When Mr and Mrs Flintwinch panted up to the door of the old house in the
twilight, Jeremiah within a second of Affery, the stranger started back.
‘Death of my soul!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, how did you get here?’
Mr Flintwinch, to whom these words were spoken, repaid the stranger’s
wonder in full. He gazed at him with blank astonishment; he looked over
his own shoulder, as expecting to see some one he had not been aware of
standing behind him; he gazed at the stranger again, speechlessly, at
a loss to know what he meant; he looked to his wife for explanation;
receiving none, he pounced upon her, and shook her with such heartiness
that he shook her cap off her head, saying between his teeth, with grim
raillery, as he did it, ‘Affery, my woman, you must have a dose, my
woman! This is some of your tricks! You have been dreaming again,
mistress. What’s it about? Who is it? What does it mean! Speak out or be
choked! It’s the only choice I’ll give you.’
Supposing Mistress Affery to have any power of election at the moment,
her choice was decidedly to be choked; for she answered not a syllable
to this adjuration, but, with her bare head wagging violently backwards
and forwards, resigned herself to her punishment. The stranger, however,
picking up her cap with an air of gallantry, interposed.
‘Permit me,’ said he, laying his hand on the shoulder of Jeremiah, who
stopped and released his victim. ‘Thank you. Excuse me. Husband and
wife I know, from this playfulness. Haha! Always agreeable to see that
relation playfully maintained. Listen! May I suggest that somebody
up-stairs, in the dark, is becoming energetically curious to know what
is going on here?’
This reference to Mrs Clennam’s voice reminded Mr Flintwinch to step
into the hall and call up the staircase. ‘It’s all right, I am here,
Affery is coming with your light.’ Then he said to the latter
flustered woman, who was putting her cap on, ‘Get out with you, and get
up-stairs!’ and then turned to the stranger and said to him, ‘Now, sir,
what might you please to want?’
‘I am afraid,’ said the stranger, ‘I must be so troublesome as to
propose a candle.’
‘True,’ assented Jeremiah. ‘I was going to do so. Please to stand where
you are while I get one.’
The visitor was standing in the doorway, but turned a little into the
gloom of the house as Mr Flintwinch turned, and pursued him with his
eyes into the little room, where he groped about for a phosphorus box.
When he found it, it was damp, or otherwise out of order; and match
after match that he struck into it lighted sufficiently to throw a dull
glare about his groping face, and to sprinkle his hands with pale little
spots of fire, but not sufficiently to light the candle. The stranger,
taking advantage of this fitful illumination of his visage, looked
intently and wonderingly at him. Jeremiah, when he at last lighted
the candle, knew he had been doing this, by seeing the last shade of
a lowering watchfulness clear away from his face, as it broke into the
doubtful smile that was a large ingredient in its expression.
‘Be so good,’ said Jeremiah, closing the house door, and taking a pretty
sharp survey of the smiling visitor in his turn, ‘as to step into my
counting-house.--It’s all right, I tell you!’ petulantly breaking off to
answer the voice up-stairs, still unsatisfied, though Affery was there,
speaking in persuasive tones. ‘Don’t I tell you it’s all right? Preserve
the woman, has she no reason at all in her!’
‘Timorous,’ remarked the stranger.
‘Timorous?’ said Mr Flintwinch, turning his head to retort, as he went
before with the candle. ‘More courageous than ninety men in a hundred,
sir, let me tell you.’
‘Though an invalid?’
‘Many years an invalid. Mrs Clennam. The only one of that name left
in the House now. My partner.’
Saying something apologetically as he crossed the hall, to the effect
that at that time of night they were not in the habit of receiving any
one, and were always shut up, Mr Flintwinch led the way into his own
office, which presented a sufficiently business-like appearance. Here he
put the light on his desk, and said to the stranger, with his wryest
twist upon him, ‘Your commands.’
‘My name is Blandois.’
‘Blandois. I don’t know it,’ said Jeremiah.
‘I thought it possible,’ resumed the other, ‘that you might have been
advised from Paris--’
‘We have had no advice from Paris respecting anybody of the name of
Blandois,’ said Jeremiah.
‘No?’
‘No.’
