Thenceforth the Dowager, with a light and careless humour, often

recounted to her particular acquaintance how, after a hard trial, she

had found it impossible to know those people who belonged to Henry’s

wife, and who had made that desperate set to catch him. Whether she had

come to the conclusion beforehand, that to get rid of them would give

her favourite pretence a better air, might save her some occasional

inconvenience, and could risk no loss (the pretty creature being fast

married, and her father devoted to her), was best known to herself.

Though this history has its opinion on that point too, and decidedly in

the affirmative.

CHAPTER 9. Appearance and Disappearance

‘Arthur, my dear boy,’ said Mr Meagles, on the evening of the following

day, ‘Mother and I have been talking this over, and we don’t feel

comfortable in remaining as we are. That elegant connection of

ours--that dear lady who was here yesterday--’

‘I understand,’ said Arthur.

‘Even that affable and condescending ornament of society,’ pursued Mr

Meagles, ‘may misrepresent us, we are afraid. We could bear a great

deal, Arthur, for her sake; but we think we would rather not bear that,

if it was all the same to her.’

‘Good,’ said Arthur. ‘Go on.’

‘You see,’ proceeded Mr Meagles ‘it might put us wrong with our

son-in-law, it might even put us wrong with our daughter, and it might

lead to a great deal of domestic trouble. You see, don’t you?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ returned Arthur, ‘there is much reason in what you say.’

He had glanced at Mrs Meagles, who was always on the good and sensible

side; and a petition had shone out of her honest face that he would

support Mr Meagles in his present inclinings.

‘So we are very much disposed, are Mother and I,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘to

pack up bags and baggage and go among the Allongers and Marshongers once

more. I mean, we are very much disposed to be off, strike right through

France into Italy, and see our Pet.’

‘And I don’t think,’ replied Arthur, touched by the motherly

anticipation in the bright face of Mrs Meagles (she must have been very

like her daughter, once), ‘that you could do better. And if you ask me

for my advice, it is that you set off to-morrow.’

‘Is it really, though?’ said Mr Meagles. ‘Mother, this is being backed

in an idea!’

Mother, with a look which thanked Clennam in a manner very agreeable to

him, answered that it was indeed.

‘The fact is, besides, Arthur,’ said Mr Meagles, the old cloud coming

over his face, ‘that my son-in-law is already in debt again, and that I

suppose I must clear him again. It may be as well, even on this account,

that I should step over there, and look him up in a friendly way. Then

again, here’s Mother foolishly anxious (and yet naturally too) about

Pet’s state of health, and that she should not be left to feel lonesome

at the present time. It’s undeniably a long way off, Arthur, and a

strange place for the poor love under all the circumstances. Let her be

as well cared for as any lady in that land, still it is a long way off.

just as Home is Home though it’s never so Homely, why you see,’ said Mr

Meagles, adding a new version to the proverb, ‘Rome is Rome, though it’s

never so Romely.’

‘All perfectly true,’ observed Arthur, ‘and all sufficient reasons for

going.’

‘I am glad you think so; it decides me. Mother, my dear, you may get

ready. We have lost our pleasant interpreter (she spoke three foreign

languages beautifully, Arthur; you have heard her many a time), and you

must pull me through it, Mother, as well as you can. I require a deal

of pulling through, Arthur,’ said Mr Meagles, shaking his head, ‘a deal

of pulling through. I stick at everything beyond a noun-substantive--and

I stick at him, if he’s at all a tight one.’

‘Now I think of it,’ returned Clennam, ‘there’s Cavalletto. He shall

go with you, if you like. I could not afford to lose him, but you will

bring him safe back.’

‘Well! I am much obliged to you, my boy,’ said Mr Meagles, turning it

over, ‘but I think not. No, I think I’ll be pulled through by Mother.

Cavallooro (I stick at his very name to start with, and it sounds like

the chorus to a comic song) is so necessary to you, that I don’t like

the thought of taking him away. More than that, there’s no saying when

we may come home again; and it would never do to take him away for

an indefinite time. The cottage is not what it was. It only holds two

little people less than it ever did, Pet, and her poor unfortunate maid

Tattycoram; but it seems empty now. Once out of it, there’s no knowing

when we may come back to it. No, Arthur, I’ll be pulled through by

Mother.’

They would do best by themselves perhaps, after all, Clennam thought;

therefore did not press his proposal.

‘If you would come down and stay here for a change, when it wouldn’t

trouble you,’ Mr Meagles resumed, ‘I should be glad to think--and so

would Mother too, I know--that you were brightening up the old place

with a bit of life it was used to when it was full, and that the Babies

on the wall there had a kind eye upon them sometimes. You so belong to

the spot, and to them, Arthur, and we should every one of us have been

so happy if it had fallen out--but, let us see--how’s the weather for

travelling now?’ Mr Meagles broke off, cleared his throat, and got up to

look out of the window.

They agreed that the weather was of high promise; and Clennam kept the

talk in that safe direction until it had become easy again, when he

gently diverted it to Henry Gowan and his quick sense and agreeable

qualities when he was delicately dealt with; he likewise dwelt on the

indisputable affection he entertained for his wife. Clennam did not fail

of his effect upon good Mr Meagles, whom these commendations greatly

cheered; and who took Mother to witness that the single and cordial

desire of his heart in reference to their daughter’s husband, was

harmoniously to exchange friendship for friendship, and confidence for

confidence. Within a few hours the cottage furniture began to be wrapped

up for preservation in the family absence--or, as Mr Meagles expressed

it, the house began to put its hair in papers--and within a few days

Father and Mother were gone, Mrs Tickit and Dr Buchan were posted, as of

yore, behind the parlour blind, and Arthur’s solitary feet were rustling

among the dry fallen leaves in the garden walks.

As he had a liking for the spot, he seldom let a week pass without

paying a visit. Sometimes, he went down alone from Saturday to Monday;

sometimes his partner accompanied him; sometimes, he merely strolled for

an hour or two about the house and garden, saw that all was right, and

returned to London again. At all times, and under all circumstances, Mrs

Tickit, with her dark row of curls, and Dr Buchan, sat in the parlour

window, looking out for the family return.

On one of his visits Mrs Tickit received him with the words, ‘I

have something to tell you, Mr Clennam, that will surprise you.’ So

surprising was the something in question, that it actually brought Mrs

Tickit out of the parlour window and produced her in the garden walk,

when Clennam went in at the gate on its being opened for him.

‘What is it, Mrs Tickit?’ said he.

‘Sir,’ returned that faithful housekeeper, having taken him into the

parlour and closed the door; ‘if ever I saw the led away and deluded

child in my life, I saw her identically in the dusk of yesterday

evening.’

‘You don’t mean Tatty--’

‘Coram yes I do!’ quoth Mrs Tickit, clearing the disclosure at a leap.

‘Where?’

‘Mr Clennam,’ returned Mrs Tickit, ‘I was a little heavy in my eyes,

being that I was waiting longer than customary for my cup of tea which

was then preparing by Mary Jane. I was not sleeping, nor what a person

would term correctly, dozing. I was more what a person would strictly

call watching with my eyes closed.’

Without entering upon an inquiry into this curious abnormal condition,

Clennam said, ‘Exactly. Well?’

‘Well, sir,’ proceeded Mrs Tickit, ‘I was thinking of one thing and

thinking of another, just as you yourself might. Just as anybody might.’

‘Precisely so,’ said Clennam. ‘Well?’

‘And when I do think of one thing and do think of another,’ pursued

Mrs Tickit, ‘I hardly need to tell you, Mr Clennam, that I think of the

family. Because, dear me! a person’s thoughts,’ Mrs Tickit said this

with an argumentative and philosophic air, ‘however they may stray, will

go more or less on what is uppermost in their minds. They _will_ do it,

sir, and a person can’t prevent them.’

Arthur subscribed to this discovery with a nod.

‘You find it so yourself, sir, I’ll be bold to say,’ said Mrs Tickit,

‘and we all find it so. It an’t our stations in life that changes us, Mr

Clennam; thoughts is free!--As I was saying, I was thinking of one thing

and thinking of another, and thinking very much of the family. Not of

the family in the present times only, but in the past times too. For

when a person does begin thinking of one thing and thinking of another

in that manner, as it’s getting dark, what I say is, that all times

seem to be present, and a person must get out of that state and consider

before they can say which is which.’

He nodded again; afraid to utter a word, lest it should present any new

opening to Mrs Tickit’s conversational powers.

‘In consequence of which,’ said Mrs Tickit, ‘when I quivered my eyes and

saw her actual form and figure looking in at the gate, I let them close

again without so much as starting, for that actual form and figure came

so pat to the time when it belonged to the house as much as mine or your

own, that I never thought at the moment of its having gone away. But,

sir, when I quivered my eyes again, and saw that it wasn’t there, then

it all flooded upon me with a fright, and I jumped up.’

‘You ran out directly?’ said Clennam.

‘I ran out,’ assented Mrs Tickit, ‘as fast as ever my feet would carry

me; and if you’ll credit it, Mr Clennam, there wasn’t in the whole

shining Heavens, no not so much as a finger of that young woman.’

Passing over the absence from the firmament of this novel constellation,

Arthur inquired of Mrs Tickit if she herself went beyond the gate?

‘Went to and fro, and high and low,’ said Mrs Tickit, ‘and saw no sign

of her!’

He then asked Mrs Tickit how long a space of time she supposed there

might have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she had

experienced? Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her reply,

had no settled opinion between five seconds and ten minutes. She was so

plainly at sea on this part of the case, and had so clearly been

startled out of slumber, that Clennam was much disposed to regard the

appearance as a dream. Without hurting Mrs Tickit’s feelings with that

infidel solution of her mystery, he took it away from the cottage with

him; and probably would have retained it ever afterwards if a

circumstance had not soon happened to change his opinion.

He was passing at nightfall along the Strand, and the lamp-lighter was

going on before him, under whose hand the street-lamps, blurred by the

foggy air, burst out one after another, like so many blazing sunflowers

coming into full-blow all at once,--when a stoppage on the pavement,

caused by a train of coal-waggons toiling up from the wharves at the

river-side, brought him to a stand-still. He had been walking quickly,

and going with some current of thought, and the sudden check given to

both operations caused him to look freshly about him, as people under

such circumstances usually do.

Immediately, he saw in advance--a few people intervening, but still

so near to him that he could have touched them by stretching out

his arm--Tattycoram and a strange man of a remarkable appearance: a

swaggering man, with a high nose, and a black moustache as false in its

colour as his eyes were false in their expression, who wore his heavy

cloak with the air of a foreigner. His dress and general appearance were

those of a man on travel, and he seemed to have very recently joined

the girl. In bending down (being much taller than she was), listening

to whatever she said to him, he looked over his shoulder with the

suspicious glance of one who was not unused to be mistrustful that his

footsteps might be dogged. It was then that Clennam saw his face; as

his eyes lowered on the people behind him in the aggregate, without

particularly resting upon Clennam’s face or any other.

He had scarcely turned his head about again, and it was still bent down,

listening to the girl, when the stoppage ceased, and the obstructed

stream of people flowed on. Still bending his head and listening to the

girl, he went on at her side, and Clennam followed them, resolved to

play this unexpected play out, and see where they went.

He had hardly made the determination (though he was not long about it),

when he was again as suddenly brought up as he had been by the stoppage.

They turned short into the Adelphi,--the girl evidently leading,--and

went straight on, as if they were going to the Terrace which overhangs

the river.

There is always, to this day, a sudden pause in that place to the roar

of the great thoroughfare. The many sounds become so deadened that the

change is like putting cotton in the ears, or having the head thickly

muffled. At that time the contrast was far greater; there being no small

steam-boats on the river, no landing places but slippery wooden stairs

and foot-causeways, no railroad on the opposite bank, no hanging bridge

or fish-market near at hand, no traffic on the nearest bridge of stone,

nothing moving on the stream but watermen’s wherries and coal-lighters.

Long and broad black tiers of the latter, moored fast in the mud as if

they were never to move again, made the shore funereal and silent after

dark; and kept what little water-movement there was, far out towards

mid-stream. At any hour later than sunset, and not least at that hour

when most of the people who have anything to eat at home are going home

to eat it, and when most of those who have nothing have hardly yet slunk

out to beg or steal, it was a deserted place and looked on a deserted

scene.

Such was the hour when Clennam stopped at the corner, observing the girl

and the strange man as they went down the street. The man’s footsteps

were so noisy on the echoing stones that he was unwilling to add the

sound of his own. But when they had passed the turning and were in the

darkness of the dark corner leading to the terrace, he made after them

with such indifferent appearance of being a casual passenger on his way,

as he could assume.

When he rounded the dark corner, they were walking along the terrace

towards a figure which was coming towards them. If he had seen it by

itself, under such conditions of gas-lamp, mist, and distance, he might

not have known it at first sight, but with the figure of the girl to

prompt him, he at once recognised Miss Wade.

