‘No!’ said Mr Baptist. ‘Altro, Altro, Altro, Altro!’ He could not reject

the name sufficiently, with his head and his right forefinger going at

once.

‘Stay!’ cried Clennam, spreading out the handbill on his desk. ‘Was this

the man? You can understand what I read aloud?’

‘Altogether. Perfectly.’

‘But look at it, too. Come here and look over me, while I read.’

Mr Baptist approached, followed every word with his quick eyes, saw

and heard it all out with the greatest impatience, then clapped his

two hands flat upon the bill as if he had fiercely caught some noxious

creature, and cried, looking eagerly at Clennam, ‘It is the man! Behold

him!’

‘This is of far greater moment to me’ said Clennam, in great agitation,

‘than you can imagine. Tell me where you knew the man.’

Mr Baptist, releasing the paper very slowly and with much discomfiture,

and drawing himself back two or three paces, and making as though he

dusted his hands, returned, very much against his will:

‘At Marsiglia--Marseilles.’

‘What was he?’

‘A prisoner, and--Altro! I believe yes!--an,’ Mr Baptist crept closer

again to whisper it, ‘Assassin!’

Clennam fell back as if the word had struck him a blow: so terrible

did it make his mother’s communication with the man appear.

Cavalletto dropped on one knee, and implored him, with a redundancy of

gesticulation, to hear what had brought himself into such foul company.

He told with perfect truth how it had come of a little contraband

trading, and how he had in time been released from prison, and how he

had gone away from those antecedents. How, at the house of entertainment

called the Break of Day at Chalons on the Saone, he had been awakened

in his bed at night by the same assassin, then assuming the name of

Lagnier, though his name had formerly been Rigaud; how the assassin had

proposed that they should join their fortunes together; how he held

the assassin in such dread and aversion that he had fled from him at

daylight, and how he had ever since been haunted by the fear of seeing

the assassin again and being claimed by him as an acquaintance. When he

had related this, with an emphasis and poise on the word, ‘assassin,’

peculiarly belonging to his own language, and which did not serve to

render it less terrible to Clennam, he suddenly sprang to his feet,

pounced upon the bill again, and with a vehemence that would have been

absolute madness in any man of Northern origin, cried ‘Behold the same

assassin! Here he is!’

In his passionate raptures, he at first forgot the fact that he had

lately seen the assassin in London. On his remembering it, it suggested

hope to Clennam that the recognition might be of later date than the

night of the visit at his mother’s; but Cavalletto was too exact and

clear about time and place, to leave any opening for doubt that it had

preceded that occasion.

‘Listen,’ said Arthur, very seriously. ‘This man, as we have read here,

has wholly disappeared.’

‘Of it I am well content!’ said Cavalletto, raising his eyes piously. ‘A

thousand thanks to Heaven! Accursed assassin!’

‘Not so,’ returned Clennam; ‘for until something more is heard of him, I

can never know an hour’s peace.’

‘Enough, Benefactor; that is quite another thing. A million of excuses!’

‘Now, Cavalletto,’ said Clennam, gently turning him by the arm, so that

they looked into each other’s eyes. ‘I am certain that for the little

I have been able to do for you, you are the most sincerely grateful of

men.’

‘I swear it!’ cried the other.

‘I know it. If you could find this man, or discover what has become of

him, or gain any later intelligence whatever of him, you would render

me a service above any other service I could receive in the world, and

would make me (with far greater reason) as grateful to you as you are to

me.’

‘I know not where to look,’ cried the little man, kissing Arthur’s

hand in a transport. ‘I know not where to begin. I know not where to go.

But, courage! Enough! It matters not! I go, in this instant of time!’

‘Not a word to any one but me, Cavalletto.’

‘Al-tro!’ cried Cavalletto. And was gone with great speed.

CHAPTER 23. Mistress Affery makes a Conditional Promise,

respecting her Dreams

Left alone, with the expressive looks and gestures of Mr Baptist,

otherwise Giovanni Baptista Cavalletto, vividly before him, Clennam

entered on a weary day. It was in vain that he tried to control his

attention by directing it to any business occupation or train of

thought; it rode at anchor by the haunting topic, and would hold to no

other idea. As though a criminal should be chained in a stationary boat

on a deep clear river, condemned, whatever countless leagues of water

flowed past him, always to see the body of the fellow-creature he had

drowned lying at the bottom, immovable, and unchangeable, except as

the eddies made it broad or long, now expanding, now contracting

its terrible lineaments; so Arthur, below the shifting current of

transparent thoughts and fancies which were gone and succeeded by others

as soon as come, saw, steady and dark, and not to be stirred from its

place, the one subject that he endeavoured with all his might to rid

himself of, and that he could not fly from.

The assurance he now had, that Blandois, whatever his right name, was

one of the worst of characters, greatly augmented the burden of his

anxieties. Though the disappearance should be accounted for to-morrow,

the fact that his mother had been in communication with such a man,

would remain unalterable. That the communication had been of a secret

kind, and that she had been submissive to him and afraid of him, he

hoped might be known to no one beyond himself; yet, knowing it, how

could he separate it from his old vague fears, and how believe that

there was nothing evil in such relations?

Her resolution not to enter on the question with him, and his knowledge

of her indomitable character, enhanced his sense of helplessness. It was

like the oppression of a dream to believe that shame and exposure were

impending over her and his father’s memory, and to be shut out, as by a

brazen wall, from the possibility of coming to their aid. The purpose he

had brought home to his native country, and had ever since kept in view,

was, with her greatest determination, defeated by his mother herself, at

the time of all others when he feared that it pressed most. His advice,

energy, activity, money, credit, all his resources whatsoever, were all

made useless. If she had been possessed of the old fabled influence, and

had turned those who looked upon her into stone, she could not have

rendered him more completely powerless (so it seemed to him in his

distress of mind) than she did, when she turned her unyielding face to

his in her gloomy room.

But the light of that day’s discovery, shining on these considerations,

roused him to take a more decided course of action. Confident in the

rectitude of his purpose, and impelled by a sense of overhanging danger

closing in around, he resolved, if his mother would still admit of no

approach, to make a desperate appeal to Affery. If she could be brought

to become communicative, and to do what lay in her to break the spell of

secrecy that enshrouded the house, he might shake off the paralysis of

which every hour that passed over his head made him more acutely

sensible. This was the result of his day’s anxiety, and this was the

decision he put in practice when the day closed in.

His first disappointment, on arriving at the house, was to find the door

open, and Mr Flintwinch smoking a pipe on the steps. If circumstances

had been commonly favourable, Mistress Affery would have opened the

door to his knock. Circumstances being uncommonly unfavourable, the door

stood open, and Mr Flintwinch was smoking his pipe on the steps.

‘Good evening,’ said Arthur.

‘Good evening,’ said Mr Flintwinch.

The smoke came crookedly out of Mr Flintwinch’s mouth, as if it

circulated through the whole of his wry figure and came back by his wry

throat, before coming forth to mingle with the smoke from the crooked

chimneys and the mists from the crooked river.

‘Have you any news?’ said Arthur.

‘We have no news,’ said Jeremiah.

‘I mean of the foreign man,’ Arthur explained.

‘_I_ mean of the foreign man,’ said Jeremiah.

He looked so grim, as he stood askew, with the knot of his cravat under

his ear, that the thought passed into Clennam’s mind, and not for the

first time by many, could Flintwinch for a purpose of his own have got

rid of Blandois? Could it have been his secret, and his safety, that

were at issue? He was small and bent, and perhaps not actively strong;

yet he was as tough as an old yew-tree, and as crusty as an old jackdaw.

Such a man, coming behind a much younger and more vigorous man, and

having the will to put an end to him and no relenting, might do it

pretty surely in that solitary place at a late hour.

While, in the morbid condition of his thoughts, these thoughts drifted

over the main one that was always in Clennam’s mind, Mr Flintwinch,

regarding the opposite house over the gateway with his neck twisted and

one eye shut up, stood smoking with a vicious expression upon him; more

as if he were trying to bite off the stem of his pipe, than as if he

were enjoying it. Yet he was enjoying it in his own way.

‘You’ll be able to take my likeness, the next time you call, Arthur,

I should think,’ said Mr Flintwinch, drily, as he stooped to knock the

ashes out.

Rather conscious and confused, Arthur asked his pardon, if he had stared

at him unpolitely. ‘But my mind runs so much upon this matter,’ he said,

‘that I lose myself.’

‘Hah! Yet I don’t see,’ returned Mr Flintwinch, quite at his leisure,

‘why it should trouble _you_, Arthur.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ said Mr Flintwinch, very shortly and decidedly: much as if he were

of the canine race, and snapped at Arthur’s hand.

‘Is it nothing to see those placards about? Is it nothing to me to

see my mother’s name and residence hawked up and down in such an

association?’

‘I don’t see,’ returned Mr Flintwinch, scraping his horny cheek, ‘that

it need signify much to you. But I’ll tell you what I do see, Arthur,’

glancing up at the windows; ‘I see the light of fire and candle in your

mother’s room!’

‘And what has that to do with it?’

‘Why, sir, I read by it,’ said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself at him,

‘that if it’s advisable (as the proverb says it is) to let sleeping dogs

lie, it’s just as advisable, perhaps, to let missing dogs lie. Let ‘em

be. They generally turn up soon enough.’

Mr Flintwinch turned short round when he had made this remark, and went

into the dark hall. Clennam stood there, following him with his eyes,

as he dipped for a light in the phosphorus-box in the little room at the

side, got one after three or four dips, and lighted the dim lamp against

the wall. All the while, Clennam was pursuing the probabilities--rather

as if they were being shown to him by an invisible hand than as if he

himself were conjuring them up--of Mr Flintwinch’s ways and means of

doing that darker deed, and removing its traces by any of the black

avenues of shadow that lay around them.

‘Now, sir,’ said the testy Jeremiah; ‘will it be agreeable to walk

up-stairs?’

‘My mother is alone, I suppose?’

‘Not alone,’ said Mr Flintwinch. ‘Mr Casby and his daughter are with

her. They came in while I was smoking, and I stayed behind to have my

smoke out.’

This was the second disappointment. Arthur made no remark upon it, and

repaired to his mother’s room, where Mr Casby and Flora had been

taking tea, anchovy paste, and hot buttered toast. The relics of those

delicacies were not yet removed, either from the table or from the

scorched countenance of Affery, who, with the kitchen toasting-fork

still in her hand, looked like a sort of allegorical personage; except

that she had a considerable advantage over the general run of such

personages in point of significant emblematical purpose.

Flora had spread her bonnet and shawl upon the bed, with a care

indicative of an intention to stay some time. Mr Casby, too, was beaming

near the hob, with his benevolent knobs shining as if the warm butter of

the toast were exuding through the patriarchal skull, and with his face

as ruddy as if the colouring matter of the anchovy paste were mantling

in the patriarchal visage. Seeing this, as he exchanged the

usual salutations, Clennam decided to speak to his mother without

postponement.

It had long been customary, as she never changed her room, for those who

had anything to say to her apart, to wheel her to her desk; where she

sat, usually with the back of her chair turned towards the rest of the

room, and the person who talked with her seated in a corner, on a stool

which was always set in that place for that purpose. Except that it

was long since the mother and son had spoken together without the

intervention of a third person, it was an ordinary matter of course

within the experience of visitors for Mrs Clennam to be asked, with a

word of apology for the interruption, if she could be spoken with on

a matter of business, and, on her replying in the affirmative, to be

wheeled into the position described.

Therefore, when Arthur now made such an apology, and such a request,

and moved her to her desk and seated himself on the stool, Mrs Finching

merely began to talk louder and faster, as a delicate hint that she

could overhear nothing, and Mr Casby stroked his long white locks with

sleepy calmness.

‘Mother, I have heard something to-day which I feel persuaded you don’t

know, and which I think you should know, of the antecedents of that man

I saw here.’

