Part 2 Little Dorrit-1 in English Fiction Stories by Charles Dickens books and stories PDF | Part 2 Little Dorrit-1

Little Dorrit

Dickens, Charles

By Listen Books

Part - 2 (1)

Published: 1857 • Categorie(s): Fiction • Source: http://en.wikisource.org

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter-1

Chapter-2

Chapter-3

Chapter-4

Chapter-5

Chapter-6

Chapter-7

Chapter-8

Chapter-9

Chapter-10

Chapter-11

Chapter-12

Chapter-13

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Fellow Travellers

In the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to the highest ridges of the Alps. It was vintage time in the valleys on the Swiss side of the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard, and along the banks of the Lake of Geneva. The air there was charged with the scent of gathered grapes. Baskets, troughs, and tubs of grapes stood in the dim village doorways, stopped the steep and narrow village streets, and had been carrying all day along the roads and lanes. Grapes, split and crushed under foot, lay about everywhere. The child carried in a sling by the laden peasant woman toiling home, was quieted with picked-up grapes; the idiot sunning his big goitre under the leaves of the wooden chalet by the way to the Waterfall, sat Munching grapes; the breath of the cows and goats was redolent of leaves and stalks of grapes; the company in every little cabaret were eating, drinking, talking grapes. A pity that no ripe touch of this generous abundance could be given to the thin, hard, stony wine, which after all was made from the grapes! The air had been warm and transparent through the whole of the bright day. Shining metal spires and church-roofs, distant and rarely seen, had sparkled in the view; and the snowy mountain-tops had been so clear that unaccustomed eyes, cancelling the intervening country, and slighting their rugged heights for something fabulous, would have measured them as within a few hours easy reach. Mountain-peaks of great celebrity in the valleys, whence no trace of their existence was visible sometimes for months together, had been since morning plain and near in the blue sky. And now, when it was dark be-low, though they seemed solemnly to recede, like spectres who were going to vanish, as the red dye of the sunset faded out of them and left them coldly white, they were yet distinctly defined in their loneliness above the mists and shadows. Seen from these solitudes, and from the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard, which was one of them, the ascending Night came up the mountain like a rising water. When it at last rose to the walls of the convent of the Great Saint Bernard, it was as if that weather-beaten structure were another Ark, and floated on the shadowy waves. Darkness, outstripping some visitors on mules, had risen thus to the rough convent walls, when those travellers were yet climbing the mountain. As the heat of the glowing day when they had stopped to drink at the streams of melted ice and snow, was changed to the searching cold of the frosty rarefied night air at a great height, so the fresh beauty of the lower journey had yielded to barrenness and desolation. A craggy track, up which the mules in single file scrambled and turned from block to block, as though they were ascending the broken staircase of a gigantic ruin, was their way now. No trees were to be seen, nor any vegetable growth save a poor brown scrubby moss, freezing in the chinks of rock. Blackened skeleton arms of wood by the wayside pointed upward to the convent as if the ghosts of former travellers overwhelmed by the snow haunted the scene of their distress. Icicle-hung caves and cellars built for refuges from sudden storms, were like so many whispers of the perils of the place; never-resting wreaths and mazes of mist wandered about, hunted by a moaning wind; and snow, the besetting danger of the mountain, against which all its defences were taken, drifted sharply down. The file of mules, jaded by their day’s work, turned and wound slowly up the deep ascent; the foremost led by a guide on foot, in his broad-brimmed hat and round jacket, carrying a mountain staff or two upon his shoulder, with whom another guide conversed. There was no speaking among the string of riders. The sharp cold, the fatigue of the journey, and a new sensation of a catching in the breath, partly as if they had just emerged from very clear crisp water, and partly as if they had been sobbing, kept them silent. At length, a light on the summit of the rocky staircase gleamed through the snow and mist. The guides called to the mules, the mules pricked up their drooping heads, the travellers’ tongues were loosened, and in a sudden burst of slipping, climbing, jingling, clinking, and talking, they arrived at the convent door. Other mules had arrived not long before, some with peasant riders and some with goods, and had trodden the snow about the door into a pool of mud. Riding-saddles and bridles, pack-saddles and strings of bells, mules and men, lanterns, torches, sacks, provender, barrels, cheeses, kegs of honey and butter, straw bundles and packages of many shapes, were crowded confusedly together in this thawed quagmire and about the steps. Up here in the clouds, everything was seen through cloud, and seemed dissolving into cloud. The breath of the men was cloud, the breath of the mules was cloud, the lights were encircled by cloud, speakers close at hand were not seen for cloud, though their voices and all other sounds were surprisingly clear. Of the cloudy line of mules hastily tied to rings in the wall, one would bite another, or kick another, and then the whole mist would be disturbed: with men diving into it, and cries of men and beasts coming out of it, and no bystander discerning what was wrong. In the midst of this, the great stable of the convent, occupying the basement story and entered by the basement door, outside which all the disorder was, poured forth its contribution of cloud, as if the whole rugged edifice were filled with nothing else, and would collapse as soon as it had emptied itself, leaving the snow to fall upon the bare mountain summit. While all this noise and hurry were rife among the living travellers, there, too, silently assembled in a grated house half a dozen paces removed, with the same cloud enfolding them and the same snow flakes drifting in upon them, were the dead travellers found upon the mountain. The mother, storm-belated many winters ago, still standing in the corner with her baby at her breast; the man who had frozen with his arm raised to his mouth in fear or hunger, still pressing it with his dry lips after years and years. An awful company, mysteriously come together! A wild destiny for that mother to have foreseen! ‘Surrounded by so many and such companions upon whom I never looked, and never shall look, I and my child will dwell together inseparable, on the Great Saint Bernard, outlasting generations who will come to see us, and will never know our name, or one word of our story but the end.’ The living travellers thought little or nothing of the dead just then. They thought much more of alighting at the convent door, and warming themselves at the convent fire. Disengaged from the turmoil, which was already calming down as the crowd of mules began to be bestowed in the stable, they hurried shivering up the steps and into the building. There was a smell within, coming up from the floor, of tethered beasts, like the smell of a menagerie of wild animals. There were strong arched galleries within, huge stone piers, great staircases, and thick walls pierced with small sunken windows—fortifications against the mountain storms, as if they had been human enemies. There were gloomy vaulted sleeping-rooms within, in-tensely cold, but clean and hospitably prepared for guests. Fin-ally, there was a parlour for guests to sit in and sup in, where a table was already laid, and where a blazing fire shone red and high. In this room, after having had their quarters for the night al-lotted to them by two young Fathers, the travellers presently drew round the hearth. They were in three parties; of whom the first, as the most numerous and important, was the slowest, and had been overtaken by one of the others on the way up. It consisted of an elderly lady, two grey-haired gentlemen, two young ladies, and their brother. These were attended (not to mention four guides), by a courier, two footmen, and two waiting-maids: which strong body of inconvenience was accommodated elsewhere under the same roof. The party that had overtaken them, and followed in their train, consisted of only three members: one lady and two gentlemen. The third party, which had ascended from the valley on the Italian side of the Pass, and had arrived first, were four in number: a plethoric, hungry, and silent German tutor in spectacles, on a tour with three young men, his pupils, all plethoric, hungry, and silent, and all in spectacles. These three groups sat round the fire eyeing each other drily, and waiting for supper. Only one among them, one of the gentlemen belonging to the party of three, made advances to-wards conversation. Throwing out his lines for the Chief of the important tribe, while addressing himself to his own companions, he remarked, in a tone of voice which included all the company if they chose to be included, that it had been a long day, and that he felt for the ladies. That he feared one of the young ladies was not a strong or accustomed traveller, and had been over-fatigued two or three hours ago. That he had observed, from his station in the rear, that she sat her mule as if she were exhausted. That he had, twice or thrice afterwards, done himself the honour of inquiring of one of the guides, when he fell behind, how the lady did. That he had been enchanted to learn that she had recovered her spirits, and that it had been but a passing discomfort. That he trusted (by this time he had secured the eyes of the Chief, and addressed him) he might be permitted to express his hope that she was now none the worse, and that she would not regret having made the journey. ‘My daughter, I am obliged to you, sir,’ returned the Chief, ‘is quite restored, and has been greatly interested.’ ‘New to mountains, perhaps?’ said the insinuating traveller. ‘New to—ha—to mountains,’ said the Chief. ‘But you are familiar with them, sir?’ the insinuating traveller assumed. ‘I am—hum—tolerably familiar. Not of late years. Not of late years,’ replied the Chief, with a flourish of his hand. The insinuating traveller, acknowledging the flourish with an inclination of his head, passed from the Chief to the second young lady, who had not yet been referred to otherwise than as one of the ladies in whose behalf he felt so sensitive an interest. He hoped she was not incommoded by the fatigues of the day. ‘Incommoded, certainly,’ returned the young lady, ‘but not tired.’ The insinuating traveller complimented her on the justice of the distinction. It was what he had meant to say. Every lady must doubtless be incommoded by having to do with that proverbially unaccommodating animal, the mule. ‘We have had, of course,’ said the young lady, who was rather reserved and haughty, ‘to leave the carriages and fourgon at Martigny. And the impossibility of bringing anything that one wants to this inaccessible place, and the necessity of leaving every comfort behind, is not convenient.’ ‘A savage place indeed,’ said the insinuating traveller. The elderly lady, who was a model of accurate dressing, and whose manner was perfect, considered as a piece of machinery, here interposed a remark in a low soft voice. ‘But, like other inconvenient places,’ she observed, ‘it must be seen. As a place much spoken of, it is necessary to see it.’ ‘O! I have not the least objection to seeing it, I assure you, Mrs General,’ returned the other, carelessly. ‘You, madam,’ said the insinuating traveller, ‘have visited this spot before?’ ‘Yes,’ returned Mrs General. ‘I have been here before. Let me commend you, my dear,’ to the former young lady, ‘to shade your face from the hot wood, after exposure to the mountain air and snow. You, too, my dear,’ to the other and younger lady, who immediately did so; while the former merely said, ‘Thank you, Mrs General, I am Perfectly comfortable, and prefer remaining as I am.’ The brother, who had left his chair to open a piano that stood in the room, and who had whistled into it and shut it up again, now came strolling back to the fire with his glass in his eye. He was dressed in the very fullest and completest travelling trim. The world seemed hardly large enough to yield him an amount of travel proportionate to his equipment. ‘These fellows are an immense time with supper,’ he drawled. ‘I wonder what they’ll give us! Has anybody any idea?’ ‘Not roast man, I believe,’ replied the voice of the second gentleman of the party of three. ‘I suppose not. What d’ye mean?’ he inquired. ‘That, as you are not to be served for the general supper, perhaps you will do us the favour of not cooking yourself at the general fire,’ returned the other. The young gentleman who was standing in an easy attitude on the hearth, cocking his glass at the company, with his back to the blaze and his coat tucked under his arms, something as if he were Of the Poultry species and were trussed for roasting, lost countenance at this reply; he seemed about to demand further explanation, when it was discovered—through all eyes turning on the speaker—that the lady with him, who was young and beautiful, had not heard what had passed through having fainted with her head upon his shoulder. ‘I think,’ said the gentleman in a subdued tone, ‘I had best carry her straight to her room. Will you call to some one to bring a light?’ addressing his companion, ‘and to show the way? In this strange rambling place I don’t know that I could find it.’ ‘Pray, let me call my maid,’ cried the taller of the young ladies. ‘Pray, let me put this water to her lips,’ said the shorter, who had not spoken yet. Each doing what she suggested, there was no want of assistance. Indeed, when the two maids came in (escorted by the courier, lest any one should strike them dumb by addressing a foreign language to them on the road), there was a prospect of too much assistance. Seeing this, and saying as much in a few words to the slighter and younger of the two ladies, the gentle-man put his wife’s arm over his shoulder, lifted her up, and carried her away. His friend, being left alone with the other visitors, walked slowly up and down the room without coming to the fire again, pulling his black moustache in a contemplative manner, as if he felt himself committed to the late retort. While the subject of it was breathing injury in a corner, the Chief loftily ad-dressed this gentleman. ‘Your friend, sir,’ said he, ‘is—ha—is a little impatient; and, in his impatience, is not perhaps fully sensible of what he owes to—hum—to—but we will waive that, we will waive that. Your friend is a little impatient, sir.’ ‘It may be so, sir,’ returned the other. ‘But having had the honour of making that gentleman’s acquaintance at the hotel at Geneva, where we and much good company met some time ago, and having had the honour of exchanging company and conversation with that gentleman on several subsequent excursions, I can hear nothing—no, not even from one of your appearance and station, sir—detrimental to that gentleman.’ ‘You are in no danger, sir, of hearing any such thing from me. In remarking that your friend has shown impatience, I say no such thing. I make that remark, because it is not to be doubted that my son, being by birth and by—ha—by education a—hum—a gentleman, would have readily adapted himself to any obligingly expressed wish on the subject of the fire being equally accessible to the whole of the present circle. Which, in principle, I—ha—for all are—hum—equal on these occasions—I consider right.’ ‘Good,’ was the reply. ‘And there it ends! I am your son’s obedient servant. I beg your son to receive the assurance of my profound consideration. And now, sir, I may admit, freely admit, that my friend is sometimes of a sarcastic temper.’ ‘The lady is your friend’s wife, sir?’ ‘The lady is my friend’s wife, sir.’ ‘She is very handsome.’ ‘Sir, she is peerless. They are still in the first year of their marriage. They are still partly on a marriage, and partly on an artistic, tour.’ ‘Your friend is an artist, sir?’ The gentleman replied by kissing the fingers of his right hand, and wafting the kiss the length of his arm towards Heaven. As who should say, I devote him to the celestial Powers as an immortal artist! ‘But he is a man of family,’ he added. ‘His connections are of the best. He is more than an artist: he is highly connected. He may, in effect, have repudiated his connections, proudly, impatiently, sarcastically (I make the concession of both words); but he has them. Sparks that have been struck out during our intercourse have shown me this.’ ‘Well! I hope,’ said the lofty gentleman, with the air of finally disposing of the subject, ‘that the lady’s indisposition may be only temporary.’ ‘Sir, I hope so.’ ‘Mere fatigue, I dare say.’ ‘Not altogether mere fatigue, sir, for her mule stumbled to-day, and she fell from the saddle. She fell lightly, and was up again without assistance, and rode from us laughing; but she complained towards evening of a slight bruise in the side. She spoke of it more than once, as we followed your party up the mountain.’ The head of the large retinue, who was gracious but not familiar, appeared by this time to think that he had condescended more than enough. He said no more, and there was silence for some quarter of an hour until supper appeared. With the supper came one of the young Fathers (there seemed to be no old Fathers) to take the head of the table. It was like the supper of an ordinary Swiss hotel, and good red wine grown by the convent in more genial air was not wanting. The artist traveller calmly came and took his place at table when the rest sat down, with no apparent sense upon him of his late skirmish with the completely dressed traveller. ‘Pray,’ he inquired of the host, over his soup, ‘has your con-vent many of its famous dogs now?’ ‘Monsieur, it has three.’ ‘I saw three in the gallery below. Doubtless the three in question.’ The host, a slender, bright-eyed, dark young man of polite manners, whose garment was a black gown with strips of white crossed over it like braces, and who no more resembled the conventional breed of Saint Bernard monks than he resembled the conventional breed of Saint Bernard dogs, replied, doubtless those were the three in question. ‘And I think,’ said the artist traveller, ‘I have seen one of them before.’ It was possible. He was a dog sufficiently well known. Monsieur might have easily seen him in the valley or somewhere on the lake, when he (the dog) had gone down with one of the or-der to solicit aid for the convent. ‘Which is done in its regular season of the year, I think?’ Monsieur was right. ‘And never without a dog. The dog is very important.’ Again Monsieur was right. The dog was very important. People were justly interested in the dog. As one of the dogs celebrated everywhere, Mam’selle would observe. Mam’selle was a little slow to observe it, as though she were not yet well accustomed to the French tongue. Mrs General, however, observed it for her. ‘Ask him if he has saved many lives?’ said, in his native English, the young man who had been put out of countenance. The host needed no translation of the question. He promptly replied in French, ‘No. Not this one.’ ‘Why not?’ the same gentleman asked.

‘Pardon,’ returned the host composedly, ‘give him the opportunity and he will do it without doubt. For example, I am well convinced,’ smiling sedately, as he cut up the dish of veal to be handed round, on the young man who had been put out of countenance, ‘that if you, Monsieur, would give him the opportunity, he would hasten with great ardour to fulfil his duty.’ The artist traveller laughed. The insinuating traveller (who evinced a provident anxiety to get his full share of the supper), wiping some drops of wine from his moustache with a piece of bread, joined the conversation. ‘It is becoming late in the year, my Father,’ said he, ‘for tourist-travellers, is it not?’ ‘Yes, it is late. Yet two or three weeks, at most, and we shall be left to the winter snows.’ ‘And then,’ said the insinuating traveller, ‘for the scratching dogs and the buried children, according to the pictures!’ ‘Pardon,’ said the host, not quite understanding the allusion. ‘How, then the scratching dogs and the buried children according to the pictures?’ The artist traveller struck in again before an answer could be given. ‘Don’t you know,’ he coldly inquired across the table of his companion, ‘that none but smugglers come this way in the winter or can have any possible business this way?’ ‘Holy blue! No; never heard of it.’ ‘So it is, I believe. And as they know the signs of the weather tolerably well, they don’t give much employment to the dogs—who have consequently died out rather—though this house of entertainment is conveniently situated for themselves. Their young families, I am told, they usually leave at home. But it’s a grand idea!’ cried the artist traveller, unexpectedly rising into a tone of enthusiasm. ‘It’s a sublime idea. It’s the finest idea in the world, and brings tears into a man’s eyes, by Jupiter!’ He then went on eating his veal with great composure. There was enough of mocking inconsistency at the bottom of this speech to make it rather discordant, though the manner was refined and the person well favoured, and though the depreciatory part of it was so skilfully thrown off as to be very difficult for one not perfectly acquainted with the English language to understand, or , even understanding, to take of-fence at: so simple and dispassionate was its tone. After finishing his veal in the midst of silence, the speaker again ad-dressed his friend. ‘Look,’ said he, in his former tone, ‘at this gentleman our host, not yet in the prime of life, who in so graceful a way and with such courtly urbanity and modesty presides over us! Manners fit for a crown! Dine with the Lord Mayor of London (if you can get an invitation) and observe the contrast. This dear fellow, with the finest cut face I ever saw, a face in perfect drawing, leaves some laborious life and comes up here I don’t know how many feet above the level of the sea, for no other purpose on earth (except enjoying himself, I hope, in a capital refectory) than to keep an hotel for idle poor devils like you and me, and leave the bill to our consciences! Why, isn’t it a beautiful sacrifice? What do we want more to touch us? Be-cause rescued people of interesting appearance are not, for eight or nine months out of every twelve, holding on here round the necks of the most sagacious of dogs carrying wooden bottles, shall we disparage the place? No! Bless the place. It’s a great place, a glorious place!’ The chest of the grey-haired gentleman who was the Chief of the important party, had swelled as if with a protest against his being numbered among poor devils. No sooner had the artist traveller ceased speaking than he himself spoke with great dignity, as having it incumbent on him to take the lead in most places, and having deserted that duty for a little while. He weightily communicated his opinion to their host, that his life must be a very dreary life here in the winter. The host allowed to Monsieur that it was a little monotonous. The air was difficult to breathe for a length of time consecutively. The cold was very severe. One needed youth and strength to bear it. However, having them and the blessing of Heaven— Yes, that was very good. ‘But the confinement,’ said the grey-haired gentleman. There were many days, even in bad weather, when it was possible to walk about outside. It was the custom to beat a little track, and take exercise there.

‘But the space,’ urged the grey-haired gentleman. ‘So small. So—ha—very limited.’ Monsieur would recall to himself that there were the refuges to visit, and that tracks had to be made to them also. Monsieur still urged, on the other hand, that the space was so—ha—hum—so very contracted. More than that, it was al-ways the same, always the same. With a deprecating smile, the host gently raised and gently lowered his shoulders. That was true, he remarked, but permit him to say that almost all objects had their various points of view. Monsieur and he did not see this poor life of his from the same point of view. Monsieur was not used to confinement. ‘I—ha—yes, very true,’ said the grey-haired gentleman. He seemed to receive quite a shock from the force of the argument. Monsieur, as an English traveller, surrounded by all means of travelling pleasantly; doubtless possessing fortune, carriages, and servants— ‘Perfectly, perfectly. Without doubt,’ said the gentleman. Monsieur could not easily place himself in the position of a person who had not the power to choose, I will go here to-morrow, or there next day; I will pass these barriers, I will enlarge those bounds. Monsieur could not realise, perhaps, how the mind accommodated itself in such things to the force of necessity. ‘It is true,’ said Monsieur. ‘We will—ha—not pursue the subject. You are—hum—quite accurate, I have no doubt. We will say no more.’ The supper having come to a close, he drew his chair away as he spoke, and moved back to his former place by the fire. As it was very cold at the greater part of the table, the other guests also resumed their former seats by the fire, designing to toast themselves well before going to bed. The host, when they rose from the table, bowed to all present, wished them good night, and withdrew. But first the insinuating traveller had asked him if they could have some wine made hot; and as he had answered Yes, and had presently afterwards sent it in, that traveller, seated in the centre of the group, and in the full heat of the fire, was soon engaged in serving it out to the rest.

At this time, the younger of the two young ladies, who had been silently attentive in her dark corner (the fire-light was the chief light in the sombre room, the lamp being smoky and dull) to what had been said of the absent lady, glided out. She was at a loss which way to turn when she had softly closed the door; but, after a little hesitation among the sounding passages and the many ways, came to a room in a corner of the main gallery, where the servants were at their supper. From these she obtained a lamp, and a direction to the lady’s room. It was up the great staircase on the story above. Here and there, the bare white walls were broken by an iron grate, and she thought as she went along that the place was something like a prison. The arched door of the lady’s room, or cell, was not quite shut. After knocking at it two or three times without receiving an answer, she pushed it gently open, and looked in. The lady lay with closed eyes on the outside of the bed, protected from the cold by the blankets and wrappers with which she had been covered when she revived from her fainting fit. A dull light placed in the deep recess of the window, made little impression on the arched room. The visitor timidly stepped to the bed, and said, in a soft whisper, ‘Are you better?’ The lady had fallen into a slumber, and the whisper was too low to awake her. Her visitor, standing quite still, looked at her attentively. ‘She is very pretty,’ she said to herself. ‘I never saw so beautiful a face. O how unlike me!’ It was a curious thing to say, but it had some hidden meaning, for it filled her eyes with tears. ‘I know I must be right. I know he spoke of her that evening. I could very easily be wrong on any other subject, but not on this, not on this!’ With a quiet and tender hand she put aside a straying fold of the sleeper’s hair, and then touched the hand that lay outside the covering. ‘I like to look at her,’ she breathed to herself. ‘I like to see what has affected him so much.’ She had not withdrawn her hand, when the sleeper opened her eyes and started.

‘Pray don’t be alarmed. I am only one of the travellers from down-stairs. I came to ask if you were better, and if I could do anything for you.’ ‘I think you have already been so kind as to send your servants to my assistance?’ ‘No, not I; that was my sister. Are you better?’ ‘Much better. It is only a slight bruise, and has been well looked to, and is almost easy now. It made me giddy and faint in a moment. It had hurt me before; but at last it overpowered me all at once.’ ‘May I stay with you until some one comes? Would you like it?’ ‘I should like it, for it is lonely here; but I am afraid you will feel the cold too much.’ ‘I don’t mind cold. I am not delicate, if I look so.’ She quickly moved one of the two rough chairs to the bedside, and sat down. The other as quickly moved a part of some travelling wrapper from herself, and drew it over her, so that her arm, in keeping it about her, rested on her shoulder. ‘You have so much the air of a kind nurse,’ said the lady, smiling on her, ‘that you seem as if you had come to me from home.’ ‘I am very glad of it.’ ‘I was dreaming of home when I woke just now. Of my old home, I mean, before I was married.’ ‘And before you were so far away from it.’ ‘I have been much farther away from it than this; but then I took the best part of it with me, and missed nothing. I felt solitary as I dropped asleep here, and, missing it a little, wandered back to it.’ There was a sorrowfully affectionate and regretful sound in her voice, which made her visitor refrain from looking at her for the moment. ‘It is a curious chance which at last brings us together, under this covering in which you have wrapped me,’ said the visitor after a pause; ‘for do you know, I think I have been looking for you some time.’ ‘Looking for me?’ ‘I believe I have a little note here, which I was to give to you whenever I found you. This is it. Unless I greatly mistake, it is addressed to you? Is it not?’

The lady took it, and said yes, and read it. Her visitor watched her as she did so. It was very short. She flushed a little as she put her lips to her visitor’s cheek, and pressed her hand. ‘The dear young friend to whom he presents me, may be a comfort to me at some time, he says. She is truly a comfort to me the first time I see her.’ ‘Perhaps you don’t,’ said the visitor, hesitating—‘perhaps you don’t know my story? Perhaps he never told you my story ?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh no, why should he! I have scarcely the right to tell it my-self at present, because I have been entreated not to do so. There is not much in it, but it might account to you for my asking you not to say anything about the letter here. You saw my family with me, perhaps? Some of them—I only say this to you—are a little proud, a little prejudiced.’ ‘You shall take it back again,’ said the other; ‘and then my husband is sure not to see it. He might see it and speak of it, otherwise, by some accident. Will you put it in your bosom again, to be certain?’ She did so with great care. Her small, slight hand was still upon the letter, when they heard some one in the gallery outside. ‘I promised,’ said the visitor, rising, ‘that I would write to him after seeing you (I could hardly fail to see you sooner or later), and tell him if you were well and happy. I had better say you were well and happy.’ ‘Yes, yes, yes! Say I was very well and very happy. And that I thanked him affectionately, and would never forget him.’ ‘I shall see you in the morning. After that we are sure to meet again before very long. Good night!’ ‘Good night. Thank you, thank you. Good night, my dear!’ Both of them were hurried and fluttered as they exchanged this parting, and as the visitor came out of the door. She had expected to meet the lady’s husband approaching it; but the person in the gallery was not he: it was the traveller who had wiped the wine-drops from his moustache with the piece of bread. When he heard the step behind him, he turned round—for he was walking away in the dark. His politeness, which was extreme, would not allow of the young lady’s lighting herself down-stairs, or going down alone. He took her lamp, held it so as to throw the best light on the stone steps, and followed her all the way to the supper-room. She went down, not easily hiding how much she was inclined to shrink and tremble; for the appearance of this traveller was particularly disagreeable to her. She had sat in her quiet corner be-fore supper imagining what he would have been in the scenes and places within her experience, until he inspired her with an aversion that made him little less than terrific. He followed her down with his smiling politeness, followed her in, and resumed his seat in the best place in the hearth. There with the wood-fire, which was beginning to burn low, rising and falling upon him in the dark room, he sat with his legs thrust out to warm, drinking the hot wine down to the lees, with a monstrous shadow imitating him on the wall and ceiling. The tired company had broken up, and all the rest were gone to bed except the young lady’s father, who dozed in his chair by the fire. The traveller had been at the pains of going a long way up-stairs to his sleeping-room to fetch his pocket-flask of brandy. He told them so, as he poured its contents into what was left of the wine, and drank with a new relish. ‘May I ask, sir, if you are on your way to Italy?’ The grey-haired gentleman had roused himself, and was pre-paring to withdraw. He answered in the affirmative. ‘I also!’ said the traveller. ‘I shall hope to have the honour of offering my compliments in fairer scenes, and under softer circumstances, than on this dismal mountain.’ The gentleman bowed, distantly enough, and said he was obliged to him. ‘We poor gentlemen, sir,’ said the traveller, pulling his moustache dry with his hand, for he had dipped it in the wine and brandy; ‘we poor gentlemen do not travel like princes, but the courtesies and graces of life are precious to us. To your health, sir!’ ‘Sir, I thank you.’ ‘To the health of your distinguished family—of the fair ladies, your daughters!’

‘Sir, I thank you again, I wish you good night. My dear, are our—ha—our people in attendance?’ ‘They are close by, father.’ ‘Permit me!’ said the traveller, rising and holding the door open, as the gentleman crossed the room towards it with his arm drawn through his daughter’s. ‘Good repose! To the pleasure of seeing you once more! To to-morrow!’ As he kissed his hand, with his best manner and his daintiest smile, the young lady drew a little nearer to her father, and passed him with a dread of touching him. ‘Humph!’ said the insinuating traveller, whose manner shrunk, and whose voice dropped when he was left alone. ‘If they all go to bed, why I must go. They are in a devil of a hurry. One would think the night would be long enough, in this freezing silence and solitude, if one went to bed two hours hence.’ Throwing back his head in emptying his glass, he cast his eyes upon the travellers’ book, which lay on the piano, open, with pens and ink beside it, as if the night’s names had been registered when he was absent. Taking it in his hand, he read these entries. William Dorrit, Esquire Miss Dorrit And Suite. Frederick Dorrit, Esquire Miss Amy Dorrit From France Edward Dorrit, Esquire Mrs General to Italy. Mr and Mrs Henry Gowan. From France to Italy. To which he added, in a small complicated hand, ending with a long lean flourish, not unlike a lasso thrown at all the rest of the names: Blandois. Paris. From France to Italy. And then, with his nose coming down over his moustache and his moustache going up and under his nose, repaired to his al-lotted cell.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Mrs General

It is indispensable to present the accomplished lady who was of sufficient importance in the suite of the Dorrit Family to have a line to herself in the Travellers’ Book. Mrs General was the daughter of a clerical dignitary in a cathedral town, where she had led the fashion until she was as near forty-five as a single lady can be. A stiff commissariat officer of sixty, famous as a martinet, had then become enamoured of the gravity with which she drove the proprieties four-in-hand through the cathedral town society, and had solicited to be taken beside her on the box of the cool coach of ceremony to which that team was harnessed. His proposal of marriage being accepted by the lady, the commissary took his seat behind the proprieties with great decorum, and Mrs General drove until the commissary died. In the course of their united journey, they ran over several people who came in the way of the proprieties; but always in a high style and with composure. The commissary having been buried with all the decorations suitable to the service (the whole team of proprieties were harnessed to his hearse, and they all had feathers and black velvet housings with his coat of arms in the corner), Mrs General began to inquire what quantity of dust and ashes was deposited at the bankers’. It then transpired that the commissary had so far stolen a march on Mrs General as to have bought himself an annuity some years before his marriage, and to have reserved that circumstance in mentioning, at the period of his proposal, that his income was derived from the interest of his money. Mrs General consequently found her means so much diminished, that, but for the perfect regulation of her mind, she might have felt disposed to question the accuracy of that portion of the late service which had declared that the commissary could take nothing away with him. In this state of affairs it occurred to Mrs General, that she might ‘form the mind,’ and eke the manners of some young lady of distinction. Or, that she might harness the proprieties to the carriage of some rich young heiress or widow, and be-come at once the driver and guard of such vehicle through the social mazes. Mrs General’s communication of this idea to her clerical and commissariat connection was so warmly applauded that, but for the lady’s undoubted merit, it might have appeared as though they wanted to get rid of her. Testimonials representing Mrs General as a prodigy of piety, learning, virtue, and gentility, were lavishly contributed from influential quarters; and one venerable archdeacon even shed tears in re-cording his testimony to her perfections (described to him by persons on whom he could rely), though he had never had the honour and moral gratification of setting eyes on Mrs General in all his life. Thus delegated on her mission, as it were by Church and State, Mrs General, who had always occupied high ground, felt in a condition to keep it, and began by putting herself up at a very high figure. An interval of some duration elapsed, in which there was no bid for Mrs General. At length a county-widower, with a daughter of fourteen, opened negotiations with the lady; and as it was a part either of the native dignity or of the artificial policy of Mrs General (but certainly one or the other) to comport herself as if she were much more sought than seeking, the widower pursued Mrs General until he prevailed upon her to form his daughter’s mind and manners. The execution of this trust occupied Mrs General about seven years, in the course of which time she made the tour of Europe, and saw most of that extensive miscellany of objects which it is essential that all persons of polite cultivation should see with other people’s eyes, and never with their own. When her charge was at length formed, the marriage, not only of the young lady, but likewise of her father, the widower, was re-solved on. The widower then finding Mrs General both inconvenient and expensive, became of a sudden almost as much affected by her merits as the archdeacon had been, and circulated such praises of her surpassing worth, in all quarters where he thought an opportunity might arise of transferring the blessing to somebody else, that Mrs General was a name more honourable than ever. The phoenix was to let, on this elevated perch, when Mr Dorrit, who had lately succeeded to his property, mentioned to his bankers that he wished to discover a lady, well-bred, accomplished, well connected, well accustomed to good society, who was qualified at once to complete the education of his daughters, and to be their matron or chaperone. Mr Dorrit’s bankers, as bankers of the county widower, instantly said, ‘Mrs General.’ Pursuing the light so fortunately hit upon, and finding the concurrent testimony of the whole of Mrs General’s acquaintance to be of the pathetic nature already recorded, Mr Dorrit took the trouble of going down to the county of the county-widower to see Mrs General, in whom he found a lady of a quality superior to his highest expectations. ‘Might I be excused,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘if I inquired—ha—what remune—’ ‘Why, indeed,’ returned Mrs General, stopping the word, ‘it is a subject on which I prefer to avoid entering. I have never entered on it with my friends here; and I cannot overcome the delicacy, Mr Dorrit, with which I have always regarded it. I am not, as I hope you are aware, a governess—’ ‘O dear no!’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘Pray, madam, do not imagine for a moment that I think so.’ He really blushed to be suspected of it. Mrs General gravely inclined her head. ‘I cannot, therefore, put a price upon services which it is a pleasure to me to render if I can render them spontaneously, but which I could not render in mere return for any consideration. Neither do I know how, or where, to find a case parallel to my own. It is peculiar.’ No doubt. But how then (Mr Dorrit not unnaturally hinted) could the subject be approached. ‘I cannot object,’ said Mrs General—‘though even that is disagreeable to me—to Mr Dorrit’s inquiring, in confidence of my friends here, what amount they have been accustomed, at quarterly intervals, to pay to my credit at my bankers’.’ Mr Dorrit bowed his acknowledgements.

