summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/old/files/relative.htm
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      Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens
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<pre xml:space="preserve">

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Little Dorrit

Author: Charles Dickens

Release Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #963]
Last Updated: July 10, 2014

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE DORRIT ***




Produced by Jo Churcher, and David Widger





</pre>
    <div style="height: 8em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h1>
      LITTLE DORRIT
    </h1>
    <h2>
      By Charles Dickens
    </h2>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0008m.jpg" alt="0008m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0008.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0009m.jpg" alt="0009m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0009.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>

    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <p>
      <b>CONTENTS</b>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE TO THE 1857 EDITION </a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY</b> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER 1. Sun and Shadow </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER 2 Fellow Travellers </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER 3. Home </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER 4. Mrs Flintwinch has a Dream </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER 5. Family Affairs </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER 6. The Father of the Marshalsea </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER 7. The Child of the Marshalsea </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER 8. The Lock </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER 9. Little Mother </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER 10. Containing the whole Science of
      Government </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER 11. Let Loose </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER 12. Bleeding Heart Yard </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER 13. Patriarchal </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER 14. Little Dorrit's Party </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER 15. Mrs Flintwinch has another Dream </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER 16. Nobody's Weakness </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER 17. Nobody's Rival </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER 18. Little Dorrit's Lover </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER 19. The Father of the Marshalsea in two
      or three Relations </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER 20. Moving in Society </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER 21. Mr Merdle's Complaint </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER 22. A Puzzle </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER 23. Machinery in Motion </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER 24. Fortune-Telling </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER 25. Conspirators and Others </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER 26. Nobody's State of Mind </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER 27. Five-and-Twenty </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER 28. Nobody's Disappearance </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER 29. Mrs Flintwinch goes on Dreaming </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER 30. The Word of a Gentleman </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER 31. Spirit </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER 32. More Fortune-Telling </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER 33. Mrs Merdle's Complaint </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER 34. A Shoal of Barnacles </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER 35. What was behind Mr Pancks on Little
      Dorrit's Hand </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER 36. The Marshalsea becomes an Orphan </a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> <b>BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES</b> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER 1. Fellow Travellers </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER 2. Mrs General </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0039"> CHAPTER 3. On the Road </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0040"> CHAPTER 4. A Letter from Little Dorrit </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0041"> CHAPTER 5. Something Wrong Somewhere </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0042"> CHAPTER 6. Something Right Somewhere </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0043"> CHAPTER 7. Mostly, Prunes and Prism </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0044"> CHAPTER 8. The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that
      'It Never Does' </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0045"> CHAPTER 9. Appearance and Disappearance </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0046"> CHAPTER 10. The Dreams of Mrs Flintwinch thicken
      </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0047"> CHAPTER 11. A Letter from Little Dorrit </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0048"> CHAPTER 12. In which a Great Patriotic Conference
      is holden </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0049"> CHAPTER 13. The Progress of an Epidemic </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0050"> CHAPTER 14. Taking Advice </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0051"> CHAPTER 15. No just Cause or Impediment why these
      Two Persons </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0052"> CHAPTER 16. Getting on </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0053"> CHAPTER 17. Missing </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0054"> CHAPTER 18. A Castle in the Air </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0055"> CHAPTER 19. The Storming of the Castle in the Air
      </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0056"> CHAPTER 20. Introduces the next </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0057"> CHAPTER 21. The History of a Self-Tormentor </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0058"> CHAPTER 22. Who passes by this Road so late? </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0059"> CHAPTER 23. Mistress Affery makes a Conditional
      Promise, </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0060"> CHAPTER 24. The Evening of a Long Day </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0061"> CHAPTER 25. The Chief Butler Resigns the Seals of
      Office </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0062"> CHAPTER 26. Reaping the Whirlwind </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0063"> CHAPTER 27. The Pupil of the Marshalsea </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0064"> CHAPTER 28. An Appearance in the Marshalsea </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0065"> CHAPTER 29. A Plea in the Marshalsea </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0066"> CHAPTER 30. Closing in </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0067"> CHAPTER 31. Closed </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0068"> CHAPTER 32. Going </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0069"> CHAPTER 33. Going! </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0070"> CHAPTER 34. Gone </a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      PREFACE TO THE 1857 EDITION
</h2>

    <p class="pfirst">
<span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> have been occupied with this story, during many working hours of two
      years. I must have been very ill employed, if I could not leave its merits
      and demerits as a whole, to express themselves on its being read as a
      whole. But, as it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may have held its
      threads with a more continuous attention than anyone else can have given
      them during its desultory publication, it is not unreasonable to ask that
      the weaving may be looked at in its completed state, and with the pattern
      finished.
    </p>
    <p>
      If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the Barnacles
      and the Circumlocution Office, I would seek it in the common experience of
      an Englishman, without presuming to mention the unimportant fact of my
      having done that violence to good manners, in the days of a Russian war,
      and of a Court of Inquiry at Chelsea. If I might make so bold as to defend
      that extravagant conception, Mr Merdle, I would hint that it originated
      after the Railroad-share epoch, in the times of a certain Irish bank, and
      of one or two other equally laudable enterprises. If I were to plead
      anything in mitigation of the preposterous fancy that a bad design will
      sometimes claim to be a good and an expressly religious design, it would
      be the curious coincidence that it has been brought to its climax in these
      pages, in the days of the public examination of late Directors of a Royal
      British Bank. But, I submit myself to suffer judgment to go by default on
      all these counts, if need be, and to accept the assurance (on good
      authority) that nothing like them was ever known in this land.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some of my readers may have an interest in being informed whether or no
      any portions of the Marshalsea Prison are yet standing. I did not know,
      myself, until the sixth of this present month, when I went to look. I
      found the outer front courtyard, often mentioned here, metamorphosed into
      a butter shop; and I then almost gave up every brick of the jail for lost.
      Wandering, however, down a certain adjacent 'Angel Court, leading to
      Bermondsey', I came to 'Marshalsea Place:' the houses in which I
      recognised, not only as the great block of the former prison, but as
      preserving the rooms that arose in my mind's-eye when I became Little
      Dorrit's biographer. The smallest boy I ever conversed with, carrying the
      largest baby I ever saw, offered a supernaturally intelligent explanation
      of the locality in its old uses, and was very nearly correct. How this
      young Newton (for such I judge him to be) came by his information, I don't
      know; he was a quarter of a century too young to know anything about it of
      himself. I pointed to the window of the room where Little Dorrit was born,
      and where her father lived so long, and asked him what was the name of the
      lodger who tenanted that apartment at present? He said, 'Tom Pythick.' I
      asked him who was Tom Pythick? and he said, 'Joe Pythick's uncle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      A little further on, I found the older and smaller wall, which used to
      enclose the pent-up inner prison where nobody was put, except for
      ceremony. But, whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of Angel
      Court, leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very paving-stones
      of the extinct Marshalsea jail; will see its narrow yard to the right and
      to the left, very little altered if at all, except that the walls were
      lowered when the place got free; will look upon rooms in which the debtors
      lived; and will stand among the crowding ghosts of many miserable years.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the Preface to Bleak House I remarked that I had never had so many
      readers. In the Preface to its next successor, Little Dorrit, I have still
      to repeat the same words. Deeply sensible of the affection and confidence
      that have grown up between us, I add to this Preface, as I added to that,
      May we meet again!
    </p>
    <p>
      London May 1857
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 1. Sun and Shadow
</h2>
    <p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
    </p>
    <p>
      A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern
      France then, than at any other time, before or since. Everything in
      Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been
      stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there.
      Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring
      white walls, staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring
      hills from which verdure was burnt away. The only things to be seen not
      fixedly staring and glaring were the vines drooping under their load of
      grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, as the hot air barely moved
      their faint leaves.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbour,
      or on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two
      colours, black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not
      pass; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never
      mixed. Boats without awnings were too hot to touch; ships blistered at
      their moorings; the stones of the quays had not cooled, night or day, for
      months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen,
      Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants
      from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles, sought the
      shade alike&mdash;taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too
      intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great
      flaming jewel of fire.
    </p>
    <p>
      The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of
      Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist,
      slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea, but it softened nowhere
      else. Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hill-side,
      stared from the hollow, stared from the interminable plain. Far away the
      dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the monotonous wayside
      avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped beneath the stare of earth
      and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts,
      creeping slowly towards the interior; so did their recumbent drivers, when
      they were awake, which rarely happened; so did the exhausted labourers in
      the fields. Everything that lived or grew, was oppressed by the glare;
      except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala,
      chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched
      brown, and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were
      panting.
    </p>
    <p>
      Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out
      the stare. Grant it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a
      white-hot arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of the
      twilight of pillars and arches&mdash;dreamily dotted with winking lamps,
      dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and
      begging&mdash;was to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the
      nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade
      was, with but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, with occasional
      jangling of discordant church bells and rattling of vicious drums,
      Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the
      sun one day.
    </p>
    <p>
      In Marseilles that day there was a villainous prison. In one of its
      chambers, so repulsive a place that even the obtrusive stare blinked at
      it, and left it to such refuse of reflected light as it could find for
      itself, were two men. Besides the two men, a notched and disfigured bench,
      immovable from the wall, with a draught-board rudely hacked upon it with a
      knife, a set of draughts, made of old buttons and soup bones, a set of
      dominoes, two mats, and two or three wine bottles. That was all the
      chamber held, exclusive of rats and other unseen vermin, in addition to
      the seen vermin, the two men.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0027m.jpg" alt="0027m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0027.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>

    <p>
      It received such light as it got through a grating of iron bars fashioned
      like a pretty large window, by means of which it could be always inspected
      from the gloomy staircase on which the grating gave. There was a broad
      strong ledge of stone to this grating where the bottom of it was let into
      the masonry, three or four feet above the ground. Upon it, one of the two
      men lolled, half sitting and half lying, with his knees drawn up, and his
      feet and shoulders planted against the opposite sides of the aperture. The
      bars were wide enough apart to admit of his thrusting his arm through to
      the elbow; and so he held on negligently, for his greater ease.
    </p>
    <p>
      A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned
      light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by
      confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was
      rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the
      light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no
      knowledge of the brightness outside, and would have kept its polluted
      atmosphere intact in one of the spice islands of the Indian ocean.
    </p>
    <p>
      The man who lay on the ledge of the grating was even chilled. He jerked
      his great cloak more heavily upon him by an impatient movement of one
      shoulder, and growled, 'To the devil with this Brigand of a Sun that never
      shines in here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was waiting to be fed, looking sideways through the bars that he might
      see the further down the stairs, with much of the expression of a wild
      beast in similar expectation. But his eyes, too close together, were not
      so nobly set in his head as those of the king of beasts are in his, and
      they were sharp rather than bright&mdash;pointed weapons with little
      surface to betray them. They had no depth or change; they glittered, and
      they opened and shut. So far, and waiving their use to himself, a
      clockmaker could have made a better pair. He had a hook nose, handsome
      after its kind, but too high between the eyes by probably just as much as
      his eyes were too near to one another. For the rest, he was large and tall
      in frame, had thin lips, where his thick moustache showed them at all, and
      a quantity of dry hair, of no definable colour, in its shaggy state, but
      shot with red. The hand with which he held the grating (seamed all over
      the back with ugly scratches newly healed), was unusually small and plump;
      would have been unusually white but for the prison grime.
    </p>
    <p>
      The other man was lying on the stone floor, covered with a coarse brown
      coat.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Get up, pig!' growled the first. 'Don't sleep when I am hungry.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's all one, master,' said the pig, in a submissive manner, and not
      without cheerfulness; 'I can wake when I will, I can sleep when I will.
      It's all the same.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As he said it, he rose, shook himself, scratched himself, tied his brown
      coat loosely round his neck by the sleeves (he had previously used it as a
      coverlet), and sat down upon the pavement yawning, with his back against
      the wall opposite to the grating.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say what the hour is,' grumbled the first man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The mid-day bells will ring&mdash;in forty minutes.' When he made the
      little pause, he had looked round the prison-room, as if for certain
      information.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are a clock. How is it that you always know?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How can I say? I always know what the hour is, and where I am. I was
      brought in here at night, and out of a boat, but I know where I am. See
      here! Marseilles harbour;' on his knees on the pavement, mapping it all
      out with a swarthy forefinger; 'Toulon (where the galleys are), Spain over
      there, Algiers over <i>there</i>. Creeping away to the left here, Nice.
      Round by the Cornice to Genoa. Genoa Mole and Harbour. Quarantine Ground.
      City there; terrace gardens blushing with the bella donna. Here, Porto
      Fino. Stand out for Leghorn. Out again for Civita Vecchia, so away to&mdash;hey!
      there's no room for Naples;' he had got to the wall by this time; 'but
      it's all one; it's in there!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He remained on his knees, looking up at his fellow-prisoner with a lively
      look for a prison. A sunburnt, quick, lithe, little man, though rather
      thickset. Earrings in his brown ears, white teeth lighting up his
      grotesque brown face, intensely black hair clustering about his brown
      throat, a ragged red shirt open at his brown breast. Loose, seaman-like
      trousers, decent shoes, a long red cap, a red sash round his waist, and a
      knife in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Judge if I come back from Naples as I went! See here, my master! Civita
      Vecchia, Leghorn, Porto Fino, Genoa, Cornice, Off Nice (which is in
      there), Marseilles, you and me. The apartment of the jailer and his keys
      is where I put this thumb; and here at my wrist they keep the national
      razor in its case&mdash;the guillotine locked up.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The other man spat suddenly on the pavement, and gurgled in his throat.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some lock below gurgled in <i>its</i> throat immediately afterwards, and
      then a door crashed. Slow steps began ascending the stairs; the prattle of
      a sweet little voice mingled with the noise they made; and the
      prison-keeper appeared carrying his daughter, three or four years old, and
      a basket.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How goes the world this forenoon, gentlemen? My little one, you see,
      going round with me to have a peep at her father's birds. Fie, then! Look
      at the birds, my pretty, look at the birds.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked sharply at the birds himself, as he held the child up at the
      grate, especially at the little bird, whose activity he seemed to
      mistrust. 'I have brought your bread, Signor John Baptist,' said he (they
      all spoke in French, but the little man was an Italian); 'and if I might
      recommend you not to game&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't recommend the master!' said John Baptist, showing his teeth as
      he smiled.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! but the master wins,' returned the jailer, with a passing look of no
      particular liking at the other man, 'and you lose. It's quite another
      thing. You get husky bread and sour drink by it; and he gets sausage of
      Lyons, veal in savoury jelly, white bread, strachino cheese, and good wine
      by it. Look at the birds, my pretty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Poor birds!' said the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      The fair little face, touched with divine compassion, as it peeped
      shrinkingly through the grate, was like an angel's in the prison. John
      Baptist rose and moved towards it, as if it had a good attraction for him.
      The other bird remained as before, except for an impatient glance at the
      basket.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay!' said the jailer, putting his little daughter on the outer ledge of
      the grate, 'she shall feed the birds. This big loaf is for Signor John
      Baptist. We must break it to get it through into the cage. So, there's a
      tame bird to kiss the little hand! This sausage in a vine leaf is for
      Monsieur Rigaud. Again&mdash;this veal in savoury jelly is for Monsieur
      Rigaud. Again&mdash;these three white little loaves are for Monsieur
      Rigaud. Again, this cheese&mdash;again, this wine&mdash;again, this
      tobacco&mdash;all for Monsieur Rigaud. Lucky bird!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The child put all these things between the bars into the soft, Smooth,
      well-shaped hand, with evident dread&mdash;more than once drawing back her
      own and looking at the man with her fair brow roughened into an expression
      half of fright and half of anger. Whereas she had put the lump of coarse
      bread into the swart, scaled, knotted hands of John Baptist (who had
      scarcely as much nail on his eight fingers and two thumbs as would have
      made out one for Monsieur Rigaud), with ready confidence; and, when he
      kissed her hand, had herself passed it caressingly over his face. Monsieur
      Rigaud, indifferent to this distinction, propitiated the father by
      laughing and nodding at the daughter as often as she gave him anything;
      and, so soon as he had all his viands about him in convenient nooks of the
      ledge on which he rested, began to eat with an appetite.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Monsieur Rigaud laughed, a change took place in his face, that was
      more remarkable than prepossessing. His moustache went up under his nose,
      and his nose came down over his moustache, in a very sinister and cruel
      manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There!' said the jailer, turning his basket upside down to beat the
      crumbs out, 'I have expended all the money I received; here is the note of
      it, and <i>that's</i> a thing accomplished. Monsieur Rigaud, as I expected
      yesterday, the President will look for the pleasure of your society at an
      hour after mid-day, to-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To try me, eh?' said Rigaud, pausing, knife in hand and morsel in mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have said it. To try you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is no news for me?' asked John Baptist, who had begun, contentedly,
      to munch his bread.
    </p>
    <p>
      The jailer shrugged his shoulders.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lady of mine! Am I to lie here all my life, my father?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do I know!' cried the jailer, turning upon him with southern
      quickness, and gesticulating with both his hands and all his fingers, as
      if he were threatening to tear him to pieces. 'My friend, how is it
      possible for me to tell how long you are to lie here? What do I know, John
      Baptist Cavalletto? Death of my life! There are prisoners here sometimes,
      who are not in such a devil of a hurry to be tried.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He seemed to glance obliquely at Monsieur Rigaud in this remark; but
      Monsieur Rigaud had already resumed his meal, though not with quite so
      quick an appetite as before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Adieu, my birds!' said the keeper of the prison, taking his pretty child
      in his arms, and dictating the words with a kiss.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Adieu, my birds!' the pretty child repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her innocent face looked back so brightly over his shoulder, as he walked
      away with her, singing her the song of the child's game:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      'Who passes by this road so late?
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Compagnon de la Majolaine!
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Who passes by this road so late?
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Always gay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      that John Baptist felt it a point of honour to reply at the grate, and in
      good time and tune, though a little hoarsely:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Compagnon de la Majolaine!
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Always gay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      Which accompanied them so far down the few steep stairs, that the
      prison-keeper had to stop at last for his little daughter to hear the song
      out, and repeat the Refrain while they were yet in sight. Then the child's
      head disappeared, and the prison-keeper's head disappeared, but the little
      voice prolonged the strain until the door clashed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Monsieur Rigaud, finding the listening John Baptist in his way before the
      echoes had ceased (even the echoes were the weaker for imprisonment, and
      seemed to lag), reminded him with a push of his foot that he had better
      resume his own darker place. The little man sat down again upon the
      pavement with the negligent ease of one who was thoroughly accustomed to
      pavements; and placing three hunks of coarse bread before himself, and
      falling to upon a fourth, began contentedly to work his way through them
      as if to clear them off were a sort of game.
    </p>
    <p>
      Perhaps he glanced at the Lyons sausage, and perhaps he glanced at the
      veal in savoury jelly, but they were not there long, to make his mouth
      water; Monsieur Rigaud soon dispatched them, in spite of the president and
      tribunal, and proceeded to suck his fingers as clean as he could, and to
      wipe them on his vine leaves. Then, as he paused in his drink to
      contemplate his fellow-prisoner, his moustache went up, and his nose came
      down.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you find the bread?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A little dry, but I have my old sauce here,' returned John Baptist,
      holding up his knife.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How sauce?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can cut my bread so&mdash;like a melon. Or so&mdash;like an omelette.
      Or so&mdash;like a fried fish. Or so&mdash;like Lyons sausage,' said John
      Baptist, demonstrating the various cuts on the bread he held, and soberly
      chewing what he had in his mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here!' cried Monsieur Rigaud. 'You may drink. You may finish this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was no great gift, for there was mighty little wine left; but Signor
      Cavalletto, jumping to his feet, received the bottle gratefully, turned it
      upside down at his mouth, and smacked his lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Put the bottle by with the rest,' said Rigaud.
    </p>
    <p>
      The little man obeyed his orders, and stood ready to give him a lighted
      match; for he was now rolling his tobacco into cigarettes by the aid of
      little squares of paper which had been brought in with it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here! You may have one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A thousand thanks, my master!' John Baptist said in his own language, and
      with the quick conciliatory manner of his own countrymen.
    </p>
    <p>
      Monsieur Rigaud arose, lighted a cigarette, put the rest of his stock into
      a breast-pocket, and stretched himself out at full length upon the bench.
      Cavalletto sat down on the pavement, holding one of his ankles in each
      hand, and smoking peacefully. There seemed to be some uncomfortable
      attraction of Monsieur Rigaud's eyes to the immediate neighbourhood of
      that part of the pavement where the thumb had been in the plan. They were
      so drawn in that direction, that the Italian more than once followed them
      to and back from the pavement in some surprise.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What an infernal hole this is!' said Monsieur Rigaud, breaking a long
      pause. 'Look at the light of day. Day? the light of yesterday week, the
      light of six months ago, the light of six years ago. So slack and dead!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It came languishing down a square funnel that blinded a window in the
      staircase wall, through which the sky was never seen&mdash;nor anything
      else.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cavalletto,' said Monsieur Rigaud, suddenly withdrawing his gaze from
      this funnel to which they had both involuntarily turned their eyes, 'you
      know me for a gentleman?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Surely, surely!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How long have we been here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I, eleven weeks, to-morrow night at midnight. You, nine weeks and three
      days, at five this afternoon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have I ever done anything here? Ever touched the broom, or spread the
      mats, or rolled them up, or found the draughts, or collected the dominoes,
      or put my hand to any kind of work?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you ever thought of looking to me to do any kind of work?'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Baptist answered with that peculiar back-handed shake of the right
      forefinger which is the most expressive negative in the Italian language.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No! You knew from the first moment when you saw me here, that I was a
      gentleman?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'ALTRO!' returned John Baptist, closing his eyes and giving his head a
      most vehement toss. The word being, according to its Genoese emphasis, a
      confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt, a
      compliment, a joke, and fifty other things, became in the present
      instance, with a significance beyond all power of written expression, our
      familiar English 'I believe you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Haha! You are right! A gentleman I am! And a gentleman I'll live, and a
      gentleman I'll die! It's my intent to be a gentleman. It's my game. Death
      of my soul, I play it out wherever I go!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He changed his posture to a sitting one, crying with a triumphant air:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here I am! See me! Shaken out of destiny's dice-box into the company of a
      mere smuggler;&mdash;shut up with a poor little contraband trader, whose
      papers are wrong, and whom the police lay hold of besides, for placing his
      boat (as a means of getting beyond the frontier) at the disposition of
      other little people whose papers are wrong; and he instinctively
      recognises my position, even by this light and in this place. It's well
      done! By Heaven! I win, however the game goes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again his moustache went up, and his nose came down.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's the hour now?' he asked, with a dry hot pallor upon him, rather
      difficult of association with merriment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A little half-hour after mid-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good! The President will have a gentleman before him soon. Come! Shall I
      tell you on what accusation? It must be now, or never, for I shall not
      return here. Either I shall go free, or I shall go to be made ready for
      shaving. You know where they keep the razor.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Signor Cavalletto took his cigarette from between his parted lips, and
      showed more momentary discomfiture than might have been expected.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am a'&mdash;Monsieur Rigaud stood up to say it&mdash;'I am a
      cosmopolitan gentleman. I own no particular country. My father was Swiss&mdash;Canton
      de Vaud. My mother was French by blood, English by birth. I myself was
      born in Belgium. I am a citizen of the world.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His theatrical air, as he stood with one arm on his hip within the folds
      of his cloak, together with his manner of disregarding his companion and
      addressing the opposite wall instead, seemed to intimate that he was
      rehearsing for the President, whose examination he was shortly to undergo,
      rather than troubling himself merely to enlighten so small a person as
      John Baptist Cavalletto.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Call me five-and-thirty years of age. I have seen the world. I have lived
      here, and lived there, and lived like a gentleman everywhere. I have been
      treated and respected as a gentleman universally. If you try to prejudice
      me by making out that I have lived by my wits&mdash;how do your lawyers
      live&mdash;your politicians&mdash;your intriguers&mdash;your men of the
      Exchange?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He kept his small smooth hand in constant requisition, as if it were a
      witness to his gentility that had often done him good service before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Two years ago I came to Marseilles. I admit that I was poor; I had been
      ill. When your lawyers, your politicians, your intriguers, your men of the
      Exchange fall ill, and have not scraped money together, <i>they</i> become
      poor. I put up at the Cross of Gold,&mdash;kept then by Monsieur Henri
      Barronneau&mdash;sixty-five at least, and in a failing state of health. I
      had lived in the house some four months when Monsieur Henri Barronneau had
      the misfortune to die;&mdash;at any rate, not a rare misfortune, that. It
      happens without any aid of mine, pretty often.'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Baptist having smoked his cigarette down to his fingers' ends,
      Monsieur Rigaud had the magnanimity to throw him another. He lighted the
      second at the ashes of the first, and smoked on, looking sideways at his
      companion, who, preoccupied with his own case, hardly looked at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Monsieur Barronneau left a widow. She was two-and-twenty. She had gained
      a reputation for beauty, and (which is often another thing) was beautiful.
      I continued to live at the Cross of Gold. I married Madame Barronneau. It
      is not for me to say whether there was any great disparity in such a
      match. Here I stand, with the contamination of a jail upon me; but it is
      possible that you may think me better suited to her than her former
      husband was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had a certain air of being a handsome man&mdash;which he was not; and a
      certain air of being a well-bred man&mdash;which he was not. It was mere
      swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others,
      blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Be it as it may, Madame Barronneau approved of me. <i>That</i> is not to
      prejudice me, I hope?'
    </p>
    <p>
      His eye happening to light upon John Baptist with this inquiry, that
      little man briskly shook his head in the negative, and repeated in an
      argumentative tone under his breath, altro, altro, altro, altro&mdash;an
      infinite number of times.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now came the difficulties of our position. I am proud. I say nothing in
      defence of pride, but I am proud. It is also my character to govern. I
      can't submit; I must govern. Unfortunately, the property of Madame Rigaud
      was settled upon herself. Such was the insane act of her late husband.
      More unfortunately still, she had relations. When a wife's relations
      interpose against a husband who is a gentleman, who is proud, and who must
      govern, the consequences are inimical to peace. There was yet another
      source of difference between us. Madame Rigaud was unfortunately a little
      vulgar. I sought to improve her manners and ameliorate her general tone;
      she (supported in this likewise by her relations) resented my endeavours.
      Quarrels began to arise between us; and, propagated and exaggerated by the
      slanders of the relations of Madame Rigaud, to become notorious to the
      neighbours. It has been said that I treated Madame Rigaud with cruelty. I
      may have been seen to slap her face&mdash;nothing more. I have a light
      hand; and if I have been seen apparently to correct Madame Rigaud in that
      manner, I have done it almost playfully.'
    </p>
    <p>
      If the playfulness of Monsieur Rigaud were at all expressed by his smile
      at this point, the relations of Madame Rigaud might have said that they
      would have much preferred his correcting that unfortunate woman seriously.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sensitive and brave. I do not advance it as a merit to be sensitive
      and brave, but it is my character. If the male relations of Madame Rigaud
      had put themselves forward openly, I should have known how to deal with
      them. They knew that, and their machinations were conducted in secret;
      consequently, Madame Rigaud and I were brought into frequent and
      unfortunate collision. Even when I wanted any little sum of money for my
      personal expenses, I could not obtain it without collision&mdash;and I,
      too, a man whose character it is to govern! One night, Madame Rigaud and
      myself were walking amicably&mdash;I may say like lovers&mdash;on a height
      overhanging the sea. An evil star occasioned Madame Rigaud to advert to
      her relations; I reasoned with her on that subject, and remonstrated on
      the want of duty and devotion manifested in her allowing herself to be
      influenced by their jealous animosity towards her husband. Madame Rigaud
      retorted; I retorted; Madame Rigaud grew warm; I grew warm, and provoked
      her. I admit it. Frankness is a part of my character. At length, Madame
      Rigaud, in an access of fury that I must ever deplore, threw herself upon
      me with screams of passion (no doubt those that were overheard at some
      distance), tore my clothes, tore my hair, lacerated my hands, trampled and
      trod the dust, and finally leaped over, dashing herself to death upon the
      rocks below. Such is the train of incidents which malice has perverted
      into my endeavouring to force from Madame Rigaud a relinquishment of her
      rights; and, on her persistence in a refusal to make the concession I
      required, struggling with her&mdash;assassinating her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He stepped aside to the ledge where the vine leaves yet lay strewn about,
      collected two or three, and stood wiping his hands upon them, with his
      back to the light.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well,' he demanded after a silence, 'have you nothing to say to all
      that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's ugly,' returned the little man, who had risen, and was brightening
      his knife upon his shoe, as he leaned an arm against the wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean?'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Baptist polished his knife in silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean that I have not represented the case correctly?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Al-tro!' returned John Baptist. The word was an apology now, and stood
      for 'Oh, by no means!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Presidents and tribunals are so prejudiced.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well,' cried the other, uneasily flinging the end of his cloak over his
      shoulder with an oath, 'let them do their worst!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Truly I think they will,' murmured John Baptist to himself, as he bent
      his head to put his knife in his sash.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nothing more was said on either side, though they both began walking to
      and fro, and necessarily crossed at every turn. Monsieur Rigaud sometimes
      stopped, as if he were going to put his case in a new light, or make some
      irate remonstrance; but Signor Cavalletto continuing to go slowly to and
      fro at a grotesque kind of jog-trot pace with his eyes turned downward,
      nothing came of these inclinings.
    </p>
    <p>
      By-and-by the noise of the key in the lock arrested them both. The sound
      of voices succeeded, and the tread of feet. The door clashed, the voices
      and the feet came on, and the prison-keeper slowly ascended the stairs,
      followed by a guard of soldiers.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Monsieur Rigaud,' said he, pausing for a moment at the grate, with
      his keys in his hands, 'have the goodness to come out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am to depart in state, I see?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, unless you did,' returned the jailer, 'you might depart in so many
      pieces that it would be difficult to get you together again. There's a
      crowd, Monsieur Rigaud, and it doesn't love you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He passed on out of sight, and unlocked and unbarred a low door in the
      corner of the chamber. 'Now,' said he, as he opened it and appeared
      within, 'come out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under the sun at all like
      the whiteness of Monsieur Rigaud's face as it was then. Neither is there
      any expression of the human countenance at all like that expression in
      every little line of which the frightened heart is seen to beat. Both are
      conventionally compared with death; but the difference is the whole deep
      gulf between the struggle done, and the fight at its most desperate
      extremity.
    </p>
    <p>
      He lighted another of his paper cigars at his companion's; put it tightly
      between his teeth; covered his head with a soft slouched hat; threw the
      end of his cloak over his shoulder again; and walked out into the side
      gallery on which the door opened, without taking any further notice of
      Signor Cavalletto. As to that little man himself, his whole attention had
      become absorbed in getting near the door and looking out at it. Precisely
      as a beast might approach the opened gate of his den and eye the freedom
      beyond, he passed those few moments in watching and peering, until the
      door was closed upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was an officer in command of the soldiers; a stout, serviceable,
      profoundly calm man, with his drawn sword in his hand, smoking a cigar. He
      very briefly directed the placing of Monsieur Rigaud in the midst of the
      party, put himself with consummate indifference at their head, gave the
      word 'march!' and so they all went jingling down the staircase. The door
      clashed&mdash;the key turned&mdash;and a ray of unusual light, and a
      breath of unusual air, seemed to have passed through the jail, vanishing
      in a tiny wreath of smoke from the cigar.
    </p>
    <p>
      Still, in his captivity, like a lower animal&mdash;like some impatient
      ape, or roused bear of the smaller species&mdash;the prisoner, now left
      solitary, had jumped upon the ledge, to lose no glimpse of this departure.
      As he yet stood clasping the grate with both hands, an uproar broke upon
      his hearing; yells, shrieks, oaths, threats, execrations, all comprehended
      in it, though (as in a storm) nothing but a raging swell of sound
      distinctly heard.
    </p>
    <p>
      Excited into a still greater resemblance to a caged wild animal by his
      anxiety to know more, the prisoner leaped nimbly down, ran round the
      chamber, leaped nimbly up again, clasped the grate and tried to shake it,
      leaped down and ran, leaped up and listened, and never rested until the
      noise, becoming more and more distant, had died away. How many better
      prisoners have worn their noble hearts out so; no man thinking of it; not
      even the beloved of their souls realising it; great kings and governors,
      who had made them captive, careering in the sunlight jauntily, and men
      cheering them on. Even the said great personages dying in bed, making
      exemplary ends and sounding speeches; and polite history, more servile
      than their instruments, embalming them!
    </p>
    <p>
      At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the compass
      of those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep when he
      would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his crossed
      arms, and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his good
      humour, in his short-lived passion, in his easy contentment with hard
      bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts,
      altogether a true son of the land that gave him birth.
    </p>
    <p>
      The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in a
      red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the
      fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the
      goodness of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the
      interminable plains were in repose&mdash;and so deep a hush was on the
      sea, that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its
      dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 2 Fellow Travellers
    </h2>
    <p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>
      o more of yesterday's howling over yonder to-day, Sir; is there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have heard none.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you may be sure there <i>is</i> none. When these people howl, they
      howl to be heard.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Most people do, I suppose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! but these people are always howling. Never happy otherwise.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean the Marseilles people?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean the French people. They're always at it. As to Marseilles, we know
      what Marseilles is. It sent the most insurrectionary tune into the world
      that was ever composed. It couldn't exist without allonging and
      marshonging to something or other&mdash;victory or death, or blazes, or
      something.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The speaker, with a whimsical good humour upon him all the time, looked
      over the parapet-wall with the greatest disparagement of Marseilles; and
      taking up a determined position by putting his hands in his pockets and
      rattling his money at it, apostrophised it with a short laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Allong and marshong, indeed. It would be more creditable to you, I think,
      to let other people allong and marshong about their lawful business,
      instead of shutting 'em up in quarantine!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tiresome enough,' said the other. 'But we shall be out to-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Out to-day!' repeated the first. 'It's almost an aggravation of the
      enormity, that we shall be out to-day. Out! What have we ever been in
      for?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'For no very strong reason, I must say. But as we come from the East, and
      as the East is the country of the plague&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The plague!' repeated the other. 'That's my grievance. I have had the
      plague continually, ever since I have been here. I am like a sane man shut
      up in a madhouse; I can't stand the suspicion of the thing. I came here as
      well as ever I was in my life; but to suspect me of the plague is to give
      me the plague. And I have had it&mdash;and I have got it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You bear it very well, Mr Meagles,' said the second speaker, smiling.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. If you knew the real state of the case, that's the last observation
      you would think of making. I have been waking up night after night, and
      saying, <i>now</i> I have got it, <i>now</i> it has developed itself, <i>now</i>
      I am in for it, <i>now</i> these fellows are making out their case for
      their precautions. Why, I'd as soon have a spit put through me, and be
      stuck upon a card in a collection of beetles, as lead the life I have been
      leading here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Mr Meagles, say no more about it now it's over,' urged a cheerful
      feminine voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Over!' repeated Mr Meagles, who appeared (though without any ill-nature)
      to be in that peculiar state of mind in which the last word spoken by
      anybody else is a new injury. 'Over! and why should I say no more about it
      because it's over?'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was Mrs Meagles who had spoken to Mr Meagles; and Mrs Meagles was, like
      Mr Meagles, comely and healthy, with a pleasant English face which had
      been looking at homely things for five-and-fifty years or more, and shone
      with a bright reflection of them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There! Never mind, Father, never mind!' said Mrs Meagles. 'For goodness
      sake content yourself with Pet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'With Pet?' repeated Mr Meagles in his injured vein. Pet, however, being
      close behind him, touched him on the shoulder, and Mr Meagles immediately
      forgave Marseilles from the bottom of his heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      Pet was about twenty. A fair girl with rich brown hair hanging free in
      natural ringlets. A lovely girl, with a frank face, and wonderful eyes; so
      large, so soft, so bright, set to such perfection in her kind good head.
      She was round and fresh and dimpled and spoilt, and there was in Pet an
      air of timidity and dependence which was the best weakness in the world,
      and gave her the only crowning charm a girl so pretty and pleasant could
      have been without.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, I ask you,' said Mr Meagles in the blandest confidence, falling back
      a step himself, and handing his daughter a step forward to illustrate his
      question: 'I ask you simply, as between man and man, you know, DID you
      ever hear of such damned nonsense as putting Pet in quarantine?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It has had the result of making even quarantine enjoyable.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come!' said Mr Meagles, 'that's something to be sure. I am obliged to you
      for that remark. Now, Pet, my darling, you had better go along with Mother
      and get ready for the boat. The officer of health, and a variety of
      humbugs in cocked hats, are coming off to let us out of this at last: and
      all we jail-birds are to breakfast together in something approaching to a
      Christian style again, before we take wing for our different destinations.
      Tattycoram, stick you close to your young mistress.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He spoke to a handsome girl with lustrous dark hair and eyes, and very
      neatly dressed, who replied with a half curtsey as she passed off in the
      train of Mrs Meagles and Pet. They crossed the bare scorched terrace all
      three together, and disappeared through a staring white archway. Mr
      Meagles's companion, a grave dark man of forty, still stood looking
      towards this archway after they were gone; until Mr Meagles tapped him on
      the arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon,' said he, starting.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all,' said Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      They took one silent turn backward and forward in the shade of the wall,
      getting, at the height on which the quarantine barracks are placed, what
      cool refreshment of sea breeze there was at seven in the morning. Mr
      Meagles's companion resumed the conversation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I ask you,' he said, 'what is the name of&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tattycoram?' Mr Meagles struck in. 'I have not the least idea.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought,' said the other, 'that&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tattycoram?' suggested Mr Meagles again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you&mdash;that Tattycoram was a name; and I have several times
      wondered at the oddity of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, the fact is,' said Mr Meagles, 'Mrs Meagles and myself are, you see,
      practical people.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That you have frequently mentioned in the course of the agreeable and
      interesting conversations we have had together, walking up and down on
      these stones,' said the other, with a half smile breaking through the
      gravity of his dark face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Practical people. So one day, five or six years ago now, when we took Pet
      to church at the Foundling&mdash;you have heard of the Foundling Hospital
      in London? Similar to the Institution for the Found Children in Paris?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have seen it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well! One day when we took Pet to church there to hear the music&mdash;because,
      as practical people, it is the business of our lives to show her
      everything that we think can please her&mdash;Mother (my usual name for
      Mrs Meagles) began to cry so, that it was necessary to take her out.
      "What's the matter, Mother?" said I, when we had brought her a little
      round: "you are frightening Pet, my dear." "Yes, I know that, Father,"
      says Mother, "but I think it's through my loving her so much, that it ever
      came into my head." "That ever what came into your head, Mother?" "O dear,
      dear!" cried Mother, breaking out again, "when I saw all those children
      ranged tier above tier, and appealing from the father none of them has
      ever known on earth, to the great Father of us all in Heaven, I thought,
      does any wretched mother ever come here, and look among those young faces,
      wondering which is the poor child she brought into this forlorn world,
      never through all its life to know her love, her kiss, her face, her
      voice, even her name!" Now that was practical in Mother, and I told her
      so. I said, "Mother, that's what I call practical in you, my dear."'
    </p>
    <p>
      The other, not unmoved, assented.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So I said next day: Now, Mother, I have a proposition to make that I
      think you'll approve of. Let us take one of those same little children to
      be a little maid to Pet. We are practical people. So if we should find her
      temper a little defective, or any of her ways a little wide of ours, we
      shall know what we have to take into account. We shall know what an
      immense deduction must be made from all the influences and experiences
      that have formed us&mdash;no parents, no child-brother or sister, no
      individuality of home, no Glass Slipper, or Fairy Godmother. And that's
      the way we came by Tattycoram.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And the name itself&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By George!' said Mr Meagles, 'I was forgetting the name itself. Why, she
      was called in the Institution, Harriet Beadle&mdash;an arbitrary name, of
      course. Now, Harriet we changed into Hattey, and then into Tatty, because,
      as practical people, we thought even a playful name might be a new thing
      to her, and might have a softening and affectionate kind of effect, don't
      you see? As to Beadle, that I needn't say was wholly out of the question.
      If there is anything that is not to be tolerated on any terms, anything
      that is a type of Jack-in-office insolence and absurdity, anything that
      represents in coats, waistcoats, and big sticks our English holding on by
      nonsense after every one has found it out, it is a beadle. You haven't
      seen a beadle lately?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As an Englishman who has been more than twenty years in China, no.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then,' said Mr Meagles, laying his forefinger on his companion's breast
      with great animation, 'don't you see a beadle, now, if you can help it.
      Whenever I see a beadle in full fig, coming down a street on a Sunday at
      the head of a charity school, I am obliged to turn and run away, or I
      should hit him. The name of Beadle being out of the question, and the
      originator of the Institution for these poor foundlings having been a
      blessed creature of the name of Coram, we gave that name to Pet's little
      maid. At one time she was Tatty, and at one time she was Coram, until we
      got into a way of mixing the two names together, and now she is always
      Tattycoram.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your daughter,' said the other, when they had taken another silent turn
      to and fro, and, after standing for a moment at the wall glancing down at
      the sea, had resumed their walk, 'is your only child, I know, Mr Meagles.
      May I ask you&mdash;in no impertinent curiosity, but because I have had so
      much pleasure in your society, may never in this labyrinth of a world
      exchange a quiet word with you again, and wish to preserve an accurate
      remembrance of you and yours&mdash;may I ask you, if I have not gathered
      from your good wife that you have had other children?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. No,' said Mr Meagles. 'Not exactly other children. One other child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid I have inadvertently touched upon a tender theme.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never mind,' said Mr Meagles. 'If I am grave about it, I am not at all
      sorrowful. It quiets me for a moment, but does not make me unhappy. Pet
      had a twin sister who died when we could just see her eyes&mdash;exactly
      like Pet's&mdash;above the table, as she stood on tiptoe holding by it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! indeed, indeed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, and being practical people, a result has gradually sprung up in the
      minds of Mrs Meagles and myself which perhaps you may&mdash;or perhaps you
      may not&mdash;understand. Pet and her baby sister were so exactly alike,
      and so completely one, that in our thoughts we have never been able to
      separate them since. It would be of no use to tell us that our dead child
      was a mere infant. We have changed that child according to the changes in
      the child spared to us and always with us. As Pet has grown, that child
      has grown; as Pet has become more sensible and womanly, her sister has
      become more sensible and womanly by just the same degrees. It would be as
      hard to convince me that if I was to pass into the other world to-morrow,
      I should not, through the mercy of God, be received there by a daughter,
      just like Pet, as to persuade me that Pet herself is not a reality at my
      side.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I understand you,' said the other, gently.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to her,' pursued her father, 'the sudden loss of her little picture
      and playfellow, and her early association with that mystery in which we
      all have our equal share, but which is not often so forcibly presented to
      a child, has necessarily had some influence on her character. Then, her
      mother and I were not young when we married, and Pet has always had a sort
      of grown-up life with us, though we have tried to adapt ourselves to her.
      We have been advised more than once when she has been a little ailing, to
      change climate and air for her as often as we could&mdash;especially at
      about this time of her life&mdash;and to keep her amused. So, as I have no
      need to stick at a bank-desk now (though I have been poor enough in my
      time I assure you, or I should have married Mrs Meagles long before), we
      go trotting about the world. This is how you found us staring at the Nile,
      and the Pyramids, and the Sphinxes, and the Desert, and all the rest of
      it; and this is how Tattycoram will be a greater traveller in course of
      time than Captain Cook.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thank you,' said the other, 'very heartily for your confidence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't mention it,' returned Mr Meagles, 'I am sure you are quite welcome.
      And now, Mr Clennam, perhaps I may ask you whether you have yet come to a
      decision where to go next?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, no. I am such a waif and stray everywhere, that I am liable to be
      drifted where any current may set.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's extraordinary to me&mdash;if you'll excuse my freedom in saying so&mdash;that
      you don't go straight to London,' said Mr Meagles, in the tone of a
      confidential adviser.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps I shall.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay! But I mean with a will.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have no will. That is to say,'&mdash;he coloured a little,&mdash;'next
      to none that I can put in action now. Trained by main force; broken, not
      bent; heavily ironed with an object on which I was never consulted and
      which was never mine; shipped away to the other end of the world before I
      was of age, and exiled there until my father's death there, a year ago;
      always grinding in a mill I always hated; what is to be expected from me
      in middle life? Will, purpose, hope? All those lights were extinguished
      before I could sound the words.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Light 'em up again!' said Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I
      am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything;
      for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no
      existence. Strict people as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion,
      their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that
      were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security
      of their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in
      this world and terror in the next&mdash;nothing graceful or gentle
      anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere&mdash;this was my
      childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning
      of life.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really though?' said Mr Meagles, made very uncomfortable by the picture
      offered to his imagination. 'That was a tough commencement. But come! You
      must now study, and profit by, all that lies beyond it, like a practical
      man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If the people who are usually called practical, were practical in your
      direction&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, so they are!' said Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are they indeed?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, I suppose so,' returned Mr Meagles, thinking about it. 'Eh? One can
      but <i>be</i> practical, and Mrs Meagles and myself are nothing else.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My unknown course is easier and more helpful than I had expected to find
      it, then,' said Clennam, shaking his head with his grave smile. 'Enough of
      me. Here is the boat.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The boat was filled with the cocked hats to which Mr Meagles entertained a
      national objection; and the wearers of those cocked hats landed and came
      up the steps, and all the impounded travellers congregated together. There
      was then a mighty production of papers on the part of the cocked hats, and
      a calling over of names, and great work of signing, sealing, stamping,
      inking, and sanding, with exceedingly blurred, gritty, and undecipherable
      results. Finally, everything was done according to rule, and the
      travellers were at liberty to depart whithersoever they would.
    </p>
    <p>
      They made little account of stare and glare, in the new pleasure of
      recovering their freedom, but flitted across the harbour in gay boats, and
      reassembled at a great hotel, whence the sun was excluded by closed
      lattices, and where bare paved floors, lofty ceilings, and resounding
      corridors tempered the intense heat. There, a great table in a great room
      was soon profusely covered with a superb repast; and the quarantine
      quarters became bare indeed, remembered among dainty dishes, southern
      fruits, cooled wines, flowers from Genoa, snow from the mountain tops, and
      all the colours of the rainbow flashing in the mirrors.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I bear those monotonous walls no ill-will now,' said Mr Meagles. 'One
      always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind; I dare say a
      prisoner begins to relent towards his prison, after he is let out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They were about thirty in company, and all talking; but necessarily in
      groups. Father and Mother Meagles sat with their daughter between them,
      the last three on one side of the table: on the opposite side sat Mr
      Clennam; a tall French gentleman with raven hair and beard, of a swart and
      terrible, not to say genteelly diabolical aspect, but who had shown
      himself the mildest of men; and a handsome young Englishwoman, travelling
      quite alone, who had a proud observant face, and had either withdrawn
      herself from the rest or been avoided by the rest&mdash;nobody, herself
      excepted perhaps, could have quite decided which. The rest of the party
      were of the usual materials: travellers on business, and travellers for
      pleasure; officers from India on leave; merchants in the Greek and Turkey
      trades; a clerical English husband in a meek strait-waistcoat, on a
      wedding trip with his young wife; a majestic English mama and papa, of the
      patrician order, with a family of three growing-up daughters, who were
      keeping a journal for the confusion of their fellow-creatures; and a deaf
      old English mother, tough in travel, with a very decidedly grown-up
      daughter indeed, which daughter went sketching about the universe in the
      expectation of ultimately toning herself off into the married state.
    </p>
    <p>
      The reserved Englishwoman took up Mr Meagles in his last remark.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean that a prisoner forgives his prison?' said she, slowly and
      with emphasis.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That was my speculation, Miss Wade. I don't pretend to know positively
      how a prisoner might feel. I never was one before.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mademoiselle doubts,' said the French gentleman in his own language,
      'it's being so easy to forgive?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Pet had to translate this passage to Mr Meagles, who never by any accident
      acquired any knowledge whatever of the language of any country into which
      he travelled. 'Oh!' said he. 'Dear me! But that's a pity, isn't it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That I am not credulous?' said Miss Wade.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not exactly that. Put it another way. That you can't believe it easy to
      forgive.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My experience,' she quietly returned, 'has been correcting my belief in
      many respects, for some years. It is our natural progress, I have heard.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, well! But it's not natural to bear malice, I hope?' said Mr
      Meagles, cheerily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I had been shut up in any place to pine and suffer, I should always
      hate that place and wish to burn it down, or raze it to the ground. I know
      no more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Strong, sir?' said Mr Meagles to the Frenchman; it being another of his
      habits to address individuals of all nations in idiomatic English, with a
      perfect conviction that they were bound to understand it somehow. 'Rather
      forcible in our fair friend, you'll agree with me, I think?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The French gentleman courteously replied, 'Plait-il?' To which Mr Meagles
      returned with much satisfaction, 'You are right. My opinion.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The breakfast beginning by-and-by to languish, Mr Meagles made the company
      a speech. It was short enough and sensible enough, considering that it was
      a speech at all, and hearty. It merely went to the effect that as they had
      all been thrown together by chance, and had all preserved a good
      understanding together, and were now about to disperse, and were not
      likely ever to find themselves all together again, what could they do
      better than bid farewell to one another, and give one another good-speed
      in a simultaneous glass of cool champagne all round the table? It was
      done, and with a general shaking of hands the assembly broke up for ever.
    </p>
    <p>
      The solitary young lady all this time had said no more. She rose with the
      rest, and silently withdrew to a remote corner of the great room, where
      she sat herself on a couch in a window, seeming to watch the reflection of
      the water as it made a silver quivering on the bars of the lattice. She
      sat, turned away from the whole length of the apartment, as if she were
      lonely of her own haughty choice. And yet it would have been as difficult
      as ever to say, positively, whether she avoided the rest, or was avoided.
    </p>
    <p>
      The shadow in which she sat, falling like a gloomy veil across her
      forehead, accorded very well with the character of her beauty. One could
      hardly see the face, so still and scornful, set off by the arched dark
      eyebrows, and the folds of dark hair, without wondering what its
      expression would be if a change came over it. That it could soften or
      relent, appeared next to impossible. That it could deepen into anger or
      any extreme of defiance, and that it must change in that direction when it
      changed at all, would have been its peculiar impression upon most
      observers. It was dressed and trimmed into no ceremony of expression.
      Although not an open face, there was no pretence in it. 'I am
      self-contained and self-reliant; your opinion is nothing to me; I have no
      interest in you, care nothing for you, and see and hear you with
      indifference'&mdash;this it said plainly. It said so in the proud eyes, in
      the lifted nostril, in the handsome but compressed and even cruel mouth.
      Cover either two of those channels of expression, and the third would have
      said so still. Mask them all, and the mere turn of the head would have
      shown an unsubduable nature.
    </p>
    <p>
      Pet had moved up to her (she had been the subject of remark among her
      family and Mr Clennam, who were now the only other occupants of the room),
      and was standing at her side.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you'&mdash;she turned her eyes, and Pet faltered&mdash;'expecting any
      one to meet you here, Miss Wade?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I? No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Father is sending to the Poste Restante. Shall he have the pleasure of
      directing the messenger to ask if there are any letters for you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thank him, but I know there can be none.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are afraid,' said Pet, sitting down beside her, shyly and half
      tenderly, 'that you will feel quite deserted when we are all gone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not,' said Pet, apologetically and embarrassed by her eyes, 'not, of
      course, that we are any company to you, or that we have been able to be
      so, or that we thought you wished it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have not intended to make it understood that I did wish it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. Of course. But&mdash;in short,' said Pet, timidly touching her hand
      as it lay impassive on the sofa between them, 'will you not allow Father
      to tender you any slight assistance or service? He will be very glad.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very glad,' said Mr Meagles, coming forward with his wife and Clennam.
      'Anything short of speaking the language, I shall be delighted to
      undertake, I am sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am obliged to you,' she returned, 'but my arrangements are made, and I
      prefer to go my own way in my own manner.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>Do</i> you?' said Mr Meagles to himself, as he surveyed her with a
      puzzled look. 'Well! There's character in that, too.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not much used to the society of young ladies, and I am afraid I may
      not show my appreciation of it as others might. A pleasant journey to you.
      Good-bye!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She would not have put out her hand, it seemed, but that Mr Meagles put
      out his so straight before her that she could not pass it. She put hers in
      it, and it lay there just as it had lain upon the couch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye!' said Mr Meagles. 'This is the last good-bye upon the list, for
      Mother and I have just said it to Mr Clennam here, and he only waits to
      say it to Pet. Good-bye! We may never meet again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In our course through life we shall meet the people who are coming to
      meet <i>us</i>, from many strange places and by many strange roads,' was
      the composed reply; 'and what it is set to us to do to them, and what it
      is set to them to do to us, will all be done.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was something in the manner of these words that jarred upon Pet's
      ear. It implied that what was to be done was necessarily evil, and it
      caused her to say in a whisper, 'O Father!' and to shrink childishly, in
      her spoilt way, a little closer to him. This was not lost on the speaker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your pretty daughter,' she said, 'starts to think of such things. Yet,'
      looking full upon her, 'you may be sure that there are men and women
      already on their road, who have their business to do with <i>you</i>, and
      who will do it. Of a certainty they will do it. They may be coming
      hundreds, thousands, of miles over the sea there; they may be close at
      hand now; they may be coming, for anything you know or anything you can do
      to prevent it, from the vilest sweepings of this very town.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With the coldest of farewells, and with a certain worn expression on her
      beauty that gave it, though scarcely yet in its prime, a wasted look, she
      left the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, there were many stairs and passages that she had to traverse in
      passing from that part of the spacious house to the chamber she had
      secured for her own occupation. When she had almost completed the journey,
      and was passing along the gallery in which her room was, she heard an
      angry sound of muttering and sobbing. A door stood open, and within she
      saw the attendant upon the girl she had just left; the maid with the
      curious name.
    </p>
    <p>
      She stood still, to look at this maid. A sullen, passionate girl! Her rich
      black hair was all about her face, her face was flushed and hot, and as
      she sobbed and raged, she plucked at her lips with an unsparing hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Selfish brutes!' said the girl, sobbing and heaving between whiles. 'Not
      caring what becomes of me! Leaving me here hungry and thirsty and tired,
      to starve, for anything they care! Beasts! Devils! Wretches!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My poor girl, what is the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She looked up suddenly, with reddened eyes, and with her hands suspended,
      in the act of pinching her neck, freshly disfigured with great scarlet
      blots. 'It's nothing to you what's the matter. It don't signify to any
      one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O yes it does; I am sorry to see you so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are not sorry,' said the girl. 'You are glad. You know you are glad.
      I never was like this but twice over in the quarantine yonder; and both
      times you found me. I am afraid of you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Afraid of me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. You seem to come like my own anger, my own malice, my own&mdash;whatever
      it is&mdash;I don't know what it is. But I am ill-used, I am ill-used, I
      am ill-used!' Here the sobs and the tears, and the tearing hand, which had
      all been suspended together since the first surprise, went on together
      anew.
    </p>
    <p>
      The visitor stood looking at her with a strange attentive smile. It was
      wonderful to see the fury of the contest in the girl, and the bodily
      struggle she made as if she were rent by the Demons of old.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0047m.jpg" alt="0047m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0047.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'I am younger than she is by two or three years, and yet it's me that
      looks after her, as if I was old, and it's she that's always petted and
      called Baby! I detest the name. I hate her! They make a fool of her, they
      spoil her. She thinks of nothing but herself, she thinks no more of me
      than if I was a stock and a stone!' So the girl went on.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You must have patience.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I <i>won't</i> have patience!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If they take much care of themselves, and little or none of you, you must
      not mind it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      I <i>will</i> mind it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush! Be more prudent. You forget your dependent position.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't care for that. I'll run away. I'll do some mischief. I won't bear
      it; I can't bear it; I shall die if I try to bear it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The observer stood with her hand upon her own bosom, looking at the girl,
      as one afflicted with a diseased part might curiously watch the dissection
      and exposition of an analogous case.
    </p>
    <p>
      The girl raged and battled with all the force of her youth and fulness of
      life, until by little and little her passionate exclamations trailed off
      into broken murmurs as if she were in pain. By corresponding degrees she
      sank into a chair, then upon her knees, then upon the ground beside the
      bed, drawing the coverlet with her, half to hide her shamed head and wet
      hair in it, and half, as it seemed, to embrace it, rather than have
      nothing to take to her repentant breast.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go away from me, go away from me! When my temper comes upon me, I am mad.
      I know I might keep it off if I only tried hard enough, and sometimes I do
      try hard enough, and at other times I don't and won't. What have I said! I
      knew when I said it, it was all lies. They think I am being taken care of
      somewhere, and have all I want. They are nothing but good to me. I love
      them dearly; no people could ever be kinder to a thankless creature than
      they always are to me. Do, do go away, for I am afraid of you. I am afraid
      of myself when I feel my temper coming, and I am as much afraid of you. Go
      away from me, and let me pray and cry myself better!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The day passed on; and again the wide stare stared itself out; and the hot
      night was on Marseilles; and through it the caravan of the morning, all
      dispersed, went their appointed ways. And thus ever by day and night,
      under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling
      along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming
      and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move
      all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 3. Home
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening
      church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and
      clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy
      streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people
      who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in dire despondency. In
      every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning,
      some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague were
      in the city and the dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted and
      barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people.
      No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural
      or artificial wonders of the ancient world&mdash;all <i>taboo</i> with
      that enlightened strictness, that the ugly South Sea gods in the British
      Museum might have supposed themselves at home again. Nothing to see but
      streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets,
      streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind, or raise it up. Nothing for
      the spent toiler to do, but to compare the monotony of his seventh day
      with the monotony of his six days, think what a weary life he led, and
      make the best of it&mdash;or the worst, according to the probabilities.
    </p>
    <p>
      At such a happy time, so propitious to the interests of religion and
      morality, Mr Arthur Clennam, newly arrived from Marseilles by way of
      Dover, and by Dover coach the Blue-eyed Maid, sat in the window of a
      coffee-house on Ludgate Hill. Ten thousand responsible houses surrounded
      him, frowning as heavily on the streets they composed, as if they were
      every one inhabited by the ten young men of the Calender's story, who
      blackened their faces and bemoaned their miseries every night. Fifty
      thousand lairs surrounded him where people lived so unwholesomely that
      fair water put into their crowded rooms on Saturday night, would be
      corrupt on Sunday morning; albeit my lord, their county member, was amazed
      that they failed to sleep in company with their butcher's meat. Miles of
      close wells and pits of houses, where the inhabitants gasped for air,
      stretched far away towards every point of the compass. Through the heart
      of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, in the place of a fine fresh
      river. What secular want could the million or so of human beings whose
      daily labour, six days in the week, lay among these Arcadian objects, from
      the sweet sameness of which they had no escape between the cradle and the
      grave&mdash;what secular want could they possibly have upon their seventh
      day? Clearly they could want nothing but a stringent policeman.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Arthur Clennam sat in the window of the coffee-house on Ludgate Hill,
      counting one of the neighbouring bells, making sentences and burdens of
      songs out of it in spite of himself, and wondering how many sick people it
      might be the death of in the course of the year. As the hour approached,
      its changes of measure made it more and more exasperating. At the quarter,
      it went off into a condition of deadly-lively importunity, urging the
      populace in a voluble manner to Come to church, Come to church, Come to
      church! At the ten minutes, it became aware that the congregation would be
      scanty, and slowly hammered out in low spirits, They <i>won't</i> come,
      they <i>won't</i> come, they <i>won't</i> come! At the five minutes, it
      abandoned hope, and shook every house in the neighbourhood for three
      hundred seconds, with one dismal swing per second, as a groan of despair.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank Heaven!' said Clennam, when the hour struck, and the bell stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      But its sound had revived a long train of miserable Sundays, and the
      procession would not stop with the bell, but continued to march on.
