The room was so eloquent to Clennam in the changed circumstances of his

return to the miserable Marshalsea; it spoke to him so mournfully of

her, and of his loss of her; that it would have gone hard with him to

resist it, even though he had not been alone. Alone, he did not try.

He had his hand on the insensible wall as tenderly as if it had been

herself that he touched, and pronounced her name in a low voice. He

stood at the window, looking over the prison-parapet with its grim

spiked border, and breathed a benediction through the summer haze

towards the distant land where she was rich and prosperous.

Young John was some time absent, and, when he came back, showed that he

had been outside by bringing with him fresh butter in a cabbage leaf,

some thin slices of boiled ham in another cabbage leaf, and a little

basket of water-cresses and salad herbs. When these were arranged upon

the table to his satisfaction, they sat down to tea.

Clennam tried to do honour to the meal, but unavailingly. The ham

sickened him, the bread seemed to turn to sand in his mouth. He could

force nothing upon himself but a cup of tea.

‘Try a little something green,’ said Young John, handing him the basket.

He took a sprig or so of water-cress, and tried again; but the bread

turned to a heavier sand than before, and the ham (though it was good

enough of itself) seemed to blow a faint simoom of ham through the whole

Marshalsea.

‘Try a little more something green, sir,’ said Young John; and again

handed the basket.

It was so like handing green meat into the cage of a dull imprisoned

bird, and John had so evidently brought the little basket as a handful

of fresh relief from the stale hot paving-stones and bricks of the jail,

that Clennam said, with a smile, ‘It was very kind of you to think of

putting this between the wires; but I cannot even get this down to-day.’

As if the difficulty were contagious, Young John soon pushed away his

own plate, and fell to folding the cabbage-leaf that had contained the

ham. When he had folded it into a number of layers, one over another,

so that it was small in the palm of his hand, he began to flatten it

between both his hands, and to eye Clennam attentively.

‘I wonder,’ he at length said, compressing his green packet with some

force, ‘that if it’s not worth your while to take care of yourself for

your own sake, it’s not worth doing for some one else’s.’

‘Truly,’ returned Arthur, with a sigh and a smile, ‘I don’t know for

whose.’

‘Mr Clennam,’ said John, warmly, ‘I am surprised that a gentleman who

is capable of the straightforwardness that you are capable of, should be

capable of the mean action of making me such an answer. Mr Clennam, I am

surprised that a gentleman who is capable of having a heart of his own,

should be capable of the heartlessness of treating mine in that way. I

am astonished at it, sir. Really and truly I am astonished!’

Having got upon his feet to emphasise his concluding words, Young John

sat down again, and fell to rolling his green packet on his right leg;

never taking his eyes off Clennam, but surveying him with a fixed look

of indignant reproach.

‘I had got over it, sir,’ said John. ‘I had conquered it, knowing that

it _must_ be conquered, and had come to the resolution to think no more

about it. I shouldn’t have given my mind to it again, I hope, if to this

prison you had not been brought, and in an hour unfortunate for me,

this day!’ (In his agitation Young John adopted his mother’s powerful

construction of sentences.) ‘When you first came upon me, sir, in the

Lodge, this day, more as if a Upas tree had been made a capture of than

a private defendant, such mingled streams of feelings broke loose again

within me, that everything was for the first few minutes swept away

before them, and I was going round and round in a vortex. I got out of

it. I struggled, and got out of it. If it was the last word I had to

speak, against that vortex with my utmost powers I strove, and out of it

I came. I argued that if I had been rude, apologies was due, and those

apologies without a question of demeaning, I did make. And now, when

I’ve been so wishful to show that one thought is next to being a holy

one with me and goes before all others--now, after all, you dodge me

when I ever so gently hint at it, and throw me back upon myself. For, do

not, sir,’ said Young John, ‘do not be so base as to deny that dodge you

do, and thrown me back upon myself you have!’

All amazement, Arthur gazed at him like one lost, only saying, ‘What is

it? What do you mean, John?’ But, John, being in that state of mind in

which nothing would seem to be more impossible to a certain class of

people than the giving of an answer, went ahead blindly.

‘I hadn’t,’ John declared, ‘no, I hadn’t, and I never had the

audaciousness to think, I am sure, that all was anything but lost. I

hadn’t, no, why should I say I hadn’t if I ever had, any hope that it

was possible to be so blest, not after the words that passed, not even

if barriers insurmountable had not been raised! But is that a reason why

I am to have no memory, why I am to have no thoughts, why I am to have

no sacred spots, nor anything?’

‘What can you mean?’ cried Arthur.

‘It’s all very well to trample on it, sir,’ John went on, scouring a

very prairie of wild words, ‘if a person can make up his mind to be

guilty of the action. It’s all very well to trample on it, but it’s

there. It may be that it couldn’t be trampled upon if it wasn’t there.

But that doesn’t make it gentlemanly, that doesn’t make it honourable,

that doesn’t justify throwing a person back upon himself after he has

struggled and strived out of himself like a butterfly. The world may

sneer at a turnkey, but he’s a man--when he isn’t a woman, which among

female criminals he’s expected to be.’

Ridiculous as the incoherence of his talk was, there was yet a

truthfulness in Young John’s simple, sentimental character, and a sense

of being wounded in some very tender respect, expressed in his burning

face and in the agitation of his voice and manner, which Arthur must

have been cruel to disregard. He turned his thoughts back to the

starting-point of this unknown injury; and in the meantime Young John,

having rolled his green packet pretty round, cut it carefully into three

pieces, and laid it on a plate as if it were some particular delicacy.

‘It seems to me just possible,’ said Arthur, when he had retraced the

conversation to the water-cresses and back again, ‘that you have made

some reference to Miss Dorrit.’

‘It is just possible, sir,’ returned John Chivery.

‘I don’t understand it. I hope I may not be so unlucky as to make you

think I mean to offend you again, for I never have meant to offend you

yet, when I say I don’t understand it.’

‘Sir,’ said Young John, ‘will you have the perfidy to deny that you know

and long have known that I felt towards Miss Dorrit, call it not the

presumption of love, but adoration and sacrifice?’

‘Indeed, John, I will not have any perfidy if I know it; why you should

suspect me of it I am at a loss to think. Did you ever hear from Mrs

Chivery, your mother, that I went to see her once?’

‘No, sir,’ returned John, shortly. ‘Never heard of such a thing.’

‘But I did. Can you imagine why?’

‘No, sir,’ returned John, shortly. ‘I can’t imagine why.’

‘I will tell you. I was solicitous to promote Miss Dorrit’s happiness;

and if I could have supposed that Miss Dorrit returned your affection--’

Poor John Chivery turned crimson to the tips of his ears. ‘Miss Dorrit

never did, sir. I wish to be honourable and true, so far as in my humble

way I can, and I would scorn to pretend for a moment that she ever did,

or that she ever led me to believe she did; no, nor even that it was

ever to be expected in any cool reason that she would or could. She was

far above me in all respects at all times. As likewise,’ added John,

‘similarly was her gen-teel family.’

His chivalrous feeling towards all that belonged to her made him so very

respectable, in spite of his small stature and his rather weak legs, and

his very weak hair, and his poetical temperament, that a Goliath might

have sat in his place demanding less consideration at Arthur’s hands.

‘You speak, John,’ he said, with cordial admiration, ‘like a Man.’

‘Well, sir,’ returned John, brushing his hand across his eyes, ‘then I

wish you’d do the same.’

He was quick with this unexpected retort, and it again made Arthur

regard him with a wondering expression of face.

‘Leastways,’ said John, stretching his hand across the tea-tray, ‘if too

strong a remark, withdrawn! But, why not, why not? When I say to you,

Mr Clennam, take care of yourself for some one else’s sake, why not be

open, though a turnkey? Why did I get you the room which I knew you’d

like best? Why did I carry up your things? Not that I found ‘em heavy;

I don’t mention ‘em on that accounts; far from it. Why have I cultivated

you in the manner I have done since the morning? On the ground of your

own merits? No. They’re very great, I’ve no doubt at all; but not on the

ground of them. Another’s merits have had their weight, and have had far

more weight with Me. Then why not speak free?’

‘Unaffectedly, John,’ said Clennam, ‘you are so good a fellow and I have

so true a respect for your character, that if I have appeared to be less

sensible than I really am of the fact that the kind services you have

rendered me to-day are attributable to my having been trusted by

Miss Dorrit as her friend--I confess it to be a fault, and I ask your

forgiveness.’

‘Oh! why not,’ John repeated with returning scorn, ‘why not speak free!’

‘I declare to you,’ returned Arthur, ‘that I do not understand you.

Look at me. Consider the trouble I have been in. Is it likely that I

would wilfully add to my other self-reproaches, that of being ungrateful

or treacherous to you. I do not understand you.’

John’s incredulous face slowly softened into a face of doubt. He rose,

backed into the garret-window of the room, beckoned Arthur to come

there, and stood looking at him thoughtfully.

‘Mr Clennam, do you mean to say that you don’t know?’

‘What, John?’

‘Lord,’ said Young John, appealing with a gasp to the spikes on the

wall. ‘He says, What!’

Clennam looked at the spikes, and looked at John; and looked at the

spikes, and looked at John.

‘He says What! And what is more,’ exclaimed Young John, surveying him in

a doleful maze, ‘he appears to mean it! Do you see this window, sir?’

‘Of course I see this window.’

‘See this room?’

‘Why, of course I see this room.’

‘That wall opposite, and that yard down below? They have all been

witnesses of it, from day to day, from night to night, from week to

week, from month to month. For how often have I seen Miss Dorrit here

when she has not seen me!’

‘Witnesses of what?’ said Clennam.

‘Of Miss Dorrit’s love.’

‘For whom?’

‘You,’ said John. And touched him with the back of his hand upon the

breast, and backed to his chair, and sat down on it with a pale face,

holding the arms, and shaking his head at him.

If he had dealt Clennam a heavy blow, instead of laying that light touch

upon him, its effect could not have been to shake him more. He stood

amazed; his eyes looking at John; his lips parted, and seeming now and

then to form the word ‘Me!’ without uttering it; his hands dropped at

his sides; his whole appearance that of a man who has been awakened from

sleep, and stupefied by intelligence beyond his full comprehension.

‘Me!’ he at length said aloud.

‘Ah!’ groaned Young John. ‘You!’

He did what he could to muster a smile, and returned, ‘Your fancy. You

are completely mistaken.’

‘I mistaken, sir!’ said Young John. ‘_I_ completely mistaken on that

subject! No, Mr Clennam, don’t tell me so. On any other, if you like,

for I don’t set up to be a penetrating character, and am well aware of

my own deficiencies. But, _I_ mistaken on a point that has caused me

more smart in my breast than a flight of savages’ arrows could have

done! _I_ mistaken on a point that almost sent me into my grave, as

I sometimes wished it would, if the grave could only have been made

compatible with the tobacco-business and father and mother’s feelings! I

mistaken on a point that, even at the present moment, makes me take out

my pocket-handkerchief like a great girl, as people say: though I am sure

I don’t know why a great girl should be a term of reproach, for every

rightly constituted male mind loves ‘em great and small. Don’t tell me

so, don’t tell me so!’

Still highly respectable at bottom, though absurd enough upon the

surface, Young John took out his pocket-handkerchief with a genuine

absence both of display and concealment, which is only to be seen in

a man with a great deal of good in him, when he takes out his

pocket-handkerchief for the purpose of wiping his eyes. Having dried

them, and indulged in the harmless luxury of a sob and a sniff, he put

it up again.

The touch was still in its influence so like a blow that Arthur could

not get many words together to close the subject with. He assured John

Chivery when he had returned his handkerchief to his pocket, that he

did all honour to his disinterestedness and to the fidelity of his

remembrance of Miss Dorrit. As to the impression on his mind, of which

he had just relieved it--here John interposed, and said, ‘No impression!

Certainty!’--as to that, they might perhaps speak of it at another time,

but would say no more now. Feeling low-spirited and weary, he would go

back to his room, with John’s leave, and come out no more that night.

John assented, and he crept back in the shadow of the wall to his own

lodging.

