family, my servants, and--hum--my rather large establishment. Being in
London for a short time on affairs connected with--ha--my estate,
and hearing of this strange disappearance, I wished to make myself
acquainted with the circumstances at first-hand, because there is--ha
hum--an English gentleman in Italy whom I shall no doubt see on my
return, who has been in habits of close and daily intimacy with Monsieur
Blandois. Mr Henry Gowan. You may know the name.’
‘Never heard of it.’
Mrs Clennam said it, and Mr Flintwinch echoed it.
‘Wishing to--ha--make the narrative coherent and consecutive to him,’
said Mr Dorrit, ‘may I ask--say, three questions?’
‘Thirty, if you choose.’
‘Have you known Monsieur Blandois long?’
‘Not a twelvemonth. Mr Flintwinch here, will refer to the books and tell
you when, and by whom at Paris he was introduced to us. If that,’
Mrs Clennam added, ‘should be any satisfaction to you. It is poor
satisfaction to us.’
‘Have you seen him often?’
‘No. Twice. Once before, and--’
‘That once,’ suggested Mr Flintwinch.
‘And that once.’
‘Pray, madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, with a growing fancy upon him as he
recovered his importance, that he was in some superior way in the
Commission of the Peace; ‘pray, madam, may I inquire, for the greater
satisfaction of the gentleman whom I have the honour to--ha--retain, or
protect or let me say to--hum--know--to know--Was Monsieur Blandois here
on business on the night indicated in this present sheet?’
‘On what he called business,’ returned Mrs Clennam.
‘Is--ha--excuse me--is its nature to be communicated?’
‘No.’
It was evidently impracticable to pass the barrier of that reply.
‘The question has been asked before,’ said Mrs Clennam, ‘and the answer
has been, No. We don’t choose to publish our transactions, however
unimportant, to all the town. We say, No.’
‘I mean, he took away no money with him, for example,’ said Mr Dorrit.
‘He took away none of ours, sir, and got none here.’
‘I suppose,’ observed Mr Dorrit, glancing from Mrs Clennam to Mr
Flintwinch, and from Mr Flintwinch to Mrs Clennam, ‘you have no way of
accounting to yourself for this mystery?’
‘Why do you suppose so?’ rejoined Mrs Clennam.
Disconcerted by the cold and hard inquiry, Mr Dorrit was unable to
assign any reason for his supposing so.
‘I account for it, sir,’ she pursued after an awkward silence on Mr
Dorrit’s part, ‘by having no doubt that he is travelling somewhere, or
hiding somewhere.’
‘Do you know--ha--why he should hide anywhere?’
‘No.’
It was exactly the same No as before, and put another barrier up.
‘You asked me if I accounted for the disappearance to myself,’ Mrs
Clennam sternly reminded him, ‘not if I accounted for it to you. I do
not pretend to account for it to you, sir. I understand it to be no more
my business to do that, than it is yours to require that.’
Mr Dorrit answered with an apologetic bend of his head. As he stepped
back, preparatory to saying he had no more to ask, he could not but
observe how gloomily and fixedly she sat with her eyes fastened on
the ground, and a certain air upon her of resolute waiting; also,
how exactly the self-same expression was reflected in Mr Flintwinch,
standing at a little distance from her chair, with his eyes also on the
ground, and his right hand softly rubbing his chin.
At that moment, Mistress Affery (of course, the woman with the apron)
dropped the candlestick she held, and cried out, ‘There! O good Lord!
there it is again. Hark, Jeremiah! Now!’
If there were any sound at all, it was so slight that she must have
fallen into a confirmed habit of listening for sounds; but Mr Dorrit
believed he did hear a something, like the falling of dry leaves. The
woman’s terror, for a very short space, seemed to touch the three; and
they all listened.
Mr Flintwinch was the first to stir. ‘Affery, my woman,’ said he,
sidling at her with his fists clenched, and his elbows quivering with
impatience to shake her, ‘you are at your old tricks. You’ll be walking
in your sleep next, my woman, and playing the whole round of your
distempered antics. You must have some physic. When I have shown this
gentleman out, I’ll make you up such a comfortable dose, my woman; such
a comfortable dose!’
It did not appear altogether comfortable in expectation to Mistress
Affery; but Jeremiah, without further reference to his healing medicine,
took another candle from Mrs Clennam’s table, and said, ‘Now, sir; shall
I light you down?’
Mr Dorrit professed himself obliged, and went down. Mr Flintwinch shut
him out, and chained him out, without a moment’s loss of time.
He was again passed by the two men, one going out and the other coming
in; got into the vehicle he had left waiting, and was driven away.
Before he had gone far, the driver stopped to let him know that he
had given his name, number, and address to the two men, on their joint
requisition; and also the address at which he had taken Mr Dorrit up,
the hour at which he had been called from his stand and the way by which
he had come. This did not make the night’s adventure run any less hotly
in Mr Dorrit’s mind, either when he sat down by his fire again, or
when he went to bed. All night he haunted the dismal house, saw the two
people resolutely waiting, heard the woman with her apron over her face
cry out about the noise, and found the body of the missing Blandois, now
buried in the cellar, and now bricked up in a wall.
CHAPTER 18. A Castle in the Air
Manifold are the cares of wealth and state. Mr Dorrit’s satisfaction in
remembering that it had not been necessary for him to announce himself
to Clennam and Co., or to make an allusion to his having had any
knowledge of the intrusive person of that name, had been damped
over-night, while it was still fresh, by a debate that arose within him
whether or no he should take the Marshalsea in his way back, and look
at the old gate. He had decided not to do so; and had astonished the
coachman by being very fierce with him for proposing to go over London
Bridge and recross the river by Waterloo Bridge--a course which would
have taken him almost within sight of his old quarters. Still, for all
that, the question had raised a conflict in his breast; and, for some
odd reason or no reason, he was vaguely dissatisfied. Even at the Merdle
dinner-table next day, he was so out of sorts about it that he
continued at intervals to turn it over and over, in a manner frightfully
inconsistent with the good society surrounding him. It made him hot to
think what the Chief Butler’s opinion of him would have been, if that
illustrious personage could have plumbed with that heavy eye of his the
stream of his meditations.
The farewell banquet was of a gorgeous nature, and wound up his visit
in a most brilliant manner. Fanny combined with the attractions of her
youth and beauty, a certain weight of self-sustainment as if she had
been married twenty years. He felt that he could leave her with a
quiet mind to tread the paths of distinction, and wished--but without
abatement of patronage, and without prejudice to the retiring virtues of
his favourite child--that he had such another daughter.
‘My dear,’ he told her at parting, ‘our family looks to you
to--ha--assert its dignity and--hum--maintain its importance. I know you
will never disappoint it.’
‘No, papa,’ said Fanny, ‘you may rely upon that, I think. My best love
to dearest Amy, and I will write to her very soon.’
‘Shall I convey any message to--ha--anybody else?’ asked Mr Dorrit, in
an insinuating manner.
‘Papa,’ said Fanny, before whom Mrs General instantly loomed, ‘no, I
thank you. You are very kind, Pa, but I must beg to be excused. There
is no other message to send, I thank you, dear papa, that it would be at
all agreeable to you to take.’
They parted in an outer drawing-room, where only Mr Sparkler waited
on his lady, and dutifully bided his time for shaking hands. When Mr
Sparkler was admitted to this closing audience, Mr Merdle came creeping
in with not much more appearance of arms in his sleeves than if he
had been the twin brother of Miss Biffin, and insisted on escorting
Mr Dorrit down-stairs. All Mr Dorrit’s protestations being in vain,
he enjoyed the honour of being accompanied to the hall-door by this
distinguished man, who (as Mr Dorrit told him in shaking hands on the
step) had really overwhelmed him with attentions and services during
this memorable visit. Thus they parted; Mr Dorrit entering his carriage
with a swelling breast, not at all sorry that his Courier, who had
come to take leave in the lower regions, should have an opportunity of
beholding the grandeur of his departure.
The aforesaid grandeur was yet full upon Mr Dorrit when he alighted at
his hotel. Helped out by the Courier and some half-dozen of the hotel
servants, he was passing through the hall with a serene magnificence,
when lo! a sight presented itself that struck him dumb and motionless.
John Chivery, in his best clothes, with his tall hat under his arm, his
ivory-handled cane genteelly embarrassing his deportment, and a bundle
of cigars in his hand!
‘Now, young man,’ said the porter. ‘This is the gentleman. This young
man has persisted in waiting, sir, saying you would be glad to see him.’
Mr Dorrit glared on the young man, choked, and said, in the mildest of
tones, ‘Ah! Young John! It is Young John, I think; is it not?’
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Young John.
‘I--ha--thought it was Young John!’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘The young man may
come up,’ turning to the attendants, as he passed on: ‘oh yes, he may
come up. Let Young John follow. I will speak to him above.’
Young John followed, smiling and much gratified. Mr Dorrit’s rooms were
reached. Candles were lighted. The attendants withdrew.
‘Now, sir,’ said Mr Dorrit, turning round upon him and seizing him by
the collar when they were safely alone. ‘What do you mean by this?’
The amazement and horror depicted in the unfortunate John’s face--for
he had rather expected to be embraced next--were of that powerfully
expressive nature that Mr Dorrit withdrew his hand and merely glared at
him.
‘How dare you do this?’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘How do you presume to come
here? How dare you insult me?’
‘I insult you, sir?’ cried Young John. ‘Oh!’
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mr Dorrit. ‘Insult me. Your coming here is an
affront, an impertinence, an audacity. You are not wanted here.
Who sent you here? What--ha--the Devil do you do here?’
‘I thought, sir,’ said Young John, with as pale and shocked a face as
ever had been turned to Mr Dorrit’s in his life--even in his College
life: ‘I thought, sir, you mightn’t object to have the goodness to
accept a bundle--’
‘Damn your bundle, sir!’ cried Mr Dorrit, in irrepressible rage.
‘I--hum--don’t smoke.’
‘I humbly beg your pardon, sir. You used to.’
‘Tell me that again,’ cried Mr Dorrit, quite beside himself, ‘and I’ll
take the poker to you!’
John Chivery backed to the door.
‘Stop, sir!’ cried Mr Dorrit. ‘Stop! Sit down. Confound you sit down!’
John Chivery dropped into the chair nearest the door, and Mr Dorrit
walked up and down the room; rapidly at first; then, more slowly. Once,
he went to the window, and stood there with his forehead against the
glass. All of a sudden, he turned and said:
‘What else did you come for, Sir?’
‘Nothing else in the world, sir. Oh dear me! Only to say, Sir, that I
hoped you was well, and only to ask if Miss Amy was Well?’
‘What’s that to you, sir?’ retorted Mr Dorrit.
‘It’s nothing to me, sir, by rights. I never thought of lessening the
distance betwixt us, I am sure. I know it’s a liberty, sir, but I never
thought you’d have taken it ill. Upon my word and honour, sir,’ said
Young John, with emotion, ‘in my poor way, I am too proud to have come,
I assure you, if I had thought so.’
Mr Dorrit was ashamed. He went back to the window, and leaned his
forehead against the glass for some time. When he turned, he had his
handkerchief in his hand, and he had been wiping his eyes with it, and
he looked tired and ill.
‘Young John, I am very sorry to have been hasty with you, but--ha--some
remembrances are not happy remembrances, and--hum--you shouldn’t have
come.’
‘I feel that now, sir,’ returned John Chivery; ‘but I didn’t before, and
Heaven knows I meant no harm, sir.’
‘No. No,’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘I am--hum--sure of that. Ha. Give me your
hand, Young John, give me your hand.’
Young John gave it; but Mr Dorrit had driven his heart out of it, and
nothing could change his face now, from its white, shocked look.
‘There!’ said Mr Dorrit, slowly shaking hands with him. ‘Sit down again,
Young John.’
‘Thank you, sir--but I’d rather stand.’
Mr Dorrit sat down instead. After painfully holding his head a little
while, he turned it to his visitor, and said, with an effort to be easy:
‘And how is your father, Young John? How--ha--how are they all, Young
John?’
