‘On my province, Mr Dorrit?’ said Mrs General, graciously. ‘Do not

mention it.’

‘Then, with your leave, madam,’ resumed Mr Dorrit, ringing his little

bell to summon his valet, ‘I will send for her at once.’

‘Does Mr Dorrit wish me to remain?’

‘Perhaps, if you have no other engagement, you would not object for a

minute or two--’

‘Not at all.’

So, Tinkler the valet was instructed to find Miss Amy’s maid, and to

request that subordinate to inform Miss Amy that Mr Dorrit wished to

see her in his own room. In delivering this charge to Tinkler, Mr Dorrit

looked severely at him, and also kept a jealous eye upon him until he

went out at the door, mistrusting that he might have something in his

mind prejudicial to the family dignity; that he might have even got wind

of some Collegiate joke before he came into the service, and might be

derisively reviving its remembrance at the present moment. If Tinkler

had happened to smile, however faintly and innocently, nothing would

have persuaded Mr Dorrit, to the hour of his death, but that this was

the case. As Tinkler happened, however, very fortunately for himself, to

be of a serious and composed countenance, he escaped the secret danger

that threatened him. And as on his return--when Mr Dorrit eyed him

again--he announced Miss Amy as if she had come to a funeral, he left a

vague impression on Mr Dorrit’s mind that he was a well-conducted young

fellow, who had been brought up in the study of his Catechism by a

widowed mother.

‘Amy,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘you have just now been the subject of some

conversation between myself and Mrs General. We agree that you scarcely

seem at home here. Ha--how is this?’

A pause.

‘I think, father, I require a little time.’

‘Papa is a preferable mode of address,’ observed Mrs General. ‘Father is

rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to

the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very

good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it

serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to

yourself in company--on entering a room, for instance--Papa, potatoes,

poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.’

‘Pray, my child,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘attend to the--hum--precepts of Mrs

General.’

Poor Little Dorrit, with a rather forlorn glance at that eminent

varnisher, promised to try.

‘You say, Amy,’ pursued Mr Dorrit, ‘that you think you require time.

Time for what?’

Another pause.

‘To become accustomed to the novelty of my life, was all I meant,’ said

Little Dorrit, with her loving eyes upon her father; whom she had very

nearly addressed as poultry, if not prunes and prism too, in her desire

to submit herself to Mrs General and please him.

Mr Dorrit frowned, and looked anything but pleased. ‘Amy,’ he returned,

‘it appears to me, I must say, that you have had abundance of time for

that. Ha--you surprise me. You disappoint me. Fanny has conquered any

such little difficulties, and--hum--why not you?’

‘I hope I shall do better soon,’ said Little Dorrit.

‘I hope so,’ returned her father. ‘I--ha--I most devoutly hope so, Amy.

I sent for you, in order that I might say--hum--impressively say, in

the presence of Mrs General, to whom we are all so much indebted

for obligingly being present among us, on--ha--on this or any other

occasion,’ Mrs General shut her eyes, ‘that I--ha hum--am not pleased

with you. You make Mrs General’s a thankless task. You--ha--embarrass

me very much. You have always (as I have informed Mrs General) been my

favourite child; I have always made you a--hum--a friend and companion;

in return, I beg--I--ha--I _do_ beg, that you accommodate yourself

better to--hum--circumstances, and dutifully do what becomes your--your

station.’

Mr Dorrit was even a little more fragmentary than usual, being excited

on the subject and anxious to make himself particularly emphatic.

‘I do beg,’ he repeated, ‘that this may be attended to, and that you

will seriously take pains and try to conduct yourself in a manner both

becoming your position as--ha--Miss Amy Dorrit, and satisfactory to

myself and Mrs General.’

That lady shut her eyes again, on being again referred to; then, slowly

opening them and rising, added these words:

‘If Miss Amy Dorrit will direct her own attention to, and will accept of

my poor assistance in, the formation of a surface, Mr. Dorrit will have

no further cause of anxiety. May I take this opportunity of remarking,

as an instance in point, that it is scarcely delicate to look at

vagrants with the attention which I have seen bestowed upon them by a

very dear young friend of mine? They should not be looked at. Nothing

disagreeable should ever be looked at. Apart from such a habit standing

in the way of that graceful equanimity of surface which is so expressive

of good breeding, it hardly seems compatible with refinement of mind. A

truly refined mind will seem to be ignorant of the existence of anything

that is not perfectly proper, placid, and pleasant.’ Having delivered

this exalted sentiment, Mrs General made a sweeping obeisance, and

retired with an expression of mouth indicative of Prunes and Prism.

Little Dorrit, whether speaking or silent, had preserved her quiet

earnestness and her loving look. It had not been clouded, except for a

passing moment, until now. But now that she was left alone with him

the fingers of her lightly folded hands were agitated, and there was

repressed emotion in her face.

Not for herself. She might feel a little wounded, but her care was not

for herself. Her thoughts still turned, as they always had turned, to

him. A faint misgiving, which had hung about her since their accession

to fortune, that even now she could never see him as he used to be

before the prison days, had gradually begun to assume form in her mind.

She felt that, in what he had just now said to her and in his whole

bearing towards her, there was the well-known shadow of the Marshalsea

wall. It took a new shape, but it was the old sad shadow. She began

with sorrowful unwillingness to acknowledge to herself that she was

not strong enough to keep off the fear that no space in the life of man

could overcome that quarter of a century behind the prison bars. She had

no blame to bestow upon him, therefore: nothing to reproach him with,

no emotions in her faithful heart but great compassion and unbounded

tenderness.

This is why it was, that, even as he sat before her on his sofa, in the

brilliant light of a bright Italian day, the wonderful city without and

the splendours of an old palace within, she saw him at the moment in the

long-familiar gloom of his Marshalsea lodging, and wished to take her

seat beside him, and comfort him, and be again full of confidence with

him, and of usefulness to him. If he divined what was in her thoughts,

his own were not in tune with it. After some uneasy moving in his seat,

he got up and walked about, looking very much dissatisfied.

‘Is there anything else you wish to say to me, dear father?’

‘No, no. Nothing else.’

‘I am sorry you have not been pleased with me, dear. I hope you will not

think of me with displeasure now. I am going to try, more than ever, to

adapt myself as you wish to what surrounds me--for indeed I have tried

all along, though I have failed, I know.’

‘Amy,’ he returned, turning short upon her. ‘You--ha--habitually hurt

me.’

‘Hurt you, father! I!’

‘There is a--hum--a topic,’ said Mr Dorrit, looking all about the

ceiling of the room, and never at the attentive, uncomplainingly shocked

face, ‘a painful topic, a series of events which I wish--ha--altogether

to obliterate. This is understood by your sister, who has already

remonstrated with you in my presence; it is understood by your brother;

it is understood by--ha hum--by every one of delicacy and sensitiveness

except yourself--ha--I am sorry to say, except yourself. You,

Amy--hum--you alone and only you--constantly revive the topic, though

not in words.’

She laid her hand on his arm. She did nothing more. She gently touched

him. The trembling hand may have said, with some expression, ‘Think of

me, think how I have worked, think of my many cares!’ But she said not a

syllable herself.

There was a reproach in the touch so addressed to him that she had

not foreseen, or she would have withheld her hand. He began to justify

himself in a heated, stumbling, angry manner, which made nothing of it.

‘I was there all those years. I was--ha--universally acknowledged as

the head of the place. I--hum--I caused you to be respected there, Amy.

I--ha hum--I gave my family a position there. I deserve a return. I

claim a return. I say, sweep it off the face of the earth and begin

afresh. Is that much? I ask, is _that_ much?’

He did not once look at her, as he rambled on in this way; but

gesticulated at, and appealed to, the empty air.

‘I have suffered. Probably I know how much I have suffered better than

any one--ha--I say than any one! If _I_ can put that aside, if _I_ can

eradicate the marks of what I have endured, and can emerge before the

world--a--ha--gentleman unspoiled, unspotted--is it a great deal to

expect--I say again, is it a great deal to expect--that my children

should--hum--do the same and sweep that accursed experience off the face

of the earth?’

In spite of his flustered state, he made all these exclamations in a

carefully suppressed voice, lest the valet should overhear anything.