The feeling of the blow was still so strong upon him that, when the

dirty old woman was gone whom he found sitting on the stairs outside

his door, waiting to make his bed, and who gave him to understand while

doing it, that she had received her instructions from Mr Chivery, ‘not

the old ‘un but the young ‘un,’ he sat down in the faded arm-chair,

pressing his head between his hands, as if he had been stunned. Little

Dorrit love him! More bewildering to him than his misery, far.

Consider the improbability. He had been accustomed to call her his

child, and his dear child, and to invite her confidence by dwelling upon

the difference in their respective ages, and to speak of himself as one

who was turning old. Yet she might not have thought him old. Something

reminded him that he had not thought himself so, until the roses had

floated away upon the river.

He had her two letters among other papers in his box, and he took them

out and read them. There seemed to be a sound in them like the sound

of her sweet voice. It fell upon his ear with many tones of tenderness,

that were not insusceptible of the new meaning. Now it was that the

quiet desolation of her answer, ‘No, No, No,’ made to him that night

in that very room--that night when he had been shown the dawn of her

altered fortune, and when other words had passed between them which he

had been destined to remember in humiliation and a prisoner, rushed into

his mind.

Consider the improbability.

But it had a preponderating tendency, when considered, to become

fainter. There was another and a curious inquiry of his own heart’s that

concurrently became stronger. In the reluctance he had felt to believe

that she loved any one; in his desire to set that question at rest; in

a half-formed consciousness he had had that there would be a kind of

nobleness in his helping her love for any one, was there no suppressed

something on his own side that he had hushed as it arose? Had he ever

whispered to himself that he must not think of such a thing as her

loving him, that he must not take advantage of her gratitude, that he

must keep his experience in remembrance as a warning and reproof;

that he must regard such youthful hopes as having passed away, as his

friend’s dead daughter had passed away; that he must be steady in saying

to himself that the time had gone by him, and he was too saddened and

old?

He had kissed her when he raised her from the ground on the day when she

had been so consistently and expressively forgotten. Quite as he might

have kissed her, if she had been conscious? No difference?

The darkness found him occupied with these thoughts. The darkness also

found Mr and Mrs Plornish knocking at his door. They brought with them a

basket, filled with choice selections from that stock in trade which met

with such a quick sale and produced such a slow return. Mrs Plornish was

affected to tears. Mr Plornish amiably growled, in his philosophical but

not lucid manner, that there was ups you see, and there was downs. It

was in vain to ask why ups, why downs; there they was, you know. He had

heerd it given for a truth that accordin’ as the world went round, which

round it did rewolve undoubted, even the best of gentlemen must take his

turn of standing with his ed upside down and all his air a flying

the wrong way into what you might call Space. Wery well then. What

Mr Plornish said was, wery well then. That gentleman’s ed would come

up-ards when his turn come, that gentleman’s air would be a pleasure to

look upon being all smooth again, and wery well then!

It has been already stated that Mrs Plornish, not being philosophical,

wept. It further happened that Mrs Plornish, not being philosophical,

was intelligible. It may have arisen out of her softened state of mind,

out of her sex’s wit, out of a woman’s quick association of ideas,

or out of a woman’s no association of ideas, but it further happened

somehow that Mrs Plornish’s intelligibility displayed itself upon the

very subject of Arthur’s meditations.

‘The way father has been talking about you, Mr Clennam,’ said Mrs

Plornish, ‘you hardly would believe. It’s made him quite poorly. As

to his voice, this misfortune has took it away. You know what a sweet

singer father is; but he couldn’t get a note out for the children at

tea, if you’ll credit what I tell you.’

While speaking, Mrs Plornish shook her head, and wiped her eyes, and

looked retrospectively about the room.

‘As to Mr Baptist,’ pursued Mrs Plornish, ‘whatever he’ll do when he

comes to know of it, I can’t conceive nor yet imagine. He’d have been

here before now, you may be sure, but that he’s away on confidential

business of your own. The persevering manner in which he follows up that

business, and gives himself no rest from it--it really do,’ said

Mrs Plornish, winding up in the Italian manner, ‘as I say to him,

Mooshattonisha padrona.’

Though not conceited, Mrs Plornish felt that she had turned this Tuscan

sentence with peculiar elegance. Mr Plornish could not conceal his

exultation in her accomplishments as a linguist.

‘But what I say is, Mr Clennam,’ the good woman went on, ‘there’s always

something to be thankful for, as I am sure you will yourself admit.

Speaking in this room, it’s not hard to think what the present something

is. It’s a thing to be thankful for, indeed, that Miss Dorrit is not

here to know it.’

Arthur thought she looked at him with particular expression.

‘It’s a thing,’ reiterated Mrs Plornish, ‘to be thankful for, indeed,

that Miss Dorrit is far away. It’s to be hoped she is not likely to hear

of it. If she had been here to see it, sir, it’s not to be doubted

that the sight of you,’ Mrs Plornish repeated those words--‘not to be

doubted, that the sight of you--in misfortune and trouble, would have

been almost too much for her affectionate heart. There’s nothing I can

think of, that would have touched Miss Dorrit so bad as that.’

Of a certainty Mrs Plornish did look at him now, with a sort of

quivering defiance in her friendly emotion.

‘Yes!’ said she. ‘And it shows what notice father takes, though at his

time of life, that he says to me this afternoon, which Happy Cottage

knows I neither make it up nor any ways enlarge, “Mary, it’s much to

be rejoiced in that Miss Dorrit is not on the spot to behold it.” Those

were father’s words. Father’s own words was, “Much to be rejoiced in,

Mary, that Miss Dorrit is not on the spot to behold it.” I says to

father then, I says to him, “Father, you are right!” That,’ Mrs Plornish

concluded, with the air of a very precise legal witness, ‘is what passed

betwixt father and me. And I tell you nothing but what did pass betwixt

me and father.’

Mr Plornish, as being of a more laconic temperament, embraced this

opportunity of interposing with the suggestion that she should now leave

Mr Clennam to himself. ‘For, you see,’ said Mr Plornish, gravely, ‘I

know what it is, old gal;’ repeating that valuable remark several times,

as if it appeared to him to include some great moral secret. Finally,

the worthy couple went away arm in arm.

Little Dorrit, Little Dorrit. Again, for hours. Always Little Dorrit!

Happily, if it ever had been so, it was over, and better over. Granted

that she had loved him, and he had known it and had suffered himself

to love her, what a road to have led her away upon--the road that would

have brought her back to this miserable place! He ought to be much

comforted by the reflection that she was quit of it forever; that she

was, or would soon be, married (vague rumours of her father’s projects

in that direction had reached Bleeding Heart Yard, with the news of her

sister’s marriage); and that the Marshalsea gate had shut for ever on

all those perplexed possibilities of a time that was gone.

Dear Little Dorrit.

Looking back upon his own poor story, she was its vanishing-point. Every

thing in its perspective led to her innocent figure. He had travelled

thousands of miles towards it; previous unquiet hopes and doubts had

worked themselves out before it; it was the centre of the interest

of his life; it was the termination of everything that was good and

pleasant in it; beyond, there was nothing but mere waste and darkened

sky.

As ill at ease as on the first night of his lying down to sleep within

those dreary walls, he wore the night out with such thoughts. What time

Young John lay wrapt in peaceful slumber, after composing and arranging

the following monumental inscription on his pillow--

STRANGER!

RESPECT THE TOMB OF

JOHN CHIVERY, JUNIOR,

WHO DIED AT AN ADVANCED AGE

NOT NECESSARY TO MENTION.

HE ENCOUNTERED HIS RIVAL IN A DISTRESSED STATE,

AND FELT INCLINED

TO HAVE A ROUND WITH HIM;

BUT, FOR THE SAKE OF THE LOVED ONE,

CONQUERED THOSE FEELINGS OF BITTERNESS, AND BECAME

MAGNANIMOUS.

CHAPTER 28. An Appearance in the Marshalsea

The opinion of the community outside the prison gates bore hard on

Clennam as time went on, and he made no friends among the community

within. Too depressed to associate with the herd in the yard, who got

together to forget their cares; too retiring and too unhappy to join in

the poor socialities of the tavern; he kept his own room, and was held

in distrust. Some said he was proud; some objected that he was

sullen and reserved; some were contemptuous of him, for that he was a

poor-spirited dog who pined under his debts. The whole population were

shy of him on these various counts of indictment, but especially the

last, which involved a species of domestic treason; and he soon became

so confirmed in his seclusion, that his only time for walking up and

down was when the evening Club were assembled at their songs and toasts

and sentiments, and when the yard was nearly left to the women and

children.

Imprisonment began to tell upon him. He knew that he idled and moped.

After what he had known of the influences of imprisonment within the

four small walls of the very room he occupied, this consciousness made

him afraid of himself. Shrinking from the observation of other men, and

shrinking from his own, he began to change very sensibly. Anybody might

see that the shadow of the wall was dark upon him.

One day when he might have been some ten or twelve weeks in jail, and

when he had been trying to read and had not been able to release even

the imaginary people of the book from the Marshalsea, a footstep stopped

at his door, and a hand tapped at it. He arose and opened it, and an

agreeable voice accosted him with ‘How do you do, Mr Clennam? I hope I

am not unwelcome in calling to see you.’

It was the sprightly young Barnacle, Ferdinand. He looked very

good-natured and prepossessing, though overpoweringly gay and free, in

contrast with the squalid prison.

‘You are surprised to see me, Mr Clennam,’ he said, taking the seat

which Clennam offered him.

‘I must confess to being much surprised.’

‘Not disagreeably, I hope?’

‘By no means.’

‘Thank you. Frankly,’ said the engaging young Barnacle, ‘I have been

excessively sorry to hear that you were under the necessity of a

temporary retirement here, and I hope (of course as between two private

gentlemen) that our place has had nothing to do with it?’

‘Your office?’

‘Our Circumlocution place.’

‘I cannot charge any part of my reverses upon that remarkable

establishment.’

‘Upon my life,’ said the vivacious young Barnacle, ‘I am heartily glad to

know it. It is quite a relief to me to hear you say it. I should have

so exceedingly regretted our place having had anything to do with your

difficulties.’

Clennam again assured him that he absolved it of the responsibility.

‘That’s right,’ said Ferdinand. ‘I am very happy to hear it. I was

rather afraid in my own mind that we might have helped to floor you,

because there is no doubt that it is our misfortune to do that kind

of thing now and then. We don’t want to do it; but if men will be

gravelled, why--we can’t help it.’

‘Without giving an unqualified assent to what you say,’ returned Arthur,

gloomily, ‘I am much obliged to you for your interest in me.’

‘No, but really! Our place is,’ said the easy young Barnacle, ‘the most

inoffensive place possible. You’ll say we are a humbug. I won’t say

we are not; but all that sort of thing is intended to be, and must be.

Don’t you see?’

‘I do not,’ said Clennam.

‘You don’t regard it from the right point of view. It is the point of

view that is the essential thing. Regard our place from the point of

view that we only ask you to leave us alone, and we are as capital a

Department as you’ll find anywhere.’

‘Is your place there to be left alone?’ asked Clennam.

‘You exactly hit it,’ returned Ferdinand. ‘It is there with the express

intention that everything shall be left alone. That is what it means.

That is what it’s for. No doubt there’s a certain form to be kept up

that it’s for something else, but it’s only a form. Why, good Heaven,

we are nothing but forms! Think what a lot of our forms you have gone

through. And you have never got any nearer to an end?’

‘Never,’ said Clennam.

‘Look at it from the right point of view, and there you have

us--official and effectual. It’s like a limited game of cricket. A field

of outsiders are always going in to bowl at the Public Service, and we

block the balls.’

Clennam asked what became of the bowlers? The airy young Barnacle

replied that they grew tired, got dead beat, got lamed, got their backs

broken, died off, gave it up, went in for other games.

‘And this occasions me to congratulate myself again,’ he pursued,

‘on the circumstance that our place has had nothing to do with your

temporary retirement. It very easily might have had a hand in it;

because it is undeniable that we are sometimes a most unlucky place, in

our effects upon people who will not leave us alone. Mr Clennam, I am

quite unreserved with you. As between yourself and myself, I know I may

be. I was so, when I first saw you making the mistake of not leaving us

alone; because I perceived that you were inexperienced and sanguine, and

had--I hope you’ll not object to my saying--some simplicity?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Some simplicity. Therefore I felt what a pity it was, and I went out

of my way to hint to you (which really was not official, but I never am

official when I can help it) something to the effect that if I were you,

I wouldn’t bother myself. However, you did bother yourself, and you have

since bothered yourself. Now, don’t do it any more.’

