lights, tell you you are a capital subject, and consider when I shall be
sufficiently disengaged to devote myself 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 better.
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 gentleman, 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 propose 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 elbows 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 congeniality 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 before 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 prevent 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 gateway 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 himself 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 carefully 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 desire 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. 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 encounter 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 support 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 exchanging
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 important 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 invented 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 gentlemen 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, counter-counter-signing,
referring backwards and forwards, and referring sideways, crosswise, and
zig-zag, 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 exclaim, 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 prepared 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 seasons), 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 prepared 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 admonition 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 entreaty 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 indifferent 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 prevent 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. 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 proverb, ‘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 London again. At all times, and under all circumstances, Mrs
Tickit, 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 anybody 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 Tickit,
‘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 belonged 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 supposed 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-waggons 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 yourself 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, before he could
discern what was passing there, that the man was coming back alone.
Clennam lounged into the road, towards 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-in-arm 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 respectable
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, supposed 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 return, 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 Maccaroni if they really
eat it like the conjurors 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 considerable 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 ensued. 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 released 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. 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 troublesome 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, towards 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 entrance, 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 elbows; 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 esteemed 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 returns, 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 offence 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 bagwig, 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 behind 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. 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 anybody else, because he has no belief in himself. Is it so?
I wonder 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 accompanies 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 themselves or their
daughters. Then he goes into the country besides, 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 resolved
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
sometimes 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 everywhere. 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 shadow 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 always 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 always 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. 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 centre-piece, 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 bestriding 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,’ returned 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
intended 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 otherwise 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 wrapt 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; innumerable 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 eighteenpennyworth 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