‘Accordingly, they do it. Your sister does it. Your brother does it. You

alone, my favourite child, whom I made the friend and companion of my

life when you were a mere--hum--Baby, do not do it. You alone say you

can’t do it. I provide you with valuable assistance to do it. I attach

an accomplished and highly bred lady--ha--Mrs General, to you, for the

purpose of doing it. Is it surprising that I should be displeased? Is it

necessary that I should defend myself for expressing my displeasure?

No!’

Notwithstanding which, he continued to defend himself, without any

abatement of his flushed mood.

‘I am careful to appeal to that lady for confirmation, before I express

any displeasure at all. I--hum--I necessarily make that appeal within

limited bounds, or I--ha--should render legible, by that lady, what I

desire to be blotted out. Am I selfish? Do I complain for my own sake?

No. No. Principally for--ha hum--your sake, Amy.’

This last consideration plainly appeared, from his manner of pursuing

it, to have just that instant come into his head.

‘I said I was hurt. So I am. So I--ha--am determined to be, whatever

is advanced to the contrary. I am hurt that my daughter, seated in

the--hum--lap of fortune, should mope and retire and proclaim herself

unequal to her destiny. I am hurt that she should--ha--systematically

reproduce what the rest of us blot out; and seem--hum--I had almost said

positively anxious--to announce to wealthy and distinguished society

that she was born and bred in--ha hum--a place that I myself decline to

name. But there is no inconsistency--ha--not the least, in my feeling

hurt, and yet complaining principally for your sake, Amy. I do; I say

again, I do. It is for your sake that I wish you, under the auspices of

Mrs General, to form a--hum--a surface. It is for your sake that I wish

you to have a--ha--truly refined mind, and (in the striking words of

Mrs General) to be ignorant of everything that is not perfectly proper,

placid, and pleasant.’

He had been running down by jerks, during his last speech, like a

sort of ill-adjusted alarum. The touch was still upon his arm. He fell

silent; and after looking about the ceiling again for a little while,

looked down at her. Her head drooped, and he could not see her face; but

her touch was tender and quiet, and in the expression of her dejected

figure there was no blame--nothing but love. He began to whimper, just

as he had done that night in the prison when she afterwards sat at

his bedside till morning; exclaimed that he was a poor ruin and a poor

wretch in the midst of his wealth; and clasped her in his arms. ‘Hush,

hush, my own dear! Kiss me!’ was all she said to him. His tears

were soon dried, much sooner than on the former occasion; and he was

presently afterwards very high with his valet, as a way of righting

himself for having shed any.

With one remarkable exception, to be recorded in its place, this was

the only time, in his life of freedom and fortune, when he spoke to his

daughter Amy of the old days.

But, now, the breakfast hour arrived; and with it Miss Fanny from her

apartment, and Mr Edward from his apartment. Both these young persons of

distinction were something the worse for late hours. As to Miss Fanny,

she had become the victim of an insatiate mania for what she called

‘going into society;’ and would have gone into it head-foremost fifty

times between sunset and sunrise, if so many opportunities had been at

her disposal. As to Mr Edward, he, too, had a large acquaintance, and

was generally engaged (for the most part, in diceing circles, or others

of a kindred nature), during the greater part of every night. For this

gentleman, when his fortunes changed, had stood at the great advantage

of being already prepared for the highest associates, and having little

to learn: so much was he indebted to the happy accidents which had made

him acquainted with horse-dealing and billiard-marking.

At breakfast, Mr Frederick Dorrit likewise appeared. As the old

gentleman inhabited the highest story of the palace, where he might have

practised pistol-shooting without much chance of discovery by the other

inmates, his younger niece had taken courage to propose the restoration

to him of his clarionet, which Mr Dorrit had ordered to be confiscated,

but which she had ventured to preserve. Notwithstanding some objections

from Miss Fanny, that it was a low instrument, and that she detested the

sound of it, the concession had been made. But it was then discovered

that he had had enough of it, and never played it, now that it was no

longer his means of getting bread. He had insensibly acquired a new

habit of shuffling into the picture-galleries, always with his twisted

paper of snuff in his hand (much to the indignation of Miss Fanny, who

had proposed the purchase of a gold box for him that the family might

not be discredited, which he had absolutely refused to carry when it was

bought); and of passing hours and hours before the portraits of renowned

Venetians. It was never made out what his dazed eyes saw in them;

whether he had an interest in them merely as pictures, or whether he

confusedly identified them with a glory that was departed, like the

strength of his own mind. But he paid his court to them with great

exactness, and clearly derived pleasure from the pursuit. After the

first few days, Little Dorrit happened one morning to assist at these

attentions. It so evidently heightened his gratification that she often

accompanied him afterwards, and the greatest delight of which the old

man had shown himself susceptible since his ruin, arose out of these

excursions, when he would carry a chair about for her from picture

to picture, and stand behind it, in spite of all her remonstrances,

silently presenting her to the noble Venetians.

It fell out that, at this family breakfast, he referred to their having

seen in a gallery, on the previous day, the lady and gentleman whom they

had encountered on the Great Saint Bernard, ‘I forget the name,’ said

he. ‘I dare say you remember them, William? I dare say you do, Edward?’

‘_I_ remember ‘em well enough,’ said the latter.

‘I should think so,’ observed Miss Fanny, with a toss of her head and

a glance at her sister. ‘But they would not have been recalled to our

remembrance, I suspect, if Uncle hadn’t tumbled over the subject.’

‘My dear, what a curious phrase,’ said Mrs General. ‘Would not

inadvertently lighted upon, or accidentally referred to, be better?’

‘Thank you very much, Mrs General,’ returned the young lady, ‘no, I

think not. On the whole I prefer my own expression.’

This was always Miss Fanny’s way of receiving a suggestion from Mrs

General. But she always stored it up in her mind, and adopted it at

another time.

‘I should have mentioned our having met Mr and Mrs Gowan, Fanny,’ said

Little Dorrit, ‘even if Uncle had not. I have scarcely seen you since,

you know. I meant to have spoken of it at breakfast; because I should

like to pay a visit to Mrs Gowan, and to become better acquainted with

her, if Papa and Mrs General do not object.’

‘Well, Amy,’ said Fanny, ‘I am sure I am glad to find you at last

expressing a wish to become better acquainted with anybody in Venice.

Though whether Mr and Mrs Gowan are desirable acquaintances, remains to

be determined.’

‘Mrs Gowan I spoke of, dear.’

‘No doubt,’ said Fanny. ‘But you can’t separate her from her husband, I

believe, without an Act of Parliament.’

‘Do you think, Papa,’ inquired Little Dorrit, with diffidence and

hesitation, ‘there is any objection to my making this visit?’

‘Really,’ he replied, ‘I--ha--what is Mrs General’s view?’

Mrs General’s view was, that not having the honour of any acquaintance

with the lady and gentleman referred to, she was not in a position

to varnish the present article. She could only remark, as a general

principle observed in the varnishing trade, that much depended on the

quarter from which the lady under consideration was accredited to a

family so conspicuously niched in the social temple as the family of

Dorrit.

At this remark the face of Mr Dorrit gloomed considerably. He was about

(connecting the accrediting with an obtrusive person of the name

of Clennam, whom he imperfectly remembered in some former state of

existence) to black-ball the name of Gowan finally, when Edward Dorrit,

Esquire, came into the conversation, with his glass in his eye, and the

preliminary remark of ‘I say--you there! Go out, will you!’--which was

addressed to a couple of men who were handing the dishes round, as a

courteous intimation that their services could be temporarily dispensed

with.

Those menials having obeyed the mandate, Edward Dorrit, Esquire,

proceeded.

‘Perhaps it’s a matter of policy to let you all know that these

Gowans--in whose favour, or at least the gentleman’s, I can’t be

supposed to be much prepossessed myself--are known to people of

importance, if that makes any difference.’

‘That, I would say,’ observed the fair varnisher, ‘Makes the greatest

difference. The connection in question, being really people of

importance and consideration--’

‘As to that,’ said Edward Dorrit, Esquire, ‘I’ll give you the means of

judging for yourself. You are acquainted, perhaps, with the famous name

of Merdle?’

‘The great Merdle!’ exclaimed Mrs General.