‘I am not likely to have the opportunity,’ said Clennam.

‘Oh yes, you are! You’ll leave here. Everybody leaves here. There are no

ends of ways of leaving here. Now, don’t come back to us. That entreaty

is the second object of my call. Pray, don’t come back to us. Upon my

honour,’ said Ferdinand in a very friendly and confiding way, ‘I shall

be greatly vexed if you don’t take warning by the past and keep away

from us.’

‘And the invention?’ said Clennam.

‘My good fellow,’ returned Ferdinand, ‘if you’ll excuse the freedom of

that form of address, nobody wants to know of the invention, and nobody

cares twopence-halfpenny about it.’

‘Nobody in the Office, that is to say?’

‘Nor out of it. Everybody is ready to dislike and ridicule any

invention. You have no idea how many people want to be left alone.

You have no idea how the Genius of the country (overlook the

Parliamentary nature of the phrase, and don’t be bored by it) tends

to being left alone. Believe me, Mr Clennam,’ said the sprightly young

Barnacle in his pleasantest manner, ‘our place is not a wicked Giant to

be charged at full tilt; but only a windmill showing you, as it grinds

immense quantities of chaff, which way the country wind blows.’

‘If I could believe that,’ said Clennam, ‘it would be a dismal prospect

for all of us.’

‘Oh! Don’t say so!’ returned Ferdinand. ‘It’s all right. We must have

humbug, we all like humbug, we couldn’t get on without humbug. A little

humbug, and a groove, and everything goes on admirably, if you leave it

alone.’

With this hopeful confession of his faith as the head of the rising

Barnacles who were born of woman, to be followed under a variety of

watchwords which they utterly repudiated and disbelieved, Ferdinand

rose. Nothing could be more agreeable than his frank and courteous

bearing, or adapted with a more gentlemanly instinct to the

circumstances of his visit.

‘Is it fair to ask,’ he said, as Clennam gave him his hand with a real

feeling of thankfulness for his candour and good-humour, ‘whether it

is true that our late lamented Merdle is the cause of this passing

inconvenience?’

‘I am one of the many he has ruined. Yes.’

‘He must have been an exceedingly clever fellow,’ said Ferdinand

Barnacle.

Arthur, not being in the mood to extol the memory of the deceased, was

silent.

‘A consummate rascal, of course,’ said Ferdinand, ‘but remarkably

clever! One cannot help admiring the fellow. Must have been such a

master of humbug. Knew people so well--got over them so completely--did

so much with them!’

In his easy way, he was really moved to genuine admiration.

‘I hope,’ said Arthur, ‘that he and his dupes may be a warning to people

not to have so much done with them again.’

‘My dear Mr Clennam,’ returned Ferdinand, laughing, ‘have you really

such a verdant hope? The next man who has as large a capacity and as

genuine a taste for swindling, will succeed as well. Pardon me, but

I think you really have no idea how the human bees will swarm to the

beating of any old tin kettle; in that fact lies the complete manual of

governing them. When they can be got to believe that the kettle is made

of the precious metals, in that fact lies the whole power of men like

our late lamented. No doubt there are here and there,’ said Ferdinand

politely, ‘exceptional cases, where people have been taken in for what

appeared to them to be much better reasons; and I need not go far to

find such a case; but they don’t invalidate the rule. Good day! I hope

that when I have the pleasure of seeing you, next, this passing cloud

will have given place to sunshine. Don’t come a step beyond the door. I

know the way out perfectly. Good day!’

With those words, the best and brightest of the Barnacles went

down-stairs, hummed his way through the Lodge, mounted his horse in the

front court-yard, and rode off to keep an appointment with his noble

kinsman, who wanted a little coaching before he could triumphantly

answer certain infidel Snobs who were going to question the Nobs about

their statesmanship.

He must have passed Mr Rugg on his way out, for, a minute or two

afterwards, that ruddy-headed gentleman shone in at the door, like an

elderly Phoebus.

‘How do you do to-day, sir?’ said Mr Rugg. ‘Is there any little thing I

can do for you to-day, sir?’

‘No, I thank you.’

Mr Rugg’s enjoyment of embarrassed affairs was like a housekeeper’s

enjoyment in pickling and preserving, or a washerwoman’s enjoyment of a

heavy wash, or a dustman’s enjoyment of an overflowing dust-bin, or any

other professional enjoyment of a mess in the way of business.

‘I still look round, from time to time, sir,’ said Mr Rugg, cheerfully,

‘to see whether any lingering Detainers are accumulating at the gate.

They have fallen in pretty thick, sir; as thick as we could have

expected.’

He remarked upon the circumstance as if it were matter of

congratulation: rubbing his hands briskly, and rolling his head a

little.

‘As thick,’ repeated Mr Rugg, ‘as we could reasonably have expected.

Quite a shower-bath of ‘em. I don’t often intrude upon you now, when I

look round, because I know you are not inclined for company, and that if

you wished to see me, you would leave word in the Lodge. But I am here

pretty well every day, sir. Would this be an unseasonable time, sir,’

asked Mr Rugg, coaxingly, ‘for me to offer an observation?’

‘As seasonable a time as any other.’

‘Hum! Public opinion, sir,’ said Mr Rugg, ‘has been busy with you.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘Might it not be advisable, sir,’ said Mr Rugg, more coaxingly yet, ‘now

to make, at last and after all, a trifling concession to public opinion?

We all do it in one way or another. The fact is, we must do it.’

‘I cannot set myself right with it, Mr Rugg, and have no business to

expect that I ever shall.’

‘Don’t say that, sir, don’t say that. The cost of being moved to the

Bench is almost insignificant, and if the general feeling is strong that

you ought to be there, why--really--’

‘I thought you had settled, Mr Rugg,’ said Arthur, ‘that my

determination to remain here was a matter of taste.’

‘Well, sir, well! But is it good taste, is it good taste? That’s the

Question.’ Mr Rugg was so soothingly persuasive as to be quite pathetic.

‘I was almost going to say, is it good feeling? This is an extensive

affair of yours; and your remaining here where a man can come for a

pound or two, is remarked upon as not in keeping. It is not in keeping.

I can’t tell you, sir, in how many quarters I heard it mentioned. I

heard comments made upon it last night in a Parlour frequented by what

I should call, if I did not look in there now and then myself, the best

legal company--I heard, there, comments on it that I was sorry to hear.

They hurt me on your account. Again, only this morning at breakfast. My

daughter (but a woman, you’ll say: yet still with a feeling for these

things, and even with some little personal experience, as the plaintiff

in Rugg and Bawkins) was expressing her great surprise; her great

surprise. Now under these circumstances, and considering that none of

us can quite set ourselves above public opinion, wouldn’t a trifling

concession to that opinion be--Come, sir,’ said Rugg, ‘I will put it on

the lowest ground of argument, and say, Amiable?’

Arthur’s thoughts had once more wandered away to Little Dorrit, and the

question remained unanswered.

‘As to myself, sir,’ said Mr Rugg, hoping that his eloquence had reduced

him to a state of indecision, ‘it is a principle of mine not to consider

myself when a client’s inclinations are in the scale. But, knowing your

considerate character and general wish to oblige, I will repeat that I

should prefer your being in the Bench. Your case has made a noise; it

is a creditable case to be professionally concerned in; I should feel on

a better standing with my connection, if you went to the Bench. Don’t

let that influence you, sir. I merely state the fact.’

So errant had the prisoner’s attention already grown in solitude and

dejection, and so accustomed had it become to commune with only one

silent figure within the ever-frowning walls, that Clennam had to shake

off a kind of stupor before he could look at Mr Rugg, recall the thread

of his talk, and hurriedly say, ‘I am unchanged, and unchangeable, in my

decision. Pray, let it be; let it be!’ Mr Rugg, without concealing that

he was nettled and mortified, replied:

‘Oh! Beyond a doubt, sir. I have travelled out of the record, sir, I am

aware, in putting the point to you. But really, when I hear it remarked

in several companies, and in very good company, that however worthy of a

foreigner, it is not worthy of the spirit of an Englishman to remain in

the Marshalsea when the glorious liberties of his island home admit

of his removal to the Bench, I thought I would depart from the narrow

professional line marked out to me, and mention it. Personally,’ said Mr

Rugg, ‘I have no opinion on the topic.’

‘That’s well,’ returned Arthur.

‘Oh! None at all, sir!’ said Mr Rugg. ‘If I had, I should have been

unwilling, some minutes ago, to see a client of mine visited in this

place by a gentleman of a high family riding a saddle-horse. But it was

not my business. If I had, I might have wished to be now empowered to

mention to another gentleman, a gentleman of military exterior at

present waiting in the Lodge, that my client had never intended to

remain here, and was on the eve of removal to a superior abode. But my

course as a professional machine is clear; I have nothing to do with it.

Is it your good pleasure to see the gentleman, sir?’

‘Who is waiting to see me, did you say?’

‘I did take that unprofessional liberty, sir. Hearing that I was your

professional adviser, he declined to interpose before my very limited

function was performed. Happily,’ said Mr Rugg, with sarcasm, ‘I did not

so far travel out of the record as to ask the gentleman for his name.’

‘I suppose I have no resource but to see him,’ sighed Clennam, wearily.

‘Then it _is_ your good pleasure, sir?’ retorted Rugg. ‘Am I honoured by

your instructions to mention as much to the gentleman, as I pass out? I

am? Thank you, sir. I take my leave.’ His leave he took accordingly, in

dudgeon.

The gentleman of military exterior had so imperfectly awakened Clennam’s

curiosity, in the existing state of his mind, that a half-forgetfulness

of such a visitor’s having been referred to, was already creeping over

it as a part of the sombre veil which almost always dimmed it now, when

a heavy footstep on the stairs aroused him. It appeared to ascend them,

not very promptly or spontaneously, yet with a display of stride and

clatter meant to be insulting. As it paused for a moment on the

landing outside his door, he could not recall his association with the

peculiarity of its sound, though he thought he had one. Only a moment

was given him for consideration. His door was immediately swung open

by a thump, and in the doorway stood the missing Blandois, the cause of

many anxieties.

‘Salve, fellow jail-bird!’ said he. ‘You want me, it seems. Here I am!’

Before Arthur could speak to him in his indignant wonder, Cavalletto

followed him into the room. Mr Pancks followed Cavalletto. Neither of

the two had been there since its present occupant had had possession of

it. Mr Pancks, breathing hard, sidled near the window, put his hat on

the ground, stirred his hair up with both hands, and folded his arms,

like a man who had come to a pause in a hard day’s work. Mr Baptist,

never taking his eyes from his dreaded chum of old, softly sat down on

the floor with his back against the door and one of his ankles in

each hand: resuming the attitude (except that it was now expressive of

unwinking watchfulness) in which he had sat before the same man in the

deeper shade of another prison, one hot morning at Marseilles.

‘I have it on the witnessing of these two madmen,’ said Monsieur

Blandois, otherwise Lagnier, otherwise Rigaud, ‘that you want me,

brother-bird. Here I am!’

Glancing round contemptuously at the bedstead, which was

turned up by day, he leaned his back against it as a resting-place,

without removing his hat from his head, and stood defiantly lounging

with his hands in his pockets.

‘You villain of ill-omen!’ said Arthur. ‘You have purposely cast a

dreadful suspicion upon my mother’s house. Why have you done it?

What prompted you to the devilish invention?’

Monsieur Rigaud, after frowning at him for a moment, laughed. ‘Hear this

noble gentleman! Listen, all the world, to this creature of Virtue! But

take care, take care. It is possible, my friend, that your ardour is a

little compromising. Holy Blue! It is possible.’

‘Signore!’ interposed Cavalletto, also addressing Arthur: ‘for to

commence, hear me! I received your instructions to find him, Rigaud; is

it not?’

‘It is the truth.’