He stopped at the corner, seeming to look back expectantly up the street

as if he had made an appointment with some one to meet him there; but he

kept a careful eye on the three. When they came together, the man took

off his hat, and made Miss Wade a bow. The girl appeared to say a few

words as though she presented him, or accounted for his being late, or

early, or what not; and then fell a pace or so behind, by herself. Miss

Wade and the man then began to walk up and down; the man having the

appearance of being extremely courteous and complimentary in manner;

Miss Wade having the appearance of being extremely haughty.

When they came down to the corner and turned, she was saying, ‘If I

pinch myself for it, sir, that is my business. Confine yourself to

yours, and ask me no question.’

‘By Heaven, ma’am!’ he replied, making her another bow. ‘It was my

profound respect for the strength of your character, and my admiration

of your beauty.’

‘I want neither the one nor the other from any one,’ said she, ‘and

certainly not from you of all creatures. Go on with your report.’

‘Am I pardoned?’ he asked, with an air of half abashed gallantry.

‘You are paid,’ she said, ‘and that is all you want.’

Whether the girl hung behind because she was not to hear the business,

or as already knowing enough about it, Clennam could not determine. They

turned and she turned. She looked away at the river, as she walked

with her hands folded before her; and that was all he could make of

her without showing his face. There happened, by good fortune, to be a

lounger really waiting for some one; and he sometimes looked over the

railing at the water, and sometimes came to the dark corner and looked

up the street, rendering Arthur less conspicuous.

When Miss Wade and the man came back again, she was saying, ‘You must

wait until to-morrow.’

‘A thousand pardons?’ he returned. ‘My faith! Then it’s not convenient

to-night?’

‘No. I tell you I must get it before I can give it to you.’

She stopped in the roadway, as if to put an end to the conference. He of

course stopped too. And the girl stopped.

‘It’s a little inconvenient,’ said the man. ‘A little. But, Holy Blue!

that’s nothing in such a service. I am without money to-night, by

chance. I have a good banker in this city, but I would not wish to draw

upon the house until the time when I shall draw for a round sum.’

‘Harriet,’ said Miss Wade, ‘arrange with him--this gentleman here--for

sending him some money to-morrow.’ She said it with a slur of the word

gentleman which was more contemptuous than any emphasis, and walked

slowly on.

The man bent his head again, and the girl spoke to him as they both

followed her. Clennam ventured to look at the girl as they moved away.

He could note that her rich black eyes were fastened upon the man with a

scrutinising expression, and that she kept at a little distance from

him, as they walked side by side to the further end of the terrace.

A loud and altered clank upon the pavement warned him, before he could

discern what was passing there, that the man was coming back alone.

Clennam lounged into the road, towards the railing; and the man passed

at a quick swing, with the end of his cloak thrown over his shoulder,

singing a scrap of a French song.

The whole vista had no one in it now but himself. The lounger had

lounged out of view, and Miss Wade and Tattycoram were gone. More than

ever bent on seeing what became of them, and on having some information

to give his good friend, Mr Meagles, he went out at the further end of

the terrace, looking cautiously about him. He rightly judged that, at

first at all events, they would go in a contrary direction from their

late companion. He soon saw them in a neighbouring bye-street, which was

not a thoroughfare, evidently allowing time for the man to get well

out of their way. They walked leisurely arm-in-arm down one side of the

street, and returned on the opposite side. When they came back to the

street-corner, they changed their pace for the pace of people with an

object and a distance before them, and walked steadily away. Clennam, no

less steadily, kept them in sight.

They crossed the Strand, and passed through Covent Garden (under the

windows of his old lodging where dear Little Dorrit had come that

night), and slanted away north-east, until they passed the great

building whence Tattycoram derived her name, and turned into the Gray’s

Inn Road. Clennam was quite at home here, in right of Flora, not to

mention the Patriarch and Pancks, and kept them in view with ease. He

was beginning to wonder where they might be going next, when that wonder

was lost in the greater wonder with which he saw them turn into the

Patriarchal street. That wonder was in its turn swallowed up on the

greater wonder with which he saw them stop at the Patriarchal door. A

low double knock at the bright brass knocker, a gleam of light into the

road from the opened door, a brief pause for inquiry and answer and the

door was shut, and they were housed.

After looking at the surrounding objects for assurance that he was

not in an odd dream, and after pacing a little while before the house,

Arthur knocked at the door. It was opened by the usual maid-servant,

and she showed him up at once, with her usual alacrity, to Flora’s

sitting-room.

There was no one with Flora but Mr F.’s Aunt, which respectable

gentlewoman, basking in a balmy atmosphere of tea and toast, was

ensconced in an easy-chair by the fireside, with a little table at her

elbow, and a clean white handkerchief spread over her lap on which

two pieces of toast at that moment awaited consumption. Bending over

a steaming vessel of tea, and looking through the steam, and breathing

forth the steam, like a malignant Chinese enchantress engaged in the

performance of unholy rites, Mr F.’s Aunt put down her great teacup and

exclaimed, ‘Drat him, if he an’t come back again!’

It would seem from the foregoing exclamation that this uncompromising

relative of the lamented Mr F., measuring time by the acuteness of her

sensations and not by the clock, supposed Clennam to have lately gone

away; whereas at least a quarter of a year had elapsed since he had had

the temerity to present himself before her.

‘My goodness Arthur!’ cried Flora, rising to give him a cordial

reception, ‘Doyce and Clennam what a start and a surprise for though not

far from the machinery and foundry business and surely might be taken

sometimes if at no other time about mid-day when a glass of sherry and a

humble sandwich of whatever cold meat in the larder might not come amiss

nor taste the worse for being friendly for you know you buy it somewhere

and wherever bought a profit must be made or they would never keep the

place it stands to reason without a motive still never seen and learnt

now not to be expected, for as Mr F. himself said if seeing is believing

not seeing is believing too and when you don’t see you may fully believe

you’re not remembered not that I expect you Arthur Doyce and Clennam to

remember me why should I for the days are gone but bring another teacup

here directly and tell her fresh toast and pray sit near the fire.’

Arthur was in the greatest anxiety to explain the object of his

visit; but was put off for the moment, in spite of himself, by what he

understood of the reproachful purport of these words, and by the genuine

pleasure she testified in seeing him.

‘And now pray tell me something all you know,’ said Flora, drawing her

chair near to his, ‘about the good dear quiet little thing and all the

changes of her fortunes carriage people now no doubt and horses without

number most romantic, a coat of arms of course and wild beasts on their

hind legs showing it as if it was a copy they had done with mouths from

ear to ear good gracious, and has she her health which is the first

consideration after all for what is wealth without it Mr F. himself so

often saying when his twinges came that sixpence a day and find yourself

and no gout so much preferable, not that he could have lived on anything

like it being the last man or that the previous little thing though far

too familiar an expression now had any tendency of that sort much too

slight and small but looked so fragile bless her?’

Mr F.’s Aunt, who had eaten a piece of toast down to the crust, here

solemnly handed the crust to Flora, who ate it for her as a matter of

business. Mr F.’s Aunt then moistened her ten fingers in slow succession

at her lips, and wiped them in exactly the same order on the white

handkerchief; then took the other piece of toast, and fell to work

upon it. While pursuing this routine, she looked at Clennam with an

expression of such intense severity that he felt obliged to look at her

in return, against his personal inclinations.

‘She is in Italy, with all her family, Flora,’ he said, when the dreaded

lady was occupied again.

‘In Italy is she really?’ said Flora, ‘with the grapes growing

everywhere and lava necklaces and bracelets too that land of poetry with

burning mountains picturesque beyond belief though if the organ-boys

come away from the neighbourhood not to be scorched nobody can wonder

being so young and bringing their white mice with them most humane, and

is she really in that favoured land with nothing but blue about her and

dying gladiators and Belvederes though Mr F. himself did not believe

for his objection when in spirits was that the images could not be true

there being no medium between expensive quantities of linen badly got

up and all in creases and none whatever, which certainly does not seem

probable though perhaps in consequence of the extremes of rich and poor

which may account for it.’

Arthur tried to edge a word in, but Flora hurried on again.

‘Venice Preserved too,’ said she, ‘I think you have been there is it

well or ill preserved for people differ so and Maccaroni if they really

eat it like the conjurors why not cut it shorter, you are acquainted

Arthur--dear Doyce and Clennam at least not dear and most assuredly

not Doyce for I have not the pleasure but pray excuse me--acquainted I

believe with Mantua what _has_ it got to do with Mantua-making for I never

have been able to conceive?’

‘I believe there is no connection, Flora, between the two,’ Arthur was

beginning, when she caught him up again.

‘Upon your word no isn’t there I never did but that’s like me I run away

with an idea and having none to spare I keep it, alas there was a time

dear Arthur that is to say decidedly not dear nor Arthur neither but you

understand me when one bright idea gilded the what’s-his-name horizon of

et cetera but it is darkly clouded now and all is over.’

Arthur’s increasing wish to speak of something very different was by

this time so plainly written on his face, that Flora stopped in a tender

look, and asked him what it was?

‘I have the greatest desire, Flora, to speak to some one who is now in

this house--with Mr Casby no doubt. Some one whom I saw come in, and

who, in a misguided and deplorable way, has deserted the house of a

friend of mine.’

‘Papa sees so many and such odd people,’ said Flora, rising, ‘that I

shouldn’t venture to go down for any one but you Arthur but for you I

would willingly go down in a diving-bell much more a dining-room and

will come back directly if you’ll mind and at the same time not mind Mr

F.’s Aunt while I’m gone.’

With those words and a parting glance, Flora bustled out, leaving

Clennam under dreadful apprehension of this terrible charge.

The first variation which manifested itself in Mr F.’s Aunt’s demeanour

when she had finished her piece of toast, was a loud and prolonged

sniff. Finding it impossible to avoid construing this demonstration

into a defiance of himself, its gloomy significance being unmistakable,

Clennam looked plaintively at the excellent though prejudiced lady

from whom it emanated, in the hope that she might be disarmed by a meek

submission.

‘None of your eyes at me,’ said Mr F.’s Aunt, shivering with hostility.

‘Take that.’

‘That’ was the crust of the piece of toast. Clennam accepted the boon

with a look of gratitude, and held it in his hand under the pressure

of a little embarrassment, which was not relieved when Mr F.’s Aunt,

elevating her voice into a cry of considerable power, exclaimed, ‘He

has a proud stomach, this chap! He’s too proud a chap to eat it!’ and,

coming out of her chair, shook her venerable fist so very close to his

nose as to tickle the surface. But for the timely return of Flora, to

find him in this difficult situation, further consequences might

have ensued. Flora, without the least discomposure or surprise, but

congratulating the old lady in an approving manner on being ‘very lively

to-night’, handed her back to her chair.

‘He has a proud stomach, this chap,’ said Mr F.’s relation, on being

reseated. ‘Give him a meal of chaff!’

‘Oh! I don’t think he would like that, aunt,’ returned Flora.

‘Give him a meal of chaff, I tell you,’ said Mr F.’s Aunt, glaring round

Flora on her enemy. ‘It’s the only thing for a proud stomach. Let him

eat up every morsel. Drat him, give him a meal of chaff!’

Under a general pretence of helping him to this refreshment, Flora got

him out on the staircase; Mr F.’s Aunt even then constantly reiterating,

with inexpressible bitterness, that he was ‘a chap,’ and had a ‘proud

stomach,’ and over and over again insisting on that equine provision

being made for him which she had already so strongly prescribed.

‘Such an inconvenient staircase and so many corner-stairs Arthur,’

whispered Flora, ‘would you object to putting your arm round me under my

pelerine?’

With a sense of going down-stairs in a highly-ridiculous manner, Clennam

descended in the required attitude, and only released his fair burden at

the dining-room door; indeed, even there she was rather difficult to

be got rid of, remaining in his embrace to murmur, ‘Arthur, for mercy’s

sake, don’t breathe it to papa!’

She accompanied Arthur into the room, where the Patriarch sat alone,

with his list shoes on the fender, twirling his thumbs as if he had

never left off. The youthful Patriarch, aged ten, looked out of his

picture-frame above him with no calmer air than he. Both smooth heads

were alike beaming, blundering, and bumpy.

‘Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well, sir, I hope you

are well. Please to sit down, please to sit down.’

‘I had hoped, sir,’ said Clennam, doing so, and looking round with a

face of blank disappointment, ‘not to find you alone.’

‘Ah, indeed?’ said the Patriarch, sweetly. ‘Ah, indeed?’

‘I told you so you know papa,’ cried Flora.

‘Ah, to be sure!’ returned the Patriarch. ‘Yes, just so. Ah, to be

sure!’

‘Pray, sir,’ demanded Clennam, anxiously, ‘is Miss Wade gone?’

‘Miss--? Oh, you call her Wade,’ returned Mr Casby. ‘Highly proper.’