‘I know nothing of the antecedents of the man you saw here, Arthur.’

She spoke aloud. He had lowered his own voice; but she rejected that

advance towards confidence as she rejected every other, and spoke in her

usual key and in her usual stern voice.

‘I have received it on no circuitous information; it has come to me

direct.’

She asked him, exactly as before, if he were there to tell her what it

was?

‘I thought it right that you should know it.’

‘And what is it?’

‘He has been a prisoner in a French gaol.’

She answered with composure, ‘I should think that very likely.’

‘But in a gaol for criminals, mother. On an accusation of murder.’

She started at the word, and her looks expressed her natural horror. Yet

she still spoke aloud, when she demanded:--

‘Who told you so?’

‘A man who was his fellow-prisoner.’

‘That man’s antecedents, I suppose, were not known to you, before he

told you?’

‘No.’

‘Though the man himself was?’

‘Yes.’

‘My case and Flintwinch’s, in respect of this other man! I dare say the

resemblance is not so exact, though, as that your informant became known

to you through a letter from a correspondent with whom he had deposited

money? How does that part of the parallel stand?’

Arthur had no choice but to say that his informant had not become known

to him through the agency of any such credentials, or indeed of any

credentials at all. Mrs Clennam’s attentive frown expanded by degrees

into a severe look of triumph, and she retorted with emphasis, ‘Take

care how you judge others, then. I say to you, Arthur, for your good,

take care how you judge!’

Her emphasis had been derived from her eyes quite as much as from the

stress she laid upon her words. She continued to look at him; and if,

when he entered the house, he had had any latent hope of prevailing in

the least with her, she now looked it out of his heart.

‘Mother, shall I do nothing to assist you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Will you entrust me with no confidence, no charge, no explanation?

Will you take no counsel with me? Will you not let me come near you?’

‘How can you ask me? You separated yourself from my affairs. It was not

my act; it was yours. How can you consistently ask me such a question?

You know that you left me to Flintwinch, and that he occupies your

place.’

Glancing at Jeremiah, Clennam saw in his very gaiters that his attention

was closely directed to them, though he stood leaning against the wall

scraping his jaw, and pretended to listen to Flora as she held forth in

a most distracting manner on a chaos of subjects, in which mackerel, and

Mr F.’s Aunt in a swing, had become entangled with cockchafers and the

wine trade.

‘A prisoner, in a French gaol, on an accusation of murder,’ repeated

Mrs Clennam, steadily going over what her son had said. ‘That is all you

know of him from the fellow-prisoner?’

‘In substance, all.’

‘And was the fellow-prisoner his accomplice and a murderer, too? But, of

course, he gives a better account of himself than of his friend; it is

needless to ask. This will supply the rest of them here with something

new to talk about. Casby, Arthur tells me--’

‘Stay, mother! Stay, stay!’ He interrupted her hastily, for it had not

entered his imagination that she would openly proclaim what he had told

her.

‘What now?’ she said with displeasure. ‘What more?’

‘I beg you to excuse me, Mr Casby--and you, too, Mrs Finching--for one

other moment with my mother--’

He had laid his hand upon her chair, or she would otherwise have wheeled

it round with the touch of her foot upon the ground. They were still

face to face. She looked at him, as he ran over the possibilities of

some result he had not intended, and could not foresee, being influenced

by Cavalletto’s disclosure becoming a matter of notoriety, and hurriedly

arrived at the conclusion that it had best not be talked about; though

perhaps he was guided by no more distinct reason than that he had taken

it for granted that his mother would reserve it to herself and her

partner.

‘What now?’ she said again, impatiently. ‘What is it?’

‘I did not mean, mother, that you should repeat what I have

communicated. I think you had better not repeat it.’

‘Do you make that a condition with me?’

‘Well! Yes.’

‘Observe, then! It is you who make this a secret,’ said she, holding

up her hand, ‘and not I. It is you, Arthur, who bring here doubts and

suspicions and entreaties for explanations, and it is you, Arthur, who

bring secrets here. What is it to me, do you think, where the man has

been, or what he has been? What can it be to me? The whole world may

know it, if they care to know it; it is nothing to me. Now, let me go.’

He yielded to her imperious but elated look, and turned her chair back

to the place from which he had wheeled it. In doing so he saw elation

in the face of Mr Flintwinch, which most assuredly was not inspired by

Flora. This turning of his intelligence and of his whole attempt and

design against himself, did even more than his mother’s fixedness and

firmness to convince him that his efforts with her were idle. Nothing

remained but the appeal to his old friend Affery.

But even to get the very doubtful and preliminary stage of making the

appeal, seemed one of the least promising of human undertakings. She

was so completely under the thrall of the two clever ones, was so

systematically kept in sight by one or other of them, and was so afraid

to go about the house besides, that every opportunity of speaking to her

alone appeared to be forestalled. Over and above that, Mistress Affery,

by some means (it was not very difficult to guess, through the sharp

arguments of her liege lord), had acquired such a lively conviction

of the hazard of saying anything under any circumstances, that she had

remained all this time in a corner guarding herself from approach with

that symbolical instrument of hers; so that, when a word or two had

been addressed to her by Flora, or even by the bottle-green patriarch

himself, she had warded off conversation with the toasting-fork like a

dumb woman.

After several abortive attempts to get Affery to look at him while

she cleared the table and washed the tea-service, Arthur thought of an

expedient which Flora might originate. To whom he therefore whispered,

‘Could you say you would like to go through the house?’

Now, poor Flora, being always in fluctuating expectation of the time

when Clennam would renew his boyhood and be madly in love with her

again, received the whisper with the utmost delight; not only as

rendered precious by its mysterious character, but as preparing the

way for a tender interview in which he would declare the state of his

affections. She immediately began to work out the hint.

‘Ah dear me the poor old room,’ said Flora, glancing round, ‘looks just

as ever Mrs Clennam I am touched to see except for being smokier which

was to be expected with time and which we must all expect and reconcile

ourselves to being whether we like it or not as I am sure I have had to

do myself if not exactly smokier dreadfully stouter which is the same or

worse, to think of the days when papa used to bring me here the least of

girls a perfect mass of chilblains to be stuck upon a chair with my feet

on the rails and stare at Arthur--pray excuse me--Mr Clennam--the

least of boys in the frightfullest of frills and jackets ere yet Mr

F. appeared a misty shadow on the horizon paying attentions like the

well-known spectre of some place in Germany beginning with a B is a

moral lesson inculcating that all the paths in life are similar to the

paths down in the North of England where they get the coals and make the

iron and things gravelled with ashes!’

Having paid the tribute of a sigh to the instability of human existence,

Flora hurried on with her purpose.

‘Not that at any time,’ she proceeded, ‘its worst enemy could have said

it was a cheerful house for that it was never made to be but always

highly impressive, fond memory recalls an occasion in youth ere yet the

judgment was mature when Arthur--confirmed habit--Mr Clennam--took

me down into an unused kitchen eminent for mouldiness and proposed to

secrete me there for life and feed me on what he could hide from his

meals when he was not at home for the holidays and on dry bread in

disgrace which at that halcyon period too frequently occurred, would

it be inconvenient or asking too much to beg to be permitted to revive

those scenes and walk through the house?’

Mrs Clennam, who responded with a constrained grace to Mrs Finching’s

good nature in being there at all, though her visit (before Arthur’s

unexpected arrival) was undoubtedly an act of pure good nature and no

self-gratification, intimated that all the house was open to her. Flora

rose and looked to Arthur for his escort. ‘Certainly,’ said he, aloud;

‘and Affery will light us, I dare say.’

Affery was excusing herself with ‘Don’t ask nothing of me, Arthur!’ when

Mr Flintwinch stopped her with ‘Why not? Affery, what’s the matter with

you, woman? Why not, jade!’ Thus expostulated with, she came unwillingly

out of her corner, resigned the toasting-fork into one of her husband’s

hands, and took the candlestick he offered from the other.

‘Go before, you fool!’ said Jeremiah. ‘Are you going up, or down, Mrs

Finching?’

Flora answered, ‘Down.’

‘Then go before, and down, you Affery,’ said Jeremiah. ‘And do it

properly, or I’ll come rolling down the banisters, and tumbling over

you!’

Affery headed the exploring party; Jeremiah closed it. He had no

intention of leaving them. Clennam looking back, and seeing him

following three stairs behind, in the coolest and most methodical

manner exclaimed in a low voice, ‘Is there no getting rid of him!’ Flora

reassured his mind by replying promptly, ‘Why though not exactly

proper Arthur and a thing I couldn’t think of before a younger man or

a stranger still I don’t mind him if you so particularly wish it and

provided you’ll have the goodness not to take me too tight.’

Wanting the heart to explain that this was not at all what he meant,

Arthur extended his supporting arm round Flora’s figure. ‘Oh my goodness

me,’ said she. ‘You are very obedient indeed really and it’s extremely

honourable and gentlemanly in you I am sure but still at the same time

if you would like to be a little tighter than that I shouldn’t consider

it intruding.’

In this preposterous attitude, unspeakably at variance with his anxious

mind, Clennam descended to the basement of the house; finding that

wherever it became darker than elsewhere, Flora became heavier, and

that when the house was lightest she was too. Returning from the dismal

kitchen regions, which were as dreary as they could be, Mistress Affery

passed with the light into his father’s old room, and then into the old

dining-room; always passing on before like a phantom that was not to be

overtaken, and neither turning nor answering when he whispered, ‘Affery!

I want to speak to you!’

In the dining-room, a sentimental desire came over Flora to look into

the dragon closet which had so often swallowed Arthur in the days of his

boyhood--not improbably because, as a very dark closet, it was a likely

place to be heavy in. Arthur, fast subsiding into despair, had opened

it, when a knock was heard at the outer door.

Mistress Affery, with a suppressed cry, threw her apron over her head.

‘What? You want another dose!’ said Mr Flintwinch. ‘You shall have it,

my woman, you shall have a good one! Oh! You shall have a sneezer, you

shall have a teaser!’

‘In the meantime is anybody going to the door?’ said Arthur.

‘In the meantime, _I_ am going to the door, sir,’ returned the old man so

savagely, as to render it clear that in a choice of difficulties he felt

he must go, though he would have preferred not to go. ‘Stay here the

while, all! Affery, my woman, move an inch, or speak a word in your

foolishness, and I’ll treble your dose!’

The moment he was gone, Arthur released Mrs Finching: with some

difficulty, by reason of that lady misunderstanding his intentions, and

making arrangements with a view to tightening instead of slackening.

‘Affery, speak to me now!’

‘Don’t touch me, Arthur!’ she cried, shrinking from him. ‘Don’t come

near me. He’ll see you. Jeremiah will. Don’t.’

‘He can’t see me,’ returned Arthur, suiting the action to the word, ‘if

I blow the candle out.’

‘He’ll hear you,’ cried Affery.

‘He can’t hear me,’ returned Arthur, suiting the action to the words

again, ‘if I draw you into this black closet, and speak here. Why do

you hide your face?’

‘Because I am afraid of seeing something.’

‘You can’t be afraid of seeing anything in this darkness, Affery.’

‘Yes I am. Much more than if it was light.’

‘Why are you afraid?’

‘Because the house is full of mysteries and secrets; because it’s full

of whisperings and counsellings; because it’s full of noises. There

never was such a house for noises. I shall die of ‘em, if Jeremiah don’t

strangle me first. As I expect he will.’

‘I have never heard any noises here, worth speaking of.’

‘Ah! But you would, though, if you lived in the house, and was obliged

to go about it as I am,’ said Affery; ‘and you’d feel that they was so

well worth speaking of, that you’d feel you was nigh bursting through

not being allowed to speak of ‘em. Here’s Jeremiah! You’ll get me

killed.’

‘My good Affery, I solemnly declare to you that I can see the light of

the open door on the pavement of the hall, and so could you if you would

uncover your face and look.’