‘Thank you, sir, They’re all pretty well, sir. They’re not any ways
complaining.’
‘Hum. You are in your--ha--old business I see, John?’ said Mr Dorrit,
with a glance at the offending bundle he had anathematised.
‘Partly, sir. I am in my’--John hesitated a little--‘father’s business
likewise.’
‘Oh indeed!’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘Do you--ha hum--go upon the ha--’
‘Lock, sir? Yes, sir.’
‘Much to do, John?’
‘Yes, sir; we’re pretty heavy at present. I don’t know how it is, but we
generally _are_ pretty heavy.’
‘At this time of the year, Young John?’
‘Mostly at all times of the year, sir. I don’t know the time that makes
much difference to us. I wish you good night, sir.’
‘Stay a moment, John--ha--stay a moment. Hum. Leave me the cigars, John,
I--ha--beg.’
‘Certainly, sir.’ John put them, with a trembling hand, on the table.
‘Stay a moment, Young John; stay another moment. It would be a--ha--a
gratification to me to send a little--hum--Testimonial, by such a trusty
messenger, to be divided among--ha hum--them--_them_--according to their
wants. Would you object to take it, John?’
‘Not in any ways, sir. There’s many of them, I’m sure, that would be the
better for it.’
‘Thank you, John. I--ha--I’ll write it, John.’
His hand shook so that he was a long time writing it, and wrote it in
a tremulous scrawl at last. It was a cheque for one hundred pounds. He
folded it up, put it in Young John’s hand, and pressed the hand in his.
‘I hope you’ll--ha--overlook--hum--what has passed, John.’
‘Don’t speak of it, sir, on any accounts. I don’t in any ways bear
malice, I’m sure.’
But nothing while John was there could change John’s face to its natural
colour and expression, or restore John’s natural manner.
‘And, John,’ said Mr Dorrit, giving his hand a final pressure, and
releasing it, ‘I hope we--ha--agree that we have spoken together
in confidence; and that you will abstain, in going out, from saying
anything to any one that might--hum--suggest that--ha--once I--’
‘Oh! I assure you, sir,’ returned John Chivery, ‘in my poor humble way,
sir, I’m too proud and honourable to do it, sir.’
Mr Dorrit was not too proud and honourable to listen at the door that
he might ascertain for himself whether John really went straight out, or
lingered to have any talk with any one. There was no doubt that he went
direct out at the door, and away down the street with a quick step.
After remaining alone for an hour, Mr Dorrit rang for the Courier,
who found him with his chair on the hearth-rug, sitting with his back
towards him and his face to the fire. ‘You can take that bundle of
cigars to smoke on the journey, if you like,’ said Mr Dorrit, with
a careless wave of his hand. ‘Ha--brought by--hum--little offering
from--ha--son of old tenant of mine.’
Next morning’s sun saw Mr Dorrit’s equipage upon the Dover road, where
every red-jacketed postilion was the sign of a cruel house, established
for the unmerciful plundering of travellers. The whole business of the
human race, between London and Dover, being spoliation, Mr Dorrit was
waylaid at Dartford, pillaged at Gravesend, rifled at Rochester, fleeced
at Sittingbourne, and sacked at Canterbury. However, it being the
Courier’s business to get him out of the hands of the banditti, the
Courier brought him off at every stage; and so the red-jackets went
gleaming merrily along the spring landscape, rising and falling to
a regular measure, between Mr Dorrit in his snug corner and the next
chalky rise in the dusty highway.
Another day’s sun saw him at Calais. And having now got the Channel
between himself and John Chivery, he began to feel safe, and to find
that the foreign air was lighter to breathe than the air of England.
On again by the heavy French roads for Paris. Having now quite recovered
his equanimity, Mr Dorrit, in his snug corner, fell to castle-building
as he rode along. It was evident that he had a very large castle in
hand. All day long he was running towers up, taking towers down, adding
a wing here, putting on a battlement there, looking to the walls,
strengthening the defences, giving ornamental touches to the interior,
making in all respects a superb castle of it. His preoccupied face so
clearly denoted the pursuit in which he was engaged, that every cripple
at the post-houses, not blind, who shoved his little battered tin-box in
at the carriage window for Charity in the name of Heaven, Charity in the
name of our Lady, Charity in the name of all the Saints, knew as well
what work he was at, as their countryman Le Brun could have known it
himself, though he had made that English traveller the subject of a
special physiognomical treatise.
Arrived at Paris, and resting there three days, Mr Dorrit strolled
much about the streets alone, looking in at the shop-windows, and
particularly the jewellers’ windows. Ultimately, he went into the most
famous jeweller’s, and said he wanted to buy a little gift for a lady.
It was a charming little woman to whom he said it--a sprightly little
woman, dressed in perfect taste, who came out of a green velvet bower
to attend upon him, from posting up some dainty little books of account
which one could hardly suppose to be ruled for the entry of any articles
more commercial than kisses, at a dainty little shining desk which
looked in itself like a sweetmeat.
For example, then, said the little woman, what species of gift did
Monsieur desire? A love-gift?
Mr Dorrit smiled, and said, Eh, well! Perhaps. What did he know? It was
always possible; the sex being so charming. Would she show him some?
Most willingly, said the little woman. Flattered and enchanted to show
him many. But pardon! To begin with, he would have the great goodness
to observe that there were love-gifts, and there were nuptial gifts.
For example, these ravishing ear-rings and this necklace so superb to
correspond, were what one called a love-gift. These brooches and these
rings, of a beauty so gracious and celestial, were what one called, with
the permission of Monsieur, nuptial gifts.
Perhaps it would be a good arrangement, Mr Dorrit hinted, smiling, to
purchase both, and to present the love-gift first, and to finish with
the nuptial offering?
Ah Heaven! said the little woman, laying the tips of the fingers of her
two little hands against each other, that would be generous indeed, that
would be a special gallantry! And without doubt the lady so crushed with
gifts would find them irresistible.
Mr Dorrit was not sure of that. But, for example, the sprightly little
woman was very sure of it, she said. So Mr Dorrit bought a gift of
each sort, and paid handsomely for it. As he strolled back to his hotel
afterwards, he carried his head high: having plainly got up his castle
now to a much loftier altitude than the two square towers of Notre Dame.
Building away with all his might, but reserving the plans of his castle
exclusively for his own eye, Mr Dorrit posted away for Marseilles.
Building on, building on, busily, busily, from morning to night. Falling
asleep, and leaving great blocks of building materials dangling in the
air; waking again, to resume work and get them into their places. What
time the Courier in the rumble, smoking Young John’s best cigars, left
a little thread of thin light smoke behind--perhaps as _he_ built a
castle or two with stray pieces of Mr Dorrit’s money.
Not a fortified town that they passed in all their journey was as
strong, not a Cathedral summit was as high, as Mr Dorrit’s castle.
Neither the Saone nor the Rhone sped with the swiftness of that peerless
building; nor was the Mediterranean deeper than its foundations; nor
were the distant landscapes on the Cornice road, nor the hills and bay
of Genoa the Superb, more beautiful. Mr Dorrit and his matchless castle
were disembarked among the dirty white houses and dirtier felons of
Civita Vecchia, and thence scrambled on to Rome as they could, through
the filth that festered on the way.
CHAPTER 19. The Storming of the Castle in the Air
The sun had gone down full four hours, and it was later than most
travellers would like it to be for finding themselves outside the walls
of Rome, when Mr Dorrit’s carriage, still on its last wearisome
stage, rattled over the solitary Campagna. The savage herdsmen and
the fierce-looking peasants who had chequered the way while the light
lasted, had all gone down with the sun, and left the wilderness
blank. At some turns of the road, a pale flare on the horizon, like an
exhalation from the ruin-sown land, showed that the city was yet far
off; but this poor relief was rare and short-lived. The carriage dipped
down again into a hollow of the black dry sea, and for a long time there
was nothing visible save its petrified swell and the gloomy sky.
Mr Dorrit, though he had his castle-building to engage his mind, could
not be quite easy in that desolate place. He was far more curious, in
every swerve of the carriage, and every cry of the postilions, than he
had been since he quitted London. The valet on the box evidently quaked.
The Courier in the rumble was not altogether comfortable in his mind. As
often as Mr Dorrit let down the glass and looked back at him (which was
very often), he saw him smoking John Chivery out, it is true, but still
generally standing up the while and looking about him, like a man who
had his suspicions, and kept upon his guard. Then would Mr Dorrit,
pulling up the glass again, reflect that those postilions were
cut-throat looking fellows, and that he would have done better to have
slept at Civita Vecchia, and have started betimes in the morning. But,
for all this, he worked at his castle in the intervals.
And now, fragments of ruinous enclosure, yawning window-gap and crazy
wall, deserted houses, leaking wells, broken water-tanks, spectral
cypress-trees, patches of tangled vine, and the changing of the track to
a long, irregular, disordered lane where everything was crumbling away,
from the unsightly buildings to the jolting road--now, these objects
showed that they were nearing Rome. And now, a sudden twist and stoppage
of the carriage inspired Mr Dorrit with the mistrust that the brigand
moment was come for twisting him into a ditch and robbing him; until,
letting down the glass again and looking out, he perceived himself
assailed by nothing worse than a funeral procession, which came
mechanically chaunting by, with an indistinct show of dirty vestments,
lurid torches, swinging censers, and a great cross borne before a
priest. He was an ugly priest by torchlight; of a lowering aspect, with
an overhanging brow; and as his eyes met those of Mr Dorrit, looking
bareheaded out of the carriage, his lips, moving as they chaunted,
seemed to threaten that important traveller; likewise the action of
his hand, which was in fact his manner of returning the traveller’s
salutation, seemed to come in aid of that menace. So thought Mr Dorrit,
made fanciful by the weariness of building and travelling, as the priest
drifted past him, and the procession straggled away, taking its dead
along with it. Upon their so-different way went Mr Dorrit’s company too;
and soon, with their coach load of luxuries from the two great capitals
of Europe, they were (like the Goths reversed) beating at the gates of
Rome.
Mr Dorrit was not expected by his own people that night. He had been;
but they had given him up until to-morrow, not doubting that it was
later than he would care, in those parts, to be out. Thus, when his
equipage stopped at his own gate, no one but the porter appeared to
receive him. Was Miss Dorrit from home? he asked. No. She was within.
Good, said Mr Dorrit to the assembling servants; let them keep where
they were; let them help to unload the carriage; he would find Miss
Dorrit for himself.
So he went up his grand staircase, slowly, and tired, and looked into
various chambers which were empty, until he saw a light in a small
ante-room. It was a curtained nook, like a tent, within two other rooms;
and it looked warm and bright in colour, as he approached it through the
dark avenue they made.
There was a draped doorway, but no door; and as he stopped here, looking
in unseen, he felt a pang. Surely not like jealousy? For why like
jealousy? There was only his daughter and his brother there: he, with
his chair drawn to the hearth, enjoying the warmth of the evening wood
fire; she seated at a little table, busied with some embroidery work.
Allowing for the great difference in the still-life of the picture, the
figures were much the same as of old; his brother being sufficiently
like himself to represent himself, for a moment, in the composition.
So had he sat many a night, over a coal fire far away; so had she sat,
devoted to him. Yet surely there was nothing to be jealous of in the old
miserable poverty. Whence, then, the pang in his heart?
‘Do you know, uncle, I think you are growing young again?’
Her uncle shook his head and said, ‘Since when, my dear; since when?’
‘I think,’ returned Little Dorrit, plying her needle, ‘that you have
been growing younger for weeks past. So cheerful, uncle, and so ready,
and so interested.’
‘My dear child--all you.’
‘All me, uncle!’
‘Yes, yes. You have done me a world of good. You have been so
considerate of me, and so tender with me, and so delicate in trying to
hide your attentions from me, that I--well, well, well! It’s treasured
up, my darling, treasured up.’
‘There is nothing in it but your own fresh fancy, uncle,’ said Little
Dorrit, cheerfully.
