I--hum--ha--I confess I could have desired, Amy, my dear," he said, jogging about in a more feverish flutter than before, "to have made some change in my dress first, and to have bought a--hum--a watch and chain. But if it must be done as it is, it---ha--it must be done. Fasten the collar of my shirt, my dear. Mr. Clennam, would you oblige me--hum--with a blue neckcloth you will find in that drawer at your elbow. Button my coat across at the chest, my love. It looks--ha--it looks broader, buttoned."

With his trembling hand he pushed his gray hair up, and then, taking Clennam and his daughter for supporters, appeared at the window leaning on an arm of each. The inmates cheered him very heartily, and he kissed his hand to them with great urbanity and protection. When he withdrew into the room again, he said "Poor creatures!" in a tone of much pity for their miserable condition.

Presently he said, unexpectedly:

"Mr. Clennam, I beg your pardon. Am I to understand, my dear sir, that I could--ha--could pass through the lodge at this moment, and--hum--take a walk?"

"I think not, Mr. Dorrit," was the unwilling reply. "There are certain forms to be completed; and although your detention here is now in itself a form, I fear it has to be observed for a few hours longer."

"A few hours, sir," he returned in a sudden passion. "You talk very easily of hours, sir! How long do you suppose, sir, that an hour is to a man who is choking for want of air?"

It was the cry of a man who had been imprisoned for nearly a quarter of a century.

Little Dorrit had been thinking too. After softly putting his gray hair aside, and touching his forehead with her lips, she looked towards Arthur, who came nearer to her, and pursued in a low whisper the subject of her thoughts.

"Mr. Clennam, will he pay all his debts before he leaves here?"

"No doubt. All."

"All the debts for which he has been imprisoned here, all my life and longer?"

"No doubt."

There was something of uncertainty and remonstrance in her look; something that was not all satisfaction. He wondered to detect it, and said:

"Are you not glad?"

"It seems to me hard," said Little Dorrit, "that he should have lost so many years and suffered so much, and at last pay all the debts as well. It seems to me hard that he should pay in life and money both."

"My dear child--" Clennam was beginning.

"Yes, I know I am wrong," she pleaded timidly, "don't think any worse of me; it has grown up with me here."

The prison, which could spoil so many things, had tainted Little Dorrit's mind no more than this. It was the first speck Clennam had ever seen, it was the last speck Clennam ever saw, of the prison atmosphere upon her.

He thought this, and forebore to say another word. With the thought, her purity and goodness came before him in their brightest light. The little spot made them the more beautiful.

*THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD*

*I. MY EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS*

The first things that I seem to remember are the figure of my mother with her pretty hair and youthful face, and Peggotty, our faithful servant, large of figure, black of eye, and with cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn't peck them in preference to apples. I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and I going unsteadily from the one to the other. My father I never saw, for he died before I was born.

What else do I remember? Let me see. There comes to me a vision of our quaint cosy little home, the "Rookery." On the ground floor is Peggotty's kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house on a pole, in the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-kennel in a corner, without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that look terribly tall to me, walking about, in a ferocious manner. There is one cock who gets upon a post to crow, and seems to take particular notice of me as I look at him through the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so fierce. Of the geese outside the gate who come waddling after me with their long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream fearfully at night.

Here is a long passage leading from Peggotty's kitchen to the front door. A dark storeroom opens out of it, and that is a place to be run past at night; for I don't know what may be among those tubs and jars and old tea-chests, in which there is the smell of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one whiff. Then there are the two parlors: the parlor in which we sit of an evening, my mother and I and Peggotty--for Peggotty is quite our companion, when her work is done and we are alone--and the best parlor where we sit on a Sunday; grandly but not so comfortably.

And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed bedroom windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the ragged old rooks'-nests still dangling in the elm trees at the bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are--a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate and padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, bolting gooseberries slyly, and trying to look unmoved.

A great wind rises, and the summer is gone in a moment. We are playing in the winter twilight, dancing about the parlor. When my mother is out of breath and rests herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round her fingers and straightening her waist, and nobody knows better than I do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.

That is among my very earliest impressions,--that, and a sense that we were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and submit ourselves in most things to her direction.

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlor fire, alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must not have read very clearly, for I remember she had a cloudy impression that they were a sort of vegetable. I was tired of reading, and sleepy; but having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from spending the evening at a neighbor's, I would rather have died upon my post than have gone to bed.

We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with alligators, when the bell rang. We went out to the door; and there was my mother looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a gentleman with beautiful black hair and whiskers, who had walked home with us from church last Sunday.

As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow than a monarch--or something like that.

"What does that mean?" I asked him, over her shoulder.

He patted me on the head; but somehow, I didn't like him or his deep voice, and I was jealous that his hand should touch my mother's in touching me--which it did. I put it away as well as I could. My mother gently chid me for being rude; and, keeping me close to her shawl, turned to thank the gentleman for bringing her home.

From the moment that I first saw the gentleman with the black whiskers, I held a deep instinctive dislike to him. And I am sure Peggotty agreed with me, from some remarks I chanced to hear her utter to my mother. But Mr. Murdstone--that was his name--began coming often to the Rookery, and exerted himself always to be agreeable to me, calling me a fine boy and patting me on the head; so I tried to think myself very ungrateful. But still I could not make myself like him. The sight of him made me fear that something was going to happen--I didn't know what.

Not long after that, when Peggotty and I were sitting alone, she darning and I reading farther in the crocodile book,--for my mother was out, as she often was, with Mr. Murdstone,--she bit off a thread and asked:

"Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a fortnight at my brother's at Yarmouth? Wouldn't that be a treat?"

"Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?" I inquired doubtfully.

"Oh, what an agreeable man he is!" cried Peggotty, holding up her hands. "Then there's the sea; and the boats and ships; and the fishermen; and the beach; and 'Am to play with--"

Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, but she spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.