Jeremiah stood in his favourite attitude. The smiling Mr Blandois,
opening his cloak to get his hand to a breast-pocket, paused to say,
with a laugh in his glittering eyes, which it occurred to Mr Flintwinch
were too near together:
‘You are so like a friend of mine! Not so identically the same as I
supposed when I really did for the moment take you to be the same in the
dusk--for which I ought to apologise; permit me to do so; a readiness
to confess my errors is, I hope, a part of the frankness of my
character--still, however, uncommonly like.’
‘Indeed?’ said Jeremiah, perversely. ‘But I have not received any letter
of advice from anywhere respecting anybody of the name of Blandois.’
‘Just so,’ said the stranger.
‘_Just_ so,’ said Jeremiah.
Mr Blandois, not at all put out by this omission on the part of the
correspondents of the house of Clennam and Co., took his pocket-book
from his breast-pocket, selected a letter from that receptacle, and
handed it to Mr Flintwinch. ‘No doubt you are well acquainted with the
writing. Perhaps the letter speaks for itself, and requires no advice.
You are a far more competent judge of such affairs than I am. It is my
misfortune to be, not so much a man of business, as what the world calls
(arbitrarily) a gentleman.’
Mr Flintwinch took the letter, and read, under date of Paris, ‘We have
to present to you, on behalf of a highly esteemed correspondent of our
Firm, M. Blandois, of this city,’ &c. &c. ‘Such facilities as he may
require and such attentions as may lie in your power,’ &c. &c. ‘Also
have to add that if you will honour M. Blandois’ drafts at sight to the
extent of, say Fifty Pounds sterling (50_l_.),’ &c. &c.
‘Very good, sir,’ said Mr Flintwinch. ‘Take a chair. To the extent of
anything that our House can do--we are in a retired, old-fashioned,
steady way of business, sir--we shall be happy to render you our best
assistance. I observe, from the date of this, that we could not yet be
advised of it. Probably you came over with the delayed mail that brings
the advice.’
‘That I came over with the delayed mail, sir,’ returned Mr Blandois,
passing his white hand down his high-hooked nose, ‘I know to the cost
of my head and stomach: the detestable and intolerable weather having
racked them both. You see me in the plight in which I came out of the
packet within this half-hour. I ought to have been here hours ago,
and then I should not have to apologise--permit me to apologise--for
presenting myself so unreasonably, and frightening--no, by-the-bye, you
said not frightening; permit me to apologise again--the esteemed lady,
Mrs Clennam, in her invalid chamber above stairs.’
Swagger and an air of authorised condescension do so much, that
Mr Flintwinch had already begun to think this a highly gentlemanly
personage. Not the less unyielding with him on that account, he scraped
his chin and said, what could he have the honour of doing for Mr
Blandois to-night, out of business hours?
‘Faith!’ returned that gentleman, shrugging his cloaked shoulders,
‘I must change, and eat and drink, and be lodged somewhere. Have the
kindness to advise me, a total stranger, where, and money is a matter of
perfect indifference until to-morrow. The nearer the place, the better.
Next door, if that’s all.’
Mr Flintwinch was slowly beginning, ‘For a gentleman of your habits,
there is not in this immediate neighbourhood any hotel--’ when Mr
Blandois took him up.
‘So much for my habits! my dear sir,’ snapping his fingers. ‘A citizen
of the world has no habits. That I am, in my poor way, a gentleman,
by Heaven! I will not deny, but I have no unaccommodating prejudiced
habits. A clean room, a hot dish for dinner, and a bottle of not
absolutely poisonous wine, are all I want tonight. But I want that much
without the trouble of going one unnecessary inch to get it.’
‘There is,’ said Mr Flintwinch, with more than his usual deliberation,
as he met, for a moment, Mr Blandois’ shining eyes, which were restless;
‘there is a coffee-house and tavern close here, which, so far, I can
recommend; but there’s no style about it.’
‘I dispense with style!’ said Mr Blandois, waving his hand. ‘Do me the
honour to show me the house, and introduce me there (if I am not too
troublesome), and I shall be infinitely obliged.’
Mr Flintwinch, upon this, looked up his hat, and lighted Mr Blandois
across the hall again. As he put the candle on a bracket, where the
dark old panelling almost served as an extinguisher for it, he bethought
himself of going up to tell the invalid that he would not be absent five
minutes.