‘Well, well, well!’ murmured the old man. ‘Thank God!’
She paused for an instant in her work to look at him, and her look
revived that former pain in her father’s breast; in his poor weak
breast, so full of contradictions, vacillations, inconsistencies, the
little peevish perplexities of this ignorant life, mists which the
morning without a night only can clear away.
‘I have been freer with you, you see, my dove,’ said the old man, ‘since
we have been alone. I say, alone, for I don’t count Mrs General; I
don’t care for her; she has nothing to do with me. But I know Fanny was
impatient of me. And I don’t wonder at it, or complain of it, for I am
sensible that I must be in the way, though I try to keep out of it as
well as I can. I know I am not fit company for our company. My brother
William,’ said the old man admiringly, ‘is fit company for monarchs;
but not so your uncle, my dear. Frederick Dorrit is no credit to William
Dorrit, and he knows it quite well. Ah! Why, here’s your father, Amy!
My dear William, welcome back! My beloved brother, I am rejoiced to see
you!’
(Turning his head in speaking, he had caught sight of him as he stood in
the doorway.)
Little Dorrit with a cry of pleasure put her arms about her father’s
neck, and kissed him again and again. Her father was a little impatient,
and a little querulous. ‘I am glad to find you at last, Amy,’ he said.
‘Ha. Really I am glad to find--hum--any one to receive me at last.
I appear to have been--ha--so little expected, that upon my word
I began--ha hum--to think it might be right to offer an apology
for--ha--taking the liberty of coming back at all.’
‘It was so late, my dear William,’ said his brother, ‘that we had given
you up for to-night.’
‘I am stronger than you, dear Frederick,’ returned his brother with an
elaboration of fraternity in which there was severity; ‘and I hope I can
travel without detriment at--ha--any hour I choose.’
‘Surely, surely,’ returned the other, with a misgiving that he had given
offence. ‘Surely, William.’
‘Thank you, Amy,’ pursued Mr Dorrit, as she helped him to put off his
wrappers. ‘I can do it without assistance. I--ha--need not trouble you,
Amy. Could I have a morsel of bread and a glass of wine, or--hum--would
it cause too much inconvenience?’
‘Dear father, you shall have supper in a very few minutes.’
‘Thank you, my love,’ said Mr Dorrit, with a reproachful frost upon him;
‘I--ha--am afraid I am causing inconvenience. Hum. Mrs General pretty
well?’
‘Mrs General complained of a headache, and of being fatigued; and so,
when we gave you up, she went to bed, dear.’
Perhaps Mr Dorrit thought that Mrs General had done well in being
overcome by the disappointment of his not arriving. At any rate, his
face relaxed, and he said with obvious satisfaction, ‘Extremely sorry to
hear that Mrs General is not well.’
During this short dialogue, his daughter had been observant of him, with
something more than her usual interest. It would seem as though he had
a changed or worn appearance in her eyes, and he perceived and resented
it; for he said with renewed peevishness, when he had divested himself
of his travelling-cloak, and had come to the fire:
‘Amy, what are you looking at? What do you see in me that causes you
to--ha--concentrate your solicitude on me in that--hum--very particular
manner?’
‘I did not know it, father; I beg your pardon. It gladdens my eyes to
see you again; that’s all.’
‘Don’t say that’s all, because--ha--that’s not all. You--hum--you
think,’ said Mr Dorrit, with an accusatory emphasis, ‘that I am not
looking well.’
‘I thought you looked a little tired, love.’
‘Then you are mistaken,’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘Ha, I am _not_ tired. Ha, hum. I
am very much fresher than I was when I went away.’
He was so inclined to be angry that she said nothing more in her
justification, but remained quietly beside him embracing his arm. As
he stood thus, with his brother on the other side, he fell into a heavy
doze, of not a minute’s duration, and awoke with a start.
‘Frederick,’ he said, turning to his brother: ‘I recommend you to go to
bed immediately.’
‘No, William. I’ll wait and see you sup.’
‘Frederick,’ he retorted, ‘I beg you to go to bed. I--ha--make it a
personal request that you go to bed. You ought to have been in bed long
ago. You are very feeble.’
‘Hah!’ said the old man, who had no wish but to please him. ‘Well, well,
well! I dare say I am.’
‘My dear Frederick,’ returned Mr Dorrit, with an astonishing superiority
to his brother’s failing powers, ‘there can be no doubt of it. It is
painful to me to see you so weak. Ha. It distresses me. Hum. I don’t
find you looking at all well. You are not fit for this sort of thing.
You should be more careful, you should be very careful.’
‘Shall I go to bed?’ asked Frederick.
‘Dear Frederick,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘do, I adjure you! Good night,
brother. I hope you will be stronger to-morrow. I am not at all pleased
with your looks. Good night, dear fellow.’ After dismissing his brother
in this gracious way, he fell into a doze again before the old man was
well out of the room: and he would have stumbled forward upon the logs,
but for his daughter’s restraining hold.
‘Your uncle wanders very much, Amy,’ he said, when he was thus roused.
‘He is less--ha--coherent, and his conversation is more--hum--broken,
than I have--ha, hum--ever known. Has he had any illness since I have
been gone?’
‘No, father.’
‘You--ha--see a great change in him, Amy?’
‘I have not observed it, dear.’
‘Greatly broken,’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘Greatly broken. My poor,
affectionate, failing Frederick! Ha. Even taking into account what he
was before, he is--hum--sadly broken!’
His supper, which was brought to him there, and spread upon the little
table where he had seen her working, diverted his attention. She sat at
his side as in the days that were gone, for the first time since those
days ended. They were alone, and she helped him to his meat and poured
out his drink for him, as she had been used to do in the prison. All
this happened now, for the first time since their accession to wealth.
She was afraid to look at him much, after the offence he had taken; but
she noticed two occasions in the course of his meal, when he all of a
sudden looked at her, and looked about him, as if the association were
so strong that he needed assurance from his sense of sight that they
were not in the old prison-room. Both times, he put his hand to his head
as if he missed his old black cap--though it had been ignominiously
given away in the Marshalsea, and had never got free to that hour, but
still hovered about the yards on the head of his successor.
He took very little supper, but was a long time over it, and often
reverted to his brother’s declining state. Though he expressed the
greatest pity for him, he was almost bitter upon him. He said that poor
Frederick--ha hum--drivelled. There was no other word to express it;
drivelled. Poor fellow! It was melancholy to reflect what Amy must have
undergone from the excessive tediousness of his Society--wandering and
babbling on, poor dear estimable creature, wandering and babbling on--if
it had not been for the relief she had had in Mrs General.
Extremely sorry, he then repeated with his former satisfaction, that
that--ha--superior woman was poorly.
Little Dorrit, in her watchful love, would have remembered the lightest
thing he said or did that night, though she had had no subsequent reason
to recall that night. She always remembered that, when he looked about
him under the strong influence of the old association, he tried to
keep it out of her mind, and perhaps out of his own too, by immediately
expatiating on the great riches and great company that had encompassed
him in his absence, and on the lofty position he and his family had to
sustain. Nor did she fail to recall that there were two under-currents,
side by side, pervading all his discourse and all his manner; one
showing her how well he had got on without her, and how independent
he was of her; the other, in a fitful and unintelligible way almost
complaining of her, as if it had been possible that she had neglected
him while he was away.
His telling her of the glorious state that Mr Merdle kept, and of the
court that bowed before him, naturally brought him to Mrs Merdle. So
naturally indeed, that although there was an unusual want of sequence in
the greater part of his remarks, he passed to her at once, and asked how
she was.
‘She is very well. She is going away next week.’
‘Home?’ asked Mr Dorrit.
‘After a few weeks’ stay upon the road.’
‘She will be a vast loss here,’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘A vast--ha--acquisition
at home. To Fanny, and to--hum--the rest of the--ha--great world.’
Little Dorrit thought of the competition that was to be entered upon,
and assented very softly.
‘Mrs Merdle is going to have a great farewell Assembly, dear, and a
dinner before it. She has been expressing her anxiety that you should
return in time. She has invited both you and me to her dinner.’
‘She is--ha--very kind. When is the day?’
‘The day after to-morrow.’
‘Write round in the morning, and say that I have returned, and
shall--hum--be delighted.’
‘May I walk with you up the stairs to your room, dear?’
‘No!’ he answered, looking angrily round; for he was moving away, as if
forgetful of leave-taking. ‘You may not, Amy. I want no help. I am your
father, not your infirm uncle!’ He checked himself, as abruptly as he
had broken into this reply, and said, ‘You have not kissed me, Amy. Good
night, my dear! We must marry--ha--we must marry _you_, now.’ With that
he went, more slowly and more tired, up the staircase to his rooms, and,
almost as soon as he got there, dismissed his valet. His next care was
to look about him for his Paris purchases, and, after opening their
cases and carefully surveying them, to put them away under lock and
key. After that, what with dozing and what with castle-building, he lost
himself for a long time, so that there was a touch of morning on the
eastward rim of the desolate Campagna when he crept to bed.
Mrs General sent up her compliments in good time next day, and hoped
he had rested well after this fatiguing journey. He sent down his
compliments, and begged to inform Mrs General that he had rested very
well indeed, and was in high condition. Nevertheless, he did not come
forth from his own rooms until late in the afternoon; and, although he
then caused himself to be magnificently arrayed for a drive with
Mrs General and his daughter, his appearance was scarcely up to his
description of himself.
As the family had no visitors that day, its four members dined alone
together. He conducted Mrs General to the seat at his right hand with
immense ceremony; and Little Dorrit could not but notice as she followed
with her uncle, both that he was again elaborately dressed, and that his
manner towards Mrs General was very particular. The perfect formation of
that accomplished lady’s surface rendered it difficult to displace an
atom of its genteel glaze, but Little Dorrit thought she descried a
slight thaw of triumph in a corner of her frosty eye.
Notwithstanding what may be called in these pages the Pruney and
Prismatic nature of the family banquet, Mr Dorrit several times fell
asleep while it was in progress. His fits of dozing were as sudden as
they had been overnight, and were as short and profound. When the first
of these slumberings seized him, Mrs General looked almost amazed: but,
on each recurrence of the symptoms, she told her polite beads, Papa,
Potatoes, Poultry, Prunes, and Prism; and, by dint of going through that
infallible performance very slowly, appeared to finish her rosary at
about the same time as Mr Dorrit started from his sleep.
He was again painfully aware of a somnolent tendency in Frederick (which
had no existence out of his own imagination), and after dinner, when
Frederick had withdrawn, privately apologised to Mrs General for the
poor man. ‘The most estimable and affectionate of brothers,’ he said,
‘but--ha, hum--broken up altogether. Unhappily, declining fast.’
‘Mr Frederick, sir,’ quoth Mrs General, ‘is habitually absent and
drooping, but let us hope it is not so bad as that.’
Mr Dorrit, however, was determined not to let him off. ‘Fast declining,
madam. A wreck. A ruin. Mouldering away before our eyes. Hum. Good
Frederick!’
‘You left Mrs Sparkler quite well and happy, I trust?’ said Mrs General,
after heaving a cool sigh for Frederick.
‘Surrounded,’ replied Mr Dorrit, ‘by--ha--all that can charm the taste,
and--hum--elevate the mind. Happy, my dear madam, in a--hum--husband.’
Mrs General was a little fluttered; seeming delicately to put the word
away with her gloves, as if there were no knowing what it might lead to.
‘Fanny,’ Mr Dorrit continued. ‘Fanny, Mrs General, has high
qualities. Ha. Ambition--hum--purpose, consciousness of--ha--position,
determination to support that position--ha, hum--grace, beauty, and
native nobility.’
‘No doubt,’ said Mrs General (with a little extra stiffness).
‘Combined with these qualities, madam,’ said Mr Dorrit, ‘Fanny
has--ha--manifested one blemish which has made me--hum--made me uneasy,
and--ha--I must add, angry; but which I trust may now be considered
at an end, even as to herself, and which is undoubtedly at an end as
to--ha--others.’