‘I durstn’t do it,’ said Affery, ‘I durstn’t never, Arthur. I’m always

blind-folded when Jeremiah an’t a looking, and sometimes even when he

is.’

‘He cannot shut the door without my seeing him,’ said Arthur. ‘You are

as safe with me as if he was fifty miles away.’

[‘I wish he was!’ cried Affery.)

‘Affery, I want to know what is amiss here; I want some light thrown

on the secrets of this house.’

‘I tell you, Arthur,’ she interrupted, ‘noises is the secrets, rustlings

and stealings about, tremblings, treads overhead and treads underneath.’

‘But those are not all the secrets.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Affery. ‘Don’t ask me no more. Your old sweetheart

an’t far off, and she’s a blabber.’

His old sweetheart, being in fact so near at hand that she was then

reclining against him in a flutter, a very substantial angle of

forty-five degrees, here interposed to assure Mistress Affery with

greater earnestness than directness of asseveration, that what she heard

should go no further, but should be kept inviolate, ‘if on no other

account on Arthur’s--sensible of intruding in being too familiar Doyce

and Clennam’s.’

‘I make an imploring appeal to you, Affery, to you, one of the few

agreeable early remembrances I have, for my mother’s sake, for your

husband’s sake, for my own, for all our sakes. I am sure you can tell me

something connected with the coming here of this man, if you will.’

‘Why, then I’ll tell you, Arthur,’ returned Affery--‘Jeremiah’s coming!’

‘No, indeed he is not. The door is open, and he is standing outside,

talking.’

‘I’ll tell you then,’ said Affery, after listening, ‘that the first time

he ever come he heard the noises his own self. “What’s that?” he said to

me. “I don’t know what it is,” I says to him, catching hold of him,

“but I have heard it over and over again.” While I says it, he stands a

looking at me, all of a shake, he do.’

‘Has he been here often?’

‘Only that night, and the last night.’

‘What did you see of him on the last night, after I was gone?’

‘Them two clever ones had him all alone to themselves. Jeremiah come

a dancing at me sideways, after I had let you out (he always comes a

dancing at me sideways when he’s going to hurt me), and he said to me,

“Now, Affery,” he said, “I am a coming behind you, my woman, and a going

to run you up.” So he took and squeezed the back of my neck in his hand,

till it made me open my mouth, and then he pushed me before him to bed,

squeezing all the way. That’s what he calls running me up, he do. Oh,

he’s a wicked one!’

‘And did you hear or see no more, Affery?’

‘Don’t I tell you I was sent to bed, Arthur! Here he is!’

‘I assure you he is still at the door. Those whisperings and

counsellings, Affery, that you have spoken of. What are they?’

‘How should I know? Don’t ask me nothing about ‘em, Arthur. Get away!’

‘But my dear Affery; unless I can gain some insight into these hidden

things, in spite of your husband and in spite of my mother, ruin will

come of it.’

‘Don’t ask me nothing,’ repeated Affery. ‘I have been in a dream for

ever so long. Go away, go away!’

‘You said that before,’ returned Arthur. ‘You used the same expression

that night, at the door, when I asked you what was going on here. What

do you mean by being in a dream?’

‘I an’t a going to tell you. Get away! I shouldn’t tell you, if you was

by yourself; much less with your old sweetheart here.’

It was equally vain for Arthur to entreat, and for Flora to protest.

Affery, who had been trembling and struggling the whole time, turned a

deaf ear to all adjuration, and was bent on forcing herself out of the

closet.

‘I’d sooner scream to Jeremiah than say another word! I’ll call out to

him, Arthur, if you don’t give over speaking to me. Now here’s the very

last word I’ll say afore I call to him--If ever you begin to get the

better of them two clever ones your own self (you ought to it, as I told

you when you first come home, for you haven’t been a living here long

years, to be made afeared of your life as I have), then do you get the

better of ‘em afore my face; and then do you say to me, Affery tell your

dreams! Maybe, then I’ll tell ‘em!’

The shutting of the door stopped Arthur from replying. They glided into

the places where Jeremiah had left them; and Clennam, stepping forward

as that old gentleman returned, informed him that he had accidentally

extinguished the candle. Mr Flintwinch looked on as he re-lighted it at

the lamp in the hall, and preserved a profound taciturnity respecting

the person who had been holding him in conversation. Perhaps his

irascibility demanded compensation for some tediousness that the visitor

had expended on him; however that was, he took such umbrage at seeing

his wife with her apron over her head, that he charged at her, and

taking her veiled nose between his thumb and finger, appeared to throw

the whole screw-power of his person into the wring he gave it.

Flora, now permanently heavy, did not release Arthur from the survey of

the house, until it had extended even to his old garret bedchamber. His

thoughts were otherwise occupied than with the tour of inspection; yet

he took particular notice at the time, as he afterwards had occasion to

remember, of the airlessness and closeness of the house; that they left

the track of their footsteps in the dust on the upper floors; and that

there was a resistance to the opening of one room door, which occasioned

Affery to cry out that somebody was hiding inside, and to continue to

believe so, though somebody was sought and not discovered. When they at

last returned to his mother’s room, they found her shading her face

with her muffled hand, and talking in a low voice to the Patriarch as he

stood before the fire, whose blue eyes, polished head, and silken locks,

turning towards them as they came in, imparted an inestimable value and

inexhaustible love of his species to his remark:

‘So you have been seeing the premises, seeing the premises--premises--

seeing the premises!’

It was not in itself a jewel of benevolence or wisdom, yet he made it an

exemplar of both that one would have liked to have a copy of.

CHAPTER 24. The Evening of a Long Day

That illustrious man and great national ornament, Mr Merdle, continued

his shining course. It began to be widely understood that one who had

done society the admirable service of making so much money out of it,

could not be suffered to remain a commoner. A baronetcy was spoken of

with confidence; a peerage was frequently mentioned. Rumour had it

that Mr Merdle had set his golden face against a baronetcy; that he had

plainly intimated to Lord Decimus that a baronetcy was not enough

for him; that he had said, ‘No--a Peerage, or plain Merdle.’ This was

reported to have plunged Lord Decimus as nigh to his noble chin in a

slough of doubts as so lofty a person could be sunk. For the Barnacles,

as a group of themselves in creation, had an idea that such distinctions

belonged to them; and that when a soldier, sailor, or lawyer became

ennobled, they let him in, as it were, by an act of condescension, at

the family door, and immediately shut it again. Not only (said Rumour)

had the troubled Decimus his own hereditary part in this impression, but

he also knew of several Barnacle claims already on the file, which came

into collision with that of the master spirit. Right or wrong, Rumour

was very busy; and Lord Decimus, while he was, or was supposed to be, in

stately excogitation of the difficulty, lent her some countenance by

taking, on several public occasions, one of those elephantine trots of

his through a jungle of overgrown sentences, waving Mr Merdle about on

his trunk as Gigantic Enterprise, The Wealth of England, Elasticity,

Credit, Capital, Prosperity, and all manner of blessings.

So quietly did the mowing of the old scythe go on, that fully three

months had passed unnoticed since the two English brothers had been laid

in one tomb in the strangers’ cemetery at Rome. Mr and Mrs Sparkler were

established in their own house: a little mansion, rather of the Tite

Barnacle class, quite a triumph of inconvenience, with a perpetual smell

in it of the day before yesterday’s soup and coach-horses, but extremely

dear, as being exactly in the centre of the habitable globe. In this

enviable abode (and envied it really was by many people), Mrs Sparkler

had intended to proceed at once to the demolition of the Bosom, when

active hostilities had been suspended by the arrival of the Courier with

his tidings of death. Mrs Sparkler, who was not unfeeling, had received

them with a violent burst of grief, which had lasted twelve hours;

after which, she had arisen to see about her mourning, and to take every

precaution that could ensure its being as becoming as Mrs Merdle’s. A

gloom was then cast over more than one distinguished family (according

to the politest sources of intelligence), and the Courier went back

again.

Mr and Mrs Sparkler had been dining alone, with their gloom cast over

them, and Mrs Sparkler reclined on a drawing-room sofa. It was a hot

summer Sunday evening. The residence in the centre of the habitable

globe, at all times stuffed and close as if it had an incurable cold in

its head, was that evening particularly stifling. The bells of the

churches had done their worst in the way of clanging among the

unmelodious echoes of the streets, and the lighted windows of the

churches had ceased to be yellow in the grey dusk, and had died out

opaque black. Mrs Sparkler, lying on her sofa, looking through an open

window at the opposite side of a narrow street over boxes of mignonette

and flowers, was tired of the view. Mrs Sparkler, looking at another

window where her husband stood in the balcony, was tired of that view.

Mrs Sparkler, looking at herself in her mourning, was even tired of that

view: though, naturally, not so tired of that as of the other two.

‘It’s like lying in a well,’ said Mrs Sparkler, changing her position

fretfully. ‘Dear me, Edmund, if you have anything to say, why don’t you

say it?’

Mr Sparkler might have replied with ingenuousness, ‘My life, I have

nothing to say.’ But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented

himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side of his

wife’s couch.

‘Good gracious, Edmund!’ said Mrs Sparkler more fretfully still, ‘you are

absolutely putting mignonette up your nose! Pray don’t!’

Mr Sparkler, in absence of mind--perhaps in a more literal absence of

mind than is usually understood by the phrase--had smelt so hard at a

sprig in his hand as to be on the verge of the offence in question. He

smiled, said, ‘I ask your pardon, my dear,’ and threw it out of window.

‘You make my head ache by remaining in that position, Edmund,’ said Mrs

Sparkler, raising her eyes to him after another minute; ‘you look so

aggravatingly large by this light. Do sit down.’

‘Certainly, my dear,’ said Mr Sparkler, and took a chair on the same

spot.

‘If I didn’t know that the longest day was past,’ said Fanny, yawning in

a dreary manner, ‘I should have felt certain this was the longest day. I

never did experience such a day.’

‘Is that your fan, my love?’ asked Mr Sparkler, picking up one and

presenting it.

‘Edmund,’ returned his wife, more wearily yet, ‘don’t ask weak

questions, I entreat you not. Whose can it be but mine?’

‘Yes, I thought it was yours,’ said Mr Sparkler.

‘Then you shouldn’t ask,’ retorted Fanny. After a little while she

turned on her sofa and exclaimed, ‘Dear me, dear me, there never was

such a long day as this!’ After another little while, she got up slowly,

walked about, and came back again.

‘My dear,’ said Mr Sparkler, flashing with an original conception, ‘I

think you must have got the fidgets.’

‘Oh, Fidgets!’ repeated Mrs Sparkler. ‘Don’t.’

‘My adorable girl,’ urged Mr Sparkler, ‘try your aromatic vinegar. I

have often seen my mother try it, and it seemingly refreshed her.

And she is, as I believe you are aware, a remarkably fine woman, with no

non--’

‘Good Gracious!’ exclaimed Fanny, starting up again. ‘It’s beyond all

patience! This is the most wearisome day that ever did dawn upon the

world, I am certain.’

Mr Sparkler looked meekly after her as she lounged about the room, and

he appeared to be a little frightened. When she had tossed a few trifles

about, and had looked down into the darkening street out of all the

three windows, she returned to her sofa, and threw herself among its

pillows.

‘Now Edmund, come here! Come a little nearer, because I want to be able

to touch you with my fan, that I may impress you very much with what I

am going to say. That will do. Quite close enough. Oh, you _do_ look so

big!’

Mr Sparkler apologised for the circumstance, pleaded that he couldn’t

help it, and said that ‘our fellows,’ without more particularly

indicating whose fellows, used to call him by the name of Quinbus

Flestrin, Junior, or the Young Man Mountain.

‘You ought to have told me so before,’ Fanny complained.