‘Oblige me,’ said the visitor, on his saying so, ‘by presenting my card
of visit. Do me the favour to add that I shall be happy to wait on Mrs
Clennam, to offer my personal compliments, and to apologise for having
occasioned any agitation in this tranquil corner, if it should suit her
convenience to endure the presence of a stranger for a few minutes,
after he shall have changed his wet clothes and fortified himself with
something to eat and drink.’
Jeremiah made all despatch, and said, on his return, ‘She’ll be glad
to see you, sir; but, being conscious that her sick room has no
attractions, wishes me to say that she won’t hold you to your offer, in
case you should think better of it.’
‘To think better of it,’ returned the gallant Blandois, ‘would be to
slight a lady; to slight a lady would be to be deficient in chivalry
towards the sex; and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my
character!’ Thus expressing himself, he threw the draggled skirt of his
cloak over his shoulder, and accompanied Mr Flintwinch to the tavern;
taking up on the road a porter who was waiting with his portmanteau on
the outer side of the gateway.
The house was kept in a homely manner, and the condescension of Mr
Blandois was infinite. It seemed to fill to inconvenience the little bar
in which the widow landlady and her two daughters received him; it was
much too big for the narrow wainscoted room with a bagatelle-board in
it, that was first proposed for his reception; it perfectly swamped the
little private holiday sitting-room of the family, which was finally
given up to him. Here, in dry clothes and scented linen, with sleeked
hair, a great ring on each forefinger and a massive show of watch-chain,
Mr Blandois waiting for his dinner, lolling on a window-seat with his
knees drawn up, looked (for all the difference in the setting of the
jewel) fearfully and wonderfully like a certain Monsieur Rigaud who had
once so waited for his breakfast, lying on the stone ledge of the iron
grating of a cell in a villainous dungeon at Marseilles.
His greed at dinner, too, was closely in keeping with the greed of
Monsieur Rigaud at breakfast. His avaricious manner of collecting all
the eatables about him, and devouring some with his eyes while devouring
others with his jaws, was the same manner. His utter disregard of
other people, as shown in his way of tossing the little womanly toys
of furniture about, flinging favourite cushions under his boots for a
softer rest, and crushing delicate coverings with his big body and his
great black head, had the same brute selfishness at the bottom of it.
The softly moving hands that were so busy among the dishes had the old
wicked facility of the hands that had clung to the bars. And when he
could eat no more, and sat sucking his delicate fingers one by one and
wiping them on a cloth, there wanted nothing but the substitution of
vine-leaves to finish the picture.
On this man, with his moustache going up and his nose coming down in
that most evil of smiles, and with his surface eyes looking as if they
belonged to his dyed hair, and had had their natural power of reflecting
light stopped by some similar process, Nature, always true, and never
working in vain, had set the mark, Beware! It was not her fault, if the
warning were fruitless. She is never to blame in any such instance.
Mr Blandois, having finished his repast and cleaned his fingers, took
a cigar from his pocket, and, lying on the window-seat again, smoked it
out at his leisure, occasionally apostrophising the smoke as it parted
from his thin lips in a thin stream:
‘Blandois, you shall turn the tables on society, my little child. Haha!
Holy blue, you have begun well, Blandois! At a pinch, an excellent
master in English or French; a man for the bosom of families! You have
a quick perception, you have humour, you have ease, you have insinuating
manners, you have a good appearance; in effect, you are a gentleman! A
gentleman you shall live, my small boy, and a gentleman you shall die.
You shall win, however the game goes. They shall all confess your merit,
Blandois. You shall subdue the society which has grievously wronged
you, to your own high spirit. Death of my soul! You are high spirited by
right and by nature, my Blandois!’
To such soothing murmurs did this gentleman smoke out his cigar and
drink out his bottle of wine. Both being finished, he shook himself into
a sitting attitude; and with the concluding serious apostrophe, ‘Hold,
then! Blandois, you ingenious one, have all your wits about you!’ arose
and went back to the house of Clennam and Co.