‘To what, Mr Dorrit,’ returned Mrs General, with her gloves again
somewhat excited, ‘can you allude? I am at a loss to--’
‘Do not say that, my dear madam,’ interrupted Mr Dorrit.
Mrs General’s voice, as it died away, pronounced the words, ‘at a loss
to imagine.’
After which Mr Dorrit was seized with a doze for about a minute, out of
which he sprang with spasmodic nimbleness.
‘I refer, Mrs General, to that--ha--strong spirit of opposition,
or--hum--I might say--ha--jealousy in Fanny, which has occasionally
risen against the--ha--sense I entertain of--hum--the claims of--ha--the
lady with whom I have now the honour of communing.’
‘Mr Dorrit,’ returned Mrs General, ‘is ever but too obliging, ever but
too appreciative. If there have been moments when I have imagined that
Miss Dorrit has indeed resented the favourable opinion Mr Dorrit has
formed of my services, I have found, in that only too high opinion, my
consolation and recompense.’
‘Opinion of your services, madam?’ said Mr Dorrit.
‘Of,’ Mrs General repeated, in an elegantly impressive manner, ‘my
services.’
‘Of your services alone, dear madam?’ said Mr Dorrit.
‘I presume,’ retorted Mrs General, in her former impressive manner, ‘of
my services alone. For, to what else,’ said Mrs General, with a slightly
interrogative action of her gloves, ‘could I impute--’
‘To--ha--yourself, Mrs General. Ha, hum. To yourself and your merits,’
was Mr Dorrit’s rejoinder.
‘Mr Dorrit will pardon me,’ said Mrs General, ‘if I remark that this
is not a time or place for the pursuit of the present conversation.
Mr Dorrit will excuse me if I remind him that Miss Dorrit is in the
adjoining room, and is visible to myself while I utter her name. Mr
Dorrit will forgive me if I observe that I am agitated, and that I find
there are moments when weaknesses I supposed myself to have subdued,
return with redoubled power. Mr Dorrit will allow me to withdraw.’
‘Hum. Perhaps we may resume this--ha--interesting conversation,’ said
Mr Dorrit, ‘at another time; unless it should be, what I hope it is
not--hum--in any way disagreeable to--ah--Mrs General.’
‘Mr Dorrit,’ said Mrs General, casting down her eyes as she rose with a
bend, ‘must ever claim my homage and obedience.’
Mrs General then took herself off in a stately way, and not with that
amount of trepidation upon her which might have been expected in a less
remarkable woman. Mr Dorrit, who had conducted his part of the dialogue
with a certain majestic and admiring condescension--much as some people
may be seen to conduct themselves in Church, and to perform their part
in the service--appeared, on the whole, very well satisfied with himself
and with Mrs General too. On the return of that lady to tea, she had
touched herself up with a little powder and pomatum, and was not without
moral enchantment likewise: the latter showing itself in much sweet
patronage of manner towards Miss Dorrit, and in an air of as tender
interest in Mr Dorrit as was consistent with rigid propriety. At the
close of the evening, when she rose to retire, Mr Dorrit took her by the
hand as if he were going to lead her out into the Piazza of the people
to walk a minuet by moonlight, and with great solemnity conducted her to
the room door, where he raised her knuckles to his lips. Having parted
from her with what may be conjectured to have been a rather bony kiss of
a cosmetic flavour, he gave his daughter his blessing, graciously. And
having thus hinted that there was something remarkable in the wind, he
again went to bed.
He remained in the seclusion of his own chamber next morning; but, early
in the afternoon, sent down his best compliments to Mrs General, by Mr
Tinkler, and begged she would accompany Miss Dorrit on an airing
without him. His daughter was dressed for Mrs Merdle’s dinner before he
appeared. He then presented himself in a refulgent condition as to his
attire, but looking indefinably shrunken and old. However, as he was
plainly determined to be angry with her if she so much as asked him how
he was, she only ventured to kiss his cheek, before accompanying him to
Mrs Merdle’s with an anxious heart.
The distance that they had to go was very short, but he was at his
building work again before the carriage had half traversed it. Mrs
Merdle received him with great distinction; the bosom was in admirable
preservation, and on the best terms with itself; the dinner was very
choice; and the company was very select.
It was principally English; saving that it comprised the usual French
Count and the usual Italian Marchese--decorative social milestones,
always to be found in certain places, and varying very little in
appearance. The table was long, and the dinner was long; and Little
Dorrit, overshadowed by a large pair of black whiskers and a large white
cravat, lost sight of her father altogether, until a servant put a scrap
of paper in her hand, with a whispered request from Mrs Merdle that she
would read it directly. Mrs Merdle had written on it in pencil, ‘Pray
come and speak to Mr Dorrit, I doubt if he is well.’
She was hurrying to him, unobserved, when he got up out of his chair,
and leaning over the table called to her, supposing her to be still in
her place:
‘Amy, Amy, my child!’
The action was so unusual, to say nothing of his strange eager
appearance and strange eager voice, that it instantaneously caused a
profound silence.
‘Amy, my dear,’ he repeated. ‘Will you go and see if Bob is on the
lock?’
She was at his side, and touching him, but he still perversely supposed
her to be in her seat, and called out, still leaning over the table,
‘Amy, Amy. I don’t feel quite myself. Ha. I don’t know what’s the matter
with me. I particularly wish to see Bob. Ha. Of all the turnkeys, he’s
as much my friend as yours. See if Bob is in the lodge, and beg him to
come to me.’
All the guests were now in consternation, and everybody rose.
‘Dear father, I am not there; I am here, by you.’
‘Oh! You are here, Amy! Good. Hum. Good. Ha. Call Bob. If he has been
relieved, and is not on the lock, tell Mrs Bangham to go and fetch him.’
She was gently trying to get him away; but he resisted, and would not
go.
‘I tell you, child,’ he said petulantly, ‘I can’t be got up the narrow
stairs without Bob. Ha. Send for Bob. Hum. Send for Bob--best of all the
turnkeys--send for Bob!’
He looked confusedly about him, and, becoming conscious of the number of
faces by which he was surrounded, addressed them:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, the duty--ha--devolves upon me of--hum--welcoming
you to the Marshalsea! Welcome to the Marshalsea! The space
is--ha--limited--limited--the parade might be wider; but you will
find it apparently grow larger after a time--a time, ladies and
gentlemen--and the air is, all things considered, very good. It blows
over the--ha--Surrey hills. Blows over the Surrey hills. This is the
Snuggery. Hum. Supported by a small subscription of the--ha--Collegiate
body. In return for which--hot water--general kitchen--and little
domestic advantages. Those who are habituated to the--ha--Marshalsea,
are pleased to call me its father. I am accustomed to be complimented by
strangers as the--ha--Father of the Marshalsea. Certainly, if years of
residence may establish a claim to so--ha--honourable a title, I may
accept the--hum--conferred distinction. My child, ladies and gentlemen.
My daughter. Born here!’
She was not ashamed of it, or ashamed of him. She was pale and
frightened; but she had no other care than to soothe him and get him
away, for his own dear sake. She was between him and the wondering
faces, turned round upon his breast with her own face raised to his. He
held her clasped in his left arm, and between whiles her low voice was
heard tenderly imploring him to go away with her.
‘Born here,’ he repeated, shedding tears. ‘Bred here. Ladies and
gentlemen, my daughter. Child of an unfortunate father, but--ha--always
a gentleman. Poor, no doubt, but--hum--proud. Always proud. It
has become a--hum--not infrequent custom for my--ha--personal
admirers--personal admirers solely--to be pleased to express
their desire to acknowledge my semi-official position here,
by offering--ha--little tributes, which usually take the form
of--ha--voluntary recognitions of my humble endeavours to--hum--to
uphold a Tone here--a Tone--I beg it to be understood that I do not
consider myself compromised. Ha. Not compromised. Ha. Not a beggar. No;
I repudiate the title! At the same time far be it from me to--hum--to
put upon the fine feelings by which my partial friends are actuated,
the slight of scrupling to admit that those offerings are--hum--highly
acceptable. On the contrary, they are most acceptable. In my child’s
name, if not in my own, I make the admission in the fullest manner, at
the same time reserving--ha--shall I say my personal dignity? Ladies and
gentlemen, God bless you all!’
By this time, the exceeding mortification undergone by the Bosom had
occasioned the withdrawal of the greater part of the company into other
rooms. The few who had lingered thus long followed the rest, and Little
Dorrit and her father were left to the servants and themselves. Dearest
and most precious to her, he would come with her now, would he not? He
replied to her fervid entreaties, that he would never be able to get up
the narrow stairs without Bob; where was Bob, would nobody fetch Bob?
Under pretence of looking for Bob, she got him out against the stream of
gay company now pouring in for the evening assembly, and got him into a
coach that had just set down its load, and got him home.
The broad stairs of his Roman palace were contracted in his failing
sight to the narrow stairs of his London prison; and he would suffer no
one but her to touch him, his brother excepted. They got him up to his
room without help, and laid him down on his bed. And from that hour his
poor maimed spirit, only remembering the place where it had broken its
wings, cancelled the dream through which it had since groped, and knew
of nothing beyond the Marshalsea. When he heard footsteps in the street,
he took them for the old weary tread in the yards. When the hour came
for locking up, he supposed all strangers to be excluded for the night.
When the time for opening came again, he was so anxious to see Bob, that
they were fain to patch up a narrative how that Bob--many a year dead
then, gentle turnkey--had taken cold, but hoped to be out to-morrow, or
the next day, or the next at furthest.
He fell away into a weakness so extreme that he could not raise his
hand. But he still protected his brother according to his long usage;
and would say with some complacency, fifty times a day, when he saw him
standing by his bed, ‘My good Frederick, sit down. You are very feeble
indeed.’
They tried him with Mrs General, but he had not the faintest knowledge
of her. Some injurious suspicion lodged itself in his brain, that she
wanted to supplant Mrs Bangham, and that she was given to drinking. He
charged her with it in no measured terms; and was so urgent with his
daughter to go round to the Marshal and entreat him to turn her out,
that she was never reproduced after the first failure.
Saving that he once asked ‘if Tip had gone outside?’ the remembrance of
his two children not present seemed to have departed from him. But the
child who had done so much for him and had been so poorly repaid, was
never out of his mind. Not that he spared her, or was fearful of her
being spent by watching and fatigue; he was not more troubled on that
score than he had usually been. No; he loved her in his old way. They
were in the jail again, and she tended him, and he had constant need of
her, and could not turn without her; and he even told her, sometimes,
that he was content to have undergone a great deal for her sake. As to
her, she bent over his bed with her quiet face against his, and would
have laid down her own life to restore him.
When he had been sinking in this painless way for two or three days, she
observed him to be troubled by the ticking of his watch--a pompous gold
watch that made as great a to-do about its going as if nothing else
went but itself and Time. She suffered it to run down; but he was still
uneasy, and showed that was not what he wanted. At length he roused
himself to explain that he wanted money to be raised on this watch. He
was quite pleased when she pretended to take it away for the purpose,
and afterwards had a relish for his little tastes of wine and jelly,
that he had not had before.
He soon made it plain that this was so; for, in another day or two
he sent off his sleeve-buttons and finger-rings. He had an amazing
satisfaction in entrusting her with these errands, and appeared to
consider it equivalent to making the most methodical and provident
arrangements. After his trinkets, or such of them as he had been able to
see about him, were gone, his clothes engaged his attention; and it
is as likely as not that he was kept alive for some days by the
satisfaction of sending them, piece by piece, to an imaginary
pawnbroker’s.
Thus for ten days Little Dorrit bent over his pillow, laying her cheek
against his. Sometimes she was so worn out that for a few minutes
they would slumber together. Then she would awake; to recollect with
fast-flowing silent tears what it was that touched her face, and to see,
stealing over the cherished face upon the pillow, a deeper shadow than
the shadow of the Marshalsea Wall.
Quietly, quietly, all the lines of the plan of the great Castle
melted one after another. Quietly, quietly, the ruled and cross-ruled
countenance on which they were traced, became fair and blank.