‘I go, consequentementally,’--it would have given Mrs Plornish great

concern if she could have been persuaded that his occasional lengthening

of an adverb in this way, was the chief fault of his English,--‘first

among my countrymen. I ask them what news in Londra, of foreigners

arrived. Then I go among the French. Then I go among the Germans. They

all tell me. The great part of us know well the other, and they all tell

me. But!--no person can tell me nothing of him, Rigaud. Fifteen times,’

said Cavalletto, thrice throwing out his left hand with all its fingers

spread, and doing it so rapidly that the sense of sight could hardly

follow the action, ‘I ask of him in every place where go the foreigners;

and fifteen times,’ repeating the same swift performance, ‘they know

nothing. But!--’

At this significant Italian rest on the word ‘But,’ his backhanded shake

of his right forefinger came into play; a very little, and very

cautiously.

‘But!--After a long time when I have not been able to find that he

is here in Londra, some one tells me of a soldier with white

hair--hey?--not hair like this that he carries--white--who lives retired

secrettementally, in a certain place. But!--’ with another rest upon

the word, ‘who sometimes in the after-dinner, walks, and smokes. It is

necessary, as they say in Italy (and as they know, poor people), to

have patience. I have patience. I ask where is this certain place. One.

believes it is here, one believes it is there. Eh well! It is not here,

it is not there. I wait patientissamentally. At last I find it. Then I

watch; then I hide, until he walks and smokes. He is a soldier with grey

hair--But!--’ a very decided rest indeed, and a very vigorous play from

side to side of the back-handed forefinger--‘he is also this man that

you see.’

It was noticeable, that, in his old habit of submission to one who had

been at the trouble of asserting superiority over him, he even then

bestowed upon Rigaud a confused bend of his head, after thus pointing

him out.

‘Eh well, Signore!’ he cried in conclusion, addressing Arthur again. ‘I

waited for a good opportunity. I writed some words to Signor Panco,’ an

air of novelty came over Mr Pancks with this designation, ‘to come and

help. I showed him, Rigaud, at his window, to Signor Panco, who was

often the spy in the day. I slept at night near the door of the house.

At last we entered, only this to-day, and now you see him! As he would

not come up in presence of the illustrious Advocate,’ such was Mr

Baptist’s honourable mention of Mr Rugg, ‘we waited down below there,

together, and Signor Panco guarded the street.’

At the close of this recital, Arthur turned his eyes upon the impudent

and wicked face. As it met his, the nose came down over the moustache

and the moustache went up under the nose. When nose and moustache had

settled into their places again, Monsieur Rigaud loudly snapped his

fingers half-a-dozen times; bending forward to jerk the snaps at Arthur,

as if they were palpable missiles which he jerked into his face.

‘Now, Philosopher!’ said Rigaud. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘I want to know,’ returned Arthur, without disguising his abhorrence,

‘how you dare direct a suspicion of murder against my mother’s house?’

‘Dare!’ cried Rigaud. ‘Ho, ho! Hear him! Dare? Is it dare? By Heaven, my

small boy, but you are a little imprudent!’

‘I want that suspicion to be cleared away,’ said Arthur. ‘You shall

be taken there, and be publicly seen. I want to know, moreover,

what business you had there when I had a burning desire to fling you

down-stairs. Don’t frown at me, man! I have seen enough of you to know

that you are a bully and coward. I need no revival of my spirits from

the effects of this wretched place to tell you so plain a fact, and one

that you know so well.’

White to the lips, Rigaud stroked his moustache, muttering, ‘By Heaven,

my small boy, but you are a little compromising of my lady, your

respectable mother’--and seemed for a minute undecided how to act.

His indecision was soon gone. He sat himself down with a threatening

swagger, and said:

‘Give me a bottle of wine. You can buy wine here. Send one of your

madmen to get me a bottle of wine. I won’t talk to you without wine.

Come! Yes or no?’

‘Fetch him what he wants, Cavalletto,’ said Arthur, scornfully,

producing the money.

‘Contraband beast,’ added Rigaud, ‘bring Port wine! I’ll drink nothing

but Porto-Porto.’

The contraband beast, however, assuring all present, with his

significant finger, that he peremptorily declined to leave his post at

the door, Signor Panco offered his services. He soon returned with the

bottle of wine: which, according to the custom of the place, originating

in a scarcity of corkscrews among the Collegians (in common with a

scarcity of much else), was already opened for use.

‘Madman! A large glass,’ said Rigaud.

Signor Panco put a tumbler before him; not without a visible conflict of

feeling on the question of throwing it at his head.

‘Haha!’ boasted Rigaud. ‘Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.

A gentleman from the beginning, and a gentleman to the end. What

the Devil! A gentleman must be waited on, I hope? It’s a part of my

character to be waited on!’

He half filled the tumbler as he said it, and drank off the contents

when he had done saying it.

‘Hah!’ smacking his lips. ‘Not a very old prisoner _that_! I judge by

your looks, brave sir, that imprisonment will subdue your blood much

sooner than it softens this hot wine. You are mellowing--losing body

and colour already. I salute you!’

He tossed off another half glass: holding it up both before and

afterwards, so as to display his small, white hand.

‘To business,’ he then continued. ‘To conversation. You have shown

yourself more free of speech than body, sir.’

‘I have used the freedom of telling you what you know yourself to be.

You know yourself, as we all know you, to be far worse than that.’

‘Add, always a gentleman, and it’s no matter. Except in that regard, we

are all alike. For example: you couldn’t for your life be a gentleman;

I couldn’t for my life be otherwise. How great the difference! Let us go

on. Words, sir, never influence the course of the cards, or the course

of the dice. Do you know that? You do? I also play a game, and words are

without power over it.’

Now that he was confronted with Cavalletto, and knew that his story was

known--whatever thin disguise he had worn, he dropped; and faced it out,

with a bare face, as the infamous wretch he was.

‘No, my son,’ he resumed, with a snap of his fingers. ‘I play my game

to the end in spite of words; and Death of my Body and Death of my Soul!

I’ll win it. You want to know why I played this little trick that

you have interrupted? Know then that I had, and that I have--do you

understand me? have--a commodity to sell to my lady your respectable

mother. I described my precious commodity, and fixed my price. Touching

the bargain, your admirable mother was a little too calm, too stolid,

too immovable and statue-like. In fine, your admirable mother vexed me.

To make variety in my position, and to amuse myself--what! a gentleman

must be amused at somebody’s expense!--I conceived the happy idea of

disappearing. An idea, see you, that your characteristic mother and my

Flintwinch would have been well enough pleased to execute. Ah! Bah,

bah, bah, don’t look as from high to low at me! I repeat it. Well enough

pleased, excessively enchanted, and with all their hearts ravished. How

strongly will you have it?’

He threw out the lees of his glass on the ground, so that they nearly

spattered Cavalletto. This seemed to draw his attention to him anew. He

set down his glass and said:

‘I’ll not fill it. What! I am born to be served. Come then, you

Cavalletto, and fill!’

The little man looked at Clennam, whose eyes were occupied with Rigaud,

and, seeing no prohibition, got up from the ground, and poured out

from the bottle into the glass. The blending, as he did so, of his old

submission with a sense of something humorous; the striving of that

with a certain smouldering ferocity, which might have flashed fire in

an instant (as the born gentleman seemed to think, for he had a wary

eye upon him); and the easy yielding of all to a good-natured, careless,

predominant propensity to sit down on the ground again: formed a very

remarkable combination of character.

‘This happy idea, brave sir,’ Rigaud resumed after drinking, ‘was a

happy idea for several reasons. It amused me, it worried your dear

mama and my Flintwinch, it caused you agonies (my terms for a lesson

in politeness towards a gentleman), and it suggested to all the amiable

persons interested that your entirely devoted is a man to fear. By

Heaven, he is a man to fear! Beyond this; it might have restored her wit

to my lady your mother--might, under the pressing little suspicion your

wisdom has recognised, have persuaded her at last to announce, covertly,

in the journals, that the difficulties of a certain contract would be

removed by the appearance of a certain important party to it. Perhaps

yes, perhaps no. But that, you have interrupted. Now, what is it you

say? What is it you want?’

Never had Clennam felt more acutely that he was a prisoner in bonds,

than when he saw this man before him, and could not accompany him to his

mother’s house. All the undiscernible difficulties and dangers he had

ever feared were closing in, when he could not stir hand or foot.

‘Perhaps, my friend, philosopher, man of virtue, Imbecile, what you

will; perhaps,’ said Rigaud, pausing in his drink to look out of his

glass with his horrible smile, ‘you would have done better to leave me

alone?’

‘No! At least,’ said Clennam, ‘you are known to be alive and unharmed.

At least you cannot escape from these two witnesses; and they can

produce you before any public authorities, or before hundreds of

people!’

‘But will not produce me before one,’ said Rigaud, snapping his

fingers again with an air of triumphant menace. ‘To the Devil with your

witnesses! To the Devil with your produced! To the Devil with yourself!

What! Do I know what I know, for that? Have I my commodity on sale, for

that? Bah, poor debtor! You have interrupted my little project. Let it

pass. How then? What remains? To you, nothing; to me, all. Produce

_me_! Is that what you want? I will produce myself, only too quickly.

Contrabandist! Give me pen, ink, and paper.’

Cavalletto got up again as before, and laid them before him in his

former manner. Rigaud, after some villainous thinking and smiling,

wrote, and read aloud, as follows:

‘To MRS CLENNAM.

‘Wait answer.

‘Prison of the Marshalsea.

‘At the apartment of your son.

‘Dear Madam,

‘I am in despair to be informed to-day by our prisoner here

(who has had the goodness to employ spies to seek me, living for politic

reasons in retirement), that you have had fears for my safety.

‘Reassure yourself, dear madam. I am well, I am strong and constant.

‘With the greatest impatience I should fly to your house, but that I

foresee it to be possible, under the circumstances, that you will not

yet have quite definitively arranged the little proposition I have had

the honour to submit to you. I name one week from this day, for a last

final visit on my part; when you will unconditionally accept it or

reject it, with its train of consequences.

‘I suppress my ardour to embrace you and achieve this interesting

business, in order that you may have leisure to adjust its details to

our perfect mutual satisfaction.

‘In the meanwhile, it is not too much to propose (our prisoner having

deranged my housekeeping), that my expenses of lodging and nourishment

at an hotel shall be paid by you.

‘Receive, dear madam, the assurance of my highest and most distinguished

consideration,

‘RIGAUD BLANDOIS.

‘A thousand friendships to that dear Flintwinch.

‘I kiss the hands of Madame F.’

When he had finished this epistle, Rigaud folded it and tossed it with

a flourish at Clennam’s feet. ‘Hola you! Apropos of producing, let

somebody produce that at its address, and produce the answer here.’

‘Cavalletto,’ said Arthur. ‘Will you take this fellow’s letter?’

But, Cavalletto’s significant finger again expressing that his post was

at the door to keep watch over Rigaud, now he had found him with so much

trouble, and that the duty of his post was to sit on the floor backed up

by the door, looking at Rigaud and holding his own ankles,--Signor Panco

once more volunteered. His services being accepted, Cavalletto suffered

the door to open barely wide enough to admit of his squeezing himself

out, and immediately shut it on him.

‘Touch me with a finger, touch me with an epithet, question my

superiority as I sit here drinking my wine at my pleasure,’ said Rigaud,

‘and I follow the letter and cancel my week’s grace. _You_ wanted me? You

have got me! How do you like me?’

‘You know,’ returned Clennam, with a bitter sense of his helplessness,

‘that when I sought you, I was not a prisoner.’

‘To the Devil with you and your prison,’ retorted Rigaud, leisurely,

as he took from his pocket a case containing the materials for making

cigarettes, and employed his facile hands in folding a few for present

use; ‘I care for neither of you. Contrabandist! A light.’

Again Cavalletto got up, and gave him what he wanted. There had been

something dreadful in the noiseless skill of his cold, white hands, with

the fingers lithely twisting about and twining one over another like

serpents. Clennam could not prevent himself from shuddering inwardly, as

if he had been looking on at a nest of those creatures.

‘Hola, Pig!’ cried Rigaud, with a noisy stimulating cry, as if

Cavalletto were an Italian horse or mule. ‘What! The infernal old jail

was a respectable one to this. There was dignity in the bars and stones

of that place. It was a prison for men. But this? Bah! A hospital for

imbeciles!’