‘_The_ Merdle,’ said Edward Dorrit, Esquire. ‘They are known to him.

Mrs Gowan--I mean the dowager, my polite friend’s mother--is intimate

with Mrs Merdle, and I know these two to be on their visiting list.’

‘If so, a more undeniable guarantee could not be given,’ said Mrs

General to Mr Dorrit, raising her gloves and bowing her head, as if she

were doing homage to some visible graven image.

‘I beg to ask my son, from motives of--ah--curiosity,’ Mr Dorrit

observed, with a decided change in his manner, ‘how he becomes possessed

of this--hum--timely information?’

‘It’s not a long story, sir,’ returned Edward Dorrit, Esquire, ‘and you

shall have it out of hand. To begin with, Mrs Merdle is the lady you had

the parley with at what’s-his-name place.’

‘Martigny,’ interposed Miss Fanny with an air of infinite languor.

‘Martigny,’ assented her brother, with a slight nod and a slight wink;

in acknowledgment of which, Miss Fanny looked surprised, and laughed and

reddened.

‘How can that be, Edward?’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘You informed me that the

name of the gentleman with whom you conferred was--ha--Sparkler. Indeed,

you showed me his card. Hum. Sparkler.’

‘No doubt of it, father; but it doesn’t follow that his mother’s name

must be the same. Mrs Merdle was married before, and he is her son. She

is in Rome now; where probably we shall know more of her, as you decide

to winter there. Sparkler is just come here. I passed last evening in

company with Sparkler. Sparkler is a very good fellow on the

whole, though rather a bore on one subject, in consequence of being

tremendously smitten with a certain young lady.’ Here Edward Dorrit,

Esquire, eyed Miss Fanny through his glass across the table. ‘We

happened last night to compare notes about our travels, and I had the

information I have given you from Sparkler himself.’ Here he ceased;

continuing to eye Miss Fanny through his glass, with a face much

twisted, and not ornamentally so, in part by the action of keeping his

glass in his eye, and in part by the great subtlety of his smile.

‘Under these circumstances,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘I believe I express the

sentiments of--ha--Mrs General, no less than my own, when I say

that there is no objection, but--ha hum--quite the contrary--to your

gratifying your desire, Amy. I trust I may--ha--hail--this desire,’ said

Mr Dorrit, in an encouraging and forgiving manner, ‘as an auspicious

omen. It is quite right to know these people. It is a very proper

thing. Mr Merdle’s is a name of--ha--world-wide repute. Mr Merdle’s

undertakings are immense. They bring him in such vast sums of money that

they are regarded as--hum--national benefits. Mr Merdle is the man of

this time. The name of Merdle is the name of the age. Pray do everything

on my behalf that is civil to Mr and Mrs Gowan, for we will--ha--we will

certainly notice them.’

This magnificent accordance of Mr Dorrit’s recognition settled the

matter. It was not observed that Uncle had pushed away his plate, and

forgotten his breakfast; but he was not much observed at any time,

except by Little Dorrit. The servants were recalled, and the meal

proceeded to its conclusion. Mrs General rose and left the table.

Little Dorrit rose and left the table. When Edward and Fanny remained

whispering together across it, and when Mr Dorrit remained eating figs

and reading a French newspaper, Uncle suddenly fixed the attention of

all three by rising out of his chair, striking his hand upon the table,

and saying, ‘Brother! I protest against it!’

If he had made a proclamation in an unknown tongue, and given up the

ghost immediately afterwards, he could not have astounded his audience

more. The paper fell from Mr Dorrit’s hand, and he sat petrified, with a

fig half way to his mouth.

‘Brother!’ said the old man, conveying a surprising energy into his

trembling voice, ‘I protest against it! I love you; you know I love you

dearly. In these many years I have never been untrue to you in a single

thought. Weak as I am, I would at any time have struck any man who spoke

ill of you. But, brother, brother, brother, I protest against it!’

It was extraordinary to see of what a burst of earnestness such a

decrepit man was capable. His eyes became bright, his grey hair rose on

his head, markings of purpose on his brow and face which had faded from

them for five-and-twenty years, started out again, and there was an

energy in his hand that made its action nervous once more.

‘My dear Frederick!’ exclaimed Mr Dorrit faintly. ‘What is wrong? What

is the matter?’

‘How dare you,’ said the old man, turning round on Fanny, ‘how dare you

do it? Have you no memory? Have you no heart?’

‘Uncle?’ cried Fanny, affrighted and bursting into tears, ‘why do you

attack me in this cruel manner? What have I done?’

‘Done?’ returned the old man, pointing to her sister’s place, ‘where’s

your affectionate invaluable friend? Where’s your devoted guardian?

Where’s your more than mother? How dare you set up superiorities against

all these characters combined in your sister? For shame, you false girl,

for shame!’

‘I love Amy,’ cried Miss Fanny, sobbing and weeping, ‘as well as I love

my life--better than I love my life. I don’t deserve to be so treated. I

am as grateful to Amy, and as fond of Amy, as it’s possible for any

human being to be. I wish I was dead. I never was so wickedly wronged.

And only because I am anxious for the family credit.’

‘To the winds with the family credit!’ cried the old man, with great

scorn and indignation. ‘Brother, I protest against pride. I protest

against ingratitude. I protest against any one of us here who have known

what we have known, and have seen what we have seen, setting up any

pretension that puts Amy at a moment’s disadvantage, or to the cost of

a moment’s pain. We may know that it’s a base pretension by its having

that effect. It ought to bring a judgment on us. Brother, I protest

against it in the sight of God!’

As his hand went up above his head and came down on the table, it might

have been a blacksmith’s. After a few moments’ silence, it had relaxed

into its usual weak condition. He went round to his brother with his

ordinary shuffling step, put the hand on his shoulder, and said, in a

softened voice, ‘William, my dear, I felt obliged to say it; forgive me,

for I felt obliged to say it!’ and then went, in his bowed way, out of

the palace hall, just as he might have gone out of the Marshalsea room.

All this time Fanny had been sobbing and crying, and still continued to

do so. Edward, beyond opening his mouth in amazement, had not opened his

lips, and had done nothing but stare. Mr Dorrit also had been utterly

discomfited, and quite unable to assert himself in any way. Fanny was

now the first to speak.

‘I never, never, never was so used!’ she sobbed. ‘There never was

anything so harsh and unjustifiable, so disgracefully violent and cruel!

Dear, kind, quiet little Amy, too, what would she feel if she could know

that she had been innocently the means of exposing me to such treatment!

But I’ll never tell her! No, good darling, I’ll never tell her!’

This helped Mr Dorrit to break his silence.

‘My dear,’ said he, ‘I--ha--approve of your resolution. It will be--ha

hum--much better not to speak of this to Amy. It might--hum--it

might distress her. Ha. No doubt it would distress her greatly. It

is considerate and right to avoid doing so. We will--ha--keep this to

ourselves.’

‘But the cruelty of Uncle!’ cried Miss Fanny. ‘O, I never can forgive

the wanton cruelty of Uncle!’

‘My dear,’ said Mr Dorrit, recovering his tone, though he remained

unusually pale, ‘I must request you not to say so. You must remember

that your uncle is--ha--not what he formerly was. You must remember

that your uncle’s state requires--hum--great forbearance from us, great

forbearance.’

‘I am sure,’ cried Fanny, piteously, ‘it is only charitable to suppose

that there must be something wrong in him somewhere, or he never could

have so attacked Me, of all the people in the world.’

‘Fanny,’ returned Mr Dorrit in a deeply fraternal tone, ‘you know, with

his innumerable good points, what a--hum--wreck your uncle is; and, I

entreat you by the fondness that I have for him, and by the fidelity

that you know I have always shown him, to--ha--to draw your own

conclusions, and to spare my brotherly feelings.’

This ended the scene; Edward Dorrit, Esquire, saying nothing throughout,

but looking, to the last, perplexed and doubtful. Miss Fanny awakened

much affectionate uneasiness in her sister’s mind that day by passing

the greater part of it in violent fits of embracing her, and in

alternately giving her brooches, and wishing herself dead.