Quietly, quietly, the reflected marks of the prison bars and of the
zig-zag iron on the wall-top, faded away. Quietly, quietly, the face
subsided into a far younger likeness of her own than she had ever seen
under the grey hair, and sank to rest.
At first her uncle was stark distracted. ‘O my brother! O William,
William! You to go before me; you to go alone; you to go, and I to
remain! You, so far superior, so distinguished, so noble; I, a poor
useless creature fit for nothing, and whom no one would have missed!’
It did her, for the time, the good of having him to think of and to
succour.
‘Uncle, dear uncle, spare yourself, spare me!’
The old man was not deaf to the last words. When he did begin to
restrain himself, it was that he might spare her. He had no care for
himself; but, with all the remaining power of the honest heart, stunned
so long and now awaking to be broken, he honoured and blessed her.
‘O God,’ he cried, before they left the room, with his wrinkled hands
clasped over her. ‘Thou seest this daughter of my dear dead brother! All
that I have looked upon, with my half-blind and sinful eyes, Thou hast
discerned clearly, brightly. Not a hair of her head shall be harmed
before Thee. Thou wilt uphold her here to her last hour. And I know Thou
wilt reward her hereafter!’
They remained in a dim room near, until it was almost midnight, quiet
and sad together. At times his grief would seek relief in a burst like
that in which it had found its earliest expression; but, besides that
his little strength would soon have been unequal to such strains, he
never failed to recall her words, and to reproach himself and calm
himself. The only utterance with which he indulged his sorrow, was the
frequent exclamation that his brother was gone, alone; that they had
been together in the outset of their lives, that they had fallen into
misfortune together, that they had kept together through their many
years of poverty, that they had remained together to that day; and that
his brother was gone alone, alone!
They parted, heavy and sorrowful. She would not consent to leave him
anywhere but in his own room, and she saw him lie down in his clothes
upon his bed, and covered him with her own hands. Then she sank upon her
own bed, and fell into a deep sleep: the sleep of exhaustion and
rest, though not of complete release from a pervading consciousness of
affliction. Sleep, good Little Dorrit. Sleep through the night!
It was a moonlight night; but the moon rose late, being long past the
full. When it was high in the peaceful firmament, it shone through
half-closed lattice blinds into the solemn room where the stumblings and
wanderings of a life had so lately ended. Two quiet figures were within
the room; two figures, equally still and impassive, equally removed
by an untraversable distance from the teeming earth and all that it
contains, though soon to lie in it.
One figure reposed upon the bed. The other, kneeling on the floor,
drooped over it; the arms easily and peacefully resting on the coverlet;
the face bowed down, so that the lips touched the hand over which with
its last breath it had bent. The two brothers were before their Father;
far beyond the twilight judgment of this world; high above its mists and
obscurities.
CHAPTER 20. Introduces the next
The passengers were landing from the packet on the pier at Calais.
A low-lying place and a low-spirited place Calais was, with the tide
ebbing out towards low water-mark. There had been no more water on the
bar than had sufficed to float the packet in; and now the bar itself,
with a shallow break of sea over it, looked like a lazy marine monster
just risen to the surface, whose form was indistinctly shown as it lay
asleep. The meagre lighthouse all in white, haunting the seaboard as if
it were the ghost of an edifice that had once had colour and rotundity,
dropped melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves. The long
rows of gaunt black piles, slimy and wet and weather-worn, with funeral
garlands of seaweed twisted about them by the late tide, might
have represented an unsightly marine cemetery. Every wave-dashed,
storm-beaten object, was so low and so little, under the broad grey sky,
in the noise of the wind and sea, and before the curling lines of surf,
making at it ferociously, that the wonder was there was any Calais left,
and that its low gates and low wall and low roofs and low ditches and
low sand-hills and low ramparts and flat streets, had not yielded
long ago to the undermining and besieging sea, like the fortifications
children make on the sea-shore.
After slipping among oozy piles and planks, stumbling up wet steps and
encountering many salt difficulties, the passengers entered on their
comfortless peregrination along the pier; where all the French vagabonds
and English outlaws in the town (half the population) attended to
prevent their recovery from bewilderment. After being minutely inspected
by all the English, and claimed and reclaimed and counter-claimed as
prizes by all the French in a hand-to-hand scuffle three quarters of a
mile long, they were at last free to enter the streets, and to make off
in their various directions, hotly pursued.
Clennam, harassed by more anxieties than one, was among this devoted
band. Having rescued the most defenceless of his compatriots from
situations of great extremity, he now went his way alone, or as nearly
alone as he could be, with a native gentleman in a suit of grease and
a cap of the same material, giving chase at a distance of some fifty
yards, and continually calling after him, ‘Hi! Ice-say! You! Seer!
Ice-say! Nice Oatel!’
Even this hospitable person, however, was left behind at last, and
Clennam pursued his way, unmolested. There was a tranquil air in the
town after the turbulence of the Channel and the beach, and its dulness
in that comparison was agreeable. He met new groups of his countrymen,
who had all a straggling air of having at one time overblown themselves,
like certain uncomfortable kinds of flowers, and of being now mere
weeds. They had all an air, too, of lounging out a limited round, day
after day, which strongly reminded him of the Marshalsea. But, taking
no further note of them than was sufficient to give birth to the
reflection, he sought out a certain street and number which he kept in
his mind.
‘So Pancks said,’ he murmured to himself, as he stopped before a dull
house answering to the address. ‘I suppose his information to be correct
and his discovery, among Mr Casby’s loose papers, indisputable; but,
without it, I should hardly have supposed this to be a likely place.’
A dead sort of house, with a dead wall over the way and a dead gateway
at the side, where a pendant bell-handle produced two dead tinkles, and
a knocker produced a dead, flat, surface-tapping, that seemed not to
have depth enough in it to penetrate even the cracked door. However, the
door jarred open on a dead sort of spring; and he closed it behind him
as he entered a dull yard, soon brought to a close by another dead wall,
where an attempt had been made to train some creeping shrubs, which were
dead; and to make a little fountain in a grotto, which was dry; and to
decorate that with a little statue, which was gone.
The entry to the house was on the left, and it was garnished as the
outer gateway was, with two printed bills in French and English,
announcing Furnished Apartments to let, with immediate possession. A
strong cheerful peasant woman, all stocking, petticoat, white cap, and
ear-ring, stood here in a dark doorway, and said with a pleasant show of
teeth, ‘Ice-say! Seer! Who?’
Clennam, replying in French, said the English lady; he wished to see
the English lady. ‘Enter then and ascend, if you please,’ returned the
peasant woman, in French likewise. He did both, and followed her up a
dark bare staircase to a back room on the first-floor. Hence, there was
a gloomy view of the yard that was dull, and of the shrubs that were
dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the pedestal of the
statue that was gone.
‘Monsieur Blandois,’ said Clennam.
‘With pleasure, Monsieur.’
Thereupon the woman withdrew and left him to look at the room. It was
the pattern of room always to be found in such a house. Cool, dull, and
dark. Waxed floor very slippery. A room not large enough to skate in;
nor adapted to the easy pursuit of any other occupation. Red and
white curtained windows, little straw mat, little round table with a
tumultuous assemblage of legs underneath, clumsy rush-bottomed chairs,
two great red velvet arm-chairs affording plenty of space to be
uncomfortable in, bureau, chimney-glass in several pieces pretending to
be in one piece, pair of gaudy vases of very artificial flowers; between
them a Greek warrior with his helmet off, sacrificing a clock to the
Genius of France.
After some pause, a door of communication with another room was opened,
and a lady entered. She manifested great surprise on seeing Clennam, and
her glance went round the room in search of some one else.
‘Pardon me, Miss Wade. I am alone.’
‘It was not your name that was brought to me.’
‘No; I know that. Excuse me. I have already had experience that my name
does not predispose you to an interview; and I ventured to mention the
name of one I am in search of.’
‘Pray,’ she returned, motioning him to a chair so coldly that he
remained standing, ‘what name was it that you gave?’
‘I mentioned the name of Blandois.’
‘Blandois?’
‘A name you are acquainted with.’
‘It is strange,’ she said, frowning, ‘that you should still press an
undesired interest in me and my acquaintances, in me and my affairs, Mr
Clennam. I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Pardon me. You know the name?’
‘What can you have to do with the name? What can I have to do with the
name? What can you have to do with my knowing or not knowing any name?
I know many names and I have forgotten many more. This may be in the
one class, or it may be in the other, or I may never have heard it. I am
acquainted with no reason for examining myself, or for being examined,
about it.’
‘If you will allow me,’ said Clennam, ‘I will tell you my reason for
pressing the subject. I admit that I do press it, and I must beg you to
forgive me if I do so, very earnestly. The reason is all mine, I do not
insinuate that it is in any way yours.’
‘Well, sir,’ she returned, repeating a little less haughtily than before
her former invitation to him to be seated: to which he now deferred, as
she seated herself. ‘I am at least glad to know that this is not another
bondswoman of some friend of yours, who is bereft of free choice, and
whom I have spirited away. I will hear your reason, if you please.’
‘First, to identify the person of whom we speak,’ said Clennam, ‘let me
observe that it is the person you met in London some time back. You will
remember meeting him near the river--in the Adelphi!’
‘You mix yourself most unaccountably with my business,’ she replied,
looking full at him with stern displeasure. ‘How do you know that?’
‘I entreat you not to take it ill. By mere accident.’
‘What accident?’
‘Solely the accident of coming upon you in the street and seeing the
meeting.’
‘Do you speak of yourself, or of some one else?’
‘Of myself. I saw it.’
‘To be sure it was in the open street,’ she observed, after a few
moments of less and less angry reflection. ‘Fifty people might have seen
it. It would have signified nothing if they had.’
‘Nor do I make my having seen it of any moment, nor (otherwise than as
an explanation of my coming here) do I connect my visit with it or the
favour that I have to ask.’
‘Oh! You have to ask a favour! It occurred to me,’ and the handsome face
looked bitterly at him, ‘that your manner was softened, Mr Clennam.’
He was content to protest against this by a slight action without
contesting it in words. He then referred to Blandois’ disappearance, of
which it was probable she had heard? However probable it was to him, she
had heard of no such thing. Let him look round him (she said) and judge
for himself what general intelligence was likely to reach the ears of
a woman who had been shut up there while it was rife, devouring her own
heart. When she had uttered this denial, which he believed to be true,
she asked him what he meant by disappearance? That led to his narrating
the circumstances in detail, and expressing something of his anxiety
to discover what had really become of the man, and to repel the dark
suspicions that clouded about his mother’s house. She heard him with
evident surprise, and with more marks of suppressed interest than he
had seen in her; still they did not overcome her distant, proud, and
self-secluded manner. When he had finished, she said nothing but these
words:
‘You have not yet told me, sir, what I have to do with it, or what the
favour is? Will you be so good as come to that?’
‘I assume,’ said Arthur, persevering, in his endeavour to soften
her scornful demeanour, ‘that being in communication--may I say,
confidential communication?--with this person--’
‘You may say, of course, whatever you like,’ she remarked; ‘but I do not
subscribe to your assumptions, Mr Clennam, or to any one’s.’
‘--that being, at least in personal communication with him,’ said
Clennam, changing the form of his position in the hope of making
it unobjectionable, ‘you can tell me something of his antecedents,
pursuits, habits, usual place of residence. Can give me some little clue
by which to seek him out in the likeliest manner, and either produce
him, or establish what has become of him. This is the favour I ask,
and I ask it in a distress of mind for which I hope you will feel some
consideration. If you should have any reason for imposing conditions
upon me, I will respect it without asking what it is.’
‘You chanced to see me in the street with the man,’ she observed,
after being, to his mortification, evidently more occupied with her own
reflections on the matter than with his appeal. ‘Then you knew the man
before?’
‘Not before; afterwards. I never saw him before, but I saw him again on
this very night of his disappearance. In my mother’s room, in fact. I
left him there. You will read in this paper all that is known of him.’
He handed her one of the printed bills, which she read with a steady and
attentive face.