He smoked his cigarette out, with his ugly smile so fixed upon his face

that he looked as though he were smoking with his drooping beak of a

nose, rather than with his mouth; like a fancy in a weird picture. When

he had lighted a second cigarette at the still burning end of the first,

he said to Clennam:

‘One must pass the time in the madman’s absence. One must talk. One

can’t drink strong wine all day long, or I would have another bottle.

She’s handsome, sir. Though not exactly to my taste, still, by

the Thunder and the Lightning! handsome. I felicitate you on your

admiration.’

‘I neither know nor ask,’ said Clennam, ‘of whom you speak.’

‘Della bella Gowana, sir, as they say in Italy. Of the Gowan, the fair

Gowan.’

‘Of whose husband you were the--follower, I think?’

‘Sir? Follower? You are insolent. The friend.’

‘Do you sell all your friends?’

Rigaud took his cigarette from his mouth, and eyed him with a momentary

revelation of surprise. But he put it between his lips again, as he

answered with coolness:

‘I sell anything that commands a price. How do your lawyers live, your

politicians, your intriguers, your men of the Exchange? How do you live?

How do you come here? Have you sold no friend? Lady of mine! I rather

think, yes!’

Clennam turned away from him towards the window, and sat looking out at

the wall.

‘Effectively, sir,’ said Rigaud, ‘Society sells itself and sells me: and

I sell Society. I perceive you have acquaintance with another lady. Also

handsome. A strong spirit. Let us see. How do they call her? Wade.’

He received no answer, but could easily discern that he had hit the

mark.

‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘that handsome lady and strong spirit addresses me in

the street, and I am not insensible. I respond. That handsome lady and

strong spirit does me the favour to remark, in full confidence, “I have

my curiosity, and I have my chagrins. You are not more than ordinarily

honourable, perhaps?” I announce myself, “Madame, a gentleman from

the birth, and a gentleman to the death; but _not_ more than ordinarily

honourable. I despise such a weak fantasy.” Thereupon she is pleased to

compliment. “The difference between you and the rest is,” she answers,

“that you say so.” For she knows Society. I accept her congratulations

with gallantry and politeness. Politeness and little gallantries are

inseparable from my character. She then makes a proposition, which is,

in effect, that she has seen us much together; that it appears to her

that I am for the passing time the cat of the house, the friend of

the family; that her curiosity and her chagrins awaken the fancy to be

acquainted with their movements, to know the manner of their life, how

the fair Gowana is beloved, how the fair Gowana is cherished, and so

on. She is not rich, but offers such and such little recompenses for the

little cares and derangements of such services; and I graciously--to do

everything graciously is a part of my character--consent to accept them.

O yes! So goes the world. It is the mode.’

Though Clennam’s back was turned while he spoke, and thenceforth to the

end of the interview, he kept those glittering eyes of his that were too

near together, upon him, and evidently saw in the very carriage of the

head, as he passed with his braggart recklessness from clause to clause

of what he said, that he was saying nothing which Clennam did not

already know.

‘Whoof! The fair Gowana!’ he said, lighting a third cigarette with a

sound as if his lightest breath could blow her away. ‘Charming, but

imprudent! For it was not well of the fair Gowana to make mysteries of

letters from old lovers, in her bedchamber on the mountain, that her

husband might not see them. No, no. That was not well. Whoof! The Gowana

was mistaken there.’

‘I earnestly hope,’ cried Arthur aloud, ‘that Pancks may not be long

gone, for this man’s presence pollutes the room.’

‘Ah! But he’ll flourish here, and everywhere,’ said Rigaud, with an

exulting look and snap of his fingers. ‘He always has; he always will!’

Stretching his body out on the only three chairs in the room besides

that on which Clennam sat, he sang, smiting himself on the breast as the

gallant personage of the song.

‘Who passes by this road so late?

Compagnon de la Majolaine!

Who passes by this road so late?

Always gay!

‘Sing the Refrain, pig! You could sing it once, in another jail. Sing

it! Or, by every Saint who was stoned to death, I’ll be affronted and

compromising; and then some people who are not dead yet, had better have

been stoned along with them!’

‘Of all the king’s knights ‘tis the flower,

Compagnon de la Majolaine!

Of all the king’s knights ‘tis the flower,

Always gay!’

Partly in his old habit of submission, partly because his not doing it

might injure his benefactor, and partly because he would as soon do

it as anything else, Cavalletto took up the Refrain this time. Rigaud

laughed, and fell to smoking with his eyes shut.

Possibly another quarter of an hour elapsed before Mr Pancks’s step was

heard upon the stairs, but the interval seemed to Clennam insupportably

long. His step was attended by another step; and when Cavalletto opened

the door, he admitted Mr Pancks and Mr Flintwinch. The latter was no

sooner visible, than Rigaud rushed at him and embraced him boisterously.

‘How do you find yourself, sir?’ said Mr Flintwinch, as soon as he could

disengage himself, which he struggled to do with very little ceremony.

‘Thank you, no; I don’t want any more.’ This was in reference to another

menace of attention from his recovered friend. ‘Well, Arthur. You

remember what I said to you about sleeping dogs and missing ones. It’s

come true, you see.’

He was as imperturbable as ever, to all appearance, and nodded his head

in a moralising way as he looked round the room.

‘And this is the Marshalsea prison for debt!’ said Mr Flintwinch. ‘Hah!

you have brought your pigs to a very indifferent market, Arthur.’

If Arthur had patience, Rigaud had not. He took his little Flintwinch,

with fierce playfulness, by the two lapels of his coat, and cried:

‘To the Devil with the Market, to the Devil with the Pigs, and to the

Devil with the Pig-Driver! Now! Give me the answer to my letter.’

‘If you can make it convenient to let go a moment, sir,’ returned Mr

Flintwinch, ‘I’ll first hand Mr Arthur a little note that I have for

him.’

He did so. It was in his mother’s maimed writing, on a slip of paper,

and contained only these words:

‘I hope it is enough that you have ruined yourself. Rest contented

without more ruin. Jeremiah Flintwinch is my messenger and

representative. Your affectionate M. C.’

Clennam read this twice, in silence, and then tore it to pieces. Rigaud

in the meanwhile stepped into a chair, and sat himself on the back with

his feet upon the seat.

‘Now, Beau Flintwinch,’ he said, when he had closely watched the note to

its destruction, ‘the answer to my letter?’

‘Mrs Clennam did not write, Mr Blandois, her hands being cramped,

and she thinking it as well to send it verbally by me.’ Mr Flintwinch

screwed this out of himself, unwillingly and rustily. ‘She sends

her compliments, and says she doesn’t on the whole wish to term

you unreasonable, and that she agrees. But without prejudicing the

appointment that stands for this day week.’

Monsieur Rigaud, after indulging in a fit of laughter, descended from

his throne, saying, ‘Good! I go to seek an hotel!’ But, there his eyes

encountered Cavalletto, who was still at his post.

‘Come, Pig,’ he added, ‘I have had you for a follower against my will;

now, I’ll have you against yours. I tell you, my little reptiles, I

am born to be served. I demand the service of this contrabandist as my

domestic until this day week.’

In answer to Cavalletto’s look of inquiry, Clennam made him a sign

to go; but he added aloud, ‘unless you are afraid of him.’ Cavalletto

replied with a very emphatic finger-negative.’No, master, I am not

afraid of him, when I no more keep it secrettementally that he was once

my comrade.’ Rigaud took no notice of either remark until he had lighted

his last cigarette and was quite ready for walking.

‘Afraid of him,’ he said then, looking round upon them all. ‘Whoof! My

children, my babies, my little dolls, you are all afraid of him. You

give him his bottle of wine here; you give him meat, drink, and lodging

there; you dare not touch him with a finger or an epithet. No. It is his

character to triumph! Whoof!

‘Of all the king’s knights he’s the flower,

And he’s always gay!’

With this adaptation of the Refrain to himself, he stalked out of the

room closely followed by Cavalletto, whom perhaps he had pressed into

his service because he tolerably well knew it would not be easy to get

rid of him. Mr Flintwinch, after scraping his chin, and looking about

with caustic disparagement of the Pig-Market, nodded to Arthur, and

followed. Mr Pancks, still penitent and depressed, followed too; after

receiving with great attention a secret word or two of instructions from

Arthur, and whispering back that he would see this affair out, and stand

by it to the end. The prisoner, with the feeling that he was more

despised, more scorned and repudiated, more helpless, altogether more

miserable and fallen than before, was left alone again.

CHAPTER 29. A Plea in the Marshalsea

Haggard anxiety and remorse are bad companions to be barred up with.

Brooding all day, and resting very little indeed at night, will not

arm a man against misery. Next morning, Clennam felt that his health was

sinking, as his spirits had already sunk and that the weight under which

he bent was bearing him down.

Night after night he had risen from his bed of wretchedness at twelve or

one o’clock, and had sat at his window watching the sickly lamps in the

yard, and looking upward for the first wan trace of day, hours before it

was possible that the sky could show it to him. Now when the night came,

he could not even persuade himself to undress.

For a burning restlessness set in, an agonised impatience of the prison,

and a conviction that he was going to break his heart and die there,

which caused him indescribable suffering. His dread and hatred of the

place became so intense that he felt it a labour to draw his breath in

it. The sensation of being stifled sometimes so overpowered him, that

he would stand at the window holding his throat and gasping. At the

same time a longing for other air, and a yearning to be beyond the blind

blank wall, made him feel as if he must go mad with the ardour of the

desire.

Many other prisoners had had experience of this condition before him,

and its violence and continuity had worn themselves out in their cases,

as they did in his. Two nights and a day exhausted it. It came back by

fits, but those grew fainter and returned at lengthening intervals. A

desolate calm succeeded; and the middle of the week found him settled

down in the despondency of low, slow fever.

With Cavalletto and Pancks away, he had no visitors to fear but Mr and

Mrs Plornish. His anxiety, in reference to that worthy pair, was that

they should not come near him; for, in the morbid state of his nerves,

he sought to be left alone, and spared the being seen so subdued and

weak. He wrote a note to Mrs Plornish representing himself as occupied

with his affairs, and bound by the necessity of devoting himself to

them, to remain for a time even without the pleasant interruption of

a sight of her kind face. As to Young John, who looked in daily at a

certain hour, when the turnkeys were relieved, to ask if he could do

anything for him; he always made a pretence of being engaged in writing,

and to answer cheerfully in the negative. The subject of their only

long conversation had never been revived between them. Through all these

changes of unhappiness, however, it had never lost its hold on Clennam’s

mind.

The sixth day of the appointed week was a moist, hot, misty day. It

seemed as though the prison’s poverty, and shabbiness, and dirt, were

growing in the sultry atmosphere. With an aching head and a weary heart,

Clennam had watched the miserable night out, listening to the fall of

rain on the yard pavement, thinking of its softer fall upon the country

earth. A blurred circle of yellow haze had risen up in the sky in lieu

of sun, and he had watched the patch it put upon his wall, like a bit of

the prison’s raggedness. He had heard the gates open; and the badly shod

feet that waited outside shuffle in; and the sweeping, and pumping,

and moving about, begin, which commenced the prison morning. So ill and

faint that he was obliged to rest many times in the process of getting

himself washed, he had at length crept to his chair by the open window.

In it he sat dozing, while the old woman who arranged his room went

through her morning’s work.

Light of head with want of sleep and want of food (his appetite, and

even his sense of taste, having forsaken him), he had been two or three

times conscious, in the night, of going astray. He had heard fragments

of tunes and songs in the warm wind, which he knew had no existence.

Now that he began to doze in exhaustion, he heard them again; and voices

seemed to address him, and he answered, and started.

Dozing and dreaming, without the power of reckoning time, so that

a minute might have been an hour and an hour a minute, some abiding

impression of a garden stole over him--a garden of flowers, with a

damp warm wind gently stirring their scents. It required such a painful

effort to lift his head for the purpose of inquiring into this, or

inquiring into anything, that the impression appeared to have become

quite an old and importunate one when he looked round. Beside the

tea-cup on his table he saw, then, a blooming nosegay: a wonderful

handful of the choicest and most lovely flowers.