CHAPTER 6. Something Right Somewhere

To be in the halting state of Mr Henry Gowan; to have left one of two

powers in disgust; to want the necessary qualifications for finding

promotion with another, and to be loitering moodily about on neutral

ground, cursing both; is to be in a situation unwholesome for the mind,

which time is not likely to improve. The worst class of sum worked in

the every-day world is cyphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are

always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of

others, and never in Addition as to their own.

The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recompense in the discontented

boast of being disappointed, is a habit fraught with degeneracy. A

certain idle carelessness and recklessness of consistency soon comes of

it. To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is

one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose

with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it.

In his expressed opinions of all performances in the Art of painting

that were completely destitute of merit, Gowan was the most liberal

fellow on earth. He would declare such a man to have more power in his

little finger (provided he had none), than such another had (provided he

had much) in his whole mind and body. If the objection were taken that

the thing commended was trash, he would reply, on behalf of his art, ‘My

good fellow, what do we all turn out but trash? _I_ turn out nothing else,

and I make you a present of the confession.’

To make a vaunt of being poor was another of the incidents of his

splenetic state, though this may have had the design in it of showing

that he ought to be rich; just as he would publicly laud and decry the

Barnacles, lest it should be forgotten that he belonged to the family.

Howbeit, these two subjects were very often on his lips; and he managed

them so well that he might have praised himself by the month together,

and not have made himself out half so important a man as he did by his

light disparagement of his claims on anybody’s consideration.

Out of this same airy talk of his, it always soon came to be understood,

wherever he and his wife went, that he had married against the wishes

of his exalted relations, and had had much ado to prevail on them to

countenance her. He never made the representation, on the contrary

seemed to laugh the idea to scorn; but it did happen that, with all his

pains to depreciate himself, he was always in the superior position.

From the days of their honeymoon, Minnie Gowan felt sensible of being

usually regarded as the wife of a man who had made a descent in marrying

her, but whose chivalrous love for her had cancelled that inequality.

To Venice they had been accompanied by Monsieur Blandois of Paris, and

at Venice Monsieur Blandois of Paris was very much in the society of

Gowan. When they had first met this gallant gentleman at Geneva,

Gowan had been undecided whether to kick him or encourage him; and had

remained for about four-and-twenty hours, so troubled to settle

the point to his satisfaction, that he had thought of tossing up a

five-franc piece on the terms, ‘Tails, kick; heads, encourage,’ and

abiding by the voice of the oracle. It chanced, however, that his wife

expressed a dislike to the engaging Blandois, and that the balance

of feeling in the hotel was against him. Upon it, Gowan resolved to

encourage him.

Why this perversity, if it were not in a generous fit?--which it was

not. Why should Gowan, very much the superior of Blandois of Paris, and

very well able to pull that prepossessing gentleman to pieces and find

out the stuff he was made of, take up with such a man? In the first

place, he opposed the first separate wish he observed in his wife,

because her father had paid his debts and it was desirable to take an

early opportunity of asserting his independence. In the second place,

he opposed the prevalent feeling, because with many capacities of

being otherwise, he was an ill-conditioned man. He found a pleasure in

declaring that a courtier with the refined manners of Blandois ought

to rise to the greatest distinction in any polished country. He found a

pleasure in setting up Blandois as the type of elegance, and making

him a satire upon others who piqued themselves on personal graces.

He seriously protested that the bow of Blandois was perfect, that the

address of Blandois was irresistible, and that the picturesque ease

of Blandois would be cheaply purchased (if it were not a gift, and

unpurchasable) for a hundred thousand francs. That exaggeration in the

manner of the man which has been noticed as appertaining to him and to

every such man, whatever his original breeding, as certainly as the sun

belongs to this system, was acceptable to Gowan as a caricature, which

he found it a humorous resource to have at hand for the ridiculing of

numbers of people who necessarily did more or less of what Blandois

overdid. Thus he had taken up with him; and thus, negligently

strengthening these inclinations with habit, and idly deriving some

amusement from his talk, he had glided into a way of having him for

a companion. This, though he supposed him to live by his wits at

play-tables and the like; though he suspected him to be a coward, while

he himself was daring and courageous; though he thoroughly knew him to

be disliked by Minnie; and though he cared so little for him, after all,

that if he had given her any tangible personal cause to regard him with

aversion, he would have had no compunction whatever in flinging him out

of the highest window in Venice into the deepest water of the city.

Little Dorrit would have been glad to make her visit to Mrs Gowan,

alone; but as Fanny, who had not yet recovered from her Uncle’s protest,

though it was four-and-twenty hours of age, pressingly offered her

company, the two sisters stepped together into one of the gondolas under

Mr Dorrit’s window, and, with the courier in attendance, were taken in

high state to Mrs Gowan’s lodging. In truth, their state was rather too

high for the lodging, which was, as Fanny complained, ‘fearfully out of

the way,’ and which took them through a complexity of narrow streets of

water, which the same lady disparaged as ‘mere ditches.’

The house, on a little desert island, looked as if it had broken

away from somewhere else, and had floated by chance into its present

anchorage in company with a vine almost as much in want of training as

the poor wretches who were lying under its leaves. The features of the

surrounding picture were, a church with hoarding and scaffolding about

it, which had been under suppositious repair so long that the means of

repair looked a hundred years old, and had themselves fallen into decay;

a quantity of washed linen, spread to dry in the sun; a number of houses

at odds with one another and grotesquely out of the perpendicular, like

rotten pre-Adamite cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of mites;

and a feverish bewilderment of windows, with their lattice-blinds all

hanging askew, and something draggled and dirty dangling out of most of

them.

On the first-floor of the house was a Bank--a surprising experience for

any gentleman of commercial pursuits bringing laws for all mankind from

a British city--where two spare clerks, like dried dragoons, in green

velvet caps adorned with golden tassels, stood, bearded, behind a small

counter in a small room, containing no other visible objects than an

empty iron-safe with the door open, a jug of water, and a papering of

garland of roses; but who, on lawful requisition, by merely dipping

their hands out of sight, could produce exhaustless mounds of five-franc

pieces. Below the Bank was a suite of three or four rooms with barred

windows, which had the appearance of a jail for criminal rats. Above the

Bank was Mrs Gowan’s residence.

Notwithstanding that its walls were blotched, as if missionary maps were

bursting out of them to impart geographical knowledge; notwithstanding

that its weird furniture was forlornly faded and musty, and that the

prevailing Venetian odour of bilge water and an ebb tide on a weedy

shore was very strong; the place was better within, than it promised.

The door was opened by a smiling man like a reformed assassin--a

temporary servant--who ushered them into the room where Mrs Gowan sat,

with the announcement that two beautiful English ladies were come to see

the mistress.

Mrs Gowan, who was engaged in needlework, put her work aside in a

covered basket, and rose, a little hurriedly. Miss Fanny was excessively

courteous to her, and said the usual nothings with the skill of a

veteran.

‘Papa was extremely sorry,’ proceeded Fanny, ‘to be engaged to-day (he

is so much engaged here, our acquaintance being so wretchedly large!);

and particularly requested me to bring his card for Mr Gowan. That I may

be sure to acquit myself of a commission which he impressed upon me at

least a dozen times, allow me to relieve my conscience by placing it on

the table at once.’

Which she did with veteran ease.

‘We have been,’ said Fanny, ‘charmed to understand that you know the

Merdles. We hope it may be another means of bringing us together.’

‘They are friends,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘of Mr Gowan’s family. I have not

yet had the pleasure of a personal introduction to Mrs Merdle, but I

suppose I shall be presented to her at Rome.’

‘Indeed?’ returned Fanny, with an appearance of amiably quenching her

own superiority. ‘I think you’ll like her.’

‘You know her very well?’

‘Why, you see,’ said Fanny, with a frank action of her pretty shoulders,

‘in London one knows every one. We met her on our way here, and, to say

the truth, papa was at first rather cross with her for taking one of the

rooms that our people had ordered for us. However, of course, that soon

blew over, and we were all good friends again.’

Although the visit had as yet given Little Dorrit no opportunity of

conversing with Mrs Gowan, there was a silent understanding between

them, which did as well. She looked at Mrs Gowan with keen and unabated

interest; the sound of her voice was thrilling to her; nothing that was

near her, or about her, or at all concerned her, escaped Little Dorrit.