Arthur quickly returned, ‘What do you call her?’

‘Wade,’ said Mr Casby. ‘Oh, always Wade.’

After looking at the philanthropic visage and the long silky white hair

for a few seconds, during which Mr Casby twirled his thumbs, and smiled

at the fire as if he were benevolently wishing it to burn him that he

might forgive it, Arthur began:

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Casby--’

‘Not so, not so,’ said the Patriarch, ‘not so.’

‘--But, Miss Wade had an attendant with her--a young woman brought up

by friends of mine, over whom her influence is not considered very

salutary, and to whom I should be glad to have the opportunity of giving

the assurance that she has not yet forfeited the interest of those

protectors.’

‘Really, really?’ returned the Patriarch.

‘Will you therefore be so good as to give me the address of Miss Wade?’

‘Dear, dear, dear!’ said the Patriarch, ‘how very unfortunate! If you

had only sent in to me when they were here! I observed the young woman,

Mr Clennam. A fine full-coloured young woman, Mr Clennam, with very dark

hair and very dark eyes. If I mistake not, if I mistake not?’

Arthur assented, and said once more with new expression, ‘If you would

be so good as to give me the address.’

‘Dear, dear, dear!’ exclaimed the Patriarch in sweet regret. ‘Tut, tut,

tut! what a pity, what a pity! I have no address, sir. Miss Wade mostly

lives abroad, Mr Clennam. She has done so for some years, and she is (if

I may say so of a fellow-creature and a lady) fitful and uncertain to a

fault, Mr Clennam. I may not see her again for a long, long time. I may

never see her again. What a pity, what a pity!’

Clennam saw now, that he had as much hope of getting assistance out of

the Portrait as out of the Patriarch; but he said nevertheless:

‘Mr Casby, could you, for the satisfaction of the friends I have

mentioned, and under any obligation of secrecy that you may consider it

your duty to impose, give me any information at all touching Miss Wade?

I have seen her abroad, and I have seen her at home, but I know nothing

of her. Could you give me any account of her whatever?’

‘None,’ returned the Patriarch, shaking his big head with his utmost

benevolence. ‘None at all. Dear, dear, dear! What a real pity that

she stayed so short a time, and you delayed! As confidential agency

business, agency business, I have occasionally paid this lady money; but

what satisfaction is it to you, sir, to know that?’

‘Truly, none at all,’ said Clennam.

‘Truly,’ assented the Patriarch, with a shining face as he

philanthropically smiled at the fire, ‘none at all, sir. You hit the

wise answer, Mr Clennam. Truly, none at all, sir.’

His turning of his smooth thumbs over one another as he sat there, was

so typical to Clennam of the way in which he would make the subject

revolve if it were pursued, never showing any new part of it nor

allowing it to make the smallest advance, that it did much to help to

convince him of his labour having been in vain. He might have taken any

time to think about it, for Mr Casby, well accustomed to get on anywhere

by leaving everything to his bumps and his white hair, knew his strength

to lie in silence. So there Casby sat, twirling and twirling, and making

his polished head and forehead look largely benevolent in every knob.

With this spectacle before him, Arthur had risen to go, when from the

inner Dock where the good ship Pancks was hove down when out in no

cruising ground, the noise was heard of that steamer labouring towards

him. It struck Arthur that the noise began demonstratively far off, as

though Mr Pancks sought to impress on any one who might happen to think

about it, that he was working on from out of hearing.

Mr Pancks and he shook hands, and the former brought his employer a

letter or two to sign. Mr Pancks in shaking hands merely scratched his

eyebrow with his left forefinger and snorted once, but Clennam, who

understood him better now than of old, comprehended that he had almost

done for the evening and wished to say a word to him outside. Therefore,

when he had taken his leave of Mr Casby, and (which was a more difficult

process) of Flora, he sauntered in the neighbourhood on Mr Pancks’s line

of road.

He had waited but a short time when Mr Pancks appeared. Mr Pancks

shaking hands again with another expressive snort, and taking off his

hat to put his hair up, Arthur thought he received his cue to speak to

him as one who knew pretty well what had just now passed. Therefore he

said, without any preface:

‘I suppose they were really gone, Pancks?’

‘Yes,’ replied Pancks. ‘They were really gone.’

‘Does he know where to find that lady?’

‘Can’t say. I should think so.’

Mr Pancks did not? No, Mr Pancks did not. Did Mr Pancks know anything

about her?

‘I expect,’ rejoined that worthy, ‘I know as much about her as she knows

about herself. She is somebody’s child--anybody’s, nobody’s. Put her in

a room in London here with any six people old enough to be her parents,

and her parents may be there for anything she knows. They may be in any

house she sees, they may be in any churchyard she passes, she may run

against ‘em in any street, she may make chance acquaintance of ‘em at

any time; and never know it. She knows nothing about ‘em. She knows

nothing about any relative whatever. Never did. Never will.’

‘Mr Casby could enlighten her, perhaps?’

‘May be,’ said Pancks. ‘I expect so, but don’t know. He has long had

money (not overmuch as I make out) in trust to dole out to her when

she can’t do without it. Sometimes she’s proud and won’t touch it for

a length of time; sometimes she’s so poor that she must have it. She

writhes under her life. A woman more angry, passionate, reckless,

and revengeful never lived. She came for money to-night. Said she had

peculiar occasion for it.’

‘I think,’ observed Clennam musing, ‘I by chance know what occasion--I

mean into whose pocket the money is to go.’

‘Indeed?’ said Pancks. ‘If it’s a compact, I recommend that party to be

exact in it. I wouldn’t trust myself to that woman, young and handsome

as she is, if I had wronged her; no, not for twice my proprietor’s

money! Unless,’ Pancks added as a saving clause, ‘I had a lingering

illness on me, and wanted to get it over.’

Arthur, hurriedly reviewing his own observation of her, found it to

tally pretty nearly with Mr Pancks’s view.

‘The wonder is to me,’ pursued Pancks, ‘that she has never done for my

proprietor, as the only person connected with her story she can lay

hold of. Mentioning that, I may tell you, between ourselves, that I am

sometimes tempted to do for him myself.’

Arthur started and said, ‘Dear me, Pancks, don’t say that!’

‘Understand me,’ said Pancks, extending five cropped coaly finger-nails

on Arthur’s arm; ‘I don’t mean, cut his throat. But by all that’s

precious, if he goes too far, I’ll cut his hair!’

Having exhibited himself in the new light of enunciating this tremendous

threat, Mr Pancks, with a countenance of grave import, snorted several

times and steamed away.

CHAPTER 10. The Dreams of Mrs Flintwinch thicken

The shady waiting-rooms of the Circumlocution Office, where he passed a

good deal of time in company with various troublesome Convicts who were

under sentence to be broken alive on that wheel, had afforded Arthur

Clennam ample leisure, in three or four successive days, to exhaust the

subject of his late glimpse of Miss Wade and Tattycoram. He had been

able to make no more of it and no less of it, and in this unsatisfactory

condition he was fain to leave it.

During this space he had not been to his mother’s dismal old house.

One of his customary evenings for repairing thither now coming round,

he left his dwelling and his partner at nearly nine o’clock, and slowly

walked in the direction of that grim home of his youth.

It always affected his imagination as wrathful, mysterious, and sad;

and his imagination was sufficiently impressible to see the whole

neighbourhood under some tinge of its dark shadow. As he went along,

upon a dreary night, the dim streets by which he went, seemed all

depositories of oppressive secrets. The deserted counting-houses, with

their secrets of books and papers locked up in chests and safes; the

banking-houses, with their secrets of strong rooms and wells, the

keys of which were in a very few secret pockets and a very few secret

breasts; the secrets of all the dispersed grinders in the vast mill,

among whom there were doubtless plunderers, forgers, and trust-betrayers

of many sorts, whom the light of any day that dawned might reveal; he

could have fancied that these things, in hiding, imparted a heaviness

to the air. The shadow thickening and thickening as he approached its

source, he thought of the secrets of the lonely church-vaults, where the

people who had hoarded and secreted in iron coffers were in their turn

similarly hoarded, not yet at rest from doing harm; and then of the

secrets of the river, as it rolled its turbid tide between two frowning

wildernesses of secrets, extending, thick and dense, for many miles, and

warding off the free air and the free country swept by winds and wings

of birds.

The shadow still darkening as he drew near the house, the melancholy

room which his father had once occupied, haunted by the appealing face

he had himself seen fade away with him when there was no other watcher

by the bed, arose before his mind. Its close air was secret. The gloom,

and must, and dust of the whole tenement, were secret. At the heart of

it his mother presided, inflexible of face, indomitable of will, firmly

holding all the secrets of her own and his father’s life, and austerely

opposing herself, front to front, to the great final secret of all life.

He had turned into the narrow and steep street from which the court of

enclosure wherein the house stood opened, when another footstep turned

into it behind him, and so close upon his own that he was jostled to the

wall. As his mind was teeming with these thoughts, the encounter took

him altogether unprepared, so that the other passenger had had time to

say, boisterously, ‘Pardon! Not my fault!’ and to pass on before the

instant had elapsed which was requisite to his recovery of the realities

about him.

When that moment had flashed away, he saw that the man striding on

before him was the man who had been so much in his mind during the last

few days. It was no casual resemblance, helped out by the force of

the impression the man made upon him. It was the man; the man he had

followed in company with the girl, and whom he had overheard talking to

Miss Wade.

The street was a sharp descent and was crooked too, and the man (who

although not drunk had the air of being flushed with some strong drink)

went down it so fast that Clennam lost him as he looked at him. With

no defined intention of following him, but with an impulse to keep the

figure in view a little longer, Clennam quickened his pace to pass the

twist in the street which hid him from his sight. On turning it, he saw

the man no more.

Standing now, close to the gateway of his mother’s house, he looked

down the street: but it was empty. There was no projecting shadow large

enough to obscure the man; there was no turning near that he could have

taken; nor had there been any audible sound of the opening and closing

of a door. Nevertheless, he concluded that the man must have had a key

in his hand, and must have opened one of the many house-doors and gone

in.

Ruminating on this strange chance and strange glimpse, he turned into

the court-yard. As he looked, by mere habit, towards the feebly lighted

windows of his mother’s room, his eyes encountered the figure he had

just lost, standing against the iron railings of the little waste

enclosure looking up at those windows and laughing to himself. Some of

the many vagrant cats who were always prowling about there by night,

and who had taken fright at him, appeared to have stopped when he had

stopped, and were looking at him with eyes by no means unlike his own

from tops of walls and porches, and other safe points of pause. He had

only halted for a moment to entertain himself thus; he immediately went

forward, throwing the end of his cloak off his shoulder as he went,

ascended the unevenly sunken steps, and knocked a sounding knock at the

door.

Clennam’s surprise was not so absorbing but that he took his resolution

without any incertitude. He went up to the door too, and ascended the

steps too. His friend looked at him with a braggart air, and sang to

himself.

‘Who passes by this road so late?

Compagnon de la Majolaine;

Who passes by this road so late?

Always gay!’

After which he knocked again.

‘You are impatient, sir,’ said Arthur.

‘I am, sir. Death of my life, sir,’ returned the stranger, ‘it’s my

character to be impatient!’

The sound of Mistress Affery cautiously chaining the door before she

opened it, caused them both to look that way. Affery opened it a very

little, with a flaring candle in her hands and asked who was that, at

that time of night, with that knock! ‘Why, Arthur!’ she added with

astonishment, seeing him first. ‘Not you sure? Ah, Lord save us! No,’

she cried out, seeing the other. ‘Him again!’

‘It’s true! Him again, dear Mrs Flintwinch,’ cried the stranger. ‘Open

the door, and let me take my dear friend Jeremiah to my arms! Open the

door, and let me hasten myself to embrace my Flintwinch!’

‘He’s not at home,’ cried Affery.

‘Fetch him!’ cried the stranger. ‘Fetch my Flintwinch! Tell him that it

is his old Blandois, who comes from arriving in England; tell him that

it is his little boy who is here, his cabbage, his well-beloved! Open

the door, beautiful Mrs Flintwinch, and in the meantime let me to pass

upstairs, to present my compliments--homage of Blandois--to my lady! My

lady lives always? It is well. Open then!’

To Arthur’s increased surprise, Mistress Affery, stretching her eyes

wide at himself, as if in warning that this was not a gentleman for

him to interfere with, drew back the chain, and opened the door. The

stranger, without ceremony, walked into the hall, leaving Arthur to

follow him.

‘Despatch then! Achieve then! Bring my Flintwinch! Announce me to my

lady!’ cried the stranger, clanking about the stone floor.

‘Pray tell me, Affery,’ said Arthur aloud and sternly, as he surveyed

him from head to foot with indignation; ‘who is this gentleman?’

‘Pray tell me, Affery,’ the stranger repeated in his turn, ‘who--ha, ha,

ha!--who is this gentleman?’