‘This is more than _I_ knew of him,’ she said, giving it back.
Clennam’s looks expressed his heavy disappointment, perhaps his
incredulity; for she added in the same unsympathetic tone: ‘You don’t
believe it. Still, it is so. As to personal communication: it seems that
there was personal communication between him and your mother. And yet
you say you believe _her_ declaration that she knows no more of him!’
A sufficiently expressive hint of suspicion was conveyed in these words,
and in the smile by which they were accompanied, to bring the blood into
Clennam’s cheeks.
‘Come, sir,’ she said, with a cruel pleasure in repeating the stab, ‘I
will be as open with you as you can desire. I will confess that if I
cared for my credit (which I do not), or had a good name to preserve
(which I have not, for I am utterly indifferent to its being considered
good or bad), I should regard myself as heavily compromised by having
had anything to do with this fellow. Yet he never passed in at _my_
door--never sat in colloquy with _me_ until midnight.’
She took her revenge for her old grudge in thus turning his subject
against him. Hers was not the nature to spare him, and she had no
compunction.
‘That he is a low, mercenary wretch; that I first saw him prowling about
Italy (where I was, not long ago), and that I hired him there, as the
suitable instrument of a purpose I happened to have; I have no objection
to tell you. In short, it was worth my while, for my own pleasure--the
gratification of a strong feeling--to pay a spy who would fetch and
carry for money. I paid this creature. And I dare say that if I had
wanted to make such a bargain, and if I could have paid him enough, and
if he could have done it in the dark, free from all risk, he would have
taken any life with as little scruple as he took my money. That, at
least, is my opinion of him; and I see it is not very far removed from
yours. Your mother’s opinion of him, I am to assume (following your
example of assuming this and that), was vastly different.’
‘My mother, let me remind you,’ said Clennam, ‘was first brought into
communication with him in the unlucky course of business.’
‘It appears to have been an unlucky course of business that last brought
her into communication with him,’ returned Miss Wade; ‘and business
hours on that occasion were late.’
‘You imply,’ said Arthur, smarting under these cool-handed thrusts, of
which he had deeply felt the force already, ‘that there was something--’
‘Mr Clennam,’ she composedly interrupted, ‘recollect that I do not speak
by implication about the man. He is, I say again without disguise, a low
mercenary wretch. I suppose such a creature goes where there is occasion
for him. If I had not had occasion for him, you would not have seen him
and me together.’
Wrung by her persistence in keeping that dark side of the case before
him, of which there was a half-hidden shadow in his own breast, Clennam
was silent.
‘I have spoken of him as still living,’ she added, ‘but he may have been
put out of the way for anything I know. For anything I care, also. I
have no further occasion for him.’
With a heavy sigh and a despondent air, Arthur Clennam slowly rose.
She did not rise also, but said, having looked at him in the meanwhile
with a fixed look of suspicion, and lips angrily compressed:
‘He was the chosen associate of your dear friend, Mr Gowan, was he not?
Why don’t you ask your dear friend to help you?’
The denial that he was a dear friend rose to Arthur’s lips; but he
repressed it, remembering his old struggles and resolutions, and said:
‘Further than that he has never seen Blandois since Blandois set out for
England, Mr Gowan knows nothing additional about him. He was a chance
acquaintance, made abroad.’
‘A chance acquaintance made abroad!’ she repeated. ‘Yes. Your dear
friend has need to divert himself with all the acquaintances he can
make, seeing what a wife he has. I hate his wife, sir.’
The anger with which she said it, the more remarkable for being so much
under her restraint, fixed Clennam’s attention, and kept him on the
spot. It flashed out of her dark eyes as they regarded him, quivered in
her nostrils, and fired the very breath she exhaled; but her face was
otherwise composed into a disdainful serenity; and her attitude was as
calmly and haughtily graceful as if she had been in a mood of complete
indifference.
‘All I will say is, Miss Wade,’ he remarked, ‘that you can have received
no provocation to a feeling in which I believe you have no sharer.’
‘You may ask your dear friend, if you choose,’ she returned, ‘for his
opinion upon that subject.’
‘I am scarcely on those intimate terms with my dear friend,’ said
Arthur, in spite of his resolutions, ‘that would render my approaching
the subject very probable, Miss Wade.’
‘I hate him,’ she returned. ‘Worse than his wife, because I was once
dupe enough, and false enough to myself, almost to love him. You have
seen me, sir, only on common-place occasions, when I dare say you have
thought me a common-place woman, a little more self-willed than the
generality. You don’t know what I mean by hating, if you know me no
better than that; you can’t know, without knowing with what care I have
studied myself and people about me. For this reason I have for some
time inclined to tell you what my life has been--not to propitiate your
opinion, for I set no value on it; but that you may comprehend, when
you think of your dear friend and his dear wife, what I mean by hating.
Shall I give you something I have written and put by for your perusal,
or shall I hold my hand?’
Arthur begged her to give it to him. She went to the bureau, unlocked
it, and took from an inner drawer a few folded sheets of paper. Without
any conciliation of him, scarcely addressing him, rather speaking as if
she were speaking to her own looking-glass for the justification of her
own stubbornness, she said, as she gave them to him:
‘Now you may know what I mean by hating! No more of that. Sir, whether
you find me temporarily and cheaply lodging in an empty London house, or
in a Calais apartment, you find Harriet with me. You may like to see
her before you leave. Harriet, come in!’ She called Harriet again. The
second call produced Harriet, once Tattycoram.
‘Here is Mr Clennam,’ said Miss Wade; ‘not come for you; he has given
you up,--I suppose you have, by this time?’
‘Having no authority, or influence--yes,’ assented Clennam.
‘Not come in search of you, you see; but still seeking some one. He
wants that Blandois man.’
‘With whom I saw you in the Strand in London,’ hinted Arthur.
‘If you know anything of him, Harriet, except that he came from
Venice--which we all know--tell it to Mr Clennam freely.’
‘I know nothing more about him,’ said the girl.
‘Are you satisfied?’ Miss Wade inquired of Arthur.
He had no reason to disbelieve them; the girl’s manner being so natural
as to be almost convincing, if he had had any previous doubts. He
replied, ‘I must seek for intelligence elsewhere.’
He was not going in the same breath; but he had risen before the girl
entered, and she evidently thought he was. She looked quickly at him,
and said:
‘Are they well, sir?’
‘Who?’
She stopped herself in saying what would have been ‘all of them;’
glanced at Miss Wade; and said ‘Mr and Mrs Meagles.’
‘They were, when I last heard of them. They are not at home. By the way,
let me ask you. Is it true that you were seen there?’
‘Where? Where does any one say I was seen?’ returned the girl, sullenly
casting down her eyes.
‘Looking in at the garden gate of the cottage.’
‘No,’ said Miss Wade. ‘She has never been near it.’
‘You are wrong, then,’ said the girl. ‘I went down there the last time
we were in London. I went one afternoon when you left me alone. And I
did look in.’
‘You poor-spirited girl,’ returned Miss Wade with infinite contempt;
‘does all our companionship, do all our conversations, do all your old
complainings, tell for so little as that?’
‘There was no harm in looking in at the gate for an instant,’ said the
girl. ‘I saw by the windows that the family were not there.’
‘Why should you go near the place?’
‘Because I wanted to see it. Because I felt that I should like to look
at it again.’
As each of the two handsome faces looked at the other, Clennam felt how
each of the two natures must be constantly tearing the other to pieces.
‘Oh!’ said Miss Wade, coldly subduing and removing her glance; ‘if you
had any desire to see the place where you led the life from which I
rescued you because you had found out what it was, that is another
thing. But is that your truth to me? Is that your fidelity to me? Is
that the common cause I make with you? You are not worth the confidence
I have placed in you. You are not worth the favour I have shown you. You
are no higher than a spaniel, and had better go back to the people who
did worse than whip you.’
‘If you speak so of them with any one else by to hear, you’ll provoke me
to take their part,’ said the girl.
‘Go back to them,’ Miss Wade retorted. ‘Go back to them.’
‘You know very well,’ retorted Harriet in her turn, ‘that I won’t go
back to them. You know very well that I have thrown them off, and never
can, never shall, never will, go back to them. Let them alone, then,
Miss Wade.’
‘You prefer their plenty to your less fat living here,’ she rejoined.
‘You exalt them, and slight me. What else should I have expected? I
ought to have known it.’
‘It’s not so,’ said the girl, flushing high, ‘and you don’t say what you
mean. I know what you mean. You are reproaching me, underhanded, with
having nobody but you to look to. And because I have nobody but you
to look to, you think you are to make me do, or not do, everything you
please, and are to put any affront upon me. You are as bad as they were,
every bit. But I will not be quite tamed, and made submissive. I will
say again that I went to look at the house, because I had often thought
that I should like to see it once more. I will ask again how they are,
because I once liked them and at times thought they were kind to me.’
Hereupon Clennam said that he was sure they would still receive her
kindly, if she should ever desire to return.
‘Never!’ said the girl passionately. ‘I shall never do that. Nobody
knows that better than Miss Wade, though she taunts me because she has
made me her dependent. And I know I am so; and I know she is overjoyed
when she can bring it to my mind.’
‘A good pretence!’ said Miss Wade, with no less anger, haughtiness, and
bitterness; ‘but too threadbare to cover what I plainly see in this. My
poverty will not bear competition with their money. Better go back at
once, better go back at once, and have done with it!’
Arthur Clennam looked at them, standing a little distance asunder in the
dull confined room, each proudly cherishing her own anger; each, with
a fixed determination, torturing her own breast, and torturing the
other’s. He said a word or two of leave-taking; but Miss Wade barely
inclined her head, and Harriet, with the assumed humiliation of an
abject dependent and serf (but not without defiance for all that), made
as if she were too low to notice or to be noticed.
He came down the dark winding stairs into the yard with an increased
sense upon him of the gloom of the wall that was dead, and of the shrubs
that were dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the statue that
was gone. Pondering much on what he had seen and heard in that house,
as well as on the failure of all his efforts to trace the suspicious
character who was lost, he returned to London and to England by the
packet that had taken him over. On the way he unfolded the sheets of
paper, and read in them what is reproduced in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 21. The History of a Self-Tormentor
I have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age I have
detected what those about me thought they hid from me. If I could have
been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually discerning the
truth, I might have lived as smoothly as most fools do.
My childhood was passed with a grandmother; that is to say, with a lady
who represented that relative to me, and who took that title on herself.
She had no claim to it, but I--being to that extent a little fool--had
no suspicion of her. She had some children of her own family in her
house, and some children of other people. All girls; ten in number,
including me. We all lived together and were educated together.
I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see how
determinedly those girls patronised me. I was told I was an orphan.
There was no other orphan among us; and I perceived (here was the
first disadvantage of not being a fool) that they conciliated me in an
insolent pity, and in a sense of superiority. I did not set this down
as a discovery, rashly. I tried them often. I could hardly make them
quarrel with me. When I succeeded with any of them, they were sure to
come after an hour or two, and begin a reconciliation. I tried them over
and over again, and I never knew them wait for me to begin. They were
always forgiving me, in their vanity and condescension. Little images of
grown people!
One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a
passionate way that she could no more deserve than I can remember
without feeling ashamed of, though I was but a child. She had what they
called an amiable temper, an affectionate temper. She could distribute,
and did distribute pretty looks and smiles to every one among them. I
believe there was not a soul in the place, except myself, who knew that
she did it purposely to wound and gall me!
Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was made stormy
by my fondness for her. I was constantly lectured and disgraced for what
was called ‘trying her;’ in other words charging her with her little
perfidy and throwing her into tears by showing her that I read her
heart. However, I loved her faithfully; and one time I went home with
her for the holidays.
She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a crowd of
cousins and acquaintances, and we had dances at her house, and went out
to dances at other houses, and, both at home and out, she tormented my
love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to make them all fond of her--and
so drive me wild with jealousy. To be familiar and endearing with them
all--and so make me mad with envying them. When we were left alone in
our bedroom at night, I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of
her baseness; and then she would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and
then I would hold her in my arms till morning: loving her as much as
ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold
her in my arms and plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still
hold her after we were both dead.