Nothing had ever appeared so beautiful in his sight. He took them up and

inhaled their fragrance, and he lifted them to his hot head, and he put

them down and opened his parched hands to them, as cold hands are opened

to receive the cheering of a fire. It was not until he had delighted in

them for some time, that he wondered who had sent them; and opened his

door to ask the woman who must have put them there, how they had come

into her hands. But she was gone, and seemed to have been long gone; for

the tea she had left for him on the table was cold. He tried to drink

some, but could not bear the odour of it: so he crept back to his chair

by the open window, and put the flowers on the little round table of

old.

When the first faintness consequent on having moved about had left him,

he subsided into his former state. One of the night-tunes was playing

in the wind, when the door of his room seemed to open to a light touch,

and, after a moment’s pause, a quiet figure seemed to stand there, with

a black mantle on it. It seemed to draw the mantle off and drop it on

the ground, and then it seemed to be his Little Dorrit in her old, worn

dress. It seemed to tremble, and to clasp its hands, and to smile, and

to burst into tears.

He roused himself, and cried out. And then he saw, in the loving,

pitying, sorrowing, dear face, as in a mirror, how changed he was; and

she came towards him; and with her hands laid on his breast to keep him

in his chair, and with her knees upon the floor at his feet, and with

her lips raised up to kiss him, and with her tears dropping on him as

the rain from Heaven had dropped upon the flowers, Little Dorrit, a

living presence, called him by his name.

‘O, my best friend! Dear Mr Clennam, don’t let me see you weep! Unless

you weep with pleasure to see me. I hope you do. Your own poor child

come back!’

So faithful, tender, and unspoiled by Fortune. In the sound of her

voice, in the light of her eyes, in the touch of her hands, so

Angelically comforting and true!

As he embraced her, she said to him, ‘They never told me you were ill,’

and drawing an arm softly round his neck, laid his head upon her bosom,

put a hand upon his head, and resting her cheek upon that hand, nursed

him as lovingly, and GOD knows as innocently, as she had nursed her

father in that room when she had been but a baby, needing all the care

from others that she took of them.

When he could speak, he said, ‘Is it possible that you have come to me?

And in this dress?’

‘I hoped you would like me better in this dress than any other. I have

always kept it by me, to remind me: though I wanted no reminding. I am

not alone, you see. I have brought an old friend with me.’

Looking round, he saw Maggy in her big cap which had been long

abandoned, with a basket on her arm as in the bygone days, chuckling

rapturously.

‘It was only yesterday evening that I came to London with my brother.

I sent round to Mrs Plornish almost as soon as we arrived, that I might

hear of you and let you know I had come. Then I heard that you were

here. Did you happen to think of me in the night? I almost believe you

must have thought of me a little. I thought of you so anxiously, and it

appeared so long to morning.’

‘I have thought of you--’ he hesitated what to call her. She perceived

it in an instant.

‘You have not spoken to me by my right name yet. You know what my right

name always is with you.’

‘I have thought of you, Little Dorrit, every day, every hour, every

minute, since I have been here.’

‘Have you? Have you?’

He saw the bright delight of her face, and the flush that kindled in

it, with a feeling of shame. He, a broken, bankrupt, sick, dishonoured

prisoner.

‘I was here before the gates were opened, but I was afraid to come

straight to you. I should have done you more harm than good, at first;

for the prison was so familiar and yet so strange, and it brought back

so many remembrances of my poor father, and of you too, that at first

it overpowered me. But we went to Mr Chivery before we came to the gate,

and he brought us in, and got John’s room for us--my poor old room, you

know--and we waited there a little. I brought the flowers to the door,

but you didn’t hear me.’

She looked something more womanly than when she had gone away, and the

ripening touch of the Italian sun was visible upon her face. But,

otherwise, she was quite unchanged. The same deep, timid earnestness

that he had always seen in her, and never without emotion, he saw still.

If it had a new meaning that smote him to the heart, the change was in

his perception, not in her.

She took off her old bonnet, hung it in the old place, and noiselessly

began, with Maggy’s help, to make his room as fresh and neat as it could

be made, and to sprinkle it with a pleasant-smelling water. When that

was done, the basket, which was filled with grapes and other fruit,

was unpacked, and all its contents were quietly put away. When that was

done, a moment’s whisper despatched Maggy to despatch somebody else to

fill the basket again; which soon came back replenished with new

stores, from which a present provision of cooling drink and jelly, and

a prospective supply of roast chicken and wine and water, were the first

extracts. These various arrangements completed, she took out her old

needle-case to make him a curtain for his window; and thus, with a quiet

reigning in the room, that seemed to diffuse itself through the else

noisy prison, he found himself composed in his chair, with Little Dorrit

working at his side.

To see the modest head again bent down over its task, and the nimble

fingers busy at their old work--though she was not so absorbed in it,

but that her compassionate eyes were often raised to his face, and, when

they drooped again had tears in them--to be so consoled and comforted,

and to believe that all the devotion of this great nature was turned to

him in his adversity to pour out its inexhaustible wealth of goodness

upon him, did not steady Clennam’s trembling voice or hand, or

strengthen him in his weakness. Yet it inspired him with an inward

fortitude, that rose with his love. And how dearly he loved her now,

what words can tell!

As they sat side by side in the shadow of the wall, the shadow fell like

light upon him. She would not let him speak much, and he lay back in

his chair, looking at her. Now and again she would rise and give him

the glass that he might drink, or would smooth the resting-place of his

head; then she would gently resume her seat by him, and bend over her

work again.

The shadow moved with the sun, but she never moved from his side, except

to wait upon him. The sun went down and she was still there. She had

done her work now, and her hand, faltering on the arm of his chair since

its last tending of him, was hesitating there yet. He laid his hand upon

it, and it clasped him with a trembling supplication.

‘Dear Mr Clennam, I must say something to you before I go. I have put it

off from hour to hour, but I must say it.’

‘I too, dear Little Dorrit. I have put off what I must say.’

She nervously moved her hand towards his lips as if to stop him; then it

dropped, trembling, into its former place.

‘I am not going abroad again. My brother is, but I am not. He was always

attached to me, and he is so grateful to me now--so much too grateful,

for it is only because I happened to be with him in his illness--that

he says I shall be free to stay where I like best, and to do what I like

best. He only wishes me to be happy, he says.’

There was one bright star shining in the sky. She looked up at it while

she spoke, as if it were the fervent purpose of her own heart shining

above her.

‘You will understand, I dare say, without my telling you, that my

brother has come home to find my dear father’s will, and to take

possession of his property. He says, if there is a will, he is sure I

shall be left rich; and if there is none, that he will make me so.’

He would have spoken; but she put up her trembling hand again, and he

stopped.

‘I have no use for money, I have no wish for it. It would be of no value

at all to me but for your sake. I could not be rich, and you here. I

must always be much worse than poor, with you distressed. Will you let

me lend you all I have? Will you let me give it you? Will you let me

show you that I have never forgotten, that I never can forget, your

protection of me when this was my home? Dear Mr Clennam, make me of all

the world the happiest, by saying Yes? Make me as happy as I can be in

leaving you here, by saying nothing to-night, and letting me go

away with the hope that you will think of it kindly; and that for my

sake--not for yours, for mine, for nobody’s but mine!--you will give me

the greatest joy I can experience on earth, the joy of knowing that I

have been serviceable to you, and that I have paid some little of the

great debt of my affection and gratitude. I can’t say what I wish to

say. I can’t visit you here where I have lived so long, I can’t think of

you here where I have seen so much, and be as calm and comforting as I

ought. My tears will make their way. I cannot keep them back. But

pray, pray, pray, do not turn from your Little Dorrit, now, in your

affliction! Pray, pray, pray, I beg you and implore you with all my

grieving heart, my friend--my dear!--take all I have, and make it a

Blessing to me!’

The star had shone on her face until now, when her face sank upon his

hand and her own.

It had grown darker when he raised her in his encircling arm, and softly

answered her.

‘No, darling Little Dorrit. No, my child. I must not hear of such a

sacrifice. Liberty and hope would be so dear, bought at such a price,

that I could never support their weight, never bear the reproach of

possessing them. But with what ardent thankfulness and love I say this,

I may call Heaven to witness!’

‘And yet you will not let me be faithful to you in your affliction?’

‘Say, dearest Little Dorrit, and yet I will try to be faithful to you.

If, in the bygone days when this was your home and when this was your

dress, I had understood myself (I speak only of myself) better, and

had read the secrets of my own breast more distinctly; if, through my

reserve and self-mistrust, I had discerned a light that I see brightly

now when it has passed far away, and my weak footsteps can never

overtake it; if I had then known, and told you that I loved and honoured

you, not as the poor child I used to call you, but as a woman whose

true hand would raise me high above myself and make me a far happier and

better man; if I had so used the opportunity there is no recalling--as

I wish I had, O I wish I had!--and if something had kept us apart then,

when I was moderately thriving, and when you were poor; I might have met

your noble offer of your fortune, dearest girl, with other words than

these, and still have blushed to touch it. But, as it is, I must never

touch it, never!’

She besought him, more pathetically and earnestly, with her little

supplicatory hand, than she could have done in any words.

‘I am disgraced enough, my Little Dorrit. I must not descend so low as

that, and carry you--so dear, so generous, so good--down with me. GOD

bless you, GOD reward you! It is past.’

He took her in his arms, as if she had been his daughter.

‘Always so much older, so much rougher, and so much less worthy, even

what I was must be dismissed by both of us, and you must see me only as

I am. I put this parting kiss upon your cheek, my child--who might have

been more near to me, who never could have been more dear--a ruined man

far removed from you, for ever separated from you, whose course is

run while yours is but beginning. I have not the courage to ask to be

forgotten by you in my humiliation; but I ask to be remembered only as I

am.’

The bell began to ring, warning visitors to depart. He took her mantle

from the wall, and tenderly wrapped it round her.

‘One other word, my Little Dorrit. A hard one to me, but it is a

necessary one. The time when you and this prison had anything in common

has long gone by. Do you understand?’

‘O! you will never say to me,’ she cried, weeping bitterly, and holding

up her clasped hands in entreaty, ‘that I am not to come back any more!

You will surely not desert me so!’

‘I would say it, if I could; but I have not the courage quite to shut

out this dear face, and abandon all hope of its return. But do not come

soon, do not come often! This is now a tainted place, and I well know

the taint of it clings to me. You belong to much brighter and better

scenes. You are not to look back here, my Little Dorrit; you are to look

away to very different and much happier paths. Again, GOD bless you in

them! GOD reward you!’

Maggy, who had fallen into very low spirits, here cried, ‘Oh get him

into a hospital; do get him into a hospital, Mother! He’ll never look

like hisself again, if he an’t got into a hospital. And then the little

woman as was always a spinning at her wheel, she can go to the cupboard

with the Princess, and say, what do you keep the Chicking there for? and

then they can take it out and give it to him, and then all be happy!’

The interruption was seasonable, for the bell had nearly rung itself

out. Again tenderly wrapping her mantle about her, and taking her on his

arm (though, but for her visit, he was almost too weak to walk), Arthur

led Little Dorrit down-stairs. She was the last visitor to pass out at

the Lodge, and the gate jarred heavily and hopelessly upon her.

With the funeral clang that it sounded into Arthur’s heart, his sense of

weakness returned. It was a toilsome journey up-stairs to his room, and

he re-entered its dark solitary precincts in unutterable misery.

When it was almost midnight, and the prison had long been quiet, a

cautious creak came up the stairs, and a cautious tap of a key was given

at his door. It was Young John. He glided in, in his stockings, and held

the door closed, while he spoke in a whisper.

‘It’s against all rules, but I don’t mind. I was determined to come

through, and come to you.’

‘What is the matter?’

‘Nothing’s the matter, sir. I was waiting in the court-yard for Miss

Dorrit when she came out. I thought you’d like some one to see that she

was safe.’

‘Thank you, thank you! You took her home, John?’

‘I saw her to her hotel. The same that Mr Dorrit was at. Miss Dorrit

walked all the way, and talked to me so kind, it quite knocked me over.

Why do you think she walked instead of riding?’

‘I don’t know, John.’