      'Heaven forgive me,' said he, 'and those who trained me. How I have hated
      this day!'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was the dreary Sunday of his childhood, when he sat with his hands
      before him, scared out of his senses by a horrible tract which commenced
      business with the poor child by asking him in its title, why he was going
      to Perdition?&mdash;a piece of curiosity that he really, in a frock and
      drawers, was not in a condition to satisfy&mdash;and which, for the
      further attraction of his infant mind, had a parenthesis in every other
      line with some such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep. Thess. c. iii, v. 6
      &amp; 7. There was the sleepy Sunday of his boyhood, when, like a military
      deserter, he was marched to chapel by a picquet of teachers three times a
      day, morally handcuffed to another boy; and when he would willingly have
      bartered two meals of indigestible sermon for another ounce or two of
      inferior mutton at his scanty dinner in the flesh. There was the
      interminable Sunday of his nonage; when his mother, stern of face and
      unrelenting of heart, would sit all day behind a Bible&mdash;bound, like
      her own construction of it, in the hardest, barest, and straitest boards,
      with one dinted ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain, and a
      wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the leaves&mdash;as if it, of
      all books! were a fortification against sweetness of temper, natural
      affection, and gentle intercourse. There was the resentful Sunday of a
      little later, when he sat down glowering and glooming through the tardy
      length of the day, with a sullen sense of injury in his heart, and no more
      real knowledge of the beneficent history of the New Testament than if he
      had been bred among idolaters. There was a legion of Sundays, all days of
      unserviceable bitterness and mortification, slowly passing before him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Beg pardon, sir,' said a brisk waiter, rubbing the table. 'Wish see
      bed-room?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. I have just made up my mind to do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Chaymaid!' cried the waiter. 'Gelen box num seven wish see room!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay!' said Clennam, rousing himself. 'I was not thinking of what I said;
      I answered mechanically. I am not going to sleep here. I am going home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Deed, sir? Chaymaid! Gelen box num seven, not go sleep here, gome.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He sat in the same place as the day died, looking at the dull houses
      opposite, and thinking, if the disembodied spirits of former inhabitants
      were ever conscious of them, how they must pity themselves for their old
      places of imprisonment. Sometimes a face would appear behind the dingy
      glass of a window, and would fade away into the gloom as if it had seen
      enough of life and had vanished out of it. Presently the rain began to
      fall in slanting lines between him and those houses, and people began to
      collect under cover of the public passage opposite, and to look out
      hopelessly at the sky as the rain dropped thicker and faster. Then wet
      umbrellas began to appear, draggled skirts, and mud. What the mud had been
      doing with itself, or where it came from, who could say? But it seemed to
      collect in a moment, as a crowd will, and in five minutes to have splashed
      all the sons and daughters of Adam. The lamplighter was going his rounds
      now; and as the fiery jets sprang up under his touch, one might have
      fancied them astonished at being suffered to introduce any show of
      brightness into such a dismal scene.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Arthur Clennam took up his hat and buttoned his coat, and walked out.
      In the country, the rain would have developed a thousand fresh scents, and
      every drop would have had its bright association with some beautiful form
      of growth or life. In the city, it developed only foul stale smells, and
      was a sickly, lukewarm, dirt-stained, wretched addition to the gutters.
    </p>
    <p>
      He crossed by St Paul's and went down, at a long angle, almost to the
      water's edge, through some of the crooked and descending streets which lie
      (and lay more crookedly and closely then) between the river and Cheapside.
      Passing, now the mouldy hall of some obsolete Worshipful Company, now the
      illuminated windows of a Congregationless Church that seemed to be waiting
      for some adventurous Belzoni to dig it out and discover its history;
      passing silent warehouses and wharves, and here and there a narrow alley
      leading to the river, where a wretched little bill, FOUND DROWNED, was
      weeping on the wet wall; he came at last to the house he sought. An old
      brick house, so dingy as to be all but black, standing by itself within a
      gateway. Before it, a square court-yard where a shrub or two and a patch
      of grass were as rank (which is saying much) as the iron railings
      enclosing them were rusty; behind it, a jumble of roots. It was a double
      house, with long, narrow, heavily-framed windows. Many years ago, it had
      had it in its mind to slide down sideways; it had been propped up,
      however, and was leaning on some half-dozen gigantic crutches: which
      gymnasium for the neighbouring cats, weather-stained, smoke-blackened, and
      overgrown with weeds, appeared in these latter days to be no very sure
      reliance.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing changed,' said the traveller, stopping to look round. 'Dark and
      miserable as ever. A light in my mother's window, which seems never to
      have been extinguished since I came home twice a year from school, and
      dragged my box over this pavement. Well, well, well!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He went up to the door, which had a projecting canopy in carved work of
      festooned jack-towels and children's heads with water on the brain,
      designed after a once-popular monumental pattern, and knocked. A shuffling
      step was soon heard on the stone floor of the hall, and the door was
      opened by an old man, bent and dried, but with keen eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had a candle in his hand, and he held it up for a moment to assist his
      keen eyes. 'Ah, Mr Arthur?' he said, without any emotion, 'you are come at
      last? Step in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Arthur stepped in and shut the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your figure is filled out, and set,' said the old man, turning to look at
      him with the light raised again, and shaking his head; 'but you don't come
      up to your father in my opinion. Nor yet your mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How is my mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is as she always is now. Keeps her room when not actually bedridden,
      and hasn't been out of it fifteen times in as many years, Arthur.' They
      had walked into a spare, meagre dining-room. The old man had put the
      candlestick upon the table, and, supporting his right elbow with his left
      hand, was smoothing his leathern jaws while he looked at the visitor. The
      visitor offered his hand. The old man took it coldly enough, and seemed to
      prefer his jaws, to which he returned as soon as he could.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I doubt if your mother will approve of your coming home on the Sabbath,
      Arthur,' he said, shaking his head warily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You wouldn't have me go away again?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I? I? I am not the master. It's not what <i>I</i> would have. I have
      stood between your father and mother for a number of years. I don't
      pretend to stand between your mother and you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you tell her that I have come home?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Arthur, yes. Oh, to be sure! I'll tell her that you have come home.
      Please to wait here. You won't find the room changed.' He took another
      candle from a cupboard, lighted it, left the first on the table, and went
      upon his errand. He was a short, bald old man, in a high-shouldered black
      coat and waistcoat, drab breeches, and long drab gaiters. He might, from
      his dress, have been either clerk or servant, and in fact had long been
      both. There was nothing about him in the way of decoration but a watch,
      which was lowered into the depths of its proper pocket by an old black
      ribbon, and had a tarnished copper key moored above it, to show where it
      was sunk. His head was awry, and he had a one-sided, crab-like way with
      him, as if his foundations had yielded at about the same time as those of
      the house, and he ought to have been propped up in a similar manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How weak am I,' said Arthur Clennam, when he was gone, 'that I could shed
      tears at this reception! I, who have never experienced anything else; who
      have never expected anything else.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He not only could, but did. It was the momentary yielding of a nature that
      had been disappointed from the dawn of its perceptions, but had not quite
      given up all its hopeful yearnings yet. He subdued it, took up the candle,
      and examined the room. The old articles of furniture were in their old
      places; the Plagues of Egypt, much the dimmer for the fly and smoke
      plagues of London, were framed and glazed upon the walls. There was the
      old cellaret with nothing in it, lined with lead, like a sort of coffin in
      compartments; there was the old dark closet, also with nothing in it, of
      which he had been many a time the sole contents, in days of punishment,
      when he had regarded it as the veritable entrance to that bourne to which
      the tract had found him galloping. There was the large, hard-featured
      clock on the sideboard, which he used to see bending its figured brows
      upon him with a savage joy when he was behind-hand with his lessons, and
      which, when it was wound up once a week with an iron handle, used to sound
      as if it were growling in ferocious anticipation of the miseries into
      which it would bring him. But here was the old man come back, saying,
      'Arthur, I'll go before and light you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur followed him up the staircase, which was panelled off into spaces
      like so many mourning tablets, into a dim bed-chamber, the floor of which
      had gradually so sunk and settled, that the fire-place was in a dell. On a
      black bier-like sofa in this hollow, propped up behind with one great
      angular black bolster like the block at a state execution in the good old
      times, sat his mother in a widow's dress.
    </p>
    <p>
      She and his father had been at variance from his earliest remembrance. To
      sit speechless himself in the midst of rigid silence, glancing in dread
      from the one averted face to the other, had been the peacefullest
      occupation of his childhood. She gave him one glassy kiss, and four stiff
      fingers muffled in worsted. This embrace concluded, he sat down on the
      opposite side of her little table. There was a fire in the grate, as there
      had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a kettle on the hob,
      as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a little
      mound of damped ashes on the top of the fire, and another little mound
      swept together under the grate, as there had been night and day for
      fifteen years. There was a smell of black dye in the airless room, which
      the fire had been drawing out of the crape and stuff of the widow's dress
      for fifteen months, and out of the bier-like sofa for fifteen years.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, this is a change from your old active habits.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The world has narrowed to these dimensions, Arthur,' she replied,
      glancing round the room. 'It is well for me that I never set my heart upon
      its hollow vanities.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old influence of her presence and her stern strong voice, so gathered
      about her son, that he felt conscious of a renewal of the timid chill and
      reserve of his childhood.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you never leave your room, mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What with my rheumatic affection, and what with its attendant debility or
      nervous weakness&mdash;names are of no matter now&mdash;I have lost the
      use of my limbs. I never leave my room. I have not been outside this door
      for&mdash;tell him for how long,' she said, speaking over her shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A dozen year next Christmas,' returned a cracked voice out of the dimness
      behind.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that Affery?' said Arthur, looking towards it.
    </p>
    <p>
      The cracked voice replied that it was Affery: and an old woman came
      forward into what doubtful light there was, and kissed her hand once; then
      subsided again into the dimness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am able,' said Mrs Clennam, with a slight motion of her worsted-muffled
      right hand toward a chair on wheels, standing before a tall writing
      cabinet close shut up, 'I am able to attend to my business duties, and I
      am thankful for the privilege. It is a great privilege. But no more of
      business on this day. It is a bad night, is it not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does it snow?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Snow, mother? And we only yet in September?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All seasons are alike to me,' she returned, with a grim kind of
      luxuriousness. 'I know nothing of summer and winter, shut up here. The
      Lord has been pleased to put me beyond all that.' With her cold grey eyes
      and her cold grey hair, and her immovable face, as stiff as the folds of
      her stony head-dress,&mdash;her being beyond the reach of the seasons
      seemed but a fit sequence to her being beyond the reach of all changing
      emotions.
    </p>
    <p>
      On her little table lay two or three books, her handkerchief, a pair of
      steel spectacles newly taken off, and an old-fashioned gold watch in a
      heavy double case. Upon this last object her son's eyes and her own now
      rested together.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I see that you received the packet I sent you on my father's death,
      safely, mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never knew my father to show so much anxiety on any subject, as that
      his watch should be sent straight to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I keep it here as a remembrance of your father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was not until the last, that he expressed the wish; when he could only
      put his hand upon it, and very indistinctly say to me "your mother." A
      moment before, I thought him wandering in his mind, as he had been for
      many hours&mdash;I think he had no consciousness of pain in his short
      illness&mdash;when I saw him turn himself in his bed and try to open it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Was your father, then, not wandering in his mind when he tried to open
      it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. He was quite sensible at that time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam shook her head; whether in dismissal of the deceased or
      opposing herself to her son's opinion, was not clearly expressed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'After my father's death I opened it myself, thinking there might be, for
      anything I knew, some memorandum there. However, as I need not tell you,
      mother, there was nothing but the old silk watch-paper worked in beads,
      which you found (no doubt) in its place between the cases, where I found
      and left it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam signified assent; then added, 'No more of business on this
      day,' and then added, 'Affery, it is nine o'clock.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Upon this, the old woman cleared the little table, went out of the room,
      and quickly returned with a tray on which was a dish of little rusks and a
      small precise pat of butter, cool, symmetrical, white, and plump. The old
      man who had been standing by the door in one attitude during the whole
      interview, looking at the mother up-stairs as he had looked at the son
      down-stairs, went out at the same time, and, after a longer absence,
      returned with another tray on which was the greater part of a bottle of
      port wine (which, to judge by his panting, he had brought from the
      cellar), a lemon, a sugar-basin, and a spice box. With these materials and
      the aid of the kettle, he filled a tumbler with a hot and odorous mixture,
      measured out and compounded with as much nicety as a physician's
      prescription. Into this mixture Mrs Clennam dipped certain of the rusks,
      and ate them; while the old woman buttered certain other of the rusks,
      which were to be eaten alone. When the invalid had eaten all the rusks and
      drunk all the mixture, the two trays were removed; and the books and the
      candle, watch, handkerchief, and spectacles were replaced upon the table.
      She then put on the spectacles and read certain passages aloud from a book&mdash;sternly,
      fiercely, wrathfully&mdash;praying that her enemies (she made them by her
      tone and manner expressly hers) might be put to the edge of the sword,
      consumed by fire, smitten by plagues and leprosy, that their bones might
      be ground to dust, and that they might be utterly exterminated. As she
      read on, years seemed to fall away from her son like the imaginings of a
      dream, and all the old dark horrors of his usual preparation for the sleep
      of an innocent child to overshadow him.
    </p>
    <p>
      She shut the book and remained for a little time with her face shaded by
      her hand. So did the old man, otherwise still unchanged in attitude; so,
      probably, did the old woman in her dimmer part of the room. Then the sick
      woman was ready for bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good night, Arthur. Affery will see to your accommodation. Only touch me,
      for my hand is tender.' He touched the worsted muffling of her hand&mdash;that
      was nothing; if his mother had been sheathed in brass there would have
      been no new barrier between them&mdash;and followed the old man and woman
      down-stairs.
    </p>
    <p>
      The latter asked him, when they were alone together among the heavy
      shadows of the dining-room, would he have some supper?
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Affery, no supper.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You shall if you like,' said Affery. 'There's her tomorrow's partridge in
      the larder&mdash;her first this year; say the word and I'll cook it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      No, he had not long dined, and could eat nothing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have something to drink, then,' said Affery; 'you shall have some of her
      bottle of port, if you like. I'll tell Jeremiah that you ordered me to
      bring it you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      No; nor would he have that, either.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's no reason, Arthur,' said the old woman, bending over him to whisper,
      'that because I am afeared of my life of 'em, you should be. You've got
      half the property, haven't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well then, don't you be cowed. You're clever, Arthur, an't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He nodded, as she seemed to expect an answer in the affirmative.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then stand up against them! She's awful clever, and none but a clever one
      durst say a word to her. <i>He's</i> a clever one&mdash;oh, he's a clever
      one!&mdash;and he gives it her when he has a mind to't, he does!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your husband does?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does? It makes me shake from head to foot, to hear him give it her. My
      husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, can conquer even your mother. What can he be
      but a clever one to do that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      His shuffling footstep coming towards them caused her to retreat to the
      other end of the room. Though a tall, hard-favoured, sinewy old woman, who
      in her youth might have enlisted in the Foot Guards without much fear of
      discovery, she collapsed before the little keen-eyed crab-like old man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Affery,' said he, 'now, woman, what are you doing? Can't you find
      Master Arthur something or another to pick at?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Master Arthur repeated his recent refusal to pick at anything.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very well, then,' said the old man; 'make his bed. Stir yourself.' His
      neck was so twisted that the knotted ends of his white cravat usually
      dangled under one ear; his natural acerbity and energy, always contending
      with a second nature of habitual repression, gave his features a swollen
      and suffused look; and altogether, he had a weird appearance of having
      hanged himself at one time or other, and of having gone about ever since,
      halter and all, exactly as some timely hand had cut him down.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'll have bitter words together to-morrow, Arthur; you and your
      mother,' said Jeremiah. 'Your having given up the business on your
      father's death&mdash;which she suspects, though we have left it to you to
      tell her&mdash;won't go off smoothly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have given up everything in life for the business, and the time came
      for me to give up that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good!' cried Jeremiah, evidently meaning Bad. 'Very good! only don't
      expect me to stand between your mother and you, Arthur. I stood between
      your mother and your father, fending off this, and fending off that, and
      getting crushed and pounded betwixt em; and I've done with such work.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You will never be asked to begin it again for me, Jeremiah.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good. I'm glad to hear it; because I should have had to decline it, if I
      had been. That's enough&mdash;as your mother says&mdash;and more than
      enough of such matters on a Sabbath night. Affery, woman, have you found
      what you want yet?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She had been collecting sheets and blankets from a press, and hastened to
      gather them up, and to reply, 'Yes, Jeremiah.' Arthur Clennam helped her
      by carrying the load himself, wished the old man good night, and went
      up-stairs with her to the top of the house.
    </p>
    <p>
      They mounted up and up, through the musty smell of an old close house,
      little used, to a large garret bed-room. Meagre and spare, like all the
      other rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer than the rest, by being the
      place of banishment for the worn-out furniture. Its movables were ugly old
      chairs with worn-out seats, and ugly old chairs without any seats; a
      threadbare patternless carpet, a maimed table, a crippled wardrobe, a lean
      set of fire-irons like the skeleton of a set deceased, a washing-stand
      that looked as if it had stood for ages in a hail of dirty soapsuds, and a
      bedstead with four bare atomies of posts, each terminating in a spike, as
      if for the dismal accommodation of lodgers who might prefer to impale
      themselves. Arthur opened the long low window, and looked out upon the old
      blasted and blackened forest of chimneys, and the old red glare in the
      sky, which had seemed to him once upon a time but a nightly reflection of
      the fiery environment that was presented to his childish fancy in all
      directions, let it look where it would.
    </p>
    <p>
      He drew in his head again, sat down at the bedside, and looked on at
      Affery Flintwinch making the bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Affery, you were not married when I went away.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She screwed her mouth into the form of saying 'No,' shook her head, and
      proceeded to get a pillow into its case.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How did it happen?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, Jeremiah, o' course,' said Affery, with an end of the pillow-case
      between her teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course he proposed it, but how did it all come about? I should have
      thought that neither of you would have married; least of all should I have
      thought of your marrying each other.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No more should I,' said Mrs Flintwinch, tying the pillow tightly in its
      case.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's what I mean. When did you begin to think otherwise?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never begun to think otherwise at all,' said Mrs Flintwinch.
    </p>
    <p>
      Seeing, as she patted the pillow into its place on the bolster, that he
      was still looking at her as if waiting for the rest of her reply, she gave
      it a great poke in the middle, and asked, 'How could I help myself?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How could you help yourself from being married!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O' course,' said Mrs Flintwinch. 'It was no doing o' mine. I'd never
      thought of it. I'd got something to do, without thinking, indeed! She kept
      me to it (as well as he) when she could go about, and she could go about
      then.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?' echoed Mrs Flintwinch. 'That's what I said myself. Well! What's
      the use of considering? If them two clever ones have made up their minds
      to it, what's left for <i>me</i> to do? Nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Was it my mother's project, then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Lord bless you, Arthur, and forgive me the wish!' cried Affery,
      speaking always in a low tone. 'If they hadn't been both of a mind in it,
      how could it ever have been? Jeremiah never courted me; t'ant likely that
      he would, after living in the house with me and ordering me about for as
      many years as he'd done. He said to me one day, he said, "Affery," he
      said, "now I am going to tell you something. What do you think of the name
      of Flintwinch?" "What do I think of it?" I says. "Yes," he said, "because
      you're going to take it," he said. "Take it?" I says. "Jere-<i>mi</i>-ah?"
      Oh! he's a clever one!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Flintwinch went on to spread the upper sheet over the bed, and the
      blanket over that, and the counterpane over that, as if she had quite
      concluded her story.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?' said Arthur again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?' echoed Mrs Flintwinch again. 'How could I help myself? He said to
      me, "Affery, you and me must be married, and I'll tell you why. She's
      failing in health, and she'll want pretty constant attendance up in her
      room, and we shall have to be much with her, and there'll be nobody about
      now but ourselves when we're away from her, and altogether it will be more
      convenient. She's of my opinion," he said, "so if you'll put your bonnet
      on next Monday morning at eight, we'll get it over."' Mrs Flintwinch
      tucked up the bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?' repeated Mrs Flintwinch, 'I think so! I sits me down and says it.
      Well!&mdash;Jeremiah then says to me, "As to banns, next Sunday being the
      third time of asking (for I've put 'em up a fortnight), is my reason for
      naming Monday. She'll speak to you about it herself, and now she'll find
      you prepared, Affery." That same day she spoke to me, and she said, "So,
      Affery, I understand that you and Jeremiah are going to be married. I am
      glad of it, and so are you, with reason. It is a very good thing for you,
      and very welcome under the circumstances to me. He is a sensible man, and
      a trustworthy man, and a persevering man, and a pious man." What could I
      say when it had come to that? Why, if it had been&mdash;a smothering
      instead of a wedding,' Mrs Flintwinch cast about in her mind with great
      pains for this form of expression, 'I couldn't have said a word upon it,
      against them two clever ones.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In good faith, I believe so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And so you may, Arthur.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Affery, what girl was that in my mother's room just now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Girl?' said Mrs Flintwinch in a rather sharp key.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was a girl, surely, whom I saw near you&mdash;almost hidden in the
      dark corner?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! She? Little Dorrit? <i>She</i>'s nothing; she's a whim of&mdash;hers.'
      It was a peculiarity of Affery Flintwinch that she never spoke of Mrs
      Clennam by name. 'But there's another sort of girls than that about. Have
      you forgot your old sweetheart? Long and long ago, I'll be bound.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suffered enough from my mother's separating us, to remember her. I
      recollect her very well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you got another?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here's news for you, then. She's well to do now, and a widow. And if you
      like to have her, why you can.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how do you know that, Affery?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Them two clever ones have been speaking about it.&mdash;There's Jeremiah
      on the stairs!' She was gone in a moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Flintwinch had introduced into the web that his mind was busily
      weaving, in that old workshop where the loom of his youth had stood, the
      last thread wanting to the pattern. The airy folly of a boy's love had
      found its way even into that house, and he had been as wretched under its
      hopelessness as if the house had been a castle of romance. Little more
      than a week ago at Marseilles, the face of the pretty girl from whom he
      had parted with regret, had had an unusual interest for him, and a tender
      hold upon him, because of some resemblance, real or imagined, to this
      first face that had soared out of his gloomy life into the bright glories
      of fancy. He leaned upon the sill of the long low window, and looking out
      upon the blackened forest of chimneys again, began to dream; for it had
      been the uniform tendency of this man's life&mdash;so much was wanting in
      it to think about, so much that might have been better directed and
      happier to speculate upon&mdash;to make him a dreamer, after all.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />

    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 4. Mrs Flintwinch has a Dream
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, she usually dreamed, unlike the son of her
      old mistress, with her eyes shut. She had a curiously vivid dream that
      night, and before she had left the son of her old mistress many hours. In
      fact it was not at all like a dream; it was so very real in every respect.
      It happened in this wise.
    </p>
    <p>
      The bed-chamber occupied by Mr and Mrs Flintwinch was within a few paces
      of that to which Mrs Clennam had been so long confined. It was not on the
      same floor, for it was a room at the side of the house, which was
      approached by a steep descent of a few odd steps, diverging from the main
      staircase nearly opposite to Mrs Clennam's door. It could scarcely be said
      to be within call, the walls, doors, and panelling of the old place were
      so cumbrous; but it was within easy reach, in any undress, at any hour of
      the night, in any temperature. At the head of the bed and within a foot of
      Mrs Flintwinch's ear, was a bell, the line of which hung ready to Mrs
      Clennam's hand. Whenever this bell rang, up started Affery, and was in the
      sick room before she was awake.
    </p>
    <p>
      Having got her mistress into bed, lighted her lamp, and given her good
      night, Mrs Flintwinch went to roost as usual, saving that her lord had not
      yet appeared. It was her lord himself who became&mdash;unlike the last
      theme in the mind, according to the observation of most philosophers&mdash;the
      subject of Mrs Flintwinch's dream.
    </p>
    <p>
      It seemed to her that she awoke after sleeping some hours, and found
      Jeremiah not yet abed. That she looked at the candle she had left burning,
      and, measuring the time like King Alfred the Great, was confirmed by its
      wasted state in her belief that she had been asleep for some considerable
      period. That she arose thereupon, muffled herself up in a wrapper, put on
      her shoes, and went out on the staircase, much surprised, to look for
      Jeremiah.
    </p>
    <p>
      The staircase was as wooden and solid as need be, and Affery went straight
      down it without any of those deviations peculiar to dreams. She did not
      skim over it, but walked down it, and guided herself by the banisters on
      account of her candle having died out. In one corner of the hall, behind
      the house-door, there was a little waiting-room, like a well-shaft, with a
      long narrow window in it as if it had been ripped up. In this room, which
      was never used, a light was burning.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Flintwinch crossed the hall, feeling its pavement cold to her
      stockingless feet, and peeped in between the rusty hinges on the door,
      which stood a little open. She expected to see Jeremiah fast asleep or in
      a fit, but he was calmly seated in a chair, awake, and in his usual
      health. But what&mdash;hey?&mdash;Lord forgive us!&mdash;Mrs Flintwinch
      muttered some ejaculation to this effect, and turned giddy.
    </p>
    <p>
      For, Mr Flintwinch awake, was watching Mr Flintwinch asleep. He sat on one
      side of the small table, looking keenly at himself on the other side with
      his chin sunk on his breast, snoring. The waking Flintwinch had his full
      front face presented to his wife; the sleeping Flintwinch was in profile.
      The waking Flintwinch was the old original; the sleeping Flintwinch was
      the double, just as she might have distinguished between a tangible object
      and its reflection in a glass, Affery made out this difference with her
      head going round and round.
    </p>
    <p>
      If she had had any doubt which was her own Jeremiah, it would have been
      resolved by his impatience. He looked about him for an offensive weapon,
      caught up the snuffers, and, before applying them to the cabbage-headed
      candle, lunged at the sleeper as though he would have run him through the
      body.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who's that? What's the matter?' cried the sleeper, starting.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch made a movement with the snuffers, as if he would have
      enforced silence on his companion by putting them down his throat; the
      companion, coming to himself, said, rubbing his eyes, 'I forgot where I
      was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been asleep,' snarled Jeremiah, referring to his watch, 'two
      hours. You said you would be rested enough if you had a short nap.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have had a short nap,' said Double.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Half-past two o'clock in the morning,' muttered Jeremiah. 'Where's your
      hat? Where's your coat? Where's the box?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All here,' said Double, tying up his throat with sleepy carefulness in a
      shawl. 'Stop a minute. Now give me the sleeve&mdash;not that sleeve, the
      other one. Ha! I'm not as young as I was.' Mr Flintwinch had pulled him
      into his coat with vehement energy. 'You promised me a second glass after
      I was rested.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Drink it!' returned Jeremiah, 'and&mdash;choke yourself, I was going to
      say&mdash;but go, I mean.' At the same time he produced the identical
      port-wine bottle, and filled a wine-glass.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Her port-wine, I believe?' said Double, tasting it as if he were in the
      Docks, with hours to spare. 'Her health.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He took a sip.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your health!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He took another sip.
    </p>
    <p>
      'His health!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He took another sip.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And all friends round St Paul's.' He emptied and put down the wine-glass
      half-way through this ancient civic toast, and took up the box. It was an
      iron box some two feet square, which he carried under his arms pretty
      easily. Jeremiah watched his manner of adjusting it, with jealous eyes;
      tried it with his hands, to be sure that he had a firm hold of it; bade
      him for his life be careful what he was about; and then stole out on
      tiptoe to open the door for him. Affery, anticipating the last movement,
      was on the staircase. The sequence of things was so ordinary and natural,
      that, standing there, she could hear the door open, feel the night air,
      and see the stars outside.
    </p>
    <p>
      But now came the most remarkable part of the dream. She felt so afraid of
      her husband, that being on the staircase, she had not the power to retreat
      to her room (which she might easily have done before he had fastened the
      door), but stood there staring. Consequently when he came up the staircase
      to bed, candle in hand, he came full upon her. He looked astonished, but
      said not a word. He kept his eyes upon her, and kept advancing; and she,
      completely under his influence, kept retiring before him. Thus, she
      walking backward and he walking forward, they came into their own room.
      They were no sooner shut in there, than Mr Flintwinch took her by the
      throat, and shook her until she was black in the face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, Affery, woman&mdash;Affery!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'What have you been
      dreaming of? Wake up, wake up! What's the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The&mdash;the matter, Jeremiah?' gasped Mrs Flintwinch, rolling her eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, Affery, woman&mdash;Affery! You have been getting out of bed in your
      sleep, my dear! I come up, after having fallen asleep myself, below, and
      find you in your wrapper here, with the nightmare. Affery, woman,' said Mr
      Flintwinch, with a friendly grin on his expressive countenance, 'if you
      ever have a dream of this sort again, it'll be a sign of your being in
      want of physic. And I'll give you such a dose, old woman&mdash;such a
      dose!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Flintwinch thanked him and crept into bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 5. Family Affairs
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s the city clocks struck nine on Monday morning, Mrs Clennam was wheeled
      by Jeremiah Flintwinch of the cut-down aspect to her tall cabinet. When
      she had unlocked and opened it, and had settled herself at its desk,
      Jeremiah withdrew&mdash;as it might be, to hang himself more effectually&mdash;and
      her son appeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you any better this morning, mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She shook her head, with the same austere air of luxuriousness that she
      had shown over-night when speaking of the weather. 'I shall never be
      better any more. It is well for me, Arthur, that I know it and can bear
      it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Sitting with her hands laid separately upon the desk, and the tall cabinet
      towering before her, she looked as if she were performing on a dumb church
      organ. Her son thought so (it was an old thought with him), while he took
      his seat beside it.
    </p>
    <p>
      She opened a drawer or two, looked over some business papers, and put them
      back again. Her severe face had no thread of relaxation in it, by which
      any explorer could have been guided to the gloomy labyrinth of her
      thoughts.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I speak of our affairs, mother? Are you inclined to enter upon
      business?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Am I inclined, Arthur? Rather, are you? Your father has been dead a year
      and more. I have been at your disposal, and waiting your pleasure, ever
      since.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There was much to arrange before I could leave; and when I did leave, I
      travelled a little for rest and relief.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She turned her face towards him, as not having heard or understood his
      last words.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For rest and relief.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She glanced round the sombre room, and appeared from the motion of her
      lips to repeat the words to herself, as calling it to witness how little
      of either it afforded her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Besides, mother, you being sole executrix, and having the direction and
      management of the estate, there remained little business, or I might say
      none, that I could transact, until you had had time to arrange matters to
      your satisfaction.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The accounts are made out,' she returned. 'I have them here. The vouchers
      have all been examined and passed. You can inspect them when you like,
      Arthur; now, if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is quite enough, mother, to know that the business is completed. Shall
      I proceed then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not?' she said, in her frozen way.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, our House has done less and less for some years past, and our
      dealings have been progressively on the decline. We have never shown much
      confidence, or invited much; we have attached no people to us; the track
      we have kept is not the track of the time; and we have been left far
      behind. I need not dwell on this to you, mother. You know it necessarily.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know what you mean,' she answered, in a qualified tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Even this old house in which we speak,' pursued her son, 'is an instance
      of what I say. In my father's earlier time, and in his uncle's time before
      him, it was a place of business&mdash;really a place of business, and
      business resort. Now, it is a mere anomaly and incongruity here, out of
      date and out of purpose. All our consignments have long been made to
      Rovinghams' the commission-merchants; and although, as a check upon them,
      and in the stewardship of my father's resources, your judgment and
      watchfulness have been actively exerted, still those qualities would have
      influenced my father's fortunes equally, if you had lived in any private
      dwelling: would they not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you consider,' she returned, without answering his question, 'that a
      house serves no purpose, Arthur, in sheltering your infirm and afflicted&mdash;justly
      infirm and righteously afflicted&mdash;mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was speaking only of business purposes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'With what object?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am coming to it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I foresee,' she returned, fixing her eyes upon him, 'what it is. But the
      Lord forbid that I should repine under any visitation. In my sinfulness I
      merit bitter disappointment, and I accept it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, I grieve to hear you speak like this, though I have had my
      apprehensions that you would&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You knew I would. You knew <i>me</i>,' she interrupted.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her son paused for a moment. He had struck fire out of her, and was
      surprised. 'Well!' she said, relapsing into stone. 'Go on. Let me hear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have anticipated, mother, that I decide for my part, to abandon the
      business. I have done with it. I will not take upon myself to advise you;
      you will continue it, I see. If I had any influence with you, I would
      simply use it to soften your judgment of me in causing you this
      disappointment: to represent to you that I have lived the half of a long
      term of life, and have never before set my own will against yours. I
      cannot say that I have been able to conform myself, in heart and spirit,
      to your rules; I cannot say that I believe my forty years have been
      profitable or pleasant to myself, or any one; but I have habitually
      submitted, and I only ask you to remember it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Woe to the suppliant, if such a one there were or ever had been, who had
      any concession to look for in the inexorable face at the cabinet. Woe to
      the defaulter whose appeal lay to the tribunal where those severe eyes
      presided. Great need had the rigid woman of her mystical religion, veiled
      in gloom and darkness, with lightnings of cursing, vengeance, and
      destruction, flashing through the sable clouds. Forgive us our debts as we
      forgive our debtors, was a prayer too poor in spirit for her. Smite Thou
      my debtors, Lord, wither them, crush them; do Thou as I would do, and Thou
      shalt have my worship: this was the impious tower of stone she built up to
      scale Heaven.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you finished, Arthur, or have you anything more to say to me? I
      think there can be nothing else. You have been short, but full of matter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, I have yet something more to say. It has been upon my mind, night
      and day, this long time. It is far more difficult to say than what I have
      said. That concerned myself; this concerns us all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Us all! Who are us all?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yourself, myself, my dead father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She took her hands from the desk; folded them in her lap; and sat looking
      towards the fire, with the impenetrability of an old Egyptian sculpture.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You knew my father infinitely better than I ever knew him; and his
      reserve with me yielded to you. You were much the stronger, mother, and
      directed him. As a child, I knew it as well as I know it now. I knew that
      your ascendancy over him was the cause of his going to China to take care
      of the business there, while you took care of it here (though I do not
      even now know whether these were really terms of separation that you
      agreed upon); and that it was your will that I should remain with you
      until I was twenty, and then go to him as I did. You will not be offended
      by my recalling this, after twenty years?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am waiting to hear why you recall it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He lowered his voice, and said, with manifest reluctance, and against his
      will:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to ask you, mother, whether it ever occurred to you to suspect&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      At the word Suspect, she turned her eyes momentarily upon her son, with a
      dark frown. She then suffered them to seek the fire, as before; but with
      the frown fixed above them, as if the sculptor of old Egypt had indented
      it in the hard granite face, to frown for ages.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;that he had any secret remembrance which caused him trouble of
      mind&mdash;remorse? Whether you ever observed anything in his conduct
      suggesting that; or ever spoke to him upon it, or ever heard him hint at
      such a thing?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not understand what kind of secret remembrance you mean to infer
      that your father was a prey to,' she returned, after a silence. 'You speak
      so mysteriously.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it possible, mother,' her son leaned forward to be the nearer to her
      while he whispered it, and laid his hand nervously upon her desk, 'is it
      possible, mother, that he had unhappily wronged any one, and made no
      reparation?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Looking at him wrathfully, she bent herself back in her chair to keep him
      further off, but gave him no reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am deeply sensible, mother, that if this thought has never at any time
      flashed upon you, it must seem cruel and unnatural in me, even in this
      confidence, to breathe it. But I cannot shake it off. Time and change (I
      have tried both before breaking silence) do nothing to wear it out.
      Remember, I was with my father. Remember, I saw his face when he gave the
      watch into my keeping, and struggled to express that he sent it as a token
      you would understand, to you. Remember, I saw him at the last with the
      pencil in his failing hand, trying to write some word for you to read, but
      to which he could give no shape. The more remote and cruel this vague
      suspicion that I have, the stronger the circumstances that could give it
      any semblance of probability to me. For Heaven's sake, let us examine
      sacredly whether there is any wrong entrusted to us to set right. No one
      can help towards it, mother, but you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Still so recoiling in her chair that her overpoised weight moved it, from
      time to time, a little on its wheels, and gave her the appearance of a
      phantom of fierce aspect gliding away from him, she interposed her left
      arm, bent at the elbow with the back of her hand towards her face, between
      herself and him, and looked at him in a fixed silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In grasping at money and in driving hard bargains&mdash;I have begun, and
      I must speak of such things now, mother&mdash;some one may have been
      grievously deceived, injured, ruined. You were the moving power of all
      this machinery before my birth; your stronger spirit has been infused into
      all my father's dealings for more than two score years. You can set these
      doubts at rest, I think, if you will really help me to discover the truth.
      Will you, mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He stopped in the hope that she would speak. But her grey hair was not
      more immovable in its two folds, than were her firm lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If reparation can be made to any one, if restitution can be made to any
      one, let us know it and make it. Nay, mother, if within my means, let <i>me</i>
      make it. I have seen so little happiness come of money; it has brought
      within my knowledge so little peace to this house, or to any one belonging
      to it, that it is worth less to me than to another. It can buy me nothing
      that will not be a reproach and misery to me, if I am haunted by a
      suspicion that it darkened my father's last hours with remorse, and that
      it is not honestly and justly mine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a bell-rope hanging on the panelled wall, some two or three
      yards from the cabinet. By a swift and sudden action of her foot, she
      drove her wheeled chair rapidly back to it and pulled it violently&mdash;still
      holding her arm up in its shield-like posture, as if he were striking at
      her, and she warding off the blow.
    </p>
    <p>
      A girl came hurrying in, frightened.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Send Flintwinch here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In a moment the girl had withdrawn, and the old man stood within the door.
      'What! You're hammer and tongs, already, you two?' he said, coolly
      stroking his face. 'I thought you would be. I was pretty sure of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flintwinch!' said the mother, 'look at my son. Look at him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, I <i>am</i> looking at him,' said Flintwinch.
    </p>
    <p>
      She stretched out the arm with which she had shielded herself, and as she
      went on, pointed at the object of her anger.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In the very hour of his return almost&mdash;before the shoe upon his foot
      is dry&mdash;he asperses his father's memory to his mother! Asks his
      mother to become, with him, a spy upon his father's transactions through a
      lifetime! Has misgivings that the goods of this world which we have
      painfully got together early and late, with wear and tear and toil and
      self-denial, are so much plunder; and asks to whom they shall be given up,
      as reparation and restitution!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Although she said this raging, she said it in a voice so far from being
      beyond her control that it was even lower than her usual tone. She also
      spoke with great distinctness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Reparation!' said she. 'Yes, truly! It is easy for him to talk of
      reparation, fresh from journeying and junketing in foreign lands, and
      living a life of vanity and pleasure. But let him look at me, in prison,
      and in bonds here. I endure without murmuring, because it is appointed
      that I shall so make reparation for my sins. Reparation! Is there none in
      this room? Has there been none here this fifteen years?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus was she always balancing her bargains with the Majesty of heaven,
      posting up the entries to her credit, strictly keeping her set-off, and
      claiming her due. She was only remarkable in this, for the force and
      emphasis with which she did it. Thousands upon thousands do it, according
      to their varying manner, every day.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flintwinch, give me that book!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old man handed it to her from the table. She put two fingers between
      the leaves, closed the book upon them, and held it up to her son in a
      threatening way.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In the days of old, Arthur, treated of in this commentary, there were
      pious men, beloved of the Lord, who would have cursed their sons for less
      than this: who would have sent them forth, and sent whole nations forth,
      if such had supported them, to be avoided of God and man, and perish, down
      to the baby at the breast. But I only tell you that if you ever renew that
      theme with me, I will renounce you; I will so dismiss you through that
      doorway, that you had better have been motherless from your cradle. I will
      never see or know you more. And if, after all, you were to come into this
      darkened room to look upon me lying dead, my body should bleed, if I could
      make it, when you came near me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      In part relieved by the intensity of this threat, and in part (monstrous
      as the fact is) by a general impression that it was in some sort a
      religious proceeding, she handed back the book to the old man, and was
      silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now,' said Jeremiah; 'premising that I'm not going to stand between you
      two, will you let me ask (as I <i>have</i> been called in, and made a
      third) what is all this about?'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0066m.jpg" alt="0066m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0066.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Take your version of it,' returned Arthur, finding it left to him to
      speak, 'from my mother. Let it rest there. What I have said, was said to
      my mother only.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' returned the old man. 'From your mother? Take it from your mother?
      Well! But your mother mentioned that you had been suspecting your father.
      That's not dutiful, Mr Arthur. Who will you be suspecting next?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Enough,' said Mrs Clennam, turning her face so that it was addressed for
      the moment to the old man only. 'Let no more be said about this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, but stop a bit, stop a bit,' the old man persisted. 'Let us see how
      we stand. Have you told Mr Arthur that he mustn't lay offences at his
      father's door? That he has no right to do it? That he has no ground to go
      upon?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell him so now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! Exactly,' said the old man. 'You tell him so now. You hadn't told him
      so before, and you tell him so now. Ay, ay! That's right! You know I stood
      between you and his father so long, that it seems as if death had made no
      difference, and I was still standing between you. So I will, and so in
      fairness I require to have that plainly put forward. Arthur, you please to
      hear that you have no right to mistrust your father, and have no ground to
      go upon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He put his hands to the back of the wheeled chair, and muttering to
      himself, slowly wheeled his mistress back to her cabinet. 'Now,' he
      resumed, standing behind her: 'in case I should go away leaving things
      half done, and so should be wanted again when you come to the other half
      and get into one of your flights, has Arthur told you what he means to do
      about the business?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has relinquished it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In favour of nobody, I suppose?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam glanced at her son, leaning against one of the windows. He
      observed the look and said, 'To my mother, of course. She does what she
      pleases.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And if any pleasure,' she said after a short pause, 'could arise for me
      out of the disappointment of my expectations that my son, in the prime of
      his life, would infuse new youth and strength into it, and make it of
      great profit and power, it would be in advancing an old and faithful
      servant. Jeremiah, the captain deserts the ship, but you and I will sink
      or float with it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Jeremiah, whose eyes glistened as if they saw money, darted a sudden look
      at the son, which seemed to say, 'I owe <i>you</i> no thanks for this; <i>you</i>
      have done nothing towards it!' and then told the mother that he thanked
      her, and that Affery thanked her, and that he would never desert her, and
      that Affery would never desert her. Finally, he hauled up his watch from
      its depths, and said, 'Eleven. Time for your oysters!' and with that
      change of subject, which involved no change of expression or manner, rang
      the bell.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Mrs Clennam, resolved to treat herself with the greater rigour for
      having been supposed to be unacquainted with reparation, refused to eat
      her oysters when they were brought. They looked tempting; eight in number,
      circularly set out on a white plate on a tray covered with a white napkin,
      flanked by a slice of buttered French roll, and a little compact glass of
      cool wine and water; but she resisted all persuasions, and sent them down
      again&mdash;placing the act to her credit, no doubt, in her Eternal
      Day-Book.
    </p>
    <p>
      This refection of oysters was not presided over by Affery, but by the girl
      who had appeared when the bell was rung; the same who had been in the
      dimly-lighted room last night. Now that he had an opportunity of observing
      her, Arthur found that her diminutive figure, small features, and slight
      spare dress, gave her the appearance of being much younger than she was. A
      woman, probably of not less than two-and-twenty, she might have been
      passed in the street for little more than half that age. Not that her face
      was very youthful, for in truth there was more consideration and care in
      it than naturally belonged to her utmost years; but she was so little and
      light, so noiseless and shy, and appeared so conscious of being out of
      place among the three hard elders, that she had all the manner and much of
      the appearance of a subdued child.
    </p>
    <p>
      In a hard way, and in an uncertain way that fluctuated between patronage
      and putting down, the sprinkling from a watering-pot and hydraulic
      pressure, Mrs Clennam showed an interest in this dependent. Even in the
      moment of her entrance, upon the violent ringing of the bell, when the
      mother shielded herself with that singular action from the son, Mrs
      Clennam's eyes had had some individual recognition in them, which seemed
      reserved for her. As there are degrees of hardness in the hardest metal,
      and shades of colour in black itself, so, even in the asperity of Mrs
      Clennam's demeanour towards all the rest of humanity and towards Little
      Dorrit, there was a fine gradation.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit let herself out to do needlework. At so much a day&mdash;or
      at so little&mdash;from eight to eight, Little Dorrit was to be hired.
      Punctual to the moment, Little Dorrit appeared; punctual to the moment,
      Little Dorrit vanished. What became of Little Dorrit between the two
      eights was a mystery.
    </p>
    <p>
      Another of the moral phenomena of Little Dorrit. Besides her consideration
      money, her daily contract included meals. She had an extraordinary
      repugnance to dining in company; would never do so, if it were possible to
      escape. Would always plead that she had this bit of work to begin first,
      or that bit of work to finish first; and would, of a certainty, scheme and
      plan&mdash;not very cunningly, it would seem, for she deceived no one&mdash;to
      dine alone. Successful in this, happy in carrying off her plate anywhere,
      to make a table of her lap, or a box, or the ground, or even as was
      supposed, to stand on tip-toe, dining moderately at a mantel-shelf; the
      great anxiety of Little Dorrit's day was set at rest.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not easy to make out Little Dorrit's face; she was so retiring,
      plied her needle in such removed corners, and started away so scared if
      encountered on the stairs. But it seemed to be a pale transparent face,
      quick in expression, though not beautiful in feature, its soft hazel eyes
      excepted. A delicately bent head, a tiny form, a quick little pair of busy
      hands, and a shabby dress&mdash;it must needs have been very shabby to
      look at all so, being so neat&mdash;were Little Dorrit as she sat at work.
    </p>
    <p>
      For these particulars or generalities concerning Little Dorrit, Mr Arthur
      was indebted in the course of the day to his own eyes and to Mrs Affery's
      tongue. If Mrs Affery had had any will or way of her own, it would
      probably have been unfavourable to Little Dorrit. But as 'them two clever
      ones'&mdash;Mrs Affery's perpetual reference, in whom her personality was
      swallowed up&mdash;were agreed to accept Little Dorrit as a matter of
      course, she had nothing for it but to follow suit. Similarly, if the two
      clever ones had agreed to murder Little Dorrit by candlelight, Mrs Affery,
      being required to hold the candle, would no doubt have done it.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the intervals of roasting the partridge for the invalid chamber, and
      preparing a baking-dish of beef and pudding for the dining-room, Mrs
      Affery made the communications above set forth; invariably putting her
      head in at the door again after she had taken it out, to enforce
      resistance to the two clever ones. It appeared to have become a perfect
      passion with Mrs Flintwinch, that the only son should be pitted against
      them.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the course of the day, too, Arthur looked through the whole house. Dull
      and dark he found it. The gaunt rooms, deserted for years upon years,
      seemed to have settled down into a gloomy lethargy from which nothing
      could rouse them again. The furniture, at once spare and lumbering, hid in
      the rooms rather than furnished them, and there was no colour in all the
      house; such colour as had ever been there, had long ago started away on
      lost sunbeams&mdash;got itself absorbed, perhaps, into flowers,
      butterflies, plumage of birds, precious stones, what not. There was not
      one straight floor from the foundation to the roof; the ceilings were so
      fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, that old women might have told
      fortunes in them better than in grouts of tea; the dead-cold hearths
      showed no traces of having ever been warmed but in heaps of soot that had
      tumbled down the chimneys, and eddied about in little dusky whirlwinds
      when the doors were opened. In what had once been a drawing-room, there
      were a pair of meagre mirrors, with dismal processions of black figures
      carrying black garlands, walking round the frames; but even these were
      short of heads and legs, and one undertaker-like Cupid had swung round on
      its own axis and got upside down, and another had fallen off altogether.
      The room Arthur Clennam's deceased father had occupied for business
      purposes, when he first remembered him, was so unaltered that he might
      have been imagined still to keep it invisibly, as his visible relict kept
      her room up-stairs; Jeremiah Flintwinch still going between them
      negotiating.
</p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0071m.jpg" alt="0071m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0071.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
His picture, dark and gloomy, earnestly speechless on the
      wall, with the eyes intently looking at his son as they had looked when
      life departed from them, seemed to urge him awfully to the task he had
      attempted; but as to any yielding on the part of his mother, he had now no
      hope, and as to any other means of setting his distrust at rest, he had
      abandoned hope a long time. Down in the cellars, as up in the
      bed-chambers, old objects that he well remembered were changed by age and
      decay, but were still in their old places; even to empty beer-casks hoary
      with cobwebs, and empty wine-bottles with fur and fungus choking up their
      throats. There, too, among unusual bottle-racks and pale slants of light
      from the yard above, was the strong room stored with old ledgers, which
      had as musty and corrupt a smell as if they were regularly balanced, in
      the dead small hours, by a nightly resurrection of old book-keepers.
    </p>
    <p>
      The baking-dish was served up in a penitential manner on a shrunken cloth
      at an end of the dining-table, at two o'clock, when he dined with Mr
      Flintwinch, the new partner. Mr Flintwinch informed him that his mother
      had recovered her equanimity now, and that he need not fear her again
      alluding to what had passed in the morning. 'And don't you lay offences at
      your father's door, Mr Arthur,' added Jeremiah, 'once for all, don't do
      it! Now, we have done with the subject.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch had been already rearranging and dusting his own particular
      little office, as if to do honour to his accession to new dignity. He
      resumed this occupation when he was replete with beef, had sucked up all
      the gravy in the baking-dish with the flat of his knife, and had drawn
      liberally on a barrel of small beer in the scullery. Thus refreshed, he
      tucked up his shirt-sleeves and went to work again; and Mr Arthur,
      watching him as he set about it, plainly saw that his father's picture, or
      his father's grave, would be as communicative with him as this old man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Affery, woman,' said Mr Flintwinch, as she crossed the hall. 'You
      hadn't made Mr Arthur's bed when I was up there last. Stir yourself.
      Bustle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      But Mr Arthur found the house so blank and dreary, and was so unwilling to
      assist at another implacable consignment of his mother's enemies (perhaps
      himself among them) to mortal disfigurement and immortal ruin, that he
      announced his intention of lodging at the coffee-house where he had left
      his luggage. Mr Flintwinch taking kindly to the idea of getting rid of
      him, and his mother being indifferent, beyond considerations of saving, to
      most domestic arrangements that were not bounded by the walls of her own
      chamber, he easily carried this point without new offence. Daily business
      hours were agreed upon, which his mother, Mr Flintwinch, and he, were to
      devote together to a necessary checking of books and papers; and he left
      the home he had so lately found, with depressed heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Little Dorrit?
    </p>
    <p>
      The business hours, allowing for intervals of invalid regimen of oysters
      and partridges, during which Clennam refreshed himself with a walk, were
      from ten to six for about a fortnight. Sometimes Little Dorrit was
      employed at her needle, sometimes not, sometimes appeared as a humble
      visitor: which must have been her character on the occasion of his
      arrival. His original curiosity augmented every day, as he watched for
      her, saw or did not see her, and speculated about her. Influenced by his
      predominant idea, he even fell into a habit of discussing with himself the
      possibility of her being in some way associated with it. At last he
      resolved to watch Little Dorrit and know more of her story.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 6. The Father of the Marshalsea
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hirty years ago there stood, a few doors short of the church of Saint
      George, in the borough of Southwark, on the left-hand side of the way
      going southward, the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years
      before, and it remained there some years afterwards; but it is gone now,
      and the world is none the worse without it.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid houses
      standing back to back, so that there were no back rooms; environed by a
      narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a
      close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much
      closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue
      laws, and defaulters to excise or customs who had incurred fines which
      they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated behind an
      iron-plated door closing up a second prison, consisting of a strong cell
      or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which formed the
      mysterious termination of the very limited skittle-ground in which the
      Marshalsea debtors bowled down their troubles.
    </p>
    <p>
      Supposed to be incarcerated there, because the time had rather outgrown
      the strong cells and the blind alley. In practice they had come to be
      considered a little too bad, though in theory they were quite as good as
      ever; which may be observed to be the case at the present day with other
      cells that are not at all strong, and with other blind alleys that are
      stone-blind. Hence the smugglers habitually consorted with the debtors
      (who received them with open arms), except at certain constitutional
      moments when somebody came from some Office, to go through some form of
      overlooking something which neither he nor anybody else knew anything
      about. On these truly British occasions, the smugglers, if any, made a
      feint of walking into the strong cells and the blind alley, while this
      somebody pretended to do his something: and made a reality of walking out
      again as soon as he hadn't done it&mdash;neatly epitomising the
      administration of most of the public affairs in our right little, tight
      little, island.
    </p>
    <p>
      There had been taken to the Marshalsea Prison, long before the day when
      the sun shone on Marseilles and on the opening of this narrative, a debtor
      with whom this narrative has some concern.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was, at that time, a very amiable and very helpless middle-aged
      gentleman, who was going out again directly. Necessarily, he was going out
      again directly, because the Marshalsea lock never turned upon a debtor who
      was not. He brought in a portmanteau with him, which he doubted its being
      worth while to unpack; he was so perfectly clear&mdash;like all the rest
      of them, the turnkey on the lock said&mdash;that he was going out again
      directly.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was a shy, retiring man; well-looking, though in an effeminate style;
      with a mild voice, curling hair, and irresolute hands&mdash;rings upon the
      fingers in those days&mdash;which nervously wandered to his trembling lip
      a hundred times in the first half-hour of his acquaintance with the jail.
      His principal anxiety was about his wife.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think, sir,' he asked the turnkey, 'that she will be very much
      shocked, if she should come to the gate to-morrow morning?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The turnkey gave it as the result of his experience that some of 'em was
      and some of 'em wasn't. In general, more no than yes. 'What like is she,
      you see?' he philosophically asked: 'that's what it hinges on.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is very delicate and inexperienced indeed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That,' said the turnkey, 'is agen her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is so little used to go out alone,' said the debtor, 'that I am at a
      loss to think how she will ever make her way here, if she walks.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'P'raps,' quoth the turnkey, 'she'll take a ackney coach.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps.' The irresolute fingers went to the trembling lip. 'I hope she
      will. She may not think of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Or p'raps,' said the turnkey, offering his suggestions from the the top
      of his well-worn wooden stool, as he might have offered them to a child
      for whose weakness he felt a compassion, 'p'raps she'll get her brother,
      or her sister, to come along with her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She has no brother or sister.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Niece, nevy, cousin, serwant, young 'ooman, greengrocer.&mdash;Dash it!
      One or another on 'em,' said the turnkey, repudiating beforehand the
      refusal of all his suggestions.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I fear&mdash;I hope it is not against the rules&mdash;that she will bring
      the children.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The children?' said the turnkey. 'And the rules? Why, lord set you up
      like a corner pin, we've a reg'lar playground o' children here. Children!
      Why we swarm with 'em. How many a you got?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Two,' said the debtor, lifting his irresolute hand to his lip again, and
      turning into the prison.
    </p>
    <p>
      The turnkey followed him with his eyes. 'And you another,' he observed to
      himself, 'which makes three on you. And your wife another, I'll lay a
      crown. Which makes four on you. And another coming, I'll lay half-a-crown.
      Which'll make five on you. And I'll go another seven and sixpence to name
      which is the helplessest, the unborn baby or you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was right in all his particulars. She came next day with a little boy
      of three years old, and a little girl of two, and he stood entirely
      corroborated.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Got a room now; haven't you?' the turnkey asked the debtor after a week
      or two.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I have got a very good room.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Any little sticks a coming to furnish it?' said the turnkey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I expect a few necessary articles of furniture to be delivered by the
      carrier, this afternoon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Missis and little 'uns a coming to keep you company?' asked the turnkey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, yes, we think it better that we should not be scattered, even for a
      few weeks.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Even for a few weeks, <i>of</i> course,' replied the turnkey. And he
      followed him again with his eyes, and nodded his head seven times when he
      was gone.
    </p>
    <p>
      The affairs of this debtor were perplexed by a partnership, of which he
      knew no more than that he had invested money in it; by legal matters of
      assignment and settlement, conveyance here and conveyance there, suspicion
      of unlawful preference of creditors in this direction, and of mysterious
      spiriting away of property in that; and as nobody on the face of the earth
      could be more incapable of explaining any single item in the heap of
      confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible could be made of
      his case. To question him in detail, and endeavour to reconcile his
      answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners, learned
      in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy; was only to put the case out at
      compound interest and incomprehensibility. The irresolute fingers
      fluttered more and more ineffectually about the trembling lip on every
      such occasion, and the sharpest practitioners gave him up as a hopeless
      job.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Out?' said the turnkey, '<i>he</i>'ll never get out, unless his creditors
      take him by the shoulders and shove him out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had been there five or six months, when he came running to this turnkey
      one forenoon to tell him, breathless and pale, that his wife was ill.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As anybody might a known she would be,' said the turnkey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We intended,' he returned, 'that she should go to a country lodging only
      to-morrow. What am I to do! Oh, good heaven, what am I to do!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't waste your time in clasping your hands and biting your fingers,'
      responded the practical turnkey, taking him by the elbow, 'but come along
      with me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The turnkey conducted him&mdash;trembling from head to foot, and
      constantly crying under his breath, What was he to do! while his
      irresolute fingers bedabbled the tears upon his face&mdash;up one of the
      common staircases in the prison to a door on the garret story. Upon which
      door the turnkey knocked with the handle of his key.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come in!' cried a voice inside.
    </p>
    <p>
      The turnkey, opening the door, disclosed in a wretched, ill-smelling
      little room, two hoarse, puffy, red-faced personages seated at a rickety
      table, playing at all-fours, smoking pipes, and drinking brandy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Doctor,' said the turnkey, 'here's a gentleman's wife in want of you
      without a minute's loss of time!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctor's friend was in the positive degree of hoarseness, puffiness,
      red-facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and brandy; the doctor in the
      comparative&mdash;hoarser, puffier, more red-faced, more all-fourey,
      tobaccoer, dirtier, and brandier. The doctor was amazingly shabby, in a
      torn and darned rough-weather sea-jacket, out at elbows and eminently
      short of buttons (he had been in his time the experienced surgeon carried
      by a passenger ship), the dirtiest white trousers conceivable by mortal
      man, carpet slippers, and no visible linen. 'Childbed?' said the doctor.
      'I'm the boy!' With that the doctor took a comb from the chimney-piece and
      stuck his hair upright&mdash;which appeared to be his way of washing
      himself&mdash;produced a professional chest or case, of most abject
      appearance, from the cupboard where his cup and saucer and coals were,
      settled his chin in the frowsy wrapper round his neck, and became a
      ghastly medical scarecrow.
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctor and the debtor ran down-stairs, leaving the turnkey to return
      to the lock, and made for the debtor's room. All the ladies in the prison
      had got hold of the news, and were in the yard. Some of them had already
      taken possession of the two children, and were hospitably carrying them
      off; others were offering loans of little comforts from their own scanty
      store; others were sympathising with the greatest volubility. The
      gentlemen prisoners, feeling themselves at a disadvantage, had for the
      most part retired, not to say sneaked, to their rooms; from the open
      windows of which some of them now complimented the doctor with whistles as
      he passed below, while others, with several stories between them,
      interchanged sarcastic references to the prevalent excitement.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a hot summer day, and the prison rooms were baking between the high
      walls. In the debtor's confined chamber, Mrs Bangham, charwoman and
      messenger, who was not a prisoner (though she had been once), but was the
      popular medium of communication with the outer world, had volunteered her
      services as fly-catcher and general attendant. The walls and ceiling were
      blackened with flies. Mrs Bangham, expert in sudden device, with one hand
      fanned the patient with a cabbage leaf, and with the other set traps of
      vinegar and sugar in gallipots; at the same time enunciating sentiments of
      an encouraging and congratulatory nature, adapted to the occasion.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The flies trouble you, don't they, my dear?' said Mrs Bangham. 'But
      p'raps they'll take your mind off of it, and do you good. What between the
      buryin ground, the grocer's, the waggon-stables, and the paunch trade, the
      Marshalsea flies gets very large. P'raps they're sent as a consolation, if
      we only know'd it. How are you now, my dear? No better? No, my dear, it
      ain't to be expected; you'll be worse before you're better, and you know
      it, don't you? Yes. That's right! And to think of a sweet little cherub
      being born inside the lock! Now ain't it pretty, ain't <i>that</i>
      something to carry you through it pleasant? Why, we ain't had such a thing
      happen here, my dear, not for I couldn't name the time when. And you a
      crying too?' said Mrs Bangham, to rally the patient more and more. 'You!
      Making yourself so famous! With the flies a falling into the gallipots by
      fifties! And everything a going on so well! And here if there ain't,' said
      Mrs Bangham as the door opened, 'if there ain't your dear gentleman along
      with Dr Haggage! And now indeed we <i>are</i> complete, I <i>think</i>!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctor was scarcely the kind of apparition to inspire a patient with a
      sense of absolute completeness, but as he presently delivered the opinion,
      'We are as right as we can be, Mrs Bangham, and we shall come out of this
      like a house afire;' and as he and Mrs Bangham took possession of the poor
      helpless pair, as everybody else and anybody else had always done, the
      means at hand were as good on the whole as better would have been. The
      special feature in Dr Haggage's treatment of the case, was his
      determination to keep Mrs Bangham up to the mark. As thus:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Bangham,' said the doctor, before he had been there twenty minutes,
      'go outside and fetch a little brandy, or we shall have you giving in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir. But none on my accounts,' said Mrs Bangham.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Bangham,' returned the doctor, 'I am in professional attendance on
      this lady, and don't choose to allow any discussion on your part. Go
      outside and fetch a little brandy, or I foresee that you'll break down.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're to be obeyed, sir,' said Mrs Bangham, rising. 'If you was to put
      your own lips to it, I think you wouldn't be the worse, for you look but
      poorly, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Bangham,' returned the doctor, 'I am not your business, thank you,
      but you are mine. Never you mind <i>me</i>, if you please. What you have
      got to do, is, to do as you are told, and to go and get what I bid you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Bangham submitted; and the doctor, having administered her potion,
      took his own. He repeated the treatment every hour, being very determined
      with Mrs Bangham. Three or four hours passed; the flies fell into the
      traps by hundreds; and at length one little life, hardly stronger than
      theirs, appeared among the multitude of lesser deaths.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A very nice little girl indeed,' said the doctor; 'little, but
      well-formed. Halloa, Mrs Bangham! You're looking queer! You be off, ma'am,
      this minute, and fetch a little more brandy, or we shall have you in
      hysterics.'