He was received at the door by Mistress Affery, who, under instructions
from her lord, had lighted up two candles in the hall and a third on the
staircase, and who conducted him to Mrs Clennam’s room. Tea was prepared
there, and such little company arrangements had been made as usually
attended the reception of expected visitors. They were slight on the
greatest occasion, never extending beyond the production of the China
tea-service, and the covering of the bed with a sober and sad drapery.
For the rest, there was the bier-like sofa with the block upon it, and
the figure in the widow’s dress, as if attired for execution; the fire
topped by the mound of damped ashes; the grate with its second little
mound of ashes; the kettle and the smell of black dye; all as they had
been for fifteen years.
Mr Flintwinch presented the gentleman commended to the consideration of
Clennam and Co. Mrs Clennam, who had the letter lying before her, bent
her head and requested him to sit. They looked very closely at one
another. That was but natural curiosity.
‘I thank you, sir, for thinking of a disabled woman like me. Few who
come here on business have any remembrance to bestow on one so removed
from observation. It would be idle to expect that they should have. Out
of sight, out of mind. While I am grateful for the exception, I don’t
complain of the rule.’
Mr Blandois, in his most gentlemanly manner, was afraid he had disturbed
her by unhappily presenting himself at such an unconscionable time. For
which he had already offered his best apologies to Mr--he begged
pardon--but by name had not the distinguished honour--
‘Mr Flintwinch has been connected with the House many years.’
Mr Blandois was Mr Flintwinch’s most obedient humble servant. He
entreated Mr Flintwinch to receive the assurance of his profoundest
consideration.
‘My husband being dead,’ said Mrs Clennam, ‘and my son preferring
another pursuit, our old House has no other representative in these days
than Mr Flintwinch.’
‘What do you call yourself?’ was the surly demand of that gentleman.
‘You have the head of two men.’
‘My sex disqualifies me,’ she proceeded with merely a slight turn of
her eyes in Jeremiah’s direction, ‘from taking a responsible part in
the business, even if I had the ability; and therefore Mr Flintwinch
combines my interest with his own, and conducts it. It is not what it
used to be; but some of our old friends (principally the writers of this
letter) have the kindness not to forget us, and we retain the power
of doing what they entrust to us as efficiently as we ever did. This
however is not interesting to you. You are English, sir?’
‘Faith, madam, no; I am neither born nor bred in England. In effect, I
am of no country,’ said Mr Blandois, stretching out his leg and smiting
it: ‘I descend from half-a-dozen countries.’
‘You have been much about the world?’
‘It is true. By Heaven, madam, I have been here and there and
everywhere!’
‘You have no ties, probably. Are not married?’
‘Madam,’ said Mr Blandois, with an ugly fall of his eyebrows, ‘I adore
your sex, but I am not married--never was.’
Mistress Affery, who stood at the table near him, pouring out the tea,
happened in her dreamy state to look at him as he said these words, and
to fancy that she caught an expression in his eyes which attracted her
own eyes so that she could not get them away. The effect of this fancy
was to keep her staring at him with the tea-pot in her hand, not only to
her own great uneasiness, but manifestly to his, too; and, through them
both, to Mrs Clennam’s and Mr Flintwinch’s. Thus a few ghostly moments
supervened, when they were all confusedly staring without knowing why.
‘Affery,’ her mistress was the first to say, ‘what is the matter with
you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mistress Affery, with her disengaged left hand
extended towards the visitor. ‘It ain’t me. It’s him!’
‘What does this good woman mean?’ cried Mr Blandois, turning white, hot,
and slowly rising with a look of such deadly wrath that it contrasted
surprisingly with the slight force of his words. ‘How is it possible to
understand this good creature?’
‘It’s _not_ possible,’ said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself rapidly
in that direction. ‘She don’t know what she means. She’s an idiot, a
wanderer in her mind. She shall have a dose, she shall have such a dose!
Get along with you, my woman,’ he added in her ear, ‘get along with you,
while you know you’re Affery, and before you’re shaken to yeast.’
Mistress Affery, sensible of the danger in which her identity stood,
relinquished the tea-pot as her husband seized it, put her apron over
her head, and in a twinkling vanished. The visitor gradually broke into
a smile, and sat down again.
‘You’ll excuse her, Mr Blandois,’ said Jeremiah, pouring out the tea
himself, ‘she’s failing and breaking up; that’s what she’s about. Do you
take sugar, sir?’