The voice of Mrs Clennam opportunely called from her chamber above,

‘Affery, let them both come up. Arthur, come straight to me!’

‘Arthur?’ exclaimed Blandois, taking off his hat at arm’s length,

and bringing his heels together from a great stride in making him a

flourishing bow. ‘The son of my lady? I am the all-devoted of the son of

my lady!’

Arthur looked at him again in no more flattering manner than before,

and, turning on his heel without acknowledgment, went up-stairs. The

visitor followed him up-stairs. Mistress Affery took the key from behind

the door, and deftly slipped out to fetch her lord.

A bystander, informed of the previous appearance of Monsieur Blandois

in that room, would have observed a difference in Mrs Clennam’s present

reception of him. Her face was not one to betray it; and her suppressed

manner, and her set voice, were equally under her control. It wholly

consisted in her never taking her eyes off his face from the moment of

his entrance, and in her twice or thrice, when he was becoming noisy,

swaying herself a very little forward in the chair in which she sat

upright, with her hands immovable upon its elbows; as if she gave him

the assurance that he should be presently heard at any length he would.

Arthur did not fail to observe this; though the difference between the

present occasion and the former was not within his power of observation.

‘Madame,’ said Blandois, ‘do me the honour to present me to Monsieur,

your son. It appears to me, madame, that Monsieur, your son, is disposed

to complain of me. He is not polite.’

‘Sir,’ said Arthur, striking in expeditiously, ‘whoever you are, and

however you come to be here, if I were the master of this house I would

lose no time in placing you on the outside of it.’

‘But you are not,’ said his mother, without looking at him.

‘Unfortunately for the gratification of your unreasonable temper, you

are not the master, Arthur.’

‘I make no claim to be, mother. If I object to this person’s manner of

conducting himself here, and object to it so much, that if I had any

authority here I certainly would not suffer him to remain a minute, I

object on your account.’

‘In the case of objection being necessary,’ she returned, ‘I could

object for myself. And of course I should.’

The subject of their dispute, who had seated himself, laughed aloud, and

rapped his legs with his hand.

‘You have no right,’ said Mrs Clennam, always intent on Blandois,

however directly she addressed her son, ‘to speak to the prejudice of

any gentleman (least of all a gentleman from another country), because

he does not conform to your standard, or square his behaviour by your

rules. It is possible that the gentleman may, on similar grounds, object

to you.’

‘I hope so,’ returned Arthur.

‘The gentleman,’ pursued Mrs Clennam, ‘on a former occasion brought

a letter of recommendation to us from highly esteemed and responsible

correspondents. I am perfectly unacquainted with the gentleman’s object

in coming here at present. I am entirely ignorant of it, and cannot be

supposed likely to be able to form the remotest guess at its nature;’

her habitual frown became stronger, as she very slowly and weightily

emphasised those words; ‘but, when the gentleman proceeds to explain

his object, as I shall beg him to have the goodness to do to myself and

Flintwinch, when Flintwinch returns, it will prove, no doubt, to be one

more or less in the usual way of our business, which it will be both our

business and our pleasure to advance. It can be nothing else.’

‘We shall see, madame!’ said the man of business.

‘We shall see,’ she assented. ‘The gentleman is acquainted with

Flintwinch; and when the gentleman was in London last, I remember

to have heard that he and Flintwinch had some entertainment or

good-fellowship together. I am not in the way of knowing much that

passes outside this room, and the jingle of little worldly things beyond

it does not much interest me; but I remember to have heard that.’

‘Right, madame. It is true.’ He laughed again, and whistled the burden

of the tune he had sung at the door.

‘Therefore, Arthur,’ said his mother, ‘the gentleman comes here as an

acquaintance, and no stranger; and it is much to be regretted that your

unreasonable temper should have found offence in him. I regret it. I say

so to the gentleman. You will not say so, I know; therefore I say it for

myself and Flintwinch, since with us two the gentleman’s business lies.’

The key of the door below was now heard in the lock, and the door was

heard to open and close. In due sequence Mr Flintwinch appeared; on

whose entrance the visitor rose from his chair, laughing loud, and

folded him in a close embrace.

‘How goes it, my cherished friend!’ said he. ‘How goes the world, my

Flintwinch? Rose-coloured? So much the better, so much the better! Ah,

but you look charming! Ah, but you look young and fresh as the flowers

of Spring! Ah, good little boy! Brave child, brave child!’

While heaping these compliments on Mr Flintwinch, he rolled him about

with a hand on each of his shoulders, until the staggerings of that

gentleman, who under the circumstances was dryer and more twisted than

ever, were like those of a teetotum nearly spent.

‘I had a presentiment, last time, that we should be better and more

intimately acquainted. Is it coming on you, Flintwinch? Is it yet coming

on?’

‘Why, no, sir,’ retorted Mr Flintwinch. ‘Not unusually. Hadn’t you

better be seated? You have been calling for some more of that port, sir,

I guess?’

‘Ah, Little joker! Little pig!’ cried the visitor. ‘Ha ha ha ha!’ And

throwing Mr Flintwinch away, as a closing piece of raillery, he sat down

again.

The amazement, suspicion, resentment, and shame, with which Arthur

looked on at all this, struck him dumb. Mr Flintwinch, who had spun

backward some two or three yards under the impetus last given to him,

brought himself up with a face completely unchanged in its stolidity

except as it was affected by shortness of breath, and looked hard at

Arthur. Not a whit less reticent and wooden was Mr Flintwinch outwardly,

than in the usual course of things: the only perceptible difference in

him being that the knot of cravat which was generally under his ear,

had worked round to the back of his head: where it formed an ornamental

appendage not unlike a bagwig, and gave him something of a courtly

appearance.

As Mrs Clennam never removed her eyes from Blandois (on whom they had

some effect, as a steady look has on a lower sort of dog), so Jeremiah

never removed his from Arthur. It was as if they had tacitly agreed to

take their different provinces. Thus, in the ensuing silence, Jeremiah

stood scraping his chin and looking at Arthur as though he were trying

to screw his thoughts out of him with an instrument.

After a little, the visitor, as if he felt the silence irksome, rose,

and impatiently put himself with his back to the sacred fire which had

burned through so many years. Thereupon Mrs Clennam said, moving one of

her hands for the first time, and moving it very slightly with an action

of dismissal:

‘Please to leave us to our business, Arthur.’

‘Mother, I do so with reluctance.’

‘Never mind with what,’ she returned, ‘or with what not. Please to leave

us. Come back at any other time when you may consider it a duty to bury

half an hour wearily here. Good night.’

She held up her muffled fingers that he might touch them with his,

according to their usual custom, and he stood over her wheeled chair to

touch her face with his lips. He thought, then, that her cheek was

more strained than usual, and that it was colder. As he followed the

direction of her eyes, in rising again, towards Mr Flintwinch’s good

friend, Mr Blandois, Mr Blandois snapped his finger and thumb with one

loud contemptuous snap.

‘I leave your--your business acquaintance in my mother’s room, Mr

Flintwinch,’ said Clennam, ‘with a great deal of surprise and a great

deal of unwillingness.’

The person referred to snapped his finger and thumb again.

‘Good night, mother.’

‘Good night.’

‘I had a friend once, my good comrade Flintwinch,’ said Blandois,

standing astride before the fire, and so evidently saying it to arrest

Clennam’s retreating steps, that he lingered near the door; ‘I had a

friend once, who had heard so much of the dark side of this city and

its ways, that he wouldn’t have confided himself alone by night with two

people who had an interest in getting him under the ground--my faith!

not even in a respectable house like this--unless he was bodily too

strong for them. Bah! What a poltroon, my Flintwinch! Eh?’

‘A cur, sir.’

‘Agreed! A cur. But he wouldn’t have done it, my Flintwinch, unless he

had known them to have the will to silence him, without the power. He

wouldn’t have drunk from a glass of water under such circumstances--not

even in a respectable house like this, my Flintwinch--unless he had seen

one of them drink first, and swallow too!’

Disdaining to speak, and indeed not very well able, for he was

half-choking, Clennam only glanced at the visitor as he passed out.

The visitor saluted him with another parting snap, and his nose came

down over his moustache and his moustache went up under his nose, in an

ominous and ugly smile.

‘For Heaven’s sake, Affery,’ whispered Clennam, as she opened the door

for him in the dark hall, and he groped his way to the sight of the

night-sky, ‘what is going on here?’

Her own appearance was sufficiently ghastly, standing in the dark

with her apron thrown over her head, and speaking behind it in a low,

deadened voice.

‘Don’t ask me anything, Arthur. I’ve been in a dream for ever so long.

Go away!’

He went out, and she shut the door upon him. He looked up at the windows

of his mother’s room, and the dim light, deadened by the yellow blinds,

seemed to say a response after Affery, and to mutter, ‘Don’t ask me

anything. Go away!’

CHAPTER 11. A Letter from Little Dorrit

Dear Mr Clennam,

As I said in my last that it was best for nobody to write to me, and

as my sending you another little letter can therefore give you no other

trouble than the trouble of reading it (perhaps you may not find leisure

for even that, though I hope you will some day), I am now going to

devote an hour to writing to you again. This time, I write from Rome.

We left Venice before Mr and Mrs Gowan did, but they were not so long

upon the road as we were, and did not travel by the same way, and so

when we arrived we found them in a lodging here, in a place called the

Via Gregoriana. I dare say you know it.

Now I am going to tell you all I can about them, because I know that is

what you most want to hear. Theirs is not a very comfortable lodging,

but perhaps I thought it less so when I first saw it than you would have

done, because you have been in many different countries and have

seen many different customs. Of course it is a far, far better

place--millions of times--than any I have ever been used to until

lately; and I fancy I don’t look at it with my own eyes, but with hers.

For it would be easy to see that she has always been brought up in a

tender and happy home, even if she had not told me so with great love

for it.

Well, it is a rather bare lodging up a rather dark common staircase, and

it is nearly all a large dull room, where Mr Gowan paints. The windows

are blocked up where any one could look out, and the walls have been

all drawn over with chalk and charcoal by others who have lived there

before--oh,--I should think, for years! There is a curtain more

dust-coloured than red, which divides it, and the part behind the

curtain makes the private sitting-room. When I first saw her there she

was alone, and her work had fallen out of her hand, and she was looking

up at the sky shining through the tops of the windows. Pray do not be

uneasy when I tell you, but it was not quite so airy, nor so bright, nor

so cheerful, nor so happy and youthful altogether as I should have liked

it to be.

On account of Mr Gowan’s painting Papa’s picture (which I am not quite

convinced I should have known from the likeness if I had not seen him

doing it), I have had more opportunities of being with her since then

than I might have had without this fortunate chance. She is very much

alone. Very much alone indeed.

Shall I tell you about the second time I saw her? I went one day, when

it happened that I could run round by myself, at four or five o’clock

in the afternoon. She was then dining alone, and her solitary dinner had

been brought in from somewhere, over a kind of brazier with a fire in

it, and she had no company or prospect of company, that I could see,

but the old man who had brought it. He was telling her a long story (of

robbers outside the walls being taken up by a stone statue of a Saint),

to entertain her--as he said to me when I came out, ‘because he had a

daughter of his own, though she was not so pretty.’

I ought now to mention Mr Gowan, before I say what little more I have to

say about her. He must admire her beauty, and he must be proud of her,

for everybody praises it, and he must be fond of her, and I do not

doubt that he is--but in his way. You know his way, and if it appears

as careless and discontented in your eyes as it does in mine, I am not

wrong in thinking that it might be better suited to her. If it does not

seem so to you, I am quite sure I am wholly mistaken; for your unchanged

poor child confides in your knowledge and goodness more than she could

ever tell you if she was to try. But don’t be frightened, I am not going

to try.

Owing (as I think, if you think so too) to Mr Gowan’s unsettled

and dissatisfied way, he applies himself to his profession very little.

He does nothing steadily or patiently; but equally takes things up and

throws them down, and does them, or leaves them undone, without caring

about them. When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings

for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no

belief in anybody else, because he has no belief in himself. Is it so?

I wonder what you will say when you come to this! I know how you will

look, and I can almost hear the voice in which you would tell me on the

Iron Bridge.

Mr Gowan goes out a good deal among what is considered the best company

here--though he does not look as if he enjoyed it or liked it when he is

with it--and she sometimes accompanies him, but lately she has gone out

very little. I think I have noticed that they have an inconsistent way

of speaking about her, as if she had made some great self-interested

success in marrying Mr Gowan, though, at the same time, the very same

people, would not have dreamed of taking him for themselves or their

daughters. Then he goes into the country besides, to think about making

sketches; and in all places where there are visitors, he has a large

acquaintance and is very well known. Besides all this, he has a friend

who is much in his society both at home and away from home, though he

treats this friend very coolly and is very uncertain in his behaviour

to him. I am quite sure (because she has told me so), that she does not

like this friend. He is so revolting to me, too, that his being away

from here, at present, is quite a relief to my mind. How much more to

hers!