I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it would indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?

"Why, then, I'll as good as bet a guinea," said Peggotty, intent upon my face, "that she'll let us go. I'll ask her, if you like, as soon as ever she comes home. There now!"

"But what's she to do while we're away?" said I, putting my small elbows on the table to argue the point. "She can't live by herself."

If Peggotty were looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the heel of that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed, and not worth darning.

"I say! Peggotty! She can't live by herself, you know."

"Oh, bless you!" said Peggotty, looking at me again at last. "Don't you know? She's going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs. Grayper. Mrs. Grayper's going to have a lot of company."

Oh! If that was it, I was quite ready to go. I waited, in the utmost impatience, until my mother came home from Mrs. Grayper's (for it was that identical neighbor), to ascertain if we could get leave to carry out this great idea. Without being nearly so much surprised as I had expected, my mother entered into it readily; and it was all arranged that night, and my board and lodging during the visit were to be paid for.

The day soon came for our going. It was such an early day that it came soon, even to me, who was in a fever of expectation, and half afraid that an earthquake or a fiery mountain, or some other accident might stop the expedition. We were to go in a carrier's cart, which departed in the morning after breakfast. I would have given any money to have been allowed to wrap myself up over-night, and sleep in my hat and boots.

It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect how eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how little I suspected what I did leave for ever.

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which she lifted up her face to mine.

As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came up to where she was, and chided her for being so moved. I was looking back round the awning of the cart, and wondered what business it was of his. Peggotty, who was also looking back on the other side, seemed anything but satisfied, as the face she brought back into the cart denoted.

The carrier's horse was the laziest horse in the world, I thought, as he shuffled along with his head down. But Peggotty had brought along a basket of refreshments which would have lasted us handsomely for a journey three times as long. And at last we drove up to the Yarmouth tavern, where we found Ham awaiting us. He was a huge, strong fellow, about six feet high, with a simple, good-natured face.

He put me upon his shoulder, and my box under his arm, and trudged away easily down a lane littered with shipbuilders' odds and ends, past forges, yards and gas works, till we came out upon an open waste of sand, with the sea pounding upon it and eating away at it. Then Ham said,

"Yon's our house, Mas'r Davy!"

I looked in all directions, as far as I could, and away at the sea, but no house could _I_ make out. There was a black barge, or some other kind of boat, not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the way of a house that was visible to me.

"That's not it?" said I. "That ship-looking thing?"

"That's it, Mas'r Davy," returned Ham.

If it had been Aladdin's palace, roc's egg and all, I suppose I could not have been more charmed with the idea of living in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there were little windows in it; but the charm of it was that it was a _real boat_ which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended to be lived in on dry land.

It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and a tea-tray with a painting on it. The tray was kept from tumbling down by a Bible; and the tray, if it had tumbled down, would have smashed a quantity of cups and saucers and a tea-pot around the book. On the walls there were some colored pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects. There were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling whose use I did not know; and some lockers and boxes scattered around, which served for seats.

One thing I particularly noticed in this delightful house was the smell of fish, which was so searching that when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. On my whispering this to Peggotty, she informed me that her brother dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish; and I afterwards found that a heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful confusion with one another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of, were usually to be found in a little wooden lean-to where the pots and kettles were kept.

We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, whom I had seen courtesying at the door when I was on Ham's back, about a quarter of a mile off; likewise by a most beautiful little girl with a necklace of blue beads, who wouldn't let me kiss her when I offered to, but ran away and hid herself.

By and by, when we had dined in a sumptuous manner off boiled fish, melted butter, and potatoes, with a chop for me, a hairy man with a very good-natured face came home. As he called Peggotty "Lass," and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I had no doubt that he was her brother; and so he turned out--being presently introduced to me as Mr. Peggotty, the master of the house.

"Glad to see you, sir," said Mr. Peggotty. "You'll find us rough, sir, but you'll find us ready."

I thanked him and replied that I was sure I should be happy in such a delightful place.

The civil woman with the white apron was Mrs. Gummidge, an old widowed lady who kept the boat-house in fine order. The little girl was Emily, a niece of Mr. Peggotty's. She had never seen her father, just as I had never seen mine--which was our first bond of sympathy. She had lost her mother, too; and as we played together happily in the sand, I told her all about my mother and how we had only each other and I was going to grow up right away to take care of her.

Of course I was quite in love with little Emily. I am sure I loved her quite as truly as one could possibly love. And I made her confess that she loved me. So when the golden days flew by and the time of parting drew near, our agony of mind was intense. The farewells were very tearful; and if ever in my life I had a void in my heart, I had one that day.

I am ashamed to confess that the delightful fortnight by the sea had driven out all thoughts of home. But no sooner were we on the return journey, than the home longing came crowding in upon me tenfold. I grew so excited to see my mother, that it seemed as if I couldn't wait for that blundering old cart. But Peggotty, instead of sharing in these transports, tried to check them, though very kindly, and looked confused and out of sorts.

The Rookery would come, however, in spite of her, when the carrier's horse pleased--and did. How well I recollect it, on a cold, gray afternoon, with a dull sky threatening rain!

The door opened, and I sprang in, half laughing and half crying as I looked for my mother. It was not she who met me, but a strange servant.

"Why, Peggotty!" I said, ruefully, "isn't she come home?"

"Yes, yes, Master Davy," said Peggotty. "She's come home. Wait a bit, Master Davy, and I'll--I'll tell you something."

"Peggotty!" said I, quite frightened. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!" she answered, with an air of cheerfulness.

"Something's the matter, I'm sure. Where's mamma?"

"Master Davy," said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking hand, and speaking in a breathless sort of way; "what do you think? You have got a Pa!"