‘Thank you, no tea for me.--Pardon my observing it, but that’s a very
remarkable watch!’
The tea-table was drawn up near the sofa, with a small interval between
it and Mrs Clennam’s own particular table. Mr Blandois in his gallantry
had risen to hand that lady her tea (her dish of toast was already
there), and it was in placing the cup conveniently within her reach that
the watch, lying before her as it always did, attracted his attention.
Mrs Clennam looked suddenly up at him.
‘May I be permitted? Thank you. A fine old-fashioned watch,’ he said,
taking it in his hand. ‘Heavy for use, but massive and genuine. I have
a partiality for everything genuine. Such as I am, I am genuine myself.
Hah! A gentleman’s watch with two cases in the old fashion. May I remove
it from the outer case? Thank you. Aye? An old silk watch-lining, worked
with beads! I have often seen these among old Dutch people and Belgians.
Quaint things!’
‘They are old-fashioned, too,’ said Mrs Clennam.
‘Very. But this is not so old as the watch, I think?’
‘I think not.’
‘Extraordinary how they used to complicate these cyphers!’ remarked Mr
Blandois, glancing up with his own smile again. ‘Now is this D. N. F.?
It might be almost anything.’
‘Those are the letters.’
Mr Flintwinch, who had been observantly pausing all this time with a cup
of tea in his hand, and his mouth open ready to swallow the contents,
began to do so: always entirely filling his mouth before he emptied it
at a gulp; and always deliberating again before he refilled it.
‘D. N. F. was some tender, lovely, fascinating fair-creature, I make no
doubt,’ observed Mr Blandois, as he snapped on the case again. ‘I adore
her memory on the assumption. Unfortunately for my peace of mind,
I adore but too readily. It may be a vice, it may be a virtue, but
adoration of female beauty and merit constitutes three parts of my
character, madam.’
Mr Flintwinch had by this time poured himself out another cup of tea,
which he was swallowing in gulps as before, with his eyes directed to
the invalid.
‘You may be heart-free here, sir,’ she returned to Mr Blandois. ‘Those
letters are not intended, I believe, for the initials of any name.’
‘Of a motto, perhaps,’ said Mr Blandois, casually.
‘Of a sentence. They have always stood, I believe, for Do Not Forget!’
‘And naturally,’ said Mr Blandois, replacing the watch and stepping
backward to his former chair, ‘you do _not_ forget.’
Mr Flintwinch, finishing his tea, not only took a longer gulp than he
had taken yet, but made his succeeding pause under new circumstances:
that is to say, with his head thrown back and his cup held still at his
lips, while his eyes were still directed at the invalid. She had that
force of face, and that concentrated air of collecting her firmness or
obstinacy, which represented in her case what would have been gesture
and action in another, as she replied with her deliberate strength of
speech:
‘No, sir, I do not forget. To lead a life as monotonous as mine has been
during many years, is not the way to forget. To lead a life of
self-correction is not the way to forget. To be sensible of having (as
we all have, every one of us, all the children of Adam!) offences
to expiate and peace to make, does not justify the desire to forget.
Therefore I have long dismissed it, and I neither forget nor wish to
forget.’
Mr Flintwinch, who had latterly been shaking the sediment at the bottom
of his tea-cup, round and round, here gulped it down, and putting the
cup in the tea-tray, as done with, turned his eyes upon Mr Blandois as
if to ask him what he thought of that?
‘All expressed, madam,’ said Mr Blandois, with his smoothest bow and his
white hand on his breast, ‘by the word “naturally,” which I am proud
to have had sufficient apprehension and appreciation (but without
appreciation I could not be Blandois) to employ.’
‘Pardon me, sir,’ she returned, ‘if I doubt the likelihood of a
gentleman of pleasure, and change, and politeness, accustomed to court
and to be courted--’
‘Oh madam! By Heaven!’
‘--If I doubt the likelihood of such a character quite comprehending
what belongs to mine in my circumstances. Not to obtrude doctrine upon
you,’ she looked at the rigid pile of hard pale books before her, ‘(for
you go your own way, and the consequences are on your own head), I will
say this much: that I shape my course by pilots, strictly by proved and
tried pilots, under whom I cannot be shipwrecked--can not be--and that
if I were unmindful of the admonition conveyed in those three letters, I
should not be half as chastened as I am.’