    </p>
    <p>
      By this time, the rings had begun to fall from the debtor's irresolute
      hands, like leaves from a wintry tree. Not one was left upon them that
      night, when he put something that chinked into the doctor's greasy palm.
      In the meantime Mrs Bangham had been out on an errand to a neighbouring
      establishment decorated with three golden balls, where she was very well
      known.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you,' said the doctor, 'thank you. Your good lady is quite
      composed. Doing charmingly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very happy and very thankful to know it,' said the debtor, 'though I
      little thought once, that&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That a child would be born to you in a place like this?' said the doctor.
      'Bah, bah, sir, what does it signify? A little more elbow-room is all we
      want here. We are quiet here; we don't get badgered here; there's no
      knocker here, sir, to be hammered at by creditors and bring a man's heart
      into his mouth. Nobody comes here to ask if a man's at home, and to say
      he'll stand on the door mat till he is. Nobody writes threatening letters
      about money to this place. It's freedom, sir, it's freedom! I have had
      to-day's practice at home and abroad, on a march, and aboard ship, and
      I'll tell you this: I don't know that I have ever pursued it under such
      quiet circumstances as here this day. Elsewhere, people are restless,
      worried, hurried about, anxious respecting one thing, anxious respecting
      another. Nothing of the kind here, sir. We have done all that&mdash;we
      know the worst of it; we have got to the bottom, we can't fall, and what
      have we found? Peace. That's the word for it. Peace.' With this profession
      of faith, the doctor, who was an old jail-bird, and was more sodden than
      usual, and had the additional and unusual stimulus of money in his pocket,
      returned to his associate and chum in hoarseness, puffiness,
      red-facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and brandy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, the debtor was a very different man from the doctor, but he had
      already begun to travel, by his opposite segment of the circle, to the
      same point. Crushed at first by his imprisonment, he had soon found a dull
      relief in it. He was under lock and key; but the lock and key that kept
      him in, kept numbers of his troubles out. If he had been a man with
      strength of purpose to face those troubles and fight them, he might have
      broken the net that held him, or broken his heart; but being what he was,
      he languidly slipped into this smooth descent, and never more took one
      step upward.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he was relieved of the perplexed affairs that nothing would make
      plain, through having them returned upon his hands by a dozen agents in
      succession who could make neither beginning, middle, nor end of them or
      him, he found his miserable place of refuge a quieter refuge than it had
      been before. He had unpacked the portmanteau long ago; and his elder
      children now played regularly about the yard, and everybody knew the baby,
      and claimed a kind of proprietorship in her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, I'm getting proud of you,' said his friend the turnkey, one day.
      'You'll be the oldest inhabitant soon. The Marshalsea wouldn't be like the
      Marshalsea now, without you and your family.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The turnkey really was proud of him. He would mention him in laudatory
      terms to new-comers, when his back was turned. 'You took notice of him,'
      he would say, 'that went out of the lodge just now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      New-comer would probably answer Yes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Brought up as a gentleman, he was, if ever a man was. Ed'cated at no end
      of expense. Went into the Marshal's house once to try a new piano for him.
      Played it, I understand, like one o'clock&mdash;beautiful! As to languages&mdash;speaks
      anything. We've had a Frenchman here in his time, and it's my opinion he
      knowed more French than the Frenchman did. We've had an Italian here in
      his time, and he shut <i>him</i> up in about half a minute. You'll find
      some characters behind other locks, I don't say you won't; but if you want
      the top sawyer in such respects as I've mentioned, you must come to the
      Marshalsea.'
    </p>
    <p>
      When his youngest child was eight years old, his wife, who had long been
      languishing away&mdash;of her own inherent weakness, not that she retained
      any greater sensitiveness as to her place of abode than he did&mdash;went
      upon a visit to a poor friend and old nurse in the country, and died
      there. He remained shut up in his room for a fortnight afterwards; and an
      attorney's clerk, who was going through the Insolvent Court, engrossed an
      address of condolence to him, which looked like a Lease, and which all the
      prisoners signed. When he appeared again he was greyer (he had soon begun
      to turn grey); and the turnkey noticed that his hands went often to his
      trembling lips again, as they had used to do when he first came in. But he
      got pretty well over it in a month or two; and in the meantime the
      children played about the yard as regularly as ever, but in black.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then Mrs Bangham, long popular medium of communication with the outer
      world, began to be infirm, and to be found oftener than usual comatose on
      pavements, with her basket of purchases spilt, and the change of her
      clients ninepence short. His son began to supersede Mrs Bangham, and to
      execute commissions in a knowing manner, and to be of the prison
      prisonous, of the streets streety.
    </p>
    <p>
      Time went on, and the turnkey began to fail. His chest swelled, and his
      legs got weak, and he was short of breath. The well-worn wooden stool was
      'beyond him,' he complained. He sat in an arm-chair with a cushion, and
      sometimes wheezed so, for minutes together, that he couldn't turn the key.
      When he was overpowered by these fits, the debtor often turned it for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You and me,' said the turnkey, one snowy winter's night when the lodge,
      with a bright fire in it, was pretty full of company, 'is the oldest
      inhabitants. I wasn't here myself above seven year before you. I shan't
      last long. When I'm off the lock for good and all, you'll be the Father of
      the Marshalsea.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The turnkey went off the lock of this world next day. His words were
      remembered and repeated; and tradition afterwards handed down from
      generation to generation&mdash;a Marshalsea generation might be calculated
      as about three months&mdash;that the shabby old debtor with the soft
      manner and the white hair, was the Father of the Marshalsea.
    </p>
    <p>
      And he grew to be proud of the title. If any impostor had arisen to claim
      it, he would have shed tears in resentment of the attempt to deprive him
      of his rights. A disposition began to be perceived in him to exaggerate
      the number of years he had been there; it was generally understood that
      you must deduct a few from his account; he was vain, the fleeting
      generations of debtors said.
    </p>
    <p>
      All new-comers were presented to him. He was punctilious in the exaction
      of this ceremony. The wits would perform the office of introduction with
      overcharged pomp and politeness, but they could not easily overstep his
      sense of its gravity. He received them in his poor room (he disliked an
      introduction in the mere yard, as informal&mdash;a thing that might happen
      to anybody), with a kind of bowed-down beneficence. They were welcome to
      the Marshalsea, he would tell them. Yes, he was the Father of the place.
      So the world was kind enough to call him; and so he was, if more than
      twenty years of residence gave him a claim to the title. It looked small
      at first, but there was very good company there&mdash;among a mixture&mdash;necessarily
      a mixture&mdash;and very good air.
    </p>
    <p>
      It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his door
      at night, enclosing half-a-crown, two half-crowns, now and then at long
      intervals even half-a-sovereign, for the Father of the Marshalsea. 'With
      the compliments of a collegian taking leave.' He received the gifts as
      tributes, from admirers, to a public character. Sometimes these
      correspondents assumed facetious names, as the Brick, Bellows, Old
      Gooseberry, Wideawake, Snooks, Mops, Cutaway, the Dogs-meat Man; but he
      considered this in bad taste, and was always a little hurt by it.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the fulness of time, this correspondence showing signs of wearing out,
      and seeming to require an effort on the part of the correspondents to
      which in the hurried circumstances of departure many of them might not be
      equal, he established the custom of attending collegians of a certain
      standing, to the gate, and taking leave of them there. The collegian under
      treatment, after shaking hands, would occasionally stop to wrap up
      something in a bit of paper, and would come back again calling 'Hi!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He would look round surprised.'Me?' he would say, with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      By this time the collegian would be up with him, and he would paternally
      add,'What have you forgotten? What can I do for you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I forgot to leave this,' the collegian would usually return, 'for the
      Father of the Marshalsea.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My good sir,' he would rejoin, 'he is infinitely obliged to you.' But, to
      the last, the irresolute hand of old would remain in the pocket into which
      he had slipped the money during two or three turns about the yard, lest
      the transaction should be too conspicuous to the general body of
      collegians.
    </p>
    <p>
      One afternoon he had been doing the honours of the place to a rather large
      party of collegians, who happened to be going out, when, as he was coming
      back, he encountered one from the poor side who had been taken in
      execution for a small sum a week before, had 'settled' in the course of
      that afternoon, and was going out too. The man was a mere Plasterer in his
      working dress; had his wife with him, and a bundle; and was in high
      spirits.
    </p>
    <p>
      'God bless you, sir,' he said in passing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you,' benignantly returned the Father of the Marshalsea.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were pretty far divided, going their several ways, when the Plasterer
      called out, 'I say!&mdash;sir!' and came back to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It ain't much,' said the Plasterer, putting a little pile of halfpence in
      his hand, 'but it's well meant.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Father of the Marshalsea had never been offered tribute in copper yet.
      His children often had, and with his perfect acquiescence it had gone into
      the common purse to buy meat that he had eaten, and drink that he had
      drunk; but fustian splashed with white lime, bestowing halfpence on him,
      front to front, was new.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How dare you!' he said to the man, and feebly burst into tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Plasterer turned him towards the wall, that his face might not be
      seen; and the action was so delicate, and the man was so penetrated with
      repentance, and asked pardon so honestly, that he could make him no less
      acknowledgment than, 'I know you meant it kindly. Say no more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bless your soul, sir,' urged the Plasterer, 'I did indeed. I'd do more by
      you than the rest of 'em do, I fancy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What would you do?' he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'd come back to see you, after I was let out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Give me the money again,' said the other, eagerly, 'and I'll keep it, and
      never spend it. Thank you for it, thank you! I shall see you again?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I live a week you shall.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They shook hands and parted. The collegians, assembled in Symposium in the
      Snuggery that night, marvelled what had happened to their Father; he
      walked so late in the shadows of the yard, and seemed so downcast.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 7. The Child of the Marshalsea
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he baby whose first draught of air had been tinctured with Doctor
      Haggage's brandy, was handed down among the generations of collegians,
      like the tradition of their common parent. In the earlier stages of her
      existence, she was handed down in a literal and prosaic sense; it being
      almost a part of the entrance footing of every new collegian to nurse the
      child who had been born in the college.
    </p>
    <p>
      'By rights,' remarked the turnkey when she was first shown to him, 'I
      ought to be her godfather.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The debtor irresolutely thought of it for a minute, and said, 'Perhaps you
      wouldn't object to really being her godfather?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! <i>I</i> don't object,' replied the turnkey, 'if you don't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus it came to pass that she was christened one Sunday afternoon, when
      the turnkey, being relieved, was off the lock; and that the turnkey went
      up to the font of Saint George's Church, and promised and vowed and
      renounced on her behalf, as he himself related when he came back, 'like a
      good 'un.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This invested the turnkey with a new proprietary share in the child, over
      and above his former official one. When she began to walk and talk, he
      became fond of her; bought a little arm-chair and stood it by the high
      fender of the lodge fire-place; liked to have her company when he was on
      the lock; and used to bribe her with cheap toys to come and talk to him.
      The child, for her part, soon grew so fond of the turnkey that she would
      come climbing up the lodge-steps of her own accord at all hours of the
      day. When she fell asleep in the little armchair by the high fender, the
      turnkey would cover her with his pocket-handkerchief; and when she sat in
      it dressing and undressing a doll which soon came to be unlike dolls on
      the other side of the lock, and to bear a horrible family resemblance to
      Mrs Bangham&mdash;he would contemplate her from the top of his stool with
      exceeding gentleness. Witnessing these things, the collegians would
      express an opinion that the turnkey, who was a bachelor, had been cut out
      by nature for a family man. But the turnkey thanked them, and said, 'No,
      on the whole it was enough to see other people's children there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At what period of her early life the little creature began to perceive
      that it was not the habit of all the world to live locked up in narrow
      yards surrounded by high walls with spikes at the top, would be a
      difficult question to settle. But she was a very, very little creature
      indeed, when she had somehow gained the knowledge that her clasp of her
      father's hand was to be always loosened at the door which the great key
      opened; and that while her own light steps were free to pass beyond it,
      his feet must never cross that line. A pitiful and plaintive look, with
      which she had begun to regard him when she was still extremely young, was
      perhaps a part of this discovery.
    </p>
    <p>
      With a pitiful and plaintive look for everything, indeed, but with
      something in it for only him that was like protection, this Child of the
      Marshalsea and the child of the Father of the Marshalsea, sat by her
      friend the turnkey in the lodge, kept the family room, or wandered about
      the prison-yard, for the first eight years of her life. With a pitiful and
      plaintive look for her wayward sister; for her idle brother; for the high
      blank walls; for the faded crowd they shut in; for the games of the prison
      children as they whooped and ran, and played at hide-and-seek, and made
      the iron bars of the inner gateway 'Home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Wistful and wondering, she would sit in summer weather by the high fender
      in the lodge, looking up at the sky through the barred window, until, when
      she turned her eyes away, bars of light would arise between her and her
      friend, and she would see him through a grating, too.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thinking of the fields,' the turnkey said once, after watching her,
      'ain't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where are they?' she inquired.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, they're&mdash;over there, my dear,' said the turnkey, with a vague
      flourish of his key. 'Just about there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does anybody open them, and shut them? Are they locked?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The turnkey was discomfited. 'Well,' he said. 'Not in general.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are they very pretty, Bob?' She called him Bob, by his own particular
      request and instruction.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lovely. Full of flowers. There's buttercups, and there's daisies, and
      there's'&mdash;the turnkey hesitated, being short of floral nomenclature&mdash;'there's
      dandelions, and all manner of games.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it very pleasant to be there, Bob?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Prime,' said the turnkey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Was father ever there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hem!' coughed the turnkey. 'O yes, he was there, sometimes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is he sorry not to be there now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'N-not particular,' said the turnkey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor any of the people?' she asked, glancing at the listless crowd within.
      'O are you quite sure and certain, Bob?'
    </p>
    <p>
      At this difficult point of the conversation Bob gave in, and changed the
      subject to hard-bake: always his last resource when he found his little
      friend getting him into a political, social, or theological corner. But
      this was the origin of a series of Sunday excursions that these two
      curious companions made together. They used to issue from the lodge on
      alternate Sunday afternoons with great gravity, bound for some meadows or
      green lanes that had been elaborately appointed by the turnkey in the
      course of the week; and there she picked grass and flowers to bring home,
      while he smoked his pipe. Afterwards, there were tea-gardens, shrimps,
      ale, and other delicacies; and then they would come back hand in hand,
      unless she was more than usually tired, and had fallen asleep on his
      shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      In those early days, the turnkey first began profoundly to consider a
      question which cost him so much mental labour, that it remained
      undetermined on the day of his death. He decided to will and bequeath his
      little property of savings to his godchild, and the point arose how could
      it be so 'tied up' as that only she should have the benefit of it? His
      experience on the lock gave him such an acute perception of the enormous
      difficulty of 'tying up' money with any approach to tightness, and
      contrariwise of the remarkable ease with which it got loose, that through
      a series of years he regularly propounded this knotty point to every new
      insolvent agent and other professional gentleman who passed in and out.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Supposing,' he would say, stating the case with his key on the
      professional gentleman's waistcoat; 'supposing a man wanted to leave his
      property to a young female, and wanted to tie it up so that nobody else
      should ever be able to make a grab at it; how would you tie up that
      property?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Settle it strictly on herself,' the professional gentleman would
      complacently answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But look here,' quoth the turnkey. 'Supposing she had, say a brother, say
      a father, say a husband, who would be likely to make a grab at that
      property when she came into it&mdash;how about that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It would be settled on herself, and they would have no more legal claim
      on it than you,' would be the professional answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stop a bit,' said the turnkey. 'Supposing she was tender-hearted, and
      they came over her. Where's your law for tying it up then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The deepest character whom the turnkey sounded, was unable to produce his
      law for tying such a knot as that. So, the turnkey thought about it all
      his life, and died intestate after all.
    </p>
    <p>
      But that was long afterwards, when his god-daughter was past sixteen. The
      first half of that space of her life was only just accomplished, when her
      pitiful and plaintive look saw her father a widower. From that time the
      protection that her wondering eyes had expressed towards him, became
      embodied in action, and the Child of the Marshalsea took upon herself a
      new relation towards the Father.
    </p>
    <p>
      At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with him, deserting
      her livelier place by the high fender, and quietly watching him. But this
      made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her, and
      began to be sensible of missing her when she was not there. Through this
      little gate, she passed out of childhood into the care-laden world.
    </p>
    <p>
      What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her
      sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much, or how little of the
      wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her; lies hidden with
      many mysteries. It is enough that she was inspired to be something which
      was not what the rest were, and to be that something, different and
      laborious, for the sake of the rest. Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of the
      inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love
      and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life!
    </p>
    <p>
      With no earthly friend to help her, or so much as to see her, but the one
      so strangely assorted; with no knowledge even of the common daily tone and
      habits of the common members of the free community who are not shut up in
      prisons; born and bred in a social condition, false even with a reference
      to the falsest condition outside the walls; drinking from infancy of a
      well whose waters had their own peculiar stain, their own unwholesome and
      unnatural taste; the Child of the Marshalsea began her womanly life.
    </p>
    <p>
      No matter through what mistakes and discouragements, what ridicule (not
      unkindly meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little figure, what
      humble consciousness of her own babyhood and want of strength, even in the
      matter of lifting and carrying; through how much weariness and
      hopelessness, and how many secret tears; she drudged on, until recognised
      as useful, even indispensable. That time came. She took the place of
      eldest of the three, in all things but precedence; was the head of the
      fallen family; and bore, in her own heart, its anxieties and shames.
    </p>
    <p>
      At thirteen, she could read and keep accounts, that is, could put down in
      words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted would
      cost, and how much less they had to buy them with. She had been, by
      snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got
      her sister and brother sent to day-schools by desultory starts, during
      three or four years. There was no instruction for any of them at home; but
      she knew well&mdash;no one better&mdash;that a man so broken as to be the
      Father of the Marshalsea, could be no father to his own children.
    </p>
    <p>
      To these scanty means of improvement, she added another of her own
      contriving. Once, among the heterogeneous crowd of inmates there appeared
      a dancing-master. Her sister had a great desire to learn the
      dancing-master's art, and seemed to have a taste that way. At thirteen
      years old, the Child of the Marshalsea presented herself to the
      dancing-master, with a little bag in her hand, and preferred her humble
      petition.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please, I was born here, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! You are the young lady, are you?' said the dancing-master, surveying
      the small figure and uplifted face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what can I do for you?' said the dancing-master.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing for me, sir, thank you,' anxiously undrawing the strings of the
      little bag; 'but if, while you stay here, you could be so kind as to teach
      my sister cheap&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My child, I'll teach her for nothing,' said the dancing-master, shutting
      up the bag. He was as good-natured a dancing-master as ever danced to the
      Insolvent Court, and he kept his word. The sister was so apt a pupil, and
      the dancing-master had such abundant leisure to bestow upon her (for it
      took him a matter of ten weeks to set to his creditors, lead off, turn the
      Commissioners, and right and left back to his professional pursuits), that
      wonderful progress was made. Indeed the dancing-master was so proud of it,
      and so wishful to display it before he left to a few select friends among
      the collegians, that at six o'clock on a certain fine morning, a minuet de
      la cour came off in the yard&mdash;the college-rooms being of too confined
      proportions for the purpose&mdash;in which so much ground was covered, and
      the steps were so conscientiously executed, that the dancing-master,
      having to play the kit besides, was thoroughly blown.
    </p>
    <p>
      The success of this beginning, which led to the dancing-master's
      continuing his instruction after his release, emboldened the poor child to
      try again. She watched and waited months for a seamstress. In the fulness
      of time a milliner came in, and to her she repaired on her own behalf.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' she said, looking timidly round the door of
      the milliner, whom she found in tears and in bed: 'but I was born here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Everybody seemed to hear of her as soon as they arrived; for the milliner
      sat up in bed, drying her eyes, and said, just as the dancing-master had
      said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! <i>You</i> are the child, are you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry I haven't got anything for you,' said the milliner, shaking
      her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's not that, ma'am. If you please I want to learn needle-work.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why should you do that,' returned the milliner, 'with me before you? It
      has not done me much good.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing&mdash;whatever it is&mdash;seems to have done anybody much good
      who comes here,' she returned in all simplicity; 'but I want to learn just
      the same.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid you are so weak, you see,' the milliner objected.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't think I am weak, ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you are so very, very little, you see,' the milliner objected.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed,' returned the Child of the
      Marshalsea; and so began to sob over that unfortunate defect of hers,
      which came so often in her way. The milliner&mdash;who was not morose or
      hard-hearted, only newly insolvent&mdash;was touched, took her in hand
      with goodwill, found her the most patient and earnest of pupils, and made
      her a cunning work-woman in course of time.
    </p>
    <p>
      In course of time, and in the very self-same course of time, the Father of
      the Marshalsea gradually developed a new flower of character. The more
      Fatherly he grew as to the Marshalsea, and the more dependent he became on
      the contributions of his changing family, the greater stand he made by his
      forlorn gentility. With the same hand that he pocketed a collegian's
      half-crown half an hour ago, he would wipe away the tears that streamed
      over his cheeks if any reference were made to his daughters' earning their
      bread. So, over and above other daily cares, the Child of the Marshalsea
      had always upon her the care of preserving the genteel fiction that they
      were all idle beggars together.
    </p>
    <p>
      The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family group&mdash;ruined
      by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing no more how than
      his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an inevitable certainty&mdash;on
      whom her protection devolved. Naturally a retired and simple man, he had
      shown no particular sense of being ruined at the time when that calamity
      fell upon him, further than that he left off washing himself when the
      shock was announced, and never took to that luxury any more. He had been a
      very indifferent musical amateur in his better days; and when he fell with
      his brother, resorted for support to playing a clarionet as dirty as
      himself in a small Theatre Orchestra. It was the theatre in which his
      niece became a dancer; he had been a fixture there a long time when she
      took her poor station in it; and he accepted the task of serving as her
      escort and guardian, just as he would have accepted an illness, a legacy,
      a feast, starvation&mdash;anything but soap.
    </p>
    <p>
      To enable this girl to earn her few weekly shillings, it was necessary for
      the Child of the Marshalsea to go through an elaborate form with the
      Father.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny is not going to live with us just now, father. She will be here a
      good deal in the day, but she is going to live outside with uncle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You surprise me. Why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think uncle wants a companion, father. He should be attended to, and
      looked after.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A companion? He passes much of his time here. And you attend to him and
      look after him, Amy, a great deal more than ever your sister will. You all
      go out so much; you all go out so much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was to keep up the ceremony and pretence of his having no idea that
      Amy herself went out by the day to work.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But we are always glad to come home, father; now, are we not? And as to
      Fanny, perhaps besides keeping uncle company and taking care of him, it
      may be as well for her not quite to live here, always. She was not born
      here as I was, you know, father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Amy, well. I don't quite follow you, but it's natural I suppose
      that Fanny should prefer to be outside, and even that you often should,
      too. So, you and Fanny and your uncle, my dear, shall have your own way.
      Good, good. I'll not meddle; don't mind me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      To get her brother out of the prison; out of the succession to Mrs Bangham
      in executing commissions, and out of the slang interchange with very
      doubtful companions consequent upon both; was her hardest task. At
      eighteen he would have dragged on from hand to mouth, from hour to hour,
      from penny to penny, until eighty. Nobody got into the prison from whom he
      derived anything useful or good, and she could find no patron for him but
      her old friend and godfather.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Bob,' said she, 'what is to become of poor Tip?' His name was
      Edward, and Ted had been transformed into Tip, within the walls.
    </p>
    <p>
      The turnkey had strong private opinions as to what would become of poor
      Tip, and had even gone so far with the view of averting their fulfilment,
      as to sound Tip in reference to the expediency of running away and going
      to serve his country. But Tip had thanked him, and said he didn't seem to
      care for his country.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, my dear,' said the turnkey, 'something ought to be done with him.
      Suppose I try and get him into the law?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That would be so good of you, Bob!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The turnkey had now two points to put to the professional gentlemen as
      they passed in and out. He put this second one so perseveringly that a
      stool and twelve shillings a week were at last found for Tip in the office
      of an attorney in a great National Palladium called the Palace Court; at
      that time one of a considerable list of everlasting bulwarks to the
      dignity and safety of Albion, whose places know them no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      Tip languished in Clifford's Inns for six months, and at the expiration of
      that term sauntered back one evening with his hands in his pockets, and
      incidentally observed to his sister that he was not going back again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not going back again?' said the poor little anxious Child of the
      Marshalsea, always calculating and planning for Tip, in the front rank of
      her charges.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am so tired of it,' said Tip, 'that I have cut it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Tip tired of everything. With intervals of Marshalsea lounging, and Mrs
      Bangham succession, his small second mother, aided by her trusty friend,
      got him into a warehouse, into a market garden, into the hop trade, into
      the law again, into an auctioneers, into a brewery, into a stockbroker's,
      into the law again, into a coach office, into a waggon office, into the
      law again, into a general dealer's, into a distillery, into the law again,
      into a wool house, into a dry goods house, into the Billingsgate trade,
      into the foreign fruit trade, and into the docks. But whatever Tip went
      into, he came out of tired, announcing that he had cut it. Wherever he
      went, this foredoomed Tip appeared to take the prison walls with him, and
      to set them up in such trade or calling; and to prowl about within their
      narrow limits in the old slip-shod, purposeless, down-at-heel way; until
      the real immovable Marshalsea walls asserted their fascination over him,
      and brought him back.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nevertheless, the brave little creature did so fix her heart on her
      brother's rescue, that while he was ringing out these doleful changes, she
      pinched and scraped enough together to ship him for Canada. When he was
      tired of nothing to do, and disposed in its turn to cut even that, he
      graciously consented to go to Canada. And there was grief in her bosom
      over parting with him, and joy in the hope of his being put in a straight
      course at last.
    </p>
    <p>
      'God bless you, dear Tip. Don't be too proud to come and see us, when you
      have made your fortune.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All right!' said Tip, and went.
    </p>
    <p>
      But not all the way to Canada; in fact, not further than Liverpool. After
      making the voyage to that port from London, he found himself so strongly
      impelled to cut the vessel, that he resolved to walk back again. Carrying
      out which intention, he presented himself before her at the expiration of
      a month, in rags, without shoes, and much more tired than ever.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length, after another interval of successorship to Mrs Bangham, he
      found a pursuit for himself, and announced it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, I have got a situation.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you really and truly, Tip?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All right. I shall do now. You needn't look anxious about me any more,
      old girl.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it, Tip?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, you know Slingo by sight?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not the man they call the dealer?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's the chap. He'll be out on Monday, and he's going to give me a
      berth.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is he a dealer in, Tip?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Horses. All right! I shall do now, Amy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She lost sight of him for months afterwards, and only heard from him once.
      A whisper passed among the elder collegians that he had been seen at a
      mock auction in Moorfields, pretending to buy plated articles for massive
      silver, and paying for them with the greatest liberality in bank notes;
      but it never reached her ears. One evening she was alone at work&mdash;standing
      up at the window, to save the twilight lingering above the wall&mdash;when
      he opened the door and walked in.
    </p>
    <p>
      She kissed and welcomed him; but was afraid to ask him any questions. He
      saw how anxious and timid she was, and appeared sorry.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid, Amy, you'll be vexed this time. Upon my life I am!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very sorry to hear you say so, Tip. Have you come back?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why&mdash;yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not expecting this time that what you had found would answer very well, I
      am less surprised and sorry than I might have been, Tip.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! But that's not the worst of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not the worst of it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't look so startled. No, Amy, not the worst of it. I have come back,
      you see; but&mdash;<i>don't</i> look so startled&mdash;I have come back in
      what I may call a new way. I am off the volunteer list altogether. I am in
      now, as one of the regulars.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! Don't say you are a prisoner, Tip! Don't, don't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, I don't want to say it,' he returned in a reluctant tone; 'but if
      you can't understand me without my saying it, what am I to do? I am in for
      forty pound odd.'
    </p>
    <p>
      For the first time in all those years, she sunk under her cares. She
      cried, with her clasped hands lifted above her head, that it would kill
      their father if he ever knew it; and fell down at Tip's graceless feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses than for her to bring <i>him</i>
      to understand that the Father of the Marshalsea would be beside himself if
      he knew the truth. The thing was incomprehensible to Tip, and altogether a
      fanciful notion. He yielded to it in that light only, when he submitted to
      her entreaties, backed by those of his uncle and sister. There was no want
      of precedent for his return; it was accounted for to the father in the
      usual way; and the collegians, with a better comprehension of the pious
      fraud than Tip, supported it loyally.
    </p>
    <p>
      This was the life, and this the history, of the child of the Marshalsea at
      twenty-two. With a still surviving attachment to the one miserable yard
      and block of houses as her birthplace and home, she passed to and fro in
      it shrinkingly now, with a womanly consciousness that she was pointed out
      to every one. Since she had begun to work beyond the walls, she had found
      it necessary to conceal where she lived, and to come and go as secretly as
      she could, between the free city and the iron gates, outside of which she
      had never slept in her life. Her original timidity had grown with this
      concealment, and her light step and her little figure shunned the thronged
      streets while they passed along them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Worldly wise in hard and poor necessities, she was innocent in all things
      else. Innocent, in the mist through which she saw her father, and the
      prison, and the turbid living river that flowed through it and flowed on.
    </p>
    <p>
      This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; now going home
      upon a dull September evening, observed at a distance by Arthur Clennam.
      This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; turning at the
      end of London Bridge, recrossing it, going back again, passing on to Saint
      George's Church, turning back suddenly once more, and flitting in at the
      open outer gate and little court-yard of the Marshalsea.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 8. The Lock
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>rthur Clennam stood in the street, waiting to ask some passer-by what
      place that was. He suffered a few people to pass him in whose face there
      was no encouragement to make the inquiry, and still stood pausing in the
      street, when an old man came up and turned into the courtyard.
    </p>
    <p>
      He stooped a good deal, and plodded along in a slow pre-occupied manner,
      which made the bustling London thoroughfares no very safe resort for him.
      He was dirtily and meanly dressed, in a threadbare coat, once blue,
      reaching to his ankles and buttoned to his chin, where it vanished in the
      pale ghost of a velvet collar. A piece of red cloth with which that
      phantom had been stiffened in its lifetime was now laid bare, and poked
      itself up, at the back of the old man's neck, into a confusion of grey
      hair and rusty stock and buckle which altogether nearly poked his hat off.
      A greasy hat it was, and a napless; impending over his eyes, cracked and
      crumpled at the brim, and with a wisp of pocket-handkerchief dangling out
      below it. His trousers were so long and loose, and his shoes so clumsy and
      large, that he shuffled like an elephant; though how much of this was
      gait, and how much trailing cloth and leather, no one could have told.
      Under one arm he carried a limp and worn-out case, containing some wind
      instrument; in the same hand he had a pennyworth of snuff in a little
      packet of whitey-brown paper, from which he slowly comforted his poor blue
      old nose with a lengthened-out pinch, as Arthur Clennam looked at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      To this old man crossing the court-yard, he preferred his inquiry,
      touching him on the shoulder. The old man stopped and looked round, with
      the expression in his weak grey eyes of one whose thoughts had been far
      off, and who was a little dull of hearing also.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, sir,' said Arthur, repeating his question, 'what is this place?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay! This place?' returned the old man, staying his pinch of snuff on its
      road, and pointing at the place without looking at it. 'This is the
      Marshalsea, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The debtors' prison?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir,' said the old man, with the air of deeming it not quite necessary to
      insist upon that designation, 'the debtors' prison.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He turned himself about, and went on.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon,' said Arthur, stopping him once more, 'but will you
      allow me to ask you another question? Can any one go in here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Any one can <i>go in</i>,' replied the old man; plainly adding by the
      significance of his emphasis, 'but it is not every one who can go out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me once more. Are you familiar with the place?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir,' returned the old man, squeezing his little packet of snuff in his
      hand, and turning upon his interrogator as if such questions hurt him. 'I
      am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg you to excuse me. I am not impertinently curious, but have a good
      object. Do you know the name of Dorrit here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My name, sir,' replied the old man most unexpectedly, 'is Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur pulled off his hat to him. 'Grant me the favour of half-a-dozen
      words. I was wholly unprepared for your announcement, and hope that
      assurance is my sufficient apology for having taken the liberty of
      addressing you. I have recently come home to England after a long absence.
      I have seen at my mother's&mdash;Mrs Clennam in the city&mdash;a young
      woman working at her needle, whom I have only heard addressed or spoken of
      as Little Dorrit. I have felt sincerely interested in her, and have had a
      great desire to know something more about her. I saw her, not a minute
      before you came up, pass in at that door.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old man looked at him attentively. 'Are you a sailor, sir?' he asked.
      He seemed a little disappointed by the shake of the head that replied to
      him. 'Not a sailor? I judged from your sunburnt face that you might be.
      Are you in earnest, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do assure you that I am, and do entreat you to believe that I am, in
      plain earnest.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know very little of the world, sir,' returned the other, who had a weak
      and quavering voice. 'I am merely passing on, like the shadow over the
      sun-dial. It would be worth no man's while to mislead me; it would really
      be too easy&mdash;too poor a success, to yield any satisfaction. The young
      woman whom you saw go in here is my brother's child. My brother is William
      Dorrit; I am Frederick. You say you have seen her at your mother's (I know
      your mother befriends her), you have felt an interest in her, and you wish
      to know what she does here. Come and see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He went on again, and Arthur accompanied him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My brother,' said the old man, pausing on the step and slowly facing
      round again, 'has been here many years; and much that happens even among
      ourselves, out of doors, is kept from him for reasons that I needn't enter
      upon now. Be so good as to say nothing of my niece's working at her
      needle. Be so good as to say nothing that goes beyond what is said among
      us. If you keep within our bounds, you cannot well be wrong. Now! Come and
      see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur followed him down a narrow entry, at the end of which a key was
      turned, and a strong door was opened from within. It admitted them into a
      lodge or lobby, across which they passed, and so through another door and
      a grating into the prison. The old man always plodding on before, turned
      round, in his slow, stiff, stooping manner, when they came to the turnkey
      on duty, as if to present his companion. The turnkey nodded; and the
      companion passed in without being asked whom he wanted.
    </p>
    <p>
      The night was dark; and the prison lamps in the yard, and the candles in
      the prison windows faintly shining behind many sorts of wry old curtain
      and blind, had not the air of making it lighter. A few people loitered
      about, but the greater part of the population was within doors. The old
      man, taking the right-hand side of the yard, turned in at the third or
      fourth doorway, and began to ascend the stairs. 'They are rather dark,
      sir, but you will not find anything in the way.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He paused for a moment before opening a door on the second story. He had
      no sooner turned the handle than the visitor saw Little Dorrit, and saw
      the reason of her setting so much store by dining alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had brought the meat home that she should have eaten herself, and was
      already warming it on a gridiron over the fire for her father, clad in an
      old grey gown and a black cap, awaiting his supper at the table. A clean
      cloth was spread before him, with knife, fork, and spoon, salt-cellar,
      pepper-box, glass, and pewter ale-pot. Such zests as his particular little
      phial of cayenne pepper and his pennyworth of pickles in a saucer, were
      not wanting.
    </p>
    <p>
      She started, coloured deeply, and turned white. The visitor, more with his
      eyes than by the slight impulsive motion of his hand, entreated her to be
      reassured and to trust him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I found this gentleman,' said the uncle&mdash;'Mr Clennam, William, son
      of Amy's friend&mdash;at the outer gate, wishful, as he was going by, of
      paying his respects, but hesitating whether to come in or not. This is my
      brother William, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope,' said Arthur, very doubtful what to say, 'that my respect for
      your daughter may explain and justify my desire to be presented to you,
      sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam,' returned the other, rising, taking his cap off in the flat
      of his hand, and so holding it, ready to put on again, 'you do me honour.
      You are welcome, sir;' with a low bow. 'Frederick, a chair. Pray sit down,
      Mr Clennam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He put his black cap on again as he had taken it off, and resumed his own
      seat. There was a wonderful air of benignity and patronage in his manner.
      These were the ceremonies with which he received the collegians.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are welcome to the Marshalsea, sir. I have welcomed many gentlemen to
      these walls. Perhaps you are aware&mdash;my daughter Amy may have
      mentioned that I am the Father of this place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;so I have understood,' said Arthur, dashing at the assertion.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know, I dare say, that my daughter Amy was born here. A good girl,
      sir, a dear girl, and long a comfort and support to me. Amy, my dear, put
      this dish on; Mr Clennam will excuse the primitive customs to which we are
      reduced here. Is it a compliment to ask you if you would do me the honour,
      sir, to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you,' returned Arthur. 'Not a morsel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He felt himself quite lost in wonder at the manner of the man, and that
      the probability of his daughter's having had a reserve as to her family
      history, should be so far out of his mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      She filled his glass, put all the little matters on the table ready to his
      hand, and then sat beside him while he ate his supper. Evidently in
      observance of their nightly custom, she put some bread before herself, and
      touched his glass with her lips; but Arthur saw she was troubled and took
      nothing. Her look at her father, half admiring him and proud of him, half
      ashamed for him, all devoted and loving, went to his inmost heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Father of the Marshalsea condescended towards his brother as an
      amiable, well-meaning man; a private character, who had not arrived at
      distinction. 'Frederick,' said he, 'you and Fanny sup at your lodgings
      to-night, I know. What have you done with Fanny, Frederick?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is walking with Tip.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tip&mdash;as you may know&mdash;is my son, Mr Clennam. He has been a
      little wild, and difficult to settle, but his introduction to the world
      was rather'&mdash;he shrugged his shoulders with a faint sigh, and looked
      round the room&mdash;'a little adverse. Your first visit here, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My first.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You could hardly have been here since your boyhood without my knowledge.
      It very seldom happens that anybody&mdash;of any pretensions&mdash;any
      pretensions&mdash;comes here without being presented to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As many as forty or fifty in a day have been introduced to my brother,'
      said Frederick, faintly lighting up with a ray of pride.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes!' the Father of the Marshalsea assented. 'We have even exceeded that
      number. On a fine Sunday in term time, it is quite a Levee&mdash;quite a
      Levee. Amy, my dear, I have been trying half the day to remember the name
      of the gentleman from Camberwell who was introduced to me last Christmas
      week by that agreeable coal-merchant who was remanded for six months.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't remember his name, father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Frederick, do <i>you</i> remember his name?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Frederick doubted if he had ever heard it. No one could doubt that
      Frederick was the last person upon earth to put such a question to, with
      any hope of information.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean,' said his brother, 'the gentleman who did that handsome action
      with so much delicacy. Ha! Tush! The name has quite escaped me. Mr
      Clennam, as I have happened to mention handsome and delicate action, you
      may like, perhaps, to know what it was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very much,' said Arthur, withdrawing his eyes from the delicate head
      beginning to droop and the pale face with a new solicitude stealing over
      it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is so generous, and shows so much fine feeling, that it is almost a
      duty to mention it. I said at the time that I always would mention it on
      every suitable occasion, without regard to personal sensitiveness. A&mdash;well&mdash;a&mdash;it's
      of no use to disguise the fact&mdash;you must know, Mr Clennam, that it
      does sometimes occur that people who come here desire to offer some little&mdash;Testimonial&mdash;to
      the Father of the place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      To see her hand upon his arm in mute entreaty half-repressed, and her
      timid little shrinking figure turning away, was to see a sad, sad sight.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sometimes,' he went on in a low, soft voice, agitated, and clearing his
      throat every now and then; 'sometimes&mdash;hem&mdash;it takes one shape
      and sometimes another; but it is generally&mdash;ha&mdash;Money. And it
      is, I cannot but confess it, it is too often&mdash;hem&mdash;acceptable.
      This gentleman that I refer to, was presented to me, Mr Clennam, in a
      manner highly gratifying to my feelings, and conversed not only with great
      politeness, but with great&mdash;ahem&mdash;information.' All this time,
      though he had finished his supper, he was nervously going about his plate
      with his knife and fork, as if some of it were still before him. 'It
      appeared from his conversation that he had a garden, though he was
      delicate of mentioning it at first, as gardens are&mdash;hem&mdash;are not
      accessible to me. But it came out, through my admiring a very fine cluster
      of geranium&mdash;beautiful cluster of geranium to be sure&mdash;which he
      had brought from his conservatory. On my taking notice of its rich colour,
      he showed me a piece of paper round it, on which was written, "For the
      Father of the Marshalsea," and presented it to me. But this was&mdash;hem&mdash;not
      all. He made a particular request, on taking leave, that I would remove
      the paper in half an hour. I&mdash;ha&mdash;I did so; and I found that it
      contained&mdash;ahem&mdash;two guineas. I assure you, Mr Clennam, I have
      received&mdash;hem&mdash;Testimonials in many ways, and of many degrees of
      value, and they have always been&mdash;ha&mdash;unfortunately acceptable;
      but I never was more pleased than with this&mdash;ahem&mdash;this
      particular Testimonial.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur was in the act of saying the little he could say on such a theme,
      when a bell began to ring, and footsteps approached the door. A pretty
      girl of a far better figure and much more developed than Little Dorrit,
      though looking much younger in the face when the two were observed
      together, stopped in the doorway on seeing a stranger; and a young man who
      was with her, stopped too.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, Fanny. My eldest daughter and my son, Mr Clennam. The bell is
      a signal for visitors to retire, and so they have come to say good night;
      but there is plenty of time, plenty of time. Girls, Mr Clennam will excuse
      any household business you may have together. He knows, I dare say, that I
      have but one room here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I only want my clean dress from Amy, father,' said the second girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I my clothes,' said Tip.
    </p>
    <p>
      Amy opened a drawer in an old piece of furniture that was a chest of
      drawers above and a bedstead below, and produced two little bundles, which
      she handed to her brother and sister. 'Mended and made up?' Clennam heard
      the sister ask in a whisper. To which Amy answered 'Yes.' He had risen
      now, and took the opportunity of glancing round the room. The bare walls
      had been coloured green, evidently by an unskilled hand, and were poorly
      decorated with a few prints. The window was curtained, and the floor
      carpeted; and there were shelves and pegs, and other such conveniences,
      that had accumulated in the course of years. It was a close, confined
      room, poorly furnished; and the chimney smoked to boot, or the tin screen
      at the top of the fireplace was superfluous; but constant pains and care
      had made it neat, and even, after its kind, comfortable.
    </p>
    <p>
      All the while the bell was ringing, and the uncle was anxious to go.
      'Come, Fanny, come, Fanny,' he said, with his ragged clarionet case under
      his arm; 'the lock, child, the lock!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny bade her father good night, and whisked off airily. Tip had already
      clattered down-stairs. 'Now, Mr Clennam,' said the uncle, looking back as
      he shuffled out after them, 'the lock, sir, the lock.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Clennam had two things to do before he followed; one, to offer his
      testimonial to the Father of the Marshalsea, without giving pain to his
      child; the other to say something to that child, though it were but a
      word, in explanation of his having come there.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Allow me,' said the Father, 'to see you down-stairs.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She had slipped out after the rest, and they were alone. 'Not on any
      account,' said the visitor, hurriedly. 'Pray allow me to&mdash;' chink,
      chink, chink.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam,' said the Father, 'I am deeply, deeply&mdash;' But his
      visitor had shut up his hand to stop the clinking, and had gone
      down-stairs with great speed.
    </p>
    <p>
      He saw no Little Dorrit on his way down, or in the yard. The last two or
      three stragglers were hurrying to the lodge, and he was following, when he
      caught sight of her in the doorway of the first house from the entrance.
      He turned back hastily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray forgive me,' he said, 'for speaking to you here; pray forgive me for
      coming here at all! I followed you to-night. I did so, that I might
      endeavour to render you and your family some service. You know the terms
      on which I and my mother are, and may not be surprised that I have
      preserved our distant relations at her house, lest I should
      unintentionally make her jealous, or resentful, or do you any injury in
      her estimation. What I have seen here, in this short time, has greatly
      increased my heartfelt wish to be a friend to you. It would recompense me
      for much disappointment if I could hope to gain your confidence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was scared at first, but seemed to take courage while he spoke to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very good, sir. You speak very earnestly to me. But I&mdash;but I
      wish you had not watched me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He understood the emotion with which she said it, to arise in her father's
      behalf; and he respected it, and was silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Clennam has been of great service to me; I don't know what we should
      have done without the employment she has given me; I am afraid it may not
      be a good return to become secret with her; I can say no more to-night,
      sir. I am sure you mean to be kind to us. Thank you, thank you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let me ask you one question before I leave. Have you known my mother
      long?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think two years, sir,&mdash;The bell has stopped.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How did you know her first? Did she send here for you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. She does not even know that I live here. We have a friend, father and
      I&mdash;a poor labouring man, but the best of friends&mdash;and I wrote
      out that I wished to do needlework, and gave his address. And he got what
      I wrote out displayed at a few places where it cost nothing, and Mrs
      Clennam found me that way, and sent for me. The gate will be locked, sir!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was so tremulous and agitated, and he was so moved by compassion for
      her, and by deep interest in her story as it dawned upon him, that he
      could scarcely tear himself away. But the stoppage of the bell, and the
      quiet in the prison, were a warning to depart; and with a few hurried
      words of kindness he left her gliding back to her father.
    </p>
    <p>
      But he remained too late. The inner gate was locked, and the lodge closed.
      After a little fruitless knocking with his hand, he was standing there
      with the disagreeable conviction upon him that he had got to get through
      the night, when a voice accosted him from behind.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Caught, eh?' said the voice. 'You won't go home till morning. Oh! It's
      you, is it, Mr Clennam?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The voice was Tip's; and they stood looking at one another in the
      prison-yard, as it began to rain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You've done it,' observed Tip; 'you must be sharper than that next time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you are locked in too,' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe I am!' said Tip, sarcastically. 'About! But not in your way. I
      belong to the shop, only my sister has a theory that our governor must
      never know it. I don't see why, myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can I get any shelter?' asked Arthur. 'What had I better do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We had better get hold of Amy first of all,' said Tip, referring any
      difficulty to her as a matter of course.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I would rather walk about all night&mdash;it's not much to do&mdash;than
      give that trouble.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You needn't do that, if you don't mind paying for a bed. If you don't
      mind paying, they'll make you up one on the Snuggery table, under the
      circumstances. If you'll come along, I'll introduce you there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As they passed down the yard, Arthur looked up at the window of the room
      he had lately left, where the light was still burning. 'Yes, sir,' said
      Tip, following his glance. 'That's the governor's. She'll sit with him for
      another hour reading yesterday's paper to him, or something of that sort;
      and then she'll come out like a little ghost, and vanish away without a
      sound.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't understand you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The governor sleeps up in the room, and she has a lodging at the
      turnkey's. First house there,' said Tip, pointing out the doorway into
      which she had retired. 'First house, sky parlour. She pays twice as much
      for it as she would for one twice as good outside. But she stands by the
      governor, poor dear girl, day and night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This brought them to the tavern-establishment at the upper end of the
      prison, where the collegians had just vacated their social evening club.
      The apartment on the ground-floor in which it was held, was the Snuggery
      in question; the presidential tribune of the chairman, the pewter-pots,
      glasses, pipes, tobacco-ashes, and general flavour of members, were still
      as that convivial institution had left them on its adjournment. The
      Snuggery had two of the qualities popularly held to be essential to grog
      for ladies, in respect that it was hot and strong; but in the third point
      of analogy, requiring plenty of it, the Snuggery was defective; being but
      a cooped-up apartment.
    </p>
    <p>
      The unaccustomed visitor from outside, naturally assumed everybody here to
      be prisoners&mdash;landlord, waiter, barmaid, potboy, and all. Whether
      they were or not, did not appear; but they all had a weedy look. The
      keeper of a chandler's shop in a front parlour, who took in gentlemen
      boarders, lent his assistance in making the bed. He had been a tailor in
      his time, and had kept a phaeton, he said. He boasted that he stood up
      litigiously for the interests of the college; and he had undefined and
      undefinable ideas that the marshal intercepted a 'Fund,' which ought to
      come to the collegians. He liked to believe this, and always impressed the
      shadowy grievance on new-comers and strangers; though he could not, for
      his life, have explained what Fund he meant, or how the notion had got
      rooted in his soul. He had fully convinced himself, notwithstanding, that
      his own proper share of the Fund was three and ninepence a week; and that
      in this amount he, as an individual collegian, was swindled by the
      marshal, regularly every Monday. Apparently, he helped to make the bed,
      that he might not lose an opportunity of stating this case; after which
      unloading of his mind, and after announcing (as it seemed he always did,
      without anything coming of it) that he was going to write a letter to the
      papers and show the marshal up, he fell into miscellaneous conversation
      with the rest. It was evident from the general tone of the whole party,
      that they had come to regard insolvency as the normal state of mankind,
      and the payment of debts as a disease that occasionally broke out.
    </p>
    <p>
      In this strange scene, and with these strange spectres flitting about him,
      Arthur Clennam looked on at the preparations as if they were part of a
      dream. Pending which, the long-initiated Tip, with an awful enjoyment of
      the Snuggery's resources, pointed out the common kitchen fire maintained
      by subscription of collegians, the boiler for hot water supported in like
      manner, and other premises generally tending to the deduction that the way
      to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, was to come to the Marshalsea.
    </p>
    <p>
      The two tables put together in a corner, were, at length, converted into a
      very fair bed; and the stranger was left to the Windsor chairs, the
      presidential tribune, the beery atmosphere, sawdust, pipe-lights,
      spittoons and repose. But the last item was long, long, long, in linking
      itself to the rest. The novelty of the place, the coming upon it without
      preparation, the sense of being locked up, the remembrance of that room
      up-stairs, of the two brothers, and above all of the retiring childish
      form, and the face in which he now saw years of insufficient food, if not
      of want, kept him waking and unhappy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Speculations, too, bearing the strangest relations towards the prison, but
      always concerning the prison, ran like nightmares through his mind while
      he lay awake. Whether coffins were kept ready for people who might die
      there, where they were kept, how they were kept, where people who died in
      the prison were buried, how they were taken out, what forms were observed,
      whether an implacable creditor could arrest the dead? As to escaping, what
      chances there were of escape? Whether a prisoner could scale the walls
      with a cord and grapple, how he would descend upon the other side? whether
      he could alight on a housetop, steal down a staircase, let himself out at
      a door, and get lost in the crowd? As to Fire in the prison, if one were
      to break out while he lay there?
    </p>
    <p>
      And these involuntary starts of fancy were, after all, but the setting of
      a picture in which three people kept before him. His father, with the
      steadfast look with which he had died, prophetically darkened forth in the
      portrait; his mother, with her arm up, warding off his suspicion; Little
      Dorrit, with her hand on the degraded arm, and her drooping head turned
      away.
    </p>
    <p>
      What if his mother had an old reason she well knew for softening to this
      poor girl! What if the prisoner now sleeping quietly&mdash;Heaven grant
      it!&mdash;by the light of the great Day of judgment should trace back his
      fall to her. What if any act of hers and of his father's, should have even
      remotely brought the grey heads of those two brothers so low!
    </p>
    <p>
      A swift thought shot into his mind. In that long imprisonment here, and in
      her own long confinement to her room, did his mother find a balance to be
      struck? 'I admit that I was accessory to that man's captivity. I have
      suffered for it in kind. He has decayed in his prison: I in mine. I have
      paid the penalty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      When all the other thoughts had faded out, this one held possession of
      him. When he fell asleep, she came before him in her wheeled chair,
      warding him off with this justification. When he awoke, and sprang up
      causelessly frightened, the words were in his ears, as if her voice had
      slowly spoken them at his pillow, to break his rest: 'He withers away in
      his prison; I wither away in mine; inexorable justice is done; what do I
      owe on this score!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 9. Little Mother
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he morning light was in no hurry to climb the prison wall and look in at
      the Snuggery windows; and when it did come, it would have been more
      welcome if it had come alone, instead of bringing a rush of rain with it.
      But the equinoctial gales were blowing out at sea, and the impartial
      south-west wind, in its flight, would not neglect even the narrow
      Marshalsea. While it roared through the steeple of St George's Church, and
      twirled all the cowls in the neighbourhood, it made a swoop to beat the
      Southwark smoke into the jail; and, plunging down the chimneys of the few
      early collegians who were yet lighting their fires, half suffocated them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam would have been little disposed to linger in bed, though
      his bed had been in a more private situation, and less affected by the
      raking out of yesterday's fire, the kindling of to-day's under the
      collegiate boiler, the filling of that Spartan vessel at the pump, the
      sweeping and sawdusting of the common room, and other such preparations.
      Heartily glad to see the morning, though little rested by the night, he
      turned out as soon as he could distinguish objects about him, and paced
      the yard for two heavy hours before the gate was opened.
    </p>
    <p>
      The walls were so near to one another, and the wild clouds hurried over
      them so fast, that it gave him a sensation like the beginning of
      sea-sickness to look up at the gusty sky. The rain, carried aslant by
      flaws of wind, blackened that side of the central building which he had
      visited last night, but left a narrow dry trough under the lee of the
      wall, where he walked up and down among the waits of straw and dust and
      paper, the waste droppings of the pump, and the stray leaves of
      yesterday's greens. It was as haggard a view of life as a man need look
      upon.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nor was it relieved by any glimpse of the little creature who had brought
      him there. Perhaps she glided out of her doorway and in at that where her
      father lived, while his face was turned from both; but he saw nothing of
      her. It was too early for her brother; to have seen him once, was to have
      seen enough of him to know that he would be sluggish to leave whatever
      frowsy bed he occupied at night; so, as Arthur Clennam walked up and down,
      waiting for the gate to open, he cast about in his mind for future rather
      than for present means of pursuing his discoveries.
    </p>
    <p>
      At last the lodge-gate turned, and the turnkey, standing on the step,
      taking an early comb at his hair, was ready to let him out. With a joyful
      sense of release he passed through the lodge, and found himself again in
      the little outer court-yard where he had spoken to the brother last night.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a string of people already straggling in, whom it was not
      difficult to identify as the nondescript messengers, go-betweens, and
      errand-bearers of the place. Some of them had been lounging in the rain
      until the gate should open; others, who had timed their arrival with
      greater nicety, were coming up now, and passing in with damp whitey-brown
      paper bags from the grocers, loaves of bread, lumps of butter, eggs, milk,
      and the like. The shabbiness of these attendants upon shabbiness, the
      poverty of these insolvent waiters upon insolvency, was a sight to see.
      Such threadbare coats and trousers, such fusty gowns and shawls, such
      squashed hats and bonnets, such boots and shoes, such umbrellas and
      walking-sticks, never were seen in Rag Fair. All of them wore the cast-off
      clothes of other men and women, were made up of patches and pieces of
      other people's individuality, and had no sartorial existence of their own
      proper. Their walk was the walk of a race apart. They had a peculiar way
      of doggedly slinking round the corner, as if they were eternally going to
      the pawnbroker's. When they coughed, they coughed like people accustomed
      to be forgotten on doorsteps and in draughty passages, waiting for answers
      to letters in faded ink, which gave the recipients of those manuscripts
      great mental disturbance and no satisfaction. As they eyed the stranger in
      passing, they eyed him with borrowing eyes&mdash;hungry, sharp,
      speculative as to his softness if they were accredited to him, and the
      likelihood of his standing something handsome. Mendicity on commission
      stooped in their high shoulders, shambled in their unsteady legs, buttoned
      and pinned and darned and dragged their clothes, frayed their
      button-holes, leaked out of their figures in dirty little ends of tape,
      and issued from their mouths in alcoholic breathings.
    </p>
    <p>
      As these people passed him standing still in the court-yard, and one of
      them turned back to inquire if he could assist him with his services, it
      came into Arthur Clennam's mind that he would speak to Little Dorrit again
      before he went away. She would have recovered her first surprise, and
      might feel easier with him. He asked this member of the fraternity (who
      had two red herrings in his hand, and a loaf and a blacking brush under
      his arm), where was the nearest place to get a cup of coffee at. The
      nondescript replied in encouraging terms, and brought him to a coffee-shop
      in the street within a stone's throw.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know Miss Dorrit?' asked the new client.
    </p>
    <p>
      The nondescript knew two Miss Dorrits; one who was born inside&mdash;That
      was the one! That was the one? The nondescript had known her many years.
      In regard of the other Miss Dorrit, the nondescript lodged in the same
      house with herself and uncle.
    </p>
    <p>
      This changed the client's half-formed design of remaining at the
      coffee-shop until the nondescript should bring him word that Dorrit had
      issued forth into the street. He entrusted the nondescript with a
      confidential message to her, importing that the visitor who had waited on
      her father last night, begged the favour of a few words with her at her
      uncle's lodging; he obtained from the same source full directions to the
      house, which was very near; dismissed the nondescript gratified with
      half-a-crown; and having hastily refreshed himself at the coffee-shop,
      repaired with all speed to the clarionet-player's dwelling.
    </p>
    <p>
      There were so many lodgers in this house that the doorpost seemed to be as
      full of bell-handles as a cathedral organ is of stops. Doubtful which
      might be the clarionet-stop, he was considering the point, when a
      shuttlecock flew out of the parlour window, and alighted on his hat. He
      then observed that in the parlour window was a blind with the inscription,
      MR CRIPPLES's ACADEMY; also in another line, EVENING TUITION; and behind
      the blind was a little white-faced boy, with a slice of bread-and-butter
      and a battledore. The window being accessible from the footway, he looked
      in over the blind, returned the shuttlecock, and put his question.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dorrit?' said the little white-faced boy (Master Cripples in fact). '<i>Mr</i>
      Dorrit? Third bell and one knock.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The pupils of Mr Cripples appeared to have been making a copy-book of the
      street-door, it was so extensively scribbled over in pencil. The frequency
      of the inscriptions, 'Old Dorrit,' and 'Dirty Dick,' in combination,
      suggested intentions of personality on the part Of Mr Cripples's pupils.
      There was ample time to make these observations before the door was opened
      by the poor old man himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ha!' said he, very slowly remembering Arthur, 'you were shut in last
      night?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Mr Dorrit. I hope to meet your niece here presently.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' said he, pondering. 'Out of my brother's way? True. Would you come
      up-stairs and wait for her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Turning himself as slowly as he turned in his mind whatever he heard or
      said, he led the way up the narrow stairs. The house was very close, and
      had an unwholesome smell. The little staircase windows looked in at the
      back windows of other houses as unwholesome as itself, with poles and
      lines thrust out of them, on which unsightly linen hung; as if the
      inhabitants were angling for clothes, and had had some wretched bites not
      worth attending to. In the back garret&mdash;a sickly room, with a turn-up
      bedstead in it, so hastily and recently turned up that the blankets were
      boiling over, as it were, and keeping the lid open&mdash;a half-finished
      breakfast of coffee and toast for two persons was jumbled down anyhow on a
      rickety table.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was no one there. The old man mumbling to himself, after some
      consideration, that Fanny had run away, went to the next room to fetch her
      back. The visitor, observing that she held the door on the inside, and
      that, when the uncle tried to open it, there was a sharp adjuration of
      'Don't, stupid!' and an appearance of loose stocking and flannel,
      concluded that the young lady was in an undress. The uncle, without
      appearing to come to any conclusion, shuffled in again, sat down in his
      chair, and began warming his hands at the fire; not that it was cold, or
      that he had any waking idea whether it was or not.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What did you think of my brother, sir?' he asked, when he by-and-by
      discovered what he was doing, left off, reached over to the chimney-piece,
      and took his clarionet case down.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was glad,' said Arthur, very much at a loss, for his thoughts were on
      the brother before him; 'to find him so well and cheerful.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ha!' muttered the old man, 'yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur wondered what he could possibly want with the clarionet case. He
      did not want it at all. He discovered, in due time, that it was not the
      little paper of snuff (which was also on the chimney-piece), put it back
      again, took down the snuff instead, and solaced himself with a pinch. He
      was as feeble, spare, and slow in his pinches as in everything else, but a
      certain little trickling of enjoyment of them played in the poor worn
      nerves about the corners of his eyes and mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, Mr Clennam. What do you think of her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am much impressed, Mr Dorrit, by all that I have seen of her and
      thought of her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My brother would have been quite lost without Amy,' he returned. 'We
      should all have been lost without Amy. She is a very good girl, Amy. She
      does her duty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur fancied that he heard in these praises a certain tone of custom,
      which he had heard from the father last night with an inward protest and
      feeling of antagonism. It was not that they stinted her praises, or were
      insensible to what she did for them; but that they were lazily habituated
      to her, as they were to all the rest of their condition. He fancied that
      although they had before them, every day, the means of comparison between
      her and one another and themselves, they regarded her as being in her
      necessary place; as holding a position towards them all which belonged to
      her, like her name or her age. He fancied that they viewed her, not as
      having risen away from the prison atmosphere, but as appertaining to it;
      as being vaguely what they had a right to expect, and nothing more.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her uncle resumed his breakfast, and was munching toast sopped in coffee,
      oblivious of his guest, when the third bell rang. That was Amy, he said,
      and went down to let her in; leaving the visitor with as vivid a picture
      on his mind of his begrimed hands, dirt-worn face, and decayed figure, as
      if he were still drooping in his chair.