‘Permit me to add,’ said Mrs General, ‘that beyond this, I can never resume the topic. Also that I can accept no second or inferior position. If the honour were proposed to me of becoming known to Mr Dorrit’s family—I think two daughters were mentioned?—’ ‘Two daughters.’ ‘I could only accept it on terms of perfect equality, as a companion, protector, Mentor, and friend.’ Mr Dorrit, in spite of his sense of his importance, felt as if it would be quite a kindness in her to accept it on any conditions. He almost said as much. ‘I think,’ repeated Mrs General, ‘two daughters were mentioned?’ ‘Two daughters,’ said Mr Dorrit again. ‘It would therefore,’ said Mrs General, ‘be necessary to add a third more to the payment (whatever its amount may prove to be), which my friends here have been accustomed to make to my bankers’.’ Mr Dorrit lost no time in referring the delicate question to the county-widower, and finding that he had been accustomed to pay three hundred pounds a-year to the credit of Mrs General, arrived, without any severe strain on his arithmetic, at the conclusion that he himself must pay four. Mrs General being an article of that lustrous surface which suggests that it is worth any money, he made a formal proposal to be allowed to have the honour and pleasure of regarding her as a member of his family. Mrs General conceded that high privilege, and here she was. In person, Mrs General, including her skirts which had much to do with it, was of a dignified and imposing appearance; ample, rustling, gravely voluminous; always upright behind the proprieties. She might have been taken—had been taken—to the top of the Alps and the bottom of Herculaneum, without disarranging a fold in her dress, or displacing a pin. If her countenance and hair had rather a floury appearance, as though from living in some transcendently genteel Mill, it was rather because she was a chalky creation altogether, than be-cause she mended her complexion with violet powder, or had turned grey. If her eyes had no expression, it was probably be-cause they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face. A cool, waxy, blown-out woman, who had never lighted well. Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains of other people’s opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere. Even her propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but Mrs General’s way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and make believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a mind—to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was the easiest way, and, beyond all comparison, the properest. Mrs General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents, miseries, and offences, were never to be mentioned be-fore her. Passion was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs General, and blood was to change to milk and water. The little that was left in the world, when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs General’s province to varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came under consideration. The more cracked it was, the more Mrs General varnished it. There was varnish in Mrs General’s voice, varnish in Mrs General’s touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs General’s figure. Mrs General’s dreams ought to have been varnished—if she had any—lying asleep in the arms of the good Saint Bernard, with the feathery snow falling on his house-top.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3
On t he Road

The bright morning sun dazzled the eyes, the snow had ceased, the mists had vanished, the mountain air was so clear and light that the new sensation of breathing it was like the having entered on a new existence. To help the delusion, the solid ground itself seemed gone, and the mountain, a shining waste of immense white heaps and masses, to be a region of cloud floating between the blue sky above and the earth far below. Some dark specks in the snow, like knots upon a little thread, beginning at the convent door and winding away down the des-cent in broken lengths which were not yet pieced together, showed where the Brethren were at work in several places clearing the track. Already the snow had begun to be foot-thawed again about the door. Mules were busily brought out, tied to the rings in the wall, and laden; strings of bells were buckled on, burdens were adjusted, the voices of drivers and riders sounded musically. Some of the earliest had even already resumed their journey; and, both on the level summit by the dark water near the convent, and on the downward way of yesterday’s ascent, little moving figures of men and mules, reduced to miniatures by the immensity around, went with a clear tinkling of bells and a pleasant harmony of tongues. In the supper-room of last night, a new fire, piled upon the feathery ashes of the old one, shone upon a homely breakfast of loaves, butter, and milk. It also shone on the courier of the Dorrit family, making tea for his party from a supply he had brought up with him, together with several other small stores which were chiefly laid in for the use of the strong body of in-convenience. Mr Gowan and Blandois of Paris had already breakfasted, and were walking up and down by the lake, smoking their cigars. ‘Gowan, eh?’ muttered Tip, otherwise Edward Dorrit, Esquire, turning over the leaves of the book, when the courier had left them to breakfast. ‘Then Gowan is the name of a puppy, that’s all I have got to say! If it was worth my while, I’d pull his nose. But it isn’t worth my while—fortunately for him. How’s his wife, Amy? I suppose you know. You generally know things of that sort.’ ‘She is better, Edward. But they are not going to-day.’ ‘Oh! They are not going to-day! Fortunately for that fellow too,’ said Tip, ‘or he and I might have come into collision.’ ‘It is thought better here that she should lie quiet to-day, and not be fatigued and shaken by the ride down until to-morrow.’ ‘With all my heart. But you talk as if you had been nursing her. You haven’t been relapsing into (Mrs General is not here) into old habits, have you, Amy?’ He asked her the question with a sly glance of observation at Miss Fanny, and at his father too. ‘I have only been in to ask her if I could do anything for her, Tip,’ said Little Dorrit. ‘You needn’t call me Tip, Amy child,’ returned that young gentleman with a frown; ‘because that’s an old habit, and one you may as well lay aside.’ ‘I didn’t mean to say so, Edward dear. I forgot. It was so natural once, that it seemed at the moment the right word.’ ‘Oh yes!’ Miss Fanny struck in. ‘Natural, and right word, and once, and all the rest of it! Nonsense, you little thing! I know perfectly well why you have been taking such an interest in this Mrs Gowan. You can’t blind me.’ ‘I will not try to, Fanny. Don’t be angry.’ ‘Oh! angry!’ returned that young lady with a flounce. ‘I have no patience’ (which indeed was the truth). ‘Pray, Fanny,’ said Mr Dorrit, raising his eyebrows, ‘what do you mean? Explain yourself.’ ‘Oh! Never mind, Pa,’ replied Miss Fanny, ‘it’s no great mat-ter. Amy will understand me. She knew, or knew of, this Mrs Gowan before yesterday, and she may as well admit that she did.’ ‘My child,’ said Mr Dorrit, turning to his younger daughter, ‘has your sister—any—ha—authority for this curious statement?’

‘However meek we are,’ Miss Fanny struck in before she could answer, ‘we don’t go creeping into people’s rooms on the tops of cold mountains, and sitting perishing in the frost with people, unless we know something about them beforehand. It’s not very hard to divine whose friend Mrs Gowan is.’ ‘Whose friend?’ inquired her father. ‘Pa, I am sorry to say,’ returned Miss Fanny, who had by this time succeeded in goading herself into a state of much ill-usage and grievance, which she was often at great pains to do: ‘that I believe her to be a friend of that very objectionable and unpleasant person, who, with a total absence of all delicacy, which our experience might have led us to expect from him, insulted us and outraged our feelings in so public and wilful a manner on an occasion to which it is understood among us that we will not more pointedly allude.’ ‘Amy, my child,’ said Mr Dorrit, tempering a bland severity with a dignified affection, ‘is this the case?’ Little Dorrit mildly answered, yes it was. ‘Yes it is!’ cried Miss Fanny. ‘Of course! I said so! And now, Pa, I do declare once for all’—this young lady was in the habit of declaring the same thing once for all every day of her life, and even several times in a day—‘that this is shameful! I do declare once for all that it ought to be put a stop to. Is it not enough that we have gone through what is only known to ourselves, but are we to have it thrown in our faces, perseveringly and systematically, by the very person who should spare our feelings most? Are we to be exposed to this unnatural con-duct every moment of our lives? Are we never to be permitted to forget? I say again, it is absolutely infamous!’ ‘Well, Amy,’ observed her brother, shaking his head, ‘you know I stand by you whenever I can, and on most occasions. But I must say, that, upon my soul, I do consider it rather an unaccountable mode of showing your sisterly affection, that you should back up a man who treated me in the most ungentlemanly way in which one man can treat another. And who,’ he added convincingly, must be a low-minded thief, you know, or he never could have conducted himself as he did.’ ‘And see,’ said Miss Fanny, ‘see what is involved in this! Can we ever hope to be respected by our servants? Never. Here are our two women, and Pa’s valet, and a footman, and a courier, and all sorts of dependents, and yet in the midst of these, we are to have one of ourselves rushing about with tumblers of cold water, like a menial! Why, a policeman,’ said Miss Fanny, ‘if a beggar had a fit in the street, could but go plunging about with tumblers, as this very Amy did in this very room before our very eyes last night!’ ‘I don’t so much mind that, once in a way,’ remarked Mr Ed-ward; ‘but your Clennam, as he thinks proper to call himself, is another thing.’ ‘He is part of the same thing,’ returned Miss Fanny, ‘and of a piece with all the rest. He obtruded himself upon us in the first instance. We never wanted him. I always showed him, for one, that I could have dispensed with his company with the greatest pleasure. He then commits that gross outrage upon our feelings, which he never could or would have committed but for the delight he took in exposing us; and then we are to be demeaned for the service of his friends! Why, I don’t wonder at this Mr Gowan’s conduct towards you. What else was to be expected when he was enjoying our past misfortunes—gloating over them at the moment!’ ‘Father—Edward—no indeed!’ pleaded Little Dorrit. ‘Neither Mr nor Mrs Gowan had ever heard our name. They were, and they are, quite ignorant of our history.’ ‘So much the worse,’ retorted Fanny, determined not to admit anything in extenuation, ‘for then you have no excuse. If they had known about us, you might have felt yourself called upon to conciliate them. That would have been a weak and ridiculous mistake, but I can respect a mistake, whereas I can’t respect a wilful and deliberate abasing of those who should be nearest and dearest to us. No. I can’t respect that. I can do nothing but denounce that.’ ‘I never offend you wilfully, Fanny,’ said Little Dorrit, ‘though you are so hard with me.’ ‘Then you should be more careful, Amy,’ returned her sister. ‘If you do such things by accident, you should be more careful. If I happened to have been born in a peculiar place, and under peculiar circumstances that blunted my knowledge of propriety, I fancy I should think myself bound to consider at every step, “Am I going, ignorantly, to compromise any near and dear relations?” That is what I fancy I should do, if it was my case. Mr Dorrit now interposed, at once to stop these painful subjects by his authority, and to point their moral by his wisdom. ‘My dear,’ said he to his younger daughter, ‘I beg you to—ha—to say no more. Your sister Fanny expresses herself strongly, but not without considerable reason. You have now a—hum—a great position to support. That great position is not occupied by yourself alone, but by—ha—by me, and—ha hum—by us. Us. Now, it is incumbent upon all people in an exalted position, but it is particularly so on this family, for reasons which I—ha—will not dwell upon, to make themselves respected. To be vigilant in making themselves respected. Dependants, to respect us, must be—ha—kept at a distance and—hum—kept down. Down. Therefore, your not exposing yourself to the remarks of our attendants by appearing to have at any time dispensed with their services and performed them for yourself, is—ha—highly important.’ ‘Why, who can doubt it?’ cried Miss Fanny. ‘It’s the essence of everything.’ ‘Fanny,’ returned her father, grandiloquently, ‘give me leave, my dear. We then come to—ha—to Mr Clennam. I am free to say that I do not, Amy, share your sister’s sentiments—that is to say altogether—hum—altogether—in reference to Mr Clennam. I am content to regard that individual in the light of—ha—generally—a well-behaved person. Hum. A well-behaved person. Nor will I inquire whether Mr Clennam did, at any time, obtrude himself on—ha—my society. He knew my society to be—hum—sought, and his plea might be that he regarded me in the light of a public character. But there were circumstances attending my—ha—slight knowledge of Mr Clennam (it was very slight), which,’ here Mr Dorrit became extremely grave and impressive, ‘would render it highly indelicate in Mr Clennam to—ha—to seek to renew communication with me or with any member of my family under existing circumstances. If Mr Clennam has sufficient delicacy to perceive the impropriety of any such attempt, I am bound as a responsible gentleman to—ha—defer to that delicacy on his part. If, on the other hand, Mr Clennam has not that delicacy, I cannot for a moment—ha—hold any correspondence with ’ so—hum—coarse a mind. In either case, it would appear that Mr Clennam is put altogether out of the question, and that we have nothing to do with him or he with us. Ha—Mrs General!’ The entrance of the lady whom he announced, to take her place at the breakfast-table, terminated the discussion. Shortly afterwards, the courier announced that the valet, and the foot-man, and the two maids, and the four guides, and the fourteen mules, were in readiness; so the breakfast party went out to the convent door to join the cavalcade. Mr Gowan stood aloof with his cigar and pencil, but Mr Blandois was on the spot to pay his respects to the ladies. When he gallantly pulled off his slouched hat to Little Dorrit, she thought he had even a more sinister look, standing swart and cloaked in the snow, than he had in the fire-light over-night. But, as both her father and her sister received his homage with some favour, she refrained from expressing any distrust of him, lest it should prove to be a new blemish de-rived from her prison birth. Nevertheless, as they wound down the rugged way while the convent was yet in sight, she more than once looked round, and descried Mr Blandois, backed by the convent smoke which rose straight and high from the chimneys in a golden film, al-ways standing on one jutting point looking down after them. Long after he was a mere black stick in the snow, she felt as though she could yet see that smile of his, that high nose, and those eyes that were too near it. And even after that, when the convent was gone and some light morning clouds veiled the pass below it, the ghastly skeleton arms by the wayside seemed to be all pointing up at him. More treacherous than snow, perhaps, colder at heart, and harder to melt, Blandois of Paris by degrees passed out of her mind, as they came down into the softer regions. Again the sun was warm, again the streams descending from glaciers and snowy caverns were refreshing to drink at, again they came among the pine-trees, the rocky rivulets, the verdant heights and dales, the wooden chalets and rough zigzag fences of Swiss country. Sometimes the way so widened that she and her father could ride abreast. And then to look at him, handsomely clothed in his fur and broadcloths, rich, free, numerously served and attended, his eyes roving far away among the glories of the landscape, no miserable screen before them to darken his sight and cast its shadow on him, was enough. Her uncle was so far rescued from that shadow of old, that he wore the clothes they gave him, and performed some ablutions as a sacrifice to the family credit, and went where he was taken, with a certain patient animal enjoyment, which seemed to express that the air and change did him good. In all other respects, save one, he shone with no light but such as was reflected from his brother. His brother’s greatness, wealth, freedom, and grandeur, pleased him without any reference to himself. Silent and retiring, he had no use for speech when he could hear his brother speak; no desire to be waited on, so that the servants devoted themselves to his brother. The only notice-able change he originated in himself, was an alteration in his manner to his younger niece. Every day it refined more and more into a marked respect, very rarely shown by age to youth, and still more rarely susceptible, one would have said, of the fitness with which he invested it. On those occasions when Miss Fanny did declare once for all, he would take the next opportunity of baring his grey head before his younger niece, and of helping her to alight, or handing her to the carriage, or showing her any other attention, with the profoundest deference. Yet it never appeared misplaced or forced, being always heartily simple, spontaneous, and genuine. Neither would he ever consent, even at his brother’s request, to be helped to any place before her, or to take precedence of her in anything. So jealous was he of her being respected, that, on this very journey down from the Great Saint Bernard, he took sudden and violent umbrage at the footman’s being remiss to hold her stirrup, though standing near when she dismounted; and unspeakably astonished the whole retinue by charging at him on a hard-headed mule, riding him into a corner, and threatening to trample him to death. They were a goodly company, and the Innkeepers all but worshipped them. Wherever they went, their importance pre-ceded them in the person of the courier riding before, to see that the rooms of state were ready. He was the herald of the family procession. The great travelling-carriage came next: containing, inside, Mr Dorrit, Miss Dorrit, Miss Amy Dorrit, and Mrs General; outside, some of the retainers, and (in fine weather) Edward Dorrit, Esquire, for whom the box was re-served. Then came the chariot containing Frederick Dorrit, Es-quire, and an empty place occupied by Edward Dorrit, Esquire, in wet weather. Then came the fourgon with the rest of the retainers, the heavy baggage, and as much as it could carry of the mud and dust which the other vehicles left behind. These equipages adorned the yard of the hotel at Martigny, on the return of the family from their mountain excursion. Other vehicles were there, much company being on the road, from the patched Italian Vettura—like the body of a swing from an English fair put upon a wooden tray on wheels, and having an-other wooden tray without wheels put atop of it—to the trim English carriage. But there was another adornment of the hotel which Mr Dorrit had not bargained for. Two strange travellers embellished one of his rooms. The Innkeeper, hat in hand in the yard, swore to the courier that he was blighted, that he was desolated, that he was profoundly afflicted, that he was the most miserable and unfortunate of beasts, that he had the head of a wooden pig. He ought never to have made the concession, he said, but the very genteel lady had so passionately prayed him for the accommodation of that room to dine in, only for a little half-hour, that he had been vanquished. The little half-hour was expired, the lady and gentleman were taking their little dessert and half-cup of coffee, the note was paid, the horses were ordered, they would depart immediately; but, owing to an unhappy destiny and the curse of Heaven, they were not yet gone. Nothing could exceed Mr Dorrit’s indignation, as he turned at the foot of the staircase on hearing these apologies. He felt that the family dignity was struck at by an assassin’s hand. He had a sense of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting his dignity. ‘Is it possible, sir,’ said Mr Dorrit, reddening excessively, ‘that you have—ha—had the audacity to place one of my rooms at the disposition of any other person?’ Thousands of pardons! It was the host’s profound misfortune to have been overcome by that too genteel lady. He besought Monseigneur not to enrage himself. He threw himself on Mon-seigneur for clemency. If Monseigneur would have the distinguished goodness to occupy the other salon especially reserved for him, for but five minutes, all would go well. ‘No, sir,’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘I will not occupy any salon. I will leave your house without eating or drinking, or setting foot in it. How do you dare to act like this? Who am I that you—ha—separate me from other gentlemen?’ Alas! The host called all the universe to witness that Monseigneur was the most amiable of the whole body of nobility, the most important, the most estimable, the most honoured. If he separated Monseigneur from others, it was only because he was more distinguished, more cherished, more generous, more renowned. ‘Don’t tell me so, sir,’ returned Mr Dorrit, in a mighty heat. ‘You have affronted me. You have heaped insults upon me. How dare you? Explain yourself.’ Ah, just Heaven, then, how could the host explain himself when he had nothing more to explain; when he had only to apologise, and confide himself to the so well-known magnanimity of Monseigneur! ‘I tell you, sir,’ said Mr Dorrit, panting with anger, ‘that you separate me—ha—from other gentlemen; that you make distinctions between me and other gentlemen of fortune and station. I demand of you, why? I wish to know on—ha—what authority, on whose authority. Reply sir. Explain. Answer why.’ Permit the landlord humbly to submit to Monsieur the Courier then, that Monseigneur, ordinarily so gracious, enraged himself without cause. There was no why. Monsieur the Courier would represent to Monseigneur, that he deceived himself in suspecting that there was any why, but the why his devoted servant had already had the honour to present to him. The very genteel lady— ‘Silence!’ cried Mr Dorrit. ‘Hold your tongue! I will hear no more of the very genteel lady; I will hear no more of you. Look at this family—my family—a family more genteel than any lady. You have treated this family with disrespect; you have been insolent to this family. I’ll ruin you. Ha—send for the horses, pack the carriages, I’ll not set foot in this man’s house again!’

No one had interfered in the dispute, which was beyond the French colloquial powers of Edward Dorrit, Esquire, and scarcely within the province of the ladies. Miss Fanny, however, now supported her father with great bitterness; declaring, in her native tongue, that it was quite clear there was something special in this man’s impertinence; and that she considered it important that he should be, by some means, forced to give up his authority for making distinctions between that family and other wealthy families. What the reasons of his presumption could be, she was at a loss to imagine; but reasons he must have, and they ought to be torn from him. All the guides, mule-drivers, and idlers in the yard, had made themselves parties to the angry conference, and were much impressed by the courier’s now bestirring himself to get the carriages out. With the aid of some dozen people to each wheel, this was done at a great cost of noise; and then the loading was proceeded with, pending the arrival of the horses from the post-house. But the very genteel lady’s English chariot being already horsed and at the inn-door, the landlord had slipped up-stairs to represent his hard case. This was notified to the yard by his now coming down the staircase in attendance on the gentle-man and the lady, and by his pointing out the offended majesty of Mr Dorrit to them with a significant motion of his hand. ‘Beg your pardon,’ said the gentleman, detaching himself from the lady, and coming forward. ‘I am a man of few words and a bad hand at an explanation—but lady here is extremely anxious that there should be no Row. Lady—a mother of mine, in point of fact—wishes me to say that she hopes no Row.’ Mr Dorrit, still panting under his injury, saluted the gentle-man, and saluted the lady, in a distant, final, and invincible manner. ‘No, but really—here, old feller; you!’ This was the gentleman’s way of appealing to Edward Dorrit, Esquire, on whom he pounced as a great and providential relief. ‘Let you and I try to make this all right. Lady so very much wishes no Row.’ Edward Dorrit, Esquire, led a little apart by the button, assumed a diplomatic expression of countenance in replying, ‘Why you must confess, that when you bespeak a lot of rooms beforehand, and they belong to you, it’s not pleasant to find other people in ’em.’ ‘No,’ said the other, ‘I know it isn’t. I admit it. Still, let you and I try to make it all right, and avoid Row. The fault is not this chap’s at all, but my mother’s. Being a remarkably fine woman with no biggodd nonsense about her—well educated, too—she was too many for this chap. Regularly pocketed him.’ ‘If that’s the case—’ Edward Dorrit, Esquire, began. ‘Assure you ’pon my soul ’tis the case. Consequently,’ said the other gentleman, retiring on his main position, ‘why Row?’ ‘Edmund,’ said the lady from the doorway, ‘I hope you have explained, or are explaining, to the satisfaction of this gentle-man and his family that the civil landlord is not to blame?’ ‘Assure you, ma’am,’ returned Edmund, ‘perfectly paralysing myself with trying it on.’ He then looked steadfastly at Edward Dorrit, Esquire, for some seconds, and suddenly added, in a burst of confidence, ‘Old feller! Is it all right?’ ‘I don’t know, after all,’ said the lady, gracefully advancing a step or two towards Mr Dorrit, ‘but that I had better say my-self, at once, that I assured this good man I took all the con-sequences on myself of occupying one of a stranger’s suite of rooms during his absence, for just as much (or as little) time as I could dine in. I had no idea the rightful owner would come back so soon, nor had I any idea that he had come back, or I should have hastened to make restoration of my ill-gotten chamber, and to have offered my explanation and apology. I trust in saying this—’ For a moment the lady, with a glass at her eye, stood trans-fixed and speechless before the two Miss Dorrits. At the same moment, Miss Fanny, in the foreground of a grand pictorial composition, formed by the family, the family equipages, and the family servants, held her sister tight under one arm to detain her on the spot, and with the other arm fanned herself with a distinguished air, and negligently surveyed the lady from head to foot. The lady, recovering herself quickly—for it was Mrs Merdle and she was not easily dashed—went on to add that she trusted in saying this, she apologised for her boldness, and restored this well-behaved landlord to the favour that was so very valuable to him. Mr Dorrit, on the altar of whose dignity all this was incense, made a gracious reply; and said that his people should—ha—countermand his horses, and he would—hum—overlook what he had at first supposed to be an affront, but now regarded as an honour. Upon this the bosom bent to him; and its owner, with a wonderful command of feature, addressed a winning smile of adieu to the two sisters, as young ladies of fortune in whose favour she was much prepossessed, and whom she had never had the gratification of seeing before. Not so, however, Mr Sparkler. This gentleman, becoming transfixed at the same moment as his lady-mother, could not by any means unfix himself again, but stood stiffly staring at the whole composition with Miss Fanny in the Foreground. On his mother saying, ‘Edmund, we are quite ready; will you give me your arm?’ he seemed, by the motion of his lips, to reply with some remark comprehending the form of words in which his shining talents found the most frequent utterance, but he relaxed no muscle. So fixed was his figure, that it would have been matter of some difficulty to bend him sufficiently to get him in the carriage-door, if he had not received the timely assistance of a maternal pull from within. He was no sooner with-in than the pad of the little window in the back of the chariot disappeared, and his eye usurped its place. There it remained as long as so small an object was discernible, and probably much longer, staring (as though something inexpressibly surprising should happen to a codfish) like an ill-executed eye in a large locket. This encounter was so highly agreeable to Miss Fanny, and gave her so much to think of with triumph afterwards, that it softened her asperities exceedingly. When the procession was again in motion next day, she occupied her place in it with a new gaiety; and showed such a flow of spirits indeed, that Mrs General looked rather surprised. Little Dorrit was glad to be found no fault with, and to see that Fanny was pleased; but her part in the procession was a musing part, and a quiet one. Sitting opposite her father in the travelling-carriage, and recalling the old Marshalsea room, her present existence was a dream. All that she saw was new and wonderful, but it was not real; it seemed to her as if those visions of mountains and picturesque countries might melt away at any moment, and the carriage, turning some abrupt corner, bring up with a jolt at the old Marshalsea gate. To have no work to do was strange, but not half so strange as having glided into a corner where she had no one to think for, nothing to plan and contrive, no cares of others to load herself with. Strange as that was, it was far stranger yet to find a space between herself and her father, where others occupied themselves in taking care of him, and where she was never expected to be. At first, this was so much more unlike her old experience than even the mountains themselves, that she had been unable to resign herself to it, and had tried to retain her old place about him. But he had spoken to her alone, and had said that people—ha—people in an exalted position, my dear, must scrupulously exact respect from their dependents; and that for her, his daughter, Miss Amy Dorrit, of the sole remaining branch of the Dorrits of Dorsetshire, to be known to—hum—to occupy herself in fulfilling the functions of—ha hum—a valet, would be incompatible with that respect. There-fore, my dear, he—ha—he laid his parental injunctions upon her, to remember that she was a lady, who had now to conduct herself with—hum—a proper pride, and to preserve the rank of a lady; and consequently he requested her to abstain from doing what would occasion—ha—unpleasant and derogatory re-marks. She had obeyed without a murmur. Thus it had been brought about that she now sat in her corner of the luxurious carriage with her little patient hands folded before her, quite displaced even from the last point of the old standing ground in life on which her feet had lingered. It was from this position that all she saw appeared unreal; the more surprising the scenes, the more they resembled the unreality of her own inner life as she went through its vacant places all day long. The gorges of the Simplon, its enormous depths and thundering waterfalls, the wonderful road, the points of danger where a loose wheel or a faltering horse would have been destruction, the descent into Italy, the opening of that beautiful land as the rugged mountain-chasm widened and let them out from a gloomy and dark imprisonment—all a dream—only the old mean Marshalsea a reality. Nay, even the old mean Marshalsea was shaken to its foundations when she pictured it without her father. She could scarcely believe that the prisoners were still lingering in the close yard, that the mean rooms were still every one tenanted, and that the turnkey still stood in the Lodge letting people in and out, all just as she well knew it to be. With a remembrance of her father’s old life in prison hanging about her like the burden of a sorrowful tune, Little Dorrit would wake from a dream of her birth-place into a whole day’s dream. The painted room in which she awoke, often a humbled state-chamber in a dilapidated palace, would begin it; with its wild red autumnal vine-leaves overhanging the glass, its orange-trees on the cracked white terrace outside the window, a group of monks and peasants in the little street below, misery and magnificence wrestling with each other upon every rood of ground in the prospect, no matter how widely diversified, and misery throwing magnificence with the strength of fate. To this would succeed a labyrinth of bare passages and pillared galleries, with the family procession already preparing in the quadrangle below, through the carriages and luggage being brought together by the servants for the day’s journey. Then breakfast in another painted chamber, damp-stained and of desolate proportions; and then the departure, which, to her timidity and sense of not being grand enough for her place in the ceremonies, was always an uneasy thing. For then the courier (who himself would have been a foreign gentleman of high mark in the Marshalsea) would present himself to report that all was ready; and then her father’s valet would pompously induct him into his travelling-cloak; and then Fanny’s maid, and her own maid (who was a weight on Little Dorrit’s mind—absolutely made her cry at first, she knew so little what to do with her), would be in attendance; and then her brother’s man would complete his master’s equipment; and then her father would give his arm to Mrs General, and her uncle would give his to her, and, escorted by the landlord and Inn servants, they would swoop down-stairs. There, a crowd would be collected to see them enter their carriages, which, amidst much bowing, and begging, and prancing, and lashing, and clattering, they would do; and so they would be driven madly through narrow unsavoury streets, and jerked out at the town gate. Among the day’s unrealities would be roads where the bright red vines were looped and garlanded together on trees for many miles; woods of olives; white villages and towns on hill-sides, lovely without, but frightful in their dirt and poverty within; crosses by the way; deep blue lakes with fairy islands, and clustering boats with awnings of bright colours and sails of beautiful forms; vast piles of building mouldering to dust; hanging-gardens where the weeds had grown so strong that their stems, like wedges driven home, had split the arch and rent the wall; stone-terraced lanes, with the lizards running in-to and out of every chink; beggars of all sorts everywhere: pitiful, picturesque, hungry, merry; children beggars and aged beggars. Often at posting-houses and other halting places, these miserable creatures would appear to her the only realities of the day; and many a time, when the money she had brought to give them was all given away, she would sit with her folded hands, thoughtfully looking after some diminutive girl leading her grey father, as if the sight reminded her of something in the days that were gone. Again, there would be places where they stayed the week together in splendid rooms, had banquets every day, rode out among heaps of wonders, walked through miles of palaces, and rested in dark corners of great churches; where there were winking lamps of gold and silver among pillars and arches, kneeling figures dotted about at confessionals and on the pavements; where there was the mist and scent of incense; where there were pictures, fantastic images, gaudy altars, great heights and distances, all softly lighted through stained glass, and the massive curtains that hung in the doorways. From these cities they would go on again, by the roads of vines and olives, through squalid villages, where there was not a hovel without a gap in its filthy walls, not a window with a whole inch of glass or paper; where there seemed to be nothing to support life, nothing to eat, nothing to make, nothing to grow, nothing to hope, nothing to do but die. Again they would come to whole towns of palaces, whose proper inmates were all banished, and which were all changed into barracks: troops of idle soldiers leaning out of the state windows, where their accoutrements hung drying on the marble architecture, and showing to the mind like hosts of rats who were (happily) eating away the props of the edifices that supported them, and must soon, with them, be smashed on the heads of the other swarms of soldiers and the swarms of priests, and the swarms of spies, who were all the ill-looking population left to be ruined, in the streets below. Through such scenes, the family procession moved on to Venice. And here it dispersed for a time, as they were to live in Venice some few months in a palace (itself six times as big as the whole Marshalsea) on the Grand Canal. In this crowning unreality, where all the streets were paved with water, and where the deathlike stillness of the days and nights was broken by no sound but the softened ringing of church-bells, the rippling of the current, and the cry of the gondoliers turning the corners of the flowing streets, Little Dorrit, quite lost by her task being done, sat down to muse. The family began a gay life, went here and there, and turned night into day; but she was timid of joining in their gaieties, and only asked leave to be left alone. Sometimes she would step into one of the gondolas that were always kept in waiting, moored to painted posts at the door—when she could escape from the attendance of that oppressive maid, who was her mistress, and a very hard one—and would be taken all over the strange city. Social people in other gondolas began to ask each other who the little solitary girl was whom they passed, sitting in her boat with folded hands, looking so pensively and wonderingly about her. Never thinking that it would be worth anybody’s while to notice her or her doings, Little Dorrit, in her quiet, scared, lost manner, went about the city none the less. But her favourite station was the balcony of her own room, overhanging the canal, with other balconies below, and none above. It was of massive stone darkened by ages, built in a wild fancy which came from the East to that collection of wild fancies; and Little Dorrit was little indeed, leaning on the broad-cushioned ledge, and looking over. As she liked no place of an evening half so well, she soon began to be watched for, and many eyes in passing gondolas were raised, and many people said, There was the little figure of the English girl who was al-ways alone. Such people were not realities to the little figure of the English girl; such people were all unknown to her. She would watch the sunset, in its long low lines of purple and red, and its burning flush high up into the sky: so glowing on the buildings, and so lightening their structure, that it made them look as if their strong walls were transparent, and they shone from with-in. She would watch those glories expire; and then, after looking at the black gondolas underneath, taking guests to music and dancing, would raise her eyes to the shining stars. Was there no party of her own, in other times, on which the stars had shone? To think of that old gate now! She would think of that old gate, and of herself sitting at it in the dead of the night, pillowing Maggy’s head; and of other places and of other scenes associated with those different times. And then she would lean upon her balcony, and look over at the water, as though they all lay underneath it. When she got to that, she would musingly watch its running, as if, in the general vision, it might run dry, and show her the prison again, and herself, and the old room, and the old inmates, and the old visitors: all lasting realities that had never changed.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4
A Letter from Little Dorrit

Dear Mr Clennam, I write to you from my own room at Venice, thinking you will be glad to hear from me. But I know you cannot be so glad to hear from me as I am to write to you; for everything about you is as you have been accustomed to see it, and you miss nothing—unless it should be me, which can only be for a very little while together and very seldom—while everything in my life is so strange, and I miss so much. When we were in Switzerland, which appears to have been years ago, though it was only weeks, I met young Mrs Gowan, who was on a mountain excursion like ourselves. She told me she was very well and very happy. She sent you the message, by me, that she thanked you affectionately and would never forget you. She was quite confiding with me, and I loved her al-most as soon as I spoke to her. But there is nothing singular in that; who could help loving so beautiful and winning a creature! I could not wonder at any one loving her. No indeed. It will not make you uneasy on Mrs Gowan’s account, I hope—for I remember that you said you had the interest of a true friend in her—if I tell you that I wish she could have married some one better suited to her. Mr Gowan seems fond of her, and of course she is very fond of him, but I thought he was not earnest enough—I don’t mean in that respect—I mean in anything. I could not keep it out of my mind that if I was Mrs Gowan (what a change that would be, and how I must alter to become like her!) I should feel that I was rather lonely and lost, for the want of some one who was steadfast and firm in purpose. I even thought she felt this want a little, almost without knowing it. But mind you are not made uneasy by this, for she was ‘very well and very happy.’ And she looked most beautiful.

I expect to meet her again before long, and indeed have been expecting for some days past to see her here. I will ever be as good a friend to her as I can for your sake. Dear Mr Clennam, I dare say you think little of having been a friend to me when I had no other (not that I have any other now, for I have made no new friends), but I think much of it, and I never can forget it. I wish I knew—but it is best for no one to write to me—how Mr and Mrs Plornish prosper in the business which my dear father bought for them, and that old Mr Nandy lives happily with them and his two grandchildren, and sings all his songs over and over again. I cannot quite keep back the tears from my eyes when I think of my poor Maggy, and of the blank she must have felt at first, however kind they all are to her, without her Little Mother. Will you go and tell her, as a strict secret, with my love, that she never can have regretted our separation more than I have regretted it? And will you tell them all that I have thought of them every day, and that my heart is faithful to them everywhere? O, if you could know how faithful, you would almost pity me for being so far away and being so grand! You will be glad, I am sure, to know that my dear father is very well in health, and that all these changes are highly beneficial to him, and that he is very different indeed from what he used to be when you used to see him. There is an improvement in my uncle too, I think, though he never complained of old, and never exults now. Fanny is very graceful, quick, and clever. It is natural to her to be a lady; she has adapted herself to our new fortunes with wonderful ease. This reminds me that I have not been able to do so, and that I sometimes almost despair of ever being able to do so. I find that I cannot learn. Mrs General is always with us, and we speak French and speak Italian, and she takes pains to form us in many ways. When I say we speak French and Italian, I mean they do. As for me, I am so slow that I scarcely get on at all. As soon as I begin to plan, and think, and try, all my planning, thinking, and trying go in old directions, and I begin to feel careful again about the expenses of the day, and about my dear father, and about my work, and then I remember with a start that there are no such cares left, and that in itself is so new and improbable that it sets me wandering again. I should not have the courage to mention this to any one but you.

It is the same with all these new countries and wonderful sights. They are very beautiful, and they astonish me, but I am not collected enough—not familiar enough with myself, if you can quite understand what I mean—to have all the pleasure in them that I might have. What I knew before them, blends with them, too, so curiously. For instance, when we were among the mountains, I often felt (I hesitate to tell such an idle thing, dear Mr Clennam, even to you) as if the Marshalsea must be behind that great rock; or as if Mrs Clennam’s room where I have worked so many days, and where I first saw you, must be just beyond that snow. Do you remember one night when I came with Maggy to your lodging in Covent Garden? That room I have often and often fancied I have seen before me, travelling along for miles by the side of our carriage, when I have looked out of the carriage-window after dark. We were shut out that night, and sat at the iron gate, and walked about till morning. I often look up at the stars, even from the balcony of this room, and believe that I am in the street again, shut out with Maggy. It is the same with people that I left in England. When I go about here in a gondola, I surprise myself looking into other gondolas as if I hoped to see them. It would over-come me with joy to see them, but I don’t think it would surprise me much, at first. In my fanciful times, I fancy that they might be anywhere; and I almost expect to see their dear faces on the bridges or the quays. Another difficulty that I have will seem very strange to you. It must seem very strange to any one but me, and does even to me: I often feel the old sad pity for—I need not write the word—for him. Changed as he is, and inexpressibly blest and thankful as I always am to know it, the old sorrowful feeling of compassion comes upon me sometimes with such strength that I want to put my arms round his neck, tell him how I love him, and cry a little on his breast. I should be glad after that, and proud and happy. But I know that I must not do this; that he would not like it, that Fanny would be angry, that Mrs General would be amazed; and so I quiet myself. Yet in doing so, I struggle with the feeling that I have come to be at a distance from him; and that even in the midst of all the servants and attendants, he is deserted, and in want of me.