It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an aunt
who was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked me much; but
I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up in the one
girl. The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious way with her
eyes of watching me. She was an audacious woman, and openly looked
compassionately at me. After one of the nights that I have spoken of, I
came down into a greenhouse before breakfast. Charlotte (the name of
my false young friend) had gone down before me, and I heard this aunt
speaking to her about me as I entered. I stopped where I was, among the
leaves, and listened.
The aunt said, ‘Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and this
must not continue.’ I repeat the very words I heard.
Now, what did she answer? Did she say, ‘It is I who am wearing her to
death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner, yet she
tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what
I make her undergo?’ No; my first memorable experience was true to
what I knew her to be, and to all my experience. She began sobbing and
weeping (to secure the aunt’s sympathy to herself), and said, ‘Dear
aunt, she has an unhappy temper; other girls at school, besides I, try
hard to make it better; we all try hard.’
Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something noble
instead of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous pretence by
replying, ‘But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to everything,
and I see that this poor miserable girl causes you more constant and
useless distress than even so good an effort justifies.’
The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may be
prepared to hear, and said, ‘Send me home.’ I never said another word
to either of them, or to any of them, but ‘Send me home, or I will
walk home alone, night and day!’ When I got home, I told my supposed
grandmother that, unless I was sent away to finish my education
somewhere else before that girl came back, or before any one of them
came back, I would burn my sight away by throwing myself into the fire,
rather than I would endure to look at their plotting faces.
I went among young women next, and I found them no better. Fair
words and fair pretences; but I penetrated below those assertions of
themselves and depreciations of me, and they were no better. Before
I left them, I learned that I had no grandmother and no recognised
relation. I carried the light of that information both into my past
and into my future. It showed me many new occasions on which people
triumphed over me, when they made a pretence of treating me with
consideration, or doing me a service.
A man of business had a small property in trust for me. I was to be
a governess; I became a governess; and went into the family of a poor
nobleman, where there were two daughters--little children, but the
parents wished them to grow up, if possible, under one instructress. The
mother was young and pretty. From the first, she made a show of behaving
to me with great delicacy. I kept my resentment to myself; but I knew
very well that it was her way of petting the knowledge that she was my
Mistress, and might have behaved differently to her servant if it had
been her fancy.
I say I did not resent it, nor did I; but I showed her, by not
gratifying her, that I understood her. When she pressed me to take wine,
I took water. If there happened to be anything choice at table, she
always sent it to me: but I always declined it, and ate of the rejected
dishes. These disappointments of her patronage were a sharp retort, and
made me feel independent.
I liked the children. They were timid, but on the whole disposed to
attach themselves to me. There was a nurse, however, in the house, a
rosy-faced woman always making an obtrusive pretence of being gay and
good-humoured, who had nursed them both, and who had secured their
affections before I saw them. I could almost have settled down to my
fate but for this woman. Her artful devices for keeping herself before
the children in constant competition with me, might have blinded many
in my place; but I saw through them from the first. On the pretext of
arranging my rooms and waiting on me and taking care of my wardrobe (all
of which she did busily), she was never absent. The most crafty of her
many subtleties was her feint of seeking to make the children fonder of
me. She would lead them to me and coax them to me. ‘Come to good Miss
Wade, come to dear Miss Wade, come to pretty Miss Wade. She loves you
very much. Miss Wade is a clever lady, who has read heaps of books, and
can tell you far better and more interesting stories than I know. Come
and hear Miss Wade!’ How could I engage their attentions, when my heart
was burning against these ignorant designs? How could I wonder, when I
saw their innocent faces shrinking away, and their arms twining round
her neck, instead of mine? Then she would look up at me, shaking their
curls from her face, and say, ‘They’ll come round soon, Miss Wade;
they’re very simple and loving, ma’am; don’t be at all cast down about
it, ma’am’--exulting over me!
There was another thing the woman did. At times, when she saw that she
had safely plunged me into a black despondent brooding by these means,
she would call the attention of the children to it, and would show them
the difference between herself and me. ‘Hush! Poor Miss Wade is not
well. Don’t make a noise, my dears, her head aches. Come and comfort
her. Come and ask her if she is better; come and ask her to lie down. I
hope you have nothing on your mind, ma’am. Don’t take on, ma’am, and be
sorry!’
It became intolerable. Her ladyship, my Mistress, coming in one day when
I was alone, and at the height of feeling that I could support it no
longer, I told her I must go. I could not bear the presence of that
woman Dawes.
‘Miss Wade! Poor Dawes is devoted to you; would do anything for you!’
I knew beforehand she would say so; I was quite prepared for it; I only
answered, it was not for me to contradict my Mistress; I must go.
‘I hope, Miss Wade,’ she returned, instantly assuming the tone of
superiority she had always so thinly concealed, ‘that nothing I have
ever said or done since we have been together, has justified your use of
that disagreeable word, “Mistress.” It must have been wholly inadvertent
on my part. Pray tell me what it is.’
I replied that I had no complaint to make, either of my Mistress or to
my Mistress; but I must go.
She hesitated a moment, and then sat down beside me, and laid her hand
on mine. As if that honour would obliterate any remembrance!
‘Miss Wade, I fear you are unhappy, through causes over which I have no
influence.’
I smiled, thinking of the experience the word awakened, and said, ‘I
have an unhappy temper, I suppose.’
‘I did not say that.’
‘It is an easy way of accounting for anything,’ said I.
‘It may be; but I did not say so. What I wish to approach is something
very different. My husband and I have exchanged some remarks upon the
subject, when we have observed with pain that you have not been easy
with us.’
‘Easy? Oh! You are such great people, my lady,’ said I.
‘I am unfortunate in using a word which may convey a meaning--and
evidently does--quite opposite to my intention.’ (She had not expected
my reply, and it shamed her.) ‘I only mean, not happy with us. It is
a difficult topic to enter on; but, from one young woman to another,
perhaps--in short, we have been apprehensive that you may allow some
family circumstances of which no one can be more innocent than yourself,
to prey upon your spirits. If so, let us entreat you not to make them
a cause of grief. My husband himself, as is well known, formerly had a
very dear sister who was not in law his sister, but who was universally
beloved and respected--’
I saw directly that they had taken me in for the sake of the dead woman,
whoever she was, and to have that boast of me and advantage of me; I
saw, in the nurse’s knowledge of it, an encouragement to goad me as
she had done; and I saw, in the children’s shrinking away, a vague
impression, that I was not like other people. I left that house that
night.
After one or two short and very similar experiences, which are not to
the present purpose, I entered another family where I had but one pupil:
a girl of fifteen, who was the only daughter. The parents here were
elderly people: people of station, and rich. A nephew whom they had
brought up was a frequent visitor at the house, among many other
visitors; and he began to pay me attention. I was resolute in repulsing
him; for I had determined when I went there, that no one should pity me
or condescend to me. But he wrote me a letter. It led to our being
engaged to be married.
He was a year younger than I, and young-looking even when that allowance
was made. He was on absence from India, where he had a post that was
soon to grow into a very good one. In six months we were to be married,
and were to go to India. I was to stay in the house, and was to be
married from the house. Nobody objected to any part of the plan.
I cannot avoid saying he admired me; but, if I could, I would. Vanity
has nothing to do with the declaration, for his admiration worried me.
He took no pains to hide it; and caused me to feel among the rich people
as if he had bought me for my looks, and made a show of his purchase to
justify himself. They appraised me in their own minds, I saw, and were
curious to ascertain what my full value was. I resolved that they
should not know. I was immovable and silent before them; and would have
suffered any one of them to kill me sooner than I would have laid myself
out to bespeak their approval.
He told me I did not do myself justice. I told him I did, and it was
because I did and meant to do so to the last, that I would not stoop to
propitiate any of them. He was concerned and even shocked, when I added
that I wished he would not parade his attachment before them; but he
said he would sacrifice even the honest impulses of his affection to my
peace.
Under that pretence he began to retort upon me. By the hour together, he
would keep at a distance from me, talking to any one rather than to me.
I have sat alone and unnoticed, half an evening, while he conversed with
his young cousin, my pupil. I have seen all the while, in people’s eyes,
that they thought the two looked nearer on an equality than he and I.
I have sat, divining their thoughts, until I have felt that his young
appearance made me ridiculous, and have raged against myself for ever
loving him.
For I did love him once. Undeserving as he was, and little as he thought
of all these agonies that it cost me--agonies which should have made him
wholly and gratefully mine to his life’s end--I loved him. I bore with
his cousin’s praising him to my face, and with her pretending to think
that it pleased me, but full well knowing that it rankled in my breast;
for his sake. While I have sat in his presence recalling all my slights
and wrongs, and deliberating whether I should not fly from the house at
once and never see him again--I have loved him.
His aunt (my Mistress you will please to remember) deliberately,
wilfully, added to my trials and vexations. It was her delight to
expatiate on the style in which we were to live in India, and on the
establishment we should keep, and the company we should entertain when
he got his advancement. My pride rose against this barefaced way of
pointing out the contrast my married life was to present to my then
dependent and inferior position. I suppressed my indignation; but I
showed her that her intention was not lost upon me, and I repaid her
annoyance by affecting humility. What she described would surely be
a great deal too much honour for me, I would tell her. I was afraid
I might not be able to support so great a change. Think of a mere
governess, her daughter’s governess, coming to that high distinction! It
made her uneasy, and made them all uneasy, when I answered in this way.
They knew that I fully understood her.
It was at the time when my troubles were at their highest, and when
I was most incensed against my lover for his ingratitude in caring as
little as he did for the innumerable distresses and mortifications I
underwent on his account, that your dear friend, Mr Gowan, appeared
at the house. He had been intimate there for a long time, but had been
abroad. He understood the state of things at a glance, and he understood
me.
He was the first person I had ever seen in my life who had understood
me. He was not in the house three times before I knew that he
accompanied every movement of my mind. In his coldly easy way with all
of them, and with me, and with the whole subject, I saw it clearly.
In his light protestations of admiration of my future husband, in his
enthusiasm regarding our engagement and our prospects, in his hopeful
congratulations on our future wealth and his despondent references to
his own poverty--all equally hollow, and jesting, and full of mockery--I
saw it clearly. He made me feel more and more resentful, and more and
more contemptible, by always presenting to me everything that surrounded
me with some new hateful light upon it, while he pretended to exhibit
it in its best aspect for my admiration and his own. He was like the
dressed-up Death in the Dutch series; whatever figure he took upon his
arm, whether it was youth or age, beauty or ugliness, whether he danced
with it, sang with it, played with it, or prayed with it, he made it
ghastly.
You will understand, then, that when your dear friend complimented me,
he really condoled with me; that when he soothed me under my vexations,
he laid bare every smarting wound I had; that when he declared my
‘faithful swain’ to be ‘the most loving young fellow in the world, with
the tenderest heart that ever beat,’ he touched my old misgiving that
I was made ridiculous. These were not great services, you may say. They
were acceptable to me, because they echoed my own mind, and confirmed
my own knowledge. I soon began to like the society of your dear friend
better than any other.
When I perceived (which I did, almost as soon) that jealousy was growing
out of this, I liked this society still better. Had I not been subject
to jealousy, and were the endurances to be all mine? No. Let him know
what it was! I was delighted that he should know it; I was delighted
that he should feel keenly, and I hoped he did. More than that. He was
tame in comparison with Mr Gowan, who knew how to address me on equal
terms, and how to anatomise the wretched people around us.
This went on, until the aunt, my Mistress, took it upon herself to speak
to me. It was scarcely worth alluding to; she knew I meant nothing; but
she suggested from herself, knowing it was only necessary to suggest,
that it might be better if I were a little less companionable with Mr
Gowan.
I asked her how she could answer for what I meant? She could always
answer, she replied, for my meaning nothing wrong. I thanked her,
but said I would prefer to answer for myself and to myself. Her other
servants would probably be grateful for good characters, but I wanted
none.