‘To talk about you. She said to me, “John, you was always honourable,

and if you’ll promise me that you will take care of him, and never let

him want for help and comfort when I am not there, my mind will be at

rest so far.” I promised her. And I’ll stand by you,’ said John Chivery,

‘for ever!’

Clennam, much affected, stretched out his hand to this honest spirit.

‘Before I take it,’ said John, looking at it, without coming from the

door, ‘guess what message Miss Dorrit gave me.’

Clennam shook his head.

‘“Tell him,”’ repeated John, in a distinct, though quavering voice,

‘“that his Little Dorrit sent him her undying love.” Now it’s delivered.

Have I been honourable, sir?’

‘Very, very!’

‘Will you tell Miss Dorrit I’ve been honourable, sir?’

‘I will indeed.’

‘There’s my hand, sir,’ said John, ‘and I’ll stand by you forever!’

After a hearty squeeze, he disappeared with the same cautious creak upon

the stair, crept shoeless over the pavement of the yard, and, locking

the gates behind him, passed out into the front where he had left his

shoes. If the same way had been paved with burning ploughshares, it is

not at all improbable that John would have traversed it with the same

devotion, for the same purpose.

CHAPTER 30. Closing in

The last day of the appointed week touched the bars of the Marshalsea

gate. Black, all night, since the gate had clashed upon Little Dorrit,

its iron stripes were turned by the early-glowing sun into stripes of

gold. Far aslant across the city, over its jumbled roofs, and through

the open tracery of its church towers, struck the long bright rays, bars

of the prison of this lower world.

Throughout the day the old house within the gateway remained untroubled

by any visitors. But, when the sun was low, three men turned in at the

gateway and made for the dilapidated house.

Rigaud was the first, and walked by himself smoking. Mr Baptist was

the second, and jogged close after him, looking at no other object.

Mr Pancks was the third, and carried his hat under his arm for the

liberation of his restive hair; the weather being extremely hot. They

all came together at the door-steps.

‘You pair of madmen!’ said Rigaud, facing about. ‘Don’t go yet!’

‘We don’t mean to,’ said Mr Pancks.

Giving him a dark glance in acknowledgment of his answer, Rigaud knocked

loudly. He had charged himself with drink, for the playing out of his

game, and was impatient to begin. He had hardly finished one long

resounding knock, when he turned to the knocker again and began another.

That was not yet finished when Jeremiah Flintwinch opened the door, and

they all clanked into the stone hall. Rigaud, thrusting Mr Flintwinch

aside, proceeded straight up-stairs. His two attendants followed him, Mr

Flintwinch followed them, and they all came trooping into Mrs Clennam’s

quiet room. It was in its usual state; except that one of the windows

was wide open, and Affery sat on its old-fashioned window-seat, mending

a stocking. The usual articles were on the little table; the usual

deadened fire was in the grate; the bed had its usual pall upon it; and

the mistress of all sat on her black bier-like sofa, propped up by her

black angular bolster that was like the headsman’s block.

Yet there was a nameless air of preparation in the room, as if it were

strung up for an occasion. From what the room derived it--every one of

its small variety of objects being in the fixed spot it had occupied

for years--no one could have said without looking attentively at its

mistress, and that, too, with a previous knowledge of her face. Although

her unchanging black dress was in every plait precisely as of old, and

her unchanging attitude was rigidly preserved, a very slight additional

setting of her features and contraction of her gloomy forehead was so

powerfully marked, that it marked everything about her.

‘Who are these?’ she said, wonderingly, as the two attendants entered.

‘What do these people want here?’

‘Who are these, dear madame, is it?’ returned Rigaud. ‘Faith, they are

friends of your son the prisoner. And what do they want here, is it?

Death, madame, I don’t know. You will do well to ask them.’

‘You know you told us at the door, not to go yet,’ said Pancks.

‘And you know you told me at the door, you didn’t mean to go,’ retorted

Rigaud. ‘In a word, madame, permit me to present two spies of the

prisoner’s--madmen, but spies. If you wish them to remain here during

our little conversation, say the word. It is nothing to me.’

‘Why should I wish them to remain here?’ said Mrs Clennam. ‘What have I

to do with them?’

‘Then, dearest madame,’ said Rigaud, throwing himself into an arm-chair

so heavily that the old room trembled, ‘you will do well to dismiss

them. It is your affair. They are not my spies, not my rascals.’

‘Hark! You Pancks,’ said Mrs Clennam, bending her brows upon him

angrily, ‘you Casby’s clerk! Attend to your employer’s business and your

own. Go. And take that other man with you.’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ returned Mr Pancks, ‘I am glad to say I see no

objection to our both retiring. We have done all we undertook to do for

Mr Clennam. His constant anxiety has been (and it grew worse upon him

when he became a prisoner), that this agreeable gentleman should be

brought back here to the place from which he slipped away. Here he

is--brought back. And I will say,’ added Mr Pancks, ‘to his ill-looking

face, that in my opinion the world would be no worse for his slipping

out of it altogether.’

‘Your opinion is not asked,’ answered Mrs Clennam. ‘Go.’

‘I am sorry not to leave you in better company, ma’am,’ said Pancks;

‘and sorry, too, that Mr Clennam can’t be present. It’s my fault, that

is.’

‘You mean his own,’ she returned.

‘No, I mean mine, ma’am,’ said Pancks, ‘for it was my misfortune to lead

him into a ruinous investment.’ (Mr Pancks still clung to that word,

and never said speculation.) ‘Though I can prove by figures,’ added Mr

Pancks, with an anxious countenance, ‘that it ought to have been a good

investment. I have gone over it since it failed, every day of my life,

and it comes out--regarded as a question of figures--triumphant. The

present is not a time or place,’ Mr Pancks pursued, with a longing

glance into his hat, where he kept his calculations, ‘for entering upon

the figures; but the figures are not to be disputed. Mr Clennam ought to

have been at this moment in his carriage and pair, and I ought to have

been worth from three to five thousand pound.’

Mr Pancks put his hair erect with a general aspect of confidence that

could hardly have been surpassed, if he had had the amount in his

pocket. These incontrovertible figures had been the occupation of every

moment of his leisure since he had lost his money, and were destined to

afford him consolation to the end of his days.

‘However,’ said Mr Pancks, ‘enough of that. Altro, old boy, you have

seen the figures, and you know how they come out.’ Mr Baptist, who had

not the slightest arithmetical power of compensating himself in this

way, nodded, with a fine display of bright teeth.

At whom Mr Flintwinch had been looking, and to whom he then said:

‘Oh! it’s you, is it? I thought I remembered your face, but I wasn’t

certain till I saw your teeth. Ah! yes, to be sure. It was this

officious refugee,’ said Jeremiah to Mrs Clennam, ‘who came knocking

at the door on the night when Arthur and Chatterbox were here, and who

asked me a whole Catechism of questions about Mr Blandois.’

‘It is true,’ Mr Baptist cheerfully admitted. ‘And behold him, padrone!

I have found him consequentementally.’

‘I shouldn’t have objected,’ returned Mr Flintwinch, ‘to your having

broken your neck consequentementally.’

‘And now,’ said Mr Pancks, whose eye had often stealthily wandered to

the window-seat and the stocking that was being mended there, ‘I’ve

only one other word to say before I go. If Mr Clennam was here--but

unfortunately, though he has so far got the better of this fine

gentleman as to return him to this place against his will, he is ill

and in prison--ill and in prison, poor fellow--if he was here,’ said Mr

Pancks, taking one step aside towards the window-seat, and laying

his right hand upon the stocking; ‘he would say, “Affery, tell your

dreams!”’

Mr Pancks held up his right forefinger between his nose and the stocking

with a ghostly air of warning, turned, steamed out and towed Mr Baptist

after him. The house-door was heard to close upon them, their steps

were heard passing over the dull pavement of the echoing court-yard, and

still nobody had added a word. Mrs Clennam and Jeremiah had exchanged a

look; and had then looked, and looked still, at Affery, who sat mending

the stocking with great assiduity.

‘Come!’ said Mr Flintwinch at length, screwing himself a curve or two in

the direction of the window-seat, and rubbing the palms of his hands on

his coat-tail as if he were preparing them to do something: ‘Whatever

has to be said among us had better be begun to be said without more loss

of time.--So, Affery, my woman, take yourself away!’

In a moment Affery had thrown the stocking down, started up, caught

hold of the windowsill with her right hand, lodged herself upon the

window-seat with her right knee, and was flourishing her left hand,

beating expected assailants off.

‘No, I won’t, Jeremiah--no, I won’t--no, I won’t! I won’t go! I’ll stay

here. I’ll hear all I don’t know, and say all I know. I will, at last,

if I die for it. I will, I will, I will, I will!’

Mr Flintwinch, stiffening with indignation and amazement, moistened the

fingers of one hand at his lips, softly described a circle with them in

the palm of the other hand, and continued with a menacing grin to

screw himself in the direction of his wife; gasping some remark as he

advanced, of which, in his choking anger, only the words, ‘Such a dose!’

were audible.

‘Not a bit nearer, Jeremiah!’ cried Affery, never ceasing to beat the

air. ‘Don’t come a bit nearer to me, or I’ll rouse the neighbourhood!

I’ll throw myself out of window. I’ll scream Fire and Murder! I’ll wake

the dead! Stop where you are, or I’ll make shrieks enough to wake the

dead!’

The determined voice of Mrs Clennam echoed ‘Stop!’ Jeremiah had stopped

already.

‘It is closing in, Flintwinch. Let her alone. Affery, do you turn

against me after these many years?’

‘I do, if it’s turning against you to hear what I don’t know, and say

what I know. I have broke out now, and I can’t go back. I am determined

to do it. I will do it, I will, I will, I will! If that’s turning

against you, yes, I turn against both of you two clever ones. I told

Arthur when he first come home to stand up against you. I told him it

was no reason, because I was afeard of my life of you, that he should

be. All manner of things have been a-going on since then, and I won’t

be run up by Jeremiah, nor yet I won’t be dazed and scared, nor made a

party to I don’t know what, no more. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t! I’ll

up for Arthur when he has nothing left, and is ill, and in prison, and

can’t up for himself. I will, I will, I will, I will!’

‘How do you know, you heap of confusion,’ asked Mrs Clennam sternly,

‘that in doing what you are doing now, you are even serving Arthur?’

‘I don’t know nothing rightly about anything,’ said Affery; ‘and if

ever you said a true word in your life, it’s when you call me a heap of

confusion, for you two clever ones have done your most to make me such.

You married me whether I liked it or not, and you’ve led me, pretty well

ever since, such a life of dreaming and frightening as never was known,

and what do you expect me to be but a heap of confusion? You wanted to

make me such, and I am such; but I won’t submit no longer; no, I won’t,

I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!’ She was still beating the air against all

comers.

After gazing at her in silence, Mrs Clennam turned to Rigaud. ‘You

see and hear this foolish creature. Do you object to such a piece of

distraction remaining where she is?’

‘I, madame,’ he replied, ‘do I? That’s a question for you.’

‘I do not,’ she said, gloomily. ‘There is little left to choose now.

Flintwinch, it is closing in.’

Mr Flintwinch replied by directing a look of red vengeance at his wife,

and then, as if to pinion himself from falling upon her, screwed his

crossed arms into the breast of his waistcoat, and with his chin very

near one of his elbows stood in a corner, watching Rigaud in the oddest

attitude. Rigaud, for his part, arose from his chair, and seated himself

on the table with his legs dangling. In this easy attitude, he met Mrs

Clennam’s set face, with his moustache going up and his nose coming

down.

‘Madame, I am a gentleman--’

‘Of whom,’ she interrupted in her steady tones, ‘I have heard

disparagement, in connection with a French jail and an accusation of

murder.’

He kissed his hand to her with his exaggerated gallantry.

‘Perfectly. Exactly. Of a lady too! What absurdity! How incredible! I

had the honour of making a great success then; I hope to have the

honour of making a great success now. I kiss your hands. Madame, I am a

gentleman (I was going to observe), who when he says, “I will definitely

finish this or that affair at the present sitting,” does definitely

finish it. I announce to you that we are arrived at our last sitting on

our little business. You do me the favour to follow, and to comprehend?’

She kept her eyes fixed upon him with a frown. ‘Yes.’