‘My dear,’ returned Mr Sparkler, rather gratified, ‘I didn’t know

It would interest you, or I would have made a point of telling you.’

‘There! For goodness sake, don’t talk,’ said Fanny; ‘I want to talk,

myself. Edmund, we must not be alone any more. I must take such

precautions as will prevent my being ever again reduced to the state of

dreadful depression in which I am this evening.’

‘My dear,’ answered Mr Sparkler; ‘being as you are well known to be, a

remarkably fine woman with no--’

‘Oh, good GRACIOUS!’ cried Fanny.

Mr Sparkler was so discomposed by the energy of this exclamation,

accompanied with a flouncing up from the sofa and a flouncing down

again, that a minute or two elapsed before he felt himself equal to

saying in explanation:

‘I mean, my dear, that everybody knows you are calculated to shine in

society.’

‘Calculated to shine in society,’ retorted Fanny with great

irritability; ‘yes, indeed! And then what happens? I no sooner recover,

in a visiting point of view, the shock of poor dear papa’s death, and my

poor uncle’s--though I do not disguise from myself that the last was

a happy release, for, if you are not presentable you had much better

die--’

‘You are not referring to me, my love, I hope?’ Mr Sparkler humbly

interrupted.

‘Edmund, Edmund, you would wear out a Saint. Am I not expressly speaking

of my poor uncle?’

‘You looked with so much expression at myself, my dear girl,’ said Mr

Sparkler, ‘that I felt a little uncomfortable. Thank you, my love.’

‘Now you have put me out,’ observed Fanny with a resigned toss of her

fan, ‘and I had better go to bed.’

‘Don’t do that, my love,’ urged Mr Sparkler. ‘Take time.’

Fanny took a good deal of time: lying back with her eyes shut, and her

eyebrows raised with a hopeless expression as if she had utterly given

up all terrestrial affairs. At length, without the slightest notice, she

opened her eyes again, and recommenced in a short, sharp manner:

‘What happens then, I ask! What happens? Why, I find myself at the very

period when I might shine most in society, and should most like for

very momentous reasons to shine in society--I find myself in a situation

which to a certain extent disqualifies me for going into society. It’s

too bad, really!’

‘My dear,’ said Mr Sparkler. ‘I don’t think it need keep you at

home.’

‘Edmund, you ridiculous creature,’ returned Fanny, with great

indignation; ‘do you suppose that a woman in the bloom of youth and not

wholly devoid of personal attractions, can put herself, at such a

time, in competition as to figure with a woman in every other way her

inferior? If you do suppose such a thing, your folly is boundless.’

Mr Sparkler submitted that he had thought ‘it might be got over.’

‘Got over!’ repeated Fanny, with immeasurable scorn.

‘For a time,’ Mr Sparkler submitted.

Honouring the last feeble suggestion with no notice, Mrs Sparkler

declared with bitterness that it really was too bad, and that positively

it was enough to make one wish one was dead!

‘However,’ she said, when she had in some measure recovered from her

sense of personal ill-usage; ‘provoking as it is, and cruel as it seems,

I suppose it must be submitted to.’

‘Especially as it was to be expected,’ said Mr Sparkler.

‘Edmund,’ returned his wife, ‘if you have nothing more becoming to do

than to attempt to insult the woman who has honoured you with her hand,

when she finds herself in adversity, I think _you_ had better go to bed!’

Mr Sparkler was much afflicted by the charge, and offered a most

tender and earnest apology. His apology was accepted; but Mrs Sparkler

requested him to go round to the other side of the sofa and sit in the

window-curtain, to tone himself down.

‘Now, Edmund,’ she said, stretching out her fan, and touching him with

it at arm’s length, ‘what I was going to say to you when you began as

usual to prose and worry, is, that I shall guard against our being alone

any more, and that when circumstances prevent my going out to my own

satisfaction, I must arrange to have some people or other always here;

for I really cannot, and will not, have another such day as this has

been.’

Mr Sparkler’s sentiments as to the plan were, in brief, that it had no

nonsense about it. He added, ‘And besides, you know it’s likely that

you’ll soon have your sister--’

‘Dearest Amy, yes!’ cried Mrs Sparkler with a sigh of affection.

‘Darling little thing! Not, however, that Amy would do here alone.’

Mr Sparkler was going to say ‘No?’ interrogatively, but he saw his

danger and said it assentingly, ‘No, Oh dear no; she wouldn’t do here

alone.’

‘No, Edmund. For not only are the virtues of the precious child of that

still character that they require a contrast--require life and movement

around them to bring them out in their right colours and make one love

them of all things; but she will require to be roused, on more accounts

than one.’

‘That’s it,’ said Mr Sparkler. ‘Roused.’

‘Pray don’t, Edmund! Your habit of interrupting without having the least

thing in the world to say, distracts one. You must be broken of it.

Speaking of Amy;--my poor little pet was devotedly attached to poor

papa, and no doubt will have lamented his loss exceedingly, and grieved

very much. I have done so myself. I have felt it dreadfully. But Amy

will no doubt have felt it even more, from having been on the spot the

whole time, and having been with poor dear papa at the last; which I

unhappily was not.’

Here Fanny stopped to weep, and to say, ‘Dear, dear, beloved papa! How

truly gentlemanly he was! What a contrast to poor uncle!’

‘From the effects of that trying time,’ she pursued, ‘my good little

Mouse will have to be roused. Also, from the effects of this long

attendance upon Edward in his illness; an attendance which is not

yet over, which may even go on for some time longer, and which in the

meanwhile unsettles us all by keeping poor dear papa’s affairs from

being wound up. Fortunately, however, the papers with his agents

here being all sealed up and locked up, as he left them when he

providentially came to England, the affairs are in that state of order

that they can wait until my brother Edward recovers his health in

Sicily, sufficiently to come over, and administer, or execute, or

whatever it may be that will have to be done.’

‘He couldn’t have a better nurse to bring him round,’ Mr Sparkler made

bold to opine.

‘For a wonder, I can agree with you,’ returned his wife, languidly

turning her eyelids a little in his direction (she held forth, in

general, as if to the drawing-room furniture), ‘and can adopt your

words. He couldn’t have a better nurse to bring him round. There are

times when my dear child is a little wearing to an active mind; but, as

a nurse, she is Perfection. Best of Amys!’

Mr Sparkler, growing rash on his late success, observed that Edward had

had, biggodd, a long bout of it, my dear girl.

‘If Bout, Edmund,’ returned Mrs Sparkler, ‘is the slang term for

indisposition, he has. If it is not, I am unable to give an opinion

on the barbarous language you address to Edward’s sister. That he

contracted Malaria Fever somewhere, either by travelling day and night

to Rome, where, after all, he arrived too late to see poor dear papa

before his death--or under some other unwholesome circumstances--is

indubitable, if that is what you mean. Likewise that his extremely

careless life has made him a very bad subject for it indeed.’

Mr Sparkler considered it a parallel case to that of some of our fellows

in the West Indies with Yellow Jack. Mrs Sparkler closed her eyes again,

and refused to have any consciousness of our fellows of the West Indies,

or of Yellow Jack.

‘So, Amy,’ she pursued, when she reopened her eyelids, ‘will require

to be roused from the effects of many tedious and anxious weeks. And

lastly, she will require to be roused from a low tendency which I know

very well to be at the bottom of her heart. Don’t ask me what it is,

Edmund, because I must decline to tell you.’

‘I am not going to, my dear,’ said Mr Sparkler.

‘I shall thus have much improvement to effect in my sweet child,’ Mrs

Sparkler continued, ‘and cannot have her near me too soon. Amiable and

dear little Twoshoes! As to the settlement of poor papa’s affairs, my

interest in that is not very selfish. Papa behaved very generously to me

when I was married, and I have little or nothing to expect. Provided

he had made no will that can come into force, leaving a legacy to Mrs

General, I am contented. Dear papa, dear papa.’

She wept again, but Mrs General was the best of restoratives. The name

soon stimulated her to dry her eyes and say:

‘It is a highly encouraging circumstance in Edward’s illness, I am

thankful to think, and gives one the greatest confidence in his sense

not being impaired, or his proper spirit weakened--down to the time

of poor dear papa’s death at all events--that he paid off Mrs General

instantly, and sent her out of the house. I applaud him for it. I could

forgive him a great deal for doing, with such promptitude, so exactly

what I would have done myself!’

Mrs Sparkler was in the full glow of her gratification, when a double

knock was heard at the door. A very odd knock. Low, as if to avoid

making a noise and attracting attention. Long, as if the person knocking

were preoccupied in mind, and forgot to leave off.

‘Halloa!’ said Mr Sparkler. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Not Amy and Edward without notice and without a carriage!’ said Mrs

Sparkler. ‘Look out.’

The room was dark, but the street was lighter, because of its lamps. Mr

Sparkler’s head peeping over the balcony looked so very bulky and heavy

that it seemed on the point of overbalancing him and flattening the

unknown below.

‘It’s one fellow,’ said Mr Sparkler. ‘I can’t see who--stop though!’

On this second thought he went out into the balcony again and had

another look. He came back as the door was opened, and announced that he

believed he had identified ‘his governor’s tile.’ He was not mistaken,

for his governor, with his tile in his hand, was introduced immediately

afterwards.

‘Candles!’ said Mrs Sparkler, with a word of excuse for the darkness.

‘It’s light enough for me,’ said Mr Merdle.

When the candles were brought in, Mr Merdle was discovered standing

behind the door, picking his lips. ‘I thought I’d give you a call,’ he

said. ‘I am rather particularly occupied just now; and, as I happened to

be out for a stroll, I thought I’d give you a call.’

As he was in dinner dress, Fanny asked him where he had been dining?

‘Well,’ said Mr Merdle, ‘I haven’t been dining anywhere, particularly.’

‘Of course you have dined?’ said Fanny.

‘Why--no, I haven’t exactly dined,’ said Mr Merdle.

He had passed his hand over his yellow forehead and considered, as if he

were not sure about it. Something to eat was proposed. ‘No, thank you,’

said Mr Merdle, ‘I don’t feel inclined for it. I was to have dined out

along with Mrs Merdle. But as I didn’t feel inclined for dinner, I let

Mrs Merdle go by herself just as we were getting into the carriage, and

thought I’d take a stroll instead.’

Would he have tea or coffee? ‘No, thank you,’ said Mr Merdle. ‘I looked

in at the Club, and got a bottle of wine.’

At this period of his visit, Mr Merdle took the chair which Edmund

Sparkler had offered him, and which he had hitherto been pushing slowly

about before him, like a dull man with a pair of skates on for the first

time, who could not make up his mind to start. He now put his hat upon

another chair beside him, and, looking down into it as if it were some

twenty feet deep, said again: ‘You see I thought I’d give you a call.’

‘Flattering to us,’ said Fanny, ‘for you are not a calling man.’

‘No--no,’ returned Mr Merdle, who was by this time taking himself into

custody under both coat-sleeves. ‘No, I am not a calling man.’

‘You have too much to do for that,’ said Fanny. ‘Having so much to do,

Mr Merdle, loss of appetite is a serious thing with you, and you must

have it seen to. You must not be ill.’

‘Oh! I am very well,’ replied Mr Merdle, after deliberating about it. ‘I

am as well as I usually am. I am well enough. I am as well as I want to

be.’

The master-mind of the age, true to its characteristic of being at all

times a mind that had as little as possible to say for itself and great

difficulty in saying it, became mute again. Mrs Sparkler began to wonder

how long the master-mind meant to stay.

‘I was speaking of poor papa when you came in, sir.’

‘Aye! Quite a coincidence,’ said Mr Merdle.

Fanny did not see that; but felt it incumbent on her to continue

talking. ‘I was saying,’ she pursued, ‘that my brother’s illness has

occasioned a delay in examining and arranging papa’s property.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Merdle; ‘yes. There has been a delay.’

‘Not that it is of consequence,’ said Fanny.