Dear Mr Clennam, I have written a great deal about myself, but I must write a little more still, or what I wanted most of all to say in this weak letter would be left out of it. In all these foolish thoughts of mine, which I have been so hardy as to confess to you because I know you will understand me if anybody can, and will make more allowance for me than anybody else would if you cannot—in all these thoughts, there is one thought scarcely ever—never—out of my memory, and that is that I hope you sometimes, in a quiet moment, have a thought for me. I must tell you that as to this, I have felt, ever since I have been away, an anxiety which I am very anxious to relieve. I have been afraid that you may think of me in a new light, or a new character. Don’t do that, I could not bear that—it would make me more unhappy than you can suppose. It would break my heart to believe that you thought of me in any way that would make me stranger to you than I was when you were so good to me. What I have to pray and entreat of you is, that you will never think of me as the daughter of a rich person; that you will never think of me as dressing any better, or living any better, than when you first knew me. That you will remember me only as the little shabby girl you protected with so much tenderness, from whose threadbare dress you have kept away the rain, and whose wet feet you have dried at your fire. That you will think of me (when you think of me at all), and of my true affection and devoted gratitude, always without change, as of your poor child, LITTLE DORRIT. P.S.—Particularly remember that you are not to be uneasy about Mrs Gowan. Her words were, ‘Very well and very happy.’ And she looked most beautiful.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5
Something Wrong Somewhere

The family had been a month or two at Venice, when Mr Dorrit, who was much among Counts and Marquises, and had but scant leisure, set an hour of one day apart, beforehand, for the purpose of holding some conference with Mrs General. The time he had reserved in his mind arriving, he sent Mr Tinkler, his valet, to Mrs General’s apartment (which would have absorbed about a third of the area of the Marshalsea), to present his compliments to that lady, and represent him as de-siring the favour of an interview. It being that period of the forenoon when the various members of the family had coffee in their own chambers, some couple of hours before assembling at breakfast in a faded hall which had once been sumptuous, but was now the prey of watery vapours and a settled melancholy, Mrs General was accessible to the valet. That envoy found her on a little square of carpet, so extremely diminutive in reference to the size of her stone and marble floor that she looked as if she might have had it spread for the trying on of a ready-made pair of shoes; or as if she had come into possession of the enchanted piece of carpet, bought for forty purses by one of the three princes in the Arabian Nights, and had that moment been transported on it, at a wish, into a palatial saloon with which it had no connection. Mrs General, replying to the envoy, as she set down her empty coffee-cup, that she was willing at once to proceed to Mr Dorrit’s apartment, and spare him the trouble of coming to her (which, in his gallantry, he had proposed), the envoy threw open the door, and escorted Mrs General to the presence. It was quite a walk, by mysterious staircases and corridors, from Mrs General’s apartment,—hoodwinked by a narrow side street with a low gloomy bridge in it, and dungeon-like opposite tenements, their walls besmeared with a thousand downward stains and streaks, as if every crazy aperture in them had been weeping tears of rust into the Adriatic for centuries—to Mr Dorrit’s apartment: with a whole English house-front of window, a prospect of beautiful church-domes rising into the blue sky sheer out of the water which reflected them, and a hushed murmur of the Grand Canal laving the doorways below, where his gondolas and gondoliers attended his pleasure, drowsily swinging in a little forest of piles. Mr Dorrit, in a resplendent dressing-gown and cap—the dormant grub that had so long bided its time among the Collegians had burst into a rare butterfly—rose to receive Mrs General. A chair to Mrs General. An easier chair, sir; what are you doing, what are you about, what do you mean? Now, leave us! ‘Mrs General,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘I took the liberty—’ ‘By no means,’ Mrs General interposed. ‘I was quite at your disposition. I had had my coffee.’ ‘—I took the liberty,’ said Mr Dorrit again, with the magnificent placidity of one who was above correction, ‘to solicit the favour of a little private conversation with you, because I feel rather worried respecting my—ha—my younger daughter. You will have observed a great difference of temperament, madam, between my two daughters?’ Said Mrs General in response, crossing her gloved hands (she was never without gloves, and they never creased and al-ways fitted), ‘There is a great difference.’ ‘May I ask to be favoured with your view of it?’ said Mr Dorrit, with a deference not incompatible with majestic serenity. ‘Fanny,’ returned Mrs General, ‘has force of character and self-reliance. Amy, none.’ None? O Mrs General, ask the Marshalsea stones and bars. O Mrs General, ask the milliner who taught her to work, and the dancing-master who taught her sister to dance. O Mrs General, Mrs General, ask me, her father, what I owe her; and hear my testimony touching the life of this slighted little creature from her childhood up! No such adjuration entered Mr. Dorrit’s head. He looked at Mrs General, seated in her usual erect attitude on her coach-box behind the proprieties, and he said in a thoughtful manner, ‘True, madam.’ ‘I would not,’ said Mrs General, ‘be understood to say, observe, that there is nothing to improve in Fanny. But there is material there—perhaps, indeed, a little too much.’ ‘Will you be kind enough, madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘to be—ha—more explicit? I do not quite understand my elder daughter’s having—hum—too much material. What material?’ ‘Fanny,’ returned Mrs General, ‘at present forms too many opinions. Perfect breeding forms none, and is never demonstrative.’ Lest he himself should be found deficient in perfect breeding, Mr Dorrit hastened to reply, ‘Unquestionably, madam, you are right.’ Mrs General returned, in her emotionless and expressionless manner, ‘I believe so.’ ‘But you are aware, my dear madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘that my daughters had the misfortune to lose their lamented mother when they were very young; and that, in consequence of my not having been until lately the recognised heir to my property, they have lived with me as a comparatively poor, though al-ways proud, gentleman, in—ha hum—retirement!’ ‘I do not,’ said Mrs General, ‘lose sight of the circumstance.’ ‘Madam,’ pursued Mr Dorrit, ‘of my daughter Fanny, under her present guidance and with such an example constantly be-fore her—’ (Mrs General shut her eyes.) ‘—I have no misgivings. There is adaptability of character in Fanny. But my younger daughter, Mrs General, rather worries and vexes my thoughts. I must inform you that she has always been my favourite.’ ‘There is no accounting,’ said Mrs General, ‘for these partialities.’ ‘Ha—no,’ assented Mr Dorrit. ‘No. Now, madam, I am troubled by noticing that Amy is not, so to speak, one of ourselves. She does not Care to go about with us; she is lost in the society we have here; our tastes are evidently not her tastes. Which,’ said Mr Dorrit, summing up with judicial gravity, ‘is to say, in other words, that there is something wrong in—ha—Amy.’

‘May we incline to the supposition,’ said Mrs General, with a little touch of varnish, ‘that something is referable to the novelty of the position?’ ‘Excuse me, madam,’ observed Mr Dorrit, rather quickly. ‘The daughter of a gentleman, though—ha—himself at one time comparatively far from affluent—comparatively—and herself reared in—hum—retirement, need not of necessity find this position so very novel.’ ‘True,’ said Mrs General, ‘true.’ ‘Therefore, madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘I took the liberty’ (he laid an emphasis on the phrase and repeated it, as though he stipulated, with urbane firmness, that he must not be contradicted again), ‘I took the liberty of requesting this interview, in order that I might mention the topic to you, and inquire how you would advise me?’ ‘Mr Dorrit,’ returned Mrs General, ‘I have conversed with Amy several times since we have been residing here, on the general subject of the formation of a demeanour. She has ex-pressed herself to me as wondering exceedingly at Venice. I have mentioned to her that it is better not to wonder. I have pointed out to her that the celebrated Mr Eustace, the classical tourist, did not think much of it; and that he compared the Rialto, greatly to its disadvantage, with Westminster and Black-friars Bridges. I need not add, after what you have said, that I have not yet found my arguments successful. You do me the honour to ask me what to advise. It always appears to me (if this should prove to be a baseless assumption, I shall be pardoned), that Mr Dorrit has been accustomed to exercise influence over the minds of others.’ ‘Hum—madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘I have been at the head of—ha of a considerable community. You are right in supposing that I am not unaccustomed to—an influential position.’ ‘I am happy,’ returned Mrs General, ‘to be so corroborated. I would therefore the more confidently recommend that Mr Dorrit should speak to Amy himself, and make his observations and wishes known to her. Being his favourite, besides, and no doubt attached to him, she is all the more likely to yield to his influence.’ ‘I had anticipated your suggestion, madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘but—ha—was not sure that I might—hum—not encroach on—’

‘On my province, Mr Dorrit?’ said Mrs General, graciously. ‘Do not mention it.’ ‘Then, with your leave, madam,’ resumed Mr Dorrit, ringing his little bell to summon his valet, ‘I will send for her at once.’ ‘Does Mr Dorrit wish me to remain?’ ‘Perhaps, if you have no other engagement, you would not object for a minute or two—’ ‘Not at all.’ So, Tinkler the valet was instructed to find Miss Amy’s maid, and to request that subordinate to inform Miss Amy that Mr Dorrit wished to see her in his own room. In delivering this charge to Tinkler, Mr Dorrit looked severely at him, and also kept a jealous eye upon him until he went out at the door, mistrusting that he might have something in his mind prejudicial to the family dignity; that he might have even got wind of some Collegiate joke before he came into the service, and might be derisively reviving its remembrance at the present moment. If Tinkler had happened to smile, however faintly and innocently, nothing would have persuaded Mr Dorrit, to the hour of his death, but that this was the case. As Tinkler happened, however, very fortunately for himself, to be of a serious and composed countenance, he escaped the secret danger that threatened him. And as on his return—when Mr Dorrit eyed him again—he announced Miss Amy as if she had come to a funeral, he left a vague impression on Mr Dorrit’s mind that he was a well-conducted young fellow, who had been brought up in the study of his Catechism by a widowed mother. ‘Amy,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘you have just now been the subject of some conversation between myself and Mrs General. We agree that you scarcely seem at home here. Ha—how is this?’ A pause. ‘I think, father, I require a little time.’ ‘Papa is a preferable mode of address,’ observed Mrs General. ‘Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in company—on entering a room, for instance—Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.’

‘Pray, my child,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘attend to the—hum—precepts of Mrs General.’ Poor Little Dorrit, with a rather forlorn glance at that eminent varnisher, promised to try. ‘You say, Amy,’ pursued Mr Dorrit, ‘that you think you re-quire time. Time for what?’ Another pause. ‘To become accustomed to the novelty of my life, was all I meant,’ said Little Dorrit, with her loving eyes upon her father; whom she had very nearly addressed as poultry, if not prunes and prism too, in her desire to submit herself to Mrs General and please him. Mr Dorrit frowned, and looked anything but pleased. ‘Amy,’ he returned, ‘it appears to me, I must say, that you have had abundance of time for that. Ha—you surprise me. You disappoint me. Fanny has conquered any such little difficulties, and—hum—why not you?’ ‘I hope I shall do better soon,’ said Little Dorrit. ‘I hope so,’ returned her father. ‘I—ha—I most devoutly hope so, Amy. I sent for you, in order that I might say—hum—impressively say, in the presence of Mrs General, to whom we are all so much indebted for obligingly being present among us, on—ha—on this or any other occasion,’ Mrs General shut her eyes, ‘that I—ha hum—am not pleased with you. You make Mrs General’s a thankless task. You—ha—embarrass me very much. You have always (as I have informed Mrs General) been my favourite child; I have always made you a—hum—a friend and companion; in return, I beg—I—ha—I do beg, that you accommodate yourself better to—hum—circumstances, and dutifully do what becomes your—your station.’ Mr Dorrit was even a little more fragmentary than usual, being excited on the subject and anxious to make himself particularly emphatic. ‘I do beg,’ he repeated, ‘that this may be attended to, and that you will seriously take pains and try to conduct yourself in a manner both becoming your position as—ha—Miss Amy Dorrit, and satisfactory to myself and Mrs General.’ That lady shut her eyes again, on being again referred to; then, slowly opening them and rising, added these words: ‘If Miss Amy Dorrit will direct her own attention to, and will accept of my poor assistance in, the formation of a surface, Mr. Dorrit will have no further cause of anxiety. May I take this opportunity of remarking, as an instance in point, that it is scarcely delicate to look at vagrants with the attention which I have seen bestowed upon them by a very dear young friend of mine? They should not be looked at. Nothing disagreeable should ever be looked at. Apart from such a habit standing in the way of that graceful equanimity of surface which is so expressive of good breeding, it hardly seems compatible with refinement of mind. A truly refined mind will seem to be ignorant of the existence of anything that is not perfectly proper, placid, and pleasant.’ Having delivered this exalted sentiment, Mrs General made a sweeping obeisance, and retired with an expression of mouth indicative of Prunes and Prism. Little Dorrit, whether speaking or silent, had preserved her quiet earnestness and her loving look. It had not been clouded, except for a passing moment, until now. But now that she was left alone with him the fingers of her lightly folded hands were agitated, and there was repressed emotion in her face. Not for herself. She might feel a little wounded, but her care was not for herself. Her thoughts still turned, as they always had turned, to him. A faint misgiving, which had hung about her since their accession to fortune, that even now she could never see him as he used to be before the prison days, had gradually begun to assume form in her mind. She felt that, in what he had just now said to her and in his whole bearing to-wards her, there was the well-known shadow of the Marshalsea wall. It took a new shape, but it was the old sad shad-ow. She began with sorrowful unwillingness to acknowledge to herself that she was not strong enough to keep off the fear that no space in the life of man could overcome that quarter of a century behind the prison bars. She had no blame to bestow upon him, therefore: nothing to reproach him with, no emotions in her faithful heart but great compassion and unbounded tenderness. This is why it was, that, even as he sat before her on his sofa, in the brilliant light of a bright Italian day, the wonderful city without and the splendours of an old palace within, she saw him at the moment in the long-familiar gloom of his Marshalsea lodging, and wished to take her seat beside him, and comfort him, and be again full of confidence with him, and of usefulness to him. If he divined what was in her thoughts, his own were not in tune with it. After some uneasy moving in his seat, he got up and walked about, looking very much dissatisfied. ‘Is there anything else you wish to say to me, dear father?’ ‘No, no. Nothing else.’ ‘I am sorry you have not been pleased with me, dear. I hope you will not think of me with displeasure now. I am going to try, more than ever, to adapt myself as you wish to what surrounds me—for indeed I have tried all along, though I have failed, I know.’ ‘Amy,’ he returned, turning short upon her. ‘You—ha—habitually hurt me.’ ‘Hurt you, father! I!’ ‘There is a—hum—a topic,’ said Mr Dorrit, looking all about the ceiling of the room, and never at the attentive, uncomplainingly shocked face, ‘a painful topic, a series of events which I wish—ha—altogether to obliterate. This is understood by your sister, who has already remonstrated with you in my presence; it is understood by your brother; it is understood by—ha hum—by every one of delicacy and sensitiveness except yourself—ha—I am sorry to say, except yourself. You, Amy—hum—you alone and only you—constantly revive the topic, though not in words.’ She laid her hand on his arm. She did nothing more. She gently touched him. The trembling hand may have said, with some expression, ‘Think of me, think how I have worked, think of my many cares!’ But she said not a syllable herself. There was a reproach in the touch so addressed to him that she had not foreseen, or she would have withheld her hand. He began to justify himself in a heated, stumbling, angry manner, which made nothing of it. ‘I was there all those years. I was—ha—universally acknowledged as the head of the place. I—hum—I caused you to be respected there, Amy. I—ha hum—I gave my family a position there. I deserve a return. I claim a return. I say, sweep it off the face of the earth and begin afresh. Is that much? I ask, is that much?’ He did not once look at her, as he rambled on in this way; but gesticulated at, and appealed to, the empty air.

‘I have suffered. Probably I know how much I have suffered better than any one—ha—I say than any one! If I can put that aside, if I can eradicate the marks of what I have endured, and can emerge before the world—a—ha—gentleman unspoiled, unspotted—is it a great deal to expect—I say again, is it a great deal to expect—that my children should—hum—do the same and sweep that accursed experience off the face of the earth?’ In spite of his flustered state, he made all these exclamations in a carefully suppressed voice, lest the valet should overhear anything. ‘Accordingly, they do it. Your sister does it. Your brother does it. You alone, my favourite child, whom I made the friend and companion of my life when you were a mere—hum—Baby, do not do it. You alone say you can’t do it. I provide you with valuable assistance to do it. I attach an accomplished and highly bred lady—ha—Mrs General, to you, for the purpose of doing it. Is it surprising that I should be displeased? Is it necessary that I should defend myself for expressing my displeasure? No!’ Notwithstanding which, he continued to defend himself, without any abatement of his flushed mood. ‘I am careful to appeal to that lady for confirmation, before I express any displeasure at all. I—hum—I necessarily make that appeal within limited bounds, or I—ha—should render legible, by that lady, what I desire to be blotted out. Am I selfish? Do I complain for my own sake? No. No. Principally for—ha hum—your sake, Amy.’ This last consideration plainly appeared, from his manner of pursuing it, to have just that instant come into his head. ‘I said I was hurt. So I am. So I—ha—am determined to be, whatever is advanced to the contrary. I am hurt that my daughter, seated in the—hum—lap of fortune, should mope and retire and proclaim herself unequal to her destiny. I am hurt that she should—ha—systematically reproduce what the rest of us blot out; and seem—hum—I had almost said positively anxious—to announce to wealthy and distinguished society that she was born and bred in—ha hum—a place that I myself decline to name. But there is no inconsistency—ha—not the least, in my feeling hurt, and yet complaining principally for your sake, Amy. I do; I say again, I do. It is for your sake that I wish you, under the auspices of Mrs General, to form a—hum—a surface. It is for your sake that I wish you to have a—ha—truly refined mind, and (in the striking words of Mrs General) to be ignorant of everything that is not perfectly proper, placid, and pleasant.’ He had been running down by jerks, during his last speech, like a sort of ill-adjusted alarum. The touch was still upon his arm. He fell silent; and after looking about the ceiling again for a little while, looked down at her. Her head drooped, and he could not see her face; but her touch was tender and quiet, and in the expression of her dejected figure there was no blame—nothing but love. He began to whimper, just as he had done that night in the prison when she afterwards sat at his bedside till morning; exclaimed that he was a poor ruin and a poor wretch in the midst of his wealth; and clasped her in his arms. ‘Hush, hush, my own dear! Kiss me!’ was all she said to him. His tears were soon dried, much sooner than on the former occasion; and he was presently afterwards very high with his valet, as a way of righting himself for having shed any. With one remarkable exception, to be recorded in its place, this was the only time, in his life of freedom and fortune, when he spoke to his daughter Amy of the old days. But, now, the breakfast hour arrived; and with it Miss Fanny from her apartment, and Mr Edward from his apartment. Both these young persons of distinction were something the worse for late hours. As to Miss Fanny, she had become the victim of an insatiate mania for what she called ‘going into society;’ and would have gone into it head-foremost fifty times between sun-set and sunrise, if so many opportunities had been at her disposal. As to Mr Edward, he, too, had a large acquaintance, and was generally engaged (for the most part, in dicing circles, or others of a kindred nature), during the greater part of every night. For this gentleman, when his fortunes changed, had stood at the great advantage of being already prepared for the highest associates, and having little to learn: so much was he indebted to the happy accidents which had made him acquainted with horse-dealing and billiard-marking. At breakfast, Mr Frederick Dorrit likewise appeared. As the old gentleman inhabited the highest story of the palace, where he might have practised pistol-shooting without much chance of discovery by the other inmates, his younger niece had taken courage to propose the restoration to him of his clarionet, which Mr Dorrit had ordered to be confiscated, but which she had ventured to preserve. Notwithstanding some objections from Miss Fanny, that it was a low instrument, and that she de-tested the sound of it, the concession had been made. But it was then discovered that he had had enough of it, and never played it, now that it was no longer his means of getting bread. He had insensibly acquired a new habit of shuffling into the picture-galleries, always with his twisted paper of snuff in his hand (much to the indignation of Miss Fanny, who had pro-posed the purchase of a gold box for him that the family might not be discredited, which he had absolutely refused to carry when it was bought); and of passing hours and hours before the portraits of renowned Venetians. It was never made out what his dazed eyes saw in them; whether he had an interest in them merely as pictures, or whether he confusedly identified them with a glory that was departed, like the strength of his own mind. But he paid his court to them with great exactness, and clearly derived pleasure from the pursuit. After the first few days, Little Dorrit happened one morning to assist at these attentions. It so evidently heightened his gratification that she often accompanied him afterwards, and the greatest delight of which the old man had shown himself susceptible since his ruin, arose out of these excursions, when he would carry a chair about for her from picture to picture, and stand behind it, in spite of all her remonstrances, silently presenting her to the noble Venetians. It fell out that, at this family breakfast, he referred to their having seen in a gallery, on the previous day, the lady and gentleman whom they had encountered on the Great Saint Bernard, ‘I forget the name,’ said he. ‘I dare say you remember them, William? I dare say you do, Edward?’ ‘I remember ’em well enough,’ said the latter. ‘I should think so,’ observed Miss Fanny, with a toss of her head and a glance at her sister. ‘But they would not have been recalled to our remembrance, I suspect, if Uncle hadn’t tumbled over the subject.’

‘My dear, what a curious phrase,’ said Mrs General. ‘Would not inadvertently lighted upon, or accidentally referred to, be better?’ ‘Thank you very much, Mrs General,’ returned the young lady, no ) I think not. On the whole I prefer my own expression.’ This was always Miss Fanny’s way of receiving a suggestion from Mrs General. But she always stored it up in her mind, and adopted it at another time. ‘I should have mentioned our having met Mr and Mrs Gowan, Fanny,’ said Little Dorrit, ‘even if Uncle had not. I have scarcely seen you since, you know. I meant to have spoken of it at breakfast; because I should like to pay a visit to Mrs Gowan, and to become better acquainted with her, if Papa and Mrs General do not object.’ ‘Well, Amy,’ said Fanny, ‘I am sure I am glad to find you at last expressing a wish to become better acquainted with any-body in Venice. Though whether Mr and Mrs Gowan are desirable acquaintances, remains to be determined.’ ‘Mrs Gowan I spoke of, dear.’ ‘No doubt,’ said Fanny. ‘But you can’t separate her from her husband, I believe, without an Act of Parliament.’ ‘Do you think, Papa,’ inquired Little Dorrit, with diffidence and hesitation, ‘there is any objection to my making this visit?’ ‘Really,’ he replied, ‘I—ha—what is Mrs General’s view?’ Mrs General’s view was, that not having the honour of any acquaintance with the lady and gentleman referred to, she was not in a position to varnish the present article. She could only remark, as a general principle observed in the varnishing trade, that much depended on the quarter from which the lady under consideration was accredited to a family so conspicuously niched in the social temple as the family of Dorrit. At this remark the face of Mr Dorrit gloomed considerably. He was about (connecting the accrediting with an obtrusive person of the name of Clennam, whom he imperfectly re-membered in some former state of existence) to black-ball the name of Gowan finally, when Edward Dorrit, Esquire, came in-to the conversation, with his glass in his eye, and the preliminary remark of ‘I say—you there! Go out, will you!’—which was addressed to a couple of men who were handing the dishes round, as a courteous intimation that their services could be temporarily dispensed with. Those menials having obeyed the mandate, Edward Dorrit, Esquire, proceeded. ‘Perhaps it’s a matter of policy to let you all know that these Gowans—in whose favour, or at least the gentleman’s, I can’t be supposed to be much prepossessed myself—are known to people of importance, if that makes any difference.’ ‘That, I would say,’ observed the fair varnisher, ‘Makes the greatest difference. The connection in question, being really people of importance and consideration—’ ‘As to that,’ said Edward Dorrit, Esquire, ‘I’ll give you the means of judging for yourself. You are acquainted, perhaps, with the famous name of Merdle?’ ‘The great Merdle!’ exclaimed Mrs General. ‘The Merdle,’ said Edward Dorrit, Esquire. ‘They are known to him. Mrs Gowan—I mean the dowager, my polite friend’s mother—is intimate with Mrs Merdle, and I know these two to be on their visiting list.’ ‘If so, a more undeniable guarantee could not be given,’ said Mrs General to Mr Dorrit, raising her gloves and bowing her head, as if she were doing homage to some visible graven image. ‘I beg to ask my son, from motives of—ah—curiosity,’ Mr Dorrit observed, with a decided change in his manner, ‘how he be-comes possessed of this—hum—timely information?’ ‘It’s not a long story, sir,’ returned Edward Dorrit, Esquire, ‘and you shall have it out of hand. To begin with, Mrs Merdle is the lady you had the parley with at what’s-his-name place.’ ‘Martigny,’ interposed Miss Fanny with an air of infinite languor. ‘Martigny,’ assented her brother, with a slight nod and a slight wink; in acknowledgment of which, Miss Fanny looked surprised, and laughed and reddened. ‘How can that be, Edward?’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘You informed me that the name of the gentleman with whom you conferred was—ha—Sparkler. Indeed, you showed me his card. Hum. Sparkler.’

‘No doubt of it, father; but it doesn’t follow that his mother’s name must be the same. Mrs Merdle was married before, and he is her son. She is in Rome now; where probably we shall know more of her, as you decide to winter there. Sparkler is just come here. I passed last evening in company with Sparkler. Sparkler is a very good fellow on the whole, though rather a bore on one subject, in consequence of being tremendously smitten with a certain young lady.’ Here Edward Dorrit, Es-quire, eyed Miss Fanny through his glass across the table. ‘We happened last night to compare notes about our travels, and I had the information I have given you from Sparkler himself.’ Here he ceased; continuing to eye Miss Fanny through his glass, with a face much twisted, and not ornamentally so, in part by the action of keeping his glass in his eye, and in part by the great subtlety of his smile. ‘Under these circumstances,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘I believe I express the sentiments of—ha—Mrs General, no less than my own, when I say that there is no objection, but—ha hum—quite the contrary—to your gratifying your desire, Amy. I trust I may—ha—hail—this desire,’ said Mr Dorrit, in an encouraging and forgiving manner, ‘as an auspicious omen. It is quite right to know these people. It is a very proper thing. Mr Merdle’s is a name of—ha—world-wide repute. Mr Merdle’s undertakings are immense. They bring him in such vast sums of money that they are regarded as—hum—national benefits. Mr Merdle is the man of this time. The name of Merdle is the name of the age. Pray do everything on my behalf that is civil to Mr and Mrs Gowan, for we will—ha—we will certainly notice them.’ This magnificent accordance of Mr Dorrit’s recognition settled the matter. It was not observed that Uncle had pushed away his plate, and forgotten his breakfast; but he was not much observed at any time, except by Little Dorrit. The servants were recalled, and the meal proceeded to its conclusion. Mrs General rose and left the table. Little Dorrit rose and left the table. When Edward and Fanny remained whispering together across it, and when Mr Dorrit remained eating figs and reading a French newspaper, Uncle suddenly fixed the attention of all three by rising out of his chair, striking his hand upon the table, and saying, ‘Brother! I protest against it!’

If he had made a proclamation in an unknown tongue, and given up the ghost immediately afterwards, he could not have astounded his audience more. The paper fell from Mr Dorrit’s hand, and he sat petrified, with a fig half way to his mouth. ‘Brother!’ said the old man, conveying a surprising energy in-to his trembling voice, ‘I protest against it! I love you; you know I love you dearly. In these many years I have never been untrue to you in a single thought. Weak as I am, I would at any time have struck any man who spoke ill of you. But, brother, brother, brother, I protest against it!’ It was extraordinary to see of what a burst of earnestness such a decrepit man was capable. His eyes became bright, his grey hair rose on his head, markings of purpose on his brow and face which had faded from them for five-and-twenty years, started out again, and there was an energy in his hand that made its action nervous once more. ‘My dear Frederick!’ exclaimed Mr Dorrit faintly. ‘What is wrong? What is the matter?’ ‘How dare you,’ said the old man, turning round on Fanny, ‘how dare you do it? Have you no memory? Have you no heart?’ ‘Uncle?’ cried Fanny, affrighted and bursting into tears, ‘why do you attack me in this cruel manner? What have I done?’ ‘Done?’ returned the old man, pointing to her sister’s place, ‘where’s your affectionate invaluable friend? Where’s your de-voted guardian? Where’s your more than mother? How dare you set up superiorities against all these characters combined in your sister? For shame, you false girl, for shame!’ ‘I love Amy,’ cried Miss Fanny, sobbing and weeping, ‘as well as I love my life—better than I love my life. I don’t deserve to be so treated. I am as grateful to Amy, and as fond of Amy, as it’s possible for any human being to be. I wish I was dead. I never was so wickedly wronged. And only because I am anxious for the family credit.’ ‘To the winds with the family credit!’ cried the old man, with great scorn and indignation. ‘Brother, I protest against pride. I protest against ingratitude. I protest against any one of us here who have known what we have known, and have seen what we have seen, setting up any pretension that puts Amy at a moment’s disadvantage, or to the cost of a moment’s pain. We may know that it’s a base pretension by its having that effect. It ought to bring a judgment on us. Brother, I protest against it in the sight of God!’ As his hand went up above his head and came down on the table, it might have been a blacksmith’s. After a few moments’ silence, it had relaxed into its usual weak condition. He went round to his brother with his ordinary shuffling step, put the hand on his shoulder, and said, in a softened voice, ‘William, my dear, I felt obliged to say it; forgive me, for I felt obliged to say it!’ and then went, in his bowed way, out of the palace hall, just as he might have gone out of the Marshalsea room. All this time Fanny had been sobbing and crying, and still continued to do so. Edward, beyond opening his mouth in amazement, had not opened his lips, and had done nothing but stare. Mr Dorrit also had been utterly discomfited, and quite unable to assert himself in any way. Fanny was now the first to speak. ‘I never, never, never was so used!’ she sobbed. ‘There never was anything so harsh and unjustifiable, so disgracefully violent and cruel! Dear, kind, quiet little Amy, too, what would she feel if she could know that she had been innocently the means of exposing me to such treatment! But I’ll never tell her! No, good darling, I’ll never tell her!’ This helped Mr Dorrit to break his silence. ‘My dear,’ said he, ‘I—ha—approve of your resolution. It will be—ha hum—much better not to speak of this to Amy. It might—hum—it might distress her. Ha. No doubt it would distress her greatly. It is considerate and right to avoid doing so. We will—ha—keep this to ourselves.’ ‘But the cruelty of Uncle!’ cried Miss Fanny. ‘O, I never can forgive the wanton cruelty of Uncle!’ ‘My dear,’ said Mr Dorrit, recovering his tone, though he remained unusually pale, ‘I must request you not to say so. You must remember that your uncle is—ha—not what he formerly was. You must remember that your uncle’s state requires—hum—great forbearance from us, great forbearance.’ ‘I am sure,’ cried Fanny, piteously, ‘it is only charitable to suppose that there Must be something wrong in him somewhere, or he never could have so attacked Me, of all the people in the world.’ ‘Fanny,’ returned Mr Dorrit in a deeply fraternal tone, ‘you know, with his innumerable good points, what a—hum—wreck your uncle is; and I entreat you by the fondness that I have for him, and by the fidelity that you know I have always shown him, to—ha—to draw your own conclusions, and to spare my brotherly feelings.’ This ended the scene; Edward Dorrit, Esquire, saying nothing throughout, but looking, to the last, perplexed and doubtful. Miss Fanny awakened much affectionate uneasiness in her sister’s mind that day by passing the greater part of it in violent fits of embracing her, and in alternately giving her brooches, and wishing herself dead.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6
Something Right Somewhere

To be in the halting state of Mr Henry Gowan; to have left one of two powers in disgust; to want the necessary qualifications for finding promotion with another, and to be loitering moodily about on neutral ground, cursing both; is to be in a situation unwholesome for the mind, which time is not likely to improve. The worst class of sum worked in the every-day world is ciphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as to their own. The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recompense in the discontented boast of being disappointed, is a habit fraught with degeneracy. A certain idle carelessness and recklessness of consistency soon comes of it. To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted de-lights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it. In his expressed opinions of all performances in the Art of painting that were completely destitute of merit, Gowan was the most liberal fellow on earth. He would declare such a man to have more power in his little finger (provided he had none), than such another had (provided he had much) in his whole mind and body. If the objection were taken that the thing commended was trash, he would reply, on behalf of his art, ‘My good fellow, what do we all turn out but trash? I turn out nothing else, and I make you a present of the confession.’ To make a vaunt of being poor was another of the incidents of his splenetic state, though this may have had the design in it of showing that he ought to be rich; just as he would publicly laud and decry the Barnacles, lest it should be forgotten that he belonged to the family. Howbeit, these two subjects were very often on his lips; and he managed them so well that he might have praised himself by the month together, and not have made himself out half so important a man as he did by his light disparagement of his claims on anybody’s consideration. Out of this same airy talk of his, it always soon came to be understood, wherever he and his wife went, that he had married against the wishes of his exalted relations, and had had much ado to prevail on them to countenance her. He never made the representation, on the contrary seemed to laugh the idea to scorn; but it did happen that, with all his pains to depreciate himself, he was always in the superior position. From the days of their honeymoon, Minnie Gowan felt sensible of being usually regarded as the wife of a man who had made a des-cent in marrying her, but whose chivalrous love for her had cancelled that inequality. To Venice they had been accompanied by Monsieur Blandois of Paris, and at Venice Monsieur Blandois of Paris was very much in the society of Gowan. When they had first met this gallant gentleman at Geneva, Gowan had been undecided whether to kick him or encourage him; and had remained for about four-and-twenty hours, so troubled to settle the point to his satisfaction, that he had thought of tossing up a five-franc piece on the terms, ‘Tails, kick; heads, encourage,’ and abiding by the voice of the oracle. It chanced, however, that his wife ex-pressed a dislike to the engaging Blandois, and that the balance of feeling in the hotel was against him. Upon it, Gowan resolved to encourage him. Why this perversity, if it were not in a generous fit?—which it was not. Why should Gowan, very much the superior of Blandois of Paris, and very well able to pull that prepossessing gentleman to pieces and find out the stuff he was made of, take up with such a man? In the first place, he opposed the first separate wish he observed in his wife, because her father had paid his debts and it was desirable to take an early opportunity of asserting his independence. In the second place, he opposed the prevalent feeling, because with many capacities of being otherwise, he was an ill-conditioned man. He found a pleasure in declaring that a courtier with the refined manners of Blandois ought to rise to the greatest distinction in any polished country. He found a pleasure in setting up Blando is as

the type of elegance, and making him a satire upon others who piqued themselves on personal graces. He seriously protested that the bow of Blandois was perfect, that the address of Blandois was irresistible, and that the picturesque ease of Blandois would be cheaply purchased (if it were not a gift, and unpurchasable) for a hundred thousand francs. That exaggeration in the manner of the man which has been noticed as appertaining to him and to every such man, whatever his original breeding, as certainly as the sun belongs to this system, was acceptable to Gowan as a caricature, which he found it a humorous resource to have at hand for the ridiculing of numbers of people who necessarily did more or less of what Blandois overdid. Thus he had taken up with him; and thus, negligently strengthening these inclinations with habit, and idly deriving some amusement from his talk, he had glided into a way of having him for a companion. This, though he supposed him to live by his wits at play-tables and the like; though he suspected him to be a coward, while he himself was daring and courageous; though he thoroughly knew him to be disliked by Minnie; and though he cared so little for him, after all, that if he had given her any tangible personal cause to regard him with aversion, he would have had no compunction whatever in flinging him out of the highest window in Venice into the deepest water of the city. Little Dorrit would have been glad to make her visit to Mrs Gowan, alone; but as Fanny, who had not yet recovered from her Uncle’s protest, though it was four-and-twenty hours of age, pressingly offered her company, the two sisters stepped together into one of the gondolas under Mr Dorrit’s window, and, with the courier in attendance, were taken in high state to Mrs Gowan’s lodging. In truth, their state was rather too high for the lodging, which was, as Fanny complained, ‘fearfully out of the way,’ and which took them through a complexity of narrow streets of water, which the same lady disparaged as ‘mere ditches.’ The house, on a little desert island, looked as if it had broken away from somewhere else, and had floated by chance into its present anchorage in company with a vine almost as much in want of training as the poor wretches who were lying under its leaves. The features of the surrounding picture were, a church with hoarding and scaffolding about it, which had been under supposititious repair so long that the means of repair looked a hundred years old, and had themselves fallen into decay; a quantity of washed linen, spread to dry in the sun; a number of houses at odds with one another and grotesquely out of the perpendicular, like rotten pre-Adamite cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of mites; and a feverish bewilderment of windows, with their lattice-blinds all hanging askew, and something draggled and dirty dangling out of most of them. On the first-floor of the house was a Bank—a surprising experience for any gentleman of commercial pursuits bringing laws for all mankind from a British city—where two spare clerks, like dried dragoons, in green velvet caps adorned with golden tassels, stood, bearded, behind a small counter in a small room, containing no other visible objects than an empty iron-safe with the door open, a jug of water, and a papering of garland of roses; but who, on lawful requisition, by merely dip-ping their hands out of sight, could produce exhaustless mounds of five-franc pieces. Below the Bank was a suite of three or four rooms with barred windows, which had the appearance of a jail for criminal rats. Above the Bank was Mrs Gowan’s residence. Notwithstanding that its walls were blotched, as if missionary maps were bursting out of them to impart geographical knowledge; notwithstanding that its weird furniture was forlornly faded and musty, and that the prevailing Venetian odour of bilge water and an ebb tide on a weedy shore was very strong; the place was better within, than it promised. The door was opened by a smiling man like a reformed assassin—a temporary servant—who ushered them into the room where Mrs Gowan sat, with the announcement that two beautiful English ladies were come to see the mistress. Mrs Gowan, who was engaged in needlework, put her work aside in a covered basket, and rose, a little hurriedly. Miss Fanny was excessively courteous to her, and said the usual nothings with the skill of a veteran. ‘Papa was extremely sorry,’ proceeded Fanny, ‘to be engaged to-day (he is so much engaged here, our acquaintance being so wretchedly large!); and particularly requested me to bring his card for Mr Gowan. That I may be sure to acquit myself of a commission which he impressed upon me at least a dozen times, allow me to relieve my conscience by placing it on the table at once.’ Which she did with veteran ease. ‘We have been,’ said Fanny, ‘charmed to understand that you know the Merdles. We hope it may be another means of bringing us together.’ ‘They are friends,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘of Mr Gowan’s family. I have not yet had the pleasure of a personal introduction to Mrs Merdle, but I suppose I shall be presented to her at Rome.’ ‘Indeed?’ returned Fanny, with an appearance of amiably quenching her own superiority. ‘I think you’ll like her.’ ‘You know her very well?’ ‘Why, you see,’ said Fanny, with a frank action of her pretty shoulders, ‘in London one knows every one. We met her on our way here, and, to say the truth, papa was at first rather cross with her for taking one of the rooms that our people had ordered for us. However, of course, that soon blew over, and we were all good friends again.’ Although the visit had as yet given Little Dorrit no opportunity of conversing with Mrs Gowan, there was a silent under-standing between them, which did as well. She looked at Mrs Gowan with keen and unabated interest; the sound of her voice was thrilling to her; nothing that was near her, or about her, or at all concerned her, escaped Little Dorrit. She was quicker to perceive the slightest matter here, than in any other case—but one. ‘You have been quite well,’ she now said, ‘since that night?’ ‘Quite, my dear. And you?’ ‘Oh! I am always well,’ said Little Dorrit, timidly. ‘I—yes, thank you.’ There was no reason for her faltering and breaking off, other than that Mrs Gowan had touched her hand in speaking to her, and their looks had met. Something thoughtfully apprehensive in the large, soft eyes, had checked Little Dorrit in an instant. ‘You don’t know that you are a favourite of my husband’s, and that I am almost bound to be jealous of you?’ said Mrs Gowan. Little Dorrit, blushing, shook her head.