She was quicker to perceive the slightest matter here, than in any other

case--but one.

‘You have been quite well,’ she now said, ‘since that night?’

‘Quite, my dear. And you?’

‘Oh! I am always well,’ said Little Dorrit, timidly. ‘I--yes, thank you.’

There was no reason for her faltering and breaking off, other than that

Mrs Gowan had touched her hand in speaking to her, and their looks had

met. Something thoughtfully apprehensive in the large, soft eyes, had

checked Little Dorrit in an instant.

‘You don’t know that you are a favourite of my husband’s, and that I am

almost bound to be jealous of you?’ said Mrs Gowan.

Little Dorrit, blushing, shook her head.

‘He will tell you, if he tells you what he tells me, that you are

quieter and quicker of resource than any one he ever saw.’

‘He speaks far too well of me,’ said Little Dorrit.

‘I doubt that; but I don’t at all doubt that I must tell him you

are here. I should never be forgiven, if I were to let you--and Miss

Dorrit--go, without doing so. May I? You can excuse the disorder and

discomfort of a painter’s studio?’

The inquiries were addressed to Miss Fanny, who graciously replied that

she would be beyond anything interested and enchanted. Mrs Gowan went to

a door, looked in beyond it, and came back. ‘Do Henry the favour to come

in,’ said she, ‘I knew he would be pleased!’

The first object that confronted Little Dorrit, entering first, was

Blandois of Paris in a great cloak and a furtive slouched hat, standing

on a throne platform in a corner, as he had stood on the Great Saint

Bernard, when the warning arms seemed to be all pointing up at him. She

recoiled from this figure, as it smiled at her.

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Gowan, coming from his easel behind the door.

‘It’s only Blandois. He is doing duty as a model to-day. I am making

a study of him. It saves me money to turn him to some use. We poor

painters have none to spare.’

Blandois of Paris pulled off his slouched hat, and saluted the ladies

without coming out of his corner.

‘A thousand pardons!’ said he. ‘But the Professore here is so inexorable

with me, that I am afraid to stir.’

‘Don’t stir, then,’ said Gowan coolly, as the sisters approached the

easel. ‘Let the ladies at least see the original of the daub, that they

may know what it’s meant for. There he stands, you see. A bravo waiting

for his prey, a distinguished noble waiting to save his country, the

common enemy waiting to do somebody a bad turn, an angelic messenger

waiting to do somebody a good turn--whatever you think he looks most

like!’

‘Say, Professore Mio, a poor gentleman waiting to do homage to

elegance and beauty,’ remarked Blandois.

‘Or say, Cattivo Soggetto Mio,’ returned Gowan, touching the painted

face with his brush in the part where the real face had moved, ‘a

murderer after the fact. Show that white hand of yours, Blandois. Put it

outside the cloak. Keep it still.’

Blandois’ hand was unsteady; but he laughed, and that would naturally

shake it.

‘He was formerly in some scuffle with another murderer, or with a

victim, you observe,’ said Gowan, putting in the markings of the hand

with a quick, impatient, unskilful touch, ‘and these are the tokens of

it. Outside the cloak, man!--Corpo di San Marco, what are you thinking

of?’

Blandois of Paris shook with a laugh again, so that his hand shook more;

now he raised it to twist his moustache, which had a damp appearance;

and now he stood in the required position, with a little new swagger.

His face was so directed in reference to the spot where Little Dorrit

stood by the easel, that throughout he looked at her. Once attracted by

his peculiar eyes, she could not remove her own, and they had looked

at each other all the time. She trembled now; Gowan, feeling it, and

supposing her to be alarmed by the large dog beside him, whose head she

caressed in her hand, and who had just uttered a low growl, glanced at

her to say, ‘He won’t hurt you, Miss Dorrit.’

‘I am not afraid of him,’ she returned in the same breath; ‘but will you

look at him?’

In a moment Gowan had thrown down his brush, and seized the dog with

both hands by the collar.

‘Blandois! How can you be such a fool as to provoke him! By Heaven, and

the other place too, he’ll tear you to bits! Lie down! Lion! Do you hear

my voice, you rebel!’

The great dog, regardless of being half-choked by his collar, was

obdurately pulling with his dead weight against his master, resolved to

get across the room. He had been crouching for a spring at the moment

when his master caught him.

‘Lion! Lion!’ He was up on his hind legs, and it was a wrestle between

master and dog. ‘Get back! Down, Lion! Get out of his sight, Blandois!

What devil have you conjured into the dog?’

‘I have done nothing to him.’

‘Get out of his sight or I can’t hold the wild beast! Get out of the

room! By my soul, he’ll kill you!’

The dog, with a ferocious bark, made one other struggle as Blandois

vanished; then, in the moment of the dog’s submission, the master,

little less angry than the dog, felled him with a blow on the head, and

standing over him, struck him many times severely with the heel of his

boot, so that his mouth was presently bloody.

‘Now get you into that corner and lie down,’ said Gowan, ‘or I’ll take

you out and shoot you.’

Lion did as he was ordered, and lay down licking his mouth and chest.

Lion’s master stopped for a moment to take breath, and then, recovering

his usual coolness of manner, turned to speak to his frightened wife

and her visitors. Probably the whole occurrence had not occupied two

minutes.

‘Come, come, Minnie! You know he is always good-humoured and tractable.

Blandois must have irritated him,--made faces at him. The dog has his

likings and dislikings, and Blandois is no great favourite of his; but

I am sure you will give him a character, Minnie, for never having been

like this before.’

Minnie was too much disturbed to say anything connected in reply; Little

Dorrit was already occupied in soothing her; Fanny, who had cried out

twice or thrice, held Gowan’s arm for protection; Lion, deeply ashamed

of having caused them this alarm, came trailing himself along the ground

to the feet of his mistress.

‘You furious brute,’ said Gowan, striking him with his foot again. ‘You

shall do penance for this.’ And he struck him again, and yet again.

‘O, pray don’t punish him any more,’ cried Little Dorrit. ‘Don’t hurt

him. See how gentle he is!’ At her entreaty, Gowan spared him; and he

deserved her intercession, for truly he was as submissive, and as sorry,

and as wretched as a dog could be.

It was not easy to recover this shock and make the visit unrestrained,

even though Fanny had not been, under the best of circumstances, the

least trifle in the way. In such further communication as passed among

them before the sisters took their departure, Little Dorrit fancied it

was revealed to her that Mr Gowan treated his wife, even in his very

fondness, too much like a beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of

the depths of feeling which she knew must lie below that surface, that

she doubted if there could be any such depths in himself. She wondered

whether his want of earnestness might be the natural result of his want

of such qualities, and whether it was with people as with ships, that,

in too shallow and rocky waters, their anchors had no hold, and they

drifted anywhere.

He attended them down the staircase, jocosely apologising for the

poor quarters to which such poor fellows as himself were limited, and

remarking that when the high and mighty Barnacles, his relatives, who

would be dreadfully ashamed of them, presented him with better, he would

live in better to oblige them. At the water’s edge they were saluted by

Blandois, who looked white enough after his late adventure, but who made

very light of it notwithstanding,--laughing at the mention of Lion.

Leaving the two together under the scrap of vine upon the causeway,

Gowan idly scattering the leaves from it into the water, and Blandois

lighting a cigarette, the sisters were paddled away in state as they had

come. They had not glided on for many minutes, when Little Dorrit became

aware that Fanny was more showy in manner than the occasion appeared to

require, and, looking about for the cause through the window and through

the open door, saw another gondola evidently in waiting on them.

As this gondola attended their progress in various artful ways;

sometimes shooting on a-head, and stopping to let them pass; sometimes,

when the way was broad enough, skimming along side by side with them;

and sometimes following close astern; and as Fanny gradually made no

disguise that she was playing off graces upon somebody within it, of

whom she at the same time feigned to be unconscious; Little Dorrit at

length asked who it was?

To which Fanny made the short answer, ‘That gaby.’

‘Who?’ said Little Dorrit.

‘My dear child,’ returned Fanny (in a tone suggesting that before her

Uncle’s protest she might have said, You little fool, instead), ‘how

slow you are! Young Sparkler.’