‘Not,’ assented Mr Merdle, after having examined the cornice of all

that part of the room which was within his range: ‘not that it is of any

consequence.’

‘My only anxiety is,’ said Fanny, ‘that Mrs General should not get

anything.’

‘_She_ won’t get anything,’ said Mr Merdle.

Fanny was delighted to hear him express the opinion. Mr Merdle, after

taking another gaze into the depths of his hat as if he thought he saw

something at the bottom, rubbed his hair and slowly appended to his last

remark the confirmatory words, ‘Oh dear no. No. Not she. Not likely.’

As the topic seemed exhausted, and Mr Merdle too, Fanny inquired if he

were going to take up Mrs Merdle and the carriage in his way home?

‘No,’ he answered; ‘I shall go by the shortest way, and leave Mrs Merdle

to--’ here he looked all over the palms of both his hands as if he were

telling his own fortune--‘to take care of herself. I dare say she’ll

manage to do it.’

‘Probably,’ said Fanny.

There was then a long silence; during which, Mrs Sparkler, lying back

on her sofa again, shut her eyes and raised her eyebrows in her former

retirement from mundane affairs.

‘But, however,’ said Mr Merdle, ‘I am equally detaining you and myself.

I thought I’d give you a call, you know.’

‘Charmed, I am sure,’ said Fanny.

‘So I am off,’ added Mr Merdle, getting up. ‘Could you lend me a

penknife?’

It was an odd thing, Fanny smilingly observed, for her who could seldom

prevail upon herself even to write a letter, to lend to a man of such

vast business as Mr Merdle. ‘Isn’t it?’ Mr Merdle acquiesced; ‘but

I want one; and I know you have got several little wedding keepsakes

about, with scissors and tweezers and such things in them. You shall

have it back to-morrow.’

‘Edmund,’ said Mrs Sparkler, ‘open (now, very carefully, I beg and

beseech, for you are so very awkward) the mother of pearl box on my

little table there, and give Mr Merdle the mother of pearl penknife.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mr Merdle; ‘but if you have got one with a darker

handle, I think I should prefer one with a darker handle.’

‘Tortoise-shell?’

‘Thank you,’ said Mr Merdle; ‘yes. I think I should prefer

tortoise-shell.’

Edmund accordingly received instructions to open the tortoise-shell box,

and give Mr Merdle the tortoise-shell knife. On his doing so, his wife

said to the master-spirit graciously:

‘I will forgive you, if you ink it.’

‘I’ll undertake not to ink it,’ said Mr Merdle.

The illustrious visitor then put out his coat-cuff, and for a moment

entombed Mrs Sparkler’s hand: wrist, bracelet, and all. Where his own

hand had shrunk to, was not made manifest, but it was as remote from Mrs

Sparkler’s sense of touch as if he had been a highly meritorious Chelsea

Veteran or Greenwich Pensioner.

Thoroughly convinced, as he went out of the room, that it was the

longest day that ever did come to an end at last, and that there never

was a woman, not wholly devoid of personal attractions, so worn out by

idiotic and lumpish people, Fanny passed into the balcony for a breath

of air. Waters of vexation filled her eyes; and they had the effect of

making the famous Mr Merdle, in going down the street, appear to leap,

and waltz, and gyrate, as if he were possessed of several Devils.

CHAPTER 25. The Chief Butler Resigns the Seals of Office

The dinner-party was at the great Physician’s. Bar was there, and in

full force. Ferdinand Barnacle was there, and in his most engaging

state. Few ways of life were hidden from Physician, and he was oftener

in its darkest places than even Bishop. There were brilliant ladies

about London who perfectly doted on him, my dear, as the most charming

creature and the most delightful person, who would have been shocked to

find themselves so close to him if they could have known on what sights

those thoughtful eyes of his had rested within an hour or two, and near

to whose beds, and under what roofs, his composed figure had stood. But

Physician was a composed man, who performed neither on his own trumpet,

nor on the trumpets of other people. Many wonderful things did he see

and hear, and much irreconcilable moral contradiction did he pass his

life among; yet his equality of compassion was no more disturbed than

the Divine Master’s of all healing was. He went, like the rain,

among the just and unjust, doing all the good he could, and neither

proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at the corner of streets.

As no man of large experience of humanity, however quietly carried

it may be, can fail to be invested with an interest peculiar to the

possession of such knowledge, Physician was an attractive man. Even the

daintier gentlemen and ladies who had no idea of his secret, and

who would have been startled out of more wits than they had, by the

monstrous impropriety of his proposing to them ‘Come and see what I

see!’ confessed his attraction. Where he was, something real was. And

half a grain of reality, like the smallest portion of some other scarce

natural productions, will flavour an enormous quantity of diluent.

It came to pass, therefore, that Physician’s little dinners always

presented people in their least conventional lights. The guests said to

themselves, whether they were conscious of it or no, ‘Here is a man who

really has an acquaintance with us as we are, who is admitted to some

of us every day with our wigs and paint off, who hears the wanderings of

our minds, and sees the undisguised expression of our faces, when both

are past our control; we may as well make an approach to reality with

him, for the man has got the better of us and is too strong for us.’

Therefore, Physician’s guests came out so surprisingly at his round

table that they were almost natural.

Bar’s knowledge of that agglomeration of jurymen which is called

humanity was as sharp as a razor; yet a razor is not a generally

convenient instrument, and Physician’s plain bright scalpel, though far

less keen, was adaptable to far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the

gullibility and knavery of people; but Physician could have given him

a better insight into their tendernesses and affections, in one week of

his rounds, than Westminster Hall and all the circuits put together,

in threescore years and ten. Bar always had a suspicion of this, and

perhaps was glad to encourage it (for, if the world were really a great

Law Court, one would think that the last day of Term could not too soon

arrive); and so he liked and respected Physician quite as much as any

other kind of man did.

Mr Merdle’s default left a Banquo’s chair at the table; but, if he had

been there, he would have merely made the difference of Banquo in it,

and consequently he was no loss. Bar, who picked up all sorts of odds

and ends about Westminster Hall, much as a raven would have done if he

had passed as much of his time there, had been picking up a great many

straws lately and tossing them about, to try which way the Merdle wind

blew. He now had a little talk on the subject with Mrs Merdle herself;

sidling up to that lady, of course, with his double eye-glass and his

jury droop.

‘A certain bird,’ said Bar; and he looked as if it could have been no

other bird than a magpie; ‘has been whispering among us lawyers lately,

that there is to be an addition to the titled personages of this realm.’

‘Really?’ said Mrs Merdle.

‘Yes,’ said Bar. ‘Has not the bird been whispering in very different

ears from ours--in lovely ears?’ He looked expressively at Mrs Merdle’s

nearest ear-ring.

‘Do you mean mine?’ asked Mrs Merdle.

‘When I say lovely,’ said Bar, ‘I always mean you.’

‘You never mean anything, I think,’ returned Mrs Merdle (not

displeased).

‘Oh, cruelly unjust!’ said Bar. ‘But, the bird.’

‘I am the last person in the world to hear news,’ observed Mrs Merdle,

carelessly arranging her stronghold. ‘Who is it?’

‘What an admirable witness you would make!’ said Bar. ‘No jury (unless

we could empanel one of blind men) could resist you, if you were ever so

bad a one; but you would be such a good one!’

‘Why, you ridiculous man?’ asked Mrs Merdle, laughing.

Bar waved his double eye-glass three or four times between himself and

the Bosom, as a rallying answer, and inquired in his most insinuating

accents:

‘What am I to call the most elegant, accomplished and charming of women,

a few weeks, or it may be a few days, hence?’

‘Didn’t your bird tell you what to call her?’ answered Mrs Merdle. ‘Do

ask it to-morrow, and tell me the next time you see me what it says.’

This led to further passages of similar pleasantry between the two; but

Bar, with all his sharpness, got nothing out of them. Physician, on the

other hand, taking Mrs Merdle down to her carriage and attending on her

as she put on her cloak, inquired into the symptoms with his usual calm

directness.

‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘is this true about Merdle?’

‘My dear doctor,’ she returned, ‘you ask me the very question that I was

half disposed to ask you.’

‘To ask me! Why me?’

‘Upon my honour, I think Mr Merdle reposes greater confidence in you

than in any one.’

‘On the contrary, he tells me absolutely nothing, even professionally.

You have heard the talk, of course?’

‘Of course I have. But you know what Mr Merdle is; you know how

taciturn and reserved he is. I assure you I have no idea what foundation

for it there may be. I should like it to be true; why should I deny that

to you? You would know better, if I did!’

‘Just so,’ said Physician.

‘But whether it is all true, or partly true, or entirely false, I am

wholly unable to say. It is a most provoking situation, a most absurd

situation; but you know Mr Merdle, and are not surprised.’

Physician was not surprised, handed her into her carriage, and bade her

Good Night. He stood for a moment at his own hall door, looking sedately

at the elegant equipage as it rattled away. On his return up-stairs, the

rest of the guests soon dispersed, and he was left alone. Being a great

reader of all kinds of literature (and never at all apologetic for that

weakness), he sat down comfortably to read.

The clock upon his study table pointed to a few minutes short of twelve,

when his attention was called to it by a ringing at the door bell. A man

of plain habits, he had sent his servants to bed and must needs go down

to open the door. He went down, and there found a man without hat or

coat, whose shirt sleeves were rolled up tight to his shoulders. For a

moment, he thought the man had been fighting: the rather, as he was much

agitated and out of breath. A second look, however, showed him that

the man was particularly clean, and not otherwise discomposed as to his

dress than as it answered this description.

‘I come from the warm-baths, sir, round in the neighbouring street.’

‘And what is the matter at the warm-baths?’

‘Would you please to come directly, sir. We found that, lying on the

table.’

He put into the physician’s hand a scrap of paper. Physician looked at

it, and read his own name and address written in pencil; nothing more.

He looked closer at the writing, looked at the man, took his hat from

its peg, put the key of his door in his pocket, and they hurried away

together.

When they came to the warm-baths, all the other people belonging to that

establishment were looking out for them at the door, and running up and

down the passages. ‘Request everybody else to keep back, if you please,’

said the physician aloud to the master; ‘and do you take me straight to

the place, my friend,’ to the messenger.

The messenger hurried before him, along a grove of little rooms,

and turning into one at the end of the grove, looked round the door.

Physician was close upon him, and looked round the door too.

There was a bath in that corner, from which the water had been hastily

drained off. Lying in it, as in a grave or sarcophagus, with a hurried

drapery of sheet and blanket thrown across it, was the body of a

heavily-made man, with an obtuse head, and coarse, mean, common

features. A sky-light had been opened to release the steam with which

the room had been filled; but it hung, condensed into water-drops,

heavily upon the walls, and heavily upon the face and figure in the

bath. The room was still hot, and the marble of the bath still warm; but

the face and figure were clammy to the touch. The white marble at the

bottom of the bath was veined with a dreadful red. On the ledge at

the side, were an empty laudanum-bottle and a tortoise-shell handled

penknife--soiled, but not with ink.

‘Separation of jugular vein--death rapid--been dead at least half an

hour.’ This echo of the physician’s words ran through the passages

and little rooms, and through the house while he was yet straightening

himself from having bent down to reach to the bottom of the bath, and

while he was yet dabbling his hands in water; redly veining it as the

marble was veined, before it mingled into one tint.

He turned his eyes to the dress upon the sofa, and to the watch, money,

and pocket-book on the table. A folded note half buckled up in the

pocket-book, and half protruding from it, caught his observant glance.

He looked at it, touched it, pulled it a little further out from among

the leaves, said quietly, ‘This is addressed to me,’ and opened and read

it.

There were no directions for him to give. The people of the house knew

what to do; the proper authorities were soon brought; and they took an

equable business-like possession of the deceased, and of what had been

his property, with no greater disturbance of manner or countenance than

usually attends the winding-up of a clock. Physician was glad to walk

out into the night air--was even glad, in spite of his great experience,

to sit down upon a door-step for a little while: feeling sick and faint.