‘He will tell you, if he tells you what he tells me, that you are quieter and quicker of resource than any one he ever saw.’ ‘He speaks far too well of me,’ said Little Dorrit. ‘I doubt that; but I don’t at all doubt that I must tell him you are here. I should never be forgiven, if I were to let you—and Miss Dorrit—go, without doing so. May I? You can excuse the disorder and discomfort of a painter’s studio?’ The inquiries were addressed to Miss Fanny, who graciously replied that she would be beyond anything interested and en-chanted. Mrs Gowan went to a door, looked in beyond it, and came back. ‘Do Henry the favour to come in,’ said she, ‘I knew he would be pleased!’ The first object that confronted Little Dorrit, entering first, was Blandois of Paris in a great cloak and a furtive slouched hat, standing on a throne platform in a corner, as he had stood on the Great Saint Bernard, when the warning arms seemed to be all pointing up at him. She recoiled from this figure, as it smiled at her. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Gowan, coming from his easel be-hind the door. ‘It’s only Blandois. He is doing duty as a model to-day. I am making a study of him. It saves me money to turn him to some use. We poor painters have none to spare.’ Blandois of Paris pulled off his slouched hat, and saluted the ladies without coming out of his corner. ‘A thousand pardons!’ said he. ‘But the Professor here is so inexorable with me, that I am afraid to stir.’ ‘Don’t stir, then,’ said Gowan coolly, as the sisters approached the easel. ‘Let the ladies at least see the original of the daub, that they may know what it’s meant for. There he stands, you see. A bravo waiting for his prey, a distinguished noble waiting to save his country, the common enemy waiting to do somebody a bad turn, an angelic messenger waiting to do somebody a good turn—whatever you think he looks most like!’ ‘Say, Professore Mio, a poor gentleman waiting to do homage to elegance and beauty,’ remarked Blandois. ‘Or say, Cattivo Soggetto Mio,’ returned Gowan, touching the painted face with his brush in the part where the real face had moved, ‘a murderer after the fact. Show that white hand of yours, Blandois. Put it outside the cloak. Keep it still.’

Blandois’ hand was unsteady; but he laughed, and that would naturally shake it. ‘He was formerly in some scuffle with another murderer, or with a victim, you observe,’ said Gowan, putting in the markings of the hand with a quick, impatient, unskilful touch, ‘and these are the tokens of it. Outside the cloak, man!—Corpo di San Marco, what are you thinking of?’ Blandois of Paris shook with a laugh again, so that his hand shook more; now he raised it to twist his moustache, which had a damp appearance; and now he stood in the required position, with a little new swagger. His face was so directed in reference to the spot where Little Dorrit stood by the easel, that throughout he looked at her. Once attracted by his peculiar eyes, she could not remove her own, and they had looked at each other all the time. She trembled now; Gowan, feeling it, and supposing her to be alarmed by the large dog beside him, whose head she caressed in her hand, and who had just uttered a low growl, glanced at her to say, ‘He won’t hurt you, Miss Dorrit.’ ‘I am not afraid of him,’ she returned in the same breath; ‘but will you look at him?’ In a moment Gowan had thrown down his brush, and seized the dog with both hands by the collar. ‘Blandois! How can you be such a fool as to provoke him! By Heaven, and the other place too, he’ll tear you to bits! Lie down! Lion! Do you hear my voice, you rebel! ‘The great dog, regardless of being half-choked by his collar, was obdurately pulling with his dead weight against his master, resolved to get across the room. He had been crouching for a spring at the moment when his master caught him. ‘Lion! Lion!’ He was up on his hind legs, and it was a wrestle between master and dog. ‘Get back! Down, Lion! Get out of his sight, Blandois! What devil have you conjured into the dog?’ ‘I have done nothing to him.’ ‘Get out of his sight or I can’t hold the wild beast! Get out of the room! By my soul, he’ll kill you!’ The dog, with a ferocious bark, made one other struggle as Blandois vanished; then, in the moment of the dog’s submission, the master, little less angry than the dog, felled him with a blow on the head, and standing over him, struck him many times severely with the heel of his boot, so that his mouth was presently bloody. ‘Now get you into that corner and lie down,’ said Gowan, ‘or I’ll take you out and shoot you.’ Lion did as he was ordered, and lay down licking his mouth and chest. Lion’s master stopped for a moment to take breath, and then, recovering his usual coolness of manner, turned to speak to his frightened wife and her visitors. Probably the whole occurrence had not occupied two minutes. ‘Come, come, Minnie! You know he is always good-humoured and tractable. Blandois must have irritated him,—made faces at him. The dog has his likings and dislikings, and Blandois is no great favourite of his; but I am sure you will give him a character, Minnie, for never having been like this before.’ Minnie was too much disturbed to say anything connected in reply; Little Dorrit was already occupied in soothing her; Fanny, who had cried out twice or thrice, held Gowan’s arm for protection; Lion, deeply ashamed of having caused them this alarm, came trailing himself along the ground to the feet of his mistress. ‘You furious brute,’ said Gowan, striking him with his foot again. ‘You shall do penance for this.’ And he struck him again, and yet again. ‘O, pray don’t punish him any more,’ cried Little Dorrit. ‘Don’t hurt him. See how gentle he is!’ At her entreaty, Gowan spared him; and he deserved her intercession, for truly he was as submissive, and as sorry, and as wretched as a dog could be. It was not easy to recover this shock and make the visit unrestrained, even though Fanny had not been, under the best of circumstances, the least trifle in the way. In such further communication as passed among them before the sisters took their departure, Little Dorrit fancied it was revealed to her that Mr Gowan treated his wife, even in his very fondness, too much like a beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of the depths of feeling which she knew must lie below that surface, that she doubted if there could be any such depths in himself. She wondered whether his want of earnestness might be the natural result of his want of such qualities, and whether it was with people as with ships, that, in too shallow and rocky waters, their anchors had no hold, and they drifted anywhere. He attended them down the staircase, jocosely apologising for the poor quarters to which such poor fellows as himself were limited, and remarking that when the high and mighty Barnacles, his relatives, who would be dreadfully ashamed of them, presented him with better, he would live in better to oblige them. At the water’s edge they were saluted by Blandois, who looked white enough after his late adventure, but who made very light of it notwithstanding,—laughing at the mention of Lion. Leaving the two together under the scrap of vine upon the causeway, Gowan idly scattering the leaves from it into the water, and Blandois lighting a cigarette, the sisters were paddled away in state as they had come. They had not glided on for many minutes, when Little Dorrit became aware that Fanny was more showy in manner than the occasion appeared to re-quire, and, looking about for the cause through the window and through the open door, saw another gondola evidently in waiting on them. As this gondola attended their progress in various artful ways; sometimes shooting on a-head, and stopping to let them pass; sometimes, when the way was broad enough, skimming along side by side with them; and sometimes following close astern; and as Fanny gradually made no disguise that she was playing off graces upon somebody within it, of whom she at the same time feigned to be unconscious; Little Dorrit at length asked who it was? To which Fanny made the short answer, ‘That baby.’ ‘Who?’ said Little Dorrit. ‘My dear child,’ returned Fanny (in a tone suggesting that before her Uncle’s protest she might have said, You little fool, instead), ‘how slow you are! Young Sparkler.’ She lowered the window on her side, and, leaning back and resting her elbow on it negligently, fanned herself with a rich Spanish fan of black and gold. The attendant gondola, having skimmed forward again, with some swift trace of an eye in the window, Fanny laughed coquettishly and said, ‘Did you ever see such a fool, my love?’

‘Do you think he means to follow you all the way?’ asked Little Dorrit. ‘My precious child,’ returned Fanny, ‘I can’t possibly answer for what an idiot in a state of desperation may do, but I should think it highly probable. It’s not such an enormous distance. All Venice would scarcely be that, I imagine, if he’s dying for a glimpse of me.’ ‘And is he?’ asked Little Dorrit in perfect simplicity. ‘Well, my love, that really is an awkward question for me to answer,’ said her sister. ‘I believe he is. You had better ask Ed-ward. He tells Edward he is, I believe. I understand he makes a perfect spectacle of himself at the Casino, and that sort of places, by going on about me. But you had better ask Edward if you want to know.’ ‘I wonder he doesn’t call,’ said Little Dorrit after thinking a moment. ‘My dear Amy, your wonder will soon cease, if I am rightly in-formed. I should not be at all surprised if he called to-day. The creature has only been waiting to get his courage up, I suspect.’ ‘Will you see him?’ ‘Indeed, my darling,’ said Fanny, ‘that’s just as it may hap-pen. Here he is again. Look at him. O, you simpleton!’ Mr Sparkler had, undeniably, a weak appearance; with his eye in the window like a knot in the glass, and no reason on earth for stopping his bark suddenly, except the real reason. ‘When you asked me if I will see him, my dear,’ said Fanny, almost as well composed in the graceful indifference of her attitude as Mrs Merdle herself, ‘what do you mean?’ ‘I mean,’ said Little Dorrit—‘I think I rather mean what do you mean, dear Fanny?’ Fanny laughed again, in a manner at once condescending, arch, and affable; and said, putting her arm round her sister in a playfully affectionate way: ‘Now tell me, my little pet. When we saw that woman at Martigny, how did you think she carried it off? Did you see what she decided on in a moment?’ ‘No, Fanny.’ ‘Then I’ll tell you, Amy. She settled with herself, now I’ll never refer to that meeting under such different circumstances, and I’ll never pretend to have any idea that these are the same girls. That’s her way out of a difficulty. What did I tell you when we came away from Harley Street that time? She is as insolent and false as any woman in the world. But in the first capacity, my love, she may find people who can match her.’ A significant turn of the Spanish fan towards Fanny’s bosom, indicated with great expression where one of these people was to be found. ‘Not only that,’ pursued Fanny, ‘but she gives the same charge to Young Sparkler; and doesn’t let him come after me until she has got it thoroughly into his most ridiculous of all ridiculous noddles (for one really can’t call it a head), that he is to pretend to have been first struck with me in that Inn Yard.’ ‘Why?’ asked Little Dorrit. ‘Why? Good gracious, my love!’ (again very much in the tone of You stupid little creature) ‘how can you ask? Don’t you see that I may have become a rather desirable match for a noddle? And don’t you see that she puts the deception upon us, and makes a pretence, while she shifts it from her own shoulders (very good shoulders they are too, I must say),’ observed Miss Fanny, glancing complacently at herself, ‘of considering our feelings?’ ‘But we can always go back to the plain truth.’ ‘Yes, but if you please we won’t,’ retorted Fanny. ‘No; I am not going to have that done, Amy. The pretext is none of mine; it’s hers, and she shall have enough of it.’ In the triumphant exaltation of her feelings, Miss Fanny, using her Spanish fan with one hand, squeezed her sister’s waist with the other, as if she were crushing Mrs Merdle. ‘No,’ repeated Fanny. ‘She shall find me go her way. She took it, and I’ll follow it. And, with the blessing of fate and for-tune, I’ll go on improving that woman’s acquaintance until I have given her maid, before her eyes, things from my dressmaker’s ten times as handsome and expensive as she once gave me from hers!’ Little Dorrit was silent; sensible that she was not to be heard on any question affecting the family dignity, and unwilling to lose to no purpose her sister’s newly and unexpectedly re-stored favour. She could not concur, but she was silent. Fanny well knew what she was thinking of; so well, that she soon asked her. Her reply was, ‘Do you mean to encourage Mr Sparkler, Fanny?’ ‘Encourage him, my dear?’ said her sister, smiling contemptuously, ‘that depends upon what you call encourage. No, I don’t mean to encourage him. But I’ll make a slave of him.’ Little Dorrit glanced seriously and doubtfully in her face, but Fanny was not to be so brought to a check. She furled her fan of black and gold, and used it to tap her sister’s nose; with the air of a proud beauty and a great spirit, who toyed with and playfully instructed a homely companion. ‘I shall make him fetch and carry, my dear, and I shall make him subject to me. And if I don’t make his mother subject to me, too, it shall not be my fault.’ ‘Do you think—dear Fanny, don’t be offended, we are so comfortable together now—that you can quite see the end of that course?’ ‘I can’t say I have so much as looked for it yet, my dear,’ answered Fanny, with supreme indifference; ‘all in good time. Such are my intentions. And really they have taken me so long to develop, that here we are at home. And Young Sparkler at the door, inquiring who is within. By the merest accident, of course!’ In effect, the swain was standing up in his gondola, card-case in hand, affecting to put the question to a servant. This con-junction of circumstances led to his immediately afterwards presenting himself before the young ladies in a posture, which in ancient times would not have been considered one of favour-able augury for his suit; since the gondoliers of the young ladies, having been put to some inconvenience by the chase, so neatly brought their own boat in the gentlest collision with the bark of Mr Sparkler, as to tip that gentleman over like a larger species of ninepin, and cause him to exhibit the soles of his shoes to the object of his dearest wishes: while the nobler portions of his anatomy struggled at the bottom of his boat in the arms of one of his men. However, as Miss Fanny called out with much concern, Was the gentleman hurt, Mr Sparkler rose more restored than might have been expected, and stammered for himself with blushes, ‘Not at all so.’ Miss Fanny had no recollection of having ever seen him before, and was passing on, with a distant inclination of her head, when he announced himself by name. Even then she was in a difficulty from being unable to call it to mind, until he explained that he had had the honour of seeing her at Martigny. Then she remembered him, and hoped his lady-mother was well. ‘Thank you,’ stammered Mr Sparkler, ‘she’s uncommonly well—at least, poorly.’ ‘In Venice?’ said Miss Fanny. ‘In Rome,’ Mr Sparkler answered. ‘I am here by myself, my-self. I came to call upon Mr Edward Dorrit myself. Indeed, upon Mr Dorrit likewise. In fact, upon the family.’ Turning graciously to the attendants, Miss Fanny inquired whether her papa or brother was within? The reply being that they were both within, Mr Sparkler humbly offered his arm. Miss Fanny accepting it, was squired up the great staircase by Mr Sparkler, who, if he still believed (which there is not any reason to doubt) that she had no nonsense about her, rather deceived himself. Arrived in a mouldering reception-room, where the faded hangings, of a sad sea-green, had worn and withered until they looked as if they might have claimed kindred with the waifs of seaweed drifting under the windows, or clinging to the walls and weeping for their imprisoned relations, Miss Fanny des-patched emissaries for her father and brother. Pending whose appearance, she showed to great advantage on a sofa, completing Mr Sparkler’s conquest with some remarks upon Dante—known to that gentleman as an eccentric man in the nature of an Old File, who used to put leaves round his head, and sit upon a stool for some unaccountable purpose, outside the cathedral at Florence. Mr Dorrit welcomed the visitor with the highest urbanity, and most courtly manners. He inquired particularly after Mrs Merdle. He inquired particularly after Mr Merdle. Mr Sparkler said, or rather twitched out of himself in small pieces by the shirt-collar, that Mrs Merdle having completely used up her place in the country, and also her house at Brighton, and being, of course, unable, don’t you see, to remain in London when there wasn’t a soul there, and not feeling herself this year quite up to visiting about at people’s places, had resolved to have a touch at Rome, where a woman like herself, with a proverbially fine appearance, and with no nonsense about her, couldn’t fail to be a great acquisition. As to Mr Merdle, he was so much wanted by the men in the City and the rest of those places, and was such a doosed extraordinary phenomenon in Buying and Banking and that, that Mr Sparkler doubted if the monetary system of the country would be able to spare him; though that his work was occasionally one too many for him, and that he would be all the better for a temporary shy at an entirely new scene and climate, Mr Sparkler did not conceal. As to himself, Mr Sparkler conveyed to the Dorrit family that he was going, on rather particular business, wherever they were going. This immense conversational achievement required time, but was effected. Being effected, Mr Dorrit expressed his hope that Mr Sparkler would shortly dine with them. Mr Sparkler received the idea so kindly that Mr Dorrit asked what he was going to do that day, for instance? As he was going to do nothing that day (his usual occupation, and one for which he was particularly qualified), he was secured without postponement; being further bound over to accompany the ladies to the Opera in the evening. At dinner-time Mr Sparkler rose out of the sea, like Venus’s son taking after his mother, and made a splendid appearance ascending the great staircase. If Fanny had been charming in the morning, she was now thrice charming, very becomingly dressed in her most suitable colours, and with an air of negligence upon her that doubled Mr Sparkler’s fetters, and riveted them. ‘I hear you are acquainted, Mr Sparkler,’ said his host at dinner, ‘with—ha—Mr Gowan. Mr Henry Gowan?’ ‘Perfectly, sir,’ returned Mr Sparkler. ‘His mother and my mother are cronies in fact.’ ‘If I had thought of it, Amy,’ said Mr Dorrit, with a patronage as magnificent as that of Lord Decimus himself, ‘you should have despatched a note to them, asking them to dine to-day. Some of our people could have—ha—fetched them, and taken them home. We could have spared a—hum—gondola for that purpose. I am sorry to have forgotten this. Pray remind me of them to-morrow.’ Little Dorrit was not without doubts how Mr Henry Gowan might take their patronage; but she promised not to fail in the reminder. ‘Pray, does Mr Henry Gowan paint—ha—Portraits?’ inquired Mr Dorrit. Mr Sparkler opined that he painted anything, if he could get the job. ‘He has no particular walk?’ said Mr Dorrit. Mr Sparkler, stimulated by Love to brilliancy, replied that for a particular walk a man ought to have a particular pair of shoes; as, for example, shooting, shooting-shoes; cricket, cricket-shoes. Whereas, he believed that Henry Gowan had no particular pair of shoes. ‘No speciality?’ said Mr Dorrit. This being a very long word for Mr Sparkler, and his mind being exhausted by his late effort, he replied, ‘No, thank you. I seldom take it.’ ‘Well!’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘It would be very agreeable to me to present a gentleman so connected, with some—ha—Testimonial of my desire to further his interests, and develop the—hum—germs of his genius. I think I must engage Mr Gowan to paint my picture. If the result should be—ha—mutually satisfactory, I might afterwards engage him to try his hand upon my family.’ The exquisitely bold and original thought presented itself to Mr Sparkler, that there was an opening here for saying there were some of the family (emphasising ‘some’ in a marked manner) to whom no painter could render justice. But, for want of a form of words in which to express the idea, it returned to the skies. This was the more to be regretted as Miss Fanny greatly applauded the notion of the portrait, and urged her papa to act upon it. She surmised, she said, that Mr Gowan had lost better and higher opportunities by marrying his pretty wife; and Love in a cottage, painting pictures for dinner, was so delightfully interesting, that she begged her papa to give him the commission whether he could paint a likeness or not: though indeed both she and Amy knew he could, from having seen a speaking likeness on his easel that day, and having had the opportunity of comparing it with the original. These remarks made Mr Sparkler (as perhaps they were intended to do) nearly distracted; for while on the one hand they expressed Miss Fanny’s susceptibility of the tender passion, she herself showed such an innocent unconsciousness of his admiration that his eyes goggled in his head with jealousy of an unknown rival. Descending into the sea again after dinner, and ascending out of it at the Opera staircase, preceded by one of their gondoliers, like an attendant Merman, with a great linen lantern, they entered their box, and Mr Sparkler entered on an evening of agony. The theatre being dark, and the box light, several visitors lounged in during the representation; in whom Fanny was so interested, and in conversation with whom she fell into such charming attitudes, as she had little confidences with them, and little disputes concerning the identity of people in distant boxes, that the wretched Sparkler hated all mankind. But he had two consolations at the close of the performance. She gave him her fan to hold while she adjusted her cloak, and it was his blessed privilege to give her his arm down-stairs again. These crumbs of encouragement, Mr Sparkler thought, would just keep him going; and it is not impossible that Miss Dorrit thought so too. The Merman with his light was ready at the box-door, and other Mermen with other lights were ready at many of the doors. The Dorrit Merman held his lantern low, to show the steps, and Mr Sparkler put on another heavy set of fetters over his former set, as he watched her radiant feet twinkling down the stairs beside him. Among the loiterers here, was Blandois of Paris. He spoke, and moved forward beside Fanny. Little Dorrit was in front with her brother and Mrs General (Mr Dorrit had remained at home), but on the brink of the quay they all came together. She started again to find Blandois close to her, handing Fanny into the boat. ‘Gowan has had a loss,’ he said, ‘since he was made happy to-day by a visit from fair ladies.’ ‘A loss?’ repeated Fanny, relinquished by the bereaved Sparkler, and taking her seat. ‘A loss,’ said Blandois. ‘His dog Lion.’ Little Dorrit’s hand was in his, as he spoke.

‘He is dead,’ said Blandois. ‘Dead?’ echoed Little Dorrit. ‘That noble dog?’ ‘Faith, dear ladies!’ said Blandois, smiling and shrugging his shoulders, ‘somebody has poisoned that noble dog. He is as dead as the Doges!’

Chapter 7

Chapter 7
Mostly, Prunes and Prism

Mrs General, always on her coach-box keeping the proprieties well together, took pains to form a surface on her very dear young friend, and Mrs General’s very dear young friend tried hard to receive it. Hard as she had tried in her laborious life to attain many ends, she had never tried harder than she did now, to be varnished by Mrs General. It made her anxious and ill at ease to be operated upon by that smoothing hand, it is true; but she submitted herself to the family want in its greatness as she had submitted herself to the family want in its littleness, and yielded to her own inclinations in this thing no more than she had yielded to her hunger itself, in the days when she had saved her dinner that her father might have his supper. One comfort that she had under the Ordeal by General was more sustaining to her, and made her more grateful than to a less devoted and affectionate spirit, not habituated to her struggles and sacrifices, might appear quite reasonable; and, indeed, it may often be observed in life, that spirits like Little Dorrit do not appear to reason half as carefully as the folks who get the better of them. The continued kindness of her sister was this comfort to Little Dorrit. It was nothing to her that the kindness took the form of tolerant patronage; she was used to that. It was nothing to her that it kept her in a tributary position, and showed her in attendance on the flaming car in which Miss Fanny sat on an elevated seat, exacting homage; she sought no better place. Always admiring Fanny’s beauty, and grace, and readiness, and not now asking herself how much of her disposition to be strongly attached to Fanny was due to her own heart, and how much to Fanny’s, she gave her all the sisterly fondness her great heart contained.

The wholesale amount of Prunes and Prism which Mrs General infused into the family life, combined with the perpetual plunges made by Fanny into society, left but a very small residue of any natural deposit at the bottom of the mixture. This rendered confidences with Fanny doubly precious to Little Dorrit, and heightened the relief they afforded her. ‘Amy,’ said Fanny to her one night when they were alone, after a day so tiring that Little Dorrit was quite worn out, though Fanny would have taken another dip into society with the greatest pleasure in life, ‘I am going to put something into your little head. You won’t guess what it is, I suspect.’ ‘I don’t think that’s likely, dear,’ said Little Dorrit. ‘Come, I’ll give you a clue, child,’ said Fanny. ‘Mrs General.’ Prunes and Prism, in a thousand combinations, having been wearily in the ascendant all day—everything having been surface and varnish and show without substance—Little Dorrit looked as if she had hoped that Mrs General was safely tucked up in bed for some hours. ‘Now, can you guess, Amy?’ said Fanny. ‘No, dear. Unless I have done anything,’ said Little Dorrit, rather alarmed, and meaning anything calculated to crack varnish and ruffle surface. Fanny was so very much amused by the misgiving, that she took up her favourite fan (being then seated at her dressing-table with her armoury of cruel instruments about her, most of them reeking from the heart of Sparkler), and tapped her sister frequently on the nose with it, laughing all the time. ‘Oh, our Amy, our Amy!’ said Fanny. ‘What a timid little goose our Amy is! But this is nothing to laugh at. On the contrary, I am very cross, my dear.’ ‘As it is not with me, Fanny, I don’t mind,’ returned her sister, smiling. ‘Ah! But I do mind,’ said Fanny, ‘and so will you, Pet, when I enlighten you. Amy, has it never struck you that somebody is monstrously polite to Mrs General?’ ‘Everybody is polite to Mrs General,’ said Little Dorrit. ‘Because—’ ‘Because she freezes them into it?’ interrupted Fanny. ‘I don’t mean that; quite different from that. Come! Has it never struck you, Amy, that Pa is monstrously polite to Mrs General.’

Amy, murmuring ‘No,’ looked quite confounded. ‘No; I dare say not. But he is,’ said Fanny. ‘He is, Amy. And remember my words. Mrs General has designs on Pa!’ ‘Dear Fanny, do you think it possible that Mrs General has designs on any one?’ ‘Do I think it possible?’ retorted Fanny. ‘My love, I know it. I tell you she has designs on Pa. And more than that, I tell you Pa considers her such a wonder, such a paragon of accomplishment, and such an acquisition to our family, that he is ready to get himself into a state of perfect infatuation with her at any moment. And that opens a pretty picture of things, I hope? Think of me with Mrs General for a Mama!’ Little Dorrit did not reply, ‘Think of me with Mrs General for a Mama;’ but she looked anxious, and seriously inquired what had led Fanny to these conclusions. ‘Lord, my darling,’ said Fanny, tartly. ‘You might as well ask me how I know when a man is struck with myself! But, of course I do know. It happens pretty often: but I always know it. I know this in much the same way, I suppose. At all events, I know it.’ ‘You never heard Papa say anything?’ ‘Say anything?’ repeated Fanny. ‘My dearest, darling child, what necessity has he had, yet awhile, to say anything?’ ‘And you have never heard Mrs General say anything?’ ‘My goodness me, Amy,’ returned Fanny, ‘is she the sort of woman to say anything? Isn’t it perfectly plain and clear that she has nothing to do at present but to hold herself upright, keep her aggravating gloves on, and go sweeping about? Say anything! If she had the ace of trumps in her hand at whist, she wouldn’t say anything, child. It would come out when she played it.’ ‘At least, you may be mistaken, Fanny. Now, may you not?’ ‘O yes, I may be,’ said Fanny, ‘but I am not. However, I am glad you can contemplate such an escape, my dear, and I am glad that you can take this for the present with sufficient coolness to think of such a chance. It makes me hope that you may be able to bear the connection. I should not be able to bear it, and I should not try. I’d marry young Sparkler first.’

‘O, you would never marry him, Fanny, under any circumstances.’ ‘Upon my word, my dear,’ rejoined that young lady with exceeding indifference, ‘I wouldn’t positively answer even for that. There’s no knowing what might happen. Especially as I should have many opportunities, afterwards, of treating that woman, his mother, in her own style. Which I most decidedly should not be slow to avail myself of, Amy.’ No more passed between the sisters then; but what had passed gave the two subjects of Mrs General and Mr Sparkler great prominence in Little Dorrit’s mind, and thenceforth she thought very much of both. Mrs General, having long ago formed her own surface to such perfection that it hid whatever was below it (if anything), no observation was to be made in that quarter. Mr Dorrit was undeniably very polite to her and had a high opinion of her; but Fanny, impetuous at most times, might easily be wrong for all that. Whereas, the Sparkler question was on the different footing that any one could see what was going on there, and Little Dorrit saw it and pondered on it with many doubts and wonderings. The devotion of Mr Sparkler was only to be equalled by the caprice and cruelty of his enslaver. Sometimes she would prefer him to such distinction of notice, that he would chuckle aloud with joy; next day, or next hour, she would overlook him so completely, and drop him into such an abyss of obscurity, that he would groan under a weak pretence of coughing. The constancy of his attendance never touched Fanny: though he was so inseparable from Edward, that, when that gentleman wished for a change of society, he was under the irksome necessity of gliding out like a conspirator in disguised boats and by secret doors and back ways; though he was so solicitous to know how Mr Dorrit was, that he called every other day to in-quire, as if Mr Dorrit were the prey of an intermittent fever; though he was so constantly being paddled up and down be-fore the principal windows, that he might have been supposed to have made a wager for a large stake to be paddled a thou-sand miles in a thousand hours; though whenever the gondola of his mistress left the gate, the gondola of Mr Sparkler shot out from some watery ambush and gave chase, as if she were a fair smuggler and he a custom-house officer. It was probably owing to this fortification of the natural strength of his constitution with so much exposure to the air, and the salt sea, that Mr Sparkler did not pine outwardly; but, whatever the cause, he was so far from having any prospect of moving his mistress by a languishing state of health, that he grew bluffer every day, and that peculiarity in his appearance of seeming rather a swelled boy than a young man, became developed to an extraordinary degree of ruddy puffiness. Blandois calling to pay his respects, Mr Dorrit received him with affability as the friend of Mr Gowan, and mentioned to him his idea of commissioning Mr Gowan to transmit him to posterity. Blandois highly extolling it, it occurred to Mr Dorrit that it might be agreeable to Blandois to communicate to his friend the great opportunity reserved for him. Blandois accepted the commission with his own free elegance of manner, and swore he would discharge it before he was an hour older. On his imparting the news to Gowan, that Master gave Mr Dorrit to the Devil with great liberality some round dozen of times (for he resented patronage almost as much as he resented the want of it), and was inclined to quarrel with his friend for bringing him the message. ‘It may be a defect in my mental vision, Blandois,’ said he, ‘but may I die if I see what you have to do with this.’ ‘Death of my life,’ replied Blandois, ‘nor I neither, except that I thought I was serving my friend.’ ‘By putting an upstart’s hire in his pocket?’ said Gowan, frowning. ‘Do you mean that? Tell your other friend to get his head painted for the sign of some public-house, and to get it done by a sign-painter. Who am I, and who is he?’ ‘Professore,’ returned the ambassador, ‘and who is Blandois?’ Without appearing at all interested in the latter question, Gowan angrily whistled Mr Dorrit away. But, next day, he resumed the subject by saying in his off-hand manner and with a slighting laugh, ‘Well, Blandois, when shall we go to this Maecenas of yours?

We journeymen must take jobs when we can get them. When shall we go and look after this job?’ ‘When you will,’ said the injured Blandois, ‘as you please. What have I to do with it? What is it to me?’ ‘I can tell you what it is to me,’ said Gowan. ‘Bread and cheese. One must eat! So come along, my Blandois.’ Mr Dorrit received them in the presence of his daughters and of Mr Sparkler, who happened, by some surprising accident, to be calling there. ‘How are you, Sparkler?’ said Gowan carelessly. ‘When you have to live by your mother wit, old boy, I hope you may get on better than I do.’ Mr Dorrit then mentioned his proposal. ‘Sir,’ said Gowan, laughing, after receiving it gracefully enough, ‘I am new to the trade, and not expert at its mysteries. I believe I ought to look at you in various lights, tell you you are a capital subject, and consider when I shall be sufficiently disengaged to devote my-self with the necessary enthusiasm to the fine picture I mean to make of you. I assure you,’ and he laughed again, ‘I feel quite a traitor in the camp of those dear, gifted, good, noble fellows, my brother artists, by not doing the hocus-pocus bet-ter. But I have not been brought up to it, and it’s too late to learn it. Now, the fact is, I am a very bad painter, but not much worse than the generality. If you are going to throw away a hundred guineas or so, I am as poor as a poor relation of great people usually is, and I shall be very much obliged to you, if you’ll throw them away upon me. I’ll do the best I can for the money; and if the best should be bad, why even then, you may probably have a bad picture with a small name to it, instead of a bad picture with a large name to it.’ This tone, though not what he had expected, on the whole suited Mr Dorrit remarkably well. It showed that the gentle-man, highly connected, and not a mere workman, would be under an obligation to him. He expressed his satisfaction in placing himself in Mr Gowan’s hands, and trusted that he would have the pleasure, in their characters of private gentlemen, of improving his acquaintance. ‘You are very good,’ said Gowan. ‘I have not forsworn society since I joined the brotherhood of the brush (the most delightful fellows on the face of the earth), and am glad enough to smell the old fine gunpowder now and then, though it did blow me into mid-air and my present calling. You’ll not think, Mr Dorrit,’ and here he laughed again in the easiest way, ‘that I am lapsing into the freemasonry of the craft—for it’s not so; upon my life I can’t help betraying it wherever I go, though, by Jupiter, I love and honour the craft with all my might—if I pro-pose a stipulation as to time and place?’ Ha! Mr Dorrit could erect no—hum—suspicion of that kind on Mr Gowan’s frankness. ‘Again you are very good,’ said Gowan. ‘Mr Dorrit, I hear you are going to Rome. I am going to Rome, having friends there. Let me begin to do you the injustice I have conspired to do you, there—not here. We shall all be hurried during the rest of our stay here; and though there’s not a poorer man with whole el-bows in Venice, than myself, I have not quite got all the Amateur out of me yet—comprising the trade again, you see!—and can’t fall on to order, in a hurry, for the mere sake of the sixpences.’ These remarks were not less favourably received by Mr Dorrit than their predecessors. They were the prelude to the first reception of Mr and Mrs Gowan at dinner, and they skilfully placed Gowan on his usual ground in the new family. His wife, too, they placed on her usual ground. Miss Fanny understood, with particular distinctness, that Mrs Gowan’s good looks had cost her husband very dear; that there had been a great disturbance about her in the Barnacle family; and that the Dowager Mrs Gowan, nearly heart-broken, had resolutely set her face against the marriage until overpowered by her maternal feelings. Mrs General likewise clearly understood that the attachment had occasioned much family grief and dissension. Of honest Mr Meagles no mention was made; except that it was natural enough that a person of that sort should wish to raise his daughter out of his own obscurity, and that no one could blame him for trying his best to do so. Little Dorrit’s interest in the fair subject of this easily accepted belief was too earnest and watchful to fail in accurate observation. She could see that it had its part in throwing upon Mrs Gowan the touch of a shadow under which she lived, and she even had an instinctive knowledge that there was not the least truth in it. But it had an influence in placing obstacles in the way of her association with Mrs Gowan by making the Prunes and Prism school excessively polite to her, but not very intimate with her; and Little Dorrit, as an enforced sizar of that college, was obliged to submit herself humbly to its ordinances. Nevertheless, there was a sympathetic understanding already established between the two, which would have carried them over greater difficulties, and made a friendship out of a more restricted intercourse. As though accidents were determined to be favourable to it, they had a new assurance of con-geniality in the aversion which each perceived that the other felt towards Blandois of Paris; an aversion amounting to the repugnance and horror of a natural antipathy towards an odious creature of the reptile kind. And there was a passive congeniality between them, besides this active one. To both of them, Blandois behaved in exactly the same manner; and to both of them his manner had uniformly something in it, which they both knew to be different from his bearing towards others. The difference was too minute in its expression to be perceived by others, but they knew it to be there. A mere trick of his evil eyes, a mere turn of his smooth white hand, a mere hair’s breadth of addition to the fall of his nose and the rise of the moustache in the most frequent movement of his face, conveyed to both of them, equally, a swagger personal to themselves. It was as if he had said, ‘I have a secret power in this quarter. I know what I know.’ This had never been felt by them both in so great a degree, and never by each so perfectly to the knowledge of the other, as on a day when he came to Mr Dorrit’s to take his leave be-fore quitting Venice. Mrs Gowan was herself there for the same purpose, and he came upon the two together; the rest of the family being out. The two had not been together five minutes, and the peculiar manner seemed to convey to them, ‘You were going to talk about me. Ha! Behold me here to pre-vent it!’ ‘Gowan is coming here?’ said Blandois, with a smile. Mrs Gowan replied he was not coming. ‘Not coming!’ said Blandois. ‘Permit your devoted servant, when you leave here, to escort you home.’ ‘Thank you: I am not going home.’ ‘Not going home!’ said Blandois. ‘Then I am forlorn.’