It was curious how she seized the occasion to argue with some invisible
opponent. Perhaps with her own better sense, always turning upon herself
and her own deception.
‘If I forgot my ignorances in my life of health and freedom, I might
complain of the life to which I am now condemned. I never do; I never
have done. If I forgot that this scene, the Earth, is expressly meant to
be a scene of gloom, and hardship, and dark trial, for the creatures who
are made out of its dust, I might have some tenderness for its vanities.
But I have no such tenderness. If I did not know that we are, every one,
the subject (most justly the subject) of a wrath that must be satisfied,
and against which mere actions are nothing, I might repine at the
difference between me, imprisoned here, and the people who pass that
gateway yonder. But I take it as a grace and favour to be elected to
make the satisfaction I am making here, to know what I know for certain
here, and to work out what I have worked out here. My affliction might
otherwise have had no meaning to me. Hence I would forget, and I do
forget, nothing. Hence I am contented, and say it is better with me
than with millions.’
As she spoke these words, she put her hand upon the watch, and restored
it to the precise spot on her little table which it always occupied.
With her touch lingering upon it, she sat for some moments afterwards,
looking at it steadily and half-defiantly.
Mr Blandois, during this exposition, had been strictly attentive,
keeping his eyes fastened on the lady, and thoughtfully stroking his
moustache with his two hands. Mr Flintwinch had been a little fidgety,
and now struck in.
‘There, there, there!’ said he. ‘That is quite understood, Mrs Clennam,
and you have spoken piously and well. Mr Blandois, I suspect, is not
of a pious cast.’
‘On the contrary, sir!’ that gentleman protested, snapping his fingers.
‘Your pardon! It’s a part of my character. I am sensitive, ardent,
conscientious, and imaginative. A sensitive, ardent, conscientious, and
imaginative man, Mr Flintwinch, must be that, or nothing!’
There was an inkling of suspicion in Mr Flintwinch’s face that he might
be nothing, as he swaggered out of his chair (it was characteristic of
this man, as it is of all men similarly marked, that whatever he did,
he overdid, though it were sometimes by only a hairsbreadth), and
approached to take his leave of Mrs Clennam.
‘With what will appear to you the egotism of a sick old woman, sir,’ she
then said, ‘though really through your accidental allusion, I have
been led away into the subject of myself and my infirmities. Being so
considerate as to visit me, I hope you will be likewise so considerate
as to overlook that. Don’t compliment me, if you please.’ For he was
evidently going to do it. ‘Mr Flintwinch will be happy to render you any
service, and I hope your stay in this city may prove agreeable.’
Mr Blandois thanked her, and kissed his hand several times. ‘This is an
old room,’ he remarked, with a sudden sprightliness of manner, looking
round when he got near the door, ‘I have been so interested that I have
not observed it. But it’s a genuine old room.’
‘It is a genuine old house,’ said Mrs Clennam, with her frozen smile. ‘A
place of no pretensions, but a piece of antiquity.’
‘Faith!’ cried the visitor. ‘If Mr Flintwinch would do me the favour to
take me through the rooms on my way out, he could hardly oblige me more.
An old house is a weakness with me. I have many weaknesses, but none
greater. I love and study the picturesque in all its varieties. I have
been called picturesque myself. It is no merit to be picturesque--I
have greater merits, perhaps--but I may be, by an accident. Sympathy,
sympathy!’
‘I tell you beforehand, Mr Blandois, that you’ll find it very dingy and
very bare,’ said Jeremiah, taking up the candle. ‘It’s not worth your
looking at.’But Mr Blandois, smiting him in a friendly manner on the
back, only laughed; so the said Blandois kissed his hand again to Mrs
Clennam, and they went out of the room together.
‘You don’t care to go up-stairs?’ said Jeremiah, on the landing.
‘On the contrary, Mr Flintwinch; if not tiresome to you, I shall be
ravished!’
Mr Flintwinch, therefore, wormed himself up the staircase, and Mr
Blandois followed close. They ascended to the great garret bed-room
which Arthur had occupied on the night of his return. ‘There, Mr
Blandois!’ said Jeremiah, showing it, ‘I hope you may think that worth
coming so high to see. I confess I don’t.’