Bar was a near neighbour of his, and, when he came to the house, he saw

a light in the room where he knew his friend often sat late getting up

his work. As the light was never there when Bar was not, it gave him

assurance that Bar was not yet in bed. In fact, this busy bee had

a verdict to get to-morrow, against evidence, and was improving the

shining hours in setting snares for the gentlemen of the jury.

Physician’s knock astonished Bar; but, as he immediately suspected that

somebody had come to tell him that somebody else was robbing him, or

otherwise trying to get the better of him, he came down promptly and

softly. He had been clearing his head with a lotion of cold water, as a

good preparative to providing hot water for the heads of the jury, and

had been reading with the neck of his shirt thrown wide open that he

might the more freely choke the opposite witnesses. In consequence, he

came down, looking rather wild. Seeing Physician, the least expected of

men, he looked wilder and said, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘You asked me once what Merdle’s complaint was.’

‘Extraordinary answer! I know I did.’

‘I told you I had not found out.’

‘Yes. I know you did.’

‘I have found it out.’

‘My God!’ said Bar, starting back, and clapping his hand upon the

other’s breast. ‘And so have I! I see it in your face.’

They went into the nearest room, where Physician gave him the letter to

read. He read it through half-a-dozen times. There was not much in it

as to quantity; but it made a great demand on his close and continuous

attention. He could not sufficiently give utterance to his regret that

he had not himself found a clue to this. The smallest clue, he said,

would have made him master of the case, and what a case it would have

been to have got to the bottom of!

Physician had engaged to break the intelligence in Harley Street. Bar

could not at once return to his inveiglements of the most enlightened

and remarkable jury he had ever seen in that box, with whom, he could

tell his learned friend, no shallow sophistry would go down, and no

unhappily abused professional tact and skill prevail (this was the way

he meant to begin with them); so he said he would go too, and would

loiter to and fro near the house while his friend was inside. They

walked there, the better to recover self-possession in the air; and the

wings of day were fluttering the night when Physician knocked at the

door.

A footman of rainbow hues, in the public eye, was sitting up for his

master--that is to say, was fast asleep in the kitchen over a couple

of candles and a newspaper, demonstrating the great accumulation of

mathematical odds against the probabilities of a house being set on fire

by accident When this serving man was roused, Physician had still to

await the rousing of the Chief Butler. At last that noble creature came

into the dining-room in a flannel gown and list shoes; but with his

cravat on, and a Chief Butler all over. It was morning now. Physician

had opened the shutters of one window while waiting, that he might see

the light.

‘Mrs Merdle’s maid must be called, and told to get Mrs Merdle up, and

prepare her as gently as she can to see me. I have dreadful news to

break to her.’

Thus Physician to the Chief Butler. The latter, who had a candle in his

hand, called his man to take it away. Then he approached the window with

dignity; looking on at Physician’s news exactly as he had looked on at

the dinners in that very room.

‘Mr Merdle is dead.’

‘I should wish,’ said the Chief Butler, ‘to give a month’s notice.’

‘Mr Merdle has destroyed himself.’

‘Sir,’ said the Chief Butler, ‘that is very unpleasant to the feelings

of one in my position, as calculated to awaken prejudice; and I should

wish to leave immediately.’

‘If you are not shocked, are you not surprised, man?’ demanded the

Physician, warmly.

The Chief Butler, erect and calm, replied in these memorable words.

‘Sir, Mr Merdle never was the gentleman, and no ungentlemanly act on

Mr Merdle’s part would surprise me. Is there anybody else I can send to

you, or any other directions I can give before I leave, respecting what

you would wish to be done?’

When Physician, after discharging himself of his trust up-stairs,

rejoined Bar in the street, he said no more of his interview with Mrs

Merdle than that he had not yet told her all, but that what he had told

her she had borne pretty well. Bar had devoted his leisure in the street

to the construction of a most ingenious man-trap for catching the whole

of his jury at a blow; having got that matter settled in his mind,

it was lucid on the late catastrophe, and they walked home slowly,

discussing it in every bearing. Before parting at the Physician’s door,

they both looked up at the sunny morning sky, into which the smoke of a

few early fires and the breath and voices of a few early stirrers were

peacefully rising, and then looked round upon the immense city, and

said, if all those hundreds and thousands of beggared people who were

yet asleep could only know, as they two spoke, the ruin that impended

over them, what a fearful cry against one miserable soul would go up to

Heaven!

The report that the great man was dead, got about with astonishing

rapidity. At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were

known, and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of

Light to meet the demand of the occasion. He had concealed a dropsy from

infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest from his

grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every morning

of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of

important veins in his body after the manner of fireworks, he had had

something the matter with his lungs, he had had something the matter

with his heart, he had had something the matter with his brain. Five

hundred people who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed on the

whole subject, believed before they had done breakfast, that they

privately and personally knew Physician to have said to Mr Merdle, ‘You

must expect to go out, some day, like the snuff of a candle;’ and that

they knew Mr Merdle to have said to Physician, ‘A man can die but once.’

By about eleven o’clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the

brain, became the favourite theory against the field; and by twelve the

something had been distinctly ascertained to be ‘Pressure.’

Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and seemed to

make everybody so comfortable, that it might have lasted all day but for

Bar’s having taken the real state of the case into Court at half-past

nine. This led to its beginning to be currently whispered all over

London by about one, that Mr Merdle had killed himself. Pressure,

however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, became a greater

favourite than ever. There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in

every street. All the people who had tried to make money and had not

been able to do it, said, There you were! You no sooner began to devote

yourself to the pursuit of wealth than you got Pressure. The idle people

improved the occasion in a similar manner. See, said they, what you

brought yourself to by work, work, work! You persisted in working, you

overdid it. Pressure came on, and you were done for! This consideration

was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more so than among the

young clerks and partners who had never been in the slightest danger

of overdoing it. These, one and all, declared, quite piously, that they

hoped they would never forget the warning as long as they lived, and

that their conduct might be so regulated as to keep off Pressure, and

preserve them, a comfort to their friends, for many years.

But, at about the time of High ‘Change, Pressure began to wane, and

appalling whispers to circulate, east, west, north, and south. At first

they were faint, and went no further than a doubt whether Mr Merdle’s

wealth would be found to be as vast as had been supposed; whether there

might not be a temporary difficulty in ‘realising’ it; whether there

might not even be a temporary suspension (say a month or so), on the

part of the wonderful Bank. As the whispers became louder, which they

did from that time every minute, they became more threatening. He had

sprung from nothing, by no natural growth or process that any one could

account for; he had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow; he had been

a down-looking man, and no one had ever been able to catch his eye;

he had been taken up by all sorts of people in quite an unaccountable

manner; he had never had any money of his own, his ventures had been

utterly reckless, and his expenditure had been most enormous. In steady

progression, as the day declined, the talk rose in sound and purpose.

He had left a letter at the Baths addressed to his physician, and his

physician had got the letter, and the letter would be produced at the

Inquest on the morrow, and it would fall like a thunderbolt upon the

multitude he had deluded. Numbers of men in every profession and trade

would be blighted by his insolvency; old people who had been in easy

circumstances all their lives would have no place of repentance for

their trust in him but the workhouse; legions of women and children

would have their whole future desolated by the hand of this mighty

scoundrel. Every partaker of his magnificent feasts would be seen to

have been a sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes; every servile

worshipper of riches who had helped to set him on his pedestal, would

have done better to worship the Devil point-blank. So, the talk, lashed

louder and higher by confirmation on confirmation, and by edition after

edition of the evening papers, swelled into such a roar when night came,

as might have brought one to believe that a solitary watcher on the

gallery above the Dome of St Paul’s would have perceived the night air

to be laden with a heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled with

every form of execration.

For by that time it was known that the late Mr Merdle’s complaint

had been simply Forgery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of such

wide-spread adulation, the sitter at great men’s feasts, the roc’s egg

of great ladies’ assemblies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller

of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargain-driver with a Minister

for Lordships of the Circumlocution Office, the recipient of more

acknowledgment within some ten or fifteen years, at most, than had been

bestowed in England upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon

all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, with all their works to

testify for them, during two centuries at least--he, the shining wonder,

the new constellation to be followed by the wise men bringing gifts,

until it stopped over a certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and

disappeared--was simply the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that

ever cheated the gallows.

CHAPTER 26. Reaping the Whirlwind

With a precursory sound of hurried breath and hurried feet, Mr Pancks

rushed into Arthur Clennam’s Counting-house. The Inquest was over, the

letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of

straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical

ship had blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates,

and boats of all sizes; and on the deep was nothing but ruin; nothing

but burning hulls, bursting magazines, great guns self-exploded tearing

friends and neighbours to pieces, drowning men clinging to unseaworthy

spars and going down every minute, spent swimmers, floating dead, and

sharks.

The usual diligence and order of the Counting-house at the Works were

overthrown. Unopened letters and unsorted papers lay strewn about the

desk. In the midst of these tokens of prostrated energy and dismissed

hope, the master of the Counting-house stood idle in his usual place,

with his arms crossed on the desk, and his head bowed down upon them.

Mr Pancks rushed in and saw him, and stood still. In another minute, Mr

Pancks’s arms were on the desk, and Mr Pancks’s head was bowed down

upon them; and for some time they remained in these attitudes, idle and

silent, with the width of the little room between them.

Mr Pancks was the first to lift up his head and speak.

‘I persuaded you to it, Mr Clennam. I know it. Say what you will. You

can’t say more to me than I say to myself. You can’t say more than I

deserve.’

‘O, Pancks, Pancks!’ returned Clennam, ‘don’t speak of deserving. What

do I myself deserve!’

‘Better luck,’ said Pancks.

‘I,’ pursued Clennam, without attending to him, ‘who have ruined my

partner! Pancks, Pancks, I have ruined Doyce! The honest, self-helpful,

indefatigable old man who has worked his way all through his life;

the man who has contended against so much disappointment, and who has

brought out of it such a good and hopeful nature; the man I have felt

so much for, and meant to be so true and useful to; I have ruined

him--brought him to shame and disgrace--ruined him, ruined him!’

The agony into which the reflection wrought his mind was so distressing

to see, that Mr Pancks took hold of himself by the hair of his head, and

tore it in desperation at the spectacle.

‘Reproach me!’ cried Pancks. ‘Reproach me, sir, or I’ll do myself an

injury. Say,--You fool, you villain. Say,--Ass, how could you do it;

Beast, what did you mean by it! Catch hold of me somewhere. Say

something abusive to me!’ All the time, Mr Pancks was tearing at his

tough hair in a most pitiless and cruel manner.

‘If you had never yielded to this fatal mania, Pancks,’ said Clennam,

more in commiseration than retaliation, ‘it would have been how much

better for you, and how much better for me!’

‘At me again, sir!’ cried Pancks, grinding his teeth in remorse. ‘At

me again!’

‘If you had never gone into those accursed calculations, and brought out

your results with such abominable clearness,’ groaned Clennam, ‘it would

have been how much better for you, Pancks, and how much better for me!’

‘At me again, sir!’ exclaimed Pancks, loosening his hold of his hair;

‘at me again, and again!’

Clennam, however, finding him already beginning to be pacified, had said

all he wanted to say, and more. He wrung his hand, only adding, ‘Blind

leaders of the blind, Pancks! Blind leaders of the blind! But Doyce,

Doyce, Doyce; my injured partner!’ That brought his head down on the

desk once more.

Their former attitudes and their former silence were once more first

encroached upon by Pancks.

‘Not been to bed, sir, since it began to get about. Been high and low,

on the chance of finding some hope of saving any cinders from the fire.

All in vain. All gone. All vanished.’