    </p>
    <p>
      She came up after him, in the usual plain dress, and with the usual timid
      manner. Her lips were a little parted, as if her heart beat faster than
      usual.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, Amy,' said her uncle, 'has been expecting you some time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I took the liberty of sending you a message.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I received the message, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you going to my mother's this morning? I think not, for it is past
      your usual hour.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not to-day, sir. I am not wanted to-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you allow Me to walk a little way in whatever direction you may be
      going? I can then speak to you as we walk, both without detaining you
      here, and without intruding longer here myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She looked embarrassed, but said, if he pleased. He made a pretence of
      having mislaid his walking-stick, to give her time to set the bedstead
      right, to answer her sister's impatient knock at the wall, and to say a
      word softly to her uncle. Then he found it, and they went down-stairs; she
      first, he following; the uncle standing at the stair-head, and probably
      forgetting them before they had reached the ground floor.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Cripples's pupils, who were by this time coming to school, desisted
      from their morning recreation of cuffing one another with bags and books,
      to stare with all the eyes they had at a stranger who had been to see
      Dirty Dick. They bore the trying spectacle in silence, until the
      mysterious visitor was at a safe distance; when they burst into pebbles
      and yells, and likewise into reviling dances, and in all respects buried
      the pipe of peace with so many savage ceremonies, that, if Mr Cripples had
      been the chief of the Cripplewayboo tribe with his war-paint on, they
      could scarcely have done greater justice to their education.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the midst of this homage, Mr Arthur Clennam offered his arm to Little
      Dorrit, and Little Dorrit took it. 'Will you go by the Iron Bridge,' said
      he, 'where there is an escape from the noise of the street?' Little Dorrit
      answered, if he pleased, and presently ventured to hope that he would 'not
      mind' Mr Cripples's boys, for she had herself received her education, such
      as it was, in Mr Cripples's evening academy. He returned, with the best
      will in the world, that Mr Cripples's boys were forgiven out of the bottom
      of his soul. Thus did Cripples unconsciously become a master of the
      ceremonies between them, and bring them more naturally together than Beau
      Nash might have done if they had lived in his golden days, and he had
      alighted from his coach and six for the purpose.
    </p>
    <p>
      The morning remained squally, and the streets were miserably muddy, but no
      rain fell as they walked towards the Iron Bridge. The little creature
      seemed so young in his eyes, that there were moments when he found himself
      thinking of her, if not speaking to her, as if she were a child. Perhaps
      he seemed as old in her eyes as she seemed young in his.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry to hear you were so inconvenienced last night, sir, as to be
      locked in. It was very unfortunate.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was nothing, he returned. He had had a very good bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes!' she said quickly; 'she believed there were excellent beds at the
      coffee-house.' He noticed that the coffee-house was quite a majestic hotel
      to her, and that she treasured its reputation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe it is very expensive,' said Little Dorrit, 'but my father has
      told me that quite beautiful dinners may be got there. And wine,' she
      added timidly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Were you ever there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no! Only into the kitchen to fetch hot water.'
    </p>
    <p>
      To think of growing up with a kind of awe upon one as to the luxuries of
      that superb establishment, the Marshalsea Hotel!
    </p>
    <p>
      'I asked you last night,' said Clennam, 'how you had become acquainted
      with my mother. Did you ever hear her name before she sent for you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think your father ever did?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He met her eyes raised to his with so much wonder in them (she was scared
      when the encounter took place, and shrunk away again), that he felt it
      necessary to say:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have a reason for asking, which I cannot very well explain; but you
      must, on no account, suppose it to be of a nature to cause you the least
      alarm or anxiety. Quite the reverse. And you think that at no time of your
      father's life was my name of Clennam ever familiar to him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He felt, from the tone in which she spoke, that she was glancing up at him
      with those parted lips; therefore he looked before him, rather than make
      her heart beat quicker still by embarrassing her afresh.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus they emerged upon the Iron Bridge, which was as quiet after the
      roaring streets as though it had been open country. The wind blew roughly,
      the wet squalls came rattling past them, skimming the pools on the road
      and pavement, and raining them down into the river. The clouds raced on
      furiously in the lead-coloured sky, the smoke and mist raced after them,
      the dark tide ran fierce and strong in the same direction. Little Dorrit
      seemed the least, the quietest, and weakest of Heaven's creatures.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let me put you in a coach,' said Clennam, very nearly adding 'my poor
      child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She hurriedly declined, saying that wet or dry made little difference to
      her; she was used to go about in all weathers. He knew it to be so, and
      was touched with more pity; thinking of the slight figure at his side,
      making its nightly way through the damp dark boisterous streets to such a
      place of rest.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You spoke so feelingly to me last night, sir, and I found afterwards that
      you had been so generous to my father, that I could not resist your
      message, if it was only to thank you; especially as I wished very much to
      say to you&mdash;' she hesitated and trembled, and tears rose in her eyes,
      but did not fall.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To say to me&mdash;?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That I hope you will not misunderstand my father. Don't judge him, sir,
      as you would judge others outside the gates. He has been there so long! I
      never saw him outside, but I can understand that he must have grown
      different in some things since.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My thoughts will never be unjust or harsh towards him, believe me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not,' she said, with a prouder air, as the misgiving evidently crept upon
      her that she might seem to be abandoning him, 'not that he has anything to
      be ashamed of for himself, or that I have anything to be ashamed of for
      him. He only requires to be understood. I only ask for him that his life
      may be fairly remembered. All that he said was quite true. It all happened
      just as he related it. He is very much respected. Everybody who comes in,
      is glad to know him. He is more courted than anyone else. He is far more
      thought of than the Marshal is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      If ever pride were innocent, it was innocent in Little Dorrit when she
      grew boastful of her father.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is often said that his manners are a true gentleman's, and quite a
      study. I see none like them in that place, but he is admitted to be
      superior to all the rest. This is quite as much why they make him
      presents, as because they know him to be needy. He is not to be blamed for
      being in need, poor love. Who could be in prison a quarter of a century,
      and be prosperous!'
    </p>
    <p>
      What affection in her words, what compassion in her repressed tears, what
      a great soul of fidelity within her, how true the light that shed false
      brightness round him!
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I have found it best to conceal where my home is, it is not because I
      am ashamed of him. God forbid! Nor am I so much ashamed of the place
      itself as might be supposed. People are not bad because they come there. I
      have known numbers of good, persevering, honest people come there through
      misfortune. They are almost all kind-hearted to one another. And it would
      be ungrateful indeed in me, to forget that I have had many quiet,
      comfortable hours there; that I had an excellent friend there when I was
      quite a baby, who was very very fond of me; that I have been taught there,
      and have worked there, and have slept soundly there. I think it would be
      almost cowardly and cruel not to have some little attachment for it, after
      all this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She had relieved the faithful fulness of her heart, and modestly said,
      raising her eyes appealingly to her new friend's, 'I did not mean to say
      so much, nor have I ever but once spoken about this before. But it seems
      to set it more right than it was last night. I said I wished you had not
      followed me, sir. I don't wish it so much now, unless you should think&mdash;indeed
      I don't wish it at all, unless I should have spoken so confusedly, that&mdash;that
      you can scarcely understand me, which I am afraid may be the case.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He told her with perfect truth that it was not the case; and putting
      himself between her and the sharp wind and rain, sheltered her as well as
      he could.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I feel permitted now,' he said, 'to ask you a little more concerning your
      father. Has he many creditors?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! a great number.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean detaining creditors, who keep him where he is?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes! a great number.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can you tell me&mdash;I can get the information, no doubt, elsewhere, if
      you cannot&mdash;who is the most influential of them?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit said, after considering a little, that she used to hear long
      ago of Mr Tite Barnacle as a man of great power. He was a commissioner, or
      a board, or a trustee, 'or something.' He lived in Grosvenor Square, she
      thought, or very near it. He was under Government&mdash;high in the
      Circumlocution Office. She appeared to have acquired, in her infancy, some
      awful impression of the might of this formidable Mr Tite Barnacle of
      Grosvenor Square, or very near it, and the Circumlocution Office, which
      quite crushed her when she mentioned him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It can do no harm,' thought Arthur, 'if I see this Mr Tite Barnacle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The thought did not present itself so quietly but that her quickness
      intercepted it. 'Ah!' said Little Dorrit, shaking her head with the mild
      despair of a lifetime. 'Many people used to think once of getting my poor
      father out, but you don't know how hopeless it is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She forgot to be shy at the moment, in honestly warning him away from the
      sunken wreck he had a dream of raising; and looked at him with eyes which
      assuredly, in association with her patient face, her fragile figure, her
      spare dress, and the wind and rain, did not turn him from his purpose of
      helping her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Even if it could be done,' said she&mdash;'and it never can be done now&mdash;where
      could father live, or how could he live? I have often thought that if such
      a change could come, it might be anything but a service to him now. People
      might not think so well of him outside as they do there. He might not be
      so gently dealt with outside as he is there. He might not be so fit
      himself for the life outside as he is for that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here for the first time she could not restrain her tears from falling; and
      the little thin hands he had watched when they were so busy, trembled as
      they clasped each other.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It would be a new distress to him even to know that I earn a little
      money, and that Fanny earns a little money. He is so anxious about us, you
      see, feeling helplessly shut up there. Such a good, good father!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He let the little burst of feeling go by before he spoke. It was soon
      gone. She was not accustomed to think of herself, or to trouble any one
      with her emotions. He had but glanced away at the piles of city roofs and
      chimneys among which the smoke was rolling heavily, and at the wilderness
      of masts on the river, and the wilderness of steeples on the shore,
      indistinctly mixed together in the stormy haze, when she was again as
      quiet as if she had been plying her needle in his mother's room.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You would be glad to have your brother set at liberty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh very, very glad, sir!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, we will hope for him at least. You told me last night of a friend
      you had?'
    </p>
    <p>
      His name was Plornish, Little Dorrit said.
    </p>
    <p>
      And where did Plornish live? Plornish lived in Bleeding Heart Yard. He was
      'only a plasterer,' Little Dorrit said, as a caution to him not to form
      high social expectations of Plornish. He lived at the last house in
      Bleeding Heart Yard, and his name was over a little gateway.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur took down the address and gave her his. He had now done all he
      sought to do for the present, except that he wished to leave her with a
      reliance upon him, and to have something like a promise from her that she
      would cherish it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is one friend!' he said, putting up his pocketbook. 'As I take you
      back&mdash;you are going back?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes! going straight home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;As I take you back,' the word home jarred upon him, 'let me ask
      you to persuade yourself that you have another friend. I make no
      professions, and say no more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are truly kind to me, sir. I am sure I need no more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They walked back through the miserable muddy streets, and among the poor,
      mean shops, and were jostled by the crowds of dirty hucksters usual to a
      poor neighbourhood. There was nothing, by the short way, that was pleasant
      to any of the five senses. Yet it was not a common passage through common
      rain, and mire, and noise, to Clennam, having this little, slender,
      careful creature on his arm. How young she seemed to him, or how old he to
      her; or what a secret either to the other, in that beginning of the
      destined interweaving of their stories, matters not here. He thought of
      her having been born and bred among these scenes, and shrinking through
      them now, familiar yet misplaced; he thought of her long acquaintance with
      the squalid needs of life, and of her innocence; of her solicitude for
      others, and her few years, and her childish aspect.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were come into the High Street, where the prison stood, when a voice
      cried, 'Little mother, little mother!' Little Dorrit stopping and looking
      back, an excited figure of a strange kind bounced against them (still
      crying 'little mother'), fell down, and scattered the contents of a large
      basket, filled with potatoes, in the mud.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Maggy,' said Little Dorrit, 'what a clumsy child you are!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Maggy was not hurt, but picked herself up immediately, and then began to
      pick up the potatoes, in which both Little Dorrit and Arthur Clennam
      helped. Maggy picked up very few potatoes and a great quantity of mud; but
      they were all recovered, and deposited in the basket. Maggy then smeared
      her muddy face with her shawl, and presenting it to Mr Clennam as a type
      of purity, enabled him to see what she was like.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was about eight-and-twenty, with large bones, large features, large
      feet and hands, large eyes and no hair. Her large eyes were limpid and
      almost colourless; they seemed to be very little affected by light, and to
      stand unnaturally still. There was also that attentive listening
      expression in her face, which is seen in the faces of the blind; but she
      was not blind, having one tolerably serviceable eye. Her face was not
      exceedingly ugly, though it was only redeemed from being so by a smile; a
      good-humoured smile, and pleasant in itself, but rendered pitiable by
      being constantly there. A great white cap, with a quantity of opaque
      frilling that was always flapping about, apologised for Maggy's baldness,
      and made it so very difficult for her old black bonnet to retain its place
      upon her head, that it held on round her neck like a gipsy's baby. A
      commission of haberdashers could alone have reported what the rest of her
      poor dress was made of, but it had a strong general resemblance to
      seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf. Her shawl looked
      particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam looked at Little Dorrit with the expression of one saying,
      'May I ask who this is?' Little Dorrit, whose hand this Maggy, still
      calling her little mother, had begun to fondle, answered in words (they
      were under a gateway into which the majority of the potatoes had rolled).
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is Maggy, sir.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0106m.jpg" alt="0106m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0106.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Maggy, sir,' echoed the personage presented. 'Little mother!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is the grand-daughter&mdash;' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Grand-daughter,' echoed Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of my old nurse, who has been dead a long time. Maggy, how old are you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ten, mother,' said Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You can't think how good she is, sir,' said Little Dorrit, with infinite
      tenderness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good <i>she</i> is,' echoed Maggy, transferring the pronoun in a most
      expressive way from herself to her little mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Or how clever,' said Little Dorrit. 'She goes on errands as well as any
      one.' Maggy laughed. 'And is as trustworthy as the Bank of England.' Maggy
      laughed. 'She earns her own living entirely. Entirely, sir!' said Little
      Dorrit, in a lower and triumphant tone. 'Really does!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is her history?' asked Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Think of that, Maggy?' said Little Dorrit, taking her two large hands and
      clapping them together. 'A gentleman from thousands of miles away, wanting
      to know your history!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>My</i> history?' cried Maggy. 'Little mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She means me,' said Little Dorrit, rather confused; 'she is very much
      attached to me. Her old grandmother was not so kind to her as she should
      have been; was she, Maggy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Maggy shook her head, made a drinking vessel of her clenched left hand,
      drank out of it, and said, 'Gin.' Then beat an imaginary child, and said,
      'Broom-handles and pokers.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'When Maggy was ten years old,' said Little Dorrit, watching her face
      while she spoke, 'she had a bad fever, sir, and she has never grown any
      older ever since.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ten years old,' said Maggy, nodding her head. 'But what a nice hospital!
      So comfortable, wasn't it? Oh so nice it was. Such a Ev'nly place!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She had never been at peace before, sir,' said Little Dorrit, turning
      towards Arthur for an instant and speaking low, 'and she always runs off
      upon that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Such beds there is there!' cried Maggy. 'Such lemonades! Such oranges!
      Such d'licious broth and wine! Such Chicking! Oh, AIN'T it a delightful
      place to go and stop at!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So Maggy stopped there as long as she could,' said Little Dorrit, in her
      former tone of telling a child's story; the tone designed for Maggy's ear,
      'and at last, when she could stop there no longer, she came out. Then,
      because she was never to be more than ten years old, however long she
      lived&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'However long she lived,' echoed Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;And because she was very weak; indeed was so weak that when she
      began to laugh she couldn't stop herself&mdash;which was a great pity&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      (Maggy mighty grave of a sudden.)
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;Her grandmother did not know what to do with her, and for some
      years was very unkind to her indeed. At length, in course of time, Maggy
      began to take pains to improve herself, and to be very attentive and very
      industrious; and by degrees was allowed to come in and out as often as she
      liked, and got enough to do to support herself, and does support herself.
      And that,' said Little Dorrit, clapping the two great hands together
      again, 'is Maggy's history, as Maggy knows!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Ah! But Arthur would have known what was wanting to its completeness,
      though he had never heard of the words Little mother; though he had never
      seen the fondling of the small spare hand; though he had had no sight for
      the tears now standing in the colourless eyes; though he had had no
      hearing for the sob that checked the clumsy laugh. The dirty gateway with
      the wind and rain whistling through it, and the basket of muddy potatoes
      waiting to be spilt again or taken up, never seemed the common hole it
      really was, when he looked back to it by these lights. Never, never!
    </p>
    <p>
      They were very near the end of their walk, and they now came out of the
      gateway to finish it. Nothing would serve Maggy but that they must stop at
      a grocer's window, short of their destination, for her to show her
      learning. She could read after a sort; and picked out the fat figures in
      the tickets of prices, for the most part correctly. She also stumbled,
      with a large balance of success against her failures, through various
      philanthropic recommendations to Try our Mixture, Try our Family Black,
      Try our Orange-flavoured Pekoe, challenging competition at the head of
      Flowery Teas; and various cautions to the public against spurious
      establishments and adulterated articles. When he saw how pleasure brought
      a rosy tint into Little Dorrit's face when Maggy made a hit, he felt that
      he could have stood there making a library of the grocer's window until
      the rain and wind were tired.
    </p>
    <p>
      The court-yard received them at last, and there he said goodbye to Little
      Dorrit. Little as she had always looked, she looked less than ever when he
      saw her going into the Marshalsea lodge passage, the little mother
      attended by her big child.
    </p>
    <p>
      The cage door opened, and when the small bird, reared in captivity, had
      tamely fluttered in, he saw it shut again; and then he came away.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 10. Containing the whole Science of Government
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the
      most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind
      could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the
      Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in
      the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest
      right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the
      Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half
      an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified
      in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half
      a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a
      family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the
      Circumlocution Office.
    </p>
    <p>
      This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one
      sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was
      first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that
      bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of
      the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the
      Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in
      the art of perceiving&mdash;HOW NOT TO DO IT.
    </p>
    <p>
      Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it
      invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on
      it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public
      departments; and the public condition had risen to be&mdash;what it was.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all
      public departments and professional politicians all round the
      Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new
      government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary
      to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost
      faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment
      when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving
      on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the
      friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of
      impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been
      asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it
      should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true
      that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through,
      uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to do it. It is
      true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said,
      My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and
      you will please to retire to your respective chambers, and discuss, How
      not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such
      session, virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several
      laborious months been considering with great loyalty and patriotism, How
      not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence
      upon the harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you. All this is
      true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping
      this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it,
      in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised
      public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any
      surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a
      memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It was
      this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had
      gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians,
      natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people
      with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who
      wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who
      couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn't get punished for
      demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of
      the Circumlocution Office.
    </p>
    <p>
      Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates
      with wrongs, or with projects for the general welfare (and they had better
      have had wrongs at first, than have taken that bitter English recipe for
      certainly getting them), who in slow lapse of time and agony had passed
      safely through other public departments; who, according to rule, had been
      bullied in this, over-reached by that, and evaded by the other; got
      referred at last to the Circumlocution Office, and never reappeared in the
      light of day. Boards sat upon them, secretaries minuted upon them,
      commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered, checked, and
      ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all the business of the
      country went through the Circumlocution Office, except the business that
      never came out of it; and <i>its</i> name was Legion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sometimes, angry spirits attacked the Circumlocution Office. Sometimes,
      parliamentary questions were asked about it, and even parliamentary
      motions made or threatened about it by demagogues so low and ignorant as
      to hold that the real recipe of government was, How to do it. Then would
      the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, in whose department it was
      to defend the Circumlocution Office, put an orange in his pocket, and make
      a regular field-day of the occasion. Then would he come down to that house
      with a slap upon the table, and meet the honourable gentleman foot to
      foot. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that the
      Circumlocution Office not only was blameless in this matter, but was
      commendable in this matter, was extollable to the skies in this matter.
      Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that, although
      the Circumlocution Office was invariably right and wholly right, it never
      was so right as in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that
      honourable gentleman that it would have been more to his honour, more to
      his credit, more to his good taste, more to his good sense, more to half
      the dictionary of commonplaces, if he had left the Circumlocution Office
      alone, and never approached this matter. Then would he keep one eye upon a
      coach or crammer from the Circumlocution Office sitting below the bar, and
      smash the honourable gentleman with the Circumlocution Office account of
      this matter. And although one of two things always happened; namely,
      either that the Circumlocution Office had nothing to say and said it, or
      that it had something to say of which the noble lord, or right honourable
      gentleman, blundered one half and forgot the other; the Circumlocution
      Office was always voted immaculate by an accommodating majority.
    </p>
    <p>
      Such a nursery of statesmen had the Department become in virtue of a long
      career of this nature, that several solemn lords had attained the
      reputation of being quite unearthly prodigies of business, solely from
      having practised, How not to do it, as the head of the Circumlocution
      Office. As to the minor priests and acolytes of that temple, the result of
      all this was that they stood divided into two classes, and, down to the
      junior messenger, either believed in the Circumlocution Office as a
      heaven-born institution that had an absolute right to do whatever it
      liked; or took refuge in total infidelity, and considered it a flagrant
      nuisance.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Barnacle family had for some time helped to administer the
      Circumlocution Office. The Tite Barnacle Branch, indeed, considered
      themselves in a general way as having vested rights in that direction, and
      took it ill if any other family had much to say to it. The Barnacles were
      a very high family, and a very large family. They were dispersed all over
      the public offices, and held all sorts of public places. Either the nation
      was under a load of obligation to the Barnacles, or the Barnacles were
      under a load of obligation to the nation. It was not quite unanimously
      settled which; the Barnacles having their opinion, the nation theirs.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Mr Tite Barnacle who at the period now in question usually coached or
      crammed the statesman at the head of the Circumlocution Office, when that
      noble or right honourable individual sat a little uneasily in his saddle
      by reason of some vagabond making a tilt at him in a newspaper, was more
      flush of blood than money. As a Barnacle he had his place, which was a
      snug thing enough; and as a Barnacle he had of course put in his son
      Barnacle Junior in the office. But he had intermarried with a branch of
      the Stiltstalkings, who were also better endowed in a sanguineous point of
      view than with real or personal property, and of this marriage there had
      been issue, Barnacle junior and three young ladies. What with the
      patrician requirements of Barnacle junior, the three young ladies, Mrs
      Tite Barnacle nee Stiltstalking, and himself, Mr Tite Barnacle found the
      intervals between quarter day and quarter day rather longer than he could
      have desired; a circumstance which he always attributed to the country's
      parsimony.
    </p>
    <p>
      For Mr Tite Barnacle, Mr Arthur Clennam made his fifth inquiry one day at
      the Circumlocution Office; having on previous occasions awaited that
      gentleman successively in a hall, a glass case, a waiting room, and a
      fire-proof passage where the Department seemed to keep its wind. On this
      occasion Mr Barnacle was not engaged, as he had been before, with the
      noble prodigy at the head of the Department; but was absent. Barnacle
      Junior, however, was announced as a lesser star, yet visible above the
      office horizon.
    </p>
    <p>
      With Barnacle junior, he signified his desire to confer; and found that
      young gentleman singeing the calves of his legs at the parental fire, and
      supporting his spine against the mantel-shelf. It was a comfortable room,
      handsomely furnished in the higher official manner; an presenting stately
      suggestions of the absent Barnacle, in the thick carpet, the
      leather-covered desk to sit at, the leather-covered desk to stand at, the
      formidable easy-chair and hearth-rug, the interposed screen, the torn-up
      papers, the dispatch-boxes with little labels sticking out of them, like
      medicine bottles or dead game, the pervading smell of leather and
      mahogany, and a general bamboozling air of How not to do it.
    </p>
    <p>
      The present Barnacle, holding Mr Clennam's card in his hand, had a
      youthful aspect, and the fluffiest little whisker, perhaps, that ever was
      seen. Such a downy tip was on his callow chin, that he seemed half fledged
      like a young bird; and a compassionate observer might have urged that, if
      he had not singed the calves of his legs, he would have died of cold. He
      had a superior eye-glass dangling round his neck, but unfortunately had
      such flat orbits to his eyes and such limp little eyelids that it wouldn't
      stick in when he put it up, but kept tumbling out against his waistcoat
      buttons with a click that discomposed him very much.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, I say. Look here! My father's not in the way, and won't be in the way
      to-day,' said Barnacle Junior. 'Is this anything that I can do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      (Click! Eye-glass down. Barnacle Junior quite frightened and feeling all
      round himself, but not able to find it.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very good,' said Arthur Clennam. 'I wish however to see Mr
      Barnacle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I say. Look here! You haven't got any appointment, you know,' said
      Barnacle Junior.
    </p>
    <p>
      (By this time he had found the eye-glass, and put it up again.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Arthur Clennam. 'That is what I wish to have.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I say. Look here! Is this public business?' asked Barnacle junior.
    </p>
    <p>
      (Click! Eye-glass down again. Barnacle Junior in that state of search
      after it that Mr Clennam felt it useless to reply at present.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it,' said Barnacle junior, taking heed of his visitor's brown face,
      'anything about&mdash;Tonnage&mdash;or that sort of thing?'
    </p>
    <p>
      (Pausing for a reply, he opened his right eye with his hand, and stuck his
      glass in it, in that inflammatory manner that his eye began watering
      dreadfully.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Arthur, 'it is nothing about tonnage.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then look here. Is it private business?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I really am not sure. It relates to a Mr Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look here, I tell you what! You had better call at our house, if you are
      going that way. Twenty-four, Mews Street, Grosvenor Square. My father's
      got a slight touch of the gout, and is kept at home by it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      (The misguided young Barnacle evidently going blind on his eye-glass side,
      but ashamed to make any further alteration in his painful arrangements.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you. I will call there now. Good morning.' Young Barnacle seemed
      discomfited at this, as not having at all expected him to go.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are quite sure,' said Barnacle junior, calling after him when he got
      to the door, unwilling wholly to relinquish the bright business idea he
      had conceived; 'that it's nothing about Tonnage?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With such assurance, and rather wondering what might have taken place if
      it <i>had</i> been anything about tonnage, Mr Clennam withdrew to pursue
      his inquiries.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, was not absolutely Grosvenor Square itself,
      but it was very near it. It was a hideous little street of dead wall,
      stables, and dunghills, with lofts over coach-houses inhabited by
      coachmen's families, who had a passion for drying clothes and decorating
      their window-sills with miniature turnpike-gates. The principal
      chimney-sweep of that fashionable quarter lived at the blind end of Mews
      Street; and the same corner contained an establishment much frequented
      about early morning and twilight for the purchase of wine-bottles and
      kitchen-stuff. Punch's shows used to lean against the dead wall in Mews
      Street, while their proprietors were dining elsewhere; and the dogs of the
      neighbourhood made appointments to meet in the same locality. Yet there
      were two or three small airless houses at the entrance end of Mews Street,
      which went at enormous rents on account of their being abject hangers-on
      to a fashionable situation; and whenever one of these fearful little coops
      was to be let (which seldom happened, for they were in great request), the
      house agent advertised it as a gentlemanly residence in the most
      aristocratic part of town, inhabited solely by the elite of the beau
      monde.
    </p>
    <p>
      If a gentlemanly residence coming strictly within this narrow margin had
      not been essential to the blood of the Barnacles, this particular branch
      would have had a pretty wide selection among, let us say, ten thousand
      houses, offering fifty times the accommodation for a third of the money.
      As it was, Mr Barnacle, finding his gentlemanly residence extremely
      inconvenient and extremely dear, always laid it, as a public servant, at
      the door of the country, and adduced it as another instance of the
      country's parsimony.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam came to a squeezed house, with a ramshackle bowed front,
      little dingy windows, and a little dark area like a damp waistcoat-pocket,
      which he found to be number twenty-four, Mews Street, Grosvenor Square. To
      the sense of smell the house was like a sort of bottle filled with a
      strong distillation of Mews; and when the footman opened the door, he
      seemed to take the stopper out.
    </p>
    <p>
      The footman was to the Grosvenor Square footmen, what the house was to the
      Grosvenor Square houses. Admirable in his way, his way was a back and a
      bye way. His gorgeousness was not unmixed with dirt; and both in
      complexion and consistency he had suffered from the closeness of his
      pantry. A sallow flabbiness was upon him when he took the stopper out, and
      presented the bottle to Mr Clennam's nose.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Be so good as to give that card to Mr Tite Barnacle, and to say that I
      have just now seen the younger Mr Barnacle, who recommended me to call
      here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The footman (who had as many large buttons with the Barnacle crest upon
      them on the flaps of his pockets, as if he were the family strong box, and
      carried the plate and jewels about with him buttoned up) pondered over the
      card a little; then said, 'Walk in.' It required some judgment to do it
      without butting the inner hall-door open, and in the consequent mental
      confusion and physical darkness slipping down the kitchen stairs. The
      visitor, however, brought himself up safely on the door-mat.
    </p>
    <p>
      Still the footman said 'Walk in,' so the visitor followed him. At the
      inner hall-door, another bottle seemed to be presented and another stopper
      taken out. This second vial appeared to be filled with concentrated
      provisions and extract of Sink from the pantry. After a skirmish in the
      narrow passage, occasioned by the footman's opening the door of the dismal
      dining-room with confidence, finding some one there with consternation,
      and backing on the visitor with disorder, the visitor was shut up, pending
      his announcement, in a close back parlour. There he had an opportunity of
      refreshing himself with both the bottles at once, looking out at a low
      blinding wall three feet off, and speculating on the number of Barnacle
      families within the bills of mortality who lived in such hutches of their
      own free flunkey choice.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Barnacle would see him. Would he walk up-stairs? He would, and he did;
      and in the drawing-room, with his leg on a rest, he found Mr Barnacle
      himself, the express image and presentment of How not to do it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Barnacle dated from a better time, when the country was not so
      parsimonious and the Circumlocution Office was not so badgered. He wound
      and wound folds of white cravat round his neck, as he wound and wound
      folds of tape and paper round the neck of the country. His wristbands and
      collar were oppressive; his voice and manner were oppressive. He had a
      large watch-chain and bunch of seals, a coat buttoned up to inconvenience,
      a waistcoat buttoned up to inconvenience, an unwrinkled pair of trousers,
      a stiff pair of boots. He was altogether splendid, massive, overpowering,
      and impracticable. He seemed to have been sitting for his portrait to Sir
      Thomas Lawrence all the days of his life.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam?' said Mr Barnacle. 'Be seated.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Clennam became seated.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have called on me, I believe,' said Mr Barnacle, 'at the
      Circumlocution&mdash;' giving it the air of a word of about
      five-and-twenty syllables&mdash;'Office.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have taken that liberty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Barnacle solemnly bent his head as who should say, 'I do not deny that
      it is a liberty; proceed to take another liberty, and let me know your
      business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Allow me to observe that I have been for some years in China, am quite a
      stranger at home, and have no personal motive or interest in the inquiry I
      am about to make.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Barnacle tapped his fingers on the table, and, as if he were now
      sitting for his portrait to a new and strange artist, appeared to say to
      his visitor, 'If you will be good enough to take me with my present lofty
      expression, I shall feel obliged.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have found a debtor in the Marshalsea Prison of the name of Dorrit, who
      has been there many years. I wish to investigate his confused affairs so
      far as to ascertain whether it may not be possible, after this lapse of
      time, to ameliorate his unhappy condition. The name of Mr Tite Barnacle
      has been mentioned to me as representing some highly influential interest
      among his creditors. Am I correctly informed?'
    </p>
    <p>
      It being one of the principles of the Circumlocution Office never, on any
      account whatever, to give a straightforward answer, Mr Barnacle said,
      'Possibly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'On behalf of the Crown, may I ask, or as private individual?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Circumlocution Department, sir,' Mr Barnacle replied, 'may have
      possibly recommended&mdash;possibly&mdash;I cannot say&mdash;that some
      public claim against the insolvent estate of a firm or copartnership to
      which this person may have belonged, should be enforced. The question may
      have been, in the course of official business, referred to the
      Circumlocution Department for its consideration. The Department may have
      either originated, or confirmed, a Minute making that recommendation.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I assume this to be the case, then.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Circumlocution Department,' said Mr Barnacle, 'is not responsible for
      any gentleman's assumptions.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I inquire how I can obtain official information as to the real state
      of the case?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is competent,' said Mr Barnacle, 'to any member of the&mdash;Public,'
      mentioning that obscure body with reluctance, as his natural enemy, 'to
      memorialise the Circumlocution Department. Such formalities as are
      required to be observed in so doing, may be known on application to the
      proper branch of that Department.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Which is the proper branch?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must refer you,' returned Mr Barnacle, ringing the bell, 'to the
      Department itself for a formal answer to that inquiry.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Excuse my mentioning&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Department is accessible to the&mdash;Public,' Mr Barnacle was always
      checked a little by that word of impertinent signification, 'if the&mdash;Public
      approaches it according to the official forms; if the&mdash;Public does
      not approach it according to the official forms, the&mdash;Public has
      itself to blame.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Barnacle made him a severe bow, as a wounded man of family, a wounded
      man of place, and a wounded man of a gentlemanly residence, all rolled
      into one; and he made Mr Barnacle a bow, and was shut out into Mews Street
      by the flabby footman.
    </p>
    <p>
      Having got to this pass, he resolved as an exercise in perseverance, to
      betake himself again to the Circumlocution Office, and try what
      satisfaction he could get there. So he went back to the Circumlocution
      Office, and once more sent up his card to Barnacle junior by a messenger
      who took it very ill indeed that he should come back again, and who was
      eating mashed potatoes and gravy behind a partition by the hall fire.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was readmitted to the presence of Barnacle junior, and found that young
      gentleman singeing his knees now, and gaping his weary way on to four
      o'clock.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say. Look here. You stick to us in a devil of a manner,' Said Barnacle
      junior, looking over his shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to know&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look here. Upon my soul you mustn't come into the place saying you want
      to know, you know,' remonstrated Barnacle junior, turning about and
      putting up the eye-glass.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to know,' said Arthur Clennam, who had made up his mind to
      persistence in one short form of words, 'the precise nature of the claim
      of the Crown against a prisoner for debt, named Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say. Look here. You really are going it at a great pace, you know.
      Egad, you haven't got an appointment,' said Barnacle junior, as if the
      thing were growing serious.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to know,' said Arthur, and repeated his case.
    </p>
    <p>
      Barnacle junior stared at him until his eye-glass fell out, and then put
      it in again and stared at him until it fell out again. 'You have no right
      to come this sort of move,' he then observed with the greatest weakness.
      'Look here. What do you mean? You told me you didn't know whether it was
      public business or not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have now ascertained that it is public business,' returned the suitor,
      'and I want to know'&mdash;and again repeated his monotonous inquiry.
    </p>
    <p>
      Its effect upon young Barnacle was to make him repeat in a defenceless
      way, 'Look here! Upon my SOUL you mustn't come into the place saying you
      want to know, you know!' The effect of that upon Arthur Clennam was to
      make him repeat his inquiry in exactly the same words and tone as before.
      The effect of that upon young Barnacle was to make him a wonderful
      spectacle of failure and helplessness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, I tell you what. Look here. You had better try the Secretarial
      Department,' he said at last, sidling to the bell and ringing it.
      'Jenkinson,' to the mashed potatoes messenger, 'Mr Wobbler!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam, who now felt that he had devoted himself to the storming
      of the Circumlocution Office, and must go through with it, accompanied the
      messenger to another floor of the building, where that functionary pointed
      out Mr Wobbler's room. He entered that apartment, and found two gentlemen
      sitting face to face at a large and easy desk, one of whom was polishing a
      gun-barrel on his pocket-handkerchief, while the other was spreading
      marmalade on bread with a paper-knife.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Wobbler?' inquired the suitor.
    </p>
    <p>
      Both gentlemen glanced at him, and seemed surprised at his assurance.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So he went,' said the gentleman with the gun-barrel, who was an extremely
      deliberate speaker, 'down to his cousin's place, and took the Dog with him
      by rail. Inestimable Dog. Flew at the porter fellow when he was put into
      the dog-box, and flew at the guard when he was taken out. He got
      half-a-dozen fellows into a Barn, and a good supply of Rats, and timed the
      Dog. Finding the Dog able to do it immensely, made the match, and heavily
      backed the Dog. When the match came off, some devil of a fellow was bought
      over, Sir, Dog was made drunk, Dog's master was cleaned out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Wobbler?' inquired the suitor.
    </p>
    <p>
      The gentleman who was spreading the marmalade returned, without looking up
      from that occupation, 'What did he call the Dog?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Called him Lovely,' said the other gentleman. 'Said the Dog was the
      perfect picture of the old aunt from whom he had expectations. Found him
      particularly like her when hocussed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Wobbler?' said the suitor.
    </p>
    <p>
      Both gentlemen laughed for some time. The gentleman with the gun-barrel,
      considering it, on inspection, in a satisfactory state, referred it to the
      other; receiving confirmation of his views, he fitted it into its place in
      the case before him, and took out the stock and polished that, softly
      whistling.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Wobbler?' said the suitor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's the matter?' then said Mr Wobbler, with his mouth full.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to know&mdash;' and Arthur Clennam again mechanically set forth
      what he wanted to know.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can't inform you,' observed Mr Wobbler, apparently to his lunch. 'Never
      heard of it. Nothing at all to do with it. Better try Mr Clive, second
      door on the left in the next passage.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps he will give me the same answer.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very likely. Don't know anything about it,' said Mr Wobbler.
    </p>
    <p>
      The suitor turned away and had left the room, when the gentleman with the
      gun called out 'Mister! Hallo!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked in again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shut the door after you. You're letting in a devil of a draught here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      A few steps brought him to the second door on the left in the next
      passage. In that room he found three gentlemen; number one doing nothing
      particular, number two doing nothing particular, number three doing
      nothing particular. They seemed, however, to be more directly concerned
      than the others had been in the effective execution of the great principle
      of the office, as there was an awful inner apartment with a double door,
      in which the Circumlocution Sages appeared to be assembled in council, and
      out of which there was an imposing coming of papers, and into which there
      was an imposing going of papers, almost constantly; wherein another
      gentleman, number four, was the active instrument.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to know,' said Arthur Clennam,&mdash;and again stated his case in
      the same barrel-organ way. As number one referred him to number two, and
      as number two referred him to number three, he had occasion to state it
      three times before they all referred him to number four, to whom he stated
      it again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Number four was a vivacious, well-looking, well-dressed, agreeable young
      fellow&mdash;he was a Barnacle, but on the more sprightly side of the
      family&mdash;and he said in an easy way, 'Oh! you had better not bother
      yourself about it, I think.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not bother myself about it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No! I recommend you not to bother yourself about it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was such a new point of view that Arthur Clennam found himself at a
      loss how to receive it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You can if you like. I can give you plenty of forms to fill up. Lots of
      'em here. You can have a dozen if you like. But you'll never go on with
      it,' said number four.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Would it be such hopeless work? Excuse me; I am a stranger in England.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>I</i> don't say it would be hopeless,' returned number four, with a
      frank smile. 'I don't express an opinion about that; I only express an
      opinion about you. <i>I</i> don't think you'd go on with it. However, of
      course, you can do as you like. I suppose there was a failure in the
      performance of a contract, or something of that kind, was there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I really don't know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well! That you can find out. Then you'll find out what Department the
      contract was in, and then you'll find out all about it there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon. How shall I find out?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, you'll&mdash;you'll ask till they tell you. Then you'll memorialise
      that Department (according to regular forms which you'll find out) for
      leave to memorialise this Department. If you get it (which you may after a
      time), that memorial must be entered in that Department, sent to be
      registered in this Department, sent back to be signed by that Department,
      sent back to be countersigned by this Department, and then it will begin
      to be regularly before that Department. You'll find out when the business
      passes through each of these stages by asking at both Departments till
      they tell you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But surely this is not the way to do the business,' Arthur Clennam could
      not help saying.
    </p>
    <p>
      This airy young Barnacle was quite entertained by his simplicity in
      supposing for a moment that it was. This light in hand young Barnacle knew
      perfectly that it was not. This touch and go young Barnacle had 'got up'
      the Department in a private secretaryship, that he might be ready for any
      little bit of fat that came to hand; and he fully understood the
      Department to be a politico-diplomatic hocus pocus piece of machinery for
      the assistance of the nobs in keeping off the snobs. This dashing young
      Barnacle, in a word, was likely to become a statesman, and to make a
      figure.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When the business is regularly before that Department, whatever it is,'
      pursued this bright young Barnacle, 'then you can watch it from time to
      time through that Department. When it comes regularly before this
      Department, then you must watch it from time to time through this
      Department. We shall have to refer it right and left; and when we refer it
      anywhere, then you'll have to look it up. When it comes back to us at any
      time, then you had better look <i>us</i> up. When it sticks anywhere,
      you'll have to try to give it a jog. When you write to another Department
      about it, and then to this Department about it, and don't hear anything
      satisfactory about it, why then you had better&mdash;keep on writing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam looked very doubtful indeed. 'But I am obliged to you at
      any rate,' said he, 'for your politeness.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all,' replied this engaging young Barnacle. 'Try the thing, and
      see how you like it. It will be in your power to give it up at any time,
      if you don't like it. You had better take a lot of forms away with you.
      Give him a lot of forms!' With which instruction to number two, this
      sparkling young Barnacle took a fresh handful of papers from numbers one
      and three, and carried them into the sanctuary to offer to the presiding
      Idol of the Circumlocution Office.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam put his forms in his pocket gloomily enough, and went his
      way down the long stone passage and the long stone staircase. He had come
      to the swing doors leading into the street, and was waiting, not over
      patiently, for two people who were between him and them to pass out and
      let him follow, when the voice of one of them struck familiarly on his
      ear. He looked at the speaker and recognised Mr Meagles. Mr Meagles was
      very red in the face&mdash;redder than travel could have made him&mdash;and
      collaring a short man who was with him, said, 'come out, you rascal, come
      Out!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was such an unexpected hearing, and it was also such an unexpected
      sight to see Mr Meagles burst the swing doors open, and emerge into the
      street with the short man, who was of an unoffending appearance, that
      Clennam stood still for the moment exchanging looks of surprise with the
      porter. He followed, however, quickly; and saw Mr Meagles going down the
      street with his enemy at his side. He soon came up with his old travelling
      companion, and touched him on the back. The choleric face which Mr Meagles
      turned upon him smoothed when he saw who it was, and he put out his
      friendly hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How are you?' said Mr Meagles. 'How d'ye <i>do?</i> I have only just come
      over from abroad. I am glad to see you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I am rejoiced to see you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank'ee. Thank'ee!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Meagles and your daughter&mdash;?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are as well as possible,' said Mr Meagles. 'I only wish you had come upon
      me in a more prepossessing condition as to coolness.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Though it was anything but a hot day, Mr Meagles was in a heated state
      that attracted the attention of the passersby; more particularly as he
      leaned his back against a railing, took off his hat and cravat, and
      heartily rubbed his steaming head and face, and his reddened ears and
      neck, without the least regard for public opinion.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whew!' said Mr Meagles, dressing again. 'That's comfortable. Now I am
      cooler.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been ruffled, Mr Meagles. What is the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wait a bit, and I'll tell you. Have you leisure for a turn in the Park?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As much as you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come along then. Ah! you may well look at him.' He happened to have
      turned his eyes towards the offender whom Mr Meagles had so angrily
      collared. 'He's something to look at, that fellow is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was not much to look at, either in point of size or in point of dress;
      being merely a short, square, practical looking man, whose hair had turned
      grey, and in whose face and forehead there were deep lines of cogitation,
      which looked as though they were carved in hard wood. He was dressed in
      decent black, a little rusty, and had the appearance of a sagacious master
      in some handicraft. He had a spectacle-case in his hand, which he turned
      over and over while he was thus in question, with a certain free use of
      the thumb that is never seen but in a hand accustomed to tools.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You keep with us,' said Mr Meagles, in a threatening kind of Way, 'and
      I'll introduce you presently. Now then!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam wondered within himself, as they took the nearest way to the Park,
      what this unknown (who complied in the gentlest manner) could have been
      doing. His appearance did not at all justify the suspicion that he had
      been detected in designs on Mr Meagles's pocket-handkerchief; nor had he
      any appearance of being quarrelsome or violent. He was a quiet, plain,
      steady man; made no attempt to escape; and seemed a little depressed, but
      neither ashamed nor repentant. If he were a criminal offender, he must
      surely be an incorrigible hypocrite; and if he were no offender, why
      should Mr Meagles have collared him in the Circumlocution Office? He
      perceived that the man was not a difficulty in his own mind alone, but in
      Mr Meagles's too; for such conversation as they had together on the short
      way to the Park was by no means well sustained, and Mr Meagles's eye
      always wandered back to the man, even when he spoke of something very
      different.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length they being among the trees, Mr Meagles stopped short, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, will you do me the favour to look at this man? His name is
      Doyce, Daniel Doyce. You wouldn't suppose this man to be a notorious
      rascal; would you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I certainly should not.' It was really a disconcerting question, with the
      man there.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. You would not. I know you would not. You wouldn't suppose him to be a
      public offender; would you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. But he is. He is a public offender. What has he been guilty of?
      Murder, manslaughter, arson, forgery, swindling, house-breaking, highway
      robbery, larceny, conspiracy, fraud? Which should you say, now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should say,' returned Arthur Clennam, observing a faint smile in Daniel
      Doyce's face, 'not one of them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are right,' said Mr Meagles. 'But he has been ingenious, and he has
      been trying to turn his ingenuity to his country's service. That makes him
      a public offender directly, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur looked at the man himself, who only shook his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This Doyce,' said Mr Meagles, 'is a smith and engineer. He is not in a
      large way, but he is well known as a very ingenious man. A dozen years
      ago, he perfects an invention (involving a very curious secret process) of
      great importance to his country and his fellow-creatures. I won't say how
      much money it cost him, or how many years of his life he had been about
      it, but he brought it to perfection a dozen years ago. Wasn't it a dozen?'
      said Mr Meagles, addressing Doyce. 'He is the most exasperating man in the
      world; he never complains!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. Rather better than twelve years ago.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Rather better?' said Mr Meagles, 'you mean rather worse. Well, Mr
      Clennam, he addresses himself to the Government. The moment he addresses
      himself to the Government, he becomes a public offender! Sir,' said Mr
      Meagles, in danger of making himself excessively hot again, 'he ceases to
      be an innocent citizen, and becomes a culprit. He is treated from that
      instant as a man who has done some infernal action. He is a man to be
      shirked, put off, brow-beaten, sneered at, handed over by this
      highly-connected young or old gentleman, to that highly-connected young or
      old gentleman, and dodged back again; he is a man with no rights in his
      own time, or his own property; a mere outlaw, whom it is justifiable to
      get rid of anyhow; a man to be worn out by all possible means.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not so difficult to believe, after the morning's experience, as Mr
      Meagles supposed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't stand there, Doyce, turning your spectacle-case over and over,'
      cried Mr Meagles, 'but tell Mr Clennam what you confessed to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I undoubtedly was made to feel,' said the inventor, 'as if I had
      committed an offence. In dancing attendance at the various offices, I was
      always treated, more or less, as if it was a very bad offence. I have
      frequently found it necessary to reflect, for my own self-support, that I
      really had not done anything to bring myself into the Newgate Calendar,
      but only wanted to effect a great saving and a great improvement.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There!' said Mr Meagles. 'Judge whether I exaggerate. Now you'll be able
      to believe me when I tell you the rest of the case.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With this prelude, Mr Meagles went through the narrative; the established
      narrative, which has become tiresome; the matter-of-course narrative which
      we all know by heart. How, after interminable attendance and
      correspondence, after infinite impertinences, ignorances, and insults, my
      lords made a Minute, number three thousand four hundred and seventy-two,
      allowing the culprit to make certain trials of his invention at his own
      expense. How the trials were made in the presence of a board of six, of
      whom two ancient members were too blind to see it, two other ancient
      members were too deaf to hear it, one other ancient member was too lame to
      get near it, and the final ancient member was too pig-headed to look at
      it. How there were more years; more impertinences, ignorances, and
      insults. How my lords then made a Minute, number five thousand one hundred
      and three, whereby they resigned the business to the Circumlocution
      Office. How the Circumlocution Office, in course of time, took up the
      business as if it were a bran new thing of yesterday, which had never been
      heard of before; muddled the business, addled the business, tossed the
      business in a wet blanket. How the impertinences, ignorances, and insults
      went through the multiplication table. How there was a reference of the
      invention to three Barnacles and a Stiltstalking, who knew nothing about
      it; into whose heads nothing could be hammered about it; who got bored
      about it, and reported physical impossibilities about it. How the
      Circumlocution Office, in a Minute, number eight thousand seven hundred
      and forty, 'saw no reason to reverse the decision at which my lords had
      arrived.' How the Circumlocution Office, being reminded that my lords had
      arrived at no decision, shelved the business. How there had been a final
      interview with the head of the Circumlocution Office that very morning,
      and how the Brazen Head had spoken, and had been, upon the whole, and
      under all the circumstances, and looking at it from the various points of
      view, of opinion that one of two courses was to be pursued in respect of
      the business: that was to say, either to leave it alone for evermore, or
      to begin it all over again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Upon which,' said Mr Meagles, 'as a practical man, I then and there, in
      that presence, took Doyce by the collar, and told him it was plain to me
      that he was an infamous rascal and treasonable disturber of the government
      peace, and took him away. I brought him out of the office door by the
      collar, that the very porter might know I was a practical man who
      appreciated the official estimate of such characters; and here we are!'
    </p>
    <p>
      If that airy young Barnacle had been there, he would have frankly told
      them perhaps that the Circumlocution Office had achieved its function.
      That what the Barnacles had to do, was to stick on to the national ship as
      long as they could. That to trim the ship, lighten the ship, clean the
      ship, would be to knock them off; that they could but be knocked off once;
      and that if the ship went down with them yet sticking to it, that was the
      ship's look out, and not theirs.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There!' said Mr Meagles, 'now you know all about Doyce. Except, which I
      own does not improve my state of mind, that even now you don't hear him
      complain.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You must have great patience,' said Arthur Clennam, looking at him with
      some wonder, 'great forbearance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' he returned, 'I don't know that I have more than another man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By the Lord, you have more than I have, though!' cried Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      Doyce smiled, as he said to Clennam, 'You see, my experience of these
      things does not begin with myself. It has been in my way to know a little
      about them from time to time. Mine is not a particular case. I am not
      worse used than a hundred others who have put themselves in the same
      position&mdash;than all the others, I was going to say.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know that I should find that a consolation, if it were my case;
      but I am very glad that you do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Understand me! I don't say,' he replied in his steady, planning way, and
      looking into the distance before him as if his grey eye were measuring it,
      'that it's recompense for a man's toil and hope; but it's a certain sort
      of relief to know that I might have counted on this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He spoke in that quiet deliberate manner, and in that undertone, which is
      often observable in mechanics who consider and adjust with great nicety.
      It belonged to him like his suppleness of thumb, or his peculiar way of
      tilting up his hat at the back every now and then, as if he were
      contemplating some half-finished work of his hand and thinking about it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Disappointed?' he went on, as he walked between them under the trees.
      'Yes. No doubt I am disappointed. Hurt? Yes. No doubt I am hurt. That's
      only natural. But what I mean when I say that people who put themselves in
      the same position are mostly used in the same way&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In England,' said Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! of course I mean in England. When they take their inventions into
      foreign countries, that's quite different. And that's the reason why so
      many go there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles very hot indeed again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What I mean is, that however this comes to be the regular way of our
      government, it is its regular way. Have you ever heard of any projector or
      inventor who failed to find it all but inaccessible, and whom it did not
      discourage and ill-treat?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I cannot say that I ever have.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you ever known it to be beforehand in the adoption of any useful
      thing? Ever known it to set an example of any useful kind?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am a good deal older than my friend here,' said Mr Meagles, 'and I'll
      answer that. Never.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But we all three have known, I expect,' said the inventor, 'a pretty many
      cases of its fixed determination to be miles upon miles, and years upon
      years, behind the rest of us; and of its being found out persisting in the
      use of things long superseded, even after the better things were well
      known and generally taken up?'
    </p>
    <p>
      They all agreed upon that.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well then,' said Doyce, with a sigh, 'as I know what such a metal will do
      at such a temperature, and such a body under such a pressure, so I may
      know (if I will only consider), how these great lords and gentlemen will
      certainly deal with such a matter as mine. I have no right to be
      surprised, with a head upon my shoulders, and memory in it, that I fall
      into the ranks with all who came before me. I ought to have let it alone.
      I have had warning enough, I am sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With that he put up his spectacle-case, and said to Arthur, 'If I don't
      complain, Mr Clennam, I can feel gratitude; and I assure you that I feel
      it towards our mutual friend. Many's the day, and many's the way in which
      he has backed me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stuff and nonsense,' said Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur could not but glance at Daniel Doyce in the ensuing silence. Though
      it was evidently in the grain of his character, and of his respect for his
      own case, that he should abstain from idle murmuring, it was evident that
      he had grown the older, the sterner, and the poorer, for his long
      endeavour. He could not but think what a blessed thing it would have been
      for this man, if he had taken a lesson from the gentlemen who were so kind
      as to take a nation's affairs in charge, and had learnt How not to do it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles was hot and despondent for about five minutes, and then began
      to cool and clear up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, come!' said he. 'We shall not make this the better by being grim.
      Where do you think of going, Dan?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall go back to the factory,' said Dan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why then, we'll all go back to the factory, or walk in that direction,'
      returned Mr Meagles cheerfully. 'Mr Clennam won't be deterred by its being
      in Bleeding Heart Yard.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bleeding Heart Yard?' said Clennam. 'I want to go there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So much the better,' cried Mr Meagles. 'Come along!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As they went along, certainly one of the party, and probably more than
      one, thought that Bleeding Heart Yard was no inappropriate destination for
      a man who had been in official correspondence with my lords and the
      Barnacles&mdash;and perhaps had a misgiving also that Britannia herself
      might come to look for lodgings in Bleeding Heart Yard some ugly day or
      other, if she over-did the Circumlocution Office.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 11. Let Loose
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> late, dull autumn night was closing in upon the river Saone. The stream,
      like a sullied looking-glass in a gloomy place, reflected the clouds
      heavily; and the low banks leaned over here and there, as if they were
      half curious, and half afraid, to see their darkening pictures in the
      water. The flat expanse of country about Chalons lay a long heavy streak,
      occasionally made a little ragged by a row of poplar trees against the
      wrathful sunset. On the banks of the river Saone it was wet, depressing,
      solitary; and the night deepened fast.
    </p>
    <p>
      One man slowly moving on towards Chalons was the only visible figure in
      the landscape. Cain might have looked as lonely and avoided. With an old
      sheepskin knapsack at his back, and a rough, unbarked stick cut out of
      some wood in his hand; miry, footsore, his shoes and gaiters trodden out,
      his hair and beard untrimmed; the cloak he carried over his shoulder, and
      the clothes he wore, sodden with wet; limping along in pain and
      difficulty; he looked as if the clouds were hurrying from him, as if the
      wail of the wind and the shuddering of the grass were directed against
      him, as if the low mysterious plashing of the water murmured at him, as if
      the fitful autumn night were disturbed by him.
    </p>
    <p>
      He glanced here, and he glanced there, sullenly but shrinkingly; and
      sometimes stopped and turned about, and looked all round him. Then he
      limped on again, toiling and muttering.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To the devil with this plain that has no end! To the devil with these
      stones that cut like knives! To the devil with this dismal darkness,
      wrapping itself about one with a chill! I hate you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      And he would have visited his hatred upon it all with the scowl he threw
      about him, if he could. He trudged a little further; and looking into the
      distance before him, stopped again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I, hungry, thirsty, weary. You, imbeciles, where the lights are yonder,
      eating and drinking, and warming yourselves at fires! I wish I had the
      sacking of your town; I would repay you, my children!'
    </p>
    <p>
      But the teeth he set at the town, and the hand he shook at the town,
      brought the town no nearer; and the man was yet hungrier, and thirstier,
      and wearier, when his feet were on its jagged pavement, and he stood
      looking about him.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was the hotel with its gateway, and its savoury smell of cooking;
      there was the cafe with its bright windows, and its rattling of dominoes;
      there was the dyer's with its strips of red cloth on the doorposts; there
      was the silversmith's with its earrings, and its offerings for altars;
      there was the tobacco dealer's with its lively group of soldier customers
      coming out pipe in mouth; there were the bad odours of the town, and the
      rain and the refuse in the kennels, and the faint lamps slung across the
      road, and the huge Diligence, and its mountain of luggage, and its six
      grey horses with their tails tied up, getting under weigh at the coach
      office. But no small cabaret for a straitened traveller being within
      sight, he had to seek one round the dark corner, where the cabbage leaves
      lay thickest, trodden about the public cistern at which women had not yet
      left off drawing water. There, in the back street he found one, the Break
      of Day. The curtained windows clouded the Break of Day, but it seemed
      light and warm, and it announced in legible inscriptions with appropriate
      pictorial embellishment of billiard cue and ball, that at the Break of Day
      one could play billiards; that there one could find meat, drink, and
      lodgings, whether one came on horseback, or came on foot; and that it kept
      good wines, liqueurs, and brandy. The man turned the handle of the Break
      of Day door, and limped in.
    </p>
    <p>
      He touched his discoloured slouched hat, as he came in at the door, to a
      few men who occupied the room. Two were playing dominoes at one of the
      little tables; three or four were seated round the stove, conversing as
      they smoked; the billiard-table in the centre was left alone for the time;
      the landlady of the Daybreak sat behind her little counter among her
      cloudy bottles of syrups, baskets of cakes, and leaden drainage for
      glasses, working at her needle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Making his way to an empty little table in a corner of the room behind the
      stove, he put down his knapsack and his cloak upon the ground. As he
      raised his head from stooping to do so, he found the landlady beside him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'One can lodge here to-night, madame?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perfectly!' said the landlady in a high, sing-song, cheery voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good. One can dine&mdash;sup&mdash;what you please to call it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, perfectly!' cried the landlady as before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dispatch then, madame, if you please. Something to eat, as quickly as you
      can; and some wine at once. I am exhausted.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is very bad weather, monsieur,' said the landlady.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cursed weather.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And a very long road.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A cursed road.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His hoarse voice failed him, and he rested his head upon his hands until a
      bottle of wine was brought from the counter. Having filled and emptied his
      little tumbler twice, and having broken off an end from the great loaf
      that was set before him with his cloth and napkin, soup-plate, salt,
      pepper, and oil, he rested his back against the corner of the wall, made a
      couch of the bench on which he sat, and began to chew crust, until such
      time as his repast should be ready.
    </p>
    <p>
      There had been that momentary interruption of the talk about the stove,
      and that temporary inattention to and distraction from one another, which
      is usually inseparable in such a company from the arrival of a stranger.
      It had passed over by this time; and the men had done glancing at him, and
      were talking again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's the true reason,' said one of them, bringing a story he had been
      telling, to a close, 'that's the true reason why they said that the devil
      was let loose.' The speaker was the tall Swiss belonging to the church,
      and he brought something of the authority of the church into the
      discussion&mdash;especially as the devil was in question.
    </p>
    <p>
      The landlady having given her directions for the new guest's entertainment
      to her husband, who acted as cook to the Break of Day, had resumed her
      needlework behind her counter. She was a smart, neat, bright little woman,
      with a good deal of cap and a good deal of stocking, and she struck into
      the conversation with several laughing nods of her head, but without
      looking up from her work.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah Heaven, then,' said she. 'When the boat came up from Lyons, and
      brought the news that the devil was actually let loose at Marseilles, some
      fly-catchers swallowed it. But I? No, not I.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madame, you are always right,' returned the tall Swiss. 'Doubtless you
      were enraged against that man, madame?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, yes, then!' cried the landlady, raising her eyes from her work,
      opening them very wide, and tossing her head on one side. 'Naturally,
      yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was a bad subject.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was a wicked wretch,' said the landlady, 'and well merited what he had
      the good fortune to escape. So much the worse.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay, madame! Let us see,' returned the Swiss, argumentatively turning
      his cigar between his lips. 'It may have been his unfortunate destiny. He
      may have been the child of circumstances. It is always possible that he
      had, and has, good in him if one did but know how to find it out.