Other conversation followed, and induced me to ask her how she knew that
it was only necessary for her to make a suggestion to me, to have it
obeyed? Did she presume on my birth, or on my hire? I was not bought,
body and soul. She seemed to think that her distinguished nephew had
gone into a slave-market and purchased a wife.
It would probably have come, sooner or later, to the end to which it did
come, but she brought it to its issue at once. She told me, with assumed
commiseration, that I had an unhappy temper. On this repetition of the
old wicked injury, I withheld no longer, but exposed to her all I had
known of her and seen in her, and all I had undergone within myself
since I had occupied the despicable position of being engaged to her
nephew. I told her that Mr Gowan was the only relief I had had in my
degradation; that I had borne it too long, and that I shook it off too
late; but that I would see none of them more. And I never did.
Your dear friend followed me to my retreat, and was very droll on the
severance of the connection; though he was sorry, too, for the excellent
people (in their way the best he had ever met), and deplored the
necessity of breaking mere house-flies on the wheel. He protested before
long, and far more truly than I then supposed, that he was not worth
acceptance by a woman of such endowments, and such power of character;
but--well, well--!
Your dear friend amused me and amused himself as long as it suited
his inclinations; and then reminded me that we were both people of the
world, that we both understood mankind, that we both knew there was no
such thing as romance, that we were both prepared for going different
ways to seek our fortunes like people of sense, and that we both foresaw
that whenever we encountered one another again we should meet as the
best friends on earth. So he said, and I did not contradict him.
It was not very long before I found that he was courting his present
wife, and that she had been taken away to be out of his reach. I hated
her then, quite as much as I hate her now; and naturally, therefore,
could desire nothing better than that she should marry him. But I was
restlessly curious to look at her--so curious that I felt it to be one
of the few sources of entertainment left to me. I travelled a little:
travelled until I found myself in her society, and in yours. Your dear
friend, I think, was not known to you then, and had not given you any of
those signal marks of his friendship which he has bestowed upon you.
In that company I found a girl, in various circumstances of whose
position there was a singular likeness to my own, and in whose character
I was interested and pleased to see much of the rising against swollen
patronage and selfishness, calling themselves kindness, protection,
benevolence, and other fine names, which I have described as inherent in
my nature. I often heard it said, too, that she had ‘an unhappy temper.’
Well understanding what was meant by the convenient phrase, and wanting
a companion with a knowledge of what I knew, I thought I would try to
release the girl from her bondage and sense of injustice. I have no
occasion to relate that I succeeded.
We have been together ever since, sharing my small means.
CHAPTER 22. Who passes by this Road so late?
Arthur Clennam had made his unavailing expedition to Calais in the midst
of a great pressure of business. A certain barbaric Power with valuable
possessions on the map of the world, had occasion for the services of
one or two engineers, quick in invention and determined in execution:
practical men, who could make the men and means their ingenuity
perceived to be wanted out of the best materials they could find
at hand; and who were as bold and fertile in the adaptation of such
materials to their purpose, as in the conception of their purpose
itself. This Power, being a barbaric one, had no idea of stowing away
a great national object in a Circumlocution Office, as strong wine is
hidden from the light in a cellar until its fire and youth are gone,
and the labourers who worked in the vineyard and pressed the grapes are
dust. With characteristic ignorance, it acted on the most decided and
energetic notions of How to do it; and never showed the least respect
for, or gave any quarter to, the great political science, How not to do
it. Indeed it had a barbarous way of striking the latter art and mystery
dead, in the person of any enlightened subject who practised it.
Accordingly, the men who were wanted were sought out and found; which
was in itself a most uncivilised and irregular way of proceeding. Being
found, they were treated with great confidence and honour (which again
showed dense political ignorance), and were invited to come at once and
do what they had to do. In short, they were regarded as men who meant to
do it, engaging with other men who meant it to be done.
Daniel Doyce was one of the chosen. There was no foreseeing at that time
whether he would be absent months or years. The preparations for his
departure, and the conscientious arrangement for him of all the details
and results of their joint business, had necessitated labour within a
short compass of time, which had occupied Clennam day and night. He
had slipped across the water in his first leisure, and had slipped as
quickly back again for his farewell interview with Doyce.
Him Arthur now showed, with pains and care, the state of their gains and
losses, responsibilities and prospects. Daniel went through it all
in his patient manner, and admired it all exceedingly. He audited the
accounts, as if they were a far more ingenious piece of mechanism than
he had ever constructed, and afterwards stood looking at them, weighing
his hat over his head by the brims, as if he were absorbed in the
contemplation of some wonderful engine.
‘It’s all beautiful, Clennam, in its regularity and order. Nothing can
be plainer. Nothing can be better.’
‘I am glad you approve, Doyce. Now, as to the management of your capital
while you are away, and as to the conversion of so much of it as the
business may need from time to time--’ His partner stopped him.
‘As to that, and as to everything else of that kind, all rests with you.
You will continue in all such matters to act for both of us, as you
have done hitherto, and to lighten my mind of a load it is much relieved
from.’
‘Though, as I often tell you,’ returned Clennam, ‘you unreasonably
depreciate your business qualities.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Doyce, smiling. ‘And perhaps not. Anyhow, I have a
calling that I have studied more than such matters, and that I am better
fitted for. I have perfect confidence in my partner, and I am satisfied
that he will do what is best. If I have a prejudice connected with money
and money figures,’ continued Doyce, laying that plastic workman’s thumb
of his on the lapel of his partner’s coat, ‘it is against speculating.
I don’t think I have any other. I dare say I entertain that prejudice,
only because I have never given my mind fully to the subject.’
‘But you shouldn’t call it a prejudice,’ said Clennam. ‘My dear Doyce,
it is the soundest sense.’
‘I am glad you think so,’ returned Doyce, with his grey eye looking kind
and bright.
‘It so happens,’ said Clennam, ‘that just now, not half an hour before
you came down, I was saying the same thing to Pancks, who looked in
here. We both agreed that to travel out of safe investments is one of
the most dangerous, as it is one of the most common, of those follies
which often deserve the name of vices.’
‘Pancks?’ said Doyce, tilting up his hat at the back, and nodding with
an air of confidence. ‘Aye, aye, aye! That’s a cautious fellow.’
‘He is a very cautious fellow indeed,’ returned Arthur. ‘Quite a
specimen of caution.’
They both appeared to derive a larger amount of satisfaction from the
cautious character of Mr Pancks, than was quite intelligible, judged by
the surface of their conversation.
‘And now,’ said Daniel, looking at his watch, ‘as time and tide wait
for no man, my trusty partner, and as I am ready for starting, bag and
baggage, at the gate below, let me say a last word. I want you to grant
a request of mine.’
‘Any request you can make--Except,’ Clennam was quick with his
exception, for his partner’s face was quick in suggesting it, ‘except
that I will abandon your invention.’
‘That’s the request, and you know it is,’ said Doyce.
‘I say, No, then. I say positively, No. Now that I have begun, I will
have some definite reason, some responsible statement, something in the
nature of a real answer, from those people.’
‘You will not,’ returned Doyce, shaking his head. ‘Take my word for it,
you never will.’
‘At least, I’ll try,’ said Clennam. ‘It will do me no harm to try.’
‘I am not certain of that,’ rejoined Doyce, laying his hand persuasively
on his shoulder. ‘It has done me harm, my friend. It has aged me, tired
me, vexed me, disappointed me. It does no man any good to have his
patience worn out, and to think himself ill-used. I fancy, even already,
that unavailing attendance on delays and evasions has made you something
less elastic than you used to be.’
‘Private anxieties may have done that for the moment,’ said Clennam,
‘but not official harrying. Not yet. I am not hurt yet.’
‘Then you won’t grant my request?’
‘Decidedly, No,’ said Clennam. ‘I should be ashamed if I submitted to
be so soon driven out of the field, where a much older and a much more
sensitively interested man contended with fortitude so long.’
As there was no moving him, Daniel Doyce returned the grasp of his hand,
and, casting a farewell look round the counting-house, went down-stairs
with him. Doyce was to go to Southampton to join the small staff of
his fellow-travellers; and a coach was at the gate, well furnished and
packed, and ready to take him there. The workmen were at the gate to see
him off, and were mightily proud of him. ‘Good luck to you, Mr Doyce!’
said one of the number. ‘Wherever you go, they’ll find as they’ve got a
man among ‘em, a man as knows his tools and as his tools knows, a man
as is willing and a man as is able, and if that’s not a man, where is
a man!’ This oration from a gruff volunteer in the back-ground, not
previously suspected of any powers in that way, was received with three
loud cheers; and the speaker became a distinguished character for ever
afterwards. In the midst of the three loud cheers, Daniel gave them all
a hearty ‘Good Bye, Men!’ and the coach disappeared from sight, as if
the concussion of the air had blown it out of Bleeding Heart Yard.
Mr Baptist, as a grateful little fellow in a position of trust, was
among the workmen, and had done as much towards the cheering as a mere
foreigner could. In truth, no men on earth can cheer like Englishmen,
who do so rally one another’s blood and spirit when they cheer in
earnest, that the stir is like the rush of their whole history, with all
its standards waving at once, from Saxon Alfred’s downwards. Mr Baptist
had been in a manner whirled away before the onset, and was taking his
breath in quite a scared condition when Clennam beckoned him to follow
up-stairs, and return the books and papers to their places.
In the lull consequent on the departure--in that first vacuity which
ensues on every separation, foreshadowing the great separation that
is always overhanging all mankind--Arthur stood at his desk, looking
dreamily out at a gleam of sun. But his liberated attention soon
reverted to the theme that was foremost in his thoughts, and began, for
the hundredth time, to dwell upon every circumstance that had impressed
itself upon his mind on the mysterious night when he had seen the man at
his mother’s. Again the man jostled him in the crooked street, again
he followed the man and lost him, again he came upon the man in the
court-yard looking at the house, again he followed the man and stood
beside him on the door-steps.
‘Who passes by this road so late?
Compagnon de la Majolaine;
Who passes by this road so late?
Always gay!’
It was not the first time, by many, that he had recalled the song of the
child’s game, of which the fellow had hummed this verse while they stood
side by side; but he was so unconscious of having repeated it audibly,
that he started to hear the next verse.
‘Of all the king’s knights ‘tis the flower,
Compagnon de la Majolaine;
Of all the king’s knights ‘tis the flower,
Always gay!’
Cavalletto had deferentially suggested the words and tune, supposing him
to have stopped short for want of more.
‘Ah! You know the song, Cavalletto?’
‘By Bacchus, yes, sir! They all know it in France. I have heard it many
times, sung by the little children. The last time when it I have heard,’
said Mr Baptist, formerly Cavalletto, who usually went back to his
native construction of sentences when his memory went near home, ‘is
from a sweet little voice. A little voice, very pretty, very innocent.
Altro!’
‘The last time I heard it,’ returned Arthur, ‘was in a voice quite the
reverse of pretty, and quite the reverse of innocent.’ He said it more
to himself than to his companion, and added to himself, repeating
the man’s next words. ‘Death of my life, sir, it’s my character to be
impatient!’
‘EH!’ cried Cavalletto, astounded, and with all his colour gone in a
moment.
‘What is the matter?’
‘Sir! You know where I have heard that song the last time?’
With his rapid native action, his hands made the outline of a high hook
nose, pushed his eyes near together, dishevelled his hair, puffed out
his upper lip to represent a thick moustache, and threw the heavy end
of an ideal cloak over his shoulder. While doing this, with a swiftness
incredible to one who has not watched an Italian peasant, he indicated a
very remarkable and sinister smile. The whole change passed over him
like a flash of light, and he stood in the same instant, pale and
astonished, before his patron.
‘In the name of Fate and wonder,’ said Clennam, ‘what do you mean? Do
you know a man of the name of Blandois?’
‘No!’ said Mr Baptist, shaking his head.
‘You have just now described a man who was by when you heard that song;
have you not?’
‘Yes!’ said Mr Baptist, nodding fifty times.
‘And was he not called Blandois?’