That he might be; but he was not so forlorn as to roam away and leave them together. He sat entertaining them with his finest compliments, and his choicest conversation; but he conveyed to them, all the time, ‘No, no, no, dear ladies. Behold me here expressly to prevent it!’ He conveyed it to them with so much meaning, and he had such a diabolical persistency in him, that at length, Mrs Gowan rose to depart. On his offering his hand to Mrs Gowan to lead her down the staircase, she retained Little Dorrit’s hand in hers, with a cautious pressure, and said, ‘No, thank you. But, if you will please to see if my boatman is there, I shall be obliged to you.’ It left him no choice but to go down before them. As he did so, hat in hand, Mrs Gowan whispered: ‘He killed the dog.’ ‘Does Mr Gowan know it?’ Little Dorrit whispered. ‘No one knows it. Don’t look towards me; look towards him. He will turn his face in a moment. No one knows it, but I am sure he did. You are?’ ‘I—I think so,’ Little Dorrit answered. ‘Henry likes him, and he will not think ill of him; he is so generous and open himself. But you and I feel sure that we think of him as he deserves. He argued with Henry that the dog had been already poisoned when he changed so, and sprang at him. Henry believes it, but we do not. I see he is listening, but can’t hear. Good-bye, my love! Good-bye!’ The last words were spoken aloud, as the vigilant Blandois stopped, turned his head, and looked at them from the bottom of the staircase. Assuredly he did look then, though he looked his politest, as if any real philanthropist could have desired no better employment than to lash a great stone to his neck, and drop him into the water flowing beyond the dark arched gate-way in which he stood. No such benefactor to mankind being on the spot, he handed Mrs Gowan to her boat, and stood there until it had shot out of the narrow view; when he handed him-self into his own boat and followed. Little Dorrit had sometimes thought, and now thought again as she retraced her steps up the staircase, that he had made his way too easily into her father’s house. But so many and such varieties of people did the same, through Mr Dorrit’s participation in his elder daughter’s society mania, that it was hardly an exceptional case. A perfect fury for making acquaintances on whom to impress their riches and importance, had seized the House of Dorrit. It appeared on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this same society in which they lived, greatly resembled a superior sort of Marshalsea. Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much as people had come into the prison; through debt, through idleness, relationship, curiosity, and general unfitness for getting on at home. They were brought into these foreign towns in the custody of couriers and local followers, just as the debtors had been brought into the prison. They prowled about the churches and picture-galleries, much in the old, dreary, prison-yard manner. They were usually going away again to-morrow or next week, and rarely knew their own minds, and seldom did what they said they would do, or went where they said they would go: in all this again, very like the prison debtors. They paid high for poor accommodation, and disparaged a place while they pretended to like it: which was exactly the Marshalsea custom. They were envied when they went away by people left behind, feigning not to want to go: and that again was the Marshalsea habit invariably. A certain set of words and phrases, as much belonging to tourists as the College and the Snuggery belonged to the jail, was always in their mouths. They had precisely the same incapacity for settling down to anything, as the prisoners used to have; they rather deteriorated one another, as the prisoners used to do; and they wore untidy dresses, and fell into a slouching way of life: still, always like the people in the Marshalsea. The period of the family’s stay at Venice came, in its course, to an end, and they moved, with their retinue, to Rome. Through a repetition of the former Italian scenes, growing more dirty and more haggard as they went on, and bringing them at length to where the very air was diseased, they passed to their destination. A fine residence had been taken for them on the Corso, and there they took up their abode, in a city where everything seemed to be trying to stand still for ever on the ruins of something else—except the water, which, following eternal laws, tumbled and rolled from its glorious multitude of fountains. Here it seemed to Little Dorrit that a change came over the Marshalsea spirit of their society, and that Prunes and Prism got the upper hand. Everybody was walking about St Peter’s and the Vatican on somebody else’s cork legs, and straining every visible object through somebody else’s sieve. Nobody said what anything was, but everybody said what the Mrs Generals, Mr Eustace, or somebody else said it was. The whole body of travellers seemed to be a collection of voluntary human sacrifices, bound hand and foot, and delivered over to Mr Eustace and his attendants, to have the entrails of their intellects arranged according to the taste of that sacred priesthood. Through the rugged remains of temples and tombs and palaces and senate halls and theatres and amphitheatres of ancient days, hosts of tongue-tied and blindfolded moderns were care-fully feeling their way, incessantly repeating Prunes and Prism in the endeavour to set their lips according to the received form. Mrs General was in her pure element. Nobody had an opinion. There was a formation of surface going on around her on an amazing scale, and it had not a flaw of courage or honest free speech in it. Another modification of Prunes and Prism insinuated itself on Little Dorrit’s notice very shortly after their arrival. They received an early visit from Mrs Merdle, who led that extensive department of life in the Eternal City that winter; and the skilful manner in which she and Fanny fenced with one another on the occasion, almost made her quiet sister wink, like the glittering of small-swords. ‘So delighted,’ said Mrs Merdle, ‘to resume an acquaintance so inauspiciously begun at Martigny.’ ‘At Martigny, of course,’ said Fanny. ‘Charmed, I am sure!’ ‘I understand,’ said Mrs Merdle, ‘from my son Edmund Sparkler, that he has already improved that chance occasion. He has returned quite transported with Venice.’ ‘Indeed?’ returned the careless Fanny. ‘Was he there long?’ ‘I might refer that question to Mr Dorrit,’ said Mrs Merdle, turning the bosom towards that gentleman; ‘Edmund having been so much indebted to him for rendering his stay agreeable.’

‘Oh, pray don’t speak of it,’ returned Fanny. ‘I believe Papa had the pleasure of inviting Mr Sparkler twice or thrice,—but it was nothing. We had so many people about us, and kept such open house, that if he had that pleasure, it was less than nothing.’ ‘Except, my dear,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘except—ha—as it afforded me unusual gratification to—hum—show by any means, however slight and worthless, the—ha, hum—high estimation in which, in—ha—common with the rest of the world, I hold so distinguished and princely a character as Mr Merdle’s.’ The bosom received this tribute in its most engaging manner. ‘Mr Merdle,’ observed Fanny, as a means of dismissing Mr Sparkler into the background, ‘is quite a theme of Papa’s, you must know, Mrs Merdle.’ ‘I have been—ha—disappointed, madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘to understand from Mr Sparkler that there is no great—hum—probability of Mr Merdle’s coming abroad.’ ‘Why, indeed,’ said Mrs Merdle, ‘he is so much engaged and in such request, that I fear not. He has not been able to get abroad for years. You, Miss Dorrit, I believe have been almost continually abroad for a long time.’ ‘Oh dear yes,’ drawled Fanny, with the greatest hardihood. ‘An immense number of years.’ ‘So I should have inferred,’ said Mrs Merdle. ‘Exactly,’ said Fanny. ‘I trust, however,’ resumed Mr Dorrit, ‘that if I have not the—hum—great advantage of becoming known to Mr Merdle on this side of the Alps or Mediterranean, I shall have that honour on returning to England. It is an honour I particularly de-sire and shall particularly esteem.’ ‘Mr Merdle,’ said Mrs Merdle, who had been looking admiringly at Fanny through her eye-glass, ‘will esteem it, I am sure, no less.’ Little Dorrit, still habitually thoughtful and solitary though no longer alone, at first supposed this to be mere Prunes and Prism. But as her father when they had been to a brilliant reception at Mrs Merdle’s, harped at their own family breakfast-table on his wish to know Mr Merdle, with the contingent view of benefiting by the advice of that wonderful man in the disposal of his fortune, she began to think it had a real meaning, and to entertain a curiosity on her own part to see the shining light of the time.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8
The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that ‘It Never Does’

While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily being sketched out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous clink of iron upon iron was heard there through the working hours. The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into sound trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious devices, had done much to enhance the character of the factory. As an ingenious man, he had necessarily to en-counter every discouragement that the ruling powers for a length of time had been able by any means to put in the way of this class of culprits; but that was only reasonable self-defence in the powers, since How to do it must obviously be regarded as the natural and mortal enemy of How not to do it. In this was to be found the basis of the wise system, by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution Office, of warning every ingenious British subject to be ingenious at his peril: of harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by making his remedy uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at the best of confiscating his property after a short term of enjoyment, as though invention were on a par with felony. The system had uniformly found great favour with the Barnacles, and that was only reasonable, too; for one who worthily invents must be in earnest, and the Barnacles abhorred and dreaded nothing half so much. That again was very reasonable; since in a country suffering under the affliction of a great amount of earnestness, there might, in an exceeding short space of time, be not a single Barnacle left sticking to a post. Daniel Doyce faced his condition with its pains and penalties attached to it, and soberly worked on for the work’s sake. Clennam cheering him with a hearty co-operation, was a moral sup-port to him, besides doing good service in his business relation. The concern prospered, and the partners were fast friends. But Daniel could not forget the old design of so many years. It was not in reason to be expected that he should; if he could have lightly forgotten it, he could never have conceived it, or had the patience and perseverance to work it out. So Clennam thought, when he sometimes observed him of an evening looking over the models and drawings, and consoling himself by muttering with a sigh as he put them away again, that the thing was as true as it ever was. To show no sympathy with so much endeavour, and so much disappointment, would have been to fail in what Clennam regarded as among the implied obligations of his partnership. A revival of the passing interest in the subject which had been by chance awakened at the door of the Circumlocution Office, originated in this feeling. He asked his partner to explain the invention to him; ‘having a lenient consideration,’ he stipulated, ‘for my being no workman, Doyce.’ ‘No workman?’ said Doyce. ‘You would have been a thorough workman if you had given yourself to it. You have as good a head for understanding such things as I have met with.’ ‘A totally uneducated one, I am sorry to add,’ said Clennam. ‘I don’t know that,’ returned Doyce, ‘and I wouldn’t have you say that. No man of sense who has been generally improved, and has improved himself, can be called quite uneducated as to anything. I don’t particularly favour mysteries. I would as soon, on a fair and clear explanation, be judged by one class of man as another, provided he had the qualification I have named.’ ‘At all events,’ said Clennam—‘this sounds as if we were ex-changing compliments, but we know we are not—I shall have the advantage of as plain an explanation as can be given.’ ‘Well!’ said Daniel, in his steady even way, ‘I’ll try to make it so. He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character, of explaining what he himself perceived, and meant, ’ with the direct force and distinctness with which it struck his own mind. His manner of demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that it was not easy to mistake him. There was something almost ludicrous in the complete irreconcilability of a vague conventional notion that he must be a visionary man, with the precise, sagacious travelling of his eye and thumb over the plans, their patient stoppages at particular points, their careful returns to other points whence little channels of explanation had to be traced up, and his steady manner of making everything good and everything sound at each import-ant stage, before taking his hearer on a line’s-breadth further. His dismissal of himself from his description, was hardly less remarkable. He never said, I discovered this adaptation or in-vented that combination; but showed the whole thing as if the Divine artificer had made it, and he had happened to find it; so modest he was about it, such a pleasant touch of respect was mingled with his quiet admiration of it, and so calmly convinced he was that it was established on irrefragable laws. Not only that evening, but for several succeeding evenings, Clennam was quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued it, and the oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and the shrewd eye kindling with pleasure in it and love of it—instrument for probing his heart though it had been made for twelve long years—the less he could reconcile it to his younger energy to let it go without one effort more. At length he said: ‘Doyce, it came to this at last—that the business was to be sunk with Heaven knows how many more wrecks, or begun all over again?’ ‘Yes,’ returned Doyce, ‘that’s what the noblemen and gentle-men made of it after a dozen years.’ ‘And pretty fellows too!’ said Clennam, bitterly. ‘The usual thing!’ observed Doyce. ‘I must not make a martyr of myself, when I am one of so large a company.’ ‘Relinquish it, or begin it all over again?’ mused Clennam. ‘That was exactly the long and the short of it,’ said Doyce. ‘Then, my friend,’ cried Clennam, starting up and taking his work-roughened hand, ‘it shall be begun all over again!’ Doyce looked alarmed, and replied in a hurry—for him, ‘No, no. Better put it by. Far better put it by. It will be heard of, one day. I can put it by. You forget, my good Clennam; I have put it by. It’s all at an end.’ ‘Yes, Doyce,’ returned Clennam, ‘at an end as far as your efforts and rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as far as mine are. I am younger than you: I have only once set foot in that precious office, and I am fresh game for them. Come! I’ll try them. You shall do exactly as you have been doing since we have been together. I will add (as I easily can) to what I have been doing, the attempt to get public justice done to you; and, unless I have some success to report, you shall hear no more of it. ’ Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to consent, and again and again urged that they had better put it by. But it was natural that he should gradually allow himself to be over-persuaded by Clennam, and should yield. Yield he did. So Arthur resumed the long and hopeless labour of striving to make way with the Circumlocution Office. The waiting-rooms of that Department soon began to be familiar with his presence, and he was generally ushered into them by its janitors much as a pickpocket might be shown into a police-office; the principal difference being that the object of the latter class of public business is to keep the pickpocket, while the Circumlocution object was to get rid of Clennam. However, he was resolved to stick to the Great Department; and so the work of form-filling, corresponding, minuting, memorandum-making, signing, counter-signing, countercounter-signing, referring backwards and forwards, and refer-ring sideways, crosswise, and zigzag, recommenced. Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution Office, not previously mentioned in the present record. When that admirable Department got into trouble, and was, by some infuriated members of Parliament whom the smaller Barnacles almost suspected of labouring under diabolic possession, attacked on the merits of no individual case, but as an Institution wholly abominable and Bedlamite; then the noble or right honourable Barnacle who represented it in the House, would smite that member and cleave him asunder, with a statement of the quantity of business (for the prevention of business) done by the Circumlocution Office. Then would that noble or right honourable Barnacle hold in his hand a paper containing a few figures, to which, with the permission of the House, he would entreat its attention. Then would the inferior Barnacles ex-claim, obeying orders, ‘Hear, Hear, Hear!’ and ‘Read!’ Then would the noble or right honourable Barnacle perceive, sir, from this little document, which he thought might carry conviction even to the perversest mind (Derisive laughter and cheering from the Barnacle fry), that within the short compass of the last financial half-year, this much-maligned Department (Cheers) had written and received fifteen thousand letters (Loud cheers), had written twenty-four thousand minutes (Louder cheers), and thirty-two thousand five hundred and seventeen memoranda (Vehement cheering). Nay, an ingenious gentleman connected with the Department, and himself a valuable public servant, had done him the favour to make a curious calculation of the amount of stationery consumed in it during the same period. It formed a part of this same short document; and he derived from it the remarkable fact that the sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted to the public service would pave the footways on both sides of Oxford Street from end to end, and leave nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Immense cheering and laughter); while of tape—red tape—it had used enough to stretch, in graceful festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to the General Post Office. Then, amidst a burst of official exultation, would the noble or right honourable Barnacle sit down, leaving the mutilated fragments of the Member on the field. No one, after that exemplary demolition of him, would have the hardihood to hint that the more the Circumlocution Office did, the less was done, and that the greatest blessing it could confer on an unhappy public would be to do nothing. With sufficient occupation on his hands, now that he had this additional task—such a task had many and many a serviceable man died of before his day—Arthur Clennam led a life of slight variety. Regular visits to his mother’s dull sick room, and visits scarcely less regular to Mr Meagles at Twickenham, were its only changes during many months. He sadly and sorely missed Little Dorrit. He had been pre-pared to miss her very much, but not so much. He knew to the full extent only through experience, what a large place in his life was left blank when her familiar little figure went out of it.

He felt, too, that he must relinquish the hope of its return, understanding the family character sufficiently well to be assured that he and she were divided by a broad ground of separation. The old interest he had had in her, and her old trusting reliance on him, were tinged with melancholy in his mind: so soon had change stolen over them, and so soon had they glided into the past with other secret tendernesses. When he received her letter he was greatly moved, but did not the less sensibly feel that she was far divided from him by more than distance. It helped him to a clearer and keener perception of the place assigned him by the family. He saw that he was cherished in her grateful remembrance secretly, and that they resented him with the jail and the rest of its belongings. Through all these meditations which every day of his life crowded about her, he thought of her otherwise in the old way. She was his innocent friend, his delicate child, his dear Little Dorrit. This very change of circumstances fitted curiously in with the habit, begun on the night when the roses floated away, of considering himself as a much older man than his years really made him. He regarded her from a point of view which in its remoteness, tender as it was, he little thought would have been unspeakable agony to her. He speculated about her future destiny, and about the husband she might have, with an affection for her which would have drained her heart of its dearest drop of hope, and broken it. Everything about him tended to confirm him in the custom of looking on himself as an elderly man, from whom such aspirations as he had combated in the case of Minnie Gowan (though that was not so long ago either, reckoning by months and sea-sons), were finally departed. His relations with her father and mother were like those on which a widower son-in-law might have stood. If the twin sister who was dead had lived to pass away in the bloom of womanhood, and he had been her husband, the nature of his intercourse with Mr and Mrs Meagles would probably have been just what it was. This imperceptibly helped to render habitual the impression within him, that he had done with, and dismissed that part of life. He invariably heard of Minnie from them, as telling them in her letters how happy she was, and how she loved her husband; but inseparable from that subject, he invariably saw the old cloud on Mr Meagles’s face. Mr Meagles had never been quite so radiant since the marriage as before. He had never quite recovered the separation from Pet. He was the same good-humoured, open creature; but as if his face, from being much turned towards the pictures of his two children which could show him only one look, unconsciously adopted a characteristic from them, it always had now, through all its changes of expression, a look of loss in it. One wintry Saturday when Clennam was at the cottage, the Dowager Mrs Gowan drove up, in the Hampton Court equipage which pretended to be the exclusive equipage of so many individual proprietors. She descended, in her shady ambuscade of green fan, to favour Mr and Mrs Meagles with a call. ‘And how do you both do, Papa and Mama Meagles?’ said she, encouraging her humble connections. ‘And when did you last hear from or about my poor fellow?’ My poor fellow was her son; and this mode of speaking of him politely kept alive, without any offence in the world, the pretence that he had fallen a victim to the Meagles’ wiles. ‘And the dear pretty one?’ said Mrs Gowan. ‘Have you later news of her than I have?’ Which also delicately implied that her son had been captured by mere beauty, and under its fascination had forgone all sorts of worldly advantages. ‘ I am sure,’ said Mrs Gowan, without straining her attention on the answers she received, ‘it’s an unspeakable comfort to know they continue happy. My poor fellow is of such a restless disposition, and has been so used to roving about, and to being inconstant and popular among all manner of people, that it’s the greatest comfort in life. I suppose they’re as poor as mice, Papa Meagles?’ Mr Meagles, fidgety under the question, replied, ‘I hope not, ma’am. I hope they will manage their little income.’ ‘Oh! my dearest Meagles!’ returned the lady, tapping him on the arm with the green fan and then adroitly interposing it between a yawn and the company, ‘how can you, as a man of the world and one of the most business-like of human beings—for you know you are business-like, and a great deal too much for us who are not—’

(Which went to the former purpose, by making Mr Meagles out to be an artful schemer.) ‘—How can you talk about their managing their little means? My poor dear fellow! The idea of his managing hundreds! And the sweet pretty creature too. The notion of her managing! Papa Meagles! Don’t!’ ‘Well, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, gravely, ‘I am sorry to admit, then, that Henry certainly does anticipate his means.’ ‘My dear good man—I use no ceremony with you, because we are a kind of relations;—positively, Mama Meagles,’ exclaimed Mrs Gowan cheerfully, as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for the first time, ‘a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this world none of us can have everything our own way.’ This again went to the former point, and showed Mr Meagles with all good breeding that, so far, he had been brilliantly successful in his deep designs. Mrs Gowan thought the hit so good a one, that she dwelt upon it; repeating ‘Not everything. No, no; in this world we must not expect everything, Papa Meagles.’ ‘And may I ask, ma’am,’ retorted Mr Meagles, a little heightened in colour, ‘who does expect everything?’ ‘Oh, nobody, nobody!’ said Mrs Gowan. ‘I was going to say—but you put me out. You interrupting Papa, what was I going to say?’ Drooping her large green fan, she looked musingly at Mr Meagles while she thought about it; a performance not tending to the cooling of that gentleman’s rather heated spirits. ‘Ah! Yes, to be sure!’ said Mrs Gowan. ‘You must remember that my poor fellow has always been accustomed to expectations. They may have been realised, or they may not have been realised—’ ‘Let us say, then, may not have been realised,’ observed Mr Meagles. The Dowager for a moment gave him an angry look; but tossed it off with her head and her fan, and pursued the tenor of her way in her former manner. ‘It makes no difference. My poor fellow has been accustomed to that sort of thing, and of course you knew it, and were pre-pared for the consequences. I myself always clearly foresaw the consequences, and am not surprised. And you must not be surprised. In fact, can’t be surprised. Must have been prepared for it.’ Mr Meagles looked at his wife and at Clennam; bit his lip; and coughed. ‘And now here’s my poor fellow,’ Mrs Gowan pursued, ‘receiving notice that he is to hold himself in expectation of a baby, and all the expenses attendant on such an addition to his family! Poor Henry! But it can’t be helped now; it’s too late to help it now. Only don’t talk of anticipating means, Papa Meagles, as a discovery; because that would be too much.’ ‘Too much, ma’am?’ said Mr Meagles, as seeking an explanation. ‘There, there!’ said Mrs Gowan, putting him in his inferior place with an expressive action of her hand. ‘Too much for my poor fellow’s mother to bear at this time of day. They are fast married, and can’t be unmarried. There, there! I know that! You needn’t tell me that, Papa Meagles. I know it very well. What was it I said just now? That it was a great comfort they continued happy. It is to be hoped they will still continue happy. It is to be hoped Pretty One will do everything she can to make my poor fellow happy, and keep him contented. Papa and Mama Meagles, we had better say no more about it. We never did look at this subject from the same side, and we never shall. There, there! Now I am good.’ Truly, having by this time said everything she could say in maintenance of her wonderfully mythical position, and in ad-monition to Mr Meagles that he must not expect to bear his honours of alliance too cheaply, Mrs Gowan was disposed to forgo the rest. If Mr Meagles had submitted to a glance of en-treaty from Mrs Meagles, and an expressive gesture from Clennam, he would have left her in the undisturbed enjoyment of this state of mind. But Pet was the darling and pride of his heart; and if he could ever have championed her more devotedly, or loved her better, than in the days when she was the sunlight of his house, it would have been now, when, as its daily grace and delight, she was lost to it. ‘Mrs Gowan, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘I have been a plain man all my life. If I was to try—no matter whether on myself, on somebody else, or both—any genteel mystifications, I should probably not succeed in them.’ ‘Papa Meagles,’ returned the Dowager, with an affable smile, but with the bloom on her cheeks standing out a little more vividly than usual as the neighbouring surface became paler, ‘probably not.’ ‘Therefore, my good madam,’ said Mr Meagles, at great pains to restrain himself, ‘I hope I may, without offence, ask to have no such mystification played off upon me.’ ‘Mama Meagles,’ observed Mrs Gowan, ‘your good man is incomprehensible.’ Her turning to that worthy lady was an artifice to bring her into the discussion, quarrel with her, and vanquish her. Mr Meagles interposed to prevent that consummation. ‘Mother,’ said he, ‘you are inexpert, my dear, and it is not a fair match. Let me beg of you to remain quiet. Come, Mrs Gowan, come! Let us try to be sensible; let us try to be good-natured; let us try to be fair. Don’t you pity Henry, and I won’t pity Pet. And don’t be one-sided, my dear madam; it’s not considerate, it’s not kind. Don’t let us say that we hope Pet will make Henry happy, or even that we hope Henry will make Pet happy,’ (Mr Meagles himself did not look happy as he spoke the words,) ‘but let us hope they will make each other happy.’ ‘Yes, sure, and there leave it, father,’ said Mrs Meagles the kind-hearted and comfortable. ‘Why, mother, no,’ returned Mr Meagles, ‘not exactly there. I can’t quite leave it there; I must say just half-a-dozen words more. Mrs Gowan, I hope I am not over-sensitive. I believe I don’t look it.’ ‘Indeed you do not,’ said Mrs Gowan, shaking her head and the great green fan together, for emphasis. ‘Thank you, ma’am; that’s well. Notwithstanding which, I feel a little—I don’t want to use a strong word—now shall I say hurt?’ asked Mr Meagles at once with frankness and moderation, and with a conciliatory appeal in his tone. ‘Say what you like,’ answered Mrs Gowan. ‘It is perfectly in-different to me.’ ‘No, no, don’t say that,’ urged Mr Meagles, ‘because that’s not responding amiably. I feel a little hurt when I hear references made to consequences having been foreseen, and to its being too late now, and so forth.’ ‘Do you, Papa Meagles?’ said Mrs Gowan. ‘I am not surprised.’ ‘Well, ma’am,’ reasoned Mr Meagles, ‘I was in hopes you would have been at least surprised, because to hurt me wilfully on so tender a subject is surely not generous.’ ‘I am not responsible,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘for your conscience, you know.’ Poor Mr Meagles looked aghast with astonishment. ‘If I am unluckily obliged to carry a cap about with me, which is yours and fits you,’ pursued Mrs Gowan, ‘don’t blame me for its pattern, Papa Meagles, I beg!’ ‘Why, good Lord, ma’am!’ Mr Meagles broke out, ‘that’s as much as to state—’ ‘Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Meagles,’ said Mrs Gowan, who became extremely deliberate and prepossessing in manner whenever that gentleman became at all warm, ‘perhaps to pre-vent confusion, I had better speak for myself than trouble your kindness to speak for me. It’s as much as to state, you begin. If you please, I will finish the sentence. It is as much as to state—not that I wish to press it or even recall it, for it is of no use now, and my only wish is to make the best of existing circumstances—that from the first to the last I always objected to this match of yours, and at a very late period yielded a most unwilling consent to it.’ ‘Mother!’ cried Mr Meagles. ‘Do you hear this! Arthur! Do you hear this!’ ‘The room being of a convenient size,’ said Mrs Gowan, looking about as she fanned herself, ‘and quite charmingly adapted in all respects to conversation, I should imagine I am audible in any part of it.’ Some moments passed in silence, before Mr Meagles could hold himself in his chair with sufficient security to prevent his breaking out of it at the next word he spoke. At last he said: ‘Ma’am, I am very unwilling to revive them, but I must remind you what my opinions and my course were, all along, on that unfortunate subject.’

‘O, my dear sir!’ said Mrs Gowan, smiling and shaking her head with accusatory intelligence, ‘they were well understood by me, I assure you.’ ‘I never, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘knew unhappiness before that time, I never knew anxiety before that time. It was a time of such distress to me that—’ That Mr Meagles could really say no more about it, in short, but passed his handkerchief before his Face. ‘I understood the whole affair,’ said Mrs Gowan, composedly looking over her fan. ‘As you have appealed to Mr Clennam, I may appeal to Mr Clennam, too. He knows whether I did or not.’ ‘I am very unwilling,’ said Clennam, looked to by all parties, ‘to take any share in this discussion, more especially because I wish to preserve the best understanding and the clearest relations with Mr Henry Gowan. I have very strong reasons indeed, for entertaining that wish. Mrs Gowan attributed certain views of furthering the marriage to my friend here, in conversation with me before it took place; and I endeavoured to undeceive her. I represented that I knew him (as I did and do) to be strenuously opposed to it, both in opinion and action.’ ‘You see?’ said Mrs Gowan, turning the palms of her hands towards Mr Meagles, as if she were Justice herself, representing to him that he had better confess, for he had not a leg to stand on. ‘You see? Very good! Now Papa and Mama Meagles both!’ here she rose; ‘allow me to take the liberty of putting an end to this rather formidable controversy. I will not say another word upon its merits. I will only say that it is an additional proof of what one knows from all experience; that this kind of thing never answers—as my poor fellow himself would say, that it never pays—in one word, that it never does.’ Mr Meagles asked, What kind of thing? ‘It is in vain,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘for people to attempt to get on together who have such extremely different antecedents; who are jumbled against each other in this accidental, matrimonial sort of way; and who cannot look at the untoward circumstance which has shaken them together in the same light. It never does.’ Mr Meagles was beginning, ‘Permit me to say, ma’am—’

‘No, don’t,’ returned Mrs Gowan. ‘Why should you! It is an ascertained fact. It never does. I will therefore, if you please, go my way, leaving you to yours. I shall at all times be happy to receive my poor fellow’s pretty wife, and I shall always make a point of being on the most affectionate terms with her. But as to these terms, semi-family and semi-stranger, semi-goring and semi-boring, they form a state of things quite amusing in its impracticability. I assure you it never does.’ The Dowager here made a smiling obeisance, rather to the room than to any one in it, and therewith took a final farewell of Papa and Mama Meagles. Clennam stepped forward to hand her to the Pill-Box which was at the service of all the Pills in Hampton Court Palace; and she got into that vehicle with distinguished serenity, and was driven away. Thenceforth the Dowager, with a light and careless humour, often recounted to her particular acquaintance how, after a hard trial, she had found it impossible to know those people who belonged to Henry’s wife, and who had made that desperate set to catch him. Whether she had come to the conclusion beforehand, that to get rid of them would give her favourite pretence a better air, might save her some occasional inconvenience, and could risk no loss (the pretty creature being fast married, and her father devoted to her), was best known to herself. Though this history has its opinion on that point too, and decidedly in the affirmative.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9
Appearance and Disappearance

‘Arthur, my dear boy,’ said Mr Meagles, on the evening of the following day, ‘Mother and I have been talking this over, and we don’t feel comfortable in remaining as we are. That elegant connection of ours—that dear lady who was here yesterday—’ ‘I understand,’ said Arthur. ‘Even that affable and condescending ornament of society,’ pursued Mr Meagles, ‘may misrepresent us, we are afraid. We could bear a great deal, Arthur, for her sake; but we think we would rather not bear that, if it was all the same to her.’ ‘Good,’ said Arthur. ‘Go on.’ ‘You see,’ proceeded Mr Meagles ‘it might put us wrong with our son-in-law, it might even put us wrong with our daughter, and it might lead to a great deal of domestic trouble. You see, don’t you?’ ‘Yes, indeed,’ returned Arthur, ‘there is much reason in what you say.’ He had glanced at Mrs Meagles, who was always on the good and sensible side; and a petition had shone out of her honest face that he would support Mr Meagles in his present inclinings. ‘So we are very much disposed, are Mother and I,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘to pack up bags and baggage and go among the Allongers and Marshongers once more. I mean, we are very much disposed to be off, strike right through France into Italy, and see our Pet.’ ‘And I don’t think,’ replied Arthur, touched by the motherly anticipation in the bright face of Mrs Meagles (she must have been very like her daughter, once), ‘that you could do better. And if you ask me for my advice, it is that you set off to-morrow.’

‘Is it really, though?’ said Mr Meagles. ‘Mother, this is being backed in an idea!’ Mother, with a look which thanked Clennam in a manner very agreeable to him, answered that it was indeed. ‘The fact is, besides, Arthur,’ said Mr Meagles, the old cloud coming over his face, ‘that my son-in-law is already in debt again, and that I suppose I must clear him again. It may be as well, even on this account, that I should step over there, and look him up in a friendly way. Then again, here’s Mother foolishly anxious (and yet naturally too) about Pet’s state of health, and that she should not be left to feel lonesome at the present time. It’s undeniably a long way off, Arthur, and a strange place for the poor love under all the circumstances. Let her be as well cared for as any lady in that land, still it is a long way off. just as Home is Home though it’s never so Homely, why you see,’ said Mr Meagles, adding a new version to the pro-verb, ‘Rome is Rome, though it’s never so Romely.’ ‘All perfectly true,’ observed Arthur, ‘and all sufficient reasons for going.’ ‘I am glad you think so; it decides me. Mother, my dear, you may get ready. We have lost our pleasant interpreter (she spoke three foreign languages beautifully, Arthur; you have heard her many a time), and you must pull me through it, Mother, as well as you can. I require a deal of pulling through, Arthur,’ said Mr Meagles, shaking his head, ‘a deal of pulling through. I stick at everything beyond a noun-substantive—and I stick at him, if he’s at all a tight one.’ ‘Now I think of it,’ returned Clennam, ‘there’s Cavalletto. He shall go with you, if you like. I could not afford to lose him, but you will bring him safe back.’ ‘Well! I am much obliged to you, my boy,’ said Mr Meagles, turning it over, ‘but I think not. No, I think I’ll be pulled through by Mother. Cavallooro (I stick at his very name to start with, and it sounds like the chorus to a comic song) is so necessary to you, that I don’t like the thought of taking him away. More than that, there’s no saying when we may come home again; and it would never do to take him away for an indefinite time. The cottage is not what it was. It only holds two little people less than it ever did, Pet, and her poor unfortunate maid Tattycoram; but it seems empty now. Once out of it, there’s no knowing when we may come back to it. No, Arthur, I’ll be pulled through by Mother.’ They would do best by themselves perhaps, after all, Clennam thought; therefore did not press his proposal. ‘If you would come down and stay here for a change, when it wouldn’t trouble you,’ Mr Meagles resumed, ‘I should be glad to think—and so would Mother too, I know—that you were brightening up the old place with a bit of life it was used to when it was full, and that the Babies on the wall there had a kind eye upon them sometimes. You so belong to the spot, and to them, Arthur, and we should every one of us have been so happy if it had fallen out—but, let us see—how’s the weather for travelling now?’ Mr Meagles broke off, cleared his throat, and got up to look out of the window. They agreed that the weather was of high promise; and Clennam kept the talk in that safe direction until it had become easy again, when he gently diverted it to Henry Gowan and his quick sense and agreeable qualities when he was delicately dealt With; he likewise dwelt on the indisputable affection he entertained for his wife. Clennam did not fail of his effect upon good Mr Meagles, whom these commendations greatly cheered; and who took Mother to witness that the single and cordial desire of his heart in reference to their daughter’s husband, was harmoniously to exchange friendship for friendship, and confidence for confidence. Within a few hours the cottage furniture began to be wrapped up for preservation in the family absence—or, as Mr Meagles expressed it, the house began to put its hair in papers—and within a few days Father and Mother were gone, Mrs Tickit and Dr Buchan were posted, as of yore, behind the parlour blind, and Arthur’s solitary feet were rustling among the dry fallen leaves in the garden walks. As he had a liking for the spot, he seldom let a week pass without paying a visit. Sometimes, he went down alone from Saturday to Monday; sometimes his partner accompanied him; sometimes, he merely strolled for an hour or two about the house and garden, saw that all was right, and returned to Lon-don again. At all times, and under all circumstances, Mrs Tick-it, with her dark row of curls, and Dr Buchan, sat in the parlour window, looking out for the family return.