She lowered the window on her side, and, leaning back and resting her

elbow on it negligently, fanned herself with a rich Spanish fan of black

and gold. The attendant gondola, having skimmed forward again, with some

swift trace of an eye in the window, Fanny laughed coquettishly and

said, ‘Did you ever see such a fool, my love?’

‘Do you think he means to follow you all the way?’ asked Little Dorrit.

‘My precious child,’ returned Fanny, ‘I can’t possibly answer for what

an idiot in a state of desperation may do, but I should think it highly

probable. It’s not such an enormous distance. All Venice would scarcely

be that, I imagine, if he’s dying for a glimpse of me.’

‘And is he?’ asked Little Dorrit in perfect simplicity.

‘Well, my love, that really is an awkward question for me to answer,’

said her sister. ‘I believe he is. You had better ask Edward. He tells

Edward he is, I believe. I understand he makes a perfect spectacle of

himself at the Casino, and that sort of places, by going on about me.

But you had better ask Edward if you want to know.’

‘I wonder he doesn’t call,’ said Little Dorrit after thinking a moment.

‘My dear Amy, your wonder will soon cease, if I am rightly informed.

I should not be at all surprised if he called to-day. The creature has

only been waiting to get his courage up, I suspect.’

‘Will you see him?’

‘Indeed, my darling,’ said Fanny, ‘that’s just as it may happen. Here he

is again. Look at him. O, you simpleton!’

Mr Sparkler had, undeniably, a weak appearance; with his eye in the

window like a knot in the glass, and no reason on earth for stopping his

bark suddenly, except the real reason.

‘When you asked me if I will see him, my dear,’ said Fanny, almost as

well composed in the graceful indifference of her attitude as Mrs Merdle

herself, ‘what do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ said Little Dorrit--‘I think I rather mean what do you mean,

dear Fanny?’

Fanny laughed again, in a manner at once condescending, arch, and

affable; and said, putting her arm round her sister in a playfully

affectionate way:

‘Now tell me, my little pet. When we saw that woman at Martigny, how

did you think she carried it off? Did you see what she decided on in a

moment?’

‘No, Fanny.’

‘Then I’ll tell you, Amy. She settled with herself, now I’ll never

refer to that meeting under such different circumstances, and I’ll never

pretend to have any idea that these are the same girls. That’s _her_ way

out of a difficulty. What did I tell you when we came away from Harley

Street that time? She is as insolent and false as any woman in the

world. But in the first capacity, my love, she may find people who can

match her.’

A significant turn of the Spanish fan towards Fanny’s bosom, indicated

with great expression where one of these people was to be found.

‘Not only that,’ pursued Fanny, ‘but she gives the same charge to

Young Sparkler; and doesn’t let him come after me until she has got it

thoroughly into his most ridiculous of all ridiculous noddles (for one

really can’t call it a head), that he is to pretend to have been first

struck with me in that Inn Yard.’

‘Why?’ asked Little Dorrit.

‘Why? Good gracious, my love!’ (again very much in the tone of You

stupid little creature) ‘how can you ask? Don’t you see that I may have

become a rather desirable match for a noddle? And don’t you see that she

puts the deception upon us, and makes a pretence, while she shifts it

from her own shoulders (very good shoulders they are too, I must say),’

observed Miss Fanny, glancing complacently at herself, ‘of considering

our feelings?’

‘But we can always go back to the plain truth.’

‘Yes, but if you please we won’t,’ retorted Fanny. ‘No; I am not going

to have that done, Amy. The pretext is none of mine; it’s hers, and she

shall have enough of it.’

In the triumphant exaltation of her feelings, Miss Fanny, using her

Spanish fan with one hand, squeezed her sister’s waist with the other,

as if she were crushing Mrs Merdle.

‘No,’ repeated Fanny. ‘She shall find me go her way. She took it, and

I’ll follow it. And, with the blessing of fate and fortune, I’ll go on

improving that woman’s acquaintance until I have given her maid,

before her eyes, things from my dressmaker’s ten times as handsome and

expensive as she once gave me from hers!’

Little Dorrit was silent; sensible that she was not to be heard on

any question affecting the family dignity, and unwilling to lose to no

purpose her sister’s newly and unexpectedly restored favour. She could

not concur, but she was silent. Fanny well knew what she was thinking

of; so well, that she soon asked her.

Her reply was, ‘Do you mean to encourage Mr Sparkler, Fanny?’

‘Encourage him, my dear?’ said her sister, smiling contemptuously, ‘that

depends upon what you call encourage. No, I don’t mean to encourage him.

But I’ll make a slave of him.’

Little Dorrit glanced seriously and doubtfully in her face, but Fanny

was not to be so brought to a check. She furled her fan of black and

gold, and used it to tap her sister’s nose; with the air of a proud

beauty and a great spirit, who toyed with and playfully instructed a

homely companion.

‘I shall make him fetch and carry, my dear, and I shall make him subject

to me. And if I don’t make his mother subject to me, too, it shall not

be my fault.’

‘Do you think--dear Fanny, don’t be offended, we are so comfortable

together now--that you can quite see the end of that course?’

‘I can’t say I have so much as looked for it yet, my dear,’ answered

Fanny, with supreme indifference; ‘all in good time. Such are my

intentions. And really they have taken me so long to develop, that here

we are at home. And Young Sparkler at the door, inquiring who is within.

By the merest accident, of course!’

In effect, the swain was standing up in his gondola, card-case in

hand, affecting to put the question to a servant. This conjunction

of circumstances led to his immediately afterwards presenting himself

before the young ladies in a posture, which in ancient times would not

have been considered one of favourable augury for his suit; since the

gondoliers of the young ladies, having been put to some inconvenience

by the chase, so neatly brought their own boat in the gentlest collision

with the bark of Mr Sparkler, as to tip that gentleman over like a

larger species of ninepin, and cause him to exhibit the soles of his

shoes to the object of his dearest wishes: while the nobler portions of

his anatomy struggled at the bottom of his boat in the arms of one of

his men.

However, as Miss Fanny called out with much concern, Was the gentleman

hurt, Mr Sparkler rose more restored than might have been expected, and

stammered for himself with blushes, ‘Not at all so.’ Miss Fanny had no

recollection of having ever seen him before, and was passing on, with a

distant inclination of her head, when he announced himself by name. Even

then she was in a difficulty from being unable to call it to mind, until

he explained that he had had the honour of seeing her at Martigny. Then

she remembered him, and hoped his lady-mother was well.

‘Thank you,’ stammered Mr Sparkler, ‘she’s uncommonly well--at least,

poorly.’

‘In Venice?’ said Miss Fanny.

‘In Rome,’ Mr Sparkler answered. ‘I am here by myself, myself. I came to

call upon Mr Edward Dorrit myself. Indeed, upon Mr Dorrit likewise. In

fact, upon the family.’

Turning graciously to the attendants, Miss Fanny inquired whether her

papa or brother was within? The reply being that they were both within,

Mr Sparkler humbly offered his arm. Miss Fanny accepting it, was squired

up the great staircase by Mr Sparkler, who, if he still believed (which

there is not any reason to doubt) that she had no nonsense about her,

rather deceived himself.

Arrived in a mouldering reception-room, where the faded hangings, of a

sad sea-green, had worn and withered until they looked as if they

might have claimed kindred with the waifs of seaweed drifting under

the windows, or clinging to the walls and weeping for their imprisoned

relations, Miss Fanny despatched emissaries for her father and brother.

Pending whose appearance, she showed to great advantage on a sofa,

completing Mr Sparkler’s conquest with some remarks upon Dante--known

to that gentleman as an eccentric man in the nature of an Old File,

who used to put leaves round his head, and sit upon a stool for some

unaccountable purpose, outside the cathedral at Florence.