But what I particularly want you to know, and why I have resolved

to tell you so much while I am afraid it may make you a little

uncomfortable without occasion, is this. She is so true and so devoted,

and knows so completely that all her love and duty are his for ever,

that you may be certain she will love him, admire him, praise him, and

conceal all his faults, until she dies. I believe she conceals them, and

always will conceal them, even from herself. She has given him a heart

that can never be taken back; and however much he may try it, he will

never wear out its affection. You know the truth of this, as you know

everything, far far better than I; but I cannot help telling you what a

nature she shows, and that you can never think too well of her.

I have not yet called her by her name in this letter, but we are such

friends now that I do so when we are quietly together, and she speaks to

me by my name--I mean, not my Christian name, but the name you gave me.

When she began to call me Amy, I told her my short story, and that you

had always called me Little Dorrit. I told her that the name was much

dearer to me than any other, and so she calls me Little Dorrit too.

Perhaps you have not heard from her father or mother yet, and may not

know that she has a baby son. He was born only two days ago, and just a

week after they came. It has made them very happy. However, I must tell

you, as I am to tell you all, that I fancy they are under a constraint

with Mr Gowan, and that they feel as if his mocking way with them was

sometimes a slight given to their love for her. It was but yesterday,

when I was there, that I saw Mr Meagles change colour, and get up and

go out, as if he was afraid that he might say so, unless he prevented

himself by that means. Yet I am sure they are both so considerate,

good-humoured, and reasonable, that he might spare them. It is hard in

him not to think of them a little more.

I stopped at the last full stop to read all this over. It looked at

first as if I was taking on myself to understand and explain so much,

that I was half inclined not to send it. But when I thought it over a

little, I felt more hopeful for your knowing at once that I had only

been watchful for you, and had only noticed what I think I have noticed,

because I was quickened by your interest in it. Indeed, you may be sure

that is the truth.

And now I have done with the subject in the present letter, and have

little left to say.

We are all quite well, and Fanny improves every day. You can hardly

think how kind she is to me, and what pains she takes with me. She has

a lover, who has followed her, first all the way from Switzerland, and

then all the way from Venice, and who has just confided to me that he

means to follow her everywhere. I was much confused by his speaking to

me about it, but he would. I did not know what to say, but at last I

told him that I thought he had better not. For Fanny (but I did not tell

him this) is much too spirited and clever to suit him. Still, he said he

would, all the same. I have no lover, of course.

If you should ever get so far as this in this long letter, you will

perhaps say, Surely Little Dorrit will not leave off without telling me

something about her travels, and surely it is time she did. I think it

is indeed, but I don’t know what to tell you. Since we left Venice we

have been in a great many wonderful places, Genoa and Florence among

them, and have seen so many wonderful sights, that I am almost giddy

when I think what a crowd they make. But you can tell me so much more

about them than I can tell you, that why should I tire you with my

accounts and descriptions?

Dear Mr Clennam, as I had the courage to tell you what the familiar

difficulties in my travelling mind were before, I will not be a coward

now. One of my frequent thoughts is this:--Old as these cities are,

their age itself is hardly so curious, to my reflections, as that they

should have been in their places all through those days when I did not

even know of the existence of more than two or three of them, and when

I scarcely knew of anything outside our old walls. There is something

melancholy in it, and I don’t know why. When we went to see the famous

leaning tower at Pisa, it was a bright sunny day, and it and the

buildings near it looked so old, and the earth and the sky looked so

young, and its shadow on the ground was so soft and retired! I could not

at first think how beautiful it was, or how curious, but I thought, ‘O

how many times when the shadow of the wall was falling on our room, and

when that weary tread of feet was going up and down the yard--O how many

times this place was just as quiet and lovely as it is to-day!’ It quite

overpowered me. My heart was so full that tears burst out of my eyes,

though I did what I could to restrain them. And I have the same feeling

often--often.

Do you know that since the change in our fortunes, though I appear to

myself to have dreamed more than before, I have always dreamed of myself

as very young indeed! I am not very old, you may say. No, but that is

not what I mean. I have always dreamed of myself as a child learning

to do needlework. I have often dreamed of myself as back there, seeing

faces in the yard little known, and which I should have thought I had

quite forgotten; but, as often as not, I have been abroad here--in

Switzerland, or France, or Italy--somewhere where we have been--yet

always as that little child. I have dreamed of going down to Mrs

General, with the patches on my clothes in which I can first remember

myself. I have over and over again dreamed of taking my place at dinner

at Venice when we have had a large company, in the mourning for my poor

mother which I wore when I was eight years old, and wore long after it

was threadbare and would mend no more. It has been a great distress to

me to think how irreconcilable the company would consider it with my

father’s wealth, and how I should displease and disgrace him and Fanny

and Edward by so plainly disclosing what they wished to keep secret. But

I have not grown out of the little child in thinking of it; and at the

self-same moment I have dreamed that I have sat with the heart-ache at

table, calculating the expenses of the dinner, and quite distracting

myself with thinking how they were ever to be made good. I have never

dreamed of the change in our fortunes itself; I have never dreamed of

your coming back with me that memorable morning to break it; I have

never even dreamed of you.

Dear Mr Clennam, it is possible that I have thought of you--and

others--so much by day, that I have no thoughts left to wander round

you by night. For I must now confess to you that I suffer from

home-sickness--that I long so ardently and earnestly for home, as

sometimes, when no one sees me, to pine for it. I cannot bear to turn my

face further away from it. My heart is a little lightened when we turn

towards it, even for a few miles, and with the knowledge that we are

soon to turn away again. So dearly do I love the scene of my poverty and

your kindness. O so dearly, O so dearly!

Heaven knows when your poor child will see England again. We are all

fond of the life here (except me), and there are no plans for our

return. My dear father talks of a visit to London late in this next

spring, on some affairs connected with the property, but I have no hope

that he will bring me with him.

I have tried to get on a little better under Mrs General’s instruction,

and I hope I am not quite so dull as I used to be. I have begun to speak

and understand, almost easily, the hard languages I told you about. I

did not remember, at the moment when I wrote last, that you knew them

both; but I remembered it afterwards, and it helped me on. God bless

you, dear Mr Clennam. Do not forget

Your ever grateful and affectionate

LITTLE DORRIT.

P.S.--Particularly remember that Minnie Gowan deserves the best

remembrance in which you can hold her. You cannot think too generously

or too highly of her. I forgot Mr Pancks last time. Please, if you

should see him, give him your Little Dorrit’s kind regard. He was very

good to Little D.

CHAPTER 12. In which a Great Patriotic Conference is holden

The famous name of Merdle became, every day, more famous in the land.

Nobody knew that the Merdle of such high renown had ever done any good

to any one, alive or dead, or to any earthly thing; nobody knew that he

had any capacity or utterance of any sort in him, which had ever thrown,

for any creature, the feeblest farthing-candle ray of light on any path

of duty or diversion, pain or pleasure, toil or rest, fact or fancy,

among the multiplicity of paths in the labyrinth trodden by the sons

of Adam; nobody had the smallest reason for supposing the clay of which

this object of worship was made, to be other than the commonest clay,

with as clogged a wick smouldering inside of it as ever kept an image of

humanity from tumbling to pieces. All people knew (or thought they knew)

that he had made himself immensely rich; and, for that reason alone,

prostrated themselves before him, more degradedly and less excusably

than the darkest savage creeps out of his hole in the ground to

propitiate, in some log or reptile, the Deity of his benighted soul.

Nay, the high priests of this worship had the man before them as

a protest against their meanness. The multitude worshipped on

trust--though always distinctly knowing why--but the officiators at the

altar had the man habitually in their view. They sat at his feasts, and

he sat at theirs. There was a spectre always attendant on him, saying to

these high priests, ‘Are such the signs you trust, and love to honour;

this head, these eyes, this mode of speech, the tone and manner of this

man? You are the levers of the Circumlocution Office, and the rulers of

men. When half-a-dozen of you fall out by the ears, it seems that mother

earth can give birth to no other rulers. Does your qualification lie in

the superior knowledge of men which accepts, courts, and puffs this man?

Or, if you are competent to judge aright the signs I never fail to

show you when he appears among you, is your superior honesty your

qualification?’ Two rather ugly questions these, always going about

town with Mr Merdle; and there was a tacit agreement that they must be

stifled.

In Mrs Merdle’s absence abroad, Mr Merdle still kept the great house

open for the passage through it of a stream Of visitors. A few of these

took affable possession of the establishment. Three or four ladies of

distinction and liveliness used to say to one another, ‘Let us dine at

our dear Merdle’s next Thursday. Whom shall we have?’ Our dear Merdle

would then receive his instructions; and would sit heavily among the

company at table and wander lumpishly about his drawing-rooms

afterwards, only remarkable for appearing to have nothing to do with the

entertainment beyond being in its way.

The Chief Butler, the Avenging Spirit of this great man’s life, relaxed

nothing of his severity. He looked on at these dinners when the bosom

was not there, as he looked on at other dinners when the bosom was

there; and his eye was a basilisk to Mr Merdle. He was a hard man, and

would never bate an ounce of plate or a bottle of wine. He would not

allow a dinner to be given, unless it was up to his mark. He set forth

the table for his own dignity. If the guests chose to partake of what

was served, he saw no objection; but it was served for the maintenance

of his rank. As he stood by the sideboard he seemed to announce, ‘I have

accepted office to look at this which is now before me, and to look at

nothing less than this.’ If he missed the presiding bosom, it was as a

part of his own state of which he was, from unavoidable circumstances,

temporarily deprived, just as he might have missed a centre-piece, or a

choice wine-cooler, which had been sent to the Banker’s.

Mr Merdle issued invitations for a Barnacle dinner. Lord Decimus was to

be there, Mr Tite Barnacle was to be there, the pleasant young Barnacle

was to be there; and the Chorus of Parliamentary Barnacles who went

about the provinces when the House was up, warbling the praises of their

Chief, were to be represented there. It was understood to be a great

occasion. Mr Merdle was going to take up the Barnacles. Some delicate

little negotiations had occurred between him and the noble Decimus--the

young Barnacle of engaging manners acting as negotiator--and Mr Merdle

had decided to cast the weight of his great probity and great riches

into the Barnacle scale. Jobbery was suspected by the malicious; perhaps

because it was indisputable that if the adherence of the immortal Enemy

of Mankind could have been secured by a job, the Barnacles would have

jobbed him--for the good of the country, for the good of the country.

Mrs Merdle had written to this magnificent spouse of hers, whom it was

heresy to regard as anything less than all the British Merchants since

the days of Whittington rolled into one, and gilded three feet deep all

over--had written to this spouse of hers, several letters from Rome, in

quick succession, urging upon him with importunity that now or never was

the time to provide for Edmund Sparkler. Mrs Merdle had shown him that

the case of Edmund was urgent, and that infinite advantages might result

from his having some good thing directly. In the grammar of Mrs

Merdle’s verbs on this momentous subject, there was only one mood, the

Imperative; and that Mood had only one Tense, the Present. Mrs Merdle’s

verbs were so pressingly presented to Mr Merdle to conjugate, that his

sluggish blood and his long coat-cuffs became quite agitated.

In which state of agitation, Mr Merdle, evasively rolling his eyes

round the Chief Butler’s shoes without raising them to the index of that

stupendous creature’s thoughts, had signified to him his intention of

giving a special dinner: not a very large dinner, but a very special

dinner. The Chief Butler had signified, in return, that he had no

objection to look on at the most expensive thing in that way that could

be done; and the day of the dinner was now come.

Mr Merdle stood in one of his drawing-rooms, with his back to the fire,

waiting for the arrival of his important guests. He seldom or never took

the liberty of standing with his back to the fire unless he was quite

alone. In the presence of the Chief Butler, he could not have done such

a deed. He would have clasped himself by the wrists in that constabulary

manner of his, and have paced up and down the hearthrug, or gone

creeping about among the rich objects of furniture, if his oppressive

retainer had appeared in the room at that very moment. The sly shadows

which seemed to dart out of hiding when the fire rose, and to dart back

into it when the fire fell, were sufficient witnesses of his making

himself so easy. They were even more than sufficient, if his

uncomfortable glances at them might be taken to mean anything.

Mr Merdle’s right hand was filled with the evening paper, and the

evening paper was full of Mr Merdle. His wonderful enterprise, his

wonderful wealth, his wonderful Bank, were the fattening food of the

evening paper that night. The wonderful Bank, of which he was the chief

projector, establisher, and manager, was the latest of the many Merdle

wonders. So modest was Mr Merdle withal, in the midst of these splendid

achievements, that he looked far more like a man in possession of his

house under a distraint, than a commercial Colossus bestriding his own

hearthrug, while the little ships were sailing into dinner.