Mr Blandois being enraptured, they walked through other garrets and
passages, and came down the staircase again. By this time Mr Flintwinch
had remarked that he never found the visitor looking at any room, after
throwing one quick glance around, but always found the visitor looking
at him, Mr Flintwinch. With this discovery in his thoughts, he turned
about on the staircase for another experiment. He met his eyes directly;
and on the instant of their fixing one another, the visitor, with
that ugly play of nose and moustache, laughed (as he had done at every
similar moment since they left Mrs Clennam’s chamber) a diabolically
silent laugh.
As a much shorter man than the visitor, Mr Flintwinch was at the
physical disadvantage of being thus disagreeably leered at from a
height; and as he went first down the staircase, and was usually a
step or two lower than the other, this disadvantage was at the time
increased. He postponed looking at Mr Blandois again until this
accidental inequality was removed by their having entered the late Mr
Clennam’s room. But, then twisting himself suddenly round upon him, he
found his look unchanged.
‘A most admirable old house,’ smiled Mr Blandois. ‘So mysterious. Do you
never hear any haunted noises here?’
‘Noises,’ returned Mr Flintwinch. ‘No.’
‘Nor see any devils?’
‘Not,’ said Mr Flintwinch, grimly screwing himself at his questioner,
‘not any that introduce themselves under that name and in that
capacity.’
‘Haha! A portrait here, I see.’
(Still looking at Mr Flintwinch, as if he were the portrait.)
‘It’s a portrait, sir, as you observe.’
‘May I ask the subject, Mr Flintwinch?’
‘Mr Clennam, deceased. Her husband.’
‘Former owner of the remarkable watch, perhaps?’ said the visitor.
Mr Flintwinch, who had cast his eyes towards the portrait, twisted
himself about again, and again found himself the subject of the same
look and smile. ‘Yes, Mr Blandois,’ he replied tartly. ‘It was his, and
his uncle’s before him, and Lord knows who before him; and that’s all I
can tell you of its pedigree.’
‘That’s a strongly marked character, Mr Flintwinch, our friend
up-stairs.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jeremiah, twisting himself at the visitor again, as he
did during the whole of this dialogue, like some screw-machine that
fell short of its grip; for the other never changed, and he always
felt obliged to retreat a little. ‘She is a remarkable woman. Great
fortitude--great strength of mind.’
‘They must have been very happy,’ said Blandois.
‘Who?’ demanded Mr Flintwinch, with another screw at him.
Mr Blandois shook his right forefinger towards the sick room, and his
left forefinger towards the portrait, and then, putting his arms akimbo
and striding his legs wide apart, stood smiling down at Mr Flintwinch
with the advancing nose and the retreating moustache.
‘As happy as most other married people, I suppose,’ returned Mr
Flintwinch. ‘I can’t say. I don’t know. There are secrets in all
families.’
‘Secrets!’ cried Mr Blandois, quickly. ‘Say it again, my son.’
‘I say,’ replied Mr Flintwinch, upon whom he had swelled himself so
suddenly that Mr Flintwinch found his face almost brushed by the dilated
chest. ‘I say there are secrets in all families.’
‘So there are,’ cried the other, clapping him on both shoulders, and
rolling him backwards and forwards. ‘Haha! you are right. So there are!
Secrets! Holy Blue! There are the devil’s own secrets in some families,
Mr Flintwinch!’ With that, after clapping Mr Flintwinch on both
shoulders several times, as if in a friendly and humorous way he were
rallying him on a joke he had made, he threw up his arms, threw back
his head, hooked his hands together behind it, and burst into a roar of
laughter. It was in vain for Mr Flintwinch to try another screw at him.
He had his laugh out.
‘But, favour me with the candle a moment,’ he said, when he had done.
‘Let us have a look at the husband of the remarkable lady. Hah!’ holding
up the light at arm’s length. ‘A decided expression of face here too,
though not of the same character. Looks as if he were saying, what is
it--Do Not Forget--does he not, Mr Flintwinch? By Heaven, sir, he does!’
As he returned the candle, he looked at him once more; and then,
leisurely strolling out with him into the hall, declared it to be a
charming old house indeed, and one which had so greatly pleased him that
he would not have missed inspecting it for a hundred pounds.