Mr Dorrit welcomed the visitor with the highest urbanity, and most

courtly manners. He inquired particularly after Mrs Merdle. He inquired

particularly after Mr Merdle. Mr Sparkler said, or rather twitched out

of himself in small pieces by the shirt-collar, that Mrs Merdle having

completely used up her place in the country, and also her house at

Brighton, and being, of course, unable, don’t you see, to remain in

London when there wasn’t a soul there, and not feeling herself this year

quite up to visiting about at people’s places, had resolved to have

a touch at Rome, where a woman like herself, with a proverbially fine

appearance, and with no nonsense about her, couldn’t fail to be a great

acquisition. As to Mr Merdle, he was so much wanted by the men in the

City and the rest of those places, and was such a doosed extraordinary

phenomenon in Buying and Banking and that, that Mr Sparkler doubted if

the monetary system of the country would be able to spare him; though

that his work was occasionally one too many for him, and that he would

be all the better for a temporary shy at an entirely new scene and

climate, Mr Sparkler did not conceal. As to himself, Mr Sparkler

conveyed to the Dorrit family that he was going, on rather particular

business, wherever they were going.

This immense conversational achievement required time, but was effected.

Being effected, Mr Dorrit expressed his hope that Mr Sparkler would

shortly dine with them. Mr Sparkler received the idea so kindly that Mr

Dorrit asked what he was going to do that day, for instance? As he was

going to do nothing that day (his usual occupation, and one for which he

was particularly qualified), he was secured without postponement; being

further bound over to accompany the ladies to the Opera in the evening.

At dinner-time Mr Sparkler rose out of the sea, like Venus’s son taking

after his mother, and made a splendid appearance ascending the great

staircase. If Fanny had been charming in the morning, she was now thrice

charming, very becomingly dressed in her most suitable colours, and with

an air of negligence upon her that doubled Mr Sparkler’s fetters, and

riveted them.

‘I hear you are acquainted, Mr Sparkler,’ said his host at dinner,

‘with--ha--Mr Gowan. Mr Henry Gowan?’

‘Perfectly, sir,’ returned Mr Sparkler. ‘His mother and my mother are

cronies in fact.’

‘If I had thought of it, Amy,’ said Mr Dorrit, with a patronage as

magnificent as that of Lord Decimus himself, ‘you should have despatched

a note to them, asking them to dine to-day. Some of our people could

have--ha--fetched them, and taken them home. We could have spared

a--hum--gondola for that purpose. I am sorry to have forgotten this.

Pray remind me of them to-morrow.’

Little Dorrit was not without doubts how Mr Henry Gowan might take their

patronage; but she promised not to fail in the reminder.

‘Pray, does Mr Henry Gowan paint--ha--Portraits?’ inquired Mr Dorrit.

Mr Sparkler opined that he painted anything, if he could get the job.

‘He has no particular walk?’ said Mr Dorrit.

Mr Sparkler, stimulated by Love to brilliancy, replied that for a

particular walk a man ought to have a particular pair of shoes; as, for

example, shooting, shooting-shoes; cricket, cricket-shoes. Whereas, he

believed that Henry Gowan had no particular pair of shoes.

‘No speciality?’ said Mr Dorrit.

This being a very long word for Mr Sparkler, and his mind being

exhausted by his late effort, he replied, ‘No, thank you. I seldom take

it.’

‘Well!’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘It would be very agreeable to me to present

a gentleman so connected, with some--ha--Testimonial of my desire to

further his interests, and develop the--hum--germs of his genius. I

think I must engage Mr Gowan to paint my picture. If the result should

be--ha--mutually satisfactory, I might afterwards engage him to try his

hand upon my family.’

The exquisitely bold and original thought presented itself to Mr

Sparkler, that there was an opening here for saying there were some of

the family (emphasising ‘some’ in a marked manner) to whom no painter

could render justice. But, for want of a form of words in which to

express the idea, it returned to the skies.

This was the more to be regretted as Miss Fanny greatly applauded the

notion of the portrait, and urged her papa to act upon it. She surmised,

she said, that Mr Gowan had lost better and higher opportunities by

marrying his pretty wife; and Love in a cottage, painting pictures for

dinner, was so delightfully interesting, that she begged her papa to

give him the commission whether he could paint a likeness or not: though

indeed both she and Amy knew he could, from having seen a speaking

likeness on his easel that day, and having had the opportunity of

comparing it with the original. These remarks made Mr Sparkler (as

perhaps they were intended to do) nearly distracted; for while on

the one hand they expressed Miss Fanny’s susceptibility of the tender

passion, she herself showed such an innocent unconsciousness of his

admiration that his eyes goggled in his head with jealousy of an unknown

rival.

Descending into the sea again after dinner, and ascending out of it

at the Opera staircase, preceded by one of their gondoliers, like an

attendant Merman, with a great linen lantern, they entered their box,

and Mr Sparkler entered on an evening of agony. The theatre being

dark, and the box light, several visitors lounged in during the

representation; in whom Fanny was so interested, and in conversation

with whom she fell into such charming attitudes, as she had little

confidences with them, and little disputes concerning the identity of

people in distant boxes, that the wretched Sparkler hated all mankind.

But he had two consolations at the close of the performance. She gave

him her fan to hold while she adjusted her cloak, and it was his

blessed privilege to give her his arm down-stairs again. These crumbs of

encouragement, Mr Sparkler thought, would just keep him going; and it is

not impossible that Miss Dorrit thought so too.

The Merman with his light was ready at the box-door, and other Mermen

with other lights were ready at many of the doors. The Dorrit Merman

held his lantern low, to show the steps, and Mr Sparkler put on another

heavy set of fetters over his former set, as he watched her radiant

feet twinkling down the stairs beside him. Among the loiterers here, was

Blandois of Paris. He spoke, and moved forward beside Fanny.

Little Dorrit was in front with her brother and Mrs General (Mr Dorrit

had remained at home), but on the brink of the quay they all came

together. She started again to find Blandois close to her, handing Fanny

into the boat.

‘Gowan has had a loss,’ he said, ‘since he was made happy to-day by a

visit from fair ladies.’

‘A loss?’ repeated Fanny, relinquished by the bereaved Sparkler, and

taking her seat.

‘A loss,’ said Blandois. ‘His dog Lion.’

Little Dorrit’s hand was in his, as he spoke.

‘He is dead,’ said Blandois.

‘Dead?’ echoed Little Dorrit. ‘That noble dog?’

‘Faith, dear ladies!’ said Blandois, smiling and shrugging his

shoulders, ‘somebody has poisoned that noble dog. He is as dead as the

Doges!’

CHAPTER 7. Mostly, Prunes and Prism

Mrs General, always on her coach-box keeping the proprieties well

together, took pains to form a surface on her very dear young friend,

and Mrs General’s very dear young friend tried hard to receive it. Hard

as she had tried in her laborious life to attain many ends, she had

never tried harder than she did now, to be varnished by Mrs General. It

made her anxious and ill at ease to be operated upon by that smoothing

hand, it is true; but she submitted herself to the family want in

its greatness as she had submitted herself to the family want in its

littleness, and yielded to her own inclinations in this thing no more

than she had yielded to her hunger itself, in the days when she had

saved her dinner that her father might have his supper.

One comfort that she had under the Ordeal by General was more

sustaining to her, and made her more grateful than to a less devoted

and affectionate spirit, not habituated to her struggles and sacrifices,

might appear quite reasonable; and, indeed, it may often be observed in

life, that spirits like Little Dorrit do not appear to reason half

as carefully as the folks who get the better of them. The continued

kindness of her sister was this comfort to Little Dorrit. It was nothing

to her that the kindness took the form of tolerant patronage; she was

used to that. It was nothing to her that it kept her in a tributary

position, and showed her in attendance on the flaming car in which Miss

Fanny sat on an elevated seat, exacting homage; she sought no better

place. Always admiring Fanny’s beauty, and grace, and readiness, and not

now asking herself how much of her disposition to be strongly attached

to Fanny was due to her own heart, and how much to Fanny’s, she gave her

all the sisterly fondness her great heart contained.

The wholesale amount of Prunes and Prism which Mrs General infused into

the family life, combined with the perpetual plunges made by Fanny into

society, left but a very small residue of any natural deposit at the

bottom of the mixture. This rendered confidences with Fanny doubly

precious to Little Dorrit, and heightened the relief they afforded her.

‘Amy,’ said Fanny to her one night when they were alone, after a day so

tiring that Little Dorrit was quite worn out, though Fanny would have

taken another dip into society with the greatest pleasure in life, ‘I

am going to put something into your little head. You won’t guess what it

is, I suspect.’

‘I don’t think that’s likely, dear,’ said Little Dorrit.