      Philosophical philanthropy teaches&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      The rest of the little knot about the stove murmured an objection to the
      introduction of that threatening expression. Even the two players at
      dominoes glanced up from their game, as if to protest against
      philosophical philanthropy being brought by name into the Break of Day.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hold there, you and your philanthropy,' cried the smiling landlady,
      nodding her head more than ever. 'Listen then. I am a woman, I. I know
      nothing of philosophical philanthropy. But I know what I have seen, and
      what I have looked in the face in this world here, where I find myself.
      And I tell you this, my friend, that there are people (men and women both,
      unfortunately) who have no good in them&mdash;none. That there are people
      whom it is necessary to detest without compromise. That there are people
      who must be dealt with as enemies of the human race. That there are people
      who have no human heart, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and
      cleared out of the way. They are but few, I hope; but I have seen (in this
      world here where I find myself, and even at the little Break of Day) that
      there are such people. And I do not doubt that this man&mdash;whatever
      they call him, I forget his name&mdash;is one of them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The landlady's lively speech was received with greater favour at the Break
      of Day, than it would have elicited from certain amiable whitewashers of
      the class she so unreasonably objected to, nearer Great Britain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My faith! If your philosophical philanthropy,' said the landlady, putting
      down her work, and rising to take the stranger's soup from her husband,
      who appeared with it at a side door, 'puts anybody at the mercy of such
      people by holding terms with them at all, in words or deeds, or both, take
      it away from the Break of Day, for it isn't worth a sou.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she placed the soup before the guest, who changed his attitude to a
      sitting one, he looked her full in the face, and his moustache went up
      under his nose, and his nose came down over his moustache.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said the previous speaker, 'let us come back to our subject.
      Leaving all that aside, gentlemen, it was because the man was acquitted on
      his trial that people said at Marseilles that the devil was let loose.
      That was how the phrase began to circulate, and what it meant; nothing
      more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do they call him?' said the landlady. 'Biraud, is it not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Rigaud, madame,' returned the tall Swiss.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Rigaud! To be sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The traveller's soup was succeeded by a dish of meat, and that by a dish
      of vegetables. He ate all that was placed before him, emptied his bottle
      of wine, called for a glass of rum, and smoked his cigarette with his cup
      of coffee. As he became refreshed, he became overbearing; and patronised
      the company at the Daybreak in certain small talk at which he assisted, as
      if his condition were far above his appearance.
    </p>
    <p>
      The company might have had other engagements, or they might have felt
      their inferiority, but in any case they dispersed by degrees, and not
      being replaced by other company, left their new patron in possession of
      the Break of Day. The landlord was clinking about in his kitchen; the
      landlady was quiet at her work; and the refreshed traveller sat smoking by
      the stove, warming his ragged feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me, madame&mdash;that Biraud.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Rigaud, monsieur.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Rigaud. Pardon me again&mdash;has contracted your displeasure, how?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The landlady, who had been at one moment thinking within herself that this
      was a handsome man, at another moment that this was an ill-looking man,
      observed the nose coming down and the moustache going up, and strongly
      inclined to the latter decision. Rigaud was a criminal, she said, who had
      killed his wife.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay? Death of my life, that's a criminal indeed. But how do you know
      it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All the world knows it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hah! And yet he escaped justice?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Monsieur, the law could not prove it against him to its satisfaction. So
      the law says. Nevertheless, all the world knows he did it. The people knew
      it so well, that they tried to tear him to pieces.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Being all in perfect accord with their own wives?' said the guest.
      'Haha!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The landlady of the Break of Day looked at him again, and felt almost
      confirmed in her last decision. He had a fine hand, though, and he turned
      it with a great show. She began once more to think that he was not
      ill-looking after all.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did you mention, madame&mdash;or was it mentioned among the gentlemen&mdash;what
      became of him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The landlady shook her head; it being the first conversational stage at
      which her vivacious earnestness had ceased to nod it, keeping time to what
      she said. It had been mentioned at the Daybreak, she remarked, on the
      authority of the journals, that he had been kept in prison for his own
      safety. However that might be, he had escaped his deserts; so much the
      worse.
    </p>
    <p>
      The guest sat looking at her as he smoked out his final cigarette, and as
      she sat with her head bent over her work, with an expression that might
      have resolved her doubts, and brought her to a lasting conclusion on the
      subject of his good or bad looks if she had seen it. When she did look up,
      the expression was not there. The hand was smoothing his shaggy moustache.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May one ask to be shown to bed, madame?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Very willingly, monsieur. Hola, my husband! My husband would conduct him
      up-stairs. There was one traveller there, asleep, who had gone to bed very
      early indeed, being overpowered by fatigue; but it was a large chamber
      with two beds in it, and space enough for twenty. This the landlady of the
      Break of Day chirpingly explained, calling between whiles, 'Hola, my
      husband!' out at the side door.
    </p>
    <p>
      My husband answered at length, 'It is I, my wife!' and presenting himself
      in his cook's cap, lighted the traveller up a steep and narrow staircase;
      the traveller carrying his own cloak and knapsack, and bidding the
      landlady good night with a complimentary reference to the pleasure of
      seeing her again to-morrow. It was a large room, with a rough splintery
      floor, unplastered rafters overhead, and two bedsteads on opposite sides.
      Here 'my husband' put down the candle he carried, and with a sidelong look
      at his guest stooping over his knapsack, gruffly gave him the instruction,
      'The bed to the right!' and left him to his repose. The landlord, whether
      he was a good or a bad physiognomist, had fully made up his mind that the
      guest was an ill-looking fellow.
    </p>
    <p>
      The guest looked contemptuously at the clean coarse bedding prepared for
      him, and, sitting down on the rush chair at the bedside, drew his money
      out of his pocket, and told it over in his hand. 'One must eat,' he
      muttered to himself, 'but by Heaven I must eat at the cost of some other
      man to-morrow!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As he sat pondering, and mechanically weighing his money in his palm, the
      deep breathing of the traveller in the other bed fell so regularly upon
      his hearing that it attracted his eyes in that direction. The man was
      covered up warm, and had drawn the white curtain at his head, so that he
      could be only heard, not seen. But the deep regular breathing, still going
      on while the other was taking off his worn shoes and gaiters, and still
      continuing when he had laid aside his coat and cravat, became at length a
      strong provocative to curiosity, and incentive to get a glimpse of the
      sleeper's face.
    </p>
    <p>
      The waking traveller, therefore, stole a little nearer, and yet a little
      nearer, and a little nearer to the sleeping traveller's bed, until he
      stood close beside it. Even then he could not see his face, for he had
      drawn the sheet over it. The regular breathing still continuing, he put
      his smooth white hand (such a treacherous hand it looked, as it went
      creeping from him!) to the sheet, and gently lifted it away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Death of my soul!' he whispered, falling back, 'here's Cavalletto!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The little Italian, previously influenced in his sleep, perhaps, by the
      stealthy presence at his bedside, stopped in his regular breathing, and
      with a long deep respiration opened his eyes. At first they were not
      awake, though open. He lay for some seconds looking placidly at his old
      prison companion, and then, all at once, with a cry of surprise and alarm,
      sprang out of bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush! What's the matter? Keep quiet! It's I. You know me?' cried the
      other, in a suppressed voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      But John Baptist, widely staring, muttering a number of invocations and
      ejaculations, tremblingly backing into a corner, slipping on his trousers,
      and tying his coat by the two sleeves round his neck, manifested an
      unmistakable desire to escape by the door rather than renew the
      acquaintance. Seeing this, his old prison comrade fell back upon the door,
      and set his shoulders against it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cavalletto! Wake, boy! Rub your eyes and look at me. Not the name you
      used to call me&mdash;don't use that&mdash;Lagnier, say Lagnier!'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Baptist, staring at him with eyes opened to their utmost width, made
      a number of those national, backhanded shakes of the right forefinger in
      the air, as if he were resolved on negativing beforehand everything that
      the other could possibly advance during the whole term of his life.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cavalletto! Give me your hand. You know Lagnier, the gentleman. Touch the
      hand of a gentleman!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Submitting himself to the old tone of condescending authority, John
      Baptist, not at all steady on his legs as yet, advanced and put his hand
      in his patron's. Monsieur Lagnier laughed; and having given it a squeeze,
      tossed it up and let it go.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you were&mdash;' faltered John Baptist.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not shaved? No. See here!' cried Lagnier, giving his head a twirl; 'as
      tight on as your own.'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Baptist, with a slight shiver, looked all round the room as if to
      recall where he was. His patron took that opportunity of turning the key
      in the door, and then sat down upon his bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look!' he said, holding up his shoes and gaiters. 'That's a poor trim for
      a gentleman, you'll say. No matter, you shall see how soon I'll mend it.
      Come and sit down. Take your old place!'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Baptist, looking anything but reassured, sat down on the floor at the
      bedside, keeping his eyes upon his patron all the time.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's well!' cried Lagnier. 'Now we might be in the old infernal hole
      again, hey? How long have you been out?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Two days after you, my master.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you come here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was cautioned not to stay there, and so I left the town at once, and
      since then I have changed about. I have been doing odds and ends at
      Avignon, at Pont Esprit, at Lyons; upon the Rhone, upon the Saone.' As he
      spoke, he rapidly mapped the places out with his sunburnt hand upon the
      floor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And where are you going?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Going, my master?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Baptist seemed to desire to evade the question without knowing how.
      'By Bacchus!' he said at last, as if he were forced to the admission, 'I
      have sometimes had a thought of going to Paris, and perhaps to England.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cavalletto. This is in confidence. I also am going to Paris and perhaps
      to England. We'll go together.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The little man nodded his head, and showed his teeth; and yet seemed not
      quite convinced that it was a surpassingly desirable arrangement.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We'll go together,' repeated Lagnier. 'You shall see how soon I will
      force myself to be recognised as a gentleman, and you shall profit by it.
      It is agreed? Are we one?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, surely, surely!' said the little man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you shall hear before I sleep&mdash;and in six words, for I want
      sleep&mdash;how I appear before you, I, Lagnier. Remember that. Not the
      other.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Altro, altro! Not Ri&mdash;&mdash;' Before John Baptist could finish the
      name, his comrade had got his hand under his chin and fiercely shut up his
      mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Death! what are you doing? Do you want me to be trampled upon and stoned?
      Do <i>you</i> want to be trampled upon and stoned? You would be. You don't
      imagine that they would set upon me, and let my prison chum go? Don't
      think it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was an expression in his face as he released his grip of his
      friend's jaw, from which his friend inferred that if the course of events
      really came to any stoning and trampling, Monsieur Lagnier would so
      distinguish him with his notice as to ensure his having his full share of
      it. He remembered what a cosmopolitan gentleman Monsieur Lagnier was, and
      how few weak distinctions he made.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am a man,' said Monsieur Lagnier, 'whom society has deeply wronged
      since you last saw me. You know that I am sensitive and brave, and that it
      is my character to govern. How has society respected those qualities in
      me? I have been shrieked at through the streets. I have been guarded
      through the streets against men, and especially women, running at me armed
      with any weapons they could lay their hands on. I have lain in prison for
      security, with the place of my confinement kept a secret, lest I should be
      torn out of it and felled by a hundred blows. I have been carted out of
      Marseilles in the dead of night, and carried leagues away from it packed
      in straw. It has not been safe for me to go near my house; and, with a
      beggar's pittance in my pocket, I have walked through vile mud and weather
      ever since, until my feet are crippled&mdash;look at them! Such are the
      humiliations that society has inflicted upon me, possessing the qualities
      I have mentioned, and which you know me to possess. But society shall pay
      for it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      All this he said in his companion's ear, and with his hand before his
      lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Even here,' he went on in the same way, 'even in this mean drinking-shop,
      society pursues me. Madame defames me, and her guests defame me. I, too, a
      gentleman with manners and accomplishments to strike them dead! But the
      wrongs society has heaped upon me are treasured in this breast.'
    </p>
    <p>
      To all of which John Baptist, listening attentively to the suppressed
      hoarse voice, said from time to time, 'Surely, surely!' tossing his head
      and shutting his eyes, as if there were the clearest case against society
      that perfect candour could make out.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Put my shoes there,' continued Lagnier. 'Hang my cloak to dry there by
      the door. Take my hat.' He obeyed each instruction, as it was given. 'And
      this is the bed to which society consigns me, is it? Hah. <i>Very</i>
      well!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As he stretched out his length upon it, with a ragged handkerchief bound
      round his wicked head, and only his wicked head showing above the
      bedclothes, John Baptist was rather strongly reminded of what had so very
      nearly happened to prevent the moustache from any more going up as it did,
      and the nose from any more coming down as it did.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shaken out of destiny's dice-box again into your company, eh? By Heaven!
      So much the better for you. You'll profit by it. I shall need a long rest.
      Let me sleep in the morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Baptist replied that he should sleep as long as he would, and wishing
      him a happy night, put out the candle. One might have supposed that the
      next proceeding of the Italian would have been to undress; but he did
      exactly the reverse, and dressed himself from head to foot, saving his
      shoes. When he had so done, he lay down upon his bed with some of its
      coverings over him, and his coat still tied round his neck, to get through
      the night.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he started up, the Godfather Break of Day was peeping at its
      namesake. He rose, took his shoes in his hand, turned the key in the door
      with great caution, and crept downstairs. Nothing was astir there but the
      smell of coffee, wine, tobacco, and syrups; and madame's little counter
      looked ghastly enough. But he had paid madame his little note at it over
      night, and wanted to see nobody&mdash;wanted nothing but to get on his
      shoes and his knapsack, open the door, and run away.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0131m.jpg" alt="0131m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0131.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      He prospered in his object. No movement or voice was heard when he opened
      the door; no wicked head tied up in a ragged handkerchief looked out of
      the upper window. When the sun had raised his full disc above the flat
      line of the horizon, and was striking fire out of the long muddy vista of
      paved road with its weary avenue of little trees, a black speck moved
      along the road and splashed among the flaming pools of rain-water, which
      black speck was John Baptist Cavalletto running away from his patron.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 12. Bleeding Heart Yard
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n London itself, though in the old rustic road towards a suburb of note
      where in the days of William Shakespeare, author and stage-player, there
      were Royal hunting-seats&mdash;howbeit no sport is left there now but for
      hunters of men&mdash;Bleeding Heart Yard was to be found; a place much
      changed in feature and in fortune, yet with some relish of ancient
      greatness about it. Two or three mighty stacks of chimneys, and a few
      large dark rooms which had escaped being walled and subdivided out of the
      recognition of their old proportions, gave the Yard a character. It was
      inhabited by poor people, who set up their rest among its faded glories,
      as Arabs of the desert pitch their tents among the fallen stones of the
      Pyramids; but there was a family sentimental feeling prevalent in the
      Yard, that it had a character.
    </p>
    <p>
      As if the aspiring city had become puffed up in the very ground on which
      it stood, the ground had so risen about Bleeding Heart Yard that you got
      into it down a flight of steps which formed no part of the original
      approach, and got out of it by a low gateway into a maze of shabby
      streets, which went about and about, tortuously ascending to the level
      again. At this end of the Yard and over the gateway, was the factory of
      Daniel Doyce, often heavily beating like a bleeding heart of iron, with
      the clink of metal upon metal.
    </p>
    <p>
      The opinion of the Yard was divided respecting the derivation of its name.
      The more practical of its inmates abided by the tradition of a murder; the
      gentler and more imaginative inhabitants, including the whole of the
      tender sex, were loyal to the legend of a young lady of former times
      closely imprisoned in her chamber by a cruel father for remaining true to
      her own true love, and refusing to marry the suitor he chose for her. The
      legend related how that the young lady used to be seen up at her window
      behind the bars, murmuring a love-lorn song of which the burden was,
      'Bleeding Heart, Bleeding Heart, bleeding away,' until she died. It was
      objected by the murderous party that this Refrain was notoriously the
      invention of a tambour-worker, a spinster and romantic, still lodging in
      the Yard. But, forasmuch as all favourite legends must be associated with
      the affections, and as many more people fall in love than commit murder&mdash;which
      it may be hoped, howsoever bad we are, will continue until the end of the
      world to be the dispensation under which we shall live&mdash;the Bleeding
      Heart, Bleeding Heart, bleeding away story, carried the day by a great
      majority. Neither party would listen to the antiquaries who delivered
      learned lectures in the neighbourhood, showing the Bleeding Heart to have
      been the heraldic cognisance of the old family to whom the property had
      once belonged. And, considering that the hour-glass they turned from year
      to year was filled with the earthiest and coarsest sand, the Bleeding
      Heart Yarders had reason enough for objecting to be despoiled of the one
      little golden grain of poetry that sparkled in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Down in to the Yard, by way of the steps, came Daniel Doyce, Mr Meagles,
      and Clennam. Passing along the Yard, and between the open doors on either
      hand, all abundantly garnished with light children nursing heavy ones,
      they arrived at its opposite boundary, the gateway. Here Arthur Clennam
      stopped to look about him for the domicile of Plornish, plasterer, whose
      name, according to the custom of Londoners, Daniel Doyce had never seen or
      heard of to that hour.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was plain enough, nevertheless, as Little Dorrit had said; over a
      lime-splashed gateway in the corner, within which Plornish kept a ladder
      and a barrel or two. The last house in Bleeding Heart Yard which she had
      described as his place of habitation, was a large house, let off to
      various tenants; but Plornish ingeniously hinted that he lived in the
      parlour, by means of a painted hand under his name, the forefinger of
      which hand (on which the artist had depicted a ring and a most elaborate
      nail of the genteelest form) referred all inquirers to that apartment.
    </p>
    <p>
      Parting from his companions, after arranging another meeting with Mr
      Meagles, Clennam went alone into the entry, and knocked with his knuckles
      at the parlour-door. It was opened presently by a woman with a child in
      her arms, whose unoccupied hand was hastily rearranging the upper part of
      her dress. This was Mrs Plornish, and this maternal action was the action
      of Mrs Plornish during a large part of her waking existence.
    </p>
    <p>
      Was Mr Plornish at home? 'Well, sir,' said Mrs Plornish, a civil woman,
      'not to deceive you, he's gone to look for a job.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not to deceive you' was a method of speech with Mrs Plornish. She would
      deceive you, under any circumstances, as little as might be; but she had a
      trick of answering in this provisional form.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think he will be back soon, if I wait for him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been expecting him,' said Mrs Plornish, 'this half an hour, at any
      minute of time. Walk in, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur entered the rather dark and close parlour (though it was lofty
      too), and sat down in the chair she placed for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not to deceive you, sir, I notice it,' said Mrs Plornish, 'and I take it
      kind of you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was at a loss to understand what she meant; and by expressing as much
      in his looks, elicited her explanation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It ain't many that comes into a poor place, that deems it worth their
      while to move their hats,' said Mrs Plornish. 'But people think more of it
      than people think.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam returned, with an uncomfortable feeling in so very slight a
      courtesy being unusual, Was that all! And stooping down to pinch the cheek
      of another young child who was sitting on the floor, staring at him, asked
      Mrs Plornish how old that fine boy was?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Four year just turned, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'He <i>is</i> a fine
      little fellow, ain't he, sir? But this one is rather sickly.' She tenderly
      hushed the baby in her arms, as she said it. 'You wouldn't mind my asking
      if it happened to be a job as you was come about, sir, would you?' asked
      Mrs Plornish wistfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      She asked it so anxiously, that if he had been in possession of any kind
      of tenement, he would have had it plastered a foot deep rather than answer
      No. But he was obliged to answer No; and he saw a shade of disappointment
      on her face, as she checked a sigh, and looked at the low fire. Then he
      saw, also, that Mrs Plornish was a young woman, made somewhat slatternly
      in herself and her belongings by poverty; and so dragged at by poverty and
      the children together, that their united forces had already dragged her
      face into wrinkles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'All such things as jobs,' said Mrs Plornish, 'seems to me to have gone
      underground, they do indeed.' (Herein Mrs Plornish limited her remark to
      the plastering trade, and spoke without reference to the Circumlocution
      Office and the Barnacle Family.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it so difficult to get work?' asked Arthur Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Plornish finds it so,' she returned. 'He is quite unfortunate. Really he
      is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Really he was. He was one of those many wayfarers on the road of life, who
      seem to be afflicted with supernatural corns, rendering it impossible for
      them to keep up even with their lame competitors. A willing, working, soft
      hearted, not hard-headed fellow, Plornish took his fortune as smoothly as
      could be expected; but it was a rough one. It so rarely happened that
      anybody seemed to want him, it was such an exceptional case when his
      powers were in any request, that his misty mind could not make out how it
      happened. He took it as it came, therefore; he tumbled into all kinds of
      difficulties, and tumbled out of them; and, by tumbling through life, got
      himself considerably bruised.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's not for want of looking after jobs, I am sure,' said Mrs Plornish,
      lifting up her eyebrows, and searching for a solution of the problem
      between the bars of the grate; 'nor yet for want of working at them when
      they are to be got. No one ever heard my husband complain of work.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Somehow or other, this was the general misfortune of Bleeding Heart Yard.
      From time to time there were public complaints, pathetically going about,
      of labour being scarce&mdash;which certain people seemed to take
      extraordinarily ill, as though they had an absolute right to it on their
      own terms&mdash;but Bleeding Heart Yard, though as willing a Yard as any
      in Britain, was never the better for the demand. That high old family, the
      Barnacles, had long been too busy with their great principle to look into
      the matter; and indeed the matter had nothing to do with their
      watchfulness in out-generalling all other high old families except the
      Stiltstalkings.
    </p>
    <p>
      While Mrs Plornish spoke in these words of her absent lord, her lord
      returned. A smooth-cheeked, fresh-coloured, sandy-whiskered man of thirty.
      Long in the legs, yielding at the knees, foolish in the face,
      flannel-jacketed, lime-whitened.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is Plornish, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I came,' said Clennam, rising, 'to beg the favour of a little
      conversation with you on the subject of the Dorrit family.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Plornish became suspicious. Seemed to scent a creditor. Said, 'Ah, yes.
      Well. He didn't know what satisfaction <i>he</i> could give any gentleman,
      respecting that family. What might it be about, now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know you better,' said Clennam, smiling, 'than you suppose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Plornish observed, not smiling in return, And yet he hadn't the pleasure
      of being acquainted with the gentleman, neither.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Arthur, 'I know your kind offices at second hand, but on the
      best authority; through Little Dorrit.&mdash;I mean,' he explained, 'Miss
      Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, is it? Oh! I've heard of you, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I of you,' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Please to sit down again, Sir, and consider yourself welcome.&mdash;Why,
      yes,' said Plornish, taking a chair, and lifting the elder child upon his
      knee, that he might have the moral support of speaking to a stranger over
      his head, 'I have been on the wrong side of the Lock myself, and in that
      way we come to know Miss Dorrit. Me and my wife, we are well acquainted
      with Miss Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Intimate!' cried Mrs Plornish. Indeed, she was so proud of the
      acquaintance, that she had awakened some bitterness of spirit in the Yard
      by magnifying to an enormous amount the sum for which Miss Dorrit's father
      had become insolvent. The Bleeding Hearts resented her claiming to know
      people of such distinction.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was her father that I got acquainted with first. And through getting
      acquainted with him, you see&mdash;why&mdash;I got acquainted with her,'
      said Plornish tautologically.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! And there's manners! There's polish! There's a gentleman to have run
      to seed in the Marshalsea jail! Why, perhaps you are not aware,' said
      Plornish, lowering his voice, and speaking with a perverse admiration of
      what he ought to have pitied or despised, 'not aware that Miss Dorrit and
      her sister dursn't let him know that they work for a living. No!' said
      Plornish, looking with a ridiculous triumph first at his wife, and then
      all round the room. 'Dursn't let him know it, they dursn't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Without admiring him for that,' Clennam quietly observed, 'I am very
      sorry for him.' The remark appeared to suggest to Plornish, for the first
      time, that it might not be a very fine trait of character after all. He
      pondered about it for a moment, and gave it up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to me,' he resumed, 'certainly Mr Dorrit is as affable with me, I am
      sure, as I can possibly expect. Considering the differences and distances
      betwixt us, more so. But it's Miss Dorrit that we were speaking of.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True. Pray how did you introduce her at my mother's!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Plornish picked a bit of lime out of his whisker, put it between his
      lips, turned it with his tongue like a sugar-plum, considered, found
      himself unequal to the task of lucid explanation, and appealing to his
      wife, said, 'Sally, <i>you</i> may as well mention how it was, old woman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dorrit,' said Sally, hushing the baby from side to side, and laying
      her chin upon the little hand as it tried to disarrange the gown again,
      'came here one afternoon with a bit of writing, telling that how she
      wished for needlework, and asked if it would be considered any
      ill-conwenience in case she was to give her address here.' (Plornish
      repeated, her address here, in a low voice, as if he were making responses
      at church.) 'Me and Plornish says, No, Miss Dorrit, no ill-conwenience,'
      (Plornish repeated, no ill-conwenience,) 'and she wrote it in, according.
      Which then me and Plornish says, Ho Miss Dorrit!' (Plornish repeated, Ho
      Miss Dorrit.) 'Have you thought of copying it three or four times, as the
      way to make it known in more places than one? No, says Miss Dorrit, I have
      not, but I will. She copied it out according, on this table, in a sweet
      writing, and Plornish, he took it where he worked, having a job just
      then,' (Plornish repeated job just then,) 'and likewise to the landlord of
      the Yard; through which it was that Mrs Clennam first happened to employ
      Miss Dorrit.' Plornish repeated, employ Miss Dorrit; and Mrs Plornish
      having come to an end, feigned to bite the fingers of the little hand as
      she kissed it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The landlord of the Yard,' said Arthur Clennam, 'is&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is Mr Casby, by name, he is,' said Plornish, 'and Pancks, he collects
      the rents. That,' added Mr Plornish, dwelling on the subject with a slow
      thoughtfulness that appeared to have no connection with any specific
      object, and to lead him nowhere, 'that is about what <i>they</i> are, you
      may believe me or not, as you think proper.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay?' returned Clennam, thoughtful in his turn. 'Mr Casby, too! An old
      acquaintance of mine, long ago!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Plornish did not see his road to any comment on this fact, and made
      none. As there truly was no reason why he should have the least interest
      in it, Arthur Clennam went on to the present purport of his visit; namely,
      to make Plornish the instrument of effecting Tip's release, with as little
      detriment as possible to the self-reliance and self-helpfulness of the
      young man, supposing him to possess any remnant of those qualities:
      without doubt a very wide stretch of supposition. Plornish, having been
      made acquainted with the cause of action from the Defendant's own mouth,
      gave Arthur to understand that the Plaintiff was a 'Chaunter'&mdash;meaning,
      not a singer of anthems, but a seller of horses&mdash;and that he
      (Plornish) considered that ten shillings in the pound 'would settle
      handsome,' and that more would be a waste of money. The Principal and
      instrument soon drove off together to a stable-yard in High Holborn, where
      a remarkably fine grey gelding, worth, at the lowest figure, seventy-five
      guineas (not taking into account the value of the shot he had been made to
      swallow for the improvement of his form), was to be parted with for a
      twenty-pound note, in consequence of his having run away last week with
      Mrs Captain Barbary of Cheltenham, who wasn't up to a horse of his
      courage, and who, in mere spite, insisted on selling him for that
      ridiculous sum: or, in other words, on giving him away. Plornish, going up
      this yard alone and leaving his Principal outside, found a gentleman with
      tight drab legs, a rather old hat, a little hooked stick, and a blue
      neckerchief (Captain Maroon of Gloucestershire, a private friend of
      Captain Barbary); who happened to be there, in a friendly way, to mention
      these little circumstances concerning the remarkably fine grey gelding to
      any real judge of a horse and quick snapper-up of a good thing, who might
      look in at that address as per advertisement. This gentleman, happening
      also to be the Plaintiff in the Tip case, referred Mr Plornish to his
      solicitor, and declined to treat with Mr Plornish, or even to endure his
      presence in the yard, unless he appeared there with a twenty-pound note:
      in which case only, the gentleman would augur from appearances that he
      meant business, and might be induced to talk to him. On this hint, Mr
      Plornish retired to communicate with his Principal, and presently came
      back with the required credentials. Then said Captain Maroon, 'Now, how
      much time do you want to make the other twenty in? Now, I'll give you a
      month.' Then said Captain Maroon, when that wouldn't suit, 'Now, I'll tell
      what I'll do with you. You shall get me a good bill at four months, made
      payable at a banking-house, for the other twenty!' Then said Captain
      Maroon, when <i>that</i> wouldn't suit, 'Now, come; Here's the last I've
      got to say to you. You shall give me another ten down, and I'll run my pen
      clean through it.' Then said Captain Maroon when <i>that</i> wouldn't
      suit, 'Now, I'll tell you what it is, and this shuts it up; he has used me
      bad, but I'll let him off for another five down and a bottle of wine; and
      if you mean done, say done, and if you don't like it, leave it.' Finally
      said Captain Maroon, when <i>that</i> wouldn't suit either, 'Hand over,
      then!'&mdash;And in consideration of the first offer, gave a receipt in
      full and discharged the prisoner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Plornish,' said Arthur, 'I trust to you, if you please, to keep my
      secret. If you will undertake to let the young man know that he is free,
      and to tell him that you were employed to compound for the debt by some
      one whom you are not at liberty to name, you will not only do me a
      service, but may do him one, and his sister also.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The last reason, sir,' said Plornish, 'would be quite sufficient. Your
      wishes shall be attended to.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A Friend has obtained his discharge, you can say if you please. A Friend
      who hopes that for his sister's sake, if for no one else's, he will make
      good use of his liberty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your wishes, sir, shall be attended to.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And if you will be so good, in your better knowledge of the family, as to
      communicate freely with me, and to point out to me any means by which you
      think I may be delicately and really useful to Little Dorrit, I shall feel
      under an obligation to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't name it, sir,' returned Plornish, 'it'll be ekally a pleasure an a&mdash;it'l
      be ekally a pleasure and a&mdash;' Finding himself unable to balance his
      sentence after two efforts, Mr Plornish wisely dropped it. He took
      Clennam's card and appropriate pecuniary compliment.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was earnest to finish his commission at once, and his Principal was in
      the same mind. So his Principal offered to set him down at the Marshalsea
      Gate, and they drove in that direction over Blackfriars Bridge. On the
      way, Arthur elicited from his new friend a confused summary of the
      interior life of Bleeding Heart Yard. They was all hard up there, Mr
      Plornish said, uncommon hard up, to be sure. Well, he couldn't say how it
      was; he didn't know as anybody <i>could</i> say how it was; all he know'd
      was, that so it was. When a man felt, on his own back and in his own
      belly, that poor he was, that man (Mr Plornish gave it as his decided
      belief) know'd well that he was poor somehow or another, and you couldn't
      talk it out of him, no more than you could talk Beef into him. Then you
      see, some people as was better off said, and a good many such people lived
      pretty close up to the mark themselves if not beyond it so he'd heerd,
      that they was 'improvident' (that was the favourite word) down the Yard.
      For instance, if they see a man with his wife and children going to
      Hampton Court in a Wan, perhaps once in a year, they says, 'Hallo! I
      thought you was poor, my improvident friend!' Why, Lord, how hard it was
      upon a man! What was a man to do? He couldn't go mollancholy mad, and even
      if he did, you wouldn't be the better for it. In Mr Plornish's judgment
      you would be the worse for it. Yet you seemed to want to make a man
      mollancholy mad. You was always at it&mdash;if not with your right hand,
      with your left. What was they a doing in the Yard? Why, take a look at 'em
      and see. There was the girls and their mothers a working at their sewing,
      or their shoe-binding, or their trimming, or their waistcoat making, day
      and night and night and day, and not more than able to keep body and soul
      together after all&mdash;often not so much. There was people of pretty
      well all sorts of trades you could name, all wanting to work, and yet not
      able to get it. There was old people, after working all their lives, going
      and being shut up in the workhouse, much worse fed and lodged and treated
      altogether, than&mdash;Mr Plornish said manufacturers, but appeared to
      mean malefactors. Why, a man didn't know where to turn himself for a crumb
      of comfort. As to who was to blame for it, Mr Plornish didn't know who was
      to blame for it. He could tell you who suffered, but he couldn't tell you
      whose fault it was. It wasn't <i>his</i> place to find out, and who'd mind
      what he said, if he did find out? He only know'd that it wasn't put right
      by them what undertook that line of business, and that it didn't come
      right of itself. And, in brief, his illogical opinion was, that if you
      couldn't do nothing for him, you had better take nothing from him for
      doing of it; so far as he could make out, that was about what it come to.
      Thus, in a prolix, gently-growling, foolish way, did Plornish turn the
      tangled skein of his estate about and about, like a blind man who was
      trying to find some beginning or end to it; until they reached the prison
      gate. There, he left his Principal alone; to wonder, as he rode away, how
      many thousand Plornishes there might be within a day or two's journey of
      the Circumlocution Office, playing sundry curious variations on the same
      tune, which were not known by ear in that glorious institution.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 13. Patriarchal
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he mention of Mr Casby again revived in Clennam's memory the smouldering
      embers of curiosity and interest which Mrs Flintwinch had fanned on the
      night of his arrival. Flora Casby had been the beloved of his boyhood; and
      Flora was the daughter and only child of wooden-headed old Christopher (so
      he was still occasionally spoken of by some irreverent spirits who had had
      dealings with him, and in whom familiarity had bred its proverbial result
      perhaps), who was reputed to be rich in weekly tenants, and to get a good
      quantity of blood out of the stones of several unpromising courts and
      alleys.
    </p>
    <p>
      After some days of inquiry and research, Arthur Clennam became convinced
      that the case of the Father of the Marshalsea was indeed a hopeless one,
      and sorrowfully resigned the idea of helping him to freedom again. He had
      no hopeful inquiry to make at present, concerning Little Dorrit either;
      but he argued with himself that it might&mdash;for anything he knew&mdash;it
      might be serviceable to the poor child, if he renewed this acquaintance.
      It is hardly necessary to add that beyond all doubt he would have
      presented himself at Mr Casby's door, if there had been no Little Dorrit
      in existence; for we all know how we all deceive ourselves&mdash;that is
      to say, how people in general, our profounder selves excepted, deceive
      themselves&mdash;as to motives of action.
    </p>
    <p>
      With a comfortable impression upon him, and quite an honest one in its
      way, that he was still patronising Little Dorrit in doing what had no
      reference to her, he found himself one afternoon at the corner of Mr
      Casby's street. Mr Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn Road, which
      had set off from that thoroughfare with the intention of running at one
      heat down into the valley, and up again to the top of Pentonville Hill;
      but which had run itself out of breath in twenty yards, and had stood
      still ever since. There is no such place in that part now; but it remained
      there for many years, looking with a baulked countenance at the wilderness
      patched with unfruitful gardens and pimpled with eruptive summerhouses,
      that it had meant to run over in no time.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The house,' thought Clennam, as he crossed to the door, 'is as little
      changed as my mother's, and looks almost as gloomy. But the likeness ends
      outside. I know its staid repose within. The smell of its jars of old
      rose-leaves and lavender seems to come upon me even here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      When his knock at the bright brass knocker of obsolete shape brought a
      woman-servant to the door, those faded scents in truth saluted him like
      wintry breath that had a faint remembrance in it of the bygone spring. He
      stepped into the sober, silent, air-tight house&mdash;one might have
      fancied it to have been stifled by Mutes in the Eastern manner&mdash;and
      the door, closing again, seemed to shut out sound and motion. The
      furniture was formal, grave, and quaker-like, but well-kept; and had as
      prepossessing an aspect as anything, from a human creature to a wooden
      stool, that is meant for much use and is preserved for little, can ever
      wear. There was a grave clock, ticking somewhere up the staircase; and
      there was a songless bird in the same direction, pecking at his cage, as
      if he were ticking too. The parlour-fire ticked in the grate. There was
      only one person on the parlour-hearth, and the loud watch in his pocket
      ticked audibly.
    </p>
    <p>
      The servant-maid had ticked the two words 'Mr Clennam' so softly that she
      had not been heard; and he consequently stood, within the door she had
      closed, unnoticed. The figure of a man advanced in life, whose smooth grey
      eyebrows seemed to move to the ticking as the fire-light flickered on
      them, sat in an arm-chair, with his list shoes on the rug, and his thumbs
      slowly revolving over one another. This was old Christopher Casby&mdash;recognisable
      at a glance&mdash;as unchanged in twenty years and upward as his own solid
      furniture&mdash;as little touched by the influence of the varying seasons
      as the old rose-leaves and old lavender in his porcelain jars.
    </p>
    <p>
      Perhaps there never was a man, in this troublesome world, so troublesome
      for the imagination to picture as a boy. And yet he had changed very
      little in his progress through life. Confronting him, in the room in which
      he sat, was a boy's portrait, which anybody seeing him would have
      identified as Master Christopher Casby, aged ten: though disguised with a
      haymaking rake, for which he had had, at any time, as much taste or use as
      for a diving-bell; and sitting (on one of his own legs) upon a bank of
      violets, moved to precocious contemplation by the spire of a village
      church. There was the same smooth face and forehead, the same calm blue
      eye, the same placid air. The shining bald head, which looked so very
      large because it shone so much; and the long grey hair at its sides and
      back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very benevolent
      because it was never cut; were not, of course, to be seen in the boy as in
      the old man. Nevertheless, in the Seraphic creature with the haymaking
      rake, were clearly to be discerned the rudiments of the Patriarch with the
      list shoes.
    </p>
    <p>
      Patriarch was the name which many people delighted to give him. Various
      old ladies in the neighbourhood spoke of him as The Last of the
      Patriarchs. So grey, so slow, so quiet, so impassionate, so very bumpy in
      the head, Patriarch was the word for him. He had been accosted in the
      streets, and respectfully solicited to become a Patriarch for painters and
      for sculptors; with so much importunity, in sooth, that it would appear to
      be beyond the Fine Arts to remember the points of a Patriarch, or to
      invent one. Philanthropists of both sexes had asked who he was, and on
      being informed, 'Old Christopher Casby, formerly Town-agent to Lord
      Decimus Tite Barnacle,' had cried in a rapture of disappointment, 'Oh!
      why, with that head, is he not a benefactor to his species! Oh! why, with
      that head, is he not a father to the orphan and a friend to the
      friendless!' With that head, however, he remained old Christopher Casby,
      proclaimed by common report rich in house property; and with that head, he
      now sat in his silent parlour. Indeed it would be the height of unreason
      to expect him to be sitting there without that head.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam moved to attract his attention, and the grey eyebrows
      turned towards him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon,' said Clennam, 'I fear you did not hear me announced?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir, I did not. Did you wish to see me, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wished to pay my respects.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Casby seemed a feather's weight disappointed by the last words, having
      perhaps prepared himself for the visitor's wishing to pay something else.
      'Have I the pleasure, sir,' he proceeded&mdash;'take a chair, if you
      please&mdash;have I the pleasure of knowing&mdash;? Ah! truly, yes, I
      think I have! I believe I am not mistaken in supposing that I am
      acquainted with those features? I think I address a gentleman of whose
      return to this country I was informed by Mr Flintwinch?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That is your present visitor.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really! Mr Clennam?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No other, Mr Casby.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. How have you been since we met?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Without thinking it worth while to explain that in the course of some
      quarter of a century he had experienced occasional slight fluctuations in
      his health and spirits, Clennam answered generally that he had never been
      better, or something equally to the purpose; and shook hands with the
      possessor of 'that head' as it shed its patriarchal light upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are older, Mr Clennam,' said Christopher Casby.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are&mdash;not younger,' said Clennam. After this wise remark he felt
      that he was scarcely shining with brilliancy, and became aware that he was
      nervous.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And your respected father,' said Mr Casby, 'is no more! I was grieved to
      hear it, Mr Clennam, I was grieved.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur replied in the usual way that he felt infinitely obliged to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There was a time,' said Mr Casby, 'when your parents and myself were not
      on friendly terms. There was a little family misunderstanding among us.
      Your respected mother was rather jealous of her son, maybe; when I say her
      son, I mean your worthy self, your worthy self.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His smooth face had a bloom upon it like ripe wall-fruit. What with his
      blooming face, and that head, and his blue eyes, he seemed to be
      delivering sentiments of rare wisdom and virtue. In like manner, his
      physiognomical expression seemed to teem with benignity. Nobody could have
      said where the wisdom was, or where the virtue was, or where the benignity
      was; but they all seemed to be somewhere about him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Those times, however,' pursued Mr Casby, 'are past and gone, past and
      gone. I do myself the pleasure of making a visit to your respected mother
      occasionally, and of admiring the fortitude and strength of mind with
      which she bears her trials, bears her trials.'
    </p>
    <p>
      When he made one of these little repetitions, sitting with his hands
      crossed before him, he did it with his head on one side, and a gentle
      smile, as if he had something in his thoughts too sweetly profound to be
      put into words. As if he denied himself the pleasure of uttering it, lest
      he should soar too high; and his meekness therefore preferred to be
      unmeaning.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have heard that you were kind enough on one of those occasions,' said
      Arthur, catching at the opportunity as it drifted past him, 'to mention
      Little Dorrit to my mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Little&mdash;? Dorrit? That's the seamstress who was mentioned to me by a
      small tenant of mine? Yes, yes. Dorrit? That's the name. Ah, yes, yes! You
      call her Little Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      No road in that direction. Nothing came of the cross-cut. It led no
      further.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My daughter Flora,' said Mr Casby, 'as you may have heard probably, Mr
      Clennam, was married and established in life, several years ago. She had
      the misfortune to lose her husband when she had been married a few months.
      She resides with me again. She will be glad to see you, if you will permit
      me to let her know that you are here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By all means,' returned Clennam. 'I should have preferred the request, if
      your kindness had not anticipated me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Upon this Mr Casby rose up in his list shoes, and with a slow, heavy step
      (he was of an elephantine build), made for the door. He had a long
      wide-skirted bottle-green coat on, and a bottle-green pair of trousers,
      and a bottle-green waistcoat. The Patriarchs were not dressed in
      bottle-green broadcloth, and yet his clothes looked patriarchal.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had scarcely left the room, and allowed the ticking to become audible
      again, when a quick hand turned a latchkey in the house-door, opened it,
      and shut it. Immediately afterwards, a quick and eager short dark man came
      into the room with so much way upon him that he was within a foot of
      Clennam before he could stop.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Halloa!' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam saw no reason why he should not say 'Halloa!' too.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's the matter?' said the short dark man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have not heard that anything is the matter,' returned Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where's Mr Casby?' asked the short dark man, looking about.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He will be here directly, if you want him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>I</i> want him?' said the short dark man. 'Don't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      This elicited a word or two of explanation from Clennam, during the
      delivery of which the short dark man held his breath and looked at him. He
      was dressed in black and rusty iron grey; had jet black beads of eyes; a
      scrubby little black chin; wiry black hair striking out from his head in
      prongs, like forks or hair-pins; and a complexion that was very dingy by
      nature, or very dirty by art, or a compound of nature and art. He had
      dirty hands and dirty broken nails, and looked as if he had been in the
      coals; he was in a perspiration, and snorted and sniffed and puffed and
      blew, like a little labouring steam-engine.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' said he, when Arthur told him how he came to be there. 'Very well.
      That's right. If he should ask for Pancks, will you be so good as to say
      that Pancks is come in?' And so, with a snort and a puff, he worked out by
      another door.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, in the old days at home, certain audacious doubts respecting the last
      of the Patriarchs, which were afloat in the air, had, by some forgotten
      means, come in contact with Arthur's sensorium. He was aware of motes and
      specks of suspicion in the atmosphere of that time; seen through which
      medium, Christopher Casby was a mere Inn signpost, without any Inn&mdash;an
      invitation to rest and be thankful, when there was no place to put up at,
      and nothing whatever to be thankful for. He knew that some of these specks
      even represented Christopher as capable of harbouring designs in 'that
      head,' and as being a crafty impostor. Other motes there were which showed
      him as a heavy, selfish, drifting Booby, who, having stumbled, in the
      course of his unwieldy jostlings against other men, on the discovery that
      to get through life with ease and credit, he had but to hold his tongue,
      keep the bald part of his head well polished, and leave his hair alone,
      had had just cunning enough to seize the idea and stick to it. It was said
      that his being town-agent to Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle was referable, not
      to his having the least business capacity, but to his looking so supremely
      benignant that nobody could suppose the property screwed or jobbed under
      such a man; also, that for similar reasons he now got more money out of
      his own wretched lettings, unquestioned, than anybody with a less nobby
      and less shining crown could possibly have done. In a word, it was
      represented (Clennam called to mind, alone in the ticking parlour) that
      many people select their models, much as the painters, just now mentioned,
      select theirs; and that, whereas in the Royal Academy some evil old
      ruffian of a Dog-stealer will annually be found embodying all the cardinal
      virtues, on account of his eyelashes, or his chin, or his legs (thereby
      planting thorns of confusion in the breasts of the more observant students
      of nature), so, in the great social Exhibition, accessories are often
      accepted in lieu of the internal character.
    </p>
    <p>
      Calling these things to mind, and ranging Mr Pancks in a row with them,
      Arthur Clennam leaned this day to the opinion, without quite deciding on
      it, that the last of the Patriarchs was the drifting Booby aforesaid, with
      the one idea of keeping the bald part of his head highly polished: and
      that, much as an unwieldy ship in the Thames river may sometimes be seen
      heavily driving with the tide, broadside on, stern first, in its own way
      and in the way of everything else, though making a great show of
      navigation, when all of a sudden, a little coaly steam-tug will bear down
      upon it, take it in tow, and bustle off with it; similarly the cumbrous
      Patriarch had been taken in tow by the snorting Pancks, and was now
      following in the wake of that dingy little craft.
    </p>
    <p>
      The return of Mr Casby with his daughter Flora, put an end to these
      meditations. Clennam's eyes no sooner fell upon the subject of his old
      passion than it shivered and broke to pieces.
    </p>
    <p>
      Most men will be found sufficiently true to themselves to be true to an
      old idea. It is no proof of an inconstant mind, but exactly the opposite,
      when the idea will not bear close comparison with the reality, and the
      contrast is a fatal shock to it. Such was Clennam's case. In his youth he
      had ardently loved this woman, and had heaped upon her all the locked-up
      wealth of his affection and imagination. That wealth had been, in his
      desert home, like Robinson Crusoe's money; exchangeable with no one, lying
      idle in the dark to rust, until he poured it out for her. Ever since that
      memorable time, though he had, until the night of his arrival, as
      completely dismissed her from any association with his Present or Future
      as if she had been dead (which she might easily have been for anything he
      knew), he had kept the old fancy of the Past unchanged, in its old sacred
      place. And now, after all, the last of the Patriarchs coolly walked into
      the parlour, saying in effect, 'Be good enough to throw it down and dance
      upon it. This is Flora.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad too, and short of breath;
      but that was not much. Flora, whom he had left a lily, had become a peony;
      but that was not much. Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she said
      and thought, was diffuse and silly. That was much. Flora, who had been
      spoiled and artless long ago, was determined to be spoiled and artless
      now. That was a fatal blow.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is Flora!
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure,' giggled Flora, tossing her head with a caricature of her
      girlish manner, such as a mummer might have presented at her own funeral,
      if she had lived and died in classical antiquity, 'I am ashamed to see Mr
      Clennam, I am a mere fright, I know he'll find me fearfully changed, I am
      actually an old woman, it's shocking to be found out, it's really
      shocking!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He assured her that she was just what he had expected and that time had
      not stood still with himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! But with a gentleman it's so different and really you look so
      amazingly well that you have no right to say anything of the kind, while,
      as to me, you know&mdash;oh!' cried Flora with a little scream, 'I am
      dreadful!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Patriarch, apparently not yet understanding his own part in the drama
      under representation, glowed with vacant serenity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But if we talk of not having changed,' said Flora, who, whatever she
      said, never once came to a full stop, 'look at Papa, is not Papa precisely
      what he was when you went away, isn't it cruel and unnatural of Papa to be
      such a reproach to his own child, if we go on in this way much longer
      people who don't know us will begin to suppose that I am Papa's Mama!'
    </p>
    <p>
      That must be a long time hence, Arthur considered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh Mr Clennam you insincerest of creatures,' said Flora, 'I perceive
      already you have not lost your old way of paying compliments, your old way
      when you used to pretend to be so sentimentally struck you know&mdash;at
      least I don't mean that, I&mdash;oh I don't know what I mean!' Here Flora
      tittered confusedly, and gave him one of her old glances.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Patriarch, as if he now began to perceive that his part in the piece
      was to get off the stage as soon as might be, rose, and went to the door
      by which Pancks had worked out, hailing that Tug by name. He received an
      answer from some little Dock beyond, and was towed out of sight directly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You mustn't think of going yet,' said Flora&mdash;Arthur had looked at
      his hat, being in a ludicrous dismay, and not knowing what to do: 'you
      could never be so unkind as to think of going, Arthur&mdash;I mean Mr
      Arthur&mdash;or I suppose Mr Clennam would be far more proper&mdash;but I
      am sure I don't know what I am saying&mdash;without a word about the dear
      old days gone for ever, when I come to think of it I dare say it would be
      much better not to speak of them and it's highly probable that you have
      some much more agreeable engagement and pray let Me be the last person in
      the world to interfere with it though there <i>was</i> a time, but I am
      running into nonsense again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Was it possible that Flora could have been such a chatterer in the days
      she referred to? Could there have been anything like her present
      disjointed volubility in the fascinations that had captivated him?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed I have little doubt,' said Flora, running on with astonishing
      speed, and pointing her conversation with nothing but commas, and very few
      of them, 'that you are married to some Chinese lady, being in China so
      long and being in business and naturally desirous to settle and extend
      your connection nothing was more likely than that you should propose to a
      Chinese lady and nothing was more natural I am sure than that the Chinese
      lady should accept you and think herself very well off too, I only hope
      she's not a Pagodian dissenter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not,' returned Arthur, smiling in spite of himself, 'married to any
      lady, Flora.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh good gracious me I hope you never kept yourself a bachelor so long on
      my account!' tittered Flora; 'but of course you never did why should you,
      pray don't answer, I don't know where I'm running to, oh do tell me
      something about the Chinese ladies whether their eyes are really so long
      and narrow always putting me in mind of mother-of-pearl fish at cards and
      do they really wear tails down their back and plaited too or is it only
      the men, and when they pull their hair so very tight off their foreheads
      don't they hurt themselves, and why do they stick little bells all over
      their bridges and temples and hats and things or don't they really do it?'
      Flora gave him another of her old glances. Instantly she went on again, as
      if he had spoken in reply for some time.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then it's all true and they really do! good gracious Arthur!&mdash;pray
      excuse me&mdash;old habit&mdash;Mr Clennam far more proper&mdash;what a
      country to live in for so long a time, and with so many lanterns and
      umbrellas too how very dark and wet the climate ought to be and no doubt
      actually is, and the sums of money that must be made by those two trades
      where everybody carries them and hangs them everywhere, the little shoes
      too and the feet screwed back in infancy is quite surprising, what a
      traveller you are!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In his ridiculous distress, Clennam received another of the old glances
      without in the least knowing what to do with it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear dear,' said Flora, 'only to think of the changes at home Arthur&mdash;cannot
      overcome it, and seems so natural, Mr Clennam far more proper&mdash;since
      you became familiar with the Chinese customs and language which I am
      persuaded you speak like a Native if not better for you were always quick
      and clever though immensely difficult no doubt, I am sure the tea chests
      alone would kill me if I tried, such changes Arthur&mdash;I am doing it
      again, seems so natural, most improper&mdash;as no one could have
      believed, who could have ever imagined Mrs Finching when I can't imagine
      it myself!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that your married name?' asked Arthur, struck, in the midst of all
      this, by a certain warmth of heart that expressed itself in her tone when
      she referred, however oddly, to the youthful relation in which they had
      stood to one another. 'Finching?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Finching oh yes isn't it a dreadful name, but as Mr F. said when he
      proposed to me which he did seven times and handsomely consented I must
      say to be what he used to call on liking twelve months, after all, he
      wasn't answerable for it and couldn't help it could he, Excellent man, not
      at all like you but excellent man!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora had at last talked herself out of breath for one moment. One moment;
      for she recovered breath in the act of raising a minute corner of her
      pocket-handkerchief to her eye, as a tribute to the ghost of the departed
      Mr F., and began again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No one could dispute, Arthur&mdash;Mr Clennam&mdash;that it's quite right
      you should be formally friendly to me under the altered circumstances and
      indeed you couldn't be anything else, at least I suppose not you ought to
      know, but I can't help recalling that there <i>was</i> a time when things
      were very different.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Mrs Finching,' Arthur began, struck by the good tone again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh not that nasty ugly name, say Flora!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flora. I assure you, Flora, I am happy in seeing you once more, and in
      finding that, like me, you have not forgotten the old foolish dreams, when
      we saw all before us in the light of our youth and hope.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't seem so,' pouted Flora, 'you take it very coolly, but however I
      know you are disappointed in me, I suppose the Chinese ladies&mdash;Mandarinesses
      if you call them so&mdash;are the cause or perhaps I am the cause myself,
      it's just as likely.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no,' Clennam entreated, 'don't say that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh I must you know,' said Flora, in a positive tone, 'what nonsense not
      to, I know I am not what you expected, I know that very well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      In the midst of her rapidity, she had found that out with the quick
      perception of a cleverer woman. The inconsistent and profoundly
      unreasonable way in which she instantly went on, nevertheless, to
      interweave their long-abandoned boy and girl relations with their present
      interview, made Clennam feel as if he were light-headed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'One remark,' said Flora, giving their conversation, without the slightest
      notice and to the great terror of Clennam, the tone of a love-quarrel, 'I
      wish to make, one explanation I wish to offer, when your Mama came and
      made a scene of it with my Papa and when I was called down into the little
      breakfast-room where they were looking at one another with your Mama's
      parasol between them seated on two chairs like mad bulls what was I to
      do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Mrs Finching,' urged Clennam&mdash;'all so long ago and so long
      concluded, is it worth while seriously to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can't Arthur,' returned Flora, 'be denounced as heartless by the whole
      society of China without setting myself right when I have the opportunity
      of doing so, and you must be very well aware that there was Paul and
      Virginia which had to be returned and which was returned without note or
      comment, not that I mean to say you could have written to me watched as I
      was but if it had only come back with a red wafer on the cover I should
      have known that it meant Come to Pekin Nankeen and What's the third place,
      barefoot.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Mrs Finching, you were not to blame, and I never blamed you. We
      were both too young, too dependent and helpless, to do anything but accept
      our separation.&mdash;Pray think how long ago,' gently remonstrated
      Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'One more remark,' proceeded Flora with unslackened volubility, 'I wish to
      make, one more explanation I wish to offer, for five days I had a cold in
      the head from crying which I passed entirely in the back drawing-room&mdash;there
      is the back drawing-room still on the first floor and still at the back of
      the house to confirm my words&mdash;when that dreary period had passed a
      lull succeeded years rolled on and Mr F. became acquainted with us at a
      mutual friend's, he was all attention he called next day he soon began to
      call three evenings a week and to send in little things for supper it was
      not love on Mr F.'s part it was adoration, Mr F. proposed with the full
      approval of Papa and what could I do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing whatever,' said Arthur, with the cheerfulest readiness, 'but what
      you did. Let an old friend assure you of his full conviction that you did
      quite right.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'One last remark,' proceeded Flora, rejecting commonplace life with a wave
      of her hand, 'I wish to make, one last explanation I wish to offer, there
      <i>was</i> a time ere Mr F. first paid attentions incapable of being
      mistaken, but that is past and was not to be, dear Mr Clennam you no
      longer wear a golden chain you are free I trust you may be happy, here is
      Papa who is always tiresome and putting in his nose everywhere where he is
      not wanted.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With these words, and with a hasty gesture fraught with timid caution&mdash;such
      a gesture had Clennam's eyes been familiar with in the old time&mdash;poor
      Flora left herself at eighteen years of age, a long long way behind again;
      and came to a full stop at last.
    </p>
    <p>
      Or rather, she left about half of herself at eighteen years of age behind,
      and grafted the rest on to the relict of the late Mr F.; thus making a
      moral mermaid of herself, which her once boy-lover contemplated with
      feelings wherein his sense of the sorrowful and his sense of the comical
      were curiously blended.
    </p>
    <p>
      For example. As if there were a secret understanding between herself and
      Clennam of the most thrilling nature; as if the first of a train of
      post-chaises and four, extending all the way to Scotland, were at that
      moment round the corner; and as if she couldn't (and wouldn't) have walked
      into the Parish Church with him, under the shade of the family umbrella,
      with the Patriarchal blessing on her head, and the perfect concurrence of
      all mankind; Flora comforted her soul with agonies of mysterious
      signalling, expressing dread of discovery. With the sensation of becoming
      more and more light-headed every minute, Clennam saw the relict of the
      late Mr F. enjoying herself in the most wonderful manner, by putting
      herself and him in their old places, and going through all the old
      performances&mdash;now, when the stage was dusty, when the scenery was
      faded, when the youthful actors were dead, when the orchestra was empty,
      when the lights were out. And still, through all this grotesque revival of
      what he remembered as having once been prettily natural to her, he could
      not but feel that it revived at sight of him, and that there was a tender
      memory in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Patriarch insisted on his staying to dinner, and Flora signalled
      'Yes!' Clennam so wished he could have done more than stay to dinner&mdash;so
      heartily wished he could have found the Flora that had been, or that never
      had been&mdash;that he thought the least atonement he could make for the
      disappointment he almost felt ashamed of, was to give himself up to the
      family desire. Therefore, he stayed to dinner.
    </p>
    <p>
      Pancks dined with them. Pancks steamed out of his little dock at a quarter
      before six, and bore straight down for the Patriarch, who happened to be
      then driving, in an inane manner, through a stagnant account of Bleeding
      Heart Yard. Pancks instantly made fast to him and hauled him out.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bleeding Heart Yard?' said Pancks, with a puff and a snort. 'It's a
      troublesome property. Don't pay you badly, but rents are very hard to get
      there. You have more trouble with that one place than with all the places
      belonging to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Just as the big ship in tow gets the credit, with most spectators, of
      being the powerful object, so the Patriarch usually seemed to have said
      himself whatever Pancks said for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed?' returned Clennam, upon whom this impression was so efficiently
      made by a mere gleam of the polished head that he spoke the ship instead
      of the Tug. 'The people are so poor there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>You</i> can't say, you know,' snorted Pancks, taking one of his dirty
      hands out of his rusty iron-grey pockets to bite his nails, if he could
      find any, and turning his beads of eyes upon his employer, 'whether
      they're poor or not. They say they are, but they all say that. When a man
      says he's rich, you're generally sure he isn't. Besides, if they <i>are</i>
      poor, you can't help it. You'd be poor yourself if you didn't get your
      rents.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True enough,' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're not going to keep open house for all the poor of London,' pursued
      Pancks. 'You're not going to lodge 'em for nothing. You're not going to
      open your gates wide and let 'em come free. Not if you know it, you
      ain't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Casby shook his head, in Placid and benignant generality.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If a man takes a room of you at half-a-crown a week, and when the week
      comes round hasn't got the half-crown, you say to that man, Why have you
      got the room, then? If you haven't got the one thing, why have you got the
      other? What have you been and done with your money? What do you mean by
      it? What are you up to? That's what <i>you</i> say to a man of that sort;
      and if you didn't say it, more shame for you!' Mr Pancks here made a
      singular and startling noise, produced by a strong blowing effort in the
      region of the nose, unattended by any result but that acoustic one.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have some extent of such property about the east and north-east here,
      I believe?' said Clennam, doubtful which of the two to address.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, pretty well,' said Pancks. 'You're not particular to east or
      north-east, any point of the compass will do for you. What you want is a
      good investment and a quick return. You take it where you can find it. You
      ain't nice as to situation&mdash;not you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a fourth and most original figure in the Patriarchal tent, who
      also appeared before dinner. This was an amazing little old woman, with a
      face like a staring wooden doll too cheap for expression, and a stiff
      yellow wig perched unevenly on the top of her head, as if the child who
      owned the doll had driven a tack through it anywhere, so that it only got
      fastened on. Another remarkable thing in this little old woman was, that
      the same child seemed to have damaged her face in two or three places with
      some blunt instrument in the nature of a spoon; her countenance, and
      particularly the tip of her nose, presenting the phenomena of several
      dints, generally answering to the bowl of that article. A further
      remarkable thing in this little old woman was, that she had no name but Mr
      F.'s Aunt.
    </p>
    <p>
      She broke upon the visitor's view under the following circumstances: Flora
      said when the first dish was being put on the table, perhaps Mr Clennam
      might not have heard that Mr F. had left her a legacy? Clennam in return
      implied his hope that Mr F. had endowed the wife whom he adored, with the
      greater part of his worldly substance, if not with all. Flora said, oh
      yes, she didn't mean that, Mr F. had made a beautiful will, but he had
      left her as a separate legacy, his Aunt. She then went out of the room to
      fetch the legacy, and, on her return, rather triumphantly presented 'Mr
      F.'s Aunt.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The major characteristics discoverable by the stranger in Mr F.'s Aunt,
      were extreme severity and grim taciturnity; sometimes interrupted by a
      propensity to offer remarks in a deep warning voice, which, being totally
      uncalled for by anything said by anybody, and traceable to no association
      of ideas, confounded and terrified the Mind. Mr F.'s Aunt may have thrown
      in these observations on some system of her own, and it may have been
      ingenious, or even subtle: but the key to it was wanted.