On one of his visits Mrs Tickit received him with the words, ‘I have something to tell you, Mr Clennam, that will surprise you.’ So surprising was the something in question, that it actually brought Mrs Tickit out of the parlour window and produced her in the garden walk, when Clennam went in at the gate on its being opened for him. ‘What is it, Mrs Tickit?’ said he. ‘Sir,’ returned that faithful housekeeper, having taken him into the parlour and closed the door; ‘if ever I saw the led away and deluded child in my life, I saw her identically in the dusk of yesterday evening.’ ‘You don’t mean Tatty—’ ‘Coram yes I do!’ quoth Mrs Tickit, clearing the disclosure at a leap. ‘Where?’ ‘Mr Clennam,’ returned Mrs Tickit, ‘I was a little heavy in my eyes, being that I was waiting longer than customary for my cup of tea which was then preparing by Mary Jane. I was not sleeping, nor what a person would term correctly, dozing. I was more what a person would strictly call watching with my eyes closed.’ Without entering upon an inquiry into this curious abnormal condition, Clennam said, ‘Exactly. Well?’ ‘Well, sir,’ proceeded Mrs Tickit, ‘I was thinking of one thing and thinking of another. just as you yourself might. just as any-body might.’ ‘Precisely so,’ said Clennam. ‘Well?’ ‘And when I do think of one thing and do think of another,’ pursued Mrs Tickit, ‘I hardly need to tell you, Mr Clennam, that I think of the family. Because, dear me! a person’s thoughts,’ Mrs Tickit said this with an argumentative and philosophic air, ‘however they may stray, will go more or less on what is uppermost in their minds. They will do it, sir, and a person can’t prevent them.’ Arthur subscribed to this discovery with a nod. ‘You find it so yourself, sir, I’ll be bold to say,’ said Mrs Tick-it, ‘and we all find it so. It an’t our stations in life that changes us, Mr Clennam; thoughts is free!—As I was saying, I was thinking of one thing and thinking of another, and thinking very much of the family. Not of the family in the present times only, but in the past times too. For when a person does begin thinking of one thing and thinking of another in that manner, as it’s getting dark, what I say is, that all times seem to be present, and a person must get out of that state and consider before they can say which is which.’ He nodded again; afraid to utter a word, lest it should present any new opening to Mrs Tickit’s conversational powers. ‘In consequence of which,’ said Mrs Tickit, ‘when I quivered my eyes and saw her actual form and figure looking in at the gate, I let them close again without so much as starting, for that actual form and figure came so pat to the time when it be-longed to the house as much as mine or your own, that I never thought at the moment of its having gone away. But, sir, when I quivered my eyes again, and saw that it wasn’t there, then it all flooded upon me with a fright, and I jumped up.’ ‘You ran out directly?’ said Clennam. ‘I ran out,’ assented Mrs Tickit, ‘as fast as ever my feet would carry me; and if you’ll credit it, Mr Clennam, there wasn’t in the whole shining Heavens, no not so much as a finger of that young woman.’ Passing over the absence from the firmament of this novel constellation, Arthur inquired of Mrs Tickit if she herself went beyond the gate? ‘Went to and fro, and high and low,’ said Mrs Tickit, ‘and saw no sign of her!’ He then asked Mrs Tickit how long a space of time she sup-posed there might have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she had experienced? Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her reply, had no settled opinion between five seconds and ten minutes. She was so plainly at sea on this part of the case, and had so clearly been startled out of slumber, that Clennam was much disposed to regard the appearance as a dream. Without hurting Mrs Tickit’s feelings with that infidel solution of her mystery, he took it away from the cottage with him; and probably would have retained it ever afterwards if a circumstance had not soon happened to change his opinion. He was passing at nightfall along the Strand, and the lamp-lighter was going on before him, under whose hand the street-lamps, blurred by the foggy air, burst out one after another, like so many blazing sunflowers coming into full-blow all at once,—when a stoppage on the pavement, caused by a train of coal-wagons toiling up from the wharves at the river-side, brought him to a stand-still. He had been walking quickly, and going with some current of thought, and the sudden check given to both operations caused him to look freshly about him, as people under such circumstances usually do. Immediately, he saw in advance—a few people intervening, but still so near to him that he could have touched them by stretching out his arm—Tattycoram and a strange man of a remarkable appearance: a swaggering man, with a high nose, and a black moustache as false in its colour as his eyes were false in their expression, who wore his heavy cloak with the air of a foreigner. His dress and general appearance were those of a man on travel, and he seemed to have very recently joined the girl. In bending down (being much taller than she was), listening to whatever she said to him, he looked over his shoulder with the suspicious glance of one who was not unused to be mistrustful that his footsteps might be dogged. It was then that Clennam saw his face; as his eyes lowered on the people behind him in the aggregate, without particularly resting upon Clennam’s face or any other. He had scarcely turned his head about again, and it was still bent down, listening to the girl, when the stoppage ceased, and the obstructed stream of people flowed on. Still bending his head and listening to the girl, he went on at her side, and Clennam followed them, resolved to play this unexpected play out, and see where they went. He had hardly made the determination (though he was not long about it), when he was again as suddenly brought up as he had been by the stoppage. They turned short into the Adelphi,—the girl evidently leading,—and went straight on, as if they were going to the Terrace which overhangs the river. There is always, to this day, a sudden pause in that place to the roar of the great thoroughfare. The many sounds become so deadened that the change is like putting cotton in the ears, or having the head thickly muffled. At that time the contrast was far greater; there being no small steam-boats on the river, no landing places but slippery wooden stairs and foot-causeways, no railroad on the opposite bank, no hanging bridge or fish-market near at hand, no traffic on the nearest bridge of stone, nothing moving on the stream but watermen’s wherries and coal-lighters. Long and broad black tiers of the latter, moored fast in the mud as if they were never to move again, made the shore funereal and silent after dark; and kept what little water-movement there was, far out towards mid-stream. At any hour later than sunset, and not least at that hour when most of the people who have anything to eat at home are going home to eat it, and when most of those who have nothing have hardly yet slunk out to beg or steal, it was a deserted place and looked on a deserted scene. Such was the hour when Clennam stopped at the corner, observing the girl and the strange man as they went down the street. The man’s footsteps were so noisy on the echoing stones that he was unwilling to add the sound of his own. But when they had passed the turning and were in the darkness of the dark corner leading to the terrace, he made after them with such indifferent appearance of being a casual passenger on his way, as he could assume. When he rounded the dark corner, they were walking along the terrace towards a figure which was coming towards them. If he had seen it by itself, under such conditions of gas-lamp, mist, and distance, he might not have known it at first sight, but with the figure of the girl to prompt him, he at once recognised Miss Wade. He stopped at the corner, seeming to look back expectantly up the street as if he had made an appointment with some one to meet him there; but he kept a careful eye on the three. When they came together, the man took off his hat, and made Miss Wade a bow. The girl appeared to say a few words as though she presented him, or accounted for his being late, or early, or what not; and then fell a pace or so behind, by herself. Miss Wade and the man then began to walk up and down; the man having the appearance of being extremely courteous and complimentary in manner; Miss Wade having the appearance of being extremely haughty. When they came down to the corner and turned, she was saying, ‘If I pinch myself for it, sir, that is my business. Confine your-self to yours, and ask me no question.’ ‘By Heaven, ma’am!’ he replied, making her another bow. ‘It was my profound respect for the strength of your character, and my admiration of your beauty.’ ‘I want neither the one nor the other from any one,’ said she, ‘and certainly not from you of all creatures. Go on with your report.’ ‘Am I pardoned?’ he asked, with an air of half abashed gallantry. ‘You are paid,’ she said, ‘and that is all you want.’ Whether the girl hung behind because she was not to hear the business, or as already knowing enough about it, Clennam could not determine. They turned and she turned. She looked away at the river, as she walked with her hands folded before her; and that was all he could make of her without showing his face. There happened, by good fortune, to be a lounger really waiting for some one; and he sometimes looked over the railing at the water, and sometimes came to the dark corner and looked up the street, rendering Arthur less conspicuous. When Miss Wade and the man came back again, she was saying, ‘You must wait until to-morrow.’ ‘A thousand pardons?’ he returned. ‘My faith! Then it’s not convenient to-night?’ ‘No. I tell you I must get it before I can give it to you.’ She stopped in the roadway, as if to put an end to the conference. He of course stopped too. And the girl stopped. ‘It’s a little inconvenient,’ said the man. ‘A little. But, Holy Blue! that’s nothing in such a service. I am without money to-night, by chance. I have a good banker in this city, but I would not wish to draw upon the house until the time when I shall draw for a round sum.’ ‘Harriet,’ said Miss Wade, ‘arrange with him—this gentleman here—for sending him some money to-morrow.’ She said it with a slur of the word gentleman which was more contemptuous than any emphasis, and walked slowly on. The man bent his head again, and the girl spoke to him as they both followed her. Clennam ventured to look at the girl as they Moved away. He could note that her rich black eyes were fastened upon the man with a scrutinising expression, and that she kept at a little distance from him, as they walked side by side to the further end of the terrace. A loud and altered clank upon the pavement warned him, be-fore he could discern what was passing there, that the man was coming back alone. Clennam lounged into the road, to-wards the railing; and the man passed at a quick swing, with the end of his cloak thrown over his shoulder, singing a scrap of a French song. The whole vista had no one in it now but himself. The lounger had lounged out of view, and Miss Wade and Tattycoram were gone. More than ever bent on seeing what became of them, and on having some information to give his good friend, Mr Meagles, he went out at the further end of the terrace, looking cautiously about him. He rightly judged that, at first at all events, they would go in a contrary direction from their late companion. He soon saw them in a neighbouring bye-street, which was not a thoroughfare, evidently allowing time for the man to get well out of their way. They walked leisurely arm-inarm down one side of the street, and returned on the opposite side. When they came back to the street-corner, they changed their pace for the pace of people with an object and a distance before them, and walked steadily away. Clennam, no less steadily, kept them in sight. They crossed the Strand, and passed through Covent Garden (under the windows of his old lodging where dear Little Dorrit had come that night), and slanted away north-east, until they passed the great building whence Tattycoram derived her name, and turned into the Gray’s Inn Road. Clennam was quite at home here, in right of Flora, not to mention the Patriarch and Pancks, and kept them in view with ease. He was beginning to wonder where they might be going next, when that wonder was lost in the greater wonder with which he saw them turn into the Patriarchal street. That wonder was in its turn swallowed up on the greater wonder with which he saw them stop at the Patriarchal door. A low double knock at the bright brass knocker, a gleam of light into the road from the opened door, a brief pause for inquiry and answer and the door was shut, and they were housed. After looking at the surrounding objects for assurance that he was not in an odd dream, and after pacing a little while before the house, Arthur knocked at the door. It was opened by the usual maid-servant, and she showed him up at once, with her usual alacrity, to Flora’s sitting-room. There was no one with Flora but Mr F.’s Aunt, which respect-able gentlewoman, basking in a balmy atmosphere of tea and toast, was ensconced in an easy-chair by the fireside, with a little table at her elbow, and a clean white handkerchief spread over her lap on which two pieces of toast at that moment awaited consumption. Bending over a steaming vessel of tea, and looking through the steam, and breathing forth the steam, like a malignant Chinese enchantress engaged in the performance of unholy rites, Mr F.’s Aunt put down her great teacup and exclaimed, ‘Drat him, if he an’t come back again!’ It would seem from the foregoing exclamation that this uncompromising relative of the lamented Mr F., measuring time by the acuteness of her sensations and not by the clock, sup-posed Clennam to have lately gone away; whereas at least a quarter of a year had elapsed since he had had the temerity to present himself before her. ‘My goodness Arthur!’ cried Flora, rising to give him a cordial reception, ‘Doyce and Clennam what a start and a surprise for though not far from the machinery and foundry business and surely might be taken sometimes if at no other time about mid-day when a glass of sherry and a humble sandwich of whatever cold meat in the larder might not come amiss nor taste the worse for being friendly for you know you buy it somewhere and wherever bought a profit must be made or they would never keep the place it stands to reason without a motive still never seen and learnt now not to be expected, for as Mr F. himself said if seeing is believing not seeing is believing too and when you don’t see you may fully believe you’re not remembered not that I expect you Arthur Doyce and Clennam to remember me why should I for the days are gone but bring another teacup here directly and tell her fresh toast and pray sit near the fire.’ Arthur was in the greatest anxiety to explain the object of his visit; but was put off for the moment, in spite of himself, by what he understood of the reproachful purport of these words, and by the genuine pleasure she testified in seeing him. ‘And now pray tell me something all you know,’ said Flora, drawing her chair near to his, ‘about the good dear quiet little thing and all the changes of her fortunes carriage people now no doubt and horses without number most romantic, a coat of arms of course and wild beasts on their hind legs showing it as if it was a copy they had done with mouths from ear to ear good gracious, and has she her health which is the first consideration after all for what is wealth without it Mr F. himself so often saying when his twinges came that sixpence a day and find yourself and no gout so much preferable, not that he could have lived on anything like it being the last man or that the previous little thing though far too familiar an expression now had any tendency of that sort much too slight and small but looked so fragile bless her?’ Mr F.’s Aunt, who had eaten a piece of toast down to the crust, here solemnly handed the crust to Flora, who ate it for her as a matter of business. Mr F.’s Aunt then moistened her ten fingers in slow succession at her lips, and wiped them in exactly the same order on the white handkerchief; then took the other piece of toast, and fell to work upon it. While pursuing this routine, she looked at Clennam with an expression of such intense severity that he felt obliged to look at her in re-turn, against his personal inclinations. ‘She is in Italy, with all her family, Flora,’ he said, when the dreaded lady was occupied again. ‘In Italy is she really?’ said Flora, ‘with the grapes growing everywhere and lava necklaces and bracelets too that land of poetry with burning mountains picturesque beyond belief though if the organ-boys come away from the neighbourhood not to be scorched nobody can wonder being so young and bringing their white mice with them most humane, and is she really in that favoured land with nothing but blue about her and dying gladiators and Belvederes though Mr F. himself did not believe for his objection when in spirits was that the images could not be true there being no medium between expensive quantities of linen badly got up and all in creases and none whatever, which certainly does not seem probable though perhaps in consequence of the extremes of rich and poor which may account for it.’ Arthur tried to edge a word in, but Flora hurried on again.

‘Venice Preserved too,’ said she, ‘I think you have been there is it well or ill preserved for people differ so and Macaroni if they really eat it like the conjurers why not cut it shorter, you are acquainted Arthur—dear Doyce and Clennam at least not dear and most assuredly not Doyce for I have not the pleasure but pray excuse me—acquainted I believe with Mantua what has it got to do with Mantua-making for I never have been able to conceive?’ ‘I believe there is no connection, Flora, between the two,’ Arthur was beginning, when she caught him up again. ‘Upon your word no isn’t there I never did but that’s like me I run away with an idea and having none to spare I keep it, alas there was a time dear Arthur that is to say decidedly not dear nor Arthur neither but you understand me when one bright idea gilded the what’s-his-name horizon of et cetera but it is darkly clouded now and all is over.’ Arthur’s increasing wish to speak of something very different was by this time so plainly written on his face, that Flora stopped in a tender look, and asked him what it was? ‘I have the greatest desire, Flora, to speak to some one who is now in this house—with Mr Casby no doubt. Some one whom I saw come in, and who, in a misguided and deplorable way, has deserted the house of a friend of mine.’ ‘Papa sees so many and such odd people,’ said Flora, rising, ‘that I shouldn’t venture to go down for any one but you Arthur but for you I would willingly go down in a diving-bell much more a dining-room and will come back directly if you’ll mind and at the same time not mind Mr F.’s Aunt while I’m gone.’ With those words and a parting glance, Flora bustled out, leaving Clennam under dreadful apprehension of this terrible charge. The first variation which manifested itself in Mr F.’s Aunt’s demeanour when she had finished her piece of toast, was a loud and prolonged sniff. Finding it impossible to avoid construing this demonstration into a defiance of himself, its gloomy significance being unmistakable, Clennam looked plaintively at the excellent though prejudiced lady from whom it emanated, in the hope that she might be disarmed by a meek submission.

‘None of your eyes at me,’ said Mr F.’s Aunt, shivering with hostility. ‘Take that.’ ‘That’ was the crust of the piece of toast. Clennam accepted the boon with a look of gratitude, and held it in his hand under the pressure of a little embarrassment, which was not relieved when Mr F.’s Aunt, elevating her voice into a cry of consider-able power, exclaimed, ‘He has a proud stomach, this chap! He’s too proud a chap to eat it!’ and, coming out of her chair, shook her venerable fist so very close to his nose as to tickle the surface. But for the timely return of Flora, to find him in this difficult situation, further consequences might have en-sued. Flora, without the least discomposure or surprise, but congratulating the old lady in an approving manner on being ‘very lively to-night’, handed her back to her chair. ‘He has a proud stomach, this chap,’ said Mr F.’s relation, on being reseated. ‘Give him a meal of chaff!’ ‘Oh! I don’t think he would like that, aunt,’ returned Flora. ‘Give him a meal of chaff, I tell you,’ said Mr F.’s Aunt, glaring round Flora on her enemy. ‘It’s the only thing for a proud stomach. Let him eat up every morsel. Drat him, give him a meal of chaff!’ Under a general pretence of helping him to this refreshment, Flora got him out on the staircase; Mr F.’s Aunt even then constantly reiterating, with inexpressible bitterness, that he was ‘a chap,’ and had a ‘proud stomach,’ and over and over again insisting on that equine provision being made for him which she had already so strongly prescribed. ‘Such an inconvenient staircase and so many corner-stairs Arthur,’ whispered Flora, ‘would you object to putting your arm round me under my pelerine?’ With a sense of going down-stairs in a highly-ridiculous manner, Clennam descended in the required attitude, and only re-leased his fair burden at the dining-room door; indeed, even there she was rather difficult to be got rid of, remaining in his embrace to murmur, ‘Arthur, for mercy’s sake, don’t breathe it to papa!’ She accompanied Arthur into the room, where the Patriarch sat alone, with his list shoes on the fender, twirling his thumbs as if he had never left off. The youthful Patriarch, aged ten, looked out of his picture-frame above him with no calmer air than he. Both smooth heads were alike beaming, blundering, and bumpy. ‘Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well, sir, I hope you are well. Please to sit down, please to sit down.’ ‘I had hoped, sir,’ said Clennam, doing so, and looking round with a face of blank disappointment, ‘not to find you alone.’ ‘Ah, indeed?’ said the Patriarch, sweetly. ‘Ah, indeed?’ ‘I told you so you know papa,’ cried Flora. ‘Ah, to be sure!’ returned the Patriarch. ‘Yes, just so. Ah, to be sure!’ ‘Pray, sir,’ demanded Clennam, anxiously, ‘is Miss Wade gone?’ ‘Miss—? Oh, you call her Wade,’ returned Mr Casby. ‘Highly proper.’ Arthur quickly returned, ‘What do you call her?’ ‘Wade,’ said Mr Casby. ‘Oh, always Wade.’ After looking at the philanthropic visage and the long silky white hair for a few seconds, during which Mr Casby twirled his thumbs, and smiled at the fire as if he were benevolently wishing it to burn him that he might forgive it, Arthur began: ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Casby—’ ‘Not so, not so,’ said the Patriarch, ‘not so.’ ‘—But, Miss Wade had an attendant with her—a young woman brought up by friends of mine, over whom her influence is not considered very salutary, and to whom I should be glad to have the opportunity of giving the assurance that she has not yet forfeited the interest of those protectors.’ ‘Really, really?’ returned the Patriarch. ‘Will you therefore be so good as to give me the address of Miss Wade?’ ‘Dear, dear, dear!’ said the Patriarch, ‘how very unfortunate! If you had only sent in to me when they were here! I observed the young woman, Mr Clennam. A fine full-coloured young woman, Mr Clennam, with very dark hair and very dark eyes. If I mistake not, if I mistake not?’ Arthur assented, and said once more with new expression, ‘If you would be so good as to give me the address.’ ‘Dear, dear, dear!’ exclaimed the Patriarch in sweet regret. ‘Tut, tut, tut! what a pity, what a pity! I have no address, sir. Miss Wade mostly lives abroad, Mr Clennam. She has done so for some years, and she is (if I may say so of a fellow-creature and a lady) fitful and uncertain to a fault, Mr Clennam. I may not see her again for a long, long time. I may never see her again. What a pity, what a pity!’ Clennam saw now, that he had as much hope of getting assistance out of the Portrait as out of the Patriarch; but he said nevertheless: ‘Mr Casby, could you, for the satisfaction of the friends I have mentioned, and under any obligation of secrecy that you may consider it your duty to impose, give me any information at all touching Miss Wade? I have seen her abroad, and I have seen her at home, but I know nothing of her. Could you give me any account of her whatever?’ ‘None,’ returned the Patriarch, shaking his big head with his utmost benevolence. ‘None at all. Dear, dear, dear! What a real pity that she stayed so short a time, and you delayed! As confidential agency business, agency business, I have occasionally paid this lady money; but what satisfaction is it to you, sir, to know that?’ ‘Truly, none at all,’ said Clennam. ‘Truly,’ assented the Patriarch, with a shining face as he philanthropically smiled at the fire, ‘none at all, sir. You hit the wise answer, Mr Clennam. Truly, none at all, sir.’ His turning of his smooth thumbs over one another as he sat there, was so typical to Clennam of the way in which he would make the subject revolve if it were pursued, never showing any new part of it nor allowing it to make the smallest advance, that it did much to help to convince him of his labour having been in vain. He might have taken any time to think about it, for Mr Casby, well accustomed to get on anywhere by leaving everything to his bumps and his white hair, knew his strength to lie in silence. So there Casby sat, twirling and twirling, and making his polished head and forehead look largely benevolent in every knob. With this spectacle before him, Arthur had risen to go, when from the inner Dock where the good ship Pancks was hove down when out in no cruising ground, the noise was heard of that steamer labouring towards him. It struck Arthur that the noise began demonstratively far off, as though Mr Pancks sought to impress on any one who might happen to think about it, that he was working on from out of hearing. Mr Pancks and he shook hands, and the former brought his employer a letter or two to sign. Mr Pancks in shaking hands merely scratched his eyebrow with his left forefinger and snorted once, but Clennam, who understood him better now than of old, comprehended that he had almost done for the evening and wished to say a word to him outside. Therefore, when he had taken his leave of Mr Casby, and (which was a more difficult process) of Flora, he sauntered in the neighbourhood on Mr Pancks’s line of road. He had waited but a short time when Mr Pancks appeared. Mr Pancks shaking hands again with another expressive snort, and taking off his hat to put his hair up, Arthur thought he received his cue to speak to him as one who knew pretty well what had just now passed. Therefore he said, without any preface: ‘I suppose they were really gone, Pancks?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Pancks. ‘They were really gone.’ ‘Does he know where to find that lady?’ ‘Can’t say. I should think so.’ Mr Pancks did not? No, Mr Pancks did not. Did Mr Pancks know anything about her? ‘I expect,’ rejoined that worthy, ‘I know as much about her as she knows about herself. She is somebody’s child—anybody’s—nobody’s. Put her in a room in London here with any six people old enough to be her parents, and her parents may be there for anything she knows. They may be in any house she sees, they may be in any churchyard she passes, she may run against ’em in any street, she may make chance acquaintance of ’em at any time; and never know it. She knows nothing about ’em. She knows nothing about any relative whatever. Never did. Never will.’ ‘Mr Casby could enlighten her, perhaps?’ ‘May be,’ said Pancks. ‘I expect so, but don’t know. He has long had money (not overmuch as I make out) in trust to dole out to her when she can’t do without it. Sometimes she’s proud and won’t touch it for a length of time; sometimes she’s so poor that she must have it. She writhes under her life. A woman more angry, passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived. She came for money to-night. Said she had peculiar occasion for it.’

‘I think,’ observed Clennam musing, ‘I by chance know what occasion—I mean into whose pocket the money is to go.’ ‘Indeed?’ said Pancks. ‘If it’s a compact, I recommend that party to be exact in it. I wouldn’t trust myself to that woman, young and handsome as she is, if I had wronged her; no, not for twice my proprietor’s money! Unless,’ Pancks added as a saving clause, ‘I had a lingering illness on me, and wanted to get it over.’ Arthur, hurriedly reviewing his own observation of her, found it to tally pretty nearly with Mr Pancks’s view. ‘The wonder is to me,’ pursued Pancks, ‘that she has never done for my proprietor, as the only person connected with her story she can lay hold of. Mentioning that, I may tell you, between ourselves, that I am sometimes tempted to do for him myself.’ Arthur started and said, ‘Dear me, Pancks, don’t say that!’ ‘Understand me,’ said Pancks, extending five cropped coaly finger-nails on Arthur’s arm; ‘I don’t mean, cut his throat. But by all that’s precious, if he goes too far, I’ll cut his hair!’ Having exhibited himself in the new light of enunciating this tremendous threat, Mr Pancks, with a countenance of grave import, snorted several times and steamed away.

Chapter 10

Chapter 10
The Dreams of Mrs Flintwinch thicken

The shady waiting-rooms of the Circumlocution Office, where he passed a good deal of time in company with various trouble-some Convicts who were under sentence to be broken alive on that wheel, had afforded Arthur Clennam ample leisure, in three or four successive days, to exhaust the subject of his late glimpse of Miss Wade and Tattycoram. He had been able to make no more of it and no less of it, and in this unsatisfactory condition he was fain to leave it. During this space he had not been to his mother’s dismal old house. One of his customary evenings for repairing thither now coming round, he left his dwelling and his partner at nearly nine o’clock, and slowly walked in the direction of that grim home of his youth. It always affected his imagination as wrathful, mysterious, and sad; and his imagination was sufficiently impressible to see the whole neighbourhood under some tinge of its dark shadow. As he went along, upon a dreary night, the dim streets by which he went, seemed all depositories of oppressive secrets. The deserted counting-houses, with their secrets of books and papers locked up in chests and safes; the banking-houses, with their secrets of strong rooms and wells, the keys of which were in a very few secret pockets and a very few secret breasts; the secrets of all the dispersed grinders in the vast mill, among whom there were doubtless plunderers, forgers, and trust-betrayers of many sorts, whom the light of any day that dawned might reveal; he could have fancied that these things, in hiding, imparted a heaviness to the air. The shadow thickening and thickening as he approached its source, he thought of the secrets of the lonely church-vaults, where the people who had hoarded and secreted in iron coffers were in their turn similarly hoarded, not yet at rest from doing harm; and then of the secrets of the river, as it rolled its turbid tide between two frowning wildernesses of secrets, extending, thick and dense, for many miles, and warding off the free air and the free country swept by winds and wings of birds. The shadow still darkening as he drew near the house, the melancholy room which his father had once occupied, haunted by the appealing face he had himself seen fade away with him when there was no other watcher by the bed, arose before his mind. Its close air was secret. The gloom, and must, and dust of the whole tenement, were secret. At the heart of it his mother presided, inflexible of face, indomitable of will, firmly holding all the secrets of her own and his father’s life, and austerely opposing herself, front to front, to the great final secret of all life. He had turned into the narrow and steep street from which the court of enclosure wherein the house stood opened, when another footstep turned into it behind him, and so close upon his own that he was jostled to the wall. As his mind was teeming with these thoughts, the encounter took him altogether unprepared, so that the other passenger had had time to say, boisterously, ‘Pardon! Not my fault!’ and to pass on before the instant had elapsed which was requisite to his recovery of the realities about him. When that moment had flashed away, he saw that the man striding on before him was the man who had been so much in his mind during the last few days. It was no casual resemblance, helped out by the force of the impression the man made upon him. It was the man; the man he had followed in company with the girl, and whom he had overheard talking to Miss Wade. The street was a sharp descent and was crooked too, and the man (who although not drunk had the air of being flushed with some strong drink) went down it so fast that Clennam lost him as he looked at him. With no defined intention of following him, but with an impulse to keep the figure in view a little longer, Clennam quickened his pace to pass the twist in the street which hid him from his sight. On turning it, he saw the man no more.

Standing now, close to the gateway of his mother’s house, he looked down the street: but it was empty. There was no projecting shadow large enough to obscure the man; there was no turning near that he could have taken; nor had there been any audible sound of the opening and closing of a door. Nevertheless, he concluded that the man must have had a key in his hand, and must have opened one of the many house-doors and gone in. Ruminating on this strange chance and strange glimpse, he turned into the court-yard. As he looked, by mere habit, to-wards the feebly lighted windows of his mother’s room, his eyes encountered the figure he had just lost, standing against the iron railings of the little waste enclosure looking up at those windows and laughing to himself. Some of the many vagrant cats who were always prowling about there by night, and who had taken fright at him, appeared to have stopped when he had stopped, and were looking at him with eyes by no means unlike his own from tops of walls and porches, and other safe points of pause. He had only halted for a moment to entertain himself thus; he immediately went forward, throwing the end of his cloak off his shoulder as he went, ascended the unevenly sunken steps, and knocked a sounding knock at the door. Clennam’s surprise was not so absorbing but that he took his resolution without any incertitude. He went up to the door too, and ascended the steps too. His friend looked at him with a braggart air, and sang to himself. Who passes by this road so late? Compagnon de la Majolaine! Who passes by this road so late? Always gay! After which he knocked again. ‘You are impatient, sir,’ said Arthur. ‘I am, sir. Death of my life, sir,’ returned the stranger, ‘it’s my character to be impatient!’ The sound of Mistress Affery cautiously chaining the door before she opened it, caused them both to look that way. Affery opened it a very little, with a flaring candle in her hands and asked who was that, at that time of night, with that knock! ‘Why, Arthur!’ she added with astonishment, seeing him first. ‘Not you sure? Ah, Lord save us! No,’ she cried out, seeing the other. ‘Him again!’ ‘It’s true! Him again, dear Mrs Flintwinch,’ cried the stranger. ‘Open the door, and let me take my dear friend Jeremiah to my arms! Open the door, and let me hasten myself to embrace my Flintwinch!’ ‘He’s not at home,’ cried Affery. ‘Fetch him!’ cried the stranger. ‘Fetch my Flintwinch! Tell him that it is his old Blandois, who comes from arriving in England; tell him that it is his little boy who is here, his cabbage, his well-beloved! Open the door, beautiful Mrs Flintwinch, and in the meantime let me to pass upstairs, to present my compliments—homage of Blandois—to my lady! My lady lives always? It is well. Open then!’ To Arthur’s increased surprise, Mistress Affery, stretching her eyes wide at himself, as if in warning that this was not a gentleman for him to interfere with, drew back the chain, and opened the door. The stranger, without ceremony, walked into the hall, leaving Arthur to follow him. ‘Despatch then! Achieve then! Bring my Flintwinch! Announce me to my lady!’ cried the stranger, clanking about the stone floor. ‘Pray tell me, Affery,’ said Arthur aloud and sternly, as he surveyed him from head to foot with indignation; ‘who is this gentleman?’ ‘Pray tell me, Affery,’ the stranger repeated in his turn, ‘who—ha, ha, ha!—who is this gentleman?’ The voice of Mrs Clennam opportunely called from her chamber above, ‘Affery, let them both come up. Arthur, come straight to me!’ ‘Arthur?’ exclaimed Blandois, taking off his hat at arm’s length, and bringing his heels together from a great stride in making him a flourishing bow. ‘The son of my lady? I am the all-devoted of the son of my lady!’ Arthur looked at him again in no more flattering manner than before, and, turning on his heel without acknowledgment, went up-stairs. The visitor followed him up-stairs. Mistress Affery took the key from behind the door, and deftly slipped out to fetch her lord.

A bystander, informed of the previous appearance of Monsieur Blandois in that room, would have observed a difference in Mrs Clennam’s present reception of him. Her face was not one to betray it; and her suppressed manner, and her set voice, were equally under her control. It wholly consisted in her never taking her eyes off his face from the moment of his en-trance, and in her twice or thrice, when he was becoming noisy, swaying herself a very little forward in the chair in which she sat upright, with her hands immovable upon its el-bows; as if she gave him the assurance that he should be presently heard at any length he would. Arthur did not fail to observe this; though the difference between the present occasion and the former was not within his power of observation. ‘Madame,’ said Blandois, ‘do me the honour to present me to Monsieur, your son. It appears to me, madame, that Monsieur, your son, is disposed to complain of me. He is not polite.’ ‘Sir,’ said Arthur, striking in expeditiously, ‘whoever you are, and however you come to be here, if I were the master of this house I would lose no time in placing you on the outside of it.’ ‘But you are not,’ said his mother, without looking at him. ‘Unfortunately for the gratification of your unreasonable temper, you are not the master, Arthur.’ ‘I make no claim to be, mother. If I object to this person’s manner of conducting himself here, and object to it so much, that if I had any authority here I certainly would not suffer him to remain a minute, I object on your account.’ ‘In the case of objection being necessary,’ she returned, ‘I could object for myself. And of course I should.’ The subject of their dispute, who had seated himself, laughed aloud, and rapped his legs with his hand. ‘You have no right,’ said Mrs Clennam, always intent on Blandois, however directly she addressed her son, ‘to speak to the prejudice of any gentleman (least of all a gentleman from another country), because he does not conform to your standard, or square his behaviour by your rules. It is possible that the gentleman may, on similar grounds, object to you.’ ‘I hope so,’ returned Arthur. ‘The gentleman,’ pursued Mrs Clennam, ‘on a former occasion brought a letter of recommendation to us from highly es-teemed and responsible correspondents. I am perfectly unacquainted with the gentleman’s object in coming here at present. I am entirely ignorant of it, and cannot be supposed likely to be able to form the remotest guess at its nature;’ her habitual frown became stronger, as she very slowly and weightily emphasised those words; ‘but, when the gentleman proceeds to explain his object, as I shall beg him to have the goodness to do to myself and Flintwinch, when Flintwinch re-turns, it will prove, no doubt, to be one more or less in the usual way of our business, which it will be both our business and our pleasure to advance. It can be nothing else.’ ‘We shall see, madame!’ said the man of business. ‘We shall see,’ she assented. ‘The gentleman is acquainted with Flintwinch; and when the gentleman was in London last, I remember to have heard that he and Flintwinch had some entertainment or good-fellowship together. I am not in the way of knowing much that passes outside this room, and the jingle of little worldly things beyond it does not much interest me; but I remember to have heard that.’ ‘Right, madame. It is true.’ He laughed again, and whistled the burden of the tune he had sung at the door. ‘Therefore, Arthur,’ said his mother, ‘the gentleman comes here as an acquaintance, and no stranger; and it is much to be regretted that your unreasonable temper should have found of-fence in him. I regret it. I say so to the gentleman. You will not say so, I know; therefore I say it for myself and Flintwinch, since with us two the gentleman’s business lies.’ The key of the door below was now heard in the lock, and the door was heard to open and close. In due sequence Mr Flintwinch appeared; on whose entrance the visitor rose from his chair, laughing loud, and folded him in a close embrace. ‘How goes it, my cherished friend!’ said he. ‘How goes the world, my Flintwinch? Rose-coloured? So much the better, so much the better! Ah, but you look charming! Ah, but you look young and fresh as the flowers of Spring! Ah, good little boy! Brave child, brave child!’ While heaping these compliments on Mr Flintwinch, he rolled him about with a hand on each of his shoulders, until the staggerings of that gentleman, who under the circumstances was dryer and more twisted than ever, were like those of a teetotum nearly spent.