Throughout these singular freedoms on the part of Mr Blandois, which
involved a general alteration in his demeanour, making it much coarser
and rougher, much more violent and audacious than before, Mr Flintwinch,
whose leathern face was not liable to many changes, preserved its
immobility intact. Beyond now appearing perhaps, to have been left
hanging a trifle too long before that friendly operation of cutting
down, he outwardly maintained an equable composure. They had brought
their survey to a close in the little room at the side of the hall, and
he stood there, eyeing Mr Blandois.
‘I am glad you are so well satisfied, sir,’ was his calm remark. ‘I
didn’t expect it. You seem to be quite in good spirits.’
‘In admirable spirits,’ returned Blandois. ‘Word of honour! never more
refreshed in spirits. Do you ever have presentiments, Mr Flintwinch?’
‘I am not sure that I know what you mean by the term, sir,’ replied that
gentleman.
‘Say, in this case, Mr Flintwinch, undefined anticipations of pleasure
to come.’
‘I can’t say I’m sensible of such a sensation at present,’ returned Mr
Flintwinch with the utmost gravity. ‘If I should find it coming on, I’ll
mention it.’
‘Now I,’ said Blandois, ‘I, my son, have a presentiment to-night that we
shall be well acquainted. Do you find it coming on?’
‘N-no,’ returned Mr Flintwinch, deliberately inquiring of himself. ‘I
can’t say I do.’
‘I have a strong presentiment that we shall become intimately
acquainted.--You have no feeling of that sort yet?’
‘Not yet,’ said Mr Flintwinch.
Mr Blandois, taking him by both shoulders again, rolled him about a
little in his former merry way, then drew his arm through his own, and
invited him to come off and drink a bottle of wine like a dear deep old
dog as he was.
Without a moment’s indecision, Mr Flintwinch accepted the invitation,
and they went out to the quarters where the traveller was lodged,
through a heavy rain which had rattled on the windows, roofs, and
pavements, ever since nightfall. The thunder and lightning had long ago
passed over, but the rain was furious. On their arrival at Mr Blandois’
room, a bottle of port wine was ordered by that gallant gentleman; who
(crushing every pretty thing he could collect, in the soft disposition
of his dainty figure) coiled himself upon the window-seat, while Mr
Flintwinch took a chair opposite to him, with the table between them. Mr
Blandois proposed having the largest glasses in the house, to which Mr
Flintwinch assented. The bumpers filled, Mr Blandois, with a roystering
gaiety, clinked the top of his glass against the bottom of Mr
Flintwinch’s, and the bottom of his glass against the top of Mr
Flintwinch’s, and drank to the intimate acquaintance he foresaw.
Mr Flintwinch gravely pledged him, and drank all the wine he could get,
and said nothing. As often as Mr Blandois clinked glasses (which was
at every replenishment), Mr Flintwinch stolidly did his part of the
clinking, and would have stolidly done his companion’s part of the wine
as well as his own: being, except in the article of palate, a mere cask.
In short, Mr Blandois found that to pour port wine into the reticent
Flintwinch was, not to open him but to shut him up. Moreover, he had
the appearance of a perfect ability to go on all night; or, if occasion
were, all next day and all next night; whereas Mr Blandois soon grew
indistinctly conscious of swaggering too fiercely and boastfully. He
therefore terminated the entertainment at the end of the third bottle.
‘You will draw upon us to-morrow, sir,’ said Mr Flintwinch, with a
business-like face at parting.
‘My Cabbage,’ returned the other, taking him by the collar with both
hands, ‘I’ll draw upon you; have no fear. Adieu, my Flintwinch. Receive
at parting;’ here he gave him a southern embrace, and kissed him soundly
on both cheeks; ‘the word of a gentleman! By a thousand Thunders, you
shall see me again!’
He did not present himself next day, though the letter of advice came
duly to hand. Inquiring after him at night, Mr Flintwinch found, with
surprise, that he had paid his bill and gone back to the Continent by
way of Calais. Nevertheless, Jeremiah scraped out of his cogitating
face a lively conviction that Mr Blandois would keep his word on this
occasion, and would be seen again.