    </p>
    <p>
      The neatly-served and well-cooked dinner (for everything about the
      Patriarchal household promoted quiet digestion) began with some soup, some
      fried soles, a butter-boat of shrimp sauce, and a dish of potatoes. The
      conversation still turned on the receipt of rents. Mr F.'s Aunt, after
      regarding the company for ten minutes with a malevolent gaze, delivered
      the following fearful remark:
    </p>
    <p>
      'When we lived at Henley, Barnes's gander was stole by tinkers.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks courageously nodded his head and said, 'All right, ma'am.' But
      the effect of this mysterious communication upon Clennam was absolutely to
      frighten him. And another circumstance invested this old lady with
      peculiar terrors. Though she was always staring, she never acknowledged
      that she saw any individual. The polite and attentive stranger would
      desire, say, to consult her inclinations on the subject of potatoes. His
      expressive action would be hopelessly lost upon her, and what could he do?
      No man could say, 'Mr F.'s Aunt, will you permit me?' Every man retired
      from the spoon, as Clennam did, cowed and baffled.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was mutton, a steak, and an apple-pie&mdash;nothing in the remotest
      way connected with ganders&mdash;and the dinner went on like a
      disenchanted feast, as it truly was. Once upon a time Clennam had sat at
      that table taking no heed of anything but Flora; now the principal heed he
      took of Flora was to observe, against his will, that she was very fond of
      porter, that she combined a great deal of sherry with sentiment, and that
      if she were a little overgrown, it was upon substantial grounds. The last
      of the Patriarchs had always been a mighty eater, and he disposed of an
      immense quantity of solid food with the benignity of a good soul who was
      feeding some one else. Mr Pancks, who was always in a hurry, and who
      referred at intervals to a little dirty notebook which he kept beside him
      (perhaps containing the names of the defaulters he meant to look up by way
      of dessert), took in his victuals much as if he were coaling; with a good
      deal of noise, a good deal of dropping about, and a puff and a snort
      occasionally, as if he were nearly ready to steam away.
    </p>
    <p>
      All through dinner, Flora combined her present appetite for eating and
      drinking with her past appetite for romantic love, in a way that made
      Clennam afraid to lift his eyes from his plate; since he could not look
      towards her without receiving some glance of mysterious meaning or
      warning, as if they were engaged in a plot. Mr F.'s Aunt sat silently
      defying him with an aspect of the greatest bitterness, until the removal
      of the cloth and the appearance of the decanters, when she originated
      another observation&mdash;struck into the conversation like a clock,
      without consulting anybody.
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora had just said, 'Mr Clennam, will you give me a glass of port for Mr
      F.'s Aunt?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Monument near London Bridge,' that lady instantly proclaimed, 'was
      put up arter the Great Fire of London; and the Great Fire of London was
      not the fire in which your uncle George's workshops was burned down.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks, with his former courage, said, 'Indeed, ma'am? All right!' But
      appearing to be incensed by imaginary contradiction, or other ill-usage,
      Mr F.'s Aunt, instead of relapsing into silence, made the following
      additional proclamation:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hate a fool!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She imparted to this sentiment, in itself almost Solomonic, so extremely
      injurious and personal a character by levelling it straight at the
      visitor's head, that it became necessary to lead Mr F.'s Aunt from the
      room. This was quietly done by Flora; Mr F.'s Aunt offering no resistance,
      but inquiring on her way out, 'What he come there for, then?' with
      implacable animosity.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0151m.jpg" alt="0151m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0151.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      When Flora returned, she explained that her legacy was a clever old lady,
      but was sometimes a little singular, and 'took dislikes'&mdash;peculiarities
      of which Flora seemed to be proud rather than otherwise. As Flora's good
      nature shone in the case, Clennam had no fault to find with the old lady
      for eliciting it, now that he was relieved from the terrors of her
      presence; and they took a glass or two of wine in peace. Foreseeing then
      that the Pancks would shortly get under weigh, and that the Patriarch
      would go to sleep, he pleaded the necessity of visiting his mother, and
      asked Mr Pancks in which direction he was going?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Citywards, sir,' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall we walk together?' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite agreeable,' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      Meanwhile Flora was murmuring in rapid snatches for his ear, that there
      was a time and that the past was a yawning gulf however and that a golden
      chain no longer bound him and that she revered the memory of the late Mr
      F. and that she should be at home to-morrow at half-past one and that the
      decrees of Fate were beyond recall and that she considered nothing so
      improbable as that he ever walked on the north-west side of Gray's-Inn
      Gardens at exactly four o'clock in the afternoon. He tried at parting to
      give his hand in frankness to the existing Flora&mdash;not the vanished
      Flora, or the mermaid&mdash;but Flora wouldn't have it, couldn't have it,
      was wholly destitute of the power of separating herself and him from their
      bygone characters. He left the house miserably enough; and so much more
      light-headed than ever, that if it had not been his good fortune to be
      towed away, he might, for the first quarter of an hour, have drifted
      anywhere.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he began to come to himself, in the cooler air and the absence of
      Flora, he found Pancks at full speed, cropping such scanty pasturage of
      nails as he could find, and snorting at intervals. These, in conjunction
      with one hand in his pocket and his roughened hat hind side before, were
      evidently the conditions under which he reflected.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A fresh night!' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, it's pretty fresh,' assented Pancks. 'As a stranger you feel the
      climate more than I do, I dare say. Indeed I haven't got time to feel it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You lead such a busy life?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I have always some of 'em to look up, or something to look after.
      But I like business,' said Pancks, getting on a little faster. 'What's a
      man made for?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'For nothing else?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      Pancks put the counter question, 'What else?' It packed up, in the
      smallest compass, a weight that had rested on Clennam's life; and he made
      no answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's what I ask our weekly tenants,' said Pancks. 'Some of 'em will
      pull long faces to me, and say, Poor as you see us, master, we're always
      grinding, drudging, toiling, every minute we're awake. I say to them, What
      else are you made for? It shuts them up. They haven't a word to answer.
      What else are you made for? That clinches it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah dear, dear, dear!' sighed Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here am I,' said Pancks, pursuing his argument with the weekly tenant.
      'What else do you suppose I think I am made for? Nothing. Rattle me out of
      bed early, set me going, give me as short a time as you like to bolt my
      meals in, and keep me at it. Keep me always at it, and I'll keep you
      always at it, you keep somebody else always at it. There you are with the
      Whole Duty of Man in a commercial country.'
    </p>
    <p>
      When they had walked a little further in silence, Clennam said: 'Have you
      no taste for anything, Mr Pancks?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's taste?' drily retorted Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let us say inclination.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have an inclination to get money, sir,' said Pancks, 'if you will show
      me how.' He blew off that sound again, and it occurred to his companion
      for the first time that it was his way of laughing. He was a singular man
      in all respects; he might not have been quite in earnest, but that the
      short, hard, rapid manner in which he shot out these cinders of
      principles, as if it were done by mechanical revolvency, seemed
      irreconcilable with banter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are no great reader, I suppose?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never read anything but letters and accounts. Never collect anything but
      advertisements relative to next of kin. If <i>that's</i> a taste, I have
      got that. You're not of the Clennams of Cornwall, Mr Clennam?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not that I ever heard of.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know you're not. I asked your mother, sir. She has too much character
      to let a chance escape her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Supposing I had been of the Clennams of Cornwall?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'd have heard of something to your advantage.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed! I have heard of little enough to my advantage for some time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's a Cornish property going a begging, sir, and not a Cornish
      Clennam to have it for the asking,' said Pancks, taking his note-book from
      his breast pocket and putting it in again. 'I turn off here. I wish you
      good night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good night!' said Clennam. But the Tug, suddenly lightened, and
      untrammelled by having any weight in tow, was already puffing away into
      the distance.
    </p>
    <p>
      They had crossed Smithfield together, and Clennam was left alone at the
      corner of Barbican. He had no intention of presenting himself in his
      mother's dismal room that night, and could not have felt more depressed
      and cast away if he had been in a wilderness. He turned slowly down
      Aldersgate Street, and was pondering his way along towards Saint Paul's,
      purposing to come into one of the great thoroughfares for the sake of
      their light and life, when a crowd of people flocked towards him on the
      same pavement, and he stood aside against a shop to let them pass. As they
      came up, he made out that they were gathered around a something that was
      carried on men's shoulders. He soon saw that it was a litter, hastily made
      of a shutter or some such thing; and a recumbent figure upon it, and the
      scraps of conversation in the crowd, and a muddy bundle carried by one
      man, and a muddy hat carried by another, informed him that an accident had
      occurred. The litter stopped under a lamp before it had passed him
      half-a-dozen paces, for some readjustment of the burden; and, the crowd
      stopping too, he found himself in the midst of the array.
    </p>
    <p>
      'An accident going to the Hospital?' he asked an old man beside him, who
      stood shaking his head, inviting conversation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said the man, 'along of them Mails. They ought to be prosecuted and
      fined, them Mails. They come a racing out of Lad Lane and Wood Street at
      twelve or fourteen mile a hour, them Mails do. The only wonder is, that
      people ain't killed oftener by them Mails.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This person is not killed, I hope?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know!' said the man, 'it an't for the want of a will in them
      Mails, if he an't.' The speaker having folded his arms, and set in
      comfortably to address his depreciation of them Mails to any of the
      bystanders who would listen, several voices, out of pure sympathy with the
      sufferer, confirmed him; one voice saying to Clennam, 'They're a public
      nuisance, them Mails, sir;' another, '<i>I</i> see one on 'em pull up
      within half a inch of a boy, last night;' another, '<i>I</i> see one on
      'em go over a cat, sir&mdash;and it might have been your own mother;' and
      all representing, by implication, that if he happened to possess any
      public influence, he could not use it better than against them Mails.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, a native Englishman is put to it every night of his life, to save
      his life from them Mails,' argued the first old man; 'and <i>he</i> knows
      when they're a coming round the corner, to tear him limb from limb. What
      can you expect from a poor foreigner who don't know nothing about 'em!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is this a foreigner?' said Clennam, leaning forward to look.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the midst of such replies as 'Frenchman, sir,' 'Porteghee, sir,'
      'Dutchman, sir,' 'Prooshan, sir,' and other conflicting testimony, he now
      heard a feeble voice asking, both in Italian and in French, for water. A
      general remark going round, in reply, of 'Ah, poor fellow, he says he'll
      never get over it; and no wonder!' Clennam begged to be allowed to pass,
      as he understood the poor creature. He was immediately handed to the
      front, to speak to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'First, he wants some water,' said he, looking round. (A dozen good
      fellows dispersed to get it.) 'Are you badly hurt, my friend?' he asked
      the man on the litter, in Italian.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir; yes, yes, yes. It's my leg, it's my leg. But it pleases me to
      hear the old music, though I am very bad.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are a traveller! Stay! See, the water! Let me give you some.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They had rested the litter on a pile of paving stones. It was at a
      convenient height from the ground, and by stooping he could lightly raise
      the head with one hand and hold the glass to his lips with the other. A
      little, muscular, brown man, with black hair and white teeth. A lively
      face, apparently. Earrings in his ears.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's well. You are a traveller?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Surely, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A stranger in this city?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Surely, surely, altogether. I am arrived this unhappy evening.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'From what country?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Marseilles.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, see there! I also! Almost as much a stranger here as you, though
      born here, I came from Marseilles a little while ago. Don't be cast down.'
      The face looked up at him imploringly, as he rose from wiping it, and
      gently replaced the coat that covered the writhing figure. 'I won't leave
      you till you shall be well taken care of. Courage! You will be very much
      better half an hour hence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! Altro, Altro!' cried the poor little man, in a faintly incredulous
      tone; and as they took him up, hung out his right hand to give the
      forefinger a back-handed shake in the air.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam turned; and walking beside the litter, and saying an
      encouraging word now and then, accompanied it to the neighbouring hospital
      of Saint Bartholomew. None of the crowd but the bearers and he being
      admitted, the disabled man was soon laid on a table in a cool, methodical
      way, and carefully examined by a surgeon who was as near at hand, and as
      ready to appear as Calamity herself. 'He hardly knows an English word,'
      said Clennam; 'is he badly hurt?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let us know all about it first,' said the surgeon, continuing his
      examination with a businesslike delight in it, 'before we pronounce.'
    </p>
    <p>
      After trying the leg with a finger, and two fingers, and one hand and two
      hands, and over and under, and up and down, and in this direction and in
      that, and approvingly remarking on the points of interest to another
      gentleman who joined him, the surgeon at last clapped the patient on the
      shoulder, and said, 'He won't hurt. He'll do very well. It's difficult
      enough, but we shall not want him to part with his leg this time.' Which
      Clennam interpreted to the patient, who was full of gratitude, and, in his
      demonstrative way, kissed both the interpreter's hand and the surgeon's
      several times.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a serious injury, I suppose?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye-es,' replied the surgeon, with the thoughtful pleasure of an artist
      contemplating the work upon his easel. 'Yes, it's enough. There's a
      compound fracture above the knee, and a dislocation below. They are both
      of a beautiful kind.' He gave the patient a friendly clap on the shoulder
      again, as if he really felt that he was a very good fellow indeed, and
      worthy of all commendation for having broken his leg in a manner
      interesting to science.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He speaks French?' said the surgeon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes, he speaks French.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He'll be at no loss here, then.&mdash;You have only to bear a little pain
      like a brave fellow, my friend, and to be thankful that all goes as well
      as it does,' he added, in that tongue, 'and you'll walk again to a marvel.
      Now, let us see whether there's anything else the matter, and how our ribs
      are?'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was nothing else the matter, and our ribs were sound. Clennam
      remained until everything possible to be done had been skilfully and
      promptly done&mdash;the poor belated wanderer in a strange land movingly
      besought that favour of him&mdash;and lingered by the bed to which he was
      in due time removed, until he had fallen into a doze. Even then he wrote a
      few words for him on his card, with a promise to return to-morrow, and
      left it to be given to him when he should awake.
    </p>
    <p>
      All these proceedings occupied so long that it struck eleven o'clock at
      night as he came out at the Hospital Gate. He had hired a lodging for the
      present in Covent Garden, and he took the nearest way to that quarter, by
      Snow Hill and Holborn.
    </p>
    <p>
      Left to himself again, after the solicitude and compassion of his last
      adventure, he was naturally in a thoughtful mood. As naturally, he could
      not walk on thinking for ten minutes without recalling Flora. She
      necessarily recalled to him his life, with all its misdirection and little
      happiness.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he got to his lodging, he sat down before the dying fire, as he had
      stood at the window of his old room looking out upon the blackened forest
      of chimneys, and turned his gaze back upon the gloomy vista by which he
      had come to that stage in his existence. So long, so bare, so blank. No
      childhood; no youth, except for one remembrance; that one remembrance
      proved, only that day, to be a piece of folly.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a misfortune to him, trifle as it might have been to another. For,
      while all that was hard and stern in his recollection, remained Reality on
      being proved&mdash;was obdurate to the sight and touch, and relaxed
      nothing of its old indomitable grimness&mdash;the one tender recollection
      of his experience would not bear the same test, and melted away. He had
      foreseen this, on the former night, when he had dreamed with waking eyes,
      but he had not felt it then; and he had now.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was a dreamer in such wise, because he was a man who had, deep-rooted
      in his nature, a belief in all the gentle and good things his life had
      been without. Bred in meanness and hard dealing, this had rescued him to
      be a man of honourable mind and open hand. Bred in coldness and severity,
      this had rescued him to have a warm and sympathetic heart. Bred in a creed
      too darkly audacious to pursue, through its process of reserving the
      making of man in the image of his Creator to the making of his Creator in
      the image of an erring man, this had rescued him to judge not, and in
      humility to be merciful, and have hope and charity.
    </p>
    <p>
      And this saved him still from the whimpering weakness and cruel
      selfishness of holding that because such a happiness or such a virtue had
      not come into his little path, or worked well for him, therefore it was
      not in the great scheme, but was reducible, when found in appearance, to
      the basest elements. A disappointed mind he had, but a mind too firm and
      healthy for such unwholesome air. Leaving himself in the dark, it could
      rise into the light, seeing it shine on others and hailing it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Therefore, he sat before his dying fire, sorrowful to think upon the way
      by which he had come to that night, yet not strewing poison on the way by
      which other men had come to it. That he should have missed so much, and at
      his time of life should look so far about him for any staff to bear him
      company upon his downward journey and cheer it, was a just regret. He
      looked at the fire from which the blaze departed, from which the afterglow
      subsided, in which the ashes turned grey, from which they dropped to dust,
      and thought, 'How soon I too shall pass through such changes, and be
      gone!'
    </p>
    <p>
      To review his life was like descending a green tree in fruit and flower,
      and seeing all the branches wither and drop off, one by one, as he came
      down towards them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'From the unhappy suppression of my youngest days, through the rigid and
      unloving home that followed them, through my departure, my long exile, my
      return, my mother's welcome, my intercourse with her since, down to the
      afternoon of this day with poor Flora,' said Arthur Clennam, 'what have I
      found!'
    </p>
    <p>
      His door was softly opened, and these spoken words startled him, and came
      as if they were an answer:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Little Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 14. Little Dorrit's Party
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>rthur Clennam rose hastily, and saw her standing at the door. This
      history must sometimes see with Little Dorrit's eyes, and shall begin that
      course by seeing him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which seemed a spacious one to her,
      and grandly furnished. Courtly ideas of Covent Garden, as a place with
      famous coffee-houses, where gentlemen wearing gold-laced coats and swords
      had quarrelled and fought duels; costly ideas of Covent Garden, as a place
      where there were flowers in winter at guineas a-piece, pine-apples at
      guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a pint; picturesque ideas of Covent
      Garden, as a place where there was a mighty theatre, showing wonderful and
      beautiful sights to richly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and which was for
      ever far beyond the reach of poor Fanny or poor uncle; desolate ideas of
      Covent Garden, as having all those arches in it, where the miserable
      children in rags among whom she had just now passed, like young rats,
      slunk and hid, fed on offal, huddled together for warmth, and were hunted
      about (look to the rats young and old, all ye Barnacles, for before God
      they are eating away our foundations, and will bring the roofs on our
      heads!); teeming ideas of Covent Garden, as a place of past and present
      mystery, romance, abundance, want, beauty, ugliness, fair country gardens,
      and foul street gutters; all confused together,&mdash;made the room dimmer
      than it was in Little Dorrit's eyes, as they timidly saw it from the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      At first in the chair before the gone-out fire, and then turned round
      wondering to see her, was the gentleman whom she sought. The brown, grave
      gentleman, who smiled so pleasantly, who was so frank and considerate in
      his manner, and yet in whose earnestness there was something that reminded
      her of his mother, with the great difference that she was earnest in
      asperity and he in gentleness. Now he regarded her with that attentive and
      inquiring look before which Little Dorrit's eyes had always fallen, and
      before which they fell still.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My poor child! Here at midnight?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I said Little Dorrit, sir, on purpose to prepare you. I knew you must be
      very much surprised.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you alone?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No sir, I have got Maggy with me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Considering her entrance sufficiently prepared for by this mention of her
      name, Maggy appeared from the landing outside, on the broad grin. She
      instantly suppressed that manifestation, however, and became fixedly
      solemn.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I have no fire,' said Clennam. 'And you are&mdash;' He was going to
      say so lightly clad, but stopped himself in what would have been a
      reference to her poverty, saying instead, 'And it is so cold.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Putting the chair from which he had risen nearer to the grate, he made her
      sit down in it; and hurriedly bringing wood and coal, heaped them together
      and got a blaze.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your foot is like marble, my child;' he had happened to touch it, while
      stooping on one knee at his work of kindling the fire; 'put it nearer the
      warmth.' Little Dorrit thanked him hastily. It was quite warm, it was very
      warm! It smote upon his heart to feel that she hid her thin, worn shoe.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was not ashamed of her poor shoes. He knew her story, and it
      was not that. Little Dorrit had a misgiving that he might blame her
      father, if he saw them; that he might think, 'why did he dine to-day, and
      leave this little creature to the mercy of the cold stones!' She had no
      belief that it would have been a just reflection; she simply knew, by
      experience, that such delusions did sometimes present themselves to
      people. It was a part of her father's misfortunes that they did.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Before I say anything else,' Little Dorrit began, sitting before the pale
      fire, and raising her eyes again to the face which in its harmonious look
      of interest, and pity, and protection, she felt to be a mystery far above
      her in degree, and almost removed beyond her guessing at; 'may I tell you
      something, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      A slight shade of distress fell upon her, at his so often calling her a
      child. She was surprised that he should see it, or think of such a slight
      thing; but he said directly:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wanted a tender word, and could think of no other. As you just now gave
      yourself the name they give you at my mother's, and as that is the name by
      which I always think of you, let me call you Little Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir, I should like it better than any name.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Little Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Little mother,' Maggy (who had been falling asleep) put in, as a
      correction.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's all the same, Maggy,' returned Little Dorrit, 'all the same.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it all the same, mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Just the same.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Maggy laughed, and immediately snored. In Little Dorrit's eyes and ears,
      the uncouth figure and the uncouth sound were as pleasant as could be.
      There was a glow of pride in her big child, overspreading her face, when
      it again met the eyes of the grave brown gentleman. She wondered what he
      was thinking of, as he looked at Maggy and her. She thought what a good
      father he would be. How, with some such look, he would counsel and cherish
      his daughter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, 'is, that my
      brother is at large.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur was rejoiced to hear it, and hoped he would do well.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, trembling in
      all her little figure and in her voice, 'is, that I am not to know whose
      generosity released him&mdash;am never to ask, and am never to be told,
      and am never to thank that gentleman with all my grateful heart!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He would probably need no thanks, Clennam said. Very likely he would be
      thankful himself (and with reason), that he had had the means and chance
      of doing a little service to her, who well deserved a great one.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what I was going to say, sir, is,' said Little Dorrit, trembling more
      and more, 'that if I knew him, and I might, I would tell him that he can
      never, never know how I feel his goodness, and how my good father would
      feel it. And what I was going to say, sir, is, that if I knew him, and I
      might&mdash;but I don't know him and I must not&mdash;I know that!&mdash;I
      would tell him that I shall never any more lie down to sleep without
      having prayed to Heaven to bless him and reward him. And if I knew him,
      and I might, I would go down on my knees to him, and take his hand and
      kiss it and ask him not to draw it away, but to leave it&mdash;O to leave
      it for a moment&mdash;and let my thankful tears fall on it; for I have no
      other thanks to give him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit had put his hand to her lips, and would have kneeled to him,
      but he gently prevented her, and replaced her in her chair. Her eyes, and
      the tones of her voice, had thanked him far better than she thought. He
      was not able to say, quite as composedly as usual, 'There, Little Dorrit,
      there, there, there! We will suppose that you did know this person, and
      that you might do all this, and that it was all done. And now tell me, Who
      am quite another person&mdash;who am nothing more than the friend who
      begged you to trust him&mdash;why you are out at midnight, and what it is
      that brings you so far through the streets at this late hour, my slight,
      delicate,' child was on his lips again, 'Little Dorrit!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maggy and I have been to-night,' she answered, subduing herself with the
      quiet effort that had long been natural to her, 'to the theatre where my
      sister is engaged.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And oh ain't it a Ev'nly place,' suddenly interrupted Maggy, who seemed
      to have the power of going to sleep and waking up whenever she chose.
      'Almost as good as a hospital. Only there ain't no Chicking in it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here she shook herself, and fell asleep again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We went there,' said Little Dorrit, glancing at her charge, 'because I
      like sometimes to know, of my own knowledge, that my sister is doing well;
      and like to see her there, with my own eyes, when neither she nor Uncle is
      aware. It is very seldom indeed that I can do that, because when I am not
      out at work, I am with my father, and even when I am out at work, I hurry
      home to him. But I pretend to-night that I am at a party.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she made the confession, timidly hesitating, she raised her eyes to the
      face, and read its expression so plainly that she answered it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no, certainly! I never was at a party in my life.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She paused a little under his attentive look, and then said, 'I hope there
      is no harm in it. I could never have been of any use, if I had not
      pretended a little.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She feared that he was blaming her in his mind for so devising to contrive
      for them, think for them, and watch over them, without their knowledge or
      gratitude; perhaps even with their reproaches for supposed neglect. But
      what was really in his mind, was the weak figure with its strong purpose,
      the thin worn shoes, the insufficient dress, and the pretence of
      recreation and enjoyment. He asked where the suppositious party was? At a
      place where she worked, answered Little Dorrit, blushing. She had said
      very little about it; only a few words to make her father easy. Her father
      did not believe it to be a grand party&mdash;indeed he might suppose that.
      And she glanced for an instant at the shawl she wore.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is the first night,' said Little Dorrit, 'that I have ever been away
      from home. And London looks so large, so barren, and so wild.' In Little
      Dorrit's eyes, its vastness under the black sky was awful; a tremor passed
      over her as she said the words.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But this is not,' she added, with the quiet effort again, 'what I have
      come to trouble you with, sir. My sister's having found a friend, a lady
      she has told me of and made me rather anxious about, was the first cause
      of my coming away from home. And being away, and coming (on purpose) round
      by where you lived and seeing a light in the window&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Not for the first time. No, not for the first time. In Little Dorrit's
      eyes, the outside of that window had been a distant star on other nights
      than this. She had toiled out of her way, tired and troubled, to look up
      at it, and wonder about the grave, brown gentleman from so far off, who
      had spoken to her as a friend and protector.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There were three things,' said Little Dorrit, 'that I thought I would
      like to say, if you were alone and I might come up-stairs. First, what I
      have tried to say, but never can&mdash;never shall&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush, hush! That is done with, and disposed of. Let us pass to the
      second,' said Clennam, smiling her agitation away, making the blaze shine
      upon her, and putting wine and cake and fruit towards her on the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think,' said Little Dorrit&mdash;'this is the second thing, sir&mdash;I
      think Mrs Clennam must have found out my secret, and must know where I
      come from and where I go to. Where I live, I mean.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed!' returned Clennam quickly. He asked her, after short
      consideration, why she supposed so.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think,' replied Little Dorrit, 'that Mr Flintwinch must have watched
      me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      And why, Clennam asked, as he turned his eyes upon the fire, bent his
      brows, and considered again; why did she suppose that?
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have met him twice. Both times near home. Both times at night, when I
      was going back. Both times I thought (though that may easily be my
      mistake), that he hardly looked as if he had met me by accident.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did he say anything?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No; he only nodded and put his head on one side.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The devil take his head!' mused Clennam, still looking at the fire; 'it's
      always on one side.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He roused himself to persuade her to put some wine to her lips, and to
      touch something to eat&mdash;it was very difficult, she was so timid and
      shy&mdash;and then said, musing again:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is my mother at all changed to you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, not at all. She is just the same. I wondered whether I had better
      tell her my history. I wondered whether I might&mdash;I mean, whether you
      would like me to tell her. I wondered,' said Little Dorrit, looking at him
      in a suppliant way, and gradually withdrawing her eyes as he looked at
      her, 'whether you would advise me what I ought to do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Little Dorrit,' said Clennam; and the phrase had already begun, between
      these two, to stand for a hundred gentle phrases, according to the varying
      tone and connection in which it was used; 'do nothing. I will have some
      talk with my old friend, Mrs Affery. Do nothing, Little Dorrit&mdash;except
      refresh yourself with such means as there are here. I entreat you to do
      that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, I am not hungry. Nor,' said Little Dorrit, as he softly put
      her glass towards her, 'nor thirsty.&mdash;I think Maggy might like
      something, perhaps.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We will make her find pockets presently for all there is here,' said
      Clennam: 'but before we awake her, there was a third thing to say.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. You will not be offended, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I promise that, unreservedly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It will sound strange. I hardly know how to say it. Don't think it
      unreasonable or ungrateful in me,' said Little Dorrit, with returning and
      increasing agitation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, no. I am sure it will be natural and right. I am not afraid that
      I shall put a wrong construction on it, whatever it is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you. You are coming back to see my father again?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been so good and thoughtful as to write him a note, saying that
      you are coming to-morrow?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, that was nothing! Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can you guess,' said Little Dorrit, folding her small hands tight in one
      another, and looking at him with all the earnestness of her soul looking
      steadily out of her eyes, 'what I am going to ask you not to do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think I can. But I may be wrong.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, you are not wrong,' said Little Dorrit, shaking her head. 'If we
      should want it so very, very badly that we cannot do without it, let me
      ask you for it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I Will,&mdash;I Will.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't encourage him to ask. Don't understand him if he does ask. Don't
      give it to him. Save him and spare him that, and you will be able to think
      better of him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam said&mdash;not very plainly, seeing those tears glistening in her
      anxious eyes&mdash;that her wish should be sacred with him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't know what he is,' she said; 'you don't know what he really is.
      How can you, seeing him there all at once, dear love, and not gradually,
      as I have done! You have been so good to us, so delicately and truly good,
      that I want him to be better in your eyes than in anybody's. And I cannot
      bear to think,' cried Little Dorrit, covering her tears with her hands, 'I
      cannot bear to think that you of all the world should see him in his only
      moments of degradation.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray,' said Clennam, 'do not be so distressed. Pray, pray, Little Dorrit!
      This is quite understood now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir. Thank you! I have tried very much to keep myself from
      saying this; I have thought about it, days and nights; but when I knew for
      certain you were coming again, I made up my mind to speak to you. Not
      because I am ashamed of him,' she dried her tears quickly, 'but because I
      know him better than any one does, and love him, and am proud of him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Relieved of this weight, Little Dorrit was nervously anxious to be gone.
      Maggy being broad awake, and in the act of distantly gloating over the
      fruit and cakes with chuckles of anticipation, Clennam made the best
      diversion in his power by pouring her out a glass of wine, which she drank
      in a series of loud smacks; putting her hand upon her windpipe after every
      one, and saying, breathless, with her eyes in a prominent state, 'Oh,
      ain't it d'licious! Ain't it hospitally!' When she had finished the wine
      and these encomiums, he charged her to load her basket (she was never
      without her basket) with every eatable thing upon the table, and to take
      especial care to leave no scrap behind. Maggy's pleasure in doing this and
      her little mother's pleasure in seeing Maggy pleased, was as good a turn
      as circumstances could have given to the late conversation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But the gates will have been locked long ago,' said Clennam, suddenly
      remembering it. 'Where are you going?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am going to Maggy's lodging,' answered Little Dorrit. 'I shall be quite
      safe, quite well taken care of.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must accompany you there,' said Clennam, 'I cannot let you go alone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, pray leave us to go there by ourselves. Pray do!' begged Little
      Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was so earnest in the petition, that Clennam felt a delicacy in
      obtruding himself upon her: the rather, because he could well understand
      that Maggy's lodging was of the obscurest sort. 'Come, Maggy,' said Little
      Dorrit cheerily, 'we shall do very well; we know the way by this time,
      Maggy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes, little mother; we know the way,' chuckled Maggy. And away they
      went. Little Dorrit turned at the door to say, 'God bless you!' She said
      it very softly, but perhaps she may have been as audible above&mdash;who
      knows!&mdash;as a whole cathedral choir.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam suffered them to pass the corner of the street before he
      followed at a distance; not with any idea of encroaching a second time on
      Little Dorrit's privacy, but to satisfy his mind by seeing her secure in
      the neighbourhood to which she was accustomed. So diminutive she looked,
      so fragile and defenceless against the bleak damp weather, flitting along
      in the shuffling shadow of her charge, that he felt, in his compassion,
      and in his habit of considering her a child apart from the rest of the
      rough world, as if he would have been glad to take her up in his arms and
      carry her to her journey's end.
    </p>
    <p>
      In course of time she came into the leading thoroughfare where the
      Marshalsea was, and then he saw them slacken their pace, and soon turn
      down a by-street. He stopped, felt that he had no right to go further, and
      slowly left them. He had no suspicion that they ran any risk of being
      houseless until morning; had no idea of the truth until long, long
      afterwards.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, said Little Dorrit, when they stopped at a poor dwelling all in
      darkness, and heard no sound on listening at the door, 'Now, this is a
      good lodging for you, Maggy, and we must not give offence. Consequently,
      we will only knock twice, and not very loud; and if we cannot wake them
      so, we must walk about till day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Once, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. Twice,
      Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. All was close and
      still. 'Maggy, we must do the best we can, my dear. We must be patient,
      and wait for day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a chill dark night, with a damp wind blowing, when they came out
      into the leading street again, and heard the clocks strike half-past one.
      'In only five hours and a half,' said Little Dorrit, 'we shall be able to
      go home.' To speak of home, and to go and look at it, it being so near,
      was a natural sequence. They went to the closed gate, and peeped through
      into the court-yard. 'I hope he is sound asleep,' said Little Dorrit,
      kissing one of the bars, 'and does not miss me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The gate was so familiar, and so like a companion, that they put down
      Maggy's basket in a corner to serve for a seat, and keeping close
      together, rested there for some time. While the street was empty and
      silent, Little Dorrit was not afraid; but when she heard a footstep at a
      distance, or saw a moving shadow among the street lamps, she was startled,
      and whispered, 'Maggy, I see some one. Come away!' Maggy would then wake
      up more or less fretfully, and they would wander about a little, and come
      back again.
    </p>
    <p>
      As long as eating was a novelty and an amusement, Maggy kept up pretty
      well. But that period going by, she became querulous about the cold, and
      shivered and whimpered. 'It will soon be over, dear,' said Little Dorrit
      patiently. 'Oh it's all very fine for you, little mother,' returned Maggy,
      'but I'm a poor thing, only ten years old.' At last, in the dead of the
      night, when the street was very still indeed, Little Dorrit laid the heavy
      head upon her bosom, and soothed her to sleep. And thus she sat at the
      gate, as it were alone; looking up at the stars, and seeing the clouds
      pass over them in their wild flight&mdash;which was the dance at Little
      Dorrit's party.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If it really was a party!' she thought once, as she sat there. 'If it was
      light and warm and beautiful, and it was our house, and my poor dear was
      its master, and had never been inside these walls. And if Mr Clennam was
      one of our visitors, and we were dancing to delightful music, and were all
      as gay and light-hearted as ever we could be! I wonder&mdash;' Such a
      vista of wonder opened out before her, that she sat looking up at the
      stars, quite lost, until Maggy was querulous again, and wanted to get up
      and walk.
    </p>
    <p>
      Three o'clock, and half-past three, and they had passed over London
      Bridge. They had heard the rush of the tide against obstacles; and looked
      down, awed, through the dark vapour on the river; had seen little spots of
      lighted water where the bridge lamps were reflected, shining like demon
      eyes, with a terrible fascination in them for guilt and misery. They had
      shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in nooks. They had run from
      drunkards. They had started from slinking men, whistling and signing to
      one another at bye corners, or running away at full speed. Though
      everywhere the leader and the guide, Little Dorrit, happy for once in her
      youthful appearance, feigned to cling to and rely upon Maggy. And more
      than once some voice, from among a knot of brawling or prowling figures in
      their path, had called out to the rest to 'let the woman and the child go
      by!'
    </p>
    <p>
      So, the woman and the child had gone by, and gone on, and five had sounded
      from the steeples. They were walking slowly towards the east, already
      looking for the first pale streak of day, when a woman came after them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What are you doing with the child?' she said to Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was young&mdash;far too young to be there, Heaven knows!&mdash;and
      neither ugly nor wicked-looking. She spoke coarsely, but with no naturally
      coarse voice; there was even something musical in its sound.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What are you doing with yourself?' retorted Maggy, for want of a better
      answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can't you see, without my telling you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know as I can,' said Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Killing myself! Now I have answered you, answer me. What are you doing
      with the child?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The supposed child kept her head drooped down, and kept her form close at
      Maggy's side.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Poor thing!' said the woman. 'Have you no feeling, that you keep her out
      in the cruel streets at such a time as this? Have you no eyes, that you
      don't see how delicate and slender she is? Have you no sense (you don't
      look as if you had much) that you don't take more pity on this cold and
      trembling little hand?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She had stepped across to that side, and held the hand between her own
      two, chafing it. 'Kiss a poor lost creature, dear,' she said, bending her
      face, 'and tell me where's she taking you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit turned towards her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, my God!' she said, recoiling, 'you're a woman!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't mind that!' said Little Dorrit, clasping one of her hands that had
      suddenly released hers. 'I am not afraid of you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you had better be,' she answered. 'Have you no mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No father?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, a very dear one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go home to him, and be afraid of me. Let me go. Good night!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must thank you first; let me speak to you as if I really were a child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You can't do it,' said the woman. 'You are kind and innocent; but you
      can't look at me out of a child's eyes. I never should have touched you,
      but I thought that you were a child.' And with a strange, wild cry, she
      went away.
    </p>
    <p>
      No day yet in the sky, but there was day in the resounding stones of the
      streets; in the waggons, carts, and coaches; in the workers going to
      various occupations; in the opening of early shops; in the traffic at
      markets; in the stir of the riverside. There was coming day in the flaring
      lights, with a feebler colour in them than they would have had at another
      time; coming day in the increased sharpness of the air, and the ghastly
      dying of the night.
    </p>
    <p>
      They went back again to the gate, intending to wait there now until it
      should be opened; but the air was so raw and cold that Little Dorrit,
      leading Maggy about in her sleep, kept in motion. Going round by the
      Church, she saw lights there, and the door open; and went up the steps and
      looked in.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who's that?' cried a stout old man, who was putting on a nightcap as if
      he were going to bed in a vault.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's no one particular, sir,' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stop!' cried the man. 'Let's have a look at you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      This caused her to turn back again in the act of going out, and to present
      herself and her charge before him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought so!' said he. 'I know <i>you</i>.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We have often seen each other,' said Little Dorrit, recognising the
      sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was, 'when I have
      been at church here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'More than that, we've got your birth in our Register, you know; you're
      one of our curiosities.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed!' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be sure. As the child of the&mdash;by-the-bye, how did you get out so
      early?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We were shut out last night, and are waiting to get in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't mean it? And there's another hour good yet! Come into the
      vestry. You'll find a fire in the vestry, on account of the painters. I'm
      waiting for the painters, or I shouldn't be here, you may depend upon it.
      One of our curiosities mustn't be cold when we have it in our power to
      warm her up comfortable. Come along.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was a very good old fellow, in his familiar way; and having stirred the
      vestry fire, he looked round the shelves of registers for a particular
      volume. 'Here you are, you see,' he said, taking it down and turning the
      leaves. 'Here you'll find yourself, as large as life. Amy, daughter of
      William and Fanny Dorrit. Born, Marshalsea Prison, Parish of St George.
      And we tell people that you have lived there, without so much as a day's
      or a night's absence, ever since. Is it true?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite true, till last night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord!' But his surveying her with an admiring gaze suggested Something
      else to him, to wit: 'I am sorry to see, though, that you are faint and
      tired. Stay a bit. I'll get some cushions out of the church, and you and
      your friend shall lie down before the fire. Don't be afraid of not going
      in to join your father when the gate opens. <i>I'll</i> call you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He soon brought in the cushions, and strewed them on the ground.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There you are, you see. Again as large as life. Oh, never mind thanking.
      I've daughters of my own. And though they weren't born in the Marshalsea
      Prison, they might have been, if I had been, in my ways of carrying on, of
      your father's breed. Stop a bit. I must put something under the cushion
      for your head. Here's a burial volume, just the thing! We have got Mrs
      Bangham in this book. But what makes these books interesting to most
      people is&mdash;not who's in 'em, but who isn't&mdash;who's coming, you
      know, and when. That's the interesting question.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Commendingly looking back at the pillow he had improvised, he left them to
      their hour's repose. Maggy was snoring already, and Little Dorrit was soon
      fast asleep with her head resting on that sealed book of Fate, untroubled
      by its mysterious blank leaves.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0167m.jpg" alt="0167m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0167.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>

    <p>
      This was Little Dorrit's party. The shame, desertion, wretchedness, and
      exposure of the great capital; the wet, the cold, the slow hours, and the
      swift clouds of the dismal night. This was the party from which Little
      Dorrit went home, jaded, in the first grey mist of a rainy morning.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 15. Mrs Flintwinch has another Dream
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he debilitated old house in the city, wrapped in its mantle of soot, and
      leaning heavily on the crutches that had partaken of its decay and worn
      out with it, never knew a healthy or a cheerful interval, let what would
      betide. If the sun ever touched it, it was but with a ray, and that was
      gone in half an hour; if the moonlight ever fell upon it, it was only to
      put a few patches on its doleful cloak, and make it look more wretched.
      The stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when the nights and the smoke
      were clear enough; and all bad weather stood by it with a rare fidelity.
      You should alike find rain, hail, frost, and thaw lingering in that dismal
      enclosure when they had vanished from other places; and as to snow, you
      should see it there for weeks, long after it had changed from yellow to
      black, slowly weeping away its grimy life. The place had no other
      adherents. As to street noises, the rumbling of wheels in the lane merely
      rushed in at the gateway in going past, and rushed out again: making the
      listening Mistress Affery feel as if she were deaf, and recovered the
      sense of hearing by instantaneous flashes. So with whistling, singing,
      talking, laughing, and all pleasant human sounds. They leaped the gap in a
      moment, and went upon their way.
    </p>
    <p>
      The varying light of fire and candle in Mrs Clennam's room made the
      greatest change that ever broke the dead monotony of the spot. In her two
      long narrow windows, the fire shone sullenly all day, and sullenly all
      night. On rare occasions it flashed up passionately, as she did; but for
      the most part it was suppressed, like her, and preyed upon itself evenly
      and slowly. During many hours of the short winter days, however, when it
      was dusk there early in the afternoon, changing distortions of herself in
      her wheeled chair, of Mr Flintwinch with his wry neck, of Mistress Affery
      coming and going, would be thrown upon the house wall that was over the
      gateway, and would hover there like shadows from a great magic lantern. As
      the room-ridden invalid settled for the night, these would gradually
      disappear: Mistress Affery's magnified shadow always flitting about, last,
      until it finally glided away into the air, as though she were off upon a
      witch excursion. Then the solitary light would burn unchangingly, until it
      burned pale before the dawn, and at last died under the breath of Mrs
      Affery, as her shadow descended on it from the witch-region of sleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      Strange, if the little sick-room fire were in effect a beacon fire,
      summoning some one, and that the most unlikely some one in the world, to
      the spot that <i>must</i> be come to. Strange, if the little sick-room
      light were in effect a watch-light, burning in that place every night
      until an appointed event should be watched out! Which of the vast
      multitude of travellers, under the sun and the stars, climbing the dusty
      hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and
      journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and
      react on one another; which of the host may, with no suspicion of the
      journey's end, be travelling surely hither?
    </p>
    <p>
      Time shall show us. The post of honour and the post of shame, the
      general's station and the drummer's, a peer's statue in Westminster Abbey
      and a seaman's hammock in the bosom of the deep, the mitre and the
      workhouse, the woolsack and the gallows, the throne and the guillotine&mdash;the
      travellers to all are on the great high road, but it has wonderful
      divergencies, and only Time shall show us whither each traveller is bound.
    </p>
    <p>
      On a wintry afternoon at twilight, Mrs Flintwinch, having been heavy all
      day, dreamed this dream:
    </p>
    <p>
      She thought she was in the kitchen getting the kettle ready for tea, and
      was warming herself with her feet upon the fender and the skirt of her
      gown tucked up, before the collapsed fire in the middle of the grate,
      bordered on either hand by a deep cold black ravine. She thought that as
      she sat thus, musing upon the question whether life was not for some
      people a rather dull invention, she was frightened by a sudden noise
      behind her. She thought that she had been similarly frightened once last
      week, and that the noise was of a mysterious kind&mdash;a sound of
      rustling and of three or four quick beats like a rapid step; while a shock
      or tremble was communicated to her heart, as if the step had shaken the
      floor, or even as if she had been touched by some awful hand. She thought
      that this revived within her certain old fears of hers that the house was
      haunted; and that she flew up the kitchen stairs without knowing how she
      got up, to be nearer company.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Affery thought that on reaching the hall, she saw the door of her
      liege lord's office standing open, and the room empty. That she went to
      the ripped-up window in the little room by the street door to connect her
      palpitating heart, through the glass, with living things beyond and
      outside the haunted house. That she then saw, on the wall over the
      gateway, the shadows of the two clever ones in conversation above. That
      she then went upstairs with her shoes in her hand, partly to be near the
      clever ones as a match for most ghosts, and partly to hear what they were
      talking about.
    </p>
    <p>
      'None of your nonsense with me,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'I won't take it from
      you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Flintwinch dreamed that she stood behind the door, which was just
      ajar, and most distinctly heard her husband say these bold words.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flintwinch,' returned Mrs Clennam, in her usual strong low voice, 'there
      is a demon of anger in you. Guard against it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't care whether there's one or a dozen,' said Mr Flintwinch,
      forcibly suggesting in his tone that the higher number was nearer the
      mark. 'If there was fifty, they should all say, None of your nonsense with
      me, I won't take it from you&mdash;I'd make 'em say it, whether they liked
      it or not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What have I done, you wrathful man?' her strong voice asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Done?' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Dropped down upon me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you mean, remonstrated with you&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't put words into my mouth that I don't mean,' said Jeremiah, sticking
      to his figurative expression with tenacious and impenetrable obstinacy: 'I
      mean dropped down upon me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I remonstrated with you,' she began again, 'because&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I won't have it!' cried Jeremiah. 'You dropped down upon me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dropped down upon you, then, you ill-conditioned man,' (Jeremiah
      chuckled at having forced her to adopt his phrase,) 'for having been
      needlessly significant to Arthur that morning. I have a right to complain
      of it as almost a breach of confidence. You did not mean it&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I won't have it!' interposed the contradictory Jeremiah, flinging back
      the concession. 'I did mean it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suppose I must leave you to speak in soliloquy if you choose,' she
      replied, after a pause that seemed an angry one. 'It is useless my
      addressing myself to a rash and headstrong old man who has a set purpose
      not to hear me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, I won't take that from you either,' said Jeremiah. 'I have no such
      purpose. I have told you I did mean it. Do you wish to know why I meant
      it, you rash and headstrong old woman?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'After all, you only restore me my own words,' she said, struggling with
      her indignation. 'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is why, then. Because you hadn't cleared his father to him, and you
      ought to have done it. Because, before you went into any tantrum about
      yourself, who are&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hold there, Flintwinch!' she cried out in a changed voice: 'you may go a
      word too far.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old man seemed to think so. There was another pause, and he had
      altered his position in the room, when he spoke again more mildly:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was going to tell you why it was. Because, before you took your own
      part, I thought you ought to have taken the part of Arthur's father.
      Arthur's father! I had no particular love for Arthur's father. I served
      Arthur's father's uncle, in this house, when Arthur's father was not much
      above me&mdash;was poorer as far as his pocket went&mdash;and when his
      uncle might as soon have left me his heir as have left him. He starved in
      the parlour, and I starved in the kitchen; that was the principal
      difference in our positions; there was not much more than a flight of
      breakneck stairs between us. I never took to him in those times; I don't
      know that I ever took to him greatly at any time. He was an undecided,
      irresolute chap, who had everything but his orphan life scared out of him
      when he was young. And when he brought you home here, the wife his uncle
      had named for him, I didn't need to look at you twice (you were a
      good-looking woman at that time) to know who'd be master. You have stood
      of your own strength ever since. Stand of your own strength now. Don't
      lean against the dead.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do <i>not</i>&mdash;as you call it&mdash;lean against the dead.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you had a mind to do it, if I had submitted,' growled Jeremiah, 'and
      that's why you drop down upon me. You can't forget that I didn't submit. I
      suppose you are astonished that I should consider it worth my while to
      have justice done to Arthur's father? Hey? It doesn't matter whether you
      answer or not, because I know you are, and you know you are. Come, then,
      I'll tell you how it is. I may be a bit of an oddity in point of temper,
      but this is my temper&mdash;I can't let anybody have entirely their own
      way. You are a determined woman, and a clever woman; and when you see your
      purpose before you, nothing will turn you from it. Who knows that better
      than I do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing will turn me from it, Flintwinch, when I have justified it to
      myself. Add that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Justified it to yourself? I said you were the most determined woman on
      the face of the earth (or I meant to say so), and if you are determined to
      justify any object you entertain, of course you'll do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Man! I justify myself by the authority of these Books,' she cried, with
      stern emphasis, and appearing from the sound that followed to strike the
      dead-weight of her arm upon the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never mind that,' returned Jeremiah calmly, 'we won't enter into that
      question at present. However that may be, you carry out your purposes, and
      you make everything go down before them. Now, I won't go down before them.
      I have been faithful to you, and useful to you, and I am attached to you.
      But I can't consent, and I won't consent, and I never did consent, and I
      never will consent to be lost in you. Swallow up everybody else, and
      welcome. The peculiarity of my temper is, ma'am, that I won't be swallowed
      up alive.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Perhaps this had originally been the mainspring of the understanding
      between them. Descrying thus much of force of character in Mr Flintwinch,
      perhaps Mrs Clennam had deemed alliance with him worth her while.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Enough and more than enough of the subject,' said she gloomily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Unless you drop down upon me again,' returned the persistent Flintwinch,
      'and then you must expect to hear of it again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Affery dreamed that the figure of her lord here began walking up
      and down the room, as if to cool his spleen, and that she ran away; but
      that, as he did not issue forth when she had stood listening and trembling
      in the shadowy hall a little time, she crept up-stairs again, impelled as
      before by ghosts and curiosity, and once more cowered outside the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Please to light the candle, Flintwinch,' Mrs Clennam was saying,
      apparently wishing to draw him back into their usual tone. 'It is nearly
      time for tea. Little Dorrit is coming, and will find me in the dark.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch lighted the candle briskly, and said as he put it down upon
      the table:
    </p>
    <p>
      'What are you going to do with Little Dorrit? Is she to come to work here
      for ever? To come to tea here for ever? To come backwards and forwards
      here, in the same way, for ever?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How can you talk about "for ever" to a maimed creature like me? Are we
      not all cut down like the grass of the field, and was not I shorn by the
      scythe many years ago: since when I have been lying here, waiting to be
      gathered into the barn?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay! But since you have been lying here&mdash;not near dead&mdash;nothing
      like it&mdash;numbers of children and young people, blooming women, strong
      men, and what not, have been cut down and carried; and still here are you,
      you see, not much changed after all. Your time and mine may be a long one
      yet. When I say for ever, I mean (though I am not poetical) through all
      our time.' Mr Flintwinch gave this explanation with great calmness, and
      calmly waited for an answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So long as Little Dorrit is quiet and industrious, and stands in need of
      the slight help I can give her, and deserves it; so long, I suppose,
      unless she withdraws of her own act, she will continue to come here, I
      being spared.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing more than that?' said Flintwinch, stroking his mouth and chin.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What should there be more than that! What could there be more than that!'
      she ejaculated in her sternly wondering way.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, that, for the space of a minute or two, they
      remained looking at each other with the candle between them, and that she
      somehow derived an impression that they looked at each other fixedly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you happen to know, Mrs Clennam,' Affery's liege lord then demanded in
      a much lower voice, and with an amount of expression that seemed quite out
      of proportion to the simple purpose of his words, 'where she lives?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Would you&mdash;now, would you like to know?' said Jeremiah with a pounce
      as if he had sprung upon her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I cared to know, I should know already. Could I not have asked her any
      day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you don't care to know?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch, having expelled a long significant breath said, with his
      former emphasis, 'For I have accidentally&mdash;mind!&mdash;found out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wherever she lives,' said Mrs Clennam, speaking in one unmodulated hard
      voice, and separating her words as distinctly as if she were reading them
      off from separate bits of metal that she took up one by one, 'she has made
      a secret of it, and she shall always keep her secret from me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'After all, perhaps you would rather not have known the fact, any how?'
      said Jeremiah; and he said it with a twist, as if his words had come out
      of him in his own wry shape.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flintwinch,' said his mistress and partner, flashing into a sudden energy
      that made Affery start, 'why do you goad me? Look round this room. If it
      is any compensation for my long confinement within these narrow limits&mdash;not
      that I complain of being afflicted; you know I never complain of that&mdash;if
      it is any compensation to me for long confinement to this room, that while
      I am shut up from all pleasant change I am also shut up from the knowledge
      of some things that I may prefer to avoid knowing, why should you, of all
      men, grudge me that belief?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't grudge it to you,' returned Jeremiah.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then say no more. Say no more. Let Little Dorrit keep her secret from me,
      and do you keep it from me also. Let her come and go, unobserved and
      unquestioned. Let me suffer, and let me have what alleviation belongs to
      my condition. Is it so much, that you torment me like an evil spirit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I asked you a question. That's all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have answered it. So, say no more. Say no more.' Here the sound of the
      wheeled chair was heard upon the floor, and Affery's bell rang with a
      hasty jerk.
    </p>
    <p>
      More afraid of her husband at the moment than of the mysterious sound in
      the kitchen, Affery crept away as lightly and as quickly as she could,
      descended the kitchen stairs almost as rapidly as she had ascended them,
      resumed her seat before the fire, tucked up her skirt again, and finally
      threw her apron over her head. Then the bell rang once more, and then once
      more, and then kept on ringing; in despite of which importunate summons,
      Affery still sat behind her apron, recovering her breath.
    </p>
    <p>
      At last Mr Flintwinch came shuffling down the staircase into the hall,
      muttering and calling 'Affery woman!' all the way. Affery still remaining
      behind her apron, he came stumbling down the kitchen stairs, candle in
      hand, sidled up to her, twitched her apron off, and roused her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh Jeremiah!' cried Affery, waking. 'What a start you gave me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What have you been doing, woman?' inquired Jeremiah. 'You've been rung
      for fifty times.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh Jeremiah,' said Mistress Affery, 'I have been a-dreaming!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Reminded of her former achievement in that way, Mr Flintwinch held the
      candle to her head, as if he had some idea of lighting her up for the
      illumination of the kitchen.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't you know it's her tea-time?' he demanded with a vicious grin, and
      giving one of the legs of Mistress Affery's chair a kick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Jeremiah? Tea-time? I don't know what's come to me. But I got such a
      dreadful turn, Jeremiah, before I went&mdash;off a-dreaming, that I think
      it must be that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yoogh! Sleepy-Head!' said Mr Flintwinch, 'what are you talking about?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Such a strange noise, Jeremiah, and such a curious movement. In the
      kitchen here&mdash;just here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Jeremiah held up his light and looked at the blackened ceiling, held down
      his light and looked at the damp stone floor, turned round with his light
      and looked about at the spotted and blotched walls.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0175m.jpg" alt="0175m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0175.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Rats, cats, water, drains,' said Jeremiah.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Affery negatived each with a shake of her head. 'No, Jeremiah; I
      have felt it before. I have felt it up-stairs, and once on the staircase
      as I was going from her room to ours in the night&mdash;a rustle and a
      sort of trembling touch behind me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Affery, my woman,' said Mr Flintwinch grimly, after advancing his nose to
      that lady's lips as a test for the detection of spirituous liquors, 'if
      you don't get tea pretty quick, old woman, you'll become sensible of a
      rustle and a touch that'll send you flying to the other end of the
      kitchen.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This prediction stimulated Mrs Flintwinch to bestir herself, and to hasten
      up-stairs to Mrs Clennam's chamber. But, for all that, she now began to
      entertain a settled conviction that there was something wrong in the
      gloomy house. Henceforth, she was never at peace in it after daylight
      departed; and never went up or down stairs in the dark without having her
      apron over her head, lest she should see something.
    </p>
    <p>
      What with these ghostly apprehensions and her singular dreams, Mrs
      Flintwinch fell that evening into a haunted state of mind, from which it
      may be long before this present narrative descries any trace of her
      recovery. In the vagueness and indistinctness of all her new experiences
      and perceptions, as everything about her was mysterious to herself she
      began to be mysterious to others: and became as difficult to be made out
      to anybody's satisfaction as she found the house and everything in it
      difficult to make out to her own.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had not yet finished preparing Mrs Clennam's tea, when the soft knock
      came to the door which always announced Little Dorrit. Mistress Affery
      looked on at Little Dorrit taking off her homely bonnet in the hall, and
      at Mr Flintwinch scraping his jaws and contemplating her in silence, as
      expecting some wonderful consequence to ensue which would frighten her out
      of her five wits or blow them all three to pieces.
    </p>
    <p>
      After tea there came another knock at the door, announcing Arthur.
      Mistress Affery went down to let him in, and he said on entering, 'Affery,
      I am glad it's you. I want to ask you a question.' Affery immediately
      replied, 'For goodness sake don't ask me nothing, Arthur! I am frightened
      out of one half of my life, and dreamed out of the other. Don't ask me
      nothing! I don't know which is which, or what is what!'&mdash;and
      immediately started away from him, and came near him no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Affery having no taste for reading, and no sufficient light for
      needlework in the subdued room, supposing her to have the inclination, now
      sat every night in the dimness from which she had momentarily emerged on
      the evening of Arthur Clennam's return, occupied with crowds of wild
      speculations and suspicions respecting her mistress and her husband and
      the noises in the house. When the ferocious devotional exercises were
      engaged in, these speculations would distract Mistress Affery's eyes
      towards the door, as if she expected some dark form to appear at those
      propitious moments, and make the party one too many.
    </p>
    <p>
      Otherwise, Affery never said or did anything to attract the attention of
      the two clever ones towards her in any marked degree, except on certain
      occasions, generally at about the quiet hour towards bed-time, when she
      would suddenly dart out of her dim corner, and whisper with a face of
      terror to Mr Flintwinch, reading the paper near Mrs Clennam's little
      table:
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, Jeremiah! Now! What's that noise?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Then the noise, if there were any, would have ceased, and Mr Flintwinch
      would snarl, turning upon her as if she had cut him down that moment
      against his will, 'Affery, old woman, you shall have a dose, old woman,
      such a dose! You have been dreaming again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 16. Nobody's Weakness
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he time being come for the renewal of his acquaintance with the Meagles
      family, Clennam, pursuant to contract made between himself and Mr Meagles
      within the precincts of Bleeding Heart Yard, turned his face on a certain
      Saturday towards Twickenham, where Mr Meagles had a cottage-residence of
      his own. The weather being fine and dry, and any English road abounding in
      interest for him who had been so long away, he sent his valise on by the
      coach, and set out to walk. A walk was in itself a new enjoyment to him,
      and one that had rarely diversified his life afar off.
    </p>
    <p>
      He went by Fulham and Putney, for the pleasure of strolling over the
      heath. It was bright and shining there; and when he found himself so far
      on his road to Twickenham, he found himself a long way on his road to a
      number of airier and less substantial destinations. They had risen before
      him fast, in the healthful exercise and the pleasant road. It is not easy
      to walk alone in the country without musing upon something. And he had
      plenty of unsettled subjects to meditate upon, though he had been walking
      to the Land's End.
    </p>
    <p>
      First, there was the subject seldom absent from his mind, the question,
      what he was to do henceforth in life; to what occupation he should devote
      himself, and in what direction he had best seek it. He was far from rich,
      and every day of indecision and inaction made his inheritance a source of
      greater anxiety to him. As often as he began to consider how to increase
      this inheritance, or to lay it by, so often his misgiving that there was
      some one with an unsatisfied claim upon his justice, returned; and that
      alone was a subject to outlast the longest walk. Again, there was the
      subject of his relations with his mother, which were now upon an equable
      and peaceful but never confidential footing, and whom he saw several times
      a week. Little Dorrit was a leading and a constant subject: for the
      circumstances of his life, united to those of her own story, presented the
      little creature to him as the only person between whom and himself there
      were ties of innocent reliance on one hand, and affectionate protection on
      the other; ties of compassion, respect, unselfish interest, gratitude, and
      pity. Thinking of her, and of the possibility of her father's release from
      prison by the unbarring hand of death&mdash;the only change of
      circumstance he could foresee that might enable him to be such a friend to
      her as he wished to be, by altering her whole manner of life, smoothing
      her rough road, and giving her a home&mdash;he regarded her, in that
      perspective, as his adopted daughter, his poor child of the Marshalsea
      hushed to rest. If there were a last subject in his thoughts, and it lay
      towards Twickenham, its form was so indefinite that it was little more
      than the pervading atmosphere in which these other subjects floated before
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had crossed the heath and was leaving it behind when he gained upon a
      figure which had been in advance of him for some time, and which, as he
      gained upon it, he thought he knew. He derived this impression from
      something in the turn of the head, and in the figure's action of
      consideration, as it went on at a sufficiently sturdy walk. But when the
      man&mdash;for it was a man's figure&mdash;pushed his hat up at the back of
      his head, and stopped to consider some object before him, he knew it to be
      Daniel Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you do, Mr Doyce?' said Clennam, overtaking him. 'I am glad to see
      you again, and in a healthier place than the Circumlocution Office.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ha! Mr Meagles's friend!' exclaimed that public criminal, coming out of
      some mental combinations he had been making, and offering his hand. 'I am
      glad to see you, sir. Will you excuse me if I forget your name?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Readily. It's not a celebrated name. It's not Barnacle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no,' said Daniel, laughing. 'And now I know what it is. It's Clennam.