Behold the vessels coming into port! The engaging young Barnacle was the

first arrival; but Bar overtook him on the staircase. Bar, strengthened

as usual with his double eye-glass and his little jury droop, was

overjoyed to see the engaging young Barnacle; and opined that we were

going to sit in Banco, as we lawyers called it, to take a special

argument?

‘Indeed,’ said the sprightly young Barnacle, whose name was Ferdinand;

‘how so?’

‘Nay,’ smiled Bar. ‘If you don’t know, how can I know? You are in the

innermost sanctuary of the temple; I am one of the admiring concourse on

the plain without.’

Bar could be light in hand, or heavy in hand, according to the customer

he had to deal with. With Ferdinand Barnacle he was gossamer. Bar was

likewise always modest and self-depreciatory--in his way. Bar was a man

of great variety; but one leading thread ran through the woof of all his

patterns. Every man with whom he had to do was in his eyes a jury-man;

and he must get that jury-man over, if he could.

‘Our illustrious host and friend,’ said Bar; ‘our shining mercantile

star;--going into politics?’

‘Going? He has been in Parliament some time, you know,’ returned the

engaging young Barnacle.

‘True,’ said Bar, with his light-comedy laugh for special jury-men,

which was a very different thing from his low-comedy laugh for comic

tradesmen on common juries: ‘he has been in Parliament for some time.

Yet hitherto our star has been a vacillating and wavering star? Humph?’

An average witness would have been seduced by the Humph? into an

affirmative answer, But Ferdinand Barnacle looked knowingly at Bar as he

strolled up-stairs, and gave him no answer at all.

‘Just so, just so,’ said Bar, nodding his head, for he was not to be put

off in that way, ‘and therefore I spoke of our sitting _in Banco_ to take

a special argument--meaning this to be a high and solemn occasion, when,

as Captain Macheath says, “the judges are met: a terrible show!” We

lawyers are sufficiently liberal, you see, to quote the Captain, though

the Captain is severe upon us. Nevertheless, I think I could put in

evidence an admission of the Captain’s,’ said Bar, with a little jocose

roll of his head; for, in his legal current of speech, he always assumed

the air of rallying himself with the best grace in the world; ‘an

admission of the Captain’s that Law, in the gross, is at least

intended to be impartial. For what says the Captain, if I quote

him correctly--and if not,’ with a light-comedy touch of his double

eye-glass on his companion’s shoulder, ‘my learned friend will set me

right:

“Since laws were made for every degree,

To curb vice in others as well as in me,

I wonder we ha’n’t better company

Upon Tyburn Tree!”’

These words brought them to the drawing-room, where Mr Merdle stood

before the fire. So immensely astounded was Mr Merdle by the entrance

of Bar with such a reference in his mouth, that Bar explained himself

to have been quoting Gay. ‘Assuredly not one of our Westminster Hall

authorities,’ said he, ‘but still no despicable one to a man possessing

the largely-practical Mr Merdle’s knowledge of the world.’

Mr Merdle looked as if he thought he would say something, but

subsequently looked as if he thought he wouldn’t. The interval afforded

time for Bishop to be announced.

Bishop came in with meekness, and yet with a strong and rapid step as if

he wanted to get his seven-league dress-shoes on, and go round the world

to see that everybody was in a satisfactory state. Bishop had no idea

that there was anything significant in the occasion. That was the most

remarkable trait in his demeanour. He was crisp, fresh, cheerful,

affable, bland; but so surprisingly innocent.

Bar sidled up to prefer his politest inquiries in reference to the

health of Mrs Bishop. Mrs Bishop had been a little unfortunate in the

article of taking cold at a Confirmation, but otherwise was well. Young

Mr Bishop was also well. He was down, with his young wife and little

family, at his Cure of Souls.

The representatives of the Barnacle Chorus dropped in next, and Mr

Merdle’s physician dropped in next. Bar, who had a bit of one eye and a

bit of his double eye-glass for every one who came in at the door, no

matter with whom he was conversing or what he was talking about, got

among them all by some skilful means, without being seen to get at them,

and touched each individual gentleman of the jury on his own individual

favourite spot. With some of the Chorus, he laughed about the sleepy

member who had gone out into the lobby the other night, and voted the

wrong way: with others, he deplored that innovating spirit in the time

which could not even be prevented from taking an unnatural interest in

the public service and the public money: with the physician he had a

word to say about the general health; he had also a little information

to ask him for, concerning a professional man of unquestioned erudition

and polished manners--but those credentials in their highest development

he believed were the possession of other professors of the healing art

(jury droop)--whom he had happened to have in the witness-box the day

before yesterday, and from whom he had elicited in cross-examination

that he claimed to be one of the exponents of this new mode of treatment

which appeared to Bar to--eh?--well, Bar thought so; Bar had thought,

and hoped, Physician would tell him so. Without presuming to decide

where doctors disagreed, it did appear to Bar, viewing it as a question

of common sense and not of so-called legal penetration, that this new

system was--might be, in the presence of so great an authority--say,

Humbug? Ah! Fortified by such encouragement, he could venture to say

Humbug; and now Bar’s mind was relieved.

Mr Tite Barnacle, who, like Dr Johnson’s celebrated acquaintance, had

only one idea in his head and that was a wrong one, had appeared by this

time. This eminent gentleman and Mr Merdle, seated diverse ways and with

ruminating aspects on a yellow ottoman in the light of the fire,

holding no verbal communication with each other, bore a strong general

resemblance to the two cows in the Cuyp picture over against them.

But now, Lord Decimus arrived. The Chief Butler, who up to this time

had limited himself to a branch of his usual function by looking at the

company as they entered (and that, with more of defiance than favour),

put himself so far out of his way as to come up-stairs with him and

announce him. Lord Decimus being an overpowering peer, a bashful young

member of the Lower House who was the last fish but one caught by the

Barnacles, and who had been invited on this occasion to commemorate his

capture, shut his eyes when his Lordship came in.

Lord Decimus, nevertheless, was glad to see the Member. He was also

glad to see Mr Merdle, glad to see Bishop, glad to see Bar, glad to see

Physician, glad to see Tite Barnacle, glad to see Chorus, glad to

see Ferdinand his private secretary. Lord Decimus, though one of the

greatest of the earth, was not remarkable for ingratiatory manners, and

Ferdinand had coached him up to the point of noticing all the fellows

he might find there, and saying he was glad to see them. When he had

achieved this rush of vivacity and condescension, his Lordship composed

himself into the picture after Cuyp, and made a third cow in the group.

Bar, who felt that he had got all the rest of the jury and must now lay

hold of the Foreman, soon came sidling up, double eye-glass in hand. Bar

tendered the weather, as a subject neatly aloof from official reserve,

for the Foreman’s consideration. Bar said that he was told (as everybody

always is told, though who tells them, and why, will ever remain a

mystery), that there was to be no wall-fruit this year. Lord Decimus

had not heard anything amiss of his peaches, but rather believed, if his

people were correct, he was to have no apples. No apples? Bar was lost

in astonishment and concern. It would have been all one to him, in

reality, if there had not been a pippin on the surface of the earth, but

his show of interest in this apple question was positively painful.

Now, to what, Lord Decimus--for we troublesome lawyers loved to gather

information, and could never tell how useful it might prove to us--to

what, Lord Decimus, was this to be attributed? Lord Decimus could not

undertake to propound any theory about it. This might have stopped

another man; but Bar, sticking to him fresh as ever, said, ‘As to pears,

now?’

Long after Bar got made Attorney-General, this was told of him as

a master-stroke. Lord Decimus had a reminiscence about a pear-tree

formerly growing in a garden near the back of his dame’s house at Eton,

upon which pear-tree the only joke of his life perennially bloomed. It

was a joke of a compact and portable nature, turning on the difference

between Eton pears and Parliamentary pairs; but it was a joke, a refined

relish of which would seem to have appeared to Lord Decimus impossible

to be had without a thorough and intimate acquaintance with the tree.

Therefore, the story at first had no idea of such a tree, sir, then

gradually found it in winter, carried it through the changing season,

saw it bud, saw it blossom, saw it bear fruit, saw the fruit ripen; in

short, cultivated the tree in that diligent and minute manner before it

got out of the bed-room window to steal the fruit, that many thanks had

been offered up by belated listeners for the trees having been planted

and grafted prior to Lord Decimus’s time. Bar’s interest in apples was

so overtopped by the wrapt suspense in which he pursued the changes

of these pears, from the moment when Lord Decimus solemnly opened with

‘Your mentioning pears recalls to my remembrance a pear-tree,’ down to

the rich conclusion, ‘And so we pass, through the various changes

of life, from Eton pears to Parliamentary pairs,’ that he had to go

down-stairs with Lord Decimus, and even then to be seated next to him

at table in order that he might hear the anecdote out. By that time, Bar

felt that he had secured the Foreman, and might go to dinner with a good

appetite.

It was a dinner to provoke an appetite, though he had not had one. The

rarest dishes, sumptuously cooked and sumptuously served; the choicest

fruits; the most exquisite wines; marvels of workmanship in gold and

silver, china and glass; innumerable things delicious to the senses of

taste, smell, and sight, were insinuated into its composition. O, what

a wonderful man this Merdle, what a great man, what a master man, how

blessedly and enviably endowed--in one word, what a rich man!

He took his usual poor eighteenpennyworth of food in his usual

indigestive way, and had as little to say for himself as ever a

wonderful man had. Fortunately Lord Decimus was one of those sublimities

who have no occasion to be talked to, for they can be at any time

sufficiently occupied with the contemplation of their own greatness.

This enabled the bashful young Member to keep his eyes open long enough

at a time to see his dinner. But, whenever Lord Decimus spoke, he shut

them again.

The agreeable young Barnacle, and Bar, were the talkers of the party.

Bishop would have been exceedingly agreeable also, but that his

innocence stood in his way. He was so soon left behind. When there was

any little hint of anything being in the wind, he got lost directly.

Worldly affairs were too much for him; he couldn’t make them out at all.

This was observable when Bar said, incidentally, that he was happy to

have heard that we were soon to have the advantage of enlisting on

the good side, the sound and plain sagacity--not demonstrative or

ostentatious, but thoroughly sound and practical--of our friend Mr

Sparkler.

Ferdinand Barnacle laughed, and said oh yes, he believed so. A vote was

a vote, and always acceptable.

Bar was sorry to miss our good friend Mr Sparkler to-day, Mr Merdle.

‘He is away with Mrs Merdle,’ returned that gentleman, slowly coming

out of a long abstraction, in the course of which he had been fitting a

tablespoon up his sleeve. ‘It is not indispensable for him to be on the

spot.’

‘The magic name of Merdle,’ said Bar, with the jury droop, ‘no doubt

will suffice for all.’

‘Why--yes--I believe so,’ assented Mr Merdle, putting the spoon aside,

and clumsily hiding each of his hands in the coat-cuff of the other

hand. ‘I believe the people in my interest down there will not make any

difficulty.’

‘Model people!’ said Bar.

‘I am glad you approve of them,’ said Mr Merdle.

‘And the people of those other two places, now,’ pursued Bar, with a

bright twinkle in his keen eye, as it slightly turned in the direction

of his magnificent neighbour; ‘we lawyers are always curious, always

inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds,

since there is no knowing when and where they may fit into some

corner;--the people of those other two places now? Do they yield so

laudably to the vast and cumulative influence of such enterprise and

such renown; do those little rills become absorbed so quietly

and easily, and, as it were by the influence of natural laws, so

beautifully, in the swoop of the majestic stream as it flows upon its

wondrous way enriching the surrounding lands; that their course is

perfectly to be calculated, and distinctly to be predicated?’

Mr Merdle, a little troubled by Bar’s eloquence, looked fitfully about

the nearest salt-cellar for some moments, and then said hesitating:

‘They are perfectly aware, sir, of their duty to Society. They will

return anybody I send to them for that purpose.’

‘Cheering to know,’ said Bar. ‘Cheering to know.’

The three places in question were three little rotten holes in this

Island, containing three little ignorant, drunken, guzzling, dirty,

out-of-the-way constituencies, that had reeled into Mr Merdle’s pocket.

Ferdinand Barnacle laughed in his easy way, and airily said they were

a nice set of fellows. Bishop, mentally perambulating among paths of

peace, was altogether swallowed up in absence of mind.

‘Pray,’ asked Lord Decimus, casting his eyes around the table, ‘what

is this story I have heard of a gentleman long confined in a debtors’

prison proving to be of a wealthy family, and having come into the

inheritance of a large sum of money? I have met with a variety of

allusions to it. Do you know anything of it, Ferdinand?’

‘I only know this much,’ said Ferdinand, ‘that he has given the

Department with which I have the honour to be associated;’ this

sparkling young Barnacle threw off the phrase sportively, as who should

say, We know all about these forms of speech, but we must keep it up,

we must keep the game alive; ‘no end of trouble, and has put us into

innumerable fixes.’