‘Further, I am a gentleman to whom mere mercenary trade-bargains are

unknown, but to whom money is always acceptable as the means of pursuing

his pleasures. You do me the favour to follow, and to comprehend?’

‘Scarcely necessary to ask, one would say. Yes.’

‘Further, I am a gentleman of the softest and sweetest disposition,

but who, if trifled with, becomes enraged. Noble natures under such

circumstances become enraged. I possess a noble nature. When the lion

is awakened--that is to say, when I enrage--the satisfaction of my

animosity is as acceptable to me as money. You always do me the favour

to follow, and to comprehend?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, somewhat louder than before.

‘Do not let me derange you; pray be tranquil. I have said we are now

arrived at our last sitting. Allow me to recall the two sittings we have

held.’

‘It is not necessary.’

‘Death, madame,’ he burst out, ‘it’s my fancy! Besides, it clears the

way. The first sitting was limited. I had the honour of making your

acquaintance--of presenting my letter; I am a Knight of Industry, at

your service, madame, but my polished manners had won me so much of

success, as a master of languages, among your compatriots who are as

stiff as their own starch is to one another, but are ready to relax to

a foreign gentleman of polished manners--and of observing one or two

little things,’ he glanced around the room and smiled, ‘about this

honourable house, to know which was necessary to assure me, and

to convince me that I had the distinguished pleasure of making the

acquaintance of the lady I sought. I achieved this. I gave my word

of honour to our dear Flintwinch that I would return. I gracefully

departed.’

Her face neither acquiesced nor demurred. The same when he paused, and

when he spoke, it as yet showed him always the one attentive frown,

and the dark revelation before mentioned of her being nerved for the

occasion.

‘I say, gracefully departed, because it was graceful to retire without

alarming a lady. To be morally graceful, not less than physically, is

a part of the character of Rigaud Blandois. It was also politic, as

leaving you with something overhanging you, to expect me again with a

little anxiety on a day not named. But your slave is politic. By Heaven,

madame, politic! Let us return. On the day not named, I have again the

honour to render myself at your house. I intimate that I have something

to sell, which, if not bought, will compromise madame whom I highly

esteem. I explain myself generally. I demand--I think it was a thousand

pounds. Will you correct me?’

Thus forced to speak, she replied with constraint, ‘You demanded as much

as a thousand pounds.’

‘I demand at present, Two. Such are the evils of delay. But to return

once more. We are not accordant; we differ on that occasion. I am

playful; playfulness is a part of my amiable character. Playfully, I

become as one slain and hidden. For, it may alone be worth half the sum

to madame, to be freed from the suspicions that my droll idea awakens.

Accident and spies intermix themselves against my playfulness, and spoil

the fruit, perhaps--who knows? only you and Flintwinch--when it is just

ripe. Thus, madame, I am here for the last time. Listen! Definitely the

last.’

As he struck his straggling boot-heels against the flap of the table,

meeting her frown with an insolent gaze, he began to change his tone for

a fierce one.

‘Bah! Stop an instant! Let us advance by steps. Here is my Hotel-note to

be paid, according to contract. Five minutes hence we may be at daggers’

points. I’ll not leave it till then, or you’ll cheat me. Pay it! Count

me the money!’

‘Take it from his hand and pay it, Flintwinch,’ said Mrs Clennam.

He spirted it into Mr Flintwinch’s face when the old man advanced to

take it, and held forth his hand, repeating noisily, ‘Pay it! Count it

out! Good money!’ Jeremiah picked the bill up, looked at the total with

a bloodshot eye, took a small canvas bag from his pocket, and told the

amount into his hand.

Rigaud chinked the money, weighed it in his hand, threw it up a little

way and caught it, chinked it again.

‘The sound of it, to the bold Rigaud Blandois, is like the taste of

fresh meat to the tiger. Say, then, madame. How much?’

He turned upon her suddenly with a menacing gesture of the weighted hand

that clenched the money, as if he were going to strike her with it.

‘I tell you again, as I told you before, that we are not rich here, as

you suppose us to be, and that your demand is excessive. I have not the

present means of complying with such a demand, if I had ever so great an

inclination.’

‘If!’ cried Rigaud. ‘Hear this lady with her If! Will you say that you

have not the inclination?’

‘I will say what presents itself to me, and not what presents itself to

you.’

‘Say it then. As to the inclination. Quick! Come to the inclination, and

I know what to do.’

She was no quicker, and no slower, in her reply. ‘It would seem that

you have obtained possession of a paper--or of papers--which I assuredly

have the inclination to recover.’

Rigaud, with a loud laugh, drummed his heels against the table, and

chinked his money. ‘I think so! I believe you there!’

‘The paper might be worth, to me, a sum of money. I cannot say how much,

or how little.’

‘What the Devil!’ he asked savagely. ‘Not after a week’s grace to

consider?’

‘No! I will not out of my scanty means--for I tell you again, we are

poor here, and not rich--I will not offer any price for a power that I

do not know the worst and the fullest extent of. This is the third time

of your hinting and threatening. You must speak explicitly, or you may

go where you will, and do what you will. It is better to be torn to

pieces at a spring, than to be a mouse at the caprice of such a cat.’

He looked at her so hard with those eyes too near together that the

sinister sight of each, crossing that of the other, seemed to make the

bridge of his hooked nose crooked. After a long survey, he said, with

the further setting off of his internal smile:

‘You are a bold woman!’

‘I am a resolved woman.’

‘You always were. What? She always was; is it not so, my little

Flintwinch?’

‘Flintwinch, say nothing to him. It is for him to say, here and now,

all he can; or to go hence, and do all he can. You know this to be our

determination. Leave him to his action on it.’

She did not shrink under his evil leer, or avoid it. He turned it upon

her again, but she remained steady at the point to which she had fixed

herself. He got off the table, placed a chair near the sofa, sat down in

it, and leaned an arm upon the sofa close to her own, which he touched

with his hand. Her face was ever frowning, attentive, and settled.

‘It is your pleasure then, madame, that I shall relate a morsel of

family history in this little family society,’ said Rigaud, with a

warning play of his lithe fingers on her arm. ‘I am something of a

doctor. Let me touch your pulse.’

She suffered him to take her wrist in his hand. Holding it, he proceeded

to say:

‘A history of a strange marriage, and a strange mother, and a revenge,

and a suppression.--Aye, aye, aye? this pulse is beating curiously!

It appears to me that it doubles while I touch it. Are these the usual

changes of your malady, madame?’

There was a struggle in her maimed arm as she twisted it away, but there

was none in her face. On his face there was his own smile.

‘I have lived an adventurous life. I am an adventurous character. I have

known many adventurers; interesting spirits--amiable society! To one

of them I owe my knowledge and my proofs--I repeat it, estimable

lady--proofs--of the ravishing little family history I go to commence.

You will be charmed with it. But, bah! I forget. One should name a

history. Shall I name it the history of a house? But, bah, again. There

are so many houses. Shall I name it the history of this house?’

Leaning over the sofa, poised on two legs of his chair and his left

elbow; that hand often tapping her arm to beat his words home; his

legs crossed; his right hand sometimes arranging his hair, sometimes

smoothing his moustache, sometimes striking his nose, always threatening

her whatever it did; coarse, insolent, rapacious, cruel, and powerful,

he pursued his narrative at his ease.

‘In fine, then, I name it the history of this house. I commence it.

There live here, let us suppose, an uncle and nephew. The uncle, a

rigid old gentleman of strong force of character; the nephew, habitually

timid, repressed, and under constraint.’

Mistress Affery, fixedly attentive in the window-seat, biting the

rolled up end of her apron, and trembling from head to foot, here cried

out, ‘Jeremiah, keep off from me! I’ve heerd, in my dreams, of Arthur’s

father and his uncle. He’s a talking of them. It was before my time

here; but I’ve heerd in my dreams that Arthur’s father was a poor,

irresolute, frightened chap, who had had everything but his orphan life

scared out of him when he was young, and that he had no voice in the

choice of his wife even, but his uncle chose her. There she sits! I

heerd it in my dreams, and you said it to her own self.’

As Mr Flintwinch shook his fist at her, and as Mrs Clennam gazed upon

her, Rigaud kissed his hand to her.

‘Perfectly right, dear Madame Flintwinch. You have a genius for

dreaming.’

‘I don’t want none of your praises,’ returned Affery. ‘I don’t want to

have nothing at all to say to you. But Jeremiah said they was dreams,

and I’ll tell ‘em as such!’ Here she put her apron in her mouth again,

as if she were stopping somebody else’s mouth--perhaps Jeremiah’s, which

was chattering with threats as if he were grimly cold.

‘Our beloved Madame Flintwinch,’ said Rigaud, ‘developing all of a

sudden a fine susceptibility and spirituality, is right to a marvel.

Yes. So runs the history. Monsieur, the uncle, commands the nephew to

marry. Monsieur says to him in effect, “My nephew, I introduce to you a

lady of strong force of character, like myself--a resolved lady, a stern

lady, a lady who has a will that can break the weak to powder: a lady

without pity, without love, implacable, revengeful, cold as the stone,

but raging as the fire.” Ah! what fortitude! Ah, what superiority of

intellectual strength! Truly, a proud and noble character that I

describe in the supposed words of Monsieur, the uncle. Ha, ha, ha! Death

of my soul, I love the sweet lady!’

Mrs Clennam’s face had changed. There was a remarkable darkness of

colour on it, and the brow was more contracted. ‘Madame, madame,’ said

Rigaud, tapping her on the arm, as if his cruel hand were sounding a

musical instrument, ‘I perceive I interest you. I perceive I awaken your

sympathy. Let us go on.’

The drooping nose and the ascending moustache had, however, to be hidden

for a moment with the white hand, before he could go on; he enjoyed the

effect he made so much.

‘The nephew, being, as the lucid Madame Flintwinch has remarked, a poor

devil who has had everything but his orphan life frightened and famished

out of him--the nephew abases his head, and makes response: “My uncle,

it is to you to command. Do as you will!” Monsieur, the uncle, does as

he will. It is what he always does. The auspicious nuptials take place;

the newly married come home to this charming mansion; the lady is

received, let us suppose, by Flintwinch. Hey, old intriguer?’

Jeremiah, with his eyes upon his mistress, made no reply. Rigaud looked

from one to the other, struck his ugly nose, and made a clucking with

his tongue.

‘Soon the lady makes a singular and exciting discovery. Thereupon,

full of anger, full of jealousy, full of vengeance, she forms--see you,

madame!--a scheme of retribution, the weight of which she ingeniously

forces her crushed husband to bear himself, as well as execute upon her

enemy. What superior intelligence!’

‘Keep off, Jeremiah!’ cried the palpitating Affery, taking her apron

from her mouth again. ‘But it was one of my dreams, that you told her,

when you quarrelled with her one winter evening at dusk--there she sits

and you looking at her--that she oughtn’t to have let Arthur when he

come home, suspect his father only; that she had always had the strength

and the power; and that she ought to have stood up more to Arthur, for

his father. It was in the same dream where you said to her that she was

not--not something, but I don’t know what, for she burst out tremendous

and stopped you. You know the dream as well as I do. When you come

down-stairs into the kitchen with the candle in your hand, and hitched

my apron off my head. When you told me I had been dreaming. When you

wouldn’t believe the noises.’ After this explosion Affery put her apron

into her mouth again; always keeping her hand on the window-sill and her

knee on the window-seat, ready to cry out or jump out if her lord and

master approached.

Rigaud had not lost a word of this.

‘Haha!’ he cried, lifting his eyebrows, folding his arms, and leaning

back in his chair. ‘Assuredly, Madame Flintwinch is an oracle! How shall

we interpret the oracle, you and I and the old intriguer? He said that

you were not--? And you burst out and stopped him! What was it you were

not? What is it you are not? Say then, madame!’

Under this ferocious banter, she sat breathing harder, and her mouth was

disturbed. Her lips quivered and opened, in spite of her utmost efforts

to keep them still.

‘Come then, madame! Speak, then! Our old intriguer said that you were

not--and you stopped him. He was going to say that you were not--what?

I know already, but I want a little confidence from you. How, then? You

are not what?’

She tried again to repress herself, but broke out vehemently, ‘Not

Arthur’s mother!’

‘Good,’ said Rigaud. ‘You are amenable.’