      How do you do, Mr Clennam?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have some hope,' said Arthur, as they walked on together, 'that we may
      be going to the same place, Mr Doyce.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Meaning Twickenham?' returned Daniel. 'I am glad to hear it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They were soon quite intimate, and lightened the way with a variety of
      conversation. The ingenious culprit was a man of great modesty and good
      sense; and, though a plain man, had been too much accustomed to combine
      what was original and daring in conception with what was patient and
      minute in execution, to be by any means an ordinary man. It was at first
      difficult to lead him to speak about himself, and he put off Arthur's
      advances in that direction by admitting slightly, oh yes, he had done
      this, and he had done that, and such a thing was of his making, and such
      another thing was his discovery, but it was his trade, you see, his trade;
      until, as he gradually became assured that his companion had a real
      interest in his account of himself, he frankly yielded to it. Then it
      appeared that he was the son of a north-country blacksmith, and had
      originally been apprenticed by his widowed mother to a lock-maker; that he
      had 'struck out a few little things' at the lock-maker's, which had led to
      his being released from his indentures with a present, which present had
      enabled him to gratify his ardent wish to bind himself to a working
      engineer, under whom he had laboured hard, learned hard, and lived hard,
      seven years. His time being out, he had 'worked in the shop' at weekly
      wages seven or eight years more; and had then betaken himself to the banks
      of the Clyde, where he had studied, and filed, and hammered, and improved
      his knowledge, theoretical and practical, for six or seven years more.
      There he had had an offer to go to Lyons, which he had accepted; and from
      Lyons had been engaged to go to Germany, and in Germany had had an offer
      to go to St Petersburg, and there had done very well indeed&mdash;never
      better. However, he had naturally felt a preference for his own country,
      and a wish to gain distinction there, and to do whatever service he could
      do, there rather than elsewhere. And so he had come home. And so at home
      he had established himself in business, and had invented and executed, and
      worked his way on, until, after a dozen years of constant suit and
      service, he had been enrolled in the Great British Legion of Honour, the
      Legion of the Rebuffed of the Circumlocution Office, and had been
      decorated with the Great British Order of Merit, the Order of the Disorder
      of the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is much to be regretted,' said Clennam, 'that you ever turned your
      thoughts that way, Mr Doyce.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True, sir, true to a certain extent. But what is a man to do? if he has
      the misfortune to strike out something serviceable to the nation, he must
      follow where it leads him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hadn't he better let it go?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He can't do it,' said Doyce, shaking his head with a thoughtful smile.
      'It's not put into his head to be buried. It's put into his head to be
      made useful. You hold your life on the condition that to the last you
      shall struggle hard for it. Every man holds a discovery on the same
      terms.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That is to say,' said Arthur, with a growing admiration of his quiet
      companion, 'you are not finally discouraged even now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have no right to be, if I am,' returned the other. 'The thing is as
      true as it ever was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      When they had walked a little way in silence, Clennam, at once to change
      the direct point of their conversation and not to change it too abruptly,
      asked Mr Doyce if he had any partner in his business to relieve him of a
      portion of its anxieties?
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' he returned, 'not at present. I had when I first entered on it, and
      a good man he was. But he has been dead some years; and as I could not
      easily take to the notion of another when I lost him, I bought his share
      for myself and have gone on by myself ever since. And here's another
      thing,' he said, stopping for a moment with a good-humoured laugh in his
      eyes, and laying his closed right hand, with its peculiar suppleness of
      thumb, on Clennam's arm, 'no inventor can be a man of business, you know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, so the men of business say,' he answered, resuming the walk and
      laughing outright. 'I don't know why we unfortunate creatures should be
      supposed to want common sense, but it is generally taken for granted that
      we do. Even the best friend I have in the world, our excellent friend over
      yonder,' said Doyce, nodding towards Twickenham, 'extends a sort of
      protection to me, don't you know, as a man not quite able to take care of
      himself?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam could not help joining in the good-humoured laugh, for he
      recognised the truth of the description.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So I find that I must have a partner who is a man of business and not
      guilty of any inventions,' said Daniel Doyce, taking off his hat to pass
      his hand over his forehead, 'if it's only in deference to the current
      opinion, and to uphold the credit of the Works. I don't think he'll find
      that I have been very remiss or confused in my way of conducting them; but
      that's for him to say&mdash;whoever he is&mdash;not for me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have not chosen him yet, then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir, no. I have only just come to a decision to take one. The fact
      is, there's more to do than there used to be, and the Works are enough for
      me as I grow older. What with the books and correspondence, and foreign
      journeys for which a Principal is necessary, I can't do all. I am going to
      talk over the best way of negotiating the matter, if I find a spare
      half-hour between this and Monday morning, with my&mdash;my Nurse and
      protector,' said Doyce, with laughing eyes again. 'He is a sagacious man
      in business, and has had a good apprenticeship to it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      After this, they conversed on different subjects until they arrived at
      their journey's end. A composed and unobtrusive self-sustainment was
      noticeable in Daniel Doyce&mdash;a calm knowledge that what was true must
      remain true, in spite of all the Barnacles in the family ocean, and would
      be just the truth, and neither more nor less when even that sea had run
      dry&mdash;which had a kind of greatness in it, though not of the official
      quality.
    </p>
    <p>
      As he knew the house well, he conducted Arthur to it by the way that
      showed it to the best advantage. It was a charming place (none the worse
      for being a little eccentric), on the road by the river, and just what the
      residence of the Meagles family ought to be. It stood in a garden, no
      doubt as fresh and beautiful in the May of the Year as Pet now was in the
      May of her life; and it was defended by a goodly show of handsome trees
      and spreading evergreens, as Pet was by Mr and Mrs Meagles. It was made
      out of an old brick house, of which a part had been altogether pulled
      down, and another part had been changed into the present cottage; so there
      was a hale elderly portion, to represent Mr and Mrs Meagles, and a young
      picturesque, very pretty portion to represent Pet. There was even the
      later addition of a conservatory sheltering itself against it, uncertain
      of hue in its deep-stained glass, and in its more transparent portions
      flashing to the sun's rays, now like fire and now like harmless water
      drops; which might have stood for Tattycoram. Within view was the peaceful
      river and the ferry-boat, to moralise to all the inmates saying: Young or
      old, passionate or tranquil, chafing or content, you, thus runs the
      current always. Let the heart swell into what discord it will, thus plays
      the rippling water on the prow of the ferry-boat ever the same tune. Year
      after year, so much allowance for the drifting of the boat, so many miles
      an hour the flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the lilies,
      nothing uncertain or unquiet, upon this road that steadily runs away;
      while you, upon your flowing road of time, are so capricious and
      distracted.
    </p>
    <p>
      The bell at the gate had scarcely sounded when Mr Meagles came out to
      receive them. Mr Meagles had scarcely come out, when Mrs Meagles came out.
      Mrs Meagles had scarcely come out, when Pet came out. Pet scarcely had
      come out, when Tattycoram came out. Never had visitors a more hospitable
      reception.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here we are, you see,' said Mr Meagles, 'boxed up, Mr Clennam, within our
      own home-limits, as if we were never going to expand&mdash;that is, travel&mdash;again.
      Not like Marseilles, eh? No allonging and marshonging here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A different kind of beauty, indeed!' said Clennam, looking about him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, Lord bless me!' cried Mr Meagles, rubbing his hands with a relish,
      'it was an uncommonly pleasant thing being in quarantine, wasn't it? Do
      you know, I have often wished myself back again? We were a capital party.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was Mr Meagles's invariable habit. Always to object to everything
      while he was travelling, and always to want to get back to it when he was
      not travelling.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If it was summer-time,' said Mr Meagles, 'which I wish it was on your
      account, and in order that you might see the place at its best, you would
      hardly be able to hear yourself speak for birds. Being practical people,
      we never allow anybody to scare the birds; and the birds, being practical
      people too, come about us in myriads. We are delighted to see you, Clennam
      (if you'll allow me, I shall drop the Mister); I heartily assure you, we
      are delighted.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have not had so pleasant a greeting,' said Clennam&mdash;then he
      recalled what Little Dorrit had said to him in his own room, and
      faithfully added 'except once&mdash;since we last walked to and fro,
      looking down at the Mediterranean.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!' returned Mr Meagles. 'Something like a look out, <i>that</i> was,
      wasn't it? I don't want a military government, but I shouldn't mind a
      little allonging and marshonging&mdash;just a dash of it&mdash;in this
      neighbourhood sometimes. It's Devilish still.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Bestowing this eulogium on the retired character of his retreat with a
      dubious shake of the head, Mr Meagles led the way into the house. It was
      just large enough, and no more; was as pretty within as it was without,
      and was perfectly well-arranged and comfortable. Some traces of the
      migratory habits of the family were to be observed in the covered frames
      and furniture, and wrapped-up hangings; but it was easy to see that it was
      one of Mr Meagles's whims to have the cottage always kept, in their
      absence, as if they were always coming back the day after to-morrow. Of
      articles collected on his various expeditions, there was such a vast
      miscellany that it was like the dwelling of an amiable Corsair. There were
      antiquities from Central Italy, made by the best modern houses in that
      department of industry; bits of mummy from Egypt (and perhaps Birmingham);
      model gondolas from Venice; model villages from Switzerland; morsels of
      tesselated pavement from Herculaneum and Pompeii, like petrified minced
      veal; ashes out of tombs, and lava out of Vesuvius; Spanish fans, Spezzian
      straw hats, Moorish slippers, Tuscan hairpins, Carrara sculpture,
      Trastaverini scarves, Genoese velvets and filigree, Neapolitan coral,
      Roman cameos, Geneva jewellery, Arab lanterns, rosaries blest all round by
      the Pope himself, and an infinite variety of lumber. There were views,
      like and unlike, of a multitude of places; and there was one little
      picture-room devoted to a few of the regular sticky old Saints, with
      sinews like whipcord, hair like Neptune's, wrinkles like tattooing, and
      such coats of varnish that every holy personage served for a fly-trap, and
      became what is now called in the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O. Of
      these pictorial acquisitions Mr Meagles spoke in the usual manner. He was
      no judge, he said, except of what pleased himself; he had picked them up,
      dirt-cheap, and people <i>had</i> considered them rather fine. One man,
      who at any rate ought to know something of the subject, had declared that
      'Sage, Reading' (a specially oily old gentleman in a blanket, with a
      swan's-down tippet for a beard, and a web of cracks all over him like rich
      pie-crust), to be a fine Guercino. As for Sebastian del Piombo there, you
      would judge for yourself; if it were not his later manner, the question
      was, Who was it? Titian, that might or might not be&mdash;perhaps he had
      only touched it. Daniel Doyce said perhaps he hadn't touched it, but Mr
      Meagles rather declined to overhear the remark.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he had shown all his spoils, Mr Meagles took them into his own snug
      room overlooking the lawn, which was fitted up in part like a
      dressing-room and in part like an office, and in which, upon a kind of
      counter-desk, were a pair of brass scales for weighing gold, and a scoop
      for shovelling out money.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here they are, you see,' said Mr Meagles. 'I stood behind these two
      articles five-and-thirty years running, when I no more thought of gadding
      about than I now think of&mdash;staying at home. When I left the Bank for
      good, I asked for them, and brought them away with me. I mention it at
      once, or you might suppose that I sit in my counting-house (as Pet says I
      do), like the king in the poem of the four-and-twenty blackbirds, counting
      out my money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam's eyes had strayed to a natural picture on the wall, of two pretty
      little girls with their arms entwined. 'Yes, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, in
      a lower voice. 'There they both are. It was taken some seventeen years
      ago. As I often say to Mother, they were babies then.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Their names?' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, to be sure! You have never heard any name but Pet. Pet's name is
      Minnie; her sister's Lillie.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Should you have known, Mr Clennam, that one of them was meant for me?'
      asked Pet herself, now standing in the doorway.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I might have thought that both of them were meant for you, both are still
      so like you. Indeed,' said Clennam, glancing from the fair original to the
      picture and back, 'I cannot even now say which is not your portrait.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'D'ye hear that, Mother?' cried Mr Meagles to his wife, who had followed
      her daughter. 'It's always the same, Clennam; nobody can decide. The child
      to your left is Pet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The picture happened to be near a looking-glass. As Arthur looked at it
      again, he saw, by the reflection of the mirror, Tattycoram stop in passing
      outside the door, listen to what was going on, and pass away with an angry
      and contemptuous frown upon her face, that changed its beauty into
      ugliness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But come!' said Mr Meagles. 'You have had a long walk, and will be glad
      to get your boots off. As to Daniel here, I suppose he'd never think of
      taking <i>his</i> boots off, unless we showed him a boot-jack.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not?' asked Daniel, with a significant smile at Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! You have so many things to think about,' returned Mr Meagles,
      clapping him on the shoulder, as if his weakness must not be left to
      itself on any account. 'Figures, and wheels, and cogs, and levers, and
      screws, and cylinders, and a thousand things.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In my calling,' said Daniel, amused, 'the greater usually includes the
      less. But never mind, never mind! Whatever pleases you, pleases me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam could not help speculating, as he seated himself in his room by
      the fire, whether there might be in the breast of this honest,
      affectionate, and cordial Mr Meagles, any microscopic portion of the
      mustard-seed that had sprung up into the great tree of the Circumlocution
      Office. His curious sense of a general superiority to Daniel Doyce, which
      seemed to be founded, not so much on anything in Doyce's personal
      character as on the mere fact of his being an originator and a man out of
      the beaten track of other men, suggested the idea. It might have occupied
      him until he went down to dinner an hour afterwards, if he had not had
      another question to consider, which had been in his mind so long ago as
      before he was in quarantine at Marseilles, and which had now returned to
      it, and was very urgent with it. No less a question than this: Whether he
      should allow himself to fall in love with Pet?
    </p>
    <p>
      He was twice her age. (He changed the leg he had crossed over the other,
      and tried the calculation again, but could not bring out the total at
      less.) He was twice her age. Well! He was young in appearance, young in
      health and strength, young in heart. A man was certainly not old at forty;
      and many men were not in circumstances to marry, or did not marry, until
      they had attained that time of life. On the other hand, the question was,
      not what he thought of the point, but what she thought of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      He believed that Mr Meagles was disposed to entertain a ripe regard for
      him, and he knew that he had a sincere regard for Mr Meagles and his good
      wife. He could foresee that to relinquish this beautiful only child, of
      whom they were so fond, to any husband, would be a trial of their love
      which perhaps they never yet had had the fortitude to contemplate. But the
      more beautiful and winning and charming she, the nearer they must always
      be to the necessity of approaching it. And why not in his favour, as well
      as in another's?
    </p>
    <p>
      When he had got so far, it came again into his head that the question was,
      not what they thought of it, but what she thought of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam was a retiring man, with a sense of many deficiencies; and
      he so exalted the merits of the beautiful Minnie in his mind, and
      depressed his own, that when he pinned himself to this point, his hopes
      began to fail him. He came to the final resolution, as he made himself
      ready for dinner, that he would not allow himself to fall in love with
      Pet.
    </p>
    <p>
      There were only five, at a round table, and it was very pleasant indeed.
      They had so many places and people to recall, and they were all so easy
      and cheerful together (Daniel Doyce either sitting out like an amused
      spectator at cards, or coming in with some shrewd little experiences of
      his own, when it happened to be to the purpose), that they might have been
      together twenty times, and not have known so much of one another.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, after they had recalled a number of
      fellow-travellers. 'Has anybody seen Miss Wade?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have,' said Tattycoram.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had brought a little mantle which her young mistress had sent for, and
      was bending over her, putting it on, when she lifted up her dark eyes and
      made this unexpected answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tatty!' her young mistress exclaimed. 'You seen Miss Wade?&mdash;where?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here, miss,' said Tattycoram.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How?'
    </p>
    <p>
      An impatient glance from Tattycoram seemed, as Clennam saw it, to answer
      'With my eyes!' But her only answer in words was: 'I met her near the
      church.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What was she doing there I wonder!' said Mr Meagles. 'Not going to it, I
      should think.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She had written to me first,' said Tattycoram.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Tatty!' murmured her mistress, 'take your hands away. I feel as if
      some one else was touching me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She said it in a quick involuntary way, but half playfully, and not more
      petulantly or disagreeably than a favourite child might have done, who
      laughed next moment. Tattycoram set her full red lips together, and
      crossed her arms upon her bosom.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did you wish to know, sir,' she said, looking at Mr Meagles, 'what Miss
      Wade wrote to me about?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Tattycoram,' returned Mr Meagles, 'since you ask the question, and
      we are all friends here, perhaps you may as well mention it, if you are so
      inclined.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She knew, when we were travelling, where you lived,' said Tattycoram,
      'and she had seen me not quite&mdash;not quite&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not quite in a good temper, Tattycoram?' suggested Mr Meagles, shaking
      his head at the dark eyes with a quiet caution. 'Take a little time&mdash;count
      five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She pressed her lips together again, and took a long deep breath.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So she wrote to me to say that if I ever felt myself hurt,' she looked
      down at her young mistress, 'or found myself worried,' she looked down at
      her again, 'I might go to her, and be considerately treated. I was to
      think of it, and could speak to her by the church. So I went there to
      thank her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tatty,' said her young mistress, putting her hand up over her shoulder
      that the other might take it, 'Miss Wade almost frightened me when we
      parted, and I scarcely like to think of her just now as having been so
      near me without my knowing it. Tatty dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Tatty stood for a moment, immovable.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hey?' cried Mr Meagles. 'Count another five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She might have counted a dozen, when she bent and put her lips to the
      caressing hand. It patted her cheek, as it touched the owner's beautiful
      curls, and Tattycoram went away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now there,' said Mr Meagles softly, as he gave a turn to the dumb-waiter
      on his right hand to twirl the sugar towards himself. 'There's a girl who
      might be lost and ruined, if she wasn't among practical people. Mother and
      I know, solely from being practical, that there are times when that girl's
      whole nature seems to roughen itself against seeing us so bound up in Pet.
      No father and mother were bound up in her, poor soul. I don't like to
      think of the way in which that unfortunate child, with all that passion
      and protest in her, feels when she hears the Fifth Commandment on a
      Sunday. I am always inclined to call out, Church, Count five-and-twenty,
      Tattycoram.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Besides his dumb-waiter, Mr Meagles had two other not dumb waiters in the
      persons of two parlour-maids with rosy faces and bright eyes, who were a
      highly ornamental part of the table decoration. 'And why not, you see?'
      said Mr Meagles on this head. 'As I always say to Mother, why not have
      something pretty to look at, if you have anything at all?'
    </p>
    <p>
      A certain Mrs Tickit, who was Cook and Housekeeper when the family were at
      home, and Housekeeper only when the family were away, completed the
      establishment. Mr Meagles regretted that the nature of the duties in which
      she was engaged, rendered Mrs Tickit unpresentable at present, but hoped
      to introduce her to the new visitor to-morrow. She was an important part
      of the Cottage, he said, and all his friends knew her. That was her
      picture up in the corner. When they went away, she always put on the
      silk-gown and the jet-black row of curls represented in that portrait (her
      hair was reddish-grey in the kitchen), established herself in the
      breakfast-room, put her spectacles between two particular leaves of Doctor
      Buchan's Domestic Medicine, and sat looking over the blind all day until
      they came back again. It was supposed that no persuasion could be invented
      which would induce Mrs Tickit to abandon her post at the blind, however
      long their absence, or to dispense with the attendance of Dr Buchan; the
      lucubrations of which learned practitioner, Mr Meagles implicitly believed
      she had never yet consulted to the extent of one word in her life.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the evening they played an old-fashioned rubber; and Pet sat looking
      over her father's hand, or singing to herself by fits and starts at the
      piano. She was a spoilt child; but how could she be otherwise? Who could
      be much with so pliable and beautiful a creature, and not yield to her
      endearing influence? Who could pass an evening in the house, and not love
      her for the grace and charm of her very presence in the room? This was
      Clennam's reflection, notwithstanding the final conclusion at which he had
      arrived up-stairs.
    </p>
    <p>
      In making it, he revoked. 'Why, what are you thinking of, my good sir?'
      asked the astonished Mr Meagles, who was his partner. 'I beg your pardon.
      Nothing,' returned Clennam. 'Think of something, next time; that's a dear
      fellow,' said Mr Meagles. Pet laughingly believed he had been thinking of
      Miss Wade. 'Why of Miss Wade, Pet?' asked her father. 'Why, indeed!' said
      Arthur Clennam. Pet coloured a little, and went to the piano again.
    </p>
    <p>
      As they broke up for the night, Arthur overheard Doyce ask his host if he
      could give him half an hour's conversation before breakfast in the
      morning? The host replying willingly, Arthur lingered behind a moment,
      having his own word to add to that topic.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Meagles,' he said, on their being left alone, 'do you remember when
      you advised me to go straight to London?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perfectly well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And when you gave me some other good advice which I needed at that time?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I won't say what it was worth,' answered Mr Meagles: 'but of course I
      remember our being very pleasant and confidential together.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have acted on your advice; and having disembarrassed myself of an
      occupation that was painful to me for many reasons, wish to devote myself
      and what means I have, to another pursuit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Right! You can't do it too soon,' said Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, as I came down to-day, I found that your friend, Mr Doyce, is
      looking for a partner in his business&mdash;not a partner in his
      mechanical knowledge, but in the ways and means of turning the business
      arising from it to the best account.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Just so,' said Mr Meagles, with his hands in his pockets, and with the
      old business expression of face that had belonged to the scales and scoop.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Doyce mentioned incidentally, in the course of our conversation, that
      he was going to take your valuable advice on the subject of finding such a
      partner. If you should think our views and opportunities at all likely to
      coincide, perhaps you will let him know my available position. I speak, of
      course, in ignorance of the details, and they may be unsuitable on both
      sides.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No doubt, no doubt,' said Mr Meagles, with the caution belonging to the
      scales and scoop.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But they will be a question of figures and accounts&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Just so, just so,' said Mr Meagles, with arithmetical solidity belonging
      to the scales and scoop.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;And I shall be glad to enter into the subject, provided Mr Doyce
      responds, and you think well of it. If you will at present, therefore,
      allow me to place it in your hands, you will much oblige me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Clennam, I accept the trust with readiness,' said Mr Meagles. 'And
      without anticipating any of the points which you, as a man of business,
      have of course reserved, I am free to say to you that I think something
      may come of this. Of one thing you may be perfectly certain. Daniel is an
      honest man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am so sure of it that I have promptly made up my mind to speak to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You must guide him, you know; you must steer him; you must direct him; he
      is one of a crotchety sort,' said Mr Meagles, evidently meaning nothing
      more than that he did new things and went new ways; 'but he is as honest
      as the sun, and so good night!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam went back to his room, sat down again before his fire, and made up
      his mind that he was glad he had resolved not to fall in love with Pet.
      She was so beautiful, so amiable, so apt to receive any true impression
      given to her gentle nature and her innocent heart, and make the man who
      should be so happy as to communicate it, the most fortunate and enviable
      of all men, that he was very glad indeed he had come to that conclusion.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, as this might have been a reason for coming to the opposite
      conclusion, he followed out the theme again a little way in his mind; to
      justify himself, perhaps.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Suppose that a man,' so his thoughts ran, 'who had been of age some
      twenty years or so; who was a diffident man, from the circumstances of his
      youth; who was rather a grave man, from the tenor of his life; who knew
      himself to be deficient in many little engaging qualities which he admired
      in others, from having been long in a distant region, with nothing
      softening near him; who had no kind sisters to present to her; who had no
      congenial home to make her known in; who was a stranger in the land; who
      had not a fortune to compensate, in any measure, for these defects; who
      had nothing in his favour but his honest love and his general wish to do
      right&mdash;suppose such a man were to come to this house, and were to
      yield to the captivation of this charming girl, and were to persuade
      himself that he could hope to win her; what a weakness it would be!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He softly opened his window, and looked out upon the serene river. Year
      after year so much allowance for the drifting of the ferry-boat, so many
      miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the
      lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet.
    </p>
    <p>
      Why should he be vexed or sore at heart? It was not his weakness that he
      had imagined. It was nobody's, nobody's within his knowledge; why should
      it trouble him? And yet it did trouble him. And he thought&mdash;who has
      not thought for a moment, sometimes?&mdash;that it might be better to flow
      away monotonously, like the river, and to compound for its insensibility
      to happiness with its insensibility to pain.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 17. Nobody's Rival
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>efore breakfast in the morning, Arthur walked out to look about him. As
      the morning was fine and he had an hour on his hands, he crossed the river
      by the ferry, and strolled along a footpath through some meadows. When he
      came back to the towing-path, he found the ferry-boat on the opposite
      side, and a gentleman hailing it and waiting to be taken over.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0189m.jpg" alt="0189m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0189.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      This gentleman looked barely thirty. He was well dressed, of a sprightly
      and gay appearance, a well-knit figure, and a rich dark complexion. As
      Arthur came over the stile and down to the water's edge, the lounger
      glanced at him for a moment, and then resumed his occupation of idly
      tossing stones into the water with his foot. There was something in his
      way of spurning them out of their places with his heel, and getting them
      into the required position, that Clennam thought had an air of cruelty in
      it. Most of us have more or less frequently derived a similar impression
      from a man's manner of doing some very little thing: plucking a flower,
      clearing away an obstacle, or even destroying an insentient object.
    </p>
    <p>
      The gentleman's thoughts were preoccupied, as his face showed, and he took
      no notice of a fine Newfoundland dog, who watched him attentively, and
      watched every stone too, in its turn, eager to spring into the river on
      receiving his master's sign. The ferry-boat came over, however, without
      his receiving any sign, and when it grounded his master took him by the
      collar and walked him into it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not this morning,' he said to the dog. 'You won't do for ladies' company,
      dripping wet. Lie down.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam followed the man and the dog into the boat, and took his seat. The
      dog did as he was ordered. The man remained standing, with his hands in
      his pockets, and towered between Clennam and the prospect. Man and dog
      both jumped lightly out as soon as they touched the other side, and went
      away. Clennam was glad to be rid of them.
    </p>
    <p>
      The church clock struck the breakfast hour as he walked up the little lane
      by which the garden-gate was approached. The moment he pulled the bell a
      deep loud barking assailed him from within the wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I heard no dog last night,' thought Clennam. The gate was opened by one
      of the rosy maids, and on the lawn were the Newfoundland dog and the man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Minnie is not down yet, gentlemen,' said the blushing portress, as
      they all came together in the garden. Then she said to the master of the
      dog, 'Mr Clennam, sir,' and tripped away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Odd enough, Mr Clennam, that we should have met just now,' said the man.
      Upon which the dog became mute. 'Allow me to introduce myself&mdash;Henry
      Gowan. A pretty place this, and looks wonderfully well this morning!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The manner was easy, and the voice agreeable; but still Clennam thought,
      that if he had not made that decided resolution to avoid falling in love
      with Pet, he would have taken a dislike to this Henry Gowan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's new to you, I believe?' said this Gowan, when Arthur had extolled
      the place.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite new. I made acquaintance with it only yesterday afternoon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! Of course this is not its best aspect. It used to look charming in
      the spring, before they went away last time. I should like you to have
      seen it then.'
    </p>
    <p>
      But for that resolution so often recalled, Clennam might have wished him
      in the crater of Mount Etna, in return for this civility.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have had the pleasure of seeing it under many circumstances during the
      last three years, and it's&mdash;a Paradise.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was (at least it might have been, always excepting for that wise
      resolution) like his dexterous impudence to call it a Paradise. He only
      called it a Paradise because he first saw her coming, and so made her out
      within her hearing to be an angel, Confusion to him!
    </p>
    <p>
      And ah! how beaming she looked, and how glad! How she caressed the dog,
      and how the dog knew her! How expressive that heightened colour in her
      face, that fluttered manner, her downcast eyes, her irresolute happiness!
      When had Clennam seen her look like this? Not that there was any reason
      why he might, could, would, or should have ever seen her look like this,
      or that he had ever hoped for himself to see her look like this; but still&mdash;when
      had he ever known her do it!
    </p>
    <p>
      He stood at a little distance from them. This Gowan when he had talked
      about a Paradise, had gone up to her and taken her hand. The dog had put
      his great paws on her arm and laid his head against her dear bosom. She
      had laughed and welcomed them, and made far too much of the dog, far, far,
      too much&mdash;that is to say, supposing there had been any third person
      looking on who loved her.
    </p>
    <p>
      She disengaged herself now, and came to Clennam, and put her hand in his
      and wished him good morning, and gracefully made as if she would take his
      arm and be escorted into the house. To this Gowan had no objection. No, he
      knew he was too safe.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a passing cloud on Mr Meagles's good-humoured face when they all
      three (four, counting the dog, and he was the most objectionable but one
      of the party) came in to breakfast. Neither it, nor the touch of
      uneasiness on Mrs Meagles as she directed her eyes towards it, was
      unobserved by Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Gowan,' said Mr Meagles, even suppressing a sigh; 'how goes the
      world with you this morning?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Much as usual, sir. Lion and I being determined not to waste anything of
      our weekly visit, turned out early, and came over from Kingston, my
      present headquarters, where I am making a sketch or two.' Then he told how
      he had met Mr Clennam at the ferry, and they had come over together.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Gowan is well, Henry?' said Mrs Meagles. (Clennam became attentive.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'My mother is quite well, thank you.' (Clennam became inattentive.) 'I
      have taken the liberty of making an addition to your family dinner-party
      to-day, which I hope will not be inconvenient to you or to Mr Meagles. I
      couldn't very well get out of it,' he explained, turning to the latter.
      'The young fellow wrote to propose himself to me; and as he is well
      connected, I thought you would not object to my transferring him here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who <i>is</i> the young fellow?' asked Mr Meagles with peculiar
      complacency.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is one of the Barnacles. Tite Barnacle's son, Clarence Barnacle, who
      is in his father's Department. I can at least guarantee that the river
      shall not suffer from his visit. He won't set it on fire.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Aye, aye?' said Meagles. 'A Barnacle is he? <i>We</i> know something of
      that family, eh, Dan? By George, they are at the top of the tree, though!
      Let me see. What relation will this young fellow be to Lord Decimus now?
      His Lordship married, in seventeen ninety-seven, Lady Jemima Bilberry, who
      was the second daughter by the third marriage&mdash;no! There I am wrong!
      That was Lady Seraphina&mdash;Lady Jemima was the first daughter by the
      second marriage of the fifteenth Earl of Stiltstalking with the Honourable
      Clementina Toozellem. Very well. Now this young fellow's father married a
      Stiltstalking and <i>his</i> father married his cousin who was a Barnacle.
      The father of that father who married a Barnacle, married a Joddleby.&mdash;I
      am getting a little too far back, Gowan; I want to make out what relation
      this young fellow is to Lord Decimus.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's easily stated. His father is nephew to Lord Decimus.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nephew&mdash;to&mdash;Lord&mdash;Decimus,' Mr Meagles luxuriously
      repeated with his eyes shut, that he might have nothing to distract him
      from the full flavour of the genealogical tree. 'By George, you are right,
      Gowan. So he is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Consequently, Lord Decimus is his great uncle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But stop a bit!' said Mr Meagles, opening his eyes with a fresh
      discovery. 'Then on the mother's side, Lady Stiltstalking is his great
      aunt.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course she is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Aye, aye, aye?' said Mr Meagles with much interest. 'Indeed, indeed? We
      shall be glad to see him. We'll entertain him as well as we can, in our
      humble way; and we shall not starve him, I hope, at all events.'
    </p>
    <p>
      In the beginning of this dialogue, Clennam had expected some great
      harmless outburst from Mr Meagles, like that which had made him burst out
      of the Circumlocution Office, holding Doyce by the collar. But his good
      friend had a weakness which none of us need go into the next street to
      find, and which no amount of Circumlocution experience could long subdue
      in him. Clennam looked at Doyce; but Doyce knew all about it beforehand,
      and looked at his plate, and made no sign, and said no word.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am much obliged to you,' said Gowan, to conclude the subject. 'Clarence
      is a great ass, but he is one of the dearest and best fellows that ever
      lived!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It appeared, before the breakfast was over, that everybody whom this Gowan
      knew was either more or less of an ass, or more or less of a knave; but
      was, notwithstanding, the most lovable, the most engaging, the simplest,
      truest, kindest, dearest, best fellow that ever lived. The process by
      which this unvarying result was attained, whatever the premises, might
      have been stated by Mr Henry Gowan thus: 'I claim to be always
      book-keeping, with a peculiar nicety, in every man's case, and posting up
      a careful little account of Good and Evil with him. I do this so
      conscientiously, that I am happy to tell you I find the most worthless of
      men to be the dearest old fellow too: and am in a condition to make the
      gratifying report, that there is much less difference than you are
      inclined to suppose between an honest man and a scoundrel.' The effect of
      this cheering discovery happened to be, that while he seemed to be
      scrupulously finding good in most men, he did in reality lower it where it
      was, and set it up where it was not; but that was its only disagreeable or
      dangerous feature.
    </p>
    <p>
      It scarcely seemed, however, to afford Mr Meagles as much satisfaction as
      the Barnacle genealogy had done. The cloud that Clennam had never seen
      upon his face before that morning, frequently overcast it again; and there
      was the same shadow of uneasy observation of him on the comely face of his
      wife. More than once or twice when Pet caressed the dog, it appeared to
      Clennam that her father was unhappy in seeing her do it; and, in one
      particular instance when Gowan stood on the other side of the dog, and
      bent his head at the same time, Arthur fancied that he saw tears rise to
      Mr Meagles's eyes as he hurried out of the room. It was either the fact
      too, or he fancied further, that Pet herself was not insensible to these
      little incidents; that she tried, with a more delicate affection than
      usual, to express to her good father how much she loved him; that it was
      on this account that she fell behind the rest, both as they went to church
      and as they returned from it, and took his arm. He could not have sworn
      but that as he walked alone in the garden afterwards, he had an
      instantaneous glimpse of her in her father's room, clinging to both her
      parents with the greatest tenderness, and weeping on her father's
      shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      The latter part of the day turning out wet, they were fain to keep the
      house, look over Mr Meagles's collection, and beguile the time with
      conversation. This Gowan had plenty to say for himself, and said it in an
      off-hand and amusing manner. He appeared to be an artist by profession,
      and to have been at Rome some time; yet he had a slight, careless, amateur
      way with him&mdash;a perceptible limp, both in his devotion to art and his
      attainments&mdash;which Clennam could scarcely understand.
    </p>
    <p>
      He applied to Daniel Doyce for help, as they stood together, looking out
      of window.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know Mr Gowan?' he said in a low voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have seen him here. Comes here every Sunday when they are at home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'An artist, I infer from what he says?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A sort of a one,' said Daniel Doyce, in a surly tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What sort of a one?' asked Clennam, with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, he has sauntered into the Arts at a leisurely Pall-Mall pace,' said
      Doyce, 'and I doubt if they care to be taken quite so coolly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Pursuing his inquiries, Clennam found that the Gowan family were a very
      distant ramification of the Barnacles; and that the paternal Gowan,
      originally attached to a legation abroad, had been pensioned off as a
      Commissioner of nothing particular somewhere or other, and had died at his
      post with his drawn salary in his hand, nobly defending it to the last
      extremity. In consideration of this eminent public service, the Barnacle
      then in power had recommended the Crown to bestow a pension of two or
      three hundred a-year on his widow; to which the next Barnacle in power had
      added certain shady and sedate apartments in the Palaces at Hampton Court,
      where the old lady still lived, deploring the degeneracy of the times in
      company with several other old ladies of both sexes. Her son, Mr Henry
      Gowan, inheriting from his father, the Commissioner, that very
      questionable help in life, a very small independence, had been difficult
      to settle; the rather, as public appointments chanced to be scarce, and
      his genius, during his earlier manhood, was of that exclusively
      agricultural character which applies itself to the cultivation of wild
      oats. At last he had declared that he would become a Painter; partly
      because he had always had an idle knack that way, and partly to grieve the
      souls of the Barnacles-in-chief who had not provided for him. So it had
      come to pass successively, first, that several distinguished ladies had
      been frightfully shocked; then, that portfolios of his performances had
      been handed about o' nights, and declared with ecstasy to be perfect
      Claudes, perfect Cuyps, perfect phaenomena; then, that Lord Decimus had
      bought his picture, and had asked the President and Council to dinner at a
      blow, and had said, with his own magnificent gravity, 'Do you know, there
      appears to me to be really immense merit in that work?' and, in short,
      that people of condition had absolutely taken pains to bring him into
      fashion. But, somehow, it had all failed. The prejudiced public had stood
      out against it obstinately. They had determined not to admire Lord
      Decimus's picture. They had determined to believe that in every service,
      except their own, a man must qualify himself, by striving early and late,
      and by working heart and soul, might and main. So now Mr Gowan, like that
      worn-out old coffin which never was Mahomet's nor anybody else's, hung
      midway between two points: jaundiced and jealous as to the one he had
      left: jaundiced and jealous as to the other that he couldn't reach.
    </p>
    <p>
      Such was the substance of Clennam's discoveries concerning him, made that
      rainy Sunday afternoon and afterwards.
    </p>
    <p>
      About an hour or so after dinner time, Young Barnacle appeared, attended
      by his eye-glass; in honour of whose family connections, Mr Meagles had
      cashiered the pretty parlour-maids for the day, and had placed on duty in
      their stead two dingy men. Young Barnacle was in the last degree amazed
      and disconcerted at sight of Arthur, and had murmured involuntarily, 'Look
      here! upon my soul, you know!' before his presence of mind returned.
    </p>
    <p>
      Even then, he was obliged to embrace the earliest opportunity of taking
      his friend into a window, and saying, in a nasal way that was a part of
      his general debility:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to speak to you, Gowan. I say. Look here. Who is that fellow?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A friend of our host's. None of mine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's a most ferocious Radical, you know,' said Young Barnacle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is he? How do you know?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ecod, sir, he was Pitching into our people the other day in the most
      tremendous manner. Went up to our place and Pitched into my father to that
      extent that it was necessary to order him out. Came back to our
      Department, and Pitched into me. Look here. You never saw such a fellow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What did he want?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ecod, sir,' returned Young Barnacle, 'he said he wanted to know, you
      know! Pervaded our Department&mdash;without an appointment&mdash;and said
      he wanted to know!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The stare of indignant wonder with which Young Barnacle accompanied this
      disclosure, would have strained his eyes injuriously but for the opportune
      relief of dinner. Mr Meagles (who had been extremely solicitous to know
      how his uncle and aunt were) begged him to conduct Mrs Meagles to the
      dining-room. And when he sat on Mrs Meagles's right hand, Mr Meagles
      looked as gratified as if his whole family were there.
    </p>
    <p>
      All the natural charm of the previous day was gone. The eaters of the
      dinner, like the dinner itself, were lukewarm, insipid, overdone&mdash;and
      all owing to this poor little dull Young Barnacle. Conversationless at any
      time, he was now the victim of a weakness special to the occasion, and
      solely referable to Clennam. He was under a pressing and continual
      necessity of looking at that gentleman, which occasioned his eye-glass to
      get into his soup, into his wine-glass, into Mrs Meagles's plate, to hang
      down his back like a bell-rope, and be several times disgracefully
      restored to his bosom by one of the dingy men. Weakened in mind by his
      frequent losses of this instrument, and its determination not to stick in
      his eye, and more and more enfeebled in intellect every time he looked at
      the mysterious Clennam, he applied spoons to his eyes, forks, and other
      foreign matters connected with the furniture of the dinner-table. His
      discovery of these mistakes greatly increased his difficulties, but never
      released him from the necessity of looking at Clennam. And whenever
      Clennam spoke, this ill-starred young man was clearly seized with a dread
      that he was coming, by some artful device, round to that point of wanting
      to know, you know.
    </p>
    <p>
      It may be questioned, therefore, whether any one but Mr Meagles had much
      enjoyment of the time. Mr Meagles, however, thoroughly enjoyed Young
      Barnacle. As a mere flask of the golden water in the tale became a full
      fountain when it was poured out, so Mr Meagles seemed to feel that this
      small spice of Barnacle imparted to his table the flavour of the whole
      family-tree. In its presence, his frank, fine, genuine qualities paled; he
      was not so easy, he was not so natural, he was striving after something
      that did not belong to him, he was not himself. What a strange peculiarity
      on the part of Mr Meagles, and where should we find another such case!
    </p>
    <p>
      At last the wet Sunday wore itself out in a wet night; and Young Barnacle
      went home in a cab, feebly smoking; and the objectionable Gowan went away
      on foot, accompanied by the objectionable dog. Pet had taken the most
      amiable pains all day to be friendly with Clennam, but Clennam had been a
      little reserved since breakfast&mdash;that is to say, would have been, if
      he had loved her.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he had gone to his own room, and had again thrown himself into the
      chair by the fire, Mr Doyce knocked at the door, candle in hand, to ask
      him how and at what hour he proposed returning on the morrow? After
      settling this question, he said a word to Mr Doyce about this Gowan&mdash;who
      would have run in his head a good deal, if he had been his rival.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Those are not good prospects for a painter,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' returned Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Doyce stood, chamber-candlestick in hand, the other hand in his pocket,
      looking hard at the flame of his candle, with a certain quiet perception
      in his face that they were going to say something more.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought our good friend a little changed, and out of spirits, after he
      came this morning?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' returned Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But not his daughter?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a pause on both sides. Mr Doyce, still looking at the flame of
      his candle, slowly resumed:
    </p>
    <p>
      'The truth is, he has twice taken his daughter abroad in the hope of
      separating her from Mr Gowan. He rather thinks she is disposed to like
      him, and he has painful doubts (I quite agree with him, as I dare say you
      do) of the hopefulness of such a marriage.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There&mdash;' Clennam choked, and coughed, and stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, you have taken cold,' said Daniel Doyce. But without looking at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;There is an engagement between them, of course?' said Clennam
      airily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. As I am told, certainly not. It has been solicited on the gentleman's
      part, but none has been made. Since their recent return, our friend has
      yielded to a weekly visit, but that is the utmost. Minnie would not
      deceive her father and mother. You have travelled with them, and I believe
      you know what a bond there is among them, extending even beyond this
      present life. All that there is between Miss Minnie and Mr Gowan, I have
      no doubt we see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! We see enough!' cried Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Doyce wished him Good Night in the tone of a man who had heard a
      mournful, not to say despairing, exclamation, and who sought to infuse
      some encouragement and hope into the mind of the person by whom it had
      been uttered. Such tone was probably a part of his oddity, as one of a
      crotchety band; for how could he have heard anything of that kind, without
      Clennam's hearing it too?
    </p>
    <p>
      The rain fell heavily on the roof, and pattered on the ground, and dripped
      among the evergreens and the leafless branches of the trees. The rain fell
      heavily, drearily. It was a night of tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      If Clennam had not decided against falling in love with Pet; if he had had
      the weakness to do it; if he had, little by little, persuaded himself to
      set all the earnestness of his nature, all the might of his hope, and all
      the wealth of his matured character, on that cast; if he had done this and
      found that all was lost; he would have been, that night, unutterably
      miserable. As it was&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      As it was, the rain fell heavily, drearily.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 18. Little Dorrit's Lover
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ittle Dorrit had not attained her twenty-second birthday without finding
      a lover. Even in the shallow Marshalsea, the ever young Archer shot off a
      few featherless arrows now and then from a mouldy bow, and winged a
      Collegian or two.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit's lover, however, was not a Collegian. He was the
      sentimental son of a turnkey. His father hoped, in the fulness of time, to
      leave him the inheritance of an unstained key; and had from his early
      youth familiarised him with the duties of his office, and with an ambition
      to retain the prison-lock in the family. While the succession was yet in
      abeyance, he assisted his mother in the conduct of a snug tobacco business
      round the corner of Horsemonger Lane (his father being a non-resident
      turnkey), which could usually command a neat connection within the College
      walls.
    </p>
    <p>
      Years agone, when the object of his affections was wont to sit in her
      little arm-chair by the high Lodge-fender, Young John (family name,
      Chivery), a year older than herself, had eyed her with admiring wonder.
      When he had played with her in the yard, his favourite game had been to
      counterfeit locking her up in corners, and to counterfeit letting her out
      for real kisses. When he grew tall enough to peep through the keyhole of
      the great lock of the main door, he had divers times set down his father's
      dinner, or supper, to get on as it might on the outer side thereof, while
      he stood taking cold in one eye by dint of peeping at her through that
      airy perspective.
    </p>
    <p>
      If Young John had ever slackened in his truth in the less penetrable days
      of his boyhood, when youth is prone to wear its boots unlaced and is
      happily unconscious of digestive organs, he had soon strung it up again
      and screwed it tight. At nineteen, his hand had inscribed in chalk on that
      part of the wall which fronted her lodgings, on the occasion of her
      birthday, 'Welcome sweet nursling of the Fairies!' At twenty-three, the
      same hand falteringly presented cigars on Sundays to the Father of the
      Marshalsea, and Father of the queen of his soul.
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John was small of stature, with rather weak legs and very weak light
      hair. One of his eyes (perhaps the eye that used to peep through the
      keyhole) was also weak, and looked larger than the other, as if it
      couldn't collect itself. Young John was gentle likewise. But he was great
      of soul. Poetical, expansive, faithful.
    </p>
    <p>
      Though too humble before the ruler of his heart to be sanguine, Young John
      had considered the object of his attachment in all its lights and shades.
      Following it out to blissful results, he had descried, without
      self-commendation, a fitness in it. Say things prospered, and they were
      united. She, the child of the Marshalsea; he, the lock-keeper. There was a
      fitness in that. Say he became a resident turnkey. She would officially
      succeed to the chamber she had rented so long. There was a beautiful
      propriety in that. It looked over the wall, if you stood on tip-toe; and,
      with a trellis-work of scarlet beans and a canary or so, would become a
      very Arbour. There was a charming idea in that. Then, being all in all to
      one another, there was even an appropriate grace in the lock. With the
      world shut out (except that part of it which would be shut in); with its
      troubles and disturbances only known to them by hearsay, as they would be
      described by the pilgrims tarrying with them on their way to the Insolvent
      Shrine; with the Arbour above, and the Lodge below; they would glide down
      the stream of time, in pastoral domestic happiness. Young John drew tears
      from his eyes by finishing the picture with a tombstone in the adjoining
      churchyard, close against the prison wall, bearing the following touching
      inscription: 'Sacred to the Memory Of JOHN CHIVERY, Sixty years Turnkey,
      and fifty years Head Turnkey, Of the neighbouring Marshalsea, Who departed
      this life, universally respected, on the thirty-first of December, One
      thousand eight hundred and eighty-six, Aged eighty-three years. Also of
      his truly beloved and truly loving wife, AMY, whose maiden name was
      DORRIT, Who survived his loss not quite forty-eight hours, And who
      breathed her last in the Marshalsea aforesaid. There she was born, There
      she lived, There she died.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Chivery parents were not ignorant of their son's attachment&mdash;indeed
      it had, on some exceptional occasions, thrown him into a state of mind
      that had impelled him to conduct himself with irascibility towards the
      customers, and damage the business&mdash;but they, in their turns, had
      worked it out to desirable conclusions. Mrs Chivery, a prudent woman, had
      desired her husband to take notice that their John's prospects of the Lock
      would certainly be strengthened by an alliance with Miss Dorrit, who had
      herself a kind of claim upon the College and was much respected there. Mrs
      Chivery had desired her husband to take notice that if, on the one hand,
      their John had means and a post of trust, on the other hand, Miss Dorrit
      had family; and that her (Mrs Chivery's) sentiment was, that two halves
      made a whole. Mrs Chivery, speaking as a mother and not as a diplomatist,
      had then, from a different point of view, desired her husband to recollect
      that their John had never been strong, and that his love had fretted and
      worrited him enough as it was, without his being driven to do himself a
      mischief, as nobody couldn't say he wouldn't be if he was crossed. These
      arguments had so powerfully influenced the mind of Mr Chivery, who was a
      man of few words, that he had on sundry Sunday mornings, given his boy
      what he termed 'a lucky touch,' signifying that he considered such
      commendation of him to Good Fortune, preparatory to his that day declaring
      his passion and becoming triumphant. But Young John had never taken
      courage to make the declaration; and it was principally on these occasions
      that he had returned excited to the tobacco shop, and flown at the
      customers.
    </p>
    <p>
      In this affair, as in every other, Little Dorrit herself was the last
      person considered. Her brother and sister were aware of it, and attained a
      sort of station by making a peg of it on which to air the miserably ragged
      old fiction of the family gentility. Her sister asserted the family
      gentility by flouting the poor swain as he loitered about the prison for
      glimpses of his dear. Tip asserted the family gentility, and his own, by
      coming out in the character of the aristocratic brother, and loftily
      swaggering in the little skittle ground respecting seizures by the scruff
      of the neck, which there were looming probabilities of some gentleman
      unknown executing on some little puppy not mentioned. These were not the
      only members of the Dorrit family who turned it to account. No, no. The
      Father of the Marshalsea was supposed to know nothing about the matter, of
      course: his poor dignity could not see so low. But he took the cigars, on
      Sundays, and was glad to get them; and sometimes even condescended to walk
      up and down the yard with the donor (who was proud and hopeful then), and
      benignantly to smoke one in his society. With no less readiness and
      condescension did he receive attentions from Chivery Senior, who always
      relinquished his arm-chair and newspaper to him, when he came into the
      Lodge during one of his spells of duty; and who had even mentioned to him,
      that, if he would like at any time after dusk quietly to step out into the
      fore-court and take a look at the street, there was not much to prevent
      him. If he did not avail himself of this latter civility, it was only
      because he had lost the relish for it; inasmuch as he took everything else
      he could get, and would say at times, 'Extremely civil person, Chivery;
      very attentive man and very respectful. Young Chivery, too; really almost
      with a delicate perception of one's position here. A very well conducted
      family indeed, the Chiveries. Their behaviour gratifies me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The devoted Young John all this time regarded the family with reverence.
      He never dreamed of disputing their pretensions, but did homage to the
      miserable Mumbo jumbo they paraded. As to resenting any affront from <i>her</i>
      brother, he would have felt, even if he had not naturally been of a most
      pacific disposition, that to wag his tongue or lift his hand against that
      sacred gentleman would be an unhallowed act. He was sorry that his noble
      mind should take offence; still, he felt the fact to be not incompatible
      with its nobility, and sought to propitiate and conciliate that gallant
      soul. Her father, a gentleman in misfortune&mdash;a gentleman of a fine
      spirit and courtly manners, who always bore with him&mdash;he deeply
      honoured. Her sister he considered somewhat vain and proud, but a young
      lady of infinite accomplishments, who could not forget the past. It was an
      instinctive testimony to Little Dorrit's worth and difference from all the
      rest, that the poor young fellow honoured and loved her for being simply
      what she was.
    </p>
    <p>
      The tobacco business round the corner of Horsemonger Lane was carried out
      in a rural establishment one story high, which had the benefit of the air
      from the yards of Horsemonger Lane jail, and the advantage of a retired
      walk under the wall of that pleasant establishment. The business was of
      too modest a character to support a life-size Highlander, but it
      maintained a little one on a bracket on the door-post, who looked like a
      fallen Cherub that had found it necessary to take to a kilt.
    </p>
    <p>
      From the portal thus decorated, one Sunday after an early dinner of baked
      viands, Young John issued forth on his usual Sunday errand; not
      empty-handed, but with his offering of cigars. He was neatly attired in a
      plum-coloured coat, with as large a collar of black velvet as his figure
      could carry; a silken waistcoat, bedecked with golden sprigs; a chaste
      neckerchief much in vogue at that day, representing a preserve of lilac
      pheasants on a buff ground; pantaloons so highly decorated with
      side-stripes that each leg was a three-stringed lute; and a hat of state
      very high and hard. When the prudent Mrs Chivery perceived that in
      addition to these adornments her John carried a pair of white kid gloves,
      and a cane like a little finger-post, surmounted by an ivory hand
      marshalling him the way that he should go; and when she saw him, in this
      heavy marching order, turn the corner to the right; she remarked to Mr
      Chivery, who was at home at the time, that she thought she knew which way
      the wind blew.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Collegians were entertaining a considerable number of visitors that
      Sunday afternoon, and their Father kept his room for the purpose of
      receiving presentations. After making the tour of the yard, Little
      Dorrit's lover with a hurried heart went up-stairs, and knocked with his
      knuckles at the Father's door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come in, come in!' said a gracious voice. The Father's voice, her
      father's, the Marshalsea's father's. He was seated in his black velvet
      cap, with his newspaper, three-and-sixpence accidentally left on the
      table, and two chairs arranged. Everything prepared for holding his Court.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, Young John! How do you do, how do you do!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pretty well, I thank you, sir. I hope you are the same.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, John Chivery; yes. Nothing to complain of.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have taken the liberty, sir, of&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh?' The Father of the Marshalsea always lifted up his eyebrows at this
      point, and became amiably distraught and smilingly absent in mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;A few cigars, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' (For the moment, excessively surprised.) 'Thank you, Young John,
      thank you. But really, I am afraid I am too&mdash;No? Well then, I will
      say no more about it. Put them on the mantelshelf, if you please, Young
      John. And sit down, sit down. You are not a stranger, John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir, I am sure&mdash;Miss;' here Young John turned the great
      hat round and round upon his left-hand, like a slowly twirling mouse-cage;
      'Miss Amy quite well, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, John, yes; very well. She is out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, John. Miss Amy is gone for an airing. My young people all go out a
      good deal. But at their time of life, it's natural, John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very much so, I am sure, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'An airing. An airing. Yes.' He was blandly tapping his fingers on the
      table, and casting his eyes up at the window. 'Amy has gone for an airing
      on the Iron Bridge. She has become quite partial to the Iron Bridge of
      late, and seems to like to walk there better than anywhere.' He returned
      to conversation. 'Your father is not on duty at present, I think, John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir, he comes on later in the afternoon.' Another twirl of the great
      hat, and then Young John said, rising, 'I am afraid I must wish you good
      day, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So soon? Good day, Young John. Nay, nay,' with the utmost condescension,
      'never mind your glove, John. Shake hands with it on. You are no stranger
      here, you know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Highly gratified by the kindness of his reception, Young John descended
      the staircase. On his way down he met some Collegians bringing up visitors
      to be presented, and at that moment Mr Dorrit happened to call over the
      banisters with particular distinctness, 'Much obliged to you for your
      little testimonial, John!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit's lover very soon laid down his penny on the tollplate of
      the Iron Bridge, and came upon it looking about him for the well-known and
      well-beloved figure. At first he feared she was not there; but as he
      walked on towards the Middlesex side, he saw her standing still, looking
      at the water. She was absorbed in thought, and he wondered what she might
      be thinking about. There were the piles of city roofs and chimneys, more
      free from smoke than on week-days; and there were the distant masts and
      steeples. Perhaps she was thinking about them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit mused so long, and was so entirely preoccupied, that
      although her lover stood quiet for what he thought was a long time, and
      twice or thrice retired and came back again to the former spot, still she
      did not move. So, in the end, he made up his mind to go on, and seem to
      come upon her casually in passing, and speak to her. The place was quiet,
      and now or never was the time to speak to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      He walked on, and she did not appear to hear his steps until he was close
      upon her. When he said 'Miss Dorrit!' she started and fell back from him,
      with an expression in her face of fright and something like dislike that
      caused him unutterable dismay. She had often avoided him before&mdash;always,
      indeed, for a long, long while. She had turned away and glided off so
      often when she had seen him coming toward her, that the unfortunate Young
      John could not think it accidental. But he had hoped that it might be
      shyness, her retiring character, her foreknowledge of the state of his
      heart, anything short of aversion. Now, that momentary look had said,
      'You, of all people! I would rather have seen any one on earth than you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was but a momentary look, inasmuch as she checked it, and said in her
      soft little voice, 'Oh, Mr John! Is it you?' But she felt what it had
      been, as he felt what it had been; and they stood looking at one another
      equally confused.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Amy, I am afraid I disturbed you by speaking to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, rather. I&mdash;I came here to be alone, and I thought I was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Amy, I took the liberty of walking this way, because Mr Dorrit
      chanced to mention, when I called upon him just now, that you&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      She caused him more dismay than before by suddenly murmuring, 'O father,
      father!' in a heartrending tone, and turning her face away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Amy, I hope I don't give you any uneasiness by naming Mr Dorrit. I
      assure you I found him very well and in the best of Spirits, and he showed
      me even more than his usual kindness; being so very kind as to say that I
      was not a stranger there, and in all ways gratifying me very much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      To the inexpressible consternation of her lover, Little Dorrit, with her
      hands to her averted face, and rocking herself where she stood as if she
      were in pain, murmured, 'O father, how can you! O dear, dear father, how
      can you, can you, do it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The poor fellow stood gazing at her, overflowing with sympathy, but not
      knowing what to make of this, until, having taken out her handkerchief and
      put it to her still averted face, she hurried away. At first he remained
      stock still; then hurried after her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Amy, pray! Will you have the goodness to stop a moment? Miss Amy, if
      it comes to that, let <i>me</i> go. I shall go out of my senses, if I have
      to think that I have driven you away like this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His trembling voice and unfeigned earnestness brought Little Dorrit to a
      stop. 'Oh, I don't know what to do,' she cried, 'I don't know what to do!'
    </p>
    <p>
      To Young John, who had never seen her bereft of her quiet self-command,
      who had seen her from her infancy ever so reliable and self-suppressed,
      there was a shock in her distress, and in having to associate himself with
      it as its cause, that shook him from his great hat to the pavement. He
      felt it necessary to explain himself. He might be misunderstood&mdash;supposed
      to mean something, or to have done something, that had never entered into
      his imagination. He begged her to hear him explain himself, as the
      greatest favour she could show him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Amy, I know very well that your family is far above mine. It were
      vain to conceal it. There never was a Chivery a gentleman that ever I
      heard of, and I will not commit the meanness of making a false
      representation on a subject so momentous. Miss Amy, I know very well that
      your high-souled brother, and likewise your spirited sister, spurn me from
      a height. What I have to do is to respect them, to wish to be admitted to
      their friendship, to look up at the eminence on which they are placed from
      my lowlier station&mdash;for, whether viewed as tobacco or viewed as the
      lock, I well know it is lowly&mdash;and ever wish them well and happy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There really was a genuineness in the poor fellow, and a contrast between
      the hardness of his hat and the softness of his heart (albeit, perhaps, of
      his head, too), that was moving. Little Dorrit entreated him to disparage
      neither himself nor his station, and, above all things, to divest himself
      of any idea that she supposed hers to be superior. This gave him a little
      comfort.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Amy,' he then stammered, 'I have had for a long time&mdash;ages they
      seem to me&mdash;Revolving ages&mdash;a heart-cherished wish to say
      something to you. May I say it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit involuntarily started from his side again, with the faintest
      shadow of her former look; conquering that, she went on at great speed
      half across the Bridge without replying!
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I&mdash;Miss Amy, I but ask the question humbly&mdash;may I say it? I
      have been so unlucky already in giving you pain without having any such
      intentions, before the holy Heavens! that there is no fear of my saying it
      unless I have your leave. I can be miserable alone, I can be cut up by
      myself, why should I also make miserable and cut up one that I would fling
      myself off that parapet to give half a moment's joy to! Not that that's
      much to do, for I'd do it for twopence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The mournfulness of his spirits, and the gorgeousness of his appearance,
      might have made him ridiculous, but that his delicacy made him
      respectable. Little Dorrit learnt from it what to do.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please, John Chivery,' she returned, trembling, but in a quiet
      way, 'since you are so considerate as to ask me whether you shall say any
      more&mdash;if you please, no.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never, Miss Amy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, if you please. Never.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O Lord!' gasped Young John.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But perhaps you will let me, instead, say something to you. I want to say
      it earnestly, and with as plain a meaning as it is possible to express.