‘I had a presentiment, last time, that we should be better and more intimately acquainted. Is it coming on you, Flintwinch? Is it yet coming on?’ ‘Why, no, sir,’ retorted Mr Flintwinch. ‘Not unusually. Hadn’t you better be seated? You have been calling for some more of that port, sir, I guess?’ ‘Ah, Little joker! Little pig!’ cried the visitor. ‘Ha ha ha ha!’ And throwing Mr Flintwinch away, as a closing piece of raillery, he sat down again. The amazement, suspicion, resentment, and shame, with which Arthur looked on at all this, struck him dumb. Mr Flintwinch, who had spun backward some two or three yards under the impetus last given to him, brought himself up with a face completely unchanged in its stolidity except as it was affected by shortness of breath, and looked hard at Arthur. Not a whit less reticent and wooden was Mr Flintwinch outwardly, than in the usual course of things: the only perceptible difference in him being that the knot of cravat which was generally under his ear, had worked round to the back of his head: where it formed an ornamental appendage not unlike a bag-wig, and gave him something of a courtly appearance. As Mrs Clennam never removed her eyes from Blandois (on whom they had some effect, as a steady look has on a lower sort of dog), so Jeremiah never removed his from Arthur. It was as if they had tacitly agreed to take their different provinces. Thus, in the ensuing silence, Jeremiah stood scraping his chin and looking at Arthur as though he were trying to screw his thoughts out of him with an instrument. After a little, the visitor, as if he felt the silence irksome, rose, and impatiently put himself with his back to the sacred fire which had burned through so many years. Thereupon Mrs Clennam said, moving one of her hands for the first time, and moving it very slightly with an action of dismissal: ‘Please to leave us to our business, Arthur.’ ‘Mother, I do so with reluctance.’ ‘Never mind with what,’ she returned, ‘or with what not. Please to leave us. Come back at any other time when you may consider it a duty to bury half an hour wearily here. Good night.’

She held up her muffled fingers that he might touch them with his, according to their usual custom, and he stood over her wheeled chair to touch her face with his lips. He thought, then, that her cheek was more strained than usual, and that it was colder. As he followed the direction of her eyes, in rising again, towards Mr Flintwinch’s good friend, Mr Blandois, Mr Blandois snapped his finger and thumb with one loud contemptuous snap. ‘I leave your—your business acquaintance in my mother’s room, Mr Flintwinch,’ said Clennam, ‘with a great deal of surprise and a great deal of unwillingness.’ The person referred to snapped his finger and thumb again. ‘Good night, mother.’ ‘Good night.’ ‘I had a friend once, my good comrade Flintwinch,’ said Blandois, standing astride before the fire, and so evidently saying it to arrest Clennam’s retreating steps, that he lingered near the door; ‘I had a friend once, who had heard so much of the dark side of this city and its ways, that he wouldn’t have confided himself alone by night with two people who had an interest in getting him under the ground—my faith! not even in a respectable house like this—unless he was bodily too strong for them. Bah! What a poltroon, my Flintwinch! Eh?’ ‘A cur, sir.’ ‘Agreed! A cur. But he wouldn’t have done it, my Flintwinch, unless he had known them to have the will to silence him, without the power. He wouldn’t have drunk from a glass of water under such circumstances—not even in a respectable house like this, my Flintwinch—unless he had seen one of them drink first, and swallow too!’ Disdaining to speak, and indeed not very well able, for he was half-choking, Clennam only glanced at the visitor as he passed out. The visitor saluted him with another parting snap, and his nose came down over his moustache and his moustache went up under his nose, in an ominous and ugly smile. ‘For Heaven’s sake, Affery,’ whispered Clennam, as she opened the door for him in the dark hall, and he groped his way to the sight of the night-sky, ‘what is going on here?’

Her own appearance was sufficiently ghastly, standing in the dark with her apron thrown over her head, and speaking be-hind it in a low, deadened voice. ‘Don’t ask me anything, Arthur. I’ve been in a dream for ever so long. Go away!’ He went out, and she shut the door upon him. He looked up at the windows of his mother’s room, and the dim light, deadened by the yellow blinds, seemed to say a response after Affery, and to mutter, ‘Don’t ask me anything. Go away!’

Chapter 11

Chapter 11
A Letter from Little Dorrit

Dear Mr Clennam, As I said in my last that it was best for nobody to write to me, and as my sending you another little letter can therefore give you no other trouble than the trouble of reading it (perhaps you may not find leisure for even that, though I hope you will some day), I am now going to devote an hour to writing to you again. This time, I write from Rome. We left Venice before Mr and Mrs Gowan did, but they were not so long upon the road as we were, and did not travel by the same way, and so when we arrived we found them in a lodging here, in a place called the Via Gregoriana. I dare say you know it. Now I am going to tell you all I can about them, because I know that is what you most want to hear. Theirs is not a very comfortable lodging, but perhaps I thought it less so when I first saw it than you would have done, because you have been in many different countries and have seen many different customs. Of course it is a far, far better place—millions of times—than any I have ever been used to until lately; and I fancy I don’t look at it with my own eyes, but with hers. For it would be easy to see that she has always been brought up in a tender and happy home, even if she had not told me so with great love for it. Well, it is a rather bare lodging up a rather dark common staircase, and it is nearly all a large dull room, where Mr Gowan paints. The windows are blocked up where any one could look out, and the walls have been all drawn over with chalk and charcoal by others who have lived there before—oh,—I should think, for years!

There is a curtain more dust-coloured than red, which divides it, and the part behind the curtain makes the private sitting-room. When I first saw her there she was alone, and her work had fallen out of her hand, and she was looking up at the sky shining through the tops of the windows. Pray do not be uneasy when I tell you, but it was not quite so airy, nor so bright, nor so cheerful, nor so happy and youthful altogether as I should have liked it to be. On account of Mr Gowan’s painting Papa’s picture (which I am not quite convinced I should have known from the likeness if I had not seen him doing it), I have had more opportunities of being with her since then than I might have had without this fortunate chance. She is very much alone. Very much alone indeed. Shall I tell you about the second time I saw her? I went one day, when it happened that I could run round by myself, at four or five o’clock in the afternoon. She was then dining alone, and her solitary dinner had been brought in from somewhere, over a kind of brazier with a fire in it, and she had no company or prospect of company, that I could see, but the old man who had brought it. He was telling her a long story (of robbers outside the walls being taken up by a stone statue of a Saint), to entertain her—as he said to me when I came out, ‘because he had a daughter of his own, though she was not so pretty.’ I ought now to mention Mr Gowan, before I say what little more I have to say about her. He must admire her beauty, and he must be proud of her, for everybody praises it, and he must be fond of her, and I do not doubt that he is—but in his way. You know his way, and if it appears as careless and discontented in your eyes as it does in mine, I am not wrong in thinking that it might be better suited to her. If it does not seem so to you, I am quite sure I am wholly mistaken; for your unchanged poor child confides in your knowledge and goodness more than she could ever tell you if she was to try. But don’t be frightened, I am not going to try. Owing (as I think, if you think so too) to Mr Gowan’s unsettled and dissatisfied way, he applies himself to his profession very little. He does nothing steadily or patiently; but equally takes things up and throws them down, and does them, or leaves them undone, without caring about them. When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no belief in any-body else, because he has no belief in himself. Is it so? I won-der what you will say when you come to this! I know how you will look, and I can almost hear the voice in which you would tell me on the Iron Bridge. Mr Gowan goes out a good deal among what is considered the best company here—though he does not look as if he enjoyed it or liked it when he is with it—and she sometimes ac-companies him, but lately she has gone out very little. I think I have noticed that they have an inconsistent way of speaking about her, as if she had made some great self-interested success in marrying Mr Gowan, though, at the same time, the very same people, would not have dreamed of taking him for them-selves or their daughters. Then he goes into the country be-sides, to think about making sketches; and in all places where there are visitors, he has a large acquaintance and is very well known. Besides all this, he has a friend who is much in his society both at home and away from home, though he treats this friend very coolly and is very uncertain in his behaviour to him. I am quite sure (because she has told me so), that she does not like this friend. He is so revolting to me, too, that his being away from here, at present, is quite a relief to my mind. How much more to hers! But what I particularly want you to know, and why I have re-solved to tell you so much while I am afraid it may make you a little uncomfortable without occasion, is this. She is so true and so devoted, and knows so completely that all her love and duty are his for ever, that you may be certain she will love him, admire him, praise him, and conceal all his faults, until she dies. I believe she conceals them, and always will conceal them, even from herself. She has given him a heart that can never be taken back; and however much he may try it, he will never wear out its affection. You know the truth of this, as you know everything, far far better than I; but I cannot help telling you what a nature she shows, and that you can never think too well of her. I have not yet called her by her name in this letter, but we are such friends now that I do so when we are quietly together, and she speaks to me by my name—I mean, not my Christian name, but the name you gave me. When she began to call me Amy, I told her my short story, and that you had always called me Little Dorrit. I told her that the name was much dearer to me than any other, and so she calls me Little Dorrit too. Perhaps you have not heard from her father or mother yet, and may not know that she has a baby son. He was born only two days ago, and just a week after they came. It has made them very happy. However, I must tell you, as I am to tell you all, that I fancy they are under a constraint with Mr Gowan, and that they feel as if his mocking way with them was some-times a slight given to their love for her. It was but yesterday, when I was there, that I saw Mr Meagles change colour, and get up and go out, as if he was afraid that he might say so, unless he prevented himself by that means. Yet I am sure they are both so considerate, good-humoured, and reasonable, that he might spare them. It is hard in him not to think of them a little more. I stopped at the last full stop to read all this over. It looked at first as if I was taking on myself to understand and explain so much, that I was half inclined not to send it. But when I thought it over a little, I felt more hopeful for your knowing at once that I had only been watchful for you, and had only noticed what I think I have noticed, because I was quickened by your interest in it. Indeed, you may be sure that is the truth. And now I have done with the subject in the present letter, and have little left to say. We are all quite well, and Fanny improves every day. You can hardly think how kind she is to me, and what pains she takes with me. She has a lover, who has followed her, first all the way from Switzerland, and then all the way from Venice, and who has just confided to me that he means to follow her every-where. I was much confused by his speaking to me about it, but he would. I did not know what to say, but at last I told him that I thought he had better not. For Fanny (but I did not tell him this) is much too spirited and clever to suit him. Still, he said he would, all the same. I have no lover, of course. If you should ever get so far as this in this long letter, you will perhaps say, Surely Little Dorrit will not leave off without telling me something about her travels, and surely it is time she did. I think it is indeed, but I don’t know what to tell you. Since we left Venice we have been in a great many wonderful places, Genoa and Florence among them, and have seen so many wonderful sights, that I am almost giddy when I think what a crowd they make. But you can tell me so much more about them than I can tell you, that why should I tire you with my accounts and descriptions? Dear Mr Clennam, as I had the courage to tell you what the familiar difficulties in my travelling mind were before, I will not be a coward now. One of my frequent thoughts is this:—Old as these cities are, their age itself is hardly so curious, to my reflections, as that they should have been in their places all through those days when I did not even know of the existence of more than two or three of them, and when I scarcely knew of anything outside our old walls. There is something melancholy in it, and I don’t know why. When we went to see the famous leaning tower at Pisa, it was a bright sunny day, and it and the buildings near it looked so old, and the earth and the sky looked so young, and its shadow on the ground was so soft and retired! I could not at first think how beautiful it was, or how curious, but I thought, ‘O how many times when the shad-ow of the wall was falling on our room, and when that weary tread of feet was going up and down the yard—O how many times this place was just as quiet and lovely as it is to-day!’ It quite overpowered me. My heart was so full that tears burst out of my eyes, though I did what I could to restrain them. And I have the same feeling often—often. Do you know that since the change in our fortunes, though I appear to myself to have dreamed more than before, I have al-ways dreamed of myself as very young indeed! I am not very old, you may say. No, but that is not what I mean. I have al-ways dreamed of myself as a child learning to do needlework. I have often dreamed of myself as back there, seeing faces in the yard little known, and which I should have thought I had quite forgotten; but, as often as not, I have been abroad here—in Switzerland, or France, or Italy—somewhere where we have been—yet always as that little child. I have dreamed of going down to Mrs General, with the patches on my clothes in which I can first remember myself. I have over and over again dreamed of taking my place at dinner at Venice when we have had a large company, in the mourning for my poor mother which I wore when I was eight years old, and wore long after it was threadbare and would mend no more. It has been a great distress to me to think how irreconcilable the company would consider it with my father’s wealth, and how I should displease and disgrace him and Fanny and Edward by so plainly disclosing what they wished to keep secret. But I have not grown out of the little child in thinking of it; and at the self-same moment I have dreamed that I have sat with the heart-ache at table, calculating the expenses of the dinner, and quite distracting myself with thinking how they were ever to be made good. I have never dreamed of the change in our fortunes itself; I have never dreamed of your coming back with me that memorable morning to break it; I have never even dreamed of you. Dear Mr Clennam, it is possible that I have thought of you—and others—so much by day, that I have no thoughts left to wander round you by night. For I must now confess to you that I suffer from home-sickness—that I long so ardently and earnestly for home, as sometimes, when no one sees me, to pine for it. I cannot bear to turn my face further away from it. My heart is a little lightened when we turn towards it, even for a few miles, and with the knowledge that we are soon to turn away again. So dearly do I love the scene of my poverty and your kindness. O so dearly, O so dearly! Heaven knows when your poor child will see England again. We are all fond of the life here (except me), and there are no plans for our return. My dear father talks of a visit to London late in this next spring, on some affairs connected with the property, but I have no hope that he will bring me with him. I have tried to get on a little better under Mrs General’s instruction, and I hope I am not quite so dull as I used to be. I have begun to speak and understand, almost easily, the hard languages I told you about. I did not remember, at the moment when I wrote last, that you knew them both; but I remembered it afterwards, and it helped me on. God bless you, dear Mr Clennam. Do not forget Your ever grateful and affectionate LITTLE DORRIT. P.S.—Particularly remember that Minnie Gowan deserves the best remembrance in which you can hold her. You cannot think too generously or too highly of her. I forgot Mr Pancks last time. Please, if you should see him, give him your Little Dorrit’s kind regard. He was very good to Little D.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12
In which a Great Patriotic Conference is holden

The famous name of Merdle became, every day, more famous in the land. Nobody knew that the Merdle of such high renown had ever done any good to any one, alive or dead, or to any earthly thing; nobody knew that he had any capacity or utterance of any sort in him, which had ever thrown, for any creature, the feeblest farthing-candle ray of light on any path of duty or diversion, pain or pleasure, toil or rest, fact or fancy, among the multiplicity of paths in the labyrinth trodden by the sons of Adam; nobody had the smallest reason for supposing the clay of which this object of worship was made, to be other than the commonest clay, with as clogged a wick smouldering inside of it as ever kept an image of humanity from tumbling to pieces. All people knew (or thought they knew) that he had made himself immensely rich; and, for that reason alone, prostrated themselves before him, more degradedly and less excusably than the darkest savage creeps out of his hole in the ground to propitiate, in some log or reptile, the Deity of his benighted soul. Nay, the high priests of this worship had the man before them as a protest against their meanness. The multitude worshipped on trust—though always distinctly knowing why—but the officiators at the altar had the man habitually in their view. They sat at his feasts, and he sat at theirs. There was a spectre always attendant on him, saying to these high priests, ‘Are such the signs you trust, and love to honour; this head, these eyes, this mode of speech, the tone and manner of this man? You are the levers of the Circumlocution Office, and the rulers of men. When half-a-dozen of you fall out by the ears, it seems that mother earth can give birth to no other rulers. Does your qualification lie in the superior knowledge of men which accepts, courts, and puffs this man? Or, if you are competent to judge aright the signs I never fail to show you when he appears among you, is your superior honesty your qualification?’ Two rather ugly questions these, always going about town with Mr Merdle; and there was a tacit agreement that they must be stifled. In Mrs Merdle’s absence abroad, Mr Merdle still kept the great house open for the passage through it of a stream Of visitors. A few of these took affable possession of the establishment. Three or four ladies of distinction and liveliness used to say to one another, ‘Let us dine at our dear Merdle’s next Thursday. Whom shall we have?’ Our dear Merdle would then receive his instructions; and would sit heavily among the company at table and wander lumpishly about his drawing-rooms afterwards, only remarkable for appearing to have nothing to do with the entertainment beyond being in its way. The Chief Butler, the Avenging Spirit of this great man’s life, relaxed nothing of his severity. He looked on at these dinners when the bosom was not there, as he looked on at other dinners when the bosom was there; and his eye was a basilisk to Mr Merdle. He was a hard man, and would never bate an ounce of plate or a bottle of wine. He would not allow a dinner to be given, unless it was up to his mark. He set forth the table for his own dignity. If the guests chose to partake of what was served, he saw no objection; but it was served for the maintenance of his rank. As he stood by the sideboard he seemed to announce, ‘I have accepted office to look at this which is now before me, and to look at nothing less than this.’ If he missed the presiding bosom, it was as a part of his own state of which he was, from unavoidable circumstances, temporarily deprived. just as he might have missed a centrepiece, or a choice wine-cooler, which had been sent to the Banker’s. Mr Merdle issued invitations for a Barnacle dinner. Lord Decimus was to be there, Mr Tite Barnacle was to be there, the pleasant young Barnacle was to be there; and the Chorus of Parliamentary Barnacles who went about the provinces when the House was up, warbling the praises of their Chief, were to be represented there. It was understood to be a great occasion. Mr Merdle was going to take up the Barnacles. Some delicate little negotiations had occurred between him and the noble Decimus—the young Barnacle of engaging manners acting as negotiator—and Mr Merdle had decided to cast the weight of his great probity and great riches into the Barnacle scale. Jobbery was suspected by the malicious; perhaps because it was indisputable that if the adherence of the immortal Enemy of Mankind could have been secured by a job, the Barnacles would have jobbed him—for the good of the country, for the good of the country. Mrs Merdle had written to this magnificent spouse of hers, whom it was heresy to regard as anything less than all the British Merchants since the days of Whittington rolled into one, and gilded three feet deep all over—had written to this spouse of hers, several letters from Rome, in quick succession, urging upon him with importunity that now or never was the time to provide for Edmund Sparkler. Mrs Merdle had shown him that the case of Edmund was urgent, and that infinite advantages might result from his having some good thing directly. In the grammar of Mrs Merdle’s verbs on this momentous subject, there was only one mood, the Imperative; and that Mood had only one Tense, the Present. Mrs Merdle’s verbs were so pressingly presented to Mr Merdle to conjugate, that his sluggish blood and his long coat-cuffs became quite agitated. In which state of agitation, Mr Merdle, evasively rolling his eyes round the Chief Butler’s shoes without raising them to the index of that stupendous creature’s thoughts, had signified to him his intention of giving a special dinner: not a very large dinner, but a very special dinner. The Chief Butler had signified, in return, that he had no objection to look on at the most expensive thing in that way that could be done; and the day of the dinner was now come. Mr Merdle stood in one of his drawing-rooms, with his back to the fire, waiting for the arrival of his important guests. He seldom or never took the liberty of standing with his back to the fire unless he was quite alone. In the presence of the Chief Butler, he could not have done such a deed. He would have clasped himself by the wrists in that constabulary manner of his, and have paced up and down the hearthrug, or gone creeping about among the rich objects of furniture, if his oppressive retainer had appeared in the room at that very moment. The sly shadows which seemed to dart out of hiding when the fire rose, and to dart back into it when the fire fell, were sufficient witnesses of his making himself so easy. They were even more than sufficient, if his uncomfortable glances at them might be taken to mean anything. Mr Merdle’s right hand was filled with the evening paper, and the evening paper was full of Mr Merdle. His wonderful enterprise, his wonderful wealth, his wonderful Bank, were the fattening food of the evening paper that night. The wonderful Bank, of which he was the chief projector, establisher, and manager, was the latest of the many Merdle wonders. So modest was Mr Merdle withal, in the midst of these splendid achievements, that he looked far more like a man in possession of his house under a distraint, than a commercial Colossus be-striding his own hearthrug, while the little ships were sailing into dinner. Behold the vessels coming into port! The engaging young Barnacle was the first arrival; but Bar overtook him on the staircase. Bar, strengthened as usual with his double eye-glass and his little jury droop, was overjoyed to see the engaging young Barnacle; and opined that we were going to sit in Banco, as we lawyers called it, to take a special argument? ‘Indeed,’ said the sprightly young Barnacle, whose name was Ferdinand; ‘how so?’ ‘Nay,’ smiled Bar. ‘If you don’t know, how can I know? You are in the innermost sanctuary of the temple; I am one of the admiring concourse on the plain without.’ Bar could be light in hand, or heavy in hand, according to the customer he had to deal with. With Ferdinand Barnacle he was gossamer. Bar was likewise always modest and self-depreciatory—in his way. Bar was a man of great variety; but one leading thread ran through the woof of all his patterns. Every man with whom he had to do was in his eyes a jury-man; and he must get that jury-man over, if he could. ‘Our illustrious host and friend,’ said Bar; ‘our shining mercantile star;—going into politics?’ ‘Going? He has been in Parliament some time, you know,’ re-turned the engaging young Barnacle. ‘True,’ said Bar, with his light-comedy laugh for special jury-men, which was a very different thing from his low-comedy laugh for comic tradesmen on common juries: ‘he has been in Parliament for some time. Yet hitherto our star has been a vacillating and wavering star? Humph?’ An average witness would have been seduced by the Humph? into an affirmative answer, But Ferdinand Barnacle looked knowingly at Bar as he strolled up-stairs, and gave him no answer at all. ‘Just so, just so,’ said Bar, nodding his head, for he was not to be put off in that way, ‘and therefore I spoke of our sitting in Banco to take a special argument—meaning this to be a high and solemn occasion, when, as Captain Macheath says, “the judges are met: a terrible show!” We lawyers are sufficiently liberal, you see, to quote the Captain, though the Captain is severe upon us. Nevertheless, I think I could put in evidence an admission of the Captain’s,’ said Bar, with a little jocose roll of his head; for, in his legal current of speech, he always assumed the air of rallying himself with the best grace in the world; ‘an admission of the Captain’s that Law, in the gross, is at least in-tended to be impartial. For what says the Captain, if I quote him correctly—and if not,’ with a light-comedy touch of his double eye-glass on his companion’s shoulder, ‘my learned friend will set me right: “Since laws were made for every degree, To curb vice in others as well as in me, I wonder we ha’n’t better company Upon Tyburn Tree!”’ These words brought them to the drawing-room, where Mr Merdle stood before the fire. So immensely astounded was Mr Merdle by the entrance of Bar with such a reference in his mouth, that Bar explained himself to have been quoting Gay. ‘Assuredly not one of our Westminster Hall authorities,’ said he, ‘but still no despicable one to a man possessing the largely-practical Mr Merdle’s knowledge of the world.’ Mr Merdle looked as if he thought he would say something, but subsequently looked as if he thought he wouldn’t. The interval afforded time for Bishop to be announced. Bishop came in with meekness, and yet with a strong and rapid step as if he wanted to get his seven-league dress-shoes on, and go round the world to see that everybody was in a satisfactory state. Bishop had no idea that there was anything significant in the occasion. That was the most remarkable trait in his demeanour. He was crisp, fresh, cheerful, affable, bland; but so surprisingly innocent. Bar sidled up to prefer his politest inquiries in reference to the health of Mrs Bishop. Mrs Bishop had been a little unfortunate in the article of taking cold at a Confirmation, but other-wise was well. Young Mr Bishop was also well. He was down, with his young wife and little family, at his Cure of Souls. The representatives of the Barnacle Chorus dropped in next, and Mr Merdle’s physician dropped in next. Bar, who had a bit of one eye and a bit of his double eye-glass for every one who came in at the door, no matter with whom he was conversing or what he was talking about, got among them all by some skilful means, without being seen to get at them, and touched each individual gentleman of the jury on his own individual favourite spot. With some of the Chorus, he laughed about the sleepy member who had gone out into the lobby the other night, and voted the wrong way: with others, he deplored that innovating spirit in the time which could not even be prevented from taking an unnatural interest in the public service and the public money: with the physician he had a word to say about the general health; he had also a little information to ask him for, concerning a professional man of unquestioned erudition and polished manners—but those credentials in their highest development he believed were the possession of other professors of the healing art (jury droop)—whom he had happened to have in the witness-box the day before yesterday, and from whom he had elicited in cross-examination that he claimed to be one of the exponents of this new mode of treatment which appeared to Bar to—eh?—well, Bar thought so; Bar had thought, and hoped, Physician would tell him so. Without presuming to decide where doctors disagreed, it did appear to Bar, viewing it as a question of common sense and not of so-called legal penetration, that this new system was—might be, in the presence of so great an authority—say, Humbug? Ah! Fortified by such encouragement, he could venture to say Humbug; and now Bar’s mind was relieved. Mr Tite Barnacle, who, like Dr johnson’s celebrated acquaintance, had only one idea in his head and that was a wrong one, had appeared by this time. This eminent gentleman and Mr Merdle, seated diverse ways and with ruminating aspects on a yellow ottoman in the light of the fire, holding no verbal communication with each other, bore a strong general resemblance to the two cows in the Cuyp picture over against them. But now, Lord Decimus arrived. The Chief Butler, who up to this time had limited himself to a branch of his usual function by looking at the company as they entered (and that, with more of defiance than favour), put himself so far out of his way as to come up-stairs with him and announce him. Lord Decimus being an overpowering peer, a bashful young member of the Lower House who was the last fish but one caught by the Barnacles, and who had been invited on this occasion to commemorate his capture, shut his eyes when his Lordship came in. Lord Decimus, nevertheless, was glad to see the Member. He was also glad to see Mr Merdle, glad to see Bishop, glad to see Bar, glad to see Physician, glad to see Tite Barnacle, glad to see Chorus, glad to see Ferdinand his private secretary. Lord Decimus, though one of the greatest of the earth, was not remarkable for ingratiatory manners, and Ferdinand had coached him up to the point of noticing all the fellows he might find there, and saying he was glad to see them. When he had achieved this rush of vivacity and condescension, his Lordship composed himself into the picture after Cuyp, and made a third cow in the group. Bar, who felt that he had got all the rest of the jury and must now lay hold of the Foreman, soon came sidling up, double eye-glass in hand. Bar tendered the weather, as a subject neatly aloof from official reserve, for the Foreman’s consideration. Bar said that he was told (as everybody always is told, though who tells them, and why, will ever remain a mystery), that there was to be no wall-fruit this year. Lord Decimus had not heard anything amiss of his peaches, but rather believed, if his people were correct, he was to have no apples. No apples? Bar was lost in astonishment and concern. It would have been all one to him, in reality, if there had not been a pippin on the surface of the earth, but his show of interest in this apple question was positively painful. Now, to what, Lord Decimus—for we troublesome lawyers loved to gather information, and could never tell how useful it might prove to us—to what, Lord Decimus, was this to be attributed? Lord Decimus could not undertake to propound any theory about it. This might have stopped another man; but Bar, sticking to him fresh as ever, said, ‘As to pears, now?’ Long after Bar got made Attorney-General, this was told of him as a master-stroke. Lord Decimus had a reminiscence about a pear-tree formerly growing in a garden near the back of his dame’s house at Eton, upon which pear-tree the only joke of his life perennially bloomed. It was a joke of a compact and portable nature, turning on the difference between Eton pears and Parliamentary pairs; but it was a joke, a refined relish of which would seem to have appeared to Lord Decimus impossible to be had without a thorough and intimate acquaintance with the tree. Therefore, the story at first had no idea of such a tree, sir, then gradually found it in winter, carried it through the changing season, saw it bud, saw it blossom, saw it bear fruit, saw the fruit ripen; in short, cultivated the tree in that diligent and minute manner before it got out of the bed-room window to steal the fruit, that many thanks had been offered up by belated listeners for the trees having been planted and grafted prior to Lord Decimus’s time. Bar’s interest in apples was so overtopped by the rapt suspense in which he pursued the changes of these pears, from the moment when Lord Decimus solemnly opened with ‘Your mentioning pears recalls to my remembrance a pear-tree,’ down to the rich conclusion, ‘And so we pass, through the various changes of life, from Eton pears to Parliamentary pairs,’ that he had to go down-stairs with Lord Decimus, and even then to be seated next to him at table in order that he might hear the anecdote out. By that time, Bar felt that he had secured the Foreman, and might go to dinner with a good appetite. It was a dinner to provoke an appetite, though he had not had one. The rarest dishes, sumptuously cooked and sumptuously served; the choicest fruits; the most exquisite wines; marvels of workmanship in gold and silver, china and glass; in-numerable things delicious to the senses of taste, smell, and sight, were insinuated into its composition. O, what a wonderful man this Merdle, what a great man, what a master man, how blessedly and enviably endowed—in one word, what a rich man! He took his usual poor eighteen-pennyworth of food in his usual indigestive way, and had as little to say for himself as ever a wonderful man had. Fortunately Lord Decimus was one of those sublimities who have no occasion to be talked to, for they can be at any time sufficiently occupied with the contemplation of their own greatness. This enabled the bashful young Member to keep his eyes open long enough at a time to see his dinner. But, whenever Lord Decimus spoke, he shut them again. The agreeable young Barnacle, and Bar, were the talkers of the party. Bishop would have been exceedingly agreeable also, but that his innocence stood in his way. He was so soon left be-hind. When there was any little hint of anything being in the wind, he got lost directly. Worldly affairs were too much for him; he couldn’t make them out at all. This was observable when Bar said, incidentally, that he was happy to have heard that we were soon to have the advantage of enlisting on the good side, the sound and plain sagacity—not demonstrative or ostentatious, but thoroughly sound and practical—of our friend Mr Sparkler. Ferdinand Barnacle laughed, and said oh yes, he believed so. A vote was a vote, and always acceptable. Bar was sorry to miss our good friend Mr Sparkler to-day, Mr Merdle. ‘He is away with Mrs Merdle,’ returned that gentleman, slowly coming out of a long abstraction, in the course of which he had been fitting a tablespoon up his sleeve. ‘It is not indispensable for him to be on the spot.’ ‘The magic name of Merdle,’ said Bar, with the jury droop, ‘no doubt will suffice for all.’ ‘Why—yes—I believe so,’ assented Mr Merdle, putting the spoon aside, and clumsily hiding each of his hands in the coat-cuff of the other hand. ‘I believe the people in my interest down there will not make any difficulty.’ ‘Model people!’ said Bar. ‘I am glad you approve of them,’ said Mr Merdle. ‘And the people of those other two places, now,’ pursued Bar, with a bright twinkle in his keen eye, as it slightly turned in the direction of his magnificent neighbour; ‘we lawyers are always curious, always inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds, since there is no knowing when and where they may fit into some corner;—the people of those other two places now? Do they yield so laudably to the vast and cumulative influence of such enterprise and such renown; do those little rills become absorbed so quietly and easily, and, as it were by the influence of natural laws, so beautifully, in the swoop of the majestic stream as it flows upon its wondrous way enriching the surrounding lands; that their course is perfectly to be calculated, and distinctly to be predicated?’ Mr Merdle, a little troubled by Bar’s eloquence, looked fit-fully about the nearest salt-cellar for some moments, and then said hesitating: ‘They are perfectly aware, sir, of their duty to Society. They will return anybody I send to them for that purpose.’ ‘Cheering to know,’ said Bar. ‘Cheering to know.’ The three places in question were three little rotten holes in this Island, containing three little ignorant, drunken, guzzling, dirty, out-of-the-way constituencies, that had reeled into Mr Merdle’s pocket. Ferdinand Barnacle laughed in his easy way, and airily said they were a nice set of fellows. Bishop, mentally perambulating among paths of peace, was altogether swallowed up in absence of mind. ‘Pray,’ asked Lord Decimus, casting his eyes around the table, ‘what is this story I have heard of a gentleman long con-fined in a debtors’ prison proving to be of a wealthy family, and having come into the inheritance of a large sum of money? I have met with a variety of allusions to it. Do you know anything of it, Ferdinand?’ ‘I only know this much,’ said Ferdinand, ‘that he has given the Department with which I have the honour to be associated;’ this sparkling young Barnacle threw off the phrase sportively, as who should say, We know all about these forms of speech, but we must keep it up, we must keep the game alive; ‘no end of trouble, and has put us into innumerable fixes.’ ‘Fixes?’ repeated Lord Decimus, with a majestic pausing and pondering on the word that made the bashful Member shut his eyes quite tight. ‘Fixes?’ ‘A very perplexing business indeed,’ observed Mr Tite Barnacle, with an air of grave resentment. ‘What,’ said Lord Decimus, ‘was the character of his business; what was the nature of these—a—Fixes, Ferdinand?’

‘Oh, it’s a good story, as a story,’ returned that gentleman; ‘as good a thing of its kind as need be. This Mr Dorrit (his name is Dorrit) had incurred a responsibility to us, ages before the fairy came out of the Bank and gave him his fortune, under a bond he had signed for the performance of a contract which was not at all performed. He was a partner in a house in some large way—spirits, or buttons, or wine, or blacking, or oatmeal, or woollen, or pork, or hooks and eyes, or iron, or treacle, or shoes, or something or other that was wanted for troops, or seamen, or somebody—and the house burst, and we being among the creditors, detainees were lodged on the part of the Crown in a scientific manner, and all the rest Of it. When the fairy had appeared and he wanted to pay us off, Egad we had got into such an exemplary state of checking and counter-checking, signing and counter-signing, that it was six months before we knew how to take the money, or how to give a receipt for it. It was a triumph of public business,’ said this hand-some young Barnacle, laughing heartily, ‘You never saw such a lot of forms in your life. “Why,” the attorney said to me one day, “if I wanted this office to give me two or three thousand pounds instead of take it, I couldn’t have more trouble about it.” “You are right, old fellow,” I told him, “and in future you’ll know that we have something to do here.”’ The pleasant young Barnacle finished by once more laughing heartily. He was a very easy, pleasant fellow indeed, and his manners were exceedingly winning. Mr Tite Barnacle’s view of the business was of a less airy character. He took it ill that Mr Dorrit had troubled the Department by wanting to pay the money, and considered it a grossly informal thing to do after so many years. But Mr Tite Barnacle was a buttoned-up man, and consequently a weighty one. All buttoned-up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are believed in. Whether or no the reserved and never-exercised power of unbuttoning, fascinates mankind; whether or no wisdom is supposed to condense and augment when buttoned up, and to evaporate when unbuttoned; it is certain that the man to whom importance is accorded is the buttoned-up man. Mr Tite Barnacle never would have passed for half his current value, unless his coat had been always buttoned-up to his white cravat.

‘May I ask,’ said Lord Decimus, ‘if Mr Darrit—or Dorrit—has any family?’ Nobody else replying, the host said, ‘He has two daughters, my lord.’ ‘Oh! you are acquainted with him?’ asked Lord Decimus. ‘Mrs Merdle is. Mr Sparkler is, too. In fact,’ said Mr Merdle, ‘I rather believe that one of the young ladies has made an impression on Edmund Sparkler. He is susceptible, and—I—think—the conquest—’ Here Mr Merdle stopped, and looked at the table-cloth, as he usually did when he found him-self observed or listened to. Bar was uncommonly pleased to find that the Merdle family, and this family, had already been brought into contact. He submitted, in a low voice across the table to Bishop, that it was a kind of analogical illustration of those physical laws, in virtue of which Like flies to Like. He regarded this power of attraction in wealth to draw wealth to it, as something remarkably interesting and curious—something indefinably allied to the loadstone and gravitation. Bishop, who had ambled back to earth again when the present theme was broached, acquiesced. He said it was indeed highly important to Society that one in the trying situation of unexpectedly finding himself in-vested with a power for good or for evil in Society, should be-come, as it were, merged in the superior power of a more legitimate and more gigantic growth, the influence of which (as in the case of our friend at whose board we sat) was habitually exercised in harmony with the best interests of Society. Thus, instead of two rival and contending flames, a larger and a lesser, each burning with a lurid and uncertain glare, we had a blended and a softened light whose genial ray diffused an equable warmth throughout the land. Bishop seemed to like his own way of putting the case very much, and rather dwelt upon it; Bar, meanwhile (not to throw away a jury-man), making a show of sitting at his feet and feeding on his precepts. The dinner and dessert being three hours long, the bashful Member cooled in the shadow of Lord Decimus faster than he warmed with food and drink, and had but a chilly time of it. Lord Decimus, like a tall tower in a flat country, seemed to project himself across the table-cloth, hide the light from the honourable Member, cool the honourable Member’s marrow, and give him a woeful idea of distance. When he asked this unfortunate traveller to take wine, he encompassed his faltering steps with the gloomiest of shades; and when he said, ‘Your health sir!’ all around him was barrenness and desolation. At length Lord Decimus, with a coffee-cup in his hand, began to hover about among the pictures, and to cause an interesting speculation to arise in all minds as to the probabilities of his ceasing to hover, and enabling the smaller birds to flutter up-stairs; which could not be done until he had urged his noble pinions in that direction. After some delay, and several stretches of his wings which came to nothing, he soared to the drawing-rooms. And here a difficulty arose, which always does arise when two people are specially brought together at a dinner to confer with one another. Everybody (except Bishop, who had no suspicion of it) knew perfectly well that this dinner had been eaten and drunk, specifically to the end that Lord Decimus and Mr Merdle should have five minutes’ conversation together. The opportunity so elaborately prepared was now arrived, and it seemed from that moment that no mere human ingenuity could so much as get the two chieftains into the same room. Mr Merdle and his noble guest persisted in prowling about at opposite ends of the perspective. It was in vain for the engaging Ferdinand to bring Lord Decimus to look at the bronze horses near Mr Merdle. Then Mr Merdle evaded, and wandered away. It was in vain for him to bring Mr Merdle to Lord Decimus to tell him the history of the unique Dresden vases. Then Lord Decimus evaded and wandered away, while he was getting his man up to the mark. ‘Did you ever see such a thing as this?’ said Ferdinand to Bar when he had been baffled twenty times. ‘Often,’ returned Bar. ‘Unless I butt one of them into an appointed corner, and you butt the other,’ said Ferdinand, ‘it will not come off after all.’ ‘Very good,’ said Bar. ‘I’ll butt Merdle, if you like; but not my lord.’ Ferdinand laughed, in the midst of his vexation. ‘Confound them both!’ said he, looking at his watch. ‘I want to get away. Why the deuce can’t they come together! They both know what they want and mean to do. Look at them!’