‘Come, I’ll give you a clue, child,’ said Fanny. ‘Mrs General.’

Prunes and Prism, in a thousand combinations, having been wearily in the

ascendant all day--everything having been surface and varnish and show

without substance--Little Dorrit looked as if she had hoped that Mrs

General was safely tucked up in bed for some hours.

‘_Now_, can you guess, Amy?’ said Fanny.

‘No, dear. Unless I have done anything,’ said Little Dorrit, rather

alarmed, and meaning anything calculated to crack varnish and ruffle

surface.

Fanny was so very much amused by the misgiving, that she took up her

favourite fan (being then seated at her dressing-table with her armoury

of cruel instruments about her, most of them reeking from the heart

of Sparkler), and tapped her sister frequently on the nose with it,

laughing all the time.

‘Oh, our Amy, our Amy!’ said Fanny. ‘What a timid little goose our Amy

is! But this is nothing to laugh at. On the contrary, I am very cross,

my dear.’

‘As it is not with me, Fanny, I don’t mind,’ returned her sister,

smiling.

‘Ah! But I do mind,’ said Fanny, ‘and so will you, Pet, when I enlighten

you. Amy, has it never struck you that somebody is monstrously polite to

Mrs General?’

‘Everybody is polite to Mrs General,’ said Little Dorrit. ‘Because--’

‘Because she freezes them into it?’ interrupted Fanny. ‘I don’t mean

that; quite different from that. Come! Has it never struck you, Amy,

that Pa is monstrously polite to Mrs General.’

Amy, murmuring ‘No,’ looked quite confounded.

‘No; I dare say not. But he is,’ said Fanny. ‘He is, Amy. And remember

my words. Mrs General has designs on Pa!’

‘Dear Fanny, do you think it possible that Mrs General has designs on

any one?’

‘Do I think it possible?’ retorted Fanny. ‘My love, I know it. I tell

you she has designs on Pa. And more than that, I tell you Pa considers

her such a wonder, such a paragon of accomplishment, and such an

acquisition to our family, that he is ready to get himself into a state

of perfect infatuation with her at any moment. And that opens a pretty

picture of things, I hope? Think of me with Mrs General for a Mama!’

Little Dorrit did not reply, ‘Think of me with Mrs General for a Mama;’

but she looked anxious, and seriously inquired what had led Fanny to

these conclusions.

‘Lord, my darling,’ said Fanny, tartly. ‘You might as well ask me how

I know when a man is struck with myself! But, of course I do know. It

happens pretty often: but I always know it. I know this in much the same

way, I suppose. At all events, I know it.’

‘You never heard Papa say anything?’

‘Say anything?’ repeated Fanny. ‘My dearest, darling child, what

necessity has he had, yet awhile, to say anything?’

‘And you have never heard Mrs General say anything?’

‘My goodness me, Amy,’ returned Fanny, ‘is she the sort of woman to say

anything? Isn’t it perfectly plain and clear that she has nothing to do

at present but to hold herself upright, keep her aggravating gloves on,

and go sweeping about? Say anything! If she had the ace of trumps in her

hand at whist, she wouldn’t say anything, child. It would come out when

she played it.’

‘At least, you may be mistaken, Fanny. Now, may you not?’

‘O yes, I _may_ be,’ said Fanny, ‘but I am not. However, I am glad you

can contemplate such an escape, my dear, and I am glad that you can take

this for the present with sufficient coolness to think of such a chance.

It makes me hope that you may be able to bear the connection. I should

not be able to bear it, and I should not try. I’d marry young Sparkler

first.’

‘O, you would never marry him, Fanny, under any circumstances.’

‘Upon my word, my dear,’ rejoined that young lady with exceeding

indifference, ‘I wouldn’t positively answer even for that. There’s

no knowing what might happen. Especially as I should have many

opportunities, afterwards, of treating that woman, his mother, in her

own style. Which I most decidedly should not be slow to avail myself of,

Amy.’

No more passed between the sisters then; but what had passed gave the

two subjects of Mrs General and Mr Sparkler great prominence in Little

Dorrit’s mind, and thenceforth she thought very much of both.

Mrs General, having long ago formed her own surface to such perfection

that it hid whatever was below it (if anything), no observation was to

be made in that quarter. Mr Dorrit was undeniably very polite to her

and had a high opinion of her; but Fanny, impetuous at most times, might

easily be wrong for all that. Whereas, the Sparkler question was on the

different footing that any one could see what was going on there, and

Little Dorrit saw it and pondered on it with many doubts and wonderings.

The devotion of Mr Sparkler was only to be equalled by the caprice

and cruelty of his enslaver. Sometimes she would prefer him to such

distinction of notice, that he would chuckle aloud with joy; next day,

or next hour, she would overlook him so completely, and drop him into

such an abyss of obscurity, that he would groan under a weak pretence of

coughing. The constancy of his attendance never touched Fanny: though he

was so inseparable from Edward, that, when that gentleman wished for

a change of society, he was under the irksome necessity of gliding out

like a conspirator in disguised boats and by secret doors and back ways;

though he was so solicitous to know how Mr Dorrit was, that he called

every other day to inquire, as if Mr Dorrit were the prey of an

intermittent fever; though he was so constantly being paddled up and

down before the principal windows, that he might have been supposed to

have made a wager for a large stake to be paddled a thousand miles in

a thousand hours; though whenever the gondola of his mistress left the

gate, the gondola of Mr Sparkler shot out from some watery ambush

and gave chase, as if she were a fair smuggler and he a custom-house

officer. It was probably owing to this fortification of the natural

strength of his constitution with so much exposure to the air, and the

salt sea, that Mr Sparkler did not pine outwardly; but, whatever the

cause, he was so far from having any prospect of moving his mistress by

a languishing state of health, that he grew bluffer every day, and that

peculiarity in his appearance of seeming rather a swelled boy than

a young man, became developed to an extraordinary degree of ruddy

puffiness.

Blandois calling to pay his respects, Mr Dorrit received him with

affability as the friend of Mr Gowan, and mentioned to him his idea of

commissioning Mr Gowan to transmit him to posterity. Blandois highly

extolling it, it occurred to Mr Dorrit that it might be agreeable to

Blandois to communicate to his friend the great opportunity reserved

for him. Blandois accepted the commission with his own free elegance of

manner, and swore he would discharge it before he was an hour older. On

his imparting the news to Gowan, that Master gave Mr Dorrit to the

Devil with great liberality some round dozen of times (for he resented

patronage almost as much as he resented the want of it), and was

inclined to quarrel with his friend for bringing him the message.

‘It may be a defect in my mental vision, Blandois,’ said he, ‘but may I

die if I see what you have to do with this.’

‘Death of my life,’ replied Blandois, ‘nor I neither, except that I

thought I was serving my friend.’

‘By putting an upstart’s hire in his pocket?’ said Gowan, frowning.

‘Do you mean that? Tell your other friend to get his head painted for

the sign of some public-house, and to get it done by a sign-painter. Who

am I, and who is he?’

‘Professore,’ returned the ambassador, ‘and who is Blandois?’

Without appearing at all interested in the latter question, Gowan

angrily whistled Mr Dorrit away. But, next day, he resumed the subject

by saying in his off-hand manner and with a slighting laugh, ‘Well,

Blandois, when shall we go to this Maecenas of yours? We journeymen must

take jobs when we can get them. When shall we go and look after this

job?’

‘When you will,’ said the injured Blandois, ‘as you please. What have I

to do with it? What is it to me?’

‘I can tell you what it is to me,’ said Gowan. ‘Bread and cheese. One

must eat! So come along, my Blandois.’

Mr Dorrit received them in the presence of his daughters and of Mr

Sparkler, who happened, by some surprising accident, to be calling

there. ‘How are you, Sparkler?’ said Gowan carelessly. ‘When you have

to live by your mother wit, old boy, I hope you may get on better than I

do.’

Mr Dorrit then mentioned his proposal. ‘Sir,’ said Gowan, laughing,

after receiving it gracefully enough, ‘I am new to the trade, and not

expert at its mysteries. I believe I ought to look at you in various

lights, tell you you are a capital subject, and consider when I shall be

sufficiently disengaged to devote 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.