‘I know it,’ returned Clennam, ‘too well.’

Mr Pancks filled up a pause with a groan that came out of the very

depths of his soul.

‘Only yesterday, Pancks,’ said Arthur; ‘only yesterday, Monday, I had

the fixed intention of selling, realising, and making an end of it.’

‘I can’t say as much for myself, sir,’ returned Pancks. ‘Though it’s

wonderful how many people I’ve heard of, who were going to realise

yesterday, of all days in the three hundred and sixty-five, if it hadn’t

been too late!’

His steam-like breathings, usually droll in their effect, were more

tragic than so many groans: while from head to foot, he was in that

begrimed, besmeared, neglected state, that he might have been an

authentic portrait of Misfortune which could scarcely be discerned

through its want of cleaning.

‘Mr Clennam, had you laid out--everything?’ He got over the break before

the last word, and also brought out the last word itself with great

difficulty.

‘Everything.’

Mr Pancks took hold of his tough hair again, and gave it such a wrench

that he pulled out several prongs of it. After looking at these with an

eye of wild hatred, he put them in his pocket.

‘My course,’ said Clennam, brushing away some tears that had been

silently dropping down his face, ‘must be taken at once. What wretched

amends I can make must be made. I must clear my unfortunate partner’s

reputation. I must retain nothing for myself. I must resign to our

creditors the power of management I have so much abused, and I must work

out as much of my fault--or crime--as is susceptible of being worked out

in the rest of my days.’

‘Is it impossible, sir, to tide over the present?’

‘Out of the question. Nothing can be tided over now, Pancks. The sooner

the business can pass out of my hands, the better for it. There are

engagements to be met, this week, which would bring the catastrophe

before many days were over, even if I would postpone it for a single day

by going on for that space, secretly knowing what I know. All last night

I thought of what I would do; what remains is to do it.’

‘Not entirely of yourself?’ said Pancks, whose face was as damp as if

his steam were turning into water as fast as he dismally blew it off.

‘Have some legal help.’

‘Perhaps I had better.’

‘Have Rugg.’

‘There is not much to do. He will do it as well as another.’

‘Shall I fetch Rugg, Mr Clennam?’

‘If you could spare the time, I should be much obliged to you.’

Mr Pancks put on his hat that moment, and steamed away to Pentonville.

While he was gone Arthur never raised his head from the desk, but

remained in that one position.

Mr Pancks brought his friend and professional adviser, Mr Rugg, back

with him. Mr Rugg had had such ample experience, on the road, of Mr

Pancks’s being at that present in an irrational state of mind, that he

opened his professional mediation by requesting that gentleman to take

himself out of the way. Mr Pancks, crushed and submissive, obeyed.

‘He is not unlike what my daughter was, sir, when we began the Breach of

Promise action of Rugg and Bawkins, in which she was Plaintiff,’ said

Mr Rugg. ‘He takes too strong and direct an interest in the case. His

feelings are worked upon. There is no getting on, in our profession,

with feelings worked upon, sir.’

As he pulled off his gloves and put them in his hat, he saw, in a side

glance or two, that a great change had come over his client.

‘I am sorry to perceive, sir,’ said Mr Rugg, ‘that you have been

allowing your own feelings to be worked upon. Now, pray don’t, pray

don’t. These losses are much to be deplored, sir, but we must look ‘em

in the face.’

‘If the money I have sacrificed had been all my own, Mr Rugg,’ sighed Mr

Clennam, ‘I should have cared far less.’

‘Indeed, sir?’ said Mr Rugg, rubbing his hands with a cheerful air.

‘You surprise me. That’s singular, sir. I have generally found, in my

experience, that it’s their own money people are most particular about.

I have seen people get rid of a good deal of other people’s money, and

bear it very well: very well indeed.’

With these comforting remarks, Mr Rugg seated himself on an office-stool

at the desk and proceeded to business.

‘Now, Mr Clennam, by your leave, let us go into the matter. Let us see

the state of the case. The question is simple. The question is the

usual plain, straightforward, common-sense question. What can we do for

ourself? What can we do for ourself?’

‘This is not the question with me, Mr Rugg,’ said Arthur. ‘You mistake

it in the beginning. It is, what can I do for my partner, how can I best

make reparation to him?’

‘I am afraid, sir, do you know,’ argued Mr Rugg persuasively, ‘that you

are still allowing your feeling to be worked upon. I _don’t_ like the

term “reparation,” sir, except as a lever in the hands of counsel. Will

you excuse my saying that I feel it my duty to offer you the caution,

that you really must not allow your feelings to be worked upon?’

‘Mr Rugg,’ said Clennam, nerving himself to go through with what he had

resolved upon, and surprising that gentleman by appearing, in his

despondency, to have a settled determination of purpose; ‘you give me

the impression that you will not be much disposed to adopt the course I

have made up my mind to take. If your disapproval of it should render

you unwilling to discharge such business as it necessitates, I am sorry

for it, and must seek other aid. But I will represent to you at once,

that to argue against it with me is useless.’

‘Good, sir,’ answered Mr Rugg, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Good, sir.

Since the business is to be done by some hands, let it be done by mine.

Such was my principle in the case of Rugg and Bawkins. Such is my

principle in most cases.’

Clennam then proceeded to state to Mr Rugg his fixed resolution. He told

Mr Rugg that his partner was a man of great simplicity and integrity,

and that in all he meant to do, he was guided above all things by a

knowledge of his partner’s character, and a respect for his feelings. He

explained that his partner was then absent on an enterprise of

importance, and that it particularly behoved himself publicly to accept

the blame of what he had rashly done, and publicly to exonerate his

partner from all participation in the responsibility of it, lest the

successful conduct of that enterprise should be endangered by the

slightest suspicion wrongly attaching to his partner’s honour and credit

in another country. He told Mr Rugg that to clear his partner morally,

to the fullest extent, and publicly and unreservedly to declare that he,

Arthur Clennam, of that Firm, had of his own sole act, and even

expressly against his partner’s caution, embarked its resources in the

swindles that had lately perished, was the only real atonement within

his power; was a better atonement to the particular man than it would be

to many men; and was therefore the atonement he had first to make. With

this view, his intention was to print a declaration to the foregoing

effect, which he had already drawn up; and, besides circulating it among

all who had dealings with the House, to advertise it in the public

papers. Concurrently with this measure (the description of which cost Mr

Rugg innumerable wry faces and great uneasiness in his limbs), he would

address a letter to all the creditors, exonerating his partner in a

solemn manner, informing them of the stoppage of the House until their

pleasure could be known and his partner communicated with, and humbly

submitting himself to their direction. If, through their consideration

for his partner’s innocence, the affairs could ever be got into such

train as that the business could be profitably resumed, and its present

downfall overcome, then his own share in it should revert to his

partner, as the only reparation he could make to him in money value for

the distress and loss he had unhappily brought upon him, and he himself,

at as small a salary as he could live upon, would ask to be allowed to

serve the business as a faithful clerk.

Though Mr Rugg saw plainly there was no preventing this from being done,

still the wryness of his face and the uneasiness of his limbs so sorely

required the propitiation of a Protest, that he made one. ‘I offer no

objection, sir,’ said he, ‘I argue no point with you. I will carry out

your views, sir; but, under protest.’ Mr Rugg then stated, not without

prolixity, the heads of his protest. These were, in effect, because the

whole town, or he might say the whole country, was in the first madness

of the late discovery, and the resentment against the victims would be

very strong: those who had not been deluded being certain to wax

exceedingly wroth with them for not having been as wise as they were:

and those who had been deluded being certain to find excuses and reasons

for themselves, of which they were equally certain to see that other

sufferers were wholly devoid: not to mention the great probability of

every individual sufferer persuading himself, to his violent

indignation, that but for the example of all the other sufferers he

never would have put himself in the way of suffering. Because such a

declaration as Clennam’s, made at such a time, would certainly draw down

upon him a storm of animosity, rendering it impossible to calculate on

forbearance in the creditors, or on unanimity among them; and exposing

him a solitary target to a straggling cross-fire, which might bring him

down from half-a-dozen quarters at once.

To all this Clennam merely replied that, granting the whole protest,

nothing in it lessened the force, or could lessen the force, of the

voluntary and public exoneration of his partner. He therefore, once

and for all, requested Mr Rugg’s immediate aid in getting the business

despatched. Upon that, Mr Rugg fell to work; and Arthur, retaining no

property to himself but his clothes and books, and a little loose

money, placed his small private banker’s-account with the papers of the

business.

The disclosure was made, and the storm raged fearfully. Thousands of

people were wildly staring about for somebody alive to heap reproaches

on; and this notable case, courting publicity, set the living somebody

so much wanted, on a scaffold. When people who had nothing to do with

the case were so sensible of its flagrancy, people who lost money by it

could scarcely be expected to deal mildly with it. Letters of reproach

and invective showered in from the creditors; and Mr Rugg, who sat upon

the high stool every day and read them all, informed his client within a

week that he feared there were writs out.

‘I must take the consequences of what I have done,’ said Clennam. ‘The

writs will find me here.’

On the very next morning, as he was turning in Bleeding Heart Yard by

Mrs Plornish’s corner, Mrs Plornish stood at the door waiting for him,

and mysteriously besought him to step into Happy Cottage. There he found

Mr Rugg.

‘I thought I’d wait for you here. I wouldn’t go on to the Counting-house

this morning if I was you, sir.’

‘Why not, Mr Rugg?’

‘There are as many as five out, to my knowledge.’

‘It cannot be too soon over,’ said Clennam. ‘Let them take me at once.’

‘Yes, but,’ said Mr Rugg, getting between him and the door, ‘hear

reason, hear reason. They’ll take you soon enough, Mr Clennam, I don’t

doubt; but, hear reason. It almost always happens, in these cases,

that some insignificant matter pushes itself in front and makes much

of itself. Now, I find there’s a little one out--a mere Palace Court

jurisdiction--and I have reason to believe that a caption may be made

upon that. I wouldn’t be taken upon that.’

‘Why not?’ asked Clennam.

‘I’d be taken on a full-grown one, sir,’ said Mr Rugg. ‘It’s as well to

keep up appearances. As your professional adviser, I should prefer your

being taken on a writ from one of the Superior Courts, if you have no

objection to do me that favour. It looks better.’

‘Mr Rugg,’ said Arthur, in his dejection, ‘my only wish is, that it

should be over. I will go on, and take my chance.’

‘Another word of reason, sir!’ cried Mr Rugg. ‘Now, this _is_ reason.

The other may be taste; but this is reason. If you should be taken on a

little one, sir, you would go to the Marshalsea. Now, you know what the

Marshalsea is. Very close. Excessively confined. Whereas in the King’s

Bench--’ Mr Rugg waved his right hand freely, as expressing abundance of

space.

‘I would rather,’ said Clennam, ‘be taken to the Marshalsea than to any

other prison.’

‘Do you say so indeed, sir?’ returned Mr Rugg. ‘Then this is taste, too,

and we may be walking.’

He was a little offended at first, but he soon overlooked it. They

walked through the Yard to the other end. The Bleeding Hearts were more

interested in Arthur since his reverses than formerly; now regarding him

as one who was true to the place and had taken up his freedom. Many of

them came out to look after him, and to observe to one another, with

great unctuousness, that he was ‘pulled down by it.’ Mrs Plornish

and her father stood at the top of the steps at their own end, much

depressed and shaking their heads.

There was nobody visibly in waiting when Arthur and Mr Rugg arrived

at the Counting-house. But an elderly member of the Jewish persuasion,

preserved in rum, followed them close, and looked in at the glass before

Mr Rugg had opened one of the day’s letters. ‘Oh!’ said Mr Rugg,

looking up. ‘How do you do? Step in--Mr Clennam, I think this is the

gentleman I was mentioning.’

This gentleman explained the object of his visit to be ‘a tyfling madder

ob bithznithz,’ and executed his legal function.