They were still looming at opposite ends of the perspective, each with an absurd pretence of not having the other on his mind, which could not have been more transparently ridiculous though his real mind had been chalked on his back. Bishop, who had just now made a third with Bar and Ferdinand, but whose innocence had again cut him out of the subject and washed him in sweet oil, was seen to approach Lord Decimus and glide into conversation. ‘I must get Merdle’s doctor to catch and secure him, I sup-pose,’ said Ferdinand; ‘and then I must lay hold of my illustrious kinsman, and decoy him if I can—drag him if I can’t—to the conference.’ ‘Since you do me the honour,’ said Bar, with his sliest smile, to ask for my poor aid, it shall be yours with the greatest pleasure. I don’t think this is to be done by one man. But if you will undertake to pen my lord into that furthest drawing-room where he is now so profoundly engaged, I will undertake to bring our dear Merdle into the presence, without the possibility of getting away.’ ‘Done!’ said Ferdinand. ‘Done!’ said Bar. Bar was a sight wondrous to behold, and full of matter, when, jauntily waving his double eye-glass by its ribbon, and jauntily drooping to an Universe of jurymen, he, in the most accidental manner ever seen, found himself at Mr Merdle’s shoulder, and embraced that opportunity of mentioning a little point to him, on which he particularly wished to be guided by the light of his practical knowledge. (Here he took Mr Merdle’s arm and walked him gently away.) A banker, whom we would call A. B., advanced a considerable sum of money, which we would call fifteen thousand pounds, to a client or customer of his, whom he would call P. q. (Here, as they were getting to-wards Lord Decimus, he held Mr Merdle tight.) As a security for the repayment of this advance to P. Q. whom we would call a widow lady, there were placed in A. B.’s hands the title-deeds of a freehold estate, which we would call Blinkiter Doddles. Now, the point was this. A limited right of felling and lopping in the woods of Blinkiter Doddles, lay in the son of P. Q. then past his majority, and whom we would call X. Y.—but really this was too bad! In the presence of Lord Decimus, to detain the host with chopping our dry chaff of law, was really too bad! Another time! Bar was truly repentant, and would not say an-other syllable. Would Bishop favour him with half-a-dozen words? (He had now set Mr Merdle down on a couch, side by side with Lord Decimus, and to it they must go, now or never.) And now the rest of the company, highly excited and interested, always excepting Bishop, who had not the slightest idea that anything was going on, formed in one group round the fire in the next drawing-room, and pretended to be chatting easily on the infinite variety of small topics, while everybody’s thoughts and eyes were secretly straying towards the secluded pair. The Chorus were excessively nervous, perhaps as labouring under the dreadful apprehension that some good thing was going to be diverted from them! Bishop alone talked steadily and evenly. He conversed with the great Physician on that relaxation of the throat with which young curates were too frequently afflicted, and on the means of lessening the great pre-valence of that disorder in the church. Physician, as a general rule, was of opinion that the best way to avoid it was to know how to read, before you made a profession of reading. Bishop said dubiously, did he really think so? And Physician said, decidedly, yes he did. Ferdinand, meanwhile, was the only one of the party who skirmished on the outside of the circle; he kept about mid-way between it and the two, as if some sort of surgical operation were being performed by Lord Decimus on Mr Merdle, or by Mr Merdle on Lord Decimus, and his services might at any moment be required as Dresser. In fact, within a quarter of an hour Lord Decimus called to him ‘Ferdinand!’ and he went, and took his place in the conference for some five minutes more. Then a half-suppressed gasp broke out among the Chorus; for Lord Decimus rose to take his leave. Again coached up by Ferdinand to the point of making himself popular, he shook hands in the most brilliant manner with the whole company, and even said to Bar, ‘I hope you were not bored by my pears?’ To which Bar retorted, ‘Eton, my lord, or Parliamentary?’ neatly showing that he had mastered the joke, and delicately insinuating that he could never forget it while his life remained.

All the grave importance that was buttoned up in Mr Tite Barnacle, took itself away next; and Ferdinand took himself away next, to the opera. Some of the rest lingered a little, marrying golden liqueur glasses to buhl tables with sticky rings; on the desperate chance of Mr Merdle’s saying something. But Merdle, as usual, oozed sluggishly and muddily about his drawing-room, saying never a word. In a day or two it was announced to all the town, that Edmund Sparkler, Esquire, son-in-law of the eminent Mr Merdle of worldwide renown, was made one of the Lords of the Circumlocution Office; and proclamation was issued, to all true believers, that this admirable appointment was to be hailed as a graceful and gracious mark of homage, rendered by the graceful and gracious Decimus, to that commercial interest which must ever in a great commercial country—and all the rest of it, with blast of trumpet. So, bolstered by this mark of Government homage, the wonderful Bank and all the other wonderful undertakings went on and went up; and gapers came to Harley Street, Cavendish Square, only to look at the house where the golden wonder lived. And when they saw the Chief Butler looking out at the hall-door in his moments of condescension, the gapers said how rich he looked, and wondered how much money he had in the wonderful Bank. But, if they had known that respectable Nemesis better, they would not have wondered about it, and might have stated the amount with the utmost precision.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13
The Progress of an Epidemic

That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions: is a fact as firmly established by experience as that we human creatures breathe an atmosphere. A blessing beyond appreciation would be conferred upon mankind, if the tainted, in whose weakness or wickedness these virulent disorders are bred, could be instantly seized and placed in close confinement (not to say summarily smothered) before the poison is communicable. As a vast fire will fill the air to a great distance with its roar, so the sacred flame which the mighty Barnacles had fanned caused the air to resound more and more with the name of Merdle. It was deposited on every lip, and carried into every ear. There never was, there never had been, there never again should be, such a man as Mr Merdle. Nobody, as aforesaid, knew what he had done; but everybody knew him to be the greatest that had appeared. Down in Bleeding Heart Yard, where there was not one unappropriated halfpenny, as lively an interest was taken in this paragon of men as on the Stock Exchange. Mrs Plornish, now established in the small grocery and general trade in a snug little shop at the crack end of the Yard, at the top of the steps, with her little old father and Maggy acting as assistants, habitually held forth about him over the counter in conversation with her customers. Mr Plornish, who had a small share in a small builder’s business in the neighbourhood, said, trowel in hand, on the tops of scaffolds and on the tiles of houses, that people did tell him as Mr Merdle was the one, mind you, to put us all to rights in respects of that which all on us looked to, and to bring us all safe home as much as we needed, mind you, fur toe be brought. Mr Baptist, sole lodger of Mr and Mrs Plornish was reputed in whispers to lay by the savings which were the result of his simple and moderate life, for investment in one of Mr Merdle’s certain enterprises. The female Bleeding Hearts, when they came for ounces of tea, and hundredweights of talk, gave Mrs Plornish to understand, That how, ma’am, they had heard from their cousin Mary Anne, which worked in the line, that his lady’s dresses would fill three wagons. That how she was as handsome a lady, ma’am, as lived, no matter wheres, and a busk like marble itself. That how, according to what they was told, ma’am, it was her son by a former husband as was took into the Government; and a General he had been, and armies he had marched again and victory crowned, if all you heard was to be believed. That how it was reported that Mr Merdle’s words had been, that if they could have made it worth his while to take the whole Government he would have took it without a profit, but that take it he could not and stand a loss. That how it was not to be expected, ma’am, that he should lose by it, his ways being, as you might say and utter no falsehood, paved with gold; but that how it was much to be regretted that something handsome hadn’t been got up to make it worth his while; for it was such and only such that knowed the heighth to which the bread and butchers’ meat had rose, and it was such and only such that both could and would bring that heighth down. So rife and potent was the fever in Bleeding Heart Yard, that Mr Pancks’s rent-days caused no interval in the patients. The disease took the singular form, on those occasions, of causing the infected to find an unfathomable excuse and consolation in allusions to the magic name. ‘Now, then!’ Mr Pancks would say, to a defaulting lodger. ‘Pay up! Come on!’ ‘I haven’t got it, Mr Pancks,’ Defaulter would reply. ‘I tell you the truth, sir, when I say I haven’t got so much as a single six-pence of it to bless myself with.’

‘This won’t do, you know,’ Mr Pancks would retort. ‘You don’t expect it will do; do you?’ Defaulter would admit, with a low-spirited ‘No, sir,’ having no such expectation. ‘My proprietor isn’t going to stand this, you know,’ Mr Pancks would proceed. ‘He don’t send me here for this. Pay up! Come!’ The Defaulter would make answer, ‘Ah, Mr Pancks. If I was the rich gentleman whose name is in everybody’s mouth—if my name was Merdle, sir—I’d soon pay up, and be glad to do it.’ Dialogues on the rent-question usually took place at the house-doors or in the entries, and in the presence of several deeply interested Bleeding Hearts. They always received a reference of this kind with a low murmur of response, as if it were convincing; and the Defaulter, however black and discomfited before, always cheered up a little in making it. ‘If I was Mr Merdle, sir, you wouldn’t have cause to complain of me then. No, believe me!’ the Defaulter would proceed with a shake of the head. ‘I’d pay up so quick then, Mr Pancks, that you shouldn’t have to ask me.’ The response would be heard again here, implying that it was impossible to say anything fairer, and that this was the next thing to paying the money down. Mr Pancks would be now reduced to saying as he booked the case, ‘Well! You’ll have the broker in, and be turned out; that’s what’ll happen to you. It’s no use talking to me about Mr Merdle. You are not Mr Merdle, any more than I am.’ ‘No, sir,’ the Defaulter would reply. ‘I only wish you were him, sir.’ The response would take this up quickly; replying with great feeling, ‘Only wish you were him, sir.’ ‘You’d be easier with us if you were Mr Merdle, sir,’ the Defaulter would go on with rising spirits, ‘and it would be better for all parties. Better for our sakes, and better for yours, too. You wouldn’t have to worry no one, then, sir. You wouldn’t have to worry us, and you wouldn’t have to worry yourself. You’d be easier in your own mind, sir, and you’d leave others easier, too, you would, if you were Mr Merdle.’ Mr Pancks, in whom these impersonal compliments produced an irresistible sheepishness, never rallied after such a charge. He could only bite his nails and puff away to the next Defaulter. The responsive Bleeding Hearts would then gather round the Defaulter whom he had just abandoned, and the most extravagant rumours would circulate among them, to their great comfort, touching the amount of Mr Merdle’s ready money. From one of the many such defeats of one of many rent-days, Mr Pancks, having finished his day’s collection, repaired with his note-book under his arm to Mrs Plornish’s corner. Mr Pancks’s object was not professional, but social. He had had a trying day, and wanted a little brightening. By this time he was on friendly terms with the Plornish family, having often looked in upon them at similar seasons, and borne his part in recollections of Miss Dorrit. Mrs Plornish’s shop-parlour had been decorated under her own eye, and presented, on the side towards the shop, a little fiction in which Mrs Plornish unspeakably rejoiced. This poetic-al heightening of the parlour consisted in the wall being painted to represent the exterior of a thatched cottage; the artist having introduced (in as effective a manner as he found compatible with their highly disproportionate dimensions) the real door and window. The modest sunflower and hollyhock were depicted as flourishing with great luxuriance on this rustic dwelling, while a quantity of dense smoke issuing from the chimney indicated good cheer within, and also, perhaps, that it had not been lately swept. A faithful dog was represented as flying at the legs of the friendly visitor, from the threshold; and a circular pigeon-house, enveloped in a cloud of pigeons, arose from behind the garden-paling. On the door (when it was shut), appeared the semblance of a brass-plate, presenting the inscription, Happy Cottage, T. and M. Plornish; the partnership expressing man and wife. No Poetry and no Art ever charmed the imagination more than the union of the two in this counterfeit cottage charmed Mrs Plornish. It was nothing to her that Plornish had a habit of leaning against it as he smoked his pipe after work, when his hat blotted out the pigeon-house and all the pigeons, when his back swallowed up the dwelling, when his hands in his pockets uprooted the blooming garden and laid waste the adjacent country. To Mrs Plornish, it was still a most beautiful cottage, a most wonderful deception; and it made no difference that Mr Plornish’s eye was some inches above the level of the gable bed-room in the thatch. To come out into the shop after it was shut, and hear her father sing a song inside this cottage, was a perfect Pastoral to Mrs Plornish, the Golden Age revived. And truly if that famous period had been revived, or had ever been at all, it may be doubted whether it would have produced many more heartily admiring daughters than the poor woman. Warned of a visitor by the tinkling bell at the shop-door, Mrs Plornish came out of Happy Cottage to see who it might be. ‘I guessed it was you, Mr Pancks,’ said she, ‘for it’s quite your regular night; ain’t it? Here’s father, you see, come out to serve at the sound of the bell, like a brisk young shopman. Ain’t he looking well? Father’s more pleased to see you than if you was a customer, for he dearly loves a gossip; and when it turns upon Miss Dorrit, he loves it all the more. You never heard father in such voice as he is at present,’ said Mrs Plornish, her own voice quavering, she was so proud and pleased. ‘He gave us Strephon last night to that degree that Plornish gets up and makes him this speech across the table. “John Edward Nandy,” says Plornish to father, “I never heard you come the warbles as I have heard you come the warbles this night.” Ain’t it gratifying, Mr Pancks, though; really?’ Mr Pancks, who had snorted at the old man in his friendliest manner, replied in the affirmative, and casually asked whether that lively Altro chap had come in yet? Mrs Plornish answered no, not yet, though he had gone to the West-End with some work, and had said he should be back by tea-time. Mr Pancks was then hospitably pressed into Happy Cottage, where he en-countered the elder Master Plornish just come home from school. Examining that young student, lightly, on the educational proceedings of the day, he found that the more advanced pupils who were in the large text and the letter M, had been set the copy ‘Merdle, Millions.’ ‘And how are you getting on, Mrs Plornish,’ said Pancks, ‘since we’re mentioning millions?’ ‘Very steady, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs Plornish. ‘Father, dear, would you go into the shop and tidy the window a little bit before tea, your taste being so beautiful?’ John Edward Nandy trotted away, much gratified, to comply with his daughter’s request. Mrs Plornish, who was always in mortal terror of mentioning pecuniary affairs before the old gentleman, lest any disclosure she made might rouse his spirit and induce him to run away to the workhouse, was thus left free to be confidential with Mr Pancks. ‘It’s quite true that the business is very steady indeed,’ said Mrs Plornish, lowering her voice; ‘and has a excellent connection. The only thing that stands in its way, sir, is the Credit.’ This drawback, rather severely felt by most people who en-gaged in commercial transactions with the inhabitants of Bleeding Heart Yard, was a large stumbling-block in Mrs Plornish’s trade. When Mr Dorrit had established her in the business, the Bleeding Hearts had shown an amount of emotion and a determination to support her in it, that did honour to human nature. Recognising her claim upon their generous feelings as one who had long been a member of their community, they pledged themselves, with great feeling, to deal with Mrs Plornish, come what would and bestow their patronage on no other establishment. Influenced by these noble sentiments, they had even gone out of their way to purchase little luxuries in the grocery and butter line to which they were unaccustomed; saying to one another, that if they did stretch a point, was it not for a neighbour and a friend, and for whom ought a point to be stretched if not for such? So stimulated, the business was extremely brisk, and the articles in stock went off with the greatest celerity. In short, if the Bleeding Hearts had but paid, the undertaking would have been a complete success; whereas, by reason of their exclusively confining themselves to owing, the profits actually realised had not yet begun to appear in the books. Mr Pancks was making a very porcupine of himself by sticking his hair up in the contemplation of this state of accounts, when old Mr Nandy, re-entering the cottage with an air of mystery, entreated them to come and look at the strange behaviour of Mr Baptist, who seemed to have met with something that had scared him. All three going into the shop, and watching through the window, then saw Mr Baptist, pale and agitated, go through the following extraordinary performances. First, he was observed hiding at the top of the steps leading down into the Yard, and peeping up and down the street with his head cautiously thrust out close to the side of the shop-door. After very anxious scrutiny, he came out of his retreat, and went briskly down the street as if he were going away altogether; then, suddenly turned about, and went, at the same pace, and with the same feint, up the street. He had gone no further up the street than he had gone down, when he crossed the road and disappeared. The object of this last manoeuvre was only apparent, when his entering the shop with a sudden twist, from the steps again, explained that he had made a wide and obscure circuit round to the other, or Doyce and Clennam, end of the Yard, and had come through the Yard and bolted in. He was out of breath by that time, as he might well be, and his heart seemed to jerk faster than the little shop-bell, as it quivered and jingled behind him with his hasty shutting of the door. ‘Hallo, old chap!’ said Mr Pancks. ‘Altro, old boy! What’s the matter?’ Mr Baptist, or Signor Cavalletto, understood English now al-most as well as Mr Pancks himself, and could speak it very well too. Nevertheless, Mrs Plornish, with a pardonable vanity in that accomplishment of hers which made her all but Italian, stepped in as interpreter. ‘E ask know,’ said Mrs Plornish, ‘What go wrong?’ ‘Come into the happy little cottage, Padrona,’ returned Mr Baptist, imparting great stealthiness to his flurried back-handed shake of his right forefinger. ‘Come there!’ Mrs Plornish was proud of the title Padrona, which she regarded as signifying: not so much Mistress of the house, as Mistress of the Italian tongue. She immediately complied with Mr Baptist’s request, and they all went into the cottage. ‘E ope you no fright,’ said Mrs Plornish then, interpreting Mr Pancks in a new way with her usual fertility of resource. ‘What appen? Peaka Padrona!’ ‘I have seen some one,’ returned Baptist. ‘I have rincontrato him.’ ‘Im? Oo him?’ asked Mrs Plornish. ‘A bad man. A baddest man. I have hoped that I should never see him again.’ ‘Ow you know him bad?’ asked Mrs Plornish. ‘It does not matter, Padrona. I know it too well.’ ‘ ‘E see you?’ asked Mrs Plornish.

‘No. I hope not. I believe not.’ ‘He says,’ Mrs Plornish then interpreted, addressing her father and Pancks with mild condescension, ‘that he has met a bad man, but he hopes the bad man didn’t see him—Why,’ inquired Mrs Plornish, reverting to the Italian language, ‘why ope bad man no see?’ ‘Padrona, dearest,’ returned the little foreigner whom she so considerately protected, ‘do not ask, I pray. Once again I say it matters not. I have fear of this man. I do not wish to see him, I do not wish to be known of him—never again! Enough, most beautiful. Leave it.’ The topic was so disagreeable to him, and so put his usual liveliness to the rout, that Mrs Plornish forbore to press him further: the rather as the tea had been drawing for some time on the hob. But she was not the less surprised and curious for asking no more questions; neither was Mr Pancks, whose expressive breathing had been labouring hard since the entrance of the little man, like a locomotive engine with a great load getting up a steep incline. Maggy, now better dressed than of yore, though still faithful to the monstrous character of her cap, had been in the background from the first with open mouth and eyes, which staring and gaping features were not diminished in breadth by the untimely suppression of the subject. However, no more was said about it, though much appeared to be thought on all sides: by no means excepting the two young Plornishes, who partook of the evening meal as if their eating the bread and butter were rendered almost superfluous by the painful probability of the worst of men shortly presenting himself for the purpose of eating them. Mr Baptist, by degrees began to chirp a little; but never stirred from the seat he had taken behind the door and close to the window, though it was not his usual place. As often as the little bell rang, he started and peeped out secretly, with the end of the little curtain in his hand and the rest before his face; evidently not at all satisfied but that the man he dreaded had tracked him through all his doublings and turnings, with the certainty of a terrible bloodhound. The entrance, at various times, of two or three customers and of Mr Plornish, gave Mr Baptist just enough of this employment to keep the attention of the company fixed upon him. Tea was over, and the children were abed, and Mrs Plornish was feeling her way to the dutiful proposal that her father should favour them with Chloe, when the bell rang again, and Mr Clennam came in. Clennam had been poring late over his books and letters; for the waiting-rooms of the Circumlocution Office ravaged his time sorely. Over and above that, he was depressed and made uneasy by the late occurrence at his mother’s. He looked worn and solitary. He felt so, too; but, nevertheless, was returning home from his counting-house by that end of the Yard to give them the intelligence that he had received another letter from Miss Dorrit. The news made a sensation in the cottage which drew off the general attention from Mr Baptist. Maggy, who pushed her way into the foreground immediately, would have seemed to draw in the tidings of her Little Mother equally at her ears, nose, mouth, and eyes, but that the last were obstructed by tears. She was particularly delighted when Clennam assured her that there were hospitals, and very kindly conducted hospitals, in Rome. Mr Pancks rose into new distinction in virtue of being specially remembered in the letter. Everybody was pleased and interested, and Clennam was well repaid for his trouble. ‘But you are tired, sir. Let me make you a cup of tea,’ said Mrs Plornish, ‘if you’d condescend to take such a thing in the cottage; and many thanks to you, too, I am sure, for bearing us in mind so kindly.’ Mr Plornish deeming it incumbent on him, as host, to add his personal acknowledgments, tendered them in the form which always expressed his highest ideal of a combination of ceremony with sincerity. ‘John Edward Nandy,’ said Mr Plornish, addressing the old gentleman. ‘Sir. It’s not too often that you see unpretending actions without a spark of pride, and therefore when you see them give grateful honour unto the same, being that if you don’t, and live to want ’em, it follows serve you right.’ To which Mr Nandy replied: ‘I am heartily of your opinion, Thomas, and which your opinion is the same as mine, and therefore no more words and not being backwards with that opinion, which opinion giving it as yes, Thomas, yes, is the opinion in which yourself and me must ever be unanimously jined by all, and where there is not difference of opinion there can be none but one opinion, which fully no, Thomas, Thomas, no!’ Arthur, with less formality, expressed himself gratified by their high appreciation of so very slight an attention on his part; and explained as to the tea that he had not yet dined, and was going straight home to refresh after a long day’s labour, or he would have readily accepted the hospitable offer. As Mr Pancks was somewhat noisily getting his steam up for departure, he concluded by asking that gentleman if he would walk with him? Mr Pancks said he desired no better engagement, and the two took leave of Happy Cottage. ‘If you will come home with me, Pancks,’ said Arthur, when they got into the street, ‘and will share what dinner or supper there is, it will be next door to an act of charity; for I am weary and out of sorts to-night.’ ‘Ask me to do a greater thing than that,’ said Pancks, ‘when you want it done, and I’ll do it.’ Between this eccentric personage and Clennam, a tacit understanding and accord had been always improving since Mr Pancks flew over Mr Rugg’s back in the Marshalsea Yard. When the carriage drove away on the memorable day of the family’s departure, these two had looked after it together, and had walked slowly away together. When the first letter came from little Dorrit, nobody was more interested in hearing of her than Mr Pancks. The second letter, at that moment in Clennam’s breast-pocket, particularly remembered him by name. Though he had never before made any profession or protestation to Clennam, and though what he had just said was little enough as to the words in which it was expressed, Clennam had long had a growing belief that Mr Pancks, in his own odd way, was becoming attached to him. All these strings intertwining made Pancks a very cable of anchorage that night. ‘I am quite alone,’ Arthur explained as they walked on. ‘My partner is away, busily engaged at a distance on his branch of our business, and you shall do just as you like.’ ‘Thank you. You didn’t take particular notice of little Altro just now; did you?’ said Pancks. ‘No. Why?’

‘He’s a bright fellow, and I like him,’ said Pancks. ‘Something has gone amiss with him to-day. Have you any idea of any cause that can have overset him?’ ‘You surprise me! None whatever.’ Mr Pancks gave his reasons for the inquiry. Arthur was quite unprepared for them, and quite unable to suggest an explanation of them. ‘Perhaps you’ll ask him,’ said Pancks, ‘as he’s a stranger?’ ‘Ask him what?’ returned Clennam. ‘What he has on his mind.’ ‘I ought first to see for myself that he has something on his mind, I think,’ said Clennam. ‘I have found him in every way so diligent, so grateful (for little enough), and so trustworthy, that it might look like suspecting him. And that would be very unjust.’ ‘True,’ said Pancks. ‘But, I say! You oughtn’t to be anybody’s proprietor, Mr Clennam. You’re much too delicate.’ ‘For the matter of that,’ returned Clennam laughing, ‘I have not a large proprietary share in Cavalletto. His carving is his livelihood. He keeps the keys of the Factory, watches it every alternate night, and acts as a sort of housekeeper to it generally; but we have little work in the way of his ingenuity, though we give him what we have. No! I am rather his adviser than his proprietor. To call me his standing counsel and his banker would be nearer the fact. Speaking of being his banker, is it not curious, Pancks, that the ventures which run just now in so many people’s heads, should run even in little Cavalletto’s?’ ‘Ventures?’ retorted Pancks, with a snort. ‘What ventures?’ ‘These Merdle enterprises.’ ‘Oh! Investments,’ said Pancks. ‘Ay, ay! I didn’t know you were speaking of investments.’ His quick way of replying caused Clennam to look at him, with a doubt whether he meant more than he said. As it was accompanied, however, with a quickening of his pace and a corresponding increase in the labouring of his machinery, Arthur did not pursue the matter, and they soon arrived at his house. A dinner of soup and a pigeon-pie, served on a little round table before the fire, and flavoured with a bottle of good wine, oiled Mr Pancks’s works in a highly effective manner; so that when Clennam produced his Eastern pipe, and handed Mr Pancks another Eastern pipe, the latter gentleman was perfectly comfortable. They puffed for a while in silence, Mr Pancks like a steam-vessel with wind, tide, calm water, and all other sea-going conditions in her favour. He was the first to speak, and he spoke thus: ‘Yes. Investments is the word.’ Clennam, with his former look, said ‘Ah!’ ‘I am going back to it, you see,’ said Pancks. ‘Yes. I see you are going back to it,’ returned Clennam, wondering why. ‘Wasn’t it a curious thing that they should run in little Altro’s head? Eh?’ said Pancks as he smoked. ‘Wasn’t that how you put it?’ ‘That was what I said.’ ‘Ay! But think of the whole Yard having got it. Think of their all meeting me with it, on my collecting days, here and there and everywhere. Whether they pay, or whether they don’t pay. Merdle, Merdle, Merdle. Always Merdle.’ ‘Very strange how these runs on an infatuation prevail,’ said Arthur. ‘Ain’t it?’ returned Pancks. After smoking for a minute or so, more drily than comported with his recent oiling, he added: ‘Because you see these people don’t understand the subject.’ ‘Not a bit,’ assented Clennam. ‘Not a bit,’ cried Pancks. ‘Know nothing of figures. Know nothing of money questions. Never made a calculation. Never worked it, sir!’ ‘If they had—’ Clennam was going on to say; when Mr Pancks, without change of countenance, produced a sound so far surpassing all his usual efforts, nasal or bronchial, that he stopped. ‘If they had?’ repeated Pancks in an inquiring tone. ‘I thought you—spoke,’ said Arthur, hesitating what name to give the interruption. ‘Not at all,’ said Pancks. ‘Not yet. I may in a minute. If they had?’ ‘If they had,’ observed Clennam, who was a little at a loss how to take his friend, ‘why, I suppose they would have known better.’

‘How so, Mr Clennam?’ Pancks asked quickly, and with an odd effect of having been from the commencement of the conversation loaded with the heavy charge he now fired off. ‘They’re right, you know. They don’t mean to be, but they’re right.’ ‘Right in sharing Cavalletto’s inclination to speculate with Mr Merdle?’ ‘Per-fectly, sir,’ said Pancks. ‘I’ve gone into it. I’ve made the calculations. I’ve worked it. They’re safe and genuine.’ Relieved by having got to this, Mr Pancks took as long a pull as his lungs would permit at his Eastern pipe, and looked sagaciously and steadily at Clennam while inhaling and exhaling too. In those moments, Mr Pancks began to give out the dangerous infection with which he was laden. It is the manner of communicating these diseases; it is the subtle way in which they go about. ‘Do you mean, my good Pancks,’ asked Clennam emphatic-ally, ‘that you would put that thousand pounds of yours, let us say, for instance, out at this kind of interest?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Pancks. ‘Already done it, sir.’ Mr Pancks took another long inhalation, another long exhalation, another long sagacious look at Clennam. ‘I tell you, Mr Clennam, I’ve gone into it,’ said Pancks. ‘He’s a man of immense resources—enormous capital—government influence. They’re the best schemes afloat. They’re safe. They’re certain.’ ‘Well!’ returned Clennam, looking first at him gravely and then at the fire gravely. ‘You surprise me!’ ‘Bah!’ Pancks retorted. ‘Don’t say that, sir. It’s what you ought to do yourself! Why don’t you do as I do?’ Of whom Mr Pancks had taken the prevalent disease, he could no more have told than if he had unconsciously taken a fever. Bred at first, as many physical diseases are, in the wickedness of men, and then disseminated in their ignorance, these epidemics, after a period, get communicated to many sufferers who are neither ignorant nor wicked. Mr Pancks might, or might not, have caught the illness himself from a subject of this class; but in this category he appeared before Clennam, and the infection he threw off was all the more virulent.

‘And you have really invested,’ Clennam had already passed to that word, ‘your thousand pounds, Pancks?’ ‘To be sure, sir!’ replied Pancks boldly, with a puff of smoke. ‘And only wish it ten!’ Now, Clennam had two subjects lying heavy on his lonely mind that night; the one, his partner’s long-deferred hope; the other, what he had seen and heard at his mother’s. In the relief of having this companion, and of feeling that he could trust him, he passed on to both, and both brought him round again, with an increase and acceleration of force, to his point of departure. It came about in the simplest manner. Quitting the investment subject, after an interval of silent looking at the fire through the smoke of his pipe, he told Pancks how and why he was occupied with the great National Department. ‘A hard case it has been, and a hard case it is on Doyce,’ he finished by saying, with all the honest feeling the topic roused in him. ‘Hard indeed,’ Pancks acquiesced. ‘But you manage for him, Mr Clennam?’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Manage the money part of the business?’ ‘Yes. As well as I can.’ ‘Manage it better, sir,’ said Pancks. ‘Recompense him for his toils and disappointments. Give him the chances of the time. He’ll never benefit himself in that way, patient and preoccupied workman. He looks to you, sir.’ ‘I do my best, Pancks,’ returned Clennam, uneasily. ‘As to duly weighing and considering these new enterprises of which I have had no experience, I doubt if I am fit for it, I am growing old.’ ‘Growing old?’ cried Pancks. ‘Ha, ha!’ There was something so indubitably genuine in the wonderful laugh, and series of snorts and puffs, engendered in Mr Pancks’s astonishment at, and utter rejection of, the idea, that his being quite in earnest could not be questioned. ‘Growing old?’ cried Pancks. ‘Hear, hear, hear! Old? Hear him, hear him!’ The positive refusal expressed in Mr Pancks’s continued snorts, no less than in these exclamations, to entertain the sentiment for a single instant, drove Arthur away from it. Indeed,

he was fearful of something happening to Mr Pancks in the violent conflict that took place between the breath he jerked out of himself and the smoke he jerked into himself. This abandonment of the second topic threw him on the third. ‘Young, old, or middle-aged, Pancks,’ he said, when there was a favourable pause, ‘I am in a very anxious and uncertain state; a state that even leads me to doubt whether anything now seeming to belong to me, may be really mine. Shall I tell you how this is? Shall I put a great trust in you?’ ‘You shall, sir,’ said Pancks, ‘if you believe me worthy of it.’ ‘I do.’ ‘You may!’ Mr Pancks’s short and sharp rejoinder, confirmed by the sudden outstretching of his coaly hand, was most expressive and convincing. Arthur shook the hand warmly. He then, softening the nature of his old apprehensions as much as was possible consistently with their being made intelligible and never alluding to his mother by name, but speaking vaguely of a relation of his, confided to Mr Pancks a broad out-line of the misgivings he entertained, and of the interview he had witnessed. Mr Pancks listened with such interest that, regardless of the charms of the Eastern pipe, he put it in the grate among the fire-irons, and occupied his hands during the whole recital in so erecting the loops and hooks of hair all over his head, that he looked, when it came to a conclusion, like a journeyman Hamlet in conversation with his father’s spirit. ‘Brings me back, sir,’ was his exclamation then, with a start-ling touch on Clennam’s knee, ‘brings me back, sir, to the In-vestments! I don’t say anything of your making yourself poor to repair a wrong you never committed. That’s you. A man must be himself. But I say this, fearing you may want money to save your own blood from exposure and disgrace—make as much as you can!’ Arthur shook his head, but looked at him thoughtfully too. ‘Be as rich as you can, sir,’ Pancks adjured him with a powerful concentration of all his energies on the advice. ‘Be as rich as you honestly can. It’s your duty. Not for your sake, but for the sake of others. Take time by the forelock. Poor Mr Doyce (who really is growing old) depends upon you. Your relative depends upon you. You don’t know what depends upon you.’ ‘Well, well, well!’ returned Arthur. ‘Enough for to-night.’

‘One word more, Mr Clennam,’ retorted Pancks, ‘and then enough for to-night. Why should you leave all the gains to the gluttons, knaves, and impostors? Why should you leave all the gains that are to be got to my proprietor and the like of him? Yet you’re always doing it. When I say you, I mean such men as you. You know you are. Why, I see it every day of my life. I see nothing else. It’s my business to see it. Therefore I say,’ urged Pancks, ‘Go in and win!’ ‘But what of Go in and lose?’ said Arthur. ‘Can’t be done, sir,’ returned Pancks. ‘I have looked into it. Name up everywhere—immense resources—enormous capital—great position—high connection—government influence. Can’t be done!’ Gradually, after this closing exposition, Mr Pancks subsided; allowed his hair to droop as much as it ever would droop on the utmost persuasion; reclaimed the pipe from the fire-irons, filled it anew, and smoked it out. They said little more; but were company to one another in silently pursuing the same subjects, and did not part until midnight. On taking his leave, Mr Pancks, when he had shaken hands with Clennam, worked completely round him before he steamed out at the door. This, Arthur received as an assurance that he might implicitly rely on Pancks, if he ever should come to need assistance; either in any of the matters of which they had spoken that night, or any other subject that could in any way affect himself. At intervals all next day, and even while his attention was fixed on other things, he thought of Mr Pancks’s investment of his thousand pounds, and of his having ‘looked into it.’ He thought of Mr Pancks’s being so sanguine in this matter, and of his not being usually of a sanguine character. He thought of the great National Department, and of the delight it would be to him to see Doyce better off. He thought of the darkly threatening place that went by the name of Home in his remembrance, and of the gathering shadows which made it yet more darkly threatening than of old. He observed anew that wherever he went, he saw, or heard, or touched, the celebrated name of Merdle; he found it difficult even to remain at his desk a couple of hours, without having it presented to one of his bodily senses through some agency or other. He began to think it was curious too that it should be everywhere, and that nobody but he should seem to have any mistrust of it. Though indeed he began to remember, when he got to this, even he did not mistrust it; he had only happened to keep aloof from it. Such symptoms, when a disease of the kind is rife, are usually the signs of sickening.