‘Fixes?’ repeated Lord Decimus, with a majestic pausing and pondering

on the word that made the bashful Member shut his eyes quite tight.

‘Fixes?’

‘A very perplexing business indeed,’ observed Mr Tite Barnacle, with an

air of grave resentment.

‘What,’ said Lord Decimus, ‘was the character of his business; what was

the nature of these--a--Fixes, Ferdinand?’

‘Oh, it’s a good story, as a story,’ returned that gentleman; ‘as good

a thing of its kind as need be. This Mr Dorrit (his name is Dorrit) had

incurred a responsibility to us, ages before the fairy came out of

the Bank and gave him his fortune, under a bond he had signed for the

performance of a contract which was not at all performed. He was a

partner in a house in some large way--spirits, or buttons, or wine, or

blacking, or oatmeal, or woollen, or pork, or hooks and eyes, or iron,

or treacle, or shoes, or something or other that was wanted for troops,

or seamen, or somebody--and the house burst, and we being among

the creditors, detainees were lodged on the part of the Crown in a

scientific manner, and all the rest of it. When the fairy had appeared

and he wanted to pay us off, Egad we had got into such an exemplary

state of checking and counter-checking, signing and counter-signing,

that it was six months before we knew how to take the money, or how to

give a receipt for it. It was a triumph of public business,’ said this

handsome young Barnacle, laughing heartily, ‘You never saw such a lot of

forms in your life. “Why,” the attorney said to me one day, “if I wanted

this office to give me two or three thousand pounds instead of take it,

I couldn’t have more trouble about it.” “You are right, old fellow,”

I told him, “and in future you’ll know that we have something to do

here.”’ The pleasant young Barnacle finished by once more laughing

heartily. He was a very easy, pleasant fellow indeed, and his manners

were exceedingly winning.

Mr Tite Barnacle’s view of the business was of a less airy character. He

took it ill that Mr Dorrit had troubled the Department by wanting to

pay the money, and considered it a grossly informal thing to do after so

many years. But Mr Tite Barnacle was a buttoned-up man, and consequently

a weighty one. All buttoned-up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are

believed in. Whether or no the reserved and never-exercised power of

unbuttoning, fascinates mankind; whether or no wisdom is supposed to

condense and augment when buttoned up, and to evaporate when unbuttoned;

it is certain that the man to whom importance is accorded is the

buttoned-up man. Mr Tite Barnacle never would have passed for half his

current value, unless his coat had been always buttoned-up to his white

cravat.

‘May I ask,’ said Lord Decimus, ‘if Mr Darrit--or Dorrit--has any

family?’

Nobody else replying, the host said, ‘He has two daughters, my lord.’

‘Oh! you are acquainted with him?’ asked Lord Decimus.

‘Mrs Merdle is. Mr Sparkler is, too. In fact,’ said Mr Merdle, ‘I rather

believe that one of the young ladies has made an impression on Edmund

Sparkler. He is susceptible, and--I--think--the conquest--’ Here Mr

Merdle stopped, and looked at the table-cloth, as he usually did when he

found himself observed or listened to.

Bar was uncommonly pleased to find that the Merdle family, and this

family, had already been brought into contact. He submitted, in a low

voice across the table to Bishop, that it was a kind of analogical

illustration of those physical laws, in virtue of which Like flies to

Like. He regarded this power of attraction in wealth to draw wealth

to it, as something remarkably interesting and curious--something

indefinably allied to the loadstone and gravitation. Bishop, who

had ambled back to earth again when the present theme was broached,

acquiesced. He said it was indeed highly important to Society that one

in the trying situation of unexpectedly finding himself invested with a

power for good or for evil in Society, should become, as it were, merged

in the superior power of a more legitimate and more gigantic growth, the

influence of which (as in the case of our friend at whose board we sat)

was habitually exercised in harmony with the best interests of Society.

Thus, instead of two rival and contending flames, a larger and a lesser,

each burning with a lurid and uncertain glare, we had a blended and a

softened light whose genial ray diffused an equable warmth throughout

the land. Bishop seemed to like his own way of putting the case very

much, and rather dwelt upon it; Bar, meanwhile (not to throw away a

jury-man), making a show of sitting at his feet and feeding on his

precepts.

The dinner and dessert being three hours long, the bashful Member cooled

in the shadow of Lord Decimus faster than he warmed with food and drink,

and had but a chilly time of it. Lord Decimus, like a tall tower in a

flat country, seemed to project himself across the table-cloth, hide the

light from the honourable Member, cool the honourable Member’s marrow,

and give him a woeful idea of distance. When he asked this unfortunate

traveller to take wine, he encompassed his faltering steps with the

gloomiest of shades; and when he said, ‘Your health sir!’ all around him

was barrenness and desolation.

At length Lord Decimus, with a coffee-cup in his hand, began to hover

about among the pictures, and to cause an interesting speculation to

arise in all minds as to the probabilities of his ceasing to hover, and

enabling the smaller birds to flutter up-stairs; which could not be

done until he had urged his noble pinions in that direction. After some

delay, and several stretches of his wings which came to nothing, he

soared to the drawing-rooms.

And here a difficulty arose, which always does arise when two people

are specially brought together at a dinner to confer with one another.

Everybody (except Bishop, who had no suspicion of it) knew perfectly

well that this dinner had been eaten and drunk, specifically to the end

that Lord Decimus and Mr Merdle should have five minutes’ conversation

together. The opportunity so elaborately prepared was now arrived, and

it seemed from that moment that no mere human ingenuity could so much as

get the two chieftains into the same room. Mr Merdle and his noble guest

persisted in prowling about at opposite ends of the perspective. It was

in vain for the engaging Ferdinand to bring Lord Decimus to look at the

bronze horses near Mr Merdle. Then Mr Merdle evaded, and wandered away.

It was in vain for him to bring Mr Merdle to Lord Decimus to tell him

the history of the unique Dresden vases. Then Lord Decimus evaded and

wandered away, while he was getting his man up to the mark.

‘Did you ever see such a thing as this?’ said Ferdinand to Bar when he

had been baffled twenty times.

‘Often,’ returned Bar.

‘Unless I butt one of them into an appointed corner, and you butt the

other,’ said Ferdinand, ‘it will not come off after all.’

‘Very good,’ said Bar. ‘I’ll butt Merdle, if you like; but not my lord.’

Ferdinand laughed, in the midst of his vexation. ‘Confound them both!’

said he, looking at his watch. ‘I want to get away. Why the deuce can’t

they come together! They both know what they want and mean to do. Look

at them!’

They were still looming at opposite ends of the perspective, each with

an absurd pretence of not having the other on his mind, which could not

have been more transparently ridiculous though his real mind had been

chalked on his back. Bishop, who had just now made a third with Bar and

Ferdinand, but whose innocence had again cut him out of the subject and

washed him in sweet oil, was seen to approach Lord Decimus and glide

into conversation.

‘I must get Merdle’s doctor to catch and secure him, I suppose,’ said

Ferdinand; ‘and then I must lay hold of my illustrious kinsman, and

decoy him if I can--drag him if I can’t--to the conference.’

‘Since you do me the honour,’ said Bar, with his slyest smile, to ask

for my poor aid, it shall be yours with the greatest pleasure. I don’t

think this is to be done by one man. But if you will undertake to pen

my lord into that furthest drawing-room where he is now so profoundly

engaged, I will undertake to bring our dear Merdle into the presence,

without the possibility of getting away.’

‘Done!’ said Ferdinand. ‘Done!’ said Bar.

Bar was a sight wondrous to behold, and full of matter, when, jauntily

waving his double eye-glass by its ribbon, and jauntily drooping to an

Universe of Jurymen, he, in the most accidental manner ever seen,

found himself at Mr Merdle’s shoulder, and embraced that opportunity of

mentioning a little point to him, on which he particularly wished to

be guided by the light of his practical knowledge. (Here he took Mr

Merdle’s arm and walked him gently away.) A banker, whom we would call

A. B., advanced a considerable sum of money, which we would call fifteen

thousand pounds, to a client or customer of his, whom he would call P.

Q. (Here, as they were getting towards Lord Decimus, he held Mr Merdle

tight.) As a security for the repayment of this advance to P. Q. whom

we would call a widow lady, there were placed in A. B.’s hands the

title-deeds of a freehold estate, which we would call Blinkiter Doddles.

Now, the point was this. A limited right of felling and lopping in

the woods of Blinkiter Doddles, lay in the son of P. Q. then past his

majority, and whom we would call X. Y.--but really this was too bad! In

the presence of Lord Decimus, to detain the host with chopping our dry

chaff of law, was really too bad! Another time! Bar was truly repentant,

and would not say another syllable. Would Bishop favour him with

half-a-dozen words? (He had now set Mr Merdle down on a couch, side by

side with Lord Decimus, and to it they must go, now or never.)

And now the rest of the company, highly excited and interested, always

excepting Bishop, who had not the slightest idea that anything was going

on, formed in one group round the fire in the next drawing-room, and

pretended to be chatting easily on the infinite variety of small topics,

while everybody’s thoughts and eyes were secretly straying towards the

secluded pair. The Chorus were excessively nervous, perhaps as labouring

under the dreadful apprehension that some good thing was going to

be diverted from them! Bishop alone talked steadily and evenly. He

conversed with the great Physician on that relaxation of the throat with

which young curates were too frequently afflicted, and on the means

of lessening the great prevalence of that disorder in the church.

Physician, as a general rule, was of opinion that the best way to avoid

it was to know how to read, before you made a profession of reading.

Bishop said dubiously, did he really think so? And Physician said,

decidedly, yes he did.

Ferdinand, meanwhile, was the only one of the party who skirmished on

the outside of the circle; he kept about mid-way between it and the

two, as if some sort of surgical operation were being performed by Lord

Decimus on Mr Merdle, or by Mr Merdle on Lord Decimus, and his services

might at any moment be required as Dresser. In fact, within a quarter

of an hour Lord Decimus called to him ‘Ferdinand!’ and he went, and

took his place in the conference for some five minutes more. Then a

half-suppressed gasp broke out among the Chorus; for Lord Decimus rose

to take his leave. Again coached up by Ferdinand to the point of making

himself popular, he shook hands in the most brilliant manner with the

whole company, and even said to Bar, ‘I hope you were not bored by my

pears?’ To which Bar retorted, ‘Eton, my lord, or Parliamentary?’ neatly

showing that he had mastered the joke, and delicately insinuating that

he could never forget it while his life remained.

All the grave importance that was buttoned up in Mr Tite Barnacle, took

itself away next; and Ferdinand took himself away next, to the opera.

Some of the rest lingered a little, marrying golden liqueur glasses to

Buhl tables with sticky rings; on the desperate chance of Mr Merdle’s

saying something. But Merdle, as usual, oozed sluggishly and muddily

about his drawing-room, saying never a word.

In a day or two it was announced to all the town, that Edmund Sparkler,

Esquire, son-in-law of the eminent Mr Merdle of worldwide renown, was

made one of the Lords of the Circumlocution Office; and proclamation was

issued, to all true believers, that this admirable appointment was to

be hailed as a graceful and gracious mark of homage, rendered by the

graceful and gracious Decimus, to that commercial interest which must

ever in a great commercial country--and all the rest of it, with

blast of trumpet. So, bolstered by this mark of Government homage, the

wonderful Bank and all the other wonderful undertakings went on and went

up; and gapers came to Harley Street, Cavendish Square, only to look at

the house where the golden wonder lived.

And when they saw the Chief Butler looking out at the hall-door in

his moments of condescension, the gapers said how rich he looked, and

wondered how much money he had in the wonderful Bank. But, if they had

known that respectable Nemesis better, they would not have wondered

about it, and might have stated the amount with the utmost precision.

CHAPTER 13. The Progress of an Epidemic

That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical

one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of

the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare

no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest

health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions: is

a fact as firmly established by experience as that we human creatures

breathe an atmosphere. A blessing beyond appreciation would be conferred

upon mankind, if the tainted, in whose weakness or wickedness these

virulent disorders are bred, could be instantly seized and placed in

close confinement (not to say summarily smothered) before the poison is

communicable.

As a vast fire will fill the air to a great distance with its roar, so

the sacred flame which the mighty Barnacles had fanned caused the air to

resound more and more with the name of Merdle. It was deposited on every

lip, and carried into every ear. There never was, there never had

been, there never again should be, such a man as Mr Merdle. Nobody,

as aforesaid, knew what he had done; but everybody knew him to be the

greatest that had appeared.