‘Shall I accompany you, Mr Clennam?’ asked Mr Rugg politely, rubbing his

hands.

‘I would rather go alone, thank you. Be so good as send me my clothes.’

Mr Rugg in a light airy way replied in the affirmative, and shook hands

with him. He and his attendant then went down-stairs, got into the first

conveyance they found, and drove to the old gates.

‘Where I little thought, Heaven forgive me,’ said Clennam to himself,

‘that I should ever enter thus!’

Mr Chivery was on the Lock, and Young John was in the Lodge: either

newly released from it, or waiting to take his own spell of duty. Both

were more astonished on seeing who the prisoner was, than one might have

thought turnkeys would have been. The elder Mr Chivery shook hands with

him in a shame-faced kind of way, and said, ‘I don’t call to mind,

sir, as I was ever less glad to see you.’ The younger Mr Chivery, more

distant, did not shake hands with him at all; he stood looking at him

in a state of indecision so observable that it even came within the

observation of Clennam with his heavy eyes and heavy heart. Presently

afterwards, Young John disappeared into the jail.

As Clennam knew enough of the place to know that he was required to

remain in the Lodge a certain time, he took a seat in a corner, and

feigned to be occupied with the perusal of letters from his pocket.

They did not so engross his attention, but that he saw, with gratitude,

how the elder Mr Chivery kept the Lodge clear of prisoners; how he

signed to some, with his keys, not to come in, how he nudged others with

his elbows to go out, and how he made his misery as easy to him as he

could.

Arthur was sitting with his eyes fixed on the floor, recalling the past,

brooding over the present, and not attending to either, when he felt

himself touched upon the shoulder. It was by Young John; and he said,

‘You can come now.’

He got up and followed Young John. When they had gone a step or two

within the inner iron-gate, Young John turned and said to him:

‘You want a room. I have got you one.’

‘I thank you heartily.’

Young John turned again, and took him in at the old doorway, up the old

staircase, into the old room. Arthur stretched out his hand. Young John

looked at it, looked at him--sternly--swelled, choked, and said:

‘I don’t know as I can. No, I find I can’t. But I thought you’d like the

room, and here it is for you.’

Surprise at this inconsistent behaviour yielded when he was gone (he

went away directly) to the feelings which the empty room awakened in

Clennam’s wounded breast, and to the crowding associations with the

one good and gentle creature who had sanctified it. Her absence in his

altered fortunes made it, and him in it, so very desolate and so much in

need of such a face of love and truth, that he turned against the

wall to weep, sobbing out, as his heart relieved itself, ‘O my Little

Dorrit!’

CHAPTER 27. The Pupil of the Marshalsea

The day was sunny, and the Marshalsea, with the hot noon striking

upon it, was unwontedly quiet. Arthur Clennam dropped into a solitary

arm-chair, itself as faded as any debtor in the jail, and yielded

himself to his thoughts.

In the unnatural peace of having gone through the dreaded arrest, and

got there,--the first change of feeling which the prison most commonly

induced, and from which dangerous resting-place so many men had slipped

down to the depths of degradation and disgrace by so many ways,--he

could think of some passages in his life, almost as if he were removed

from them into another state of existence. Taking into account where he

was, the interest that had first brought him there when he had been free

to keep away, and the gentle presence that was equally inseparable from

the walls and bars about him and from the impalpable remembrances of his

later life which no walls or bars could imprison, it was not remarkable

that everything his memory turned upon should bring him round again to

Little Dorrit. Yet it was remarkable to him; not because of the fact

itself, but because of the reminder it brought with it, how much the

dear little creature had influenced his better resolutions.

None of us clearly know to whom or to what we are indebted in this wise,

until some marked stop in the whirling wheel of life brings the right

perception with it. It comes with sickness, it comes with sorrow, it

comes with the loss of the dearly loved, it is one of the most frequent

uses of adversity. It came to Clennam in his adversity, strongly and

tenderly. ‘When I first gathered myself together,’ he thought, ‘and

set something like purpose before my jaded eyes, whom had I before me,

toiling on, for a good object’s sake, without encouragement, without

notice, against ignoble obstacles that would have turned an army of

received heroes and heroines? One weak girl! When I tried to conquer

my misplaced love, and to be generous to the man who was more fortunate

than I, though he should never know it or repay me with a gracious word,

in whom had I watched patience, self-denial, self-subdual, charitable

construction, the noblest generosity of the affections? In the same poor

girl! If I, a man, with a man’s advantages and means and energies, had

slighted the whisper in my heart, that if my father had erred, it was my

first duty to conceal the fault and to repair it, what youthful figure

with tender feet going almost bare on the damp ground, with spare hands

ever working, with its slight shape but half protected from the

sharp weather, would have stood before me to put me to shame? Little

Dorrit’s.’ So always as he sat alone in the faded chair, thinking.

Always, Little Dorrit. Until it seemed to him as if he met the reward of

having wandered away from her, and suffered anything to pass between him

and his remembrance of her virtues.

His door was opened, and the head of the elder Chivery was put in a very

little way, without being turned towards him.

‘I am off the Lock, Mr Clennam, and going out. Can I do anything for

you?’

‘Many thanks. Nothing.’

‘You’ll excuse me opening the door,’ said Mr Chivery; ‘but I couldn’t

make you hear.’

‘Did you knock?’ ‘Half-a-dozen times.’

Rousing himself, Clennam observed that the prison had awakened from its

noontide doze, that the inmates were loitering about the shady yard, and

that it was late in the afternoon. He had been thinking for hours.

‘Your things is come,’ said Mr Chivery, ‘and my son is going to carry

‘em up. I should have sent ‘em up but for his wishing to carry ‘em

himself. Indeed he would have ‘em himself, and so I couldn’t send ‘em

up. Mr Clennam, could I say a word to you?’

‘Pray come in,’ said Arthur; for Mr Chivery’s head was still put in at

the door a very little way, and Mr Chivery had but one ear upon him,

instead of both eyes. This was native delicacy in Mr Chivery--true

politeness; though his exterior had very much of a turnkey about it, and

not the least of a gentleman.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mr Chivery, without advancing; ‘it’s no odds me

coming in. Mr Clennam, don’t you take no notice of my son (if you’ll

be so good) in case you find him cut up anyways difficult. My son has a

‘art, and my son’s ‘art is in the right place. Me and his mother knows

where to find it, and we find it sitiwated correct.’

With this mysterious speech, Mr Chivery took his ear away and shut the

door. He might have been gone ten minutes, when his son succeeded him.

‘Here’s your portmanteau,’ he said to Arthur, putting it carefully down.

‘It’s very kind of you. I am ashamed that you should have the trouble.’

He was gone before it came to that; but soon returned, saying exactly as

before, ‘Here’s your black box:’ which he also put down with care.

‘I am very sensible of this attention. I hope we may shake hands now, Mr

John.’

Young John, however, drew back, turning his right wrist in a socket made

of his left thumb and middle-finger and said as he had said at first,

‘I don’t know as I can. No; I find I can’t!’ He then stood regarding the

prisoner sternly, though with a swelling humour in his eyes that looked

like pity.

‘Why are you angry with me,’ said Clennam, ‘and yet so ready to do me

these kind services? There must be some mistake between us. If I have

done anything to occasion it I am sorry.’

‘No mistake, sir,’ returned John, turning the wrist backwards and

forwards in the socket, for which it was rather tight. ‘No mistake, sir,

in the feelings with which my eyes behold you at the present moment! If

I was at all fairly equal to your weight, Mr Clennam--which I am not;

and if you weren’t under a cloud--which you are; and if it wasn’t

against all rules of the Marshalsea--which it is; those feelings are

such, that they would stimulate me, more to having it out with you in

a Round on the present spot than to anything else I could name.’

Arthur looked at him for a moment in some wonder, and some little anger.

‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘A mistake, a mistake!’ Turning away, he sat down

with a heavy sigh in the faded chair again.

Young John followed him with his eyes, and, after a short pause, cried

out, ‘I beg your pardon!’

‘Freely granted,’ said Clennam, waving his hand without raising his

sunken head. ‘Say no more. I am not worth it.’

‘This furniture, sir,’ said Young John in a voice of mild and soft

explanation, ‘belongs to me. I am in the habit of letting it out to

parties without furniture, that have the room. It an’t much, but it’s at

your service. Free, I mean. I could not think of letting you have it on

any other terms. You’re welcome to it for nothing.’

Arthur raised his head again to thank him, and to say he could

not accept the favour. John was still turning his wrist, and still

contending with himself in his former divided manner.

‘What is the matter between us?’ said Arthur.

‘I decline to name it, sir,’ returned Young John, suddenly turning loud

and sharp. ‘Nothing’s the matter.’

Arthur looked at him again, in vain, for an explanation of his

behaviour. After a while, Arthur turned away his head again. Young John

said, presently afterwards, with the utmost mildness:

‘The little round table, sir, that’s nigh your elbow, was--you know

whose--I needn’t mention him--he died a great gentleman. I bought it of

an individual that he gave it to, and that lived here after him. But the

individual wasn’t any ways equal to him. Most individuals would find it

hard to come up to his level.’

Arthur drew the little table nearer, rested his arm upon it, and kept it

there.

‘Perhaps you may not be aware, sir,’ said Young John, ‘that I intruded

upon him when he was over here in London. On the whole he was of opinion

that it _was_ an intrusion, though he was so good as to ask me to sit

down and to inquire after father and all other old friends. Leastways

humblest acquaintances. He looked, to me, a good deal changed, and I

said so when I came back. I asked him if Miss Amy was well--’

‘And she was?’

‘I should have thought you would have known without putting the question

to such as me,’ returned Young John, after appearing to take a large

invisible pill. ‘Since you do put me the question, I am sorry I can’t

answer it. But the truth is, he looked upon the inquiry as a liberty,

and said, “What was that to me?” It was then I became quite aware I was

intruding: of which I had been fearful before. However, he spoke very

handsome afterwards; very handsome.’

They were both silent for several minutes: except that Young John

remarked, at about the middle of the pause, ‘He both spoke and acted

very handsome.’

It was again Young John who broke the silence by inquiring:

‘If it’s not a liberty, how long may it be your intentions, sir, to go

without eating and drinking?’

‘I have not felt the want of anything yet,’ returned Clennam. ‘I have no

appetite just now.’

‘The more reason why you should take some support, sir,’ urged Young

John. ‘If you find yourself going on sitting here for hours and hours

partaking of no refreshment because you have no appetite, why then you

should and must partake of refreshment without an appetite. I’m going to

have tea in my own apartment. If it’s not a liberty, please to come and

take a cup. Or I can bring a tray here in two minutes.’

Feeling that Young John would impose that trouble on himself if he

refused, and also feeling anxious to show that he bore in mind both

the elder Mr Chivery’s entreaty, and the younger Mr Chivery’s apology,

Arthur rose and expressed his willingness to take a cup of tea in Mr

John’s apartment. Young John locked his door for him as they went out,

slided the key into his pocket with great dexterity, and led the way to

his own residence.

It was at the top of the house nearest to the gateway. It was the room

to which Clennam had hurried on the day when the enriched family had

left the prison for ever, and where he had lifted her insensible from

the floor. He foresaw where they were going as soon as their feet

touched the staircase. The room was so far changed that it was papered

now, and had been repainted, and was far more comfortably furnished; but

he could recall it just as he had seen it in that single glance, when he

raised her from the ground and carried her down to the carriage.

Young John looked hard at him, biting his fingers.

‘I see you recollect the room, Mr Clennam?’

‘I recollect it well, Heaven bless her!’

Oblivious of the tea, Young John continued to bite his fingers and to

look at his visitor, as long as his visitor continued to glance about

the room. Finally, he made a start at the teapot, gustily rattled a

quantity of tea into it from a canister, and set off for the common

kitchen to fill it with hot water.