Down in Bleeding Heart Yard, where there was not one unappropriated

halfpenny, as lively an interest was taken in this paragon of men as on

the Stock Exchange. Mrs Plornish, now established in the small grocery

and general trade in a snug little shop at the crack end of the Yard,

at the top of the steps, with her little old father and Maggy acting

as assistants, habitually held forth about him over the counter in

conversation with her customers. Mr Plornish, who had a small share in a

small builder’s business in the neighbourhood, said, trowel in hand, on

the tops of scaffolds and on the tiles of houses, that people did tell

him as Mr Merdle was _the_ one, mind you, to put us all to rights in

respects of that which all on us looked to, and to bring us all safe

home as much as we needed, mind you, fur toe be brought. Mr Baptist,

sole lodger of Mr and Mrs Plornish was reputed in whispers to lay by

the savings which were the result of his simple and moderate life,

for investment in one of Mr Merdle’s certain enterprises. The female

Bleeding Hearts, when they came for ounces of tea, and hundredweights of

talk, gave Mrs Plornish to understand, That how, ma’am, they had heard

from their cousin Mary Anne, which worked in the line, that his lady’s

dresses would fill three waggons. That how she was as handsome a lady,

ma’am, as lived, no matter wheres, and a busk like marble itself. That

how, according to what they was told, ma’am, it was her son by a former

husband as was took into the Government; and a General he had been, and

armies he had marched again and victory crowned, if all you heard was to

be believed. That how it was reported that Mr Merdle’s words had been,

that if they could have made it worth his while to take the whole

Government he would have took it without a profit, but that take it he

could not and stand a loss. That how it was not to be expected, ma’am,

that he should lose by it, his ways being, as you might say and utter

no falsehood, paved with gold; but that how it was much to be regretted

that something handsome hadn’t been got up to make it worth his while;

for it was such and only such that knowed the heighth to which the bread

and butchers’ meat had rose, and it was such and only such that both

could and would bring that heighth down.

So rife and potent was the fever in Bleeding Heart Yard, that Mr

Pancks’s rent-days caused no interval in the patients. The disease took

the singular form, on those occasions, of causing the infected to find

an unfathomable excuse and consolation in allusions to the magic name.

‘Now, then!’ Mr Pancks would say, to a defaulting lodger. ‘Pay up!

Come on!’

‘I haven’t got it, Mr Pancks,’ Defaulter would reply. ‘I tell you the

truth, sir, when I say I haven’t got so much as a single sixpence of it

to bless myself with.’

‘This won’t do, you know,’ Mr Pancks would retort. ‘You don’t expect it

_will_ do; do you?’

Defaulter would admit, with a low-spirited ‘No, sir,’ having no such

expectation.

‘My proprietor isn’t going to stand this, you know,’ Mr Pancks would

proceed. ‘He don’t send me here for this. Pay up! Come!’

The Defaulter would make answer, ‘Ah, Mr Pancks. If I was the rich

gentleman whose name is in everybody’s mouth--if my name was Merdle,

sir--I’d soon pay up, and be glad to do it.’

Dialogues on the rent-question usually took place at the house-doors

or in the entries, and in the presence of several deeply interested

Bleeding Hearts. They always received a reference of this kind with a

low murmur of response, as if it were convincing; and the Defaulter,

however black and discomfited before, always cheered up a little in

making it.

‘If I was Mr Merdle, sir, you wouldn’t have cause to complain of me

then. No, believe me!’ the Defaulter would proceed with a shake of the

head. ‘I’d pay up so quick then, Mr Pancks, that you shouldn’t have to

ask me.’

The response would be heard again here, implying that it was impossible

to say anything fairer, and that this was the next thing to paying the

money down.

Mr Pancks would be now reduced to saying as he booked the case, ‘Well!

You’ll have the broker in, and be turned out; that’s what’ll happen to

you. It’s no use talking to me about Mr Merdle. You are not Mr Merdle,

any more than I am.’

‘No, sir,’ the Defaulter would reply. ‘I only wish you _were_ him, sir.’

The response would take this up quickly; replying with great feeling,

‘Only wish you _were_ him, sir.’

‘You’d be easier with us if you were Mr Merdle, sir,’ the Defaulter

would go on with rising spirits, ‘and it would be better for all

parties. Better for our sakes, and better for yours, too. You wouldn’t

have to worry no one, then, sir. You wouldn’t have to worry us, and you

wouldn’t have to worry yourself. You’d be easier in your own mind, sir,

and you’d leave others easier, too, you would, if you were Mr Merdle.’

Mr Pancks, in whom these impersonal compliments produced an irresistible

sheepishness, never rallied after such a charge. He could only bite

his nails and puff away to the next Defaulter. The responsive Bleeding

Hearts would then gather round the Defaulter whom he had just abandoned,

and the most extravagant rumours would circulate among them, to their

great comfort, touching the amount of Mr Merdle’s ready money.

From one of the many such defeats of one of many rent-days, Mr Pancks,

having finished his day’s collection, repaired with his note-book

under his arm to Mrs Plornish’s corner. Mr Pancks’s object was not

professional, but social. He had had a trying day, and wanted a little

brightening. By this time he was on friendly terms with the Plornish

family, having often looked in upon them at similar seasons, and borne

his part in recollections of Miss Dorrit.

Mrs Plornish’s shop-parlour had been decorated under her own eye, and

presented, on the side towards the shop, a little fiction in which Mrs

Plornish unspeakably rejoiced. This poetical heightening of the parlour

consisted in the wall being painted to represent the exterior of a

thatched cottage; the artist having introduced (in as effective a manner

as he found compatible with their highly disproportionate dimensions)

the real door and window. The modest sunflower and hollyhock were

depicted as flourishing with great luxuriance on this rustic dwelling,

while a quantity of dense smoke issuing from the chimney indicated good

cheer within, and also, perhaps, that it had not been lately swept.

A faithful dog was represented as flying at the legs of the friendly

visitor, from the threshold; and a circular pigeon-house, enveloped in a

cloud of pigeons, arose from behind the garden-paling. On the door (when

it was shut), appeared the semblance of a brass-plate, presenting

the inscription, Happy Cottage, T. and M. Plornish; the partnership

expressing man and wife. No Poetry and no Art ever charmed the

imagination more than the union of the two in this counterfeit cottage

charmed Mrs Plornish. It was nothing to her that Plornish had a habit

of leaning against it as he smoked his pipe after work, when his

hat blotted out the pigeon-house and all the pigeons, when his back

swallowed up the dwelling, when his hands in his pockets uprooted the

blooming garden and laid waste the adjacent country. To Mrs Plornish, it

was still a most beautiful cottage, a most wonderful deception; and

it made no difference that Mr Plornish’s eye was some inches above the

level of the gable bed-room in the thatch. To come out into the shop

after it was shut, and hear her father sing a song inside this cottage,

was a perfect Pastoral to Mrs Plornish, the Golden Age revived. And

truly if that famous period had been revived, or had ever been at all,

it may be doubted whether it would have produced many more heartily

admiring daughters than the poor woman.

Warned of a visitor by the tinkling bell at the shop-door, Mrs Plornish

came out of Happy Cottage to see who it might be. ‘I guessed it was

you, Mr Pancks,’ said she, ‘for it’s quite your regular night; ain’t it?

Here’s father, you see, come out to serve at the sound of the bell, like

a brisk young shopman. Ain’t he looking well? Father’s more pleased to

see you than if you was a customer, for he dearly loves a gossip; and

when it turns upon Miss Dorrit, he loves it all the more. You never

heard father in such voice as he is at present,’ said Mrs Plornish, her

own voice quavering, she was so proud and pleased. ‘He gave us Strephon

last night to that degree that Plornish gets up and makes him this

speech across the table. “John Edward Nandy,” says Plornish to father,

“I never heard you come the warbles as I have heard you come the warbles

this night.” An’t it gratifying, Mr Pancks, though; really?’

Mr Pancks, who had snorted at the old man in his friendliest manner,

replied in the affirmative, and casually asked whether that lively Altro

chap had come in yet? Mrs Plornish answered no, not yet, though he had

gone to the West-End with some work, and had said he should be back

by tea-time. Mr Pancks was then hospitably pressed into Happy Cottage,

where he encountered the elder Master Plornish just come home from

school. Examining that young student, lightly, on the educational

proceedings of the day, he found that the more advanced pupils who

were in the large text and the letter M, had been set the copy ‘Merdle,

Millions.’

‘And how are _you_ getting on, Mrs Plornish,’ said Pancks, ‘since we’re

mentioning millions?’

‘Very steady, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs Plornish. ‘Father, dear, would

you go into the shop and tidy the window a little bit before tea, your

taste being so beautiful?’

John Edward Nandy trotted away, much gratified, to comply with his

daughter’s request. Mrs Plornish, who was always in mortal terror

of mentioning pecuniary affairs before the old gentleman, lest any

disclosure she made might rouse his spirit and induce him to run away to

the workhouse, was thus left free to be confidential with Mr Pancks.

‘It’s quite true that the business is very steady indeed,’ said Mrs

Plornish, lowering her voice; ‘and has a excellent connection. The only

thing that stands in its way, sir, is the Credit.’

This drawback, rather severely felt by most people who engaged in

commercial transactions with the inhabitants of Bleeding Heart Yard,

was a large stumbling-block in Mrs Plornish’s trade. When Mr Dorrit had

established her in the business, the Bleeding Hearts had shown an amount

of emotion and a determination to support her in it, that did honour to

human nature. Recognising her claim upon their generous feelings as one

who had long been a member of their community, they pledged themselves,

with great feeling, to deal with Mrs Plornish, come what would and

bestow their patronage on no other establishment. Influenced by these

noble sentiments, they had even gone out of their way to purchase little

luxuries in the grocery and butter line to which they were unaccustomed;

saying to one another, that if they did stretch a point, was it not for

a neighbour and a friend, and for whom ought a point to be stretched if

not for such? So stimulated, the business was extremely brisk, and the

articles in stock went off with the greatest celerity. In short, if the

Bleeding Hearts had but paid, the undertaking would have been a complete

success; whereas, by reason of their exclusively confining themselves to

owing, the profits actually realised had not yet begun to appear in the

books.

Mr Pancks was making a very porcupine of himself by sticking his hair

up in the contemplation of this state of accounts, when old Mr Nandy,

re-entering the cottage with an air of mystery, entreated them to come

and look at the strange behaviour of Mr Baptist, who seemed to have met

with something that had scared him. All three going into the shop, and

watching through the window, then saw Mr Baptist, pale and agitated, go

through the following extraordinary performances. First, he was observed

hiding at the top of the steps leading down into the Yard, and peeping

up and down the street with his head cautiously thrust out close to the

side of the shop-door. After very anxious scrutiny, he came out of

his retreat, and went briskly down the street as if he were going away

altogether; then, suddenly turned about, and went, at the same pace, and

with the same feint, up the street. He had gone no further up the street

than he had gone down, when he crossed the road and disappeared. The

object of this last manoeuvre was only apparent, when his entering the

shop with a sudden twist, from the steps again, explained that he

had made a wide and obscure circuit round to the other, or Doyce and

Clennam, end of the Yard, and had come through the Yard and bolted in.

He was out of breath by that time, as he might well be, and his heart

seemed to jerk faster than the little shop-bell, as it quivered and

jingled behind him with his hasty shutting of the door.

‘Hallo, old chap!’ said Mr Pancks. ‘Altro, old boy! What’s the matter?’

Mr Baptist, or Signor Cavalletto, understood English now almost as well

as Mr Pancks himself, and could speak it very well too. Nevertheless,

Mrs Plornish, with a pardonable vanity in that accomplishment of hers

which made her all but Italian, stepped in as interpreter.

‘E ask know,’ said Mrs Plornish, ‘what go wrong?’

‘Come into the happy little cottage, Padrona,’ returned Mr Baptist,

imparting great stealthiness to his flurried back-handed shake of his

right forefinger. ‘Come there!’

Mrs Plornish was proud of the title Padrona, which she regarded as

signifying: not so much Mistress of the house, as Mistress of the

Italian tongue. She immediately complied with Mr Baptist’s request, and

they all went into the cottage.

‘E ope you no fright,’ said Mrs Plornish then, interpreting Mr Pancks

in a new way with her usual fertility of resource. ‘What appen? Peaka

Padrona!’

‘I have seen some one,’ returned Baptist. ‘I have rincontrato him.’

‘Im? Oo him?’ asked Mrs Plornish.

‘A bad man. A baddest man. I have hoped that I should never see him

again.’

‘Ow you know him bad?’ asked Mrs Plornish.

‘It does not matter, Padrona. I know it too well.’

‘E see you?’ asked Mrs Plornish.

‘No. I hope not. I believe not.’

‘He says,’ Mrs Plornish then interpreted, addressing her father and

Pancks with mild condescension, ‘that he has met a bad man, but he hopes

the bad man didn’t see him--Why,’ inquired Mrs Plornish, reverting to

the Italian language, ‘why ope bad man no see?’

‘Padrona, dearest,’ returned the little foreigner whom she so

considerately protected, ‘do not ask, I pray. Once again I say it

matters not. I have fear of this man. I do not wish to see him, I do not

wish to be known of him--never again! Enough, most beautiful. Leave it.’