      When you think of us, John&mdash;I mean my brother, and sister, and me&mdash;don't
      think of us as being any different from the rest; for, whatever we once
      were (which I hardly know) we ceased to be long ago, and never can be any
      more. It will be much better for you, and much better for others, if you
      will do that instead of what you are doing now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John dolefully protested that he would try to bear it in mind, and
      would be heartily glad to do anything she wished.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to me,' said Little Dorrit, 'think as little of me as you can; the
      less, the better. When you think of me at all, John, let it only be as the
      child you have seen grow up in the prison with one set of duties always
      occupying her; as a weak, retired, contented, unprotected girl. I
      particularly want you to remember, that when I come outside the gate, I am
      unprotected and solitary.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He would try to do anything she wished. But why did Miss Amy so much want
      him to remember that?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because,' returned Little Dorrit, 'I know I can then quite trust you not
      to forget to-day, and not to say any more to me. You are so generous that
      I know I can trust to you for that; and I do and I always will. I am going
      to show you, at once, that I fully trust you. I like this place where we
      are speaking better than any place I know;' her slight colour had faded,
      but her lover thought he saw it coming back just then; 'and I may be often
      here. I know it is only necessary for me to tell you so, to be quite sure
      that you will never come here again in search of me. And I am&mdash;quite
      sure!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She might rely upon it, said Young John. He was a miserable wretch, but
      her word was more than a law for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And good-bye, John,' said Little Dorrit. 'And I hope you will have a good
      wife one day, and be a happy man. I am sure you will deserve to be happy,
      and you will be, John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she held out her hand to him with these words, the heart that was under
      the waistcoat of sprigs&mdash;mere slop-work, if the truth must be known&mdash;swelled
      to the size of the heart of a gentleman; and the poor common little
      fellow, having no room to hold it, burst into tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, don't cry,' said Little Dorrit piteously. 'Don't, don't! Good-bye,
      John. God bless you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye, Miss Amy. Good-bye!'
    </p>
    <p>
      And so he left her: first observing that she sat down on the corner of a
      seat, and not only rested her little hand upon the rough wall, but laid
      her face against it too, as if her head were heavy, and her mind were sad.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was an affecting illustration of the fallacy of human projects, to
      behold her lover, with the great hat pulled over his eyes, the velvet
      collar turned up as if it rained, the plum-coloured coat buttoned to
      conceal the silken waistcoat of golden sprigs, and the little
      direction-post pointing inexorably home, creeping along by the worst
      back-streets, and composing, as he went, the following new inscription for
      a tombstone in St George's Churchyard:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here lie the mortal remains Of JOHN CHIVERY, Never anything worth
      mentioning, Who died about the end of the year one thousand eight hundred
      and twenty-six, Of a broken heart, Requesting with his last breath that
      the word AMY might be inscribed over his ashes, which was accordingly
      directed to be done, By his afflicted Parents.'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 19. The Father of the Marshalsea in two or three Relations
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he brothers William and Frederick Dorrit, walking up and down the
      College-yard&mdash;of course on the aristocratic or Pump side, for the
      Father made it a point of his state to be chary of going among his
      children on the Poor side, except on Sunday mornings, Christmas Days, and
      other occasions of ceremony, in the observance whereof he was very
      punctual, and at which times he laid his hand upon the heads of their
      infants, and blessed those young insolvents with a benignity that was
      highly edifying&mdash;the brothers, walking up and down the College-yard
      together, were a memorable sight. Frederick the free, was so humbled,
      bowed, withered, and faded; William the bond, was so courtly,
      condescending, and benevolently conscious of a position; that in this
      regard only, if in no other, the brothers were a spectacle to wonder at.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0206m.jpg" alt="0206m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0206.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      They walked up and down the yard on the evening of Little Dorrit's Sunday
      interview with her lover on the Iron Bridge. The cares of state were over
      for that day, the Drawing Room had been well attended, several new
      presentations had taken place, the three-and-sixpence accidentally left on
      the table had accidentally increased to twelve shillings, and the Father
      of the Marshalsea refreshed himself with a whiff of cigar. As he walked up
      and down, affably accommodating his step to the shuffle of his brother,
      not proud in his superiority, but considerate of that poor creature,
      bearing with him, and breathing toleration of his infirmities in every
      little puff of smoke that issued from his lips and aspired to get over the
      spiked wall, he was a sight to wonder at.
    </p>
    <p>
      His brother Frederick of the dim eye, palsied hand, bent form, and groping
      mind, submissively shuffled at his side, accepting his patronage as he
      accepted every incident of the labyrinthian world in which he had got
      lost. He held the usual screwed bit of whitey-brown paper in his hand,
      from which he ever and again unscrewed a spare pinch of snuff. That
      falteringly taken, he would glance at his brother not unadmiringly, put
      his hands behind him, and shuffle on so at his side until he took another
      pinch, or stood still to look about him&mdash;perchance suddenly missing
      his clarionet.
    </p>
    <p>
      The College visitors were melting away as the shades of night drew on, but
      the yard was still pretty full, the Collegians being mostly out, seeing
      their friends to the Lodge. As the brothers paced the yard, William the
      bond looked about him to receive salutes, returned them by graciously
      lifting off his hat, and, with an engaging air, prevented Frederick the
      free from running against the company, or being jostled against the wall.
      The Collegians as a body were not easily impressible, but even they,
      according to their various ways of wondering, appeared to find in the two
      brothers a sight to wonder at.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are a little low this evening, Frederick,' said the Father of the
      Marshalsea. 'Anything the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The matter?' He stared for a moment, and then dropped his head and eyes
      again. 'No, William, no. Nothing is the matter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you could be persuaded to smarten yourself up a little, Frederick&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Aye, aye!' said the old man hurriedly. 'But I can't be. I can't be. Don't
      talk so. That's all over.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Father of the Marshalsea glanced at a passing Collegian with whom he
      was on friendly terms, as who should say, 'An enfeebled old man, this; but
      he is my brother, sir, my brother, and the voice of Nature is potent!' and
      steered his brother clear of the handle of the pump by the threadbare
      sleeve. Nothing would have been wanting to the perfection of his character
      as a fraternal guide, philosopher and friend, if he had only steered his
      brother clear of ruin, instead of bringing it upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think, William,' said the object of his affectionate consideration,
      'that I am tired, and will go home to bed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Frederick,' returned the other, 'don't let me detain you; don't
      sacrifice your inclination to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Late hours, and a heated atmosphere, and years, I suppose,' said
      Frederick, 'weaken me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Frederick,' returned the Father of the Marshalsea, 'do you think
      you are sufficiently careful of yourself? Do you think your habits are as
      precise and methodical as&mdash;shall I say as mine are? Not to revert
      again to that little eccentricity which I mentioned just now, I doubt if
      you take air and exercise enough, Frederick. Here is the parade, always at
      your service. Why not use it more regularly than you do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hah!' sighed the other. 'Yes, yes, yes, yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But it is of no use saying yes, yes, my dear Frederick,' the Father of
      the Marshalsea in his mild wisdom persisted, 'unless you act on that
      assent. Consider my case, Frederick. I am a kind of example. Necessity and
      time have taught me what to do. At certain stated hours of the day, you
      will find me on the parade, in my room, in the Lodge, reading the paper,
      receiving company, eating and drinking. I have impressed upon Amy during
      many years, that I must have my meals (for instance) punctually. Amy has
      grown up in a sense of the importance of these arrangements, and you know
      what a good girl she is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The brother only sighed again, as he plodded dreamily along, 'Hah! Yes,
      yes, yes, yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear fellow,' said the Father of the Marshalsea, laying his hand upon
      his shoulder, and mildly rallying him&mdash;mildly, because of his
      weakness, poor dear soul; 'you said that before, and it does not express
      much, Frederick, even if it means much. I wish I could rouse you, my good
      Frederick; you want to be roused.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, William, yes. No doubt,' returned the other, lifting his dim eyes to
      his face. 'But I am not like you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Father of the Marshalsea said, with a shrug of modest
      self-depreciation, 'Oh! You might be like me, my dear Frederick; you might
      be, if you chose!' and forbore, in the magnanimity of his strength, to
      press his fallen brother further.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a great deal of leave-taking going on in corners, as was usual
      on Sunday nights; and here and there in the dark, some poor woman, wife or
      mother, was weeping with a new Collegian. The time had been when the
      Father himself had wept, in the shades of that yard, as his own poor wife
      had wept. But it was many years ago; and now he was like a passenger
      aboard ship in a long voyage, who has recovered from sea-sickness, and is
      impatient of that weakness in the fresher passengers taken aboard at the
      last port. He was inclined to remonstrate, and to express his opinion that
      people who couldn't get on without crying, had no business there. In
      manner, if not in words, he always testified his displeasure at these
      interruptions of the general harmony; and it was so well understood, that
      delinquents usually withdrew if they were aware of him.
    </p>
    <p>
      On this Sunday evening, he accompanied his brother to the gate with an air
      of endurance and clemency; being in a bland temper and graciously disposed
      to overlook the tears. In the flaring gaslight of the Lodge, several
      Collegians were basking; some taking leave of visitors, and some who had
      no visitors, watching the frequent turning of the key, and conversing with
      one another and with Mr Chivery. The paternal entrance made a sensation of
      course; and Mr Chivery, touching his hat (in a short manner though) with
      his key, hoped he found himself tolerable.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Chivery, quite well. And you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Chivery said in a low growl, 'Oh! <i>he</i> was all right.' Which was
      his general way of acknowledging inquiries after his health when a little
      sullen.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I had a visit from Young John to-day, Chivery. And very smart he looked,
      I assure you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      So Mr Chivery had heard. Mr Chivery must confess, however, that his wish
      was that the boy didn't lay out so much money upon it. For what did it
      bring him in? It only brought him in wexation. And he could get that
      anywhere for nothing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How vexation, Chivery?' asked the benignant father.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No odds,' returned Mr Chivery. 'Never mind. Mr Frederick going out?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Chivery, my brother is going home to bed. He is tired, and not quite
      well. Take care, Frederick, take care. Good night, my dear Frederick!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Shaking hands with his brother, and touching his greasy hat to the company
      in the Lodge, Frederick slowly shuffled out of the door which Mr Chivery
      unlocked for him. The Father of the Marshalsea showed the amiable
      solicitude of a superior being that he should come to no harm.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Be so kind as to keep the door open a moment, Chivery, that I may see him
      go along the passage and down the steps. Take care, Frederick! (He is very
      infirm.) Mind the steps! (He is so very absent.) Be careful how you cross,
      Frederick. (I really don't like the notion of his going wandering at
      large, he is so extremely liable to be run over.)'
    </p>
    <p>
      With these words, and with a face expressive of many uneasy doubts and
      much anxious guardianship, he turned his regards upon the assembled
      company in the Lodge: so plainly indicating that his brother was to be
      pitied for not being under lock and key, that an opinion to that effect
      went round among the Collegians assembled.
    </p>
    <p>
      But he did not receive it with unqualified assent; on the contrary, he
      said, No, gentlemen, no; let them not misunderstand him. His brother
      Frederick was much broken, no doubt, and it might be more comfortable to
      himself (the Father of the Marshalsea) to know that he was safe within the
      walls. Still, it must be remembered that to support an existence there
      during many years, required a certain combination of qualities&mdash;he
      did not say high qualities, but qualities&mdash;moral qualities. Now, had
      his brother Frederick that peculiar union of qualities? Gentlemen, he was
      a most excellent man, a most gentle, tender, and estimable man, with the
      simplicity of a child; but would he, though unsuited for most other
      places, do for that place? No; he said confidently, no! And, he said,
      Heaven forbid that Frederick should be there in any other character than
      in his present voluntary character! Gentlemen, whoever came to that
      College, to remain there a length of time, must have strength of character
      to go through a good deal and to come out of a good deal. Was his beloved
      brother Frederick that man? No. They saw him, even as it was, crushed.
      Misfortune crushed him. He had not power of recoil enough, not elasticity
      enough, to be a long time in such a place, and yet preserve his
      self-respect and feel conscious that he was a gentleman. Frederick had not
      (if he might use the expression) Power enough to see in any delicate
      little attentions and&mdash;and&mdash;Testimonials that he might under
      such circumstances receive, the goodness of human nature, the fine spirit
      animating the Collegians as a community, and at the same time no
      degradation to himself, and no depreciation of his claims as a gentleman.
      Gentlemen, God bless you!
    </p>
    <p>
      Such was the homily with which he improved and pointed the occasion to the
      company in the Lodge before turning into the sallow yard again, and going
      with his own poor shabby dignity past the Collegian in the dressing-gown
      who had no coat, and past the Collegian in the sea-side slippers who had
      no shoes, and past the stout greengrocer Collegian in the corduroy
      knee-breeches who had no cares, and past the lean clerk Collegian in
      buttonless black who had no hopes, up his own poor shabby staircase to his
      own poor shabby room.
    </p>
    <p>
      There, the table was laid for his supper, and his old grey gown was ready
      for him on his chair-back at the fire. His daughter put her little
      prayer-book in her pocket&mdash;had she been praying for pity on all
      prisoners and captives!&mdash;and rose to welcome him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Uncle had gone home, then? she asked him, as she changed his coat and gave
      him his black velvet cap. Yes, uncle had gone home. Had her father enjoyed
      his walk? Why, not much, Amy; not much. No! Did he not feel quite well?
    </p>
    <p>
      As she stood behind him, leaning over his chair so lovingly, he looked
      with downcast eyes at the fire. An uneasiness stole over him that was like
      a touch of shame; and when he spoke, as he presently did, it was in an
      unconnected and embarrassed manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Something, I&mdash;hem!&mdash;I don't know what, has gone wrong with
      Chivery. He is not&mdash;ha!&mdash;not nearly so obliging and attentive as
      usual to-night. It&mdash;hem!&mdash;it's a little thing, but it puts me
      out, my love. It's impossible to forget,' turning his hands over and over
      and looking closely at them, 'that&mdash;hem!&mdash;that in such a life as
      mine, I am unfortunately dependent on these men for something every hour
      in the day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her arm was on his shoulder, but she did not look in his face while he
      spoke. Bending her head she looked another way.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;hem!&mdash;I can't think, Amy, what has given Chivery offence. He
      is generally so&mdash;so very attentive and respectful. And to-night he
      was quite&mdash;quite short with me. Other people there too! Why, good
      Heaven! if I was to lose the support and recognition of Chivery and his
      brother officers, I might starve to death here.' While he spoke, he was
      opening and shutting his hands like valves; so conscious all the time of
      that touch of shame, that he shrunk before his own knowledge of his
      meaning.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;ha!&mdash;I can't think what it's owing to. I am sure I cannot
      imagine what the cause of it is. There was a certain Jackson here once, a
      turnkey of the name of Jackson (I don't think you can remember him, my
      dear, you were very young), and&mdash;hem!&mdash;and he had a&mdash;brother,
      and this&mdash;young brother paid his addresses to&mdash;at least, did not
      go so far as to pay his addresses to&mdash;but admired&mdash;respectfully
      admired&mdash;the&mdash;not daughter, the sister&mdash;of one of us; a
      rather distinguished Collegian; I may say, very much so. His name was
      Captain Martin; and he consulted me on the question whether it was
      necessary that his daughter&mdash;sister&mdash;should hazard offending the
      turnkey brother by being too&mdash;ha!&mdash;too plain with the other
      brother. Captain Martin was a gentleman and a man of honour, and I put it
      to him first to give me his&mdash;his own opinion. Captain Martin (highly
      respected in the army) then unhesitatingly said that it appeared to him
      that his&mdash;hem!&mdash;sister was not called upon to understand the
      young man too distinctly, and that she might lead him on&mdash;I am
      doubtful whether "lead him on" was Captain Martin's exact expression:
      indeed I think he said tolerate him&mdash;on her father's&mdash;I should
      say, brother's&mdash;account. I hardly know how I have strayed into this
      story. I suppose it has been through being unable to account for Chivery;
      but as to the connection between the two, I don't see&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      His voice died away, as if she could not bear the pain of hearing him, and
      her hand had gradually crept to his lips. For a little while there was a
      dead silence and stillness; and he remained shrunk in his chair, and she
      remained with her arm round his neck and her head bowed down upon his
      shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      His supper was cooking in a saucepan on the fire, and, when she moved, it
      was to make it ready for him on the table. He took his usual seat, she
      took hers, and he began his meal. They did not, as yet, look at one
      another. By little and little he began; laying down his knife and fork
      with a noise, taking things up sharply, biting at his bread as if he were
      offended with it, and in other similar ways showing that he was out of
      sorts. At length he pushed his plate from him, and spoke aloud; with the
      strangest inconsistency.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What does it matter whether I eat or starve? What does it matter whether
      such a blighted life as mine comes to an end, now, next week, or next
      year? What am I worth to anyone? A poor prisoner, fed on alms and broken
      victuals; a squalid, disgraced wretch!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Father, father!' As he rose she went on her knees to him, and held up her
      hands to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy,' he went on in a suppressed voice, trembling violently, and looking
      at her as wildly as if he had gone mad. 'I tell you, if you could see me
      as your mother saw me, you wouldn't believe it to be the creature you have
      only looked at through the bars of this cage. I was young, I was
      accomplished, I was good-looking, I was independent&mdash;by God I was,
      child!&mdash;and people sought me out, and envied me. Envied me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear father!' She tried to take down the shaking arm that he flourished
      in the air, but he resisted, and put her hand away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I had but a picture of myself in those days, though it was ever so ill
      done, you would be proud of it, you would be proud of it. But I have no
      such thing. Now, let me be a warning! Let no man,' he cried, looking
      haggardly about, 'fail to preserve at least that little of the times of
      his prosperity and respect. Let his children have that clue to what he
      was. Unless my face, when I am dead, subsides into the long departed look&mdash;they
      say such things happen, I don't know&mdash;my children will have never
      seen me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Father, father!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O despise me, despise me! Look away from me, don't listen to me, stop me,
      blush for me, cry for me&mdash;even you, Amy! Do it, do it! I do it to
      myself! I am hardened now, I have sunk too low to care long even for
      that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear father, loved father, darling of my heart!' She was clinging to him
      with her arms, and she got him to drop into his chair again, and caught at
      the raised arm, and tried to put it round her neck.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let it lie there, father. Look at me, father, kiss me, father! Only think
      of me, father, for one little moment!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Still he went on in the same wild way, though it was gradually breaking
      down into a miserable whining.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And yet I have some respect here. I have made some stand against it. I am
      not quite trodden down. Go out and ask who is the chief person in the
      place. They'll tell you it's your father. Go out and ask who is never
      trifled with, and who is always treated with some delicacy. They'll say,
      your father. Go out and ask what funeral here (it must be here, I know it
      can be nowhere else) will make more talk, and perhaps more grief, than any
      that has ever gone out at the gate. They'll say your father's. Well then.
      Amy! Amy! Is your father so universally despised? Is there nothing to
      redeem him? Will you have nothing to remember him by but his ruin and
      decay? Will you be able to have no affection for him when he is gone, poor
      castaway, gone?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He burst into tears of maudlin pity for himself, and at length suffering
      her to embrace him and take charge of him, let his grey head rest against
      her cheek, and bewailed his wretchedness. Presently he changed the subject
      of his lamentations, and clasping his hands about her as she embraced him,
      cried, O Amy, his motherless, forlorn child! O the days that he had seen
      her careful and laborious for him! Then he reverted to himself, and weakly
      told her how much better she would have loved him if she had known him in
      his vanished character, and how he would have married her to a gentleman
      who should have been proud of her as his daughter, and how (at which he
      cried again) she should first have ridden at his fatherly side on her own
      horse, and how the crowd (by which he meant in effect the people who had
      given him the twelve shillings he then had in his pocket) should have
      trudged the dusty roads respectfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus, now boasting, now despairing, in either fit a captive with the
      jail-rot upon him, and the impurity of his prison worn into the grain of
      his soul, he revealed his degenerate state to his affectionate child. No
      one else ever beheld him in the details of his humiliation. Little recked
      the Collegians who were laughing in their rooms over his late address in
      the Lodge, what a serious picture they had in their obscure gallery of the
      Marshalsea that Sunday night.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a classical daughter once&mdash;perhaps&mdash;who ministered to
      her father in his prison as her mother had ministered to her. Little
      Dorrit, though of the unheroic modern stock and mere English, did much
      more, in comforting her father's wasted heart upon her innocent breast,
      and turning to it a fountain of love and fidelity that never ran dry or
      waned through all his years of famine.
    </p>
    <p>
      She soothed him; asked him for his forgiveness if she had been, or seemed
      to have been, undutiful; told him, Heaven knows truly, that she could not
      honour him more if he were the favourite of Fortune and the whole world
      acknowledged him. When his tears were dried, and he sobbed in his weakness
      no longer, and was free from that touch of shame, and had recovered his
      usual bearing, she prepared the remains of his supper afresh, and, sitting
      by his side, rejoiced to see him eat and drink. For now he sat in his
      black velvet cap and old grey gown, magnanimous again; and would have
      comported himself towards any Collegian who might have looked in to ask
      his advice, like a great moral Lord Chesterfield, or Master of the ethical
      ceremonies of the Marshalsea.
    </p>
    <p>
      To keep his attention engaged, she talked with him about his wardrobe;
      when he was pleased to say, that Yes, indeed, those shirts she proposed
      would be exceedingly acceptable, for those he had were worn out, and,
      being ready-made, had never fitted him. Being conversational, and in a
      reasonable flow of spirits, he then invited her attention to his coat as
      it hung behind the door: remarking that the Father of the place would set
      an indifferent example to his children, already disposed to be slovenly,
      if he went among them out at elbows. He was jocular, too, as to the
      heeling of his shoes; but became grave on the subject of his cravat, and
      promised her that, when she could afford it, she should buy him a new one.
    </p>
    <p>
      While he smoked out his cigar in peace, she made his bed, and put the
      small room in order for his repose. Being weary then, owing to the
      advanced hour and his emotions, he came out of his chair to bless her and
      wish her Good night. All this time he had never once thought of <i>her</i>
      dress, her shoes, her need of anything. No other person upon earth, save
      herself, could have been so unmindful of her wants.
    </p>
    <p>
      He kissed her many times with 'Bless you, my love. Good night, my dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      But her gentle breast had been so deeply wounded by what she had seen of
      him that she was unwilling to leave him alone, lest he should lament and
      despair again. 'Father, dear, I am not tired; let me come back presently,
      when you are in bed, and sit by you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He asked her, with an air of protection, if she felt solitary?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then come back by all means, my love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall be very quiet, father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't think of me, my dear,' he said, giving her his kind permission
      fully. 'Come back by all means.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He seemed to be dozing when she returned, and she put the low fire
      together very softly lest she should awake him. But he overheard her, and
      called out who was that?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only Amy, father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, my child, come here. I want to say a word to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He raised himself a little in his low bed, as she kneeled beside it to
      bring her face near him; and put his hand between hers. O! Both the
      private father and the Father of the Marshalsea were strong within him
      then.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My love, you have had a life of hardship here. No companions, no
      recreations, many cares I am afraid?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't think of that, dear. I never do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know my position, Amy. I have not been able to do much for you; but
      all I have been able to do, I have done.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my dear father,' she rejoined, kissing him. 'I know, I know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am in the twenty-third year of my life here,' he said, with a catch in
      his breath that was not so much a sob as an irrepressible sound of
      self-approval, the momentary outburst of a noble consciousness. 'It is all
      I could do for my children&mdash;I have done it. Amy, my love, you are by
      far the best loved of the three; I have had you principally in my mind&mdash;whatever
      I have done for your sake, my dear child, I have done freely and without
      murmuring.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Only the wisdom that holds the clue to all hearts and all mysteries, can
      surely know to what extent a man, especially a man brought down as this
      man had been, can impose upon himself. Enough, for the present place, that
      he lay down with wet eyelashes, serene, in a manner majestic, after
      bestowing his life of degradation as a sort of portion on the devoted
      child upon whom its miseries had fallen so heavily, and whose love alone
      had saved him to be even what he was.
    </p>
    <p>
      That child had no doubts, asked herself no question, for she was but too
      content to see him with a lustre round his head. Poor dear, good dear,
      truest, kindest, dearest, were the only words she had for him, as she
      hushed him to rest.
    </p>
    <p>
      She never left him all that night. As if she had done him a wrong which
      her tenderness could hardly repair, she sat by him in his sleep, at times
      softly kissing him with suspended breath, and calling him in a whisper by
      some endearing name. At times she stood aside so as not to intercept the
      low fire-light, and, watching him when it fell upon his sleeping face,
      wondered did he look now at all as he had looked when he was prosperous
      and happy; as he had so touched her by imagining that he might look once
      more in that awful time. At the thought of that time, she kneeled beside
      his bed again, and prayed, 'O spare his life! O save him to me! O look
      down upon my dear, long-suffering, unfortunate, much-changed, dear dear
      father!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Not until the morning came to protect him and encourage him, did she give
      him a last kiss and leave the small room. When she had stolen down-stairs,
      and along the empty yard, and had crept up to her own high garret, the
      smokeless housetops and the distant country hills were discernible over
      the wall in the clear morning. As she gently opened the window, and looked
      eastward down the prison yard, the spikes upon the wall were tipped with
      red, then made a sullen purple pattern on the sun as it came flaming up
      into the heavens. The spikes had never looked so sharp and cruel, nor the
      bars so heavy, nor the prison space so gloomy and contracted. She thought
      of the sunrise on rolling rivers, of the sunrise on wide seas, of the
      sunrise on rich landscapes, of the sunrise on great forests where the
      birds were waking and the trees were rustling; and she looked down into
      the living grave on which the sun had risen, with her father in it
      three-and-twenty years, and said, in a burst of sorrow and compassion,
      'No, no, I have never seen him in my life!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 20. Moving in Society
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>f Young John Chivery had had the inclination and the power to write a
      satire on family pride, he would have had no need to go for an avenging
      illustration out of the family of his beloved. He would have found it
      amply in that gallant brother and that dainty sister, so steeped in mean
      experiences, and so loftily conscious of the family name; so ready to beg
      or borrow from the poorest, to eat of anybody's bread, spend anybody's
      money, drink from anybody's cup and break it afterwards. To have painted
      the sordid facts of their lives, and they throughout invoking the death's
      head apparition of the family gentility to come and scare their
      benefactors, would have made Young John a satirist of the first water.
    </p>
    <p>
      Tip had turned his liberty to hopeful account by becoming a
      billiard-marker. He had troubled himself so little as to the means of his
      release, that Clennam scarcely needed to have been at the pains of
      impressing the mind of Mr Plornish on that subject. Whoever had paid him
      the compliment, he very readily accepted the compliment with <i>his</i>
      compliments, and there was an end of it. Issuing forth from the gate on
      these easy terms, he became a billiard-marker; and now occasionally looked
      in at the little skittle-ground in a green Newmarket coat (second-hand),
      with a shining collar and bright buttons (new), and drank the beer of the
      Collegians.
    </p>
    <p>
      One solid stationary point in the looseness of this gentleman's character
      was, that he respected and admired his sister Amy. The feeling had never
      induced him to spare her a moment's uneasiness, or to put himself to any
      restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that Marshalsea taint
      upon his love, he loved her. The same rank Marshalsea flavour was to be
      recognised in his distinctly perceiving that she sacrificed her life to
      her father, and in his having no idea that she had done anything for
      himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      When this spirited young man and his sister had begun systematically to
      produce the family skeleton for the overawing of the College, this
      narrative cannot precisely state. Probably at about the period when they
      began to dine on the College charity. It is certain that the more reduced
      and necessitous they were, the more pompously the skeleton emerged from
      its tomb; and that when there was anything particularly shabby in the
      wind, the skeleton always came out with the ghastliest flourish.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was late on the Monday morning, for her father slept late,
      and afterwards there was his breakfast to prepare and his room to arrange.
      She had no engagement to go out to work, however, and therefore stayed
      with him until, with Maggy's help, she had put everything right about him,
      and had seen him off upon his morning walk (of twenty yards or so) to the
      coffee-house to read the paper. She then got on her bonnet and went out,
      having been anxious to get out much sooner. There was, as usual, a
      cessation of the small-talk in the Lodge as she passed through it; and a
      Collegian who had come in on Saturday night, received the intimation from
      the elbow of a more seasoned Collegian, 'Look out. Here she is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She wanted to see her sister, but when she got round to Mr Cripples's, she
      found that both her sister and her uncle had gone to the theatre where
      they were engaged. Having taken thought of this probability by the way,
      and having settled that in such case she would follow them, she set off
      afresh for the theatre, which was on that side of the river, and not very
      far away.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was almost as ignorant of the ways of theatres as of the
      ways of gold mines, and when she was directed to a furtive sort of door,
      with a curious up-all-night air about it, that appeared to be ashamed of
      itself and to be hiding in an alley, she hesitated to approach it; being
      further deterred by the sight of some half-dozen close-shaved gentlemen
      with their hats very strangely on, who were lounging about the door,
      looking not at all unlike Collegians. On her applying to them, reassured
      by this resemblance, for a direction to Miss Dorrit, they made way for her
      to enter a dark hall&mdash;it was more like a great grim lamp gone out
      than anything else&mdash;where she could hear the distant playing of music
      and the sound of dancing feet. A man so much in want of airing that he had
      a blue mould upon him, sat watching this dark place from a hole in a
      corner, like a spider; and he told her that he would send a message up to
      Miss Dorrit by the first lady or gentleman who went through. The first
      lady who went through had a roll of music, half in her muff and half out
      of it, and was in such a tumbled condition altogether, that it seemed as
      if it would be an act of kindness to iron her. But as she was very
      good-natured, and said, 'Come with me; I'll soon find Miss Dorrit for
      you,' Miss Dorrit's sister went with her, drawing nearer and nearer at
      every step she took in the darkness to the sound of music and the sound of
      dancing feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      At last they came into a maze of dust, where a quantity of people were
      tumbling over one another, and where there was such a confusion of
      unaccountable shapes of beams, bulkheads, brick walls, ropes, and rollers,
      and such a mixing of gaslight and daylight, that they seemed to have got
      on the wrong side of the pattern of the universe. Little Dorrit, left to
      herself, and knocked against by somebody every moment, was quite
      bewildered, when she heard her sister's voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, good gracious, Amy, what ever brought you here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wanted to see you, Fanny dear; and as I am going out all day to-morrow,
      and knew you might be engaged all day to-day, I thought&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But the idea, Amy, of <i>you</i> coming behind! I never did!' As her
      sister said this in no very cordial tone of welcome, she conducted her to
      a more open part of the maze, where various golden chairs and tables were
      heaped together, and where a number of young ladies were sitting on
      anything they could find, chattering. All these young ladies wanted
      ironing, and all had a curious way of looking everywhere while they
      chattered.
    </p>
    <p>
      Just as the sisters arrived here, a monotonous boy in a Scotch cap put his
      head round a beam on the left, and said, 'Less noise there, ladies!' and
      disappeared. Immediately after which, a sprightly gentleman with a
      quantity of long black hair looked round a beam on the right, and said,
      'Less noise there, darlings!' and also disappeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The notion of you among professionals, Amy, is really the last thing I
      could have conceived!' said her sister. 'Why, how did you ever get here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know. The lady who told you I was here, was so good as to bring
      me in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Like you quiet little things! You can make your way anywhere, I believe.
      <i>I</i> couldn't have managed it, Amy, though I know so much more of the
      world.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was the family custom to lay it down as family law, that she was a
      plain domestic little creature, without the great and sage experience of
      the rest. This family fiction was the family assertion of itself against
      her services. Not to make too much of them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well! And what have you got on your mind, Amy? Of course you have got
      something on your mind about me?' said Fanny. She spoke as if her sister,
      between two and three years her junior, were her prejudiced grandmother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is not much; but since you told me of the lady who gave you the
      bracelet, Fanny&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      The monotonous boy put his head round the beam on the left, and said,
      'Look out there, ladies!' and disappeared. The sprightly gentleman with
      the black hair as suddenly put his head round the beam on the right, and
      said, 'Look out there, darlings!' and also disappeared. Thereupon all the
      young ladies rose and began shaking their skirts out behind.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Amy?' said Fanny, doing as the rest did; 'what were you going to
      say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Since you told me a lady had given you the bracelet you showed me, Fanny,
      I have not been quite easy on your account, and indeed want to know a
      little more if you will confide more to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, ladies!' said the boy in the Scotch cap. 'Now, darlings!' said the
      gentleman with the black hair. They were every one gone in a moment, and
      the music and the dancing feet were heard again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit sat down in a golden chair, made quite giddy by these rapid
      interruptions. Her sister and the rest were a long time gone; and during
      their absence a voice (it appeared to be that of the gentleman with the
      black hair) was continually calling out through the music, 'One, two,
      three, four, five, six&mdash;go! One, two, three, four, five, six&mdash;go!
      Steady, darlings! One, two, three, four, five, six&mdash;go!' Ultimately
      the voice stopped, and they all came back again, more or less out of
      breath, folding themselves in their shawls, and making ready for the
      streets. 'Stop a moment, Amy, and let them get away before us,' whispered
      Fanny. They were soon left alone; nothing more important happening, in the
      meantime, than the boy looking round his old beam, and saying, 'Everybody
      at eleven to-morrow, ladies!' and the gentleman with the black hair
      looking round his old beam, and saying, 'Everybody at eleven to-morrow,
      darlings!' each in his own accustomed manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they were alone, something was rolled up or by other means got out of
      the way, and there was a great empty well before them, looking down into
      the depths of which Fanny said, 'Now, uncle!' Little Dorrit, as her eyes
      became used to the darkness, faintly made him out at the bottom of the
      well, in an obscure corner by himself, with his instrument in its ragged
      case under his arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      The old man looked as if the remote high gallery windows, with their
      little strip of sky, might have been the point of his better fortunes,
      from which he had descended, until he had gradually sunk down below there
      to the bottom. He had been in that place six nights a week for many years,
      but had never been observed to raise his eyes above his music-book, and
      was confidently believed to have never seen a play. There were legends in
      the place that he did not so much as know the popular heroes and heroines
      by sight, and that the low comedian had 'mugged' at him in his richest
      manner fifty nights for a wager, and he had shown no trace of
      consciousness. The carpenters had a joke to the effect that he was dead
      without being aware of it; and the frequenters of the pit supposed him to
      pass his whole life, night and day, and Sunday and all, in the orchestra.
      They had tried him a few times with pinches of snuff offered over the
      rails, and he had always responded to this attention with a momentary
      waking up of manner that had the pale phantom of a gentleman in it: beyond
      this he never, on any occasion, had any other part in what was going on
      than the part written out for the clarionet; in private life, where there
      was no part for the clarionet, he had no part at all. Some said he was
      poor, some said he was a wealthy miser; but he said nothing, never lifted
      up his bowed head, never varied his shuffling gait by getting his
      springless foot from the ground. Though expecting now to be summoned by
      his niece, he did not hear her until she had spoken to him three or four
      times; nor was he at all surprised by the presence of two nieces instead
      of one, but merely said in his tremulous voice, 'I am coming, I am
      coming!' and crept forth by some underground way which emitted a cellarous
      smell.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And so, Amy,' said her sister, when the three together passed out at the
      door that had such a shame-faced consciousness of being different from
      other doors: the uncle instinctively taking Amy's arm as the arm to be
      relied on: 'so, Amy, you are curious about me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was pretty, and conscious, and rather flaunting; and the condescension
      with which she put aside the superiority of her charms, and of her worldly
      experience, and addressed her sister on almost equal terms, had a vast
      deal of the family in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am interested, Fanny, and concerned in anything that concerns you.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0219m.jpg" alt="0219m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0219.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'So you are, so you are, and you are the best of Amys. If I am ever a
      little provoking, I am sure you'll consider what a thing it is to occupy
      my position and feel a consciousness of being superior to it. I shouldn't
      care,' said the Daughter of the Father of the Marshalsea, 'if the others
      were not so common. None of them have come down in the world as we have.
      They are all on their own level. Common.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit mildly looked at the speaker, but did not interrupt her.
      Fanny took out her handkerchief, and rather angrily wiped her eyes. 'I was
      not born where you were, you know, Amy, and perhaps that makes a
      difference. My dear child, when we get rid of Uncle, you shall know all
      about it. We'll drop him at the cook's shop where he is going to dine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They walked on with him until they came to a dirty shop window in a dirty
      street, which was made almost opaque by the steam of hot meats,
      vegetables, and puddings. But glimpses were to be caught of a roast leg of
      pork bursting into tears of sage and onion in a metal reservoir full of
      gravy, of an unctuous piece of roast beef and blisterous Yorkshire
      pudding, bubbling hot in a similar receptacle, of a stuffed fillet of veal
      in rapid cut, of a ham in a perspiration with the pace it was going at, of
      a shallow tank of baked potatoes glued together by their own richness, of
      a truss or two of boiled greens, and other substantial delicacies. Within,
      were a few wooden partitions, behind which such customers as found it more
      convenient to take away their dinners in stomachs than in their hands,
      Packed their purchases in solitude. Fanny opening her reticule, as they
      surveyed these things, produced from that repository a shilling and handed
      it to Uncle. Uncle, after not looking at it a little while, divined its
      object, and muttering 'Dinner? Ha! Yes, yes, yes!' slowly vanished from
      them into the mist.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Amy,' said her sister, 'come with me, if you are not too tired to
      walk to Harley Street, Cavendish Square.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The air with which she threw off this distinguished address and the toss
      she gave to her new bonnet (which was more gauzy than serviceable), made
      her sister wonder; however, she expressed her readiness to go to Harley
      Street, and thither they directed their steps. Arrived at that grand
      destination, Fanny singled out the handsomest house, and knocking at the
      door, inquired for Mrs Merdle. The footman who opened the door, although
      he had powder on his head and was backed up by two other footmen likewise
      powdered, not only admitted Mrs Merdle to be at home, but asked Fanny to
      walk in. Fanny walked in, taking her sister with her; and they went
      up-stairs with powder going before and powder stopping behind, and were
      left in a spacious semicircular drawing-room, one of several
      drawing-rooms, where there was a parrot on the outside of a golden cage
      holding on by its beak, with its scaly legs in the air, and putting itself
      into many strange upside-down postures. This peculiarity has been observed
      in birds of quite another feather, climbing upon golden wires.
    </p>
    <p>
      The room was far more splendid than anything Little Dorrit had ever
      imagined, and would have been splendid and costly in any eyes. She looked
      in amazement at her sister and would have asked a question, but that Fanny
      with a warning frown pointed to a curtained doorway of communication with
      another room. The curtain shook next moment, and a lady, raising it with a
      heavily ringed hand, dropped it behind her again as she entered.
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady was not young and fresh from the hand of Nature, but was young
      and fresh from the hand of her maid. She had large unfeeling handsome
      eyes, and dark unfeeling handsome hair, and a broad unfeeling handsome
      bosom, and was made the most of in every particular. Either because she
      had a cold, or because it suited her face, she wore a rich white fillet
      tied over her head and under her chin. And if ever there were an unfeeling
      handsome chin that looked as if, for certain, it had never been, in
      familiar parlance, 'chucked' by the hand of man, it was the chin curbed up
      so tight and close by that laced bridle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Merdle,' said Fanny. 'My sister, ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad to see your sister, Miss Dorrit. I did not remember that you
      had a sister.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I did not mention that I had,' said Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!' Mrs Merdle curled the little finger of her left hand as who should
      say, 'I have caught you. I know you didn't!' All her action was usually
      with her left hand because her hands were not a pair; and left being much
      the whiter and plumper of the two. Then she added: 'Sit down,' and
      composed herself voluptuously, in a nest of crimson and gold cushions, on
      an ottoman near the parrot.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Also professional?' said Mrs Merdle, looking at Little Dorrit through an
      eye-glass.
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny answered No. 'No,' said Mrs Merdle, dropping her glass. 'Has not a
      professional air. Very pleasant; but not professional.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My sister, ma'am,' said Fanny, in whom there was a singular mixture of
      deference and hardihood, 'has been asking me to tell her, as between
      sisters, how I came to have the honour of knowing you. And as I had
      engaged to call upon you once more, I thought I might take the liberty of
      bringing her with me, when perhaps you would tell her. I wish her to know,
      and perhaps you will tell her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think, at your sister's age&mdash;' hinted Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is much older than she looks,' said Fanny; 'almost as old as I am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Society,' said Mrs Merdle, with another curve of her little finger, 'is
      so difficult to explain to young persons (indeed is so difficult to
      explain to most persons), that I am glad to hear that. I wish Society was
      not so arbitrary, I wish it was not so exacting&mdash;Bird, be quiet!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The parrot had given a most piercing shriek, as if its name were Society
      and it asserted its right to its exactions.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But,' resumed Mrs Merdle, 'we must take it as we find it. We know it is
      hollow and conventional and worldly and very shocking, but unless we are
      Savages in the Tropical seas (I should have been charmed to be one myself&mdash;most
      delightful life and perfect climate, I am told), we must consult it. It is
      the common lot. Mr Merdle is a most extensive merchant, his transactions
      are on the vastest scale, his wealth and influence are very great, but
      even he&mdash;Bird, be quiet!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The parrot had shrieked another shriek; and it filled up the sentence so
      expressively that Mrs Merdle was under no necessity to end it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Since your sister begs that I would terminate our personal acquaintance,'
      she began again, addressing Little Dorrit, 'by relating the circumstances
      that are much to her credit, I cannot object to comply with her request, I
      am sure. I have a son (I was first married extremely young) of two or
      three-and-twenty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny set her lips, and her eyes looked half triumphantly at her sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A son of two or three-and-twenty. He is a little gay, a thing Society is
      accustomed to in young men, and he is very impressible. Perhaps he
      inherits that misfortune. I am very impressible myself, by nature. The
      weakest of creatures&mdash;my feelings are touched in a moment.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She said all this, and everything else, as coldly as a woman of snow;
      quite forgetting the sisters except at odd times, and apparently
      addressing some abstraction of Society; for whose behoof, too, she
      occasionally arranged her dress, or the composition of her figure upon the
      ottoman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So he is very impressible. Not a misfortune in our natural state I dare
      say, but we are not in a natural state. Much to be lamented, no doubt,
      particularly by myself, who am a child of nature if I could but show it;
      but so it is. Society suppresses us and dominates us&mdash;Bird, be
      quiet!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The parrot had broken into a violent fit of laughter, after twisting
      divers bars of his cage with his crooked bill, and licking them with his
      black tongue.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is quite unnecessary to say to a person of your good sense, wide range
      of experience, and cultivated feeling,' said Mrs Merdle from her nest of
      crimson and gold&mdash;and there put up her glass to refresh her memory as
      to whom she was addressing,&mdash;'that the stage sometimes has a
      fascination for young men of that class of character. In saying the stage,
      I mean the people on it of the female sex. Therefore, when I heard that my
      son was supposed to be fascinated by a dancer, I knew what that usually
      meant in Society, and confided in her being a dancer at the Opera, where
      young men moving in Society are usually fascinated.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She passed her white hands over one another, observant of the sisters now;
      and the rings upon her fingers grated against each other with a hard
      sound.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As your sister will tell you, when I found what the theatre was I was
      much surprised and much distressed. But when I found that your sister, by
      rejecting my son's advances (I must add, in an unexpected manner), had
      brought him to the point of proposing marriage, my feelings were of the
      profoundest anguish&mdash;acute.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She traced the outline of her left eyebrow, and put it right.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In a distracted condition, which only a mother&mdash;moving in Society&mdash;can
      be susceptible of, I determined to go myself to the theatre, and represent
      my state of mind to the dancer. I made myself known to your sister. I
      found her, to my surprise, in many respects different from my
      expectations; and certainly in none more so, than in meeting me with&mdash;what
      shall I say&mdash;a sort of family assertion on her own part?' Mrs Merdle
      smiled.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I told you, ma'am,' said Fanny, with a heightening colour, 'that although
      you found me in that situation, I was so far above the rest, that I
      considered my family as good as your son's; and that I had a brother who,
      knowing the circumstances, would be of the same opinion, and would not
      consider such a connection any honour.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dorrit,' said Mrs Merdle, after frostily looking at her through her
      glass, 'precisely what I was on the point of telling your sister, in
      pursuance of your request. Much obliged to you for recalling it so
      accurately and anticipating me. I immediately,' addressing Little Dorrit,
      '(for I am the creature of impulse), took a bracelet from my arm, and
      begged your sister to let me clasp it on hers, in token of the delight I
      had in our being able to approach the subject so far on a common footing.'
      (This was perfectly true, the lady having bought a cheap and showy article
      on her way to the interview, with a general eye to bribery.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I told you, Mrs Merdle,' said Fanny, 'that we might be unfortunate,
      but we are not common.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think, the very words, Miss Dorrit,' assented Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I told you, Mrs Merdle,' said Fanny, 'that if you spoke to me of the
      superiority of your son's standing in Society, it was barely possible that
      you rather deceived yourself in your suppositions about my origin; and
      that my father's standing, even in the Society in which he now moved (what
      that was, was best known to myself), was eminently superior, and was
      acknowledged by every one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite accurate,' rejoined Mrs Merdle. 'A most admirable memory.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, ma'am. Perhaps you will be so kind as to tell my sister the
      rest.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is very little to tell,' said Mrs Merdle, reviewing the breadth of
      bosom which seemed essential to her having room enough to be unfeeling in,
      'but it is to your sister's credit. I pointed out to your sister the plain
      state of the case; the impossibility of the Society in which we moved
      recognising the Society in which she moved&mdash;though charming, I have
      no doubt; the immense disadvantage at which she would consequently place
      the family she had so high an opinion of, upon which we should find
      ourselves compelled to look down with contempt, and from which (socially
      speaking) we should feel obliged to recoil with abhorrence. In short, I
      made an appeal to that laudable pride in your sister.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let my sister know, if you please, Mrs Merdle,' Fanny pouted, with a toss
      of her gauzy bonnet, 'that I had already had the honour of telling your
      son that I wished to have nothing whatever to say to him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Miss Dorrit,' assented Mrs Merdle, 'perhaps I might have mentioned
      that before. If I did not think of it, perhaps it was because my mind
      reverted to the apprehensions I had at the time that he might persevere
      and you might have something to say to him. I also mentioned to your
      sister&mdash;I again address the non-professional Miss Dorrit&mdash;that
      my son would have nothing in the event of such a marriage, and would be an
      absolute beggar. (I mention that merely as a fact which is part of the
      narrative, and not as supposing it to have influenced your sister, except
      in the prudent and legitimate way in which, constituted as our artificial
      system is, we must all be influenced by such considerations.) Finally,
      after some high words and high spirit on the part of your sister, we came
      to the complete understanding that there was no danger; and your sister
      was so obliging as to allow me to present her with a mark or two of my
      appreciation at my dressmaker's.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit looked sorry, and glanced at Fanny with a troubled face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Also,' said Mrs Merdle, 'as to promise to give me the present pleasure of
      a closing interview, and of parting with her on the best of terms. On
      which occasion,' added Mrs Merdle, quitting her nest, and putting
      something in Fanny's hand, 'Miss Dorrit will permit me to say Farewell
      with best wishes in my own dull manner.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The sisters rose at the same time, and they all stood near the cage of the
      parrot, as he tore at a claw-full of biscuit and spat it out, seemed to
      mock them with a pompous dance of his body without moving his feet, and
      suddenly turned himself upside down and trailed himself all over the
      outside of his golden cage, with the aid of his cruel beak and black
      tongue.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Adieu, Miss Dorrit, with best wishes,' said Mrs Merdle. 'If we could only
      come to a Millennium, or something of that sort, I for one might have the
      pleasure of knowing a number of charming and talented persons from whom I
      am at present excluded. A more primitive state of society would be
      delicious to me. There used to be a poem when I learnt lessons, something
      about Lo the poor Indians whose something mind! If a few thousand persons
      moving in Society, could only go and be Indians, I would put my name down
      directly; but as, moving in Society, we can't be Indians, unfortunately&mdash;Good
      morning!'
    </p>
    <p>
      They came down-stairs with powder before them and powder behind, the elder
      sister haughty and the younger sister humbled, and were shut out into
      unpowdered Harley Street, Cavendish Square.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?' said Fanny, when they had gone a little way without speaking.
      'Have you nothing to say, Amy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, I don't know what to say!' she answered, distressed. 'You didn't like
      this young man, Fanny?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Like him? He is almost an idiot.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am so sorry&mdash;don't be hurt&mdash;but, since you ask me what I have
      to say, I am so very sorry, Fanny, that you suffered this lady to give you
      anything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You little Fool!' returned her sister, shaking her with the sharp pull
      she gave her arm. 'Have you no spirit at all? But that's just the way! You
      have no self-respect, you have no becoming pride, just as you allow
      yourself to be followed about by a contemptible little Chivery of a
      thing,' with the scornfullest emphasis, 'you would let your family be
      trodden on, and never turn.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't say that, dear Fanny. I do what I can for them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You do what you can for them!' repeated Fanny, walking her on very fast.
      'Would you let a woman like this, whom you could see, if you had any
      experience of anything, to be as false and insolent as a woman can be&mdash;would
      you let her put her foot upon your family, and thank her for it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Fanny, I am sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then make her pay for it, you mean little thing. What else can you make
      her do? Make her pay for it, you stupid child; and do your family some
      credit with the money!'
    </p>
    <p>
      They spoke no more all the way back to the lodging where Fanny and her
      uncle lived. When they arrived there, they found the old man practising
      his clarionet in the dolefullest manner in a corner of the room. Fanny had
      a composite meal to make, of chops, and porter, and tea; and indignantly
      pretended to prepare it for herself, though her sister did all that in
      quiet reality. When at last Fanny sat down to eat and drink, she threw the
      table implements about and was angry with her bread, much as her father
      had been last night.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you despise me,' she said, bursting into vehement tears, 'because I am
      a dancer, why did you put me in the way of being one? It was your doing.
      You would have me stoop as low as the ground before this Mrs Merdle, and
      let her say what she liked and do what she liked, and hold us all in
      contempt, and tell me so to my face. Because I am a dancer!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O Fanny!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And Tip, too, poor fellow. She is to disparage him just as much as she
      likes, without any check&mdash;I suppose because he has been in the law,
      and the docks, and different things. Why, it was your doing, Amy. You
      might at least approve of his being defended.'
    </p>
    <p>
      All this time the uncle was dolefully blowing his clarionet in the corner,
      sometimes taking it an inch or so from his mouth for a moment while he
      stopped to gaze at them, with a vague impression that somebody had said
      something.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And your father, your poor father, Amy. Because he is not free to show
      himself and to speak for himself, you would let such people insult him
      with impunity. If you don't feel for yourself because you go out to work,
      you might at least feel for him, I should think, knowing what he has
      undergone so long.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Poor Little Dorrit felt the injustice of this taunt rather sharply. The
      remembrance of last night added a barbed point to it. She said nothing in
      reply, but turned her chair from the table towards the fire. Uncle, after
      making one more pause, blew a dismal wail and went on again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny was passionate with the tea-cups and the bread as long as her
      passion lasted, and then protested that she was the wretchedest girl in
      the world, and she wished she was dead. After that, her crying became
      remorseful, and she got up and put her arms round her sister. Little
      Dorrit tried to stop her from saying anything, but she answered that she
      would, she must! Thereupon she said again, and again, 'I beg your pardon,
      Amy,' and 'Forgive me, Amy,' almost as passionately as she had said what
      she regretted.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But indeed, indeed, Amy,' she resumed when they were seated in sisterly
      accord side by side, 'I hope and I think you would have seen this
      differently, if you had known a little more of Society.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps I might, Fanny,' said the mild Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see, while you have been domestic and resignedly shut up there, Amy,'
      pursued her sister, gradually beginning to patronise, 'I have been out,
      moving more in Society, and may have been getting proud and spirited&mdash;more
      than I ought to be, perhaps?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit answered 'Yes. O yes!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And while you have been thinking of the dinner or the clothes, I may have
      been thinking, you know, of the family. Now, may it not be so, Amy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit again nodded 'Yes,' with a more cheerful face than heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Especially as we know,' said Fanny, 'that there certainly is a tone in
      the place to which you have been so true, which does belong to it, and
      which does make it different from other aspects of Society. So kiss me
      once again, Amy dear, and we will agree that we may both be right, and
      that you are a tranquil, domestic, home-loving, good girl.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The clarionet had been lamenting most pathetically during this dialogue,
      but was cut short now by Fanny's announcement that it was time to go;
      which she conveyed to her uncle by shutting up his scrap of music, and
      taking the clarionet out of his mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit parted from them at the door, and hastened back to the
      Marshalsea. It fell dark there sooner than elsewhere, and going into it
      that evening was like going into a deep trench. The shadow of the wall was
      on every object. Not least upon the figure in the old grey gown and the
      black velvet cap, as it turned towards her when she opened the door of the
      dim room.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not upon me too!' thought Little Dorrit, with the door yet in her
      hand. 'It was not unreasonable in Fanny.'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 21. Mr Merdle's Complaint
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">U</span>pon that establishment of state, the Merdle establishment in Harley
      Street, Cavendish Square, there was the shadow of no more common wall than
      the fronts of other establishments of state on the opposite side of the
      street. Like unexceptionable Society, the opposing rows of houses in
      Harley Street were very grim with one another. Indeed, the mansions and
      their inhabitants were so much alike in that respect, that the people were
      often to be found drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in the
      shade of their own loftiness, staring at the other side of the way with
      the dullness of the houses.
    </p>
    <p>
      Everybody knows how like the street the two dinner-rows of people who take
      their stand by the street will be. The expressionless uniform twenty
      houses, all to be knocked at and rung at in the same form, all
      approachable by the same dull steps, all fended off by the same pattern of
      railing, all with the same impracticable fire-escapes, the same
      inconvenient fixtures in their heads, and everything without exception to
      be taken at a high valuation&mdash;who has not dined with these? The house
      so drearily out of repair, the occasional bow-window, the stuccoed house,
      the newly-fronted house, the corner house with nothing but angular rooms,
      the house with the blinds always down, the house with the hatchment always
      up, the house where the collector has called for one quarter of an Idea,
      and found nobody at home&mdash;who has not dined with these? The house
      that nobody will take, and is to be had a bargain&mdash;who does not know
      her? The showy house that was taken for life by the disappointed
      gentleman, and which does not suit him at all&mdash;who is unacquainted
      with that haunted habitation?
    </p>
    <p>
      Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was more than aware of Mr and Mrs Merdle.
      Intruders there were in Harley Street, of whom it was not aware; but Mr
      and Mrs Merdle it delighted to honour. Society was aware of Mr and Mrs
      Merdle. Society had said 'Let us license them; let us know them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a Midas
      without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold. He was in everything
      good, from banking to building. He was in Parliament, of course. He was in
      the City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this, Trustee of that, President
      of the other. The weightiest of men had said to projectors, 'Now, what
      name have you got? Have you got Merdle?' And, the reply being in the
      negative, had said, 'Then I won't look at you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This great and fortunate man had provided that extensive bosom which
      required so much room to be unfeeling enough in, with a nest of crimson
      and gold some fifteen years before. It was not a bosom to repose upon, but
      it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon. Mr Merdle wanted something to
      hang jewels upon, and he bought it for the purpose. Storr and Mortimer
      might have married on the same speculation.
    </p>
    <p>
      Like all his other speculations, it was sound and successful. The jewels
      showed to the richest advantage. The bosom moving in Society with the
      jewels displayed upon it, attracted general admiration. Society approving,
      Mr Merdle was satisfied. He was the most disinterested of men,&mdash;did
      everything for Society, and got as little for himself out of all his gain
      and care, as a man might.
    </p>
    <p>
      That is to say, it may be supposed that he got all he wanted, otherwise
      with unlimited wealth he would have got it. But his desire was to the
      utmost to satisfy Society (whatever that was), and take up all its drafts
      upon him for tribute. He did not shine in company; he had not very much to
      say for himself; he was a reserved man, with a broad, overhanging,
      watchful head, that particular kind of dull red colour in his cheeks which
      is rather stale than fresh, and a somewhat uneasy expression about his
      coat-cuffs, as if they were in his confidence, and had reasons for being
      anxious to hide his hands. In the little he said, he was a pleasant man
      enough; plain, emphatic about public and private confidence, and tenacious
      of the utmost deference being shown by every one, in all things, to
      Society. In this same Society (if that were it which came to his dinners,
      and to Mrs Merdle's receptions and concerts), he hardly seemed to enjoy
      himself much, and was mostly to be found against walls and behind doors.
      Also when he went out to it, instead of its coming home to him, he seemed
      a little fatigued, and upon the whole rather more disposed for bed; but he
      was always cultivating it nevertheless, and always moving in it&mdash;and
      always laying out money on it with the greatest liberality.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Merdle's first husband had been a colonel, under whose auspices the
      bosom had entered into competition with the snows of North America, and
      had come off at little disadvantage in point of whiteness, and at none in
      point of coldness. The colonel's son was Mrs Merdle's only child. He was
      of a chuckle-headed, high-shouldered make, with a general appearance of
      being, not so much a young man as a swelled boy. He had given so few signs
      of reason, that a by-word went among his companions that his brain had
      been frozen up in a mighty frost which prevailed at St John's, New
      Brunswick, at the period of his birth there, and had never thawed from
      that hour. Another by-word represented him as having in his infancy,
      through the negligence of a nurse, fallen out of a high window on his
      head, which had been heard by responsible witnesses to crack. It is
      probable that both these representations were of ex post facto origin; the
      young gentleman (whose expressive name was Sparkler) being monomaniacal in
      offering marriage to all manner of undesirable young ladies, and in
      remarking of every successive young lady to whom he tendered a matrimonial
      proposal that she was 'a doosed fine gal&mdash;well educated too&mdash;with
      no biggodd nonsense about her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      A son-in-law with these limited talents, might have been a clog upon
      another man; but Mr Merdle did not want a son-in-law for himself; he
      wanted a son-in-law for Society. Mr Sparkler having been in the Guards,
      and being in the habit of frequenting all the races, and all the lounges,
      and all the parties, and being well known, Society was satisfied with its
      son-in-law. This happy result Mr Merdle would have considered well
      attained, though Mr Sparkler had been a more expensive article. And he did
      not get Mr Sparkler by any means cheap for Society, even as it was.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a dinner giving in the Harley Street establishment, while Little
      Dorrit was stitching at her father's new shirts by his side that night;
      and there were magnates from the Court and magnates from the City,
      magnates from the Commons and magnates from the Lords, magnates from the
      bench and magnates from the bar, Bishop magnates, Treasury magnates, Horse
      Guard magnates, Admiralty magnates,&mdash;all the magnates that keep us
      going, and sometimes trip us up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am told,' said Bishop magnate to Horse Guards, 'that Mr Merdle has made
      another enormous hit. They say a hundred thousand pounds.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Horse Guards had heard two.
    </p>
    <p>
      Treasury had heard three.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar, handling his persuasive double eye-glass, was by no means clear but
      that it might be four. It was one of those happy strokes of calculation
      and combination, the result of which it was difficult to estimate. It was
      one of those instances of a comprehensive grasp, associated with habitual
      luck and characteristic boldness, of which an age presented us but few.
      But here was Brother Bellows, who had been in the great Bank case, and who
      could probably tell us more. What did Brother Bellows put this new success
      at?
    </p>
    <p>
      Brother Bellows was on his way to make his bow to the bosom, and could
      only tell them in passing that he had heard it stated, with great
      appearance of truth, as being worth, from first to last, half-a-million of
      money.
    </p>
    <p>
      Admiralty said Mr Merdle was a wonderful man, Treasury said he was a new
      power in the country, and would be able to buy up the whole House of
      Commons. Bishop said he was glad to think that this wealth flowed into the
      coffers of a gentleman who was always disposed to maintain the best
      interests of Society.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle himself was usually late on these occasions, as a man still
      detained in the clutch of giant enterprises when other men had shaken off
      their dwarfs for the day. On this occasion, he was the last arrival.
      Treasury said Merdle's work punished him a little. Bishop said he was glad
      to think that this wealth flowed into the coffers of a gentleman who
      accepted it with meekness.
    </p>
    <p>
      Powder! There was so much Powder in waiting, that it flavoured the dinner.
      Pulverous particles got into the dishes, and Society's meats had a
      seasoning of first-rate footmen. Mr Merdle took down a countess who was
      secluded somewhere in the core of an immense dress, to which she was in
      the proportion of the heart to the overgrown cabbage. If so low a simile
      may be admitted, the dress went down the staircase like a richly brocaded
      Jack in the Green, and nobody knew what sort of small person carried it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Society had everything it could want, and could not want, for dinner. It
      had everything to look at, and everything to eat, and everything to drink.
      It is to be hoped it enjoyed itself; for Mr Merdle's own share of the
      repast might have been paid for with eighteenpence. Mrs Merdle was
      magnificent. The chief butler was the next magnificent institution of the
      day. He was the stateliest man in the company. He did nothing, but he
      looked on as few other men could have done. He was Mr Merdle's last gift
      to Society. Mr Merdle didn't want him, and was put out of countenance when
      the great creature looked at him; but inappeasable Society would have him&mdash;and
      had got him.
    </p>
    <p>
      The invisible countess carried out the Green at the usual stage of the
      entertainment, and the file of beauty was closed up by the bosom. Treasury
      said, Juno. Bishop said, Judith.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar fell into discussion with Horse Guards concerning courts-martial.
      Brothers Bellows and Bench struck in. Other magnates paired off. Mr Merdle
      sat silent, and looked at the table-cloth. Sometimes a magnate addressed
      him, to turn the stream of his own particular discussion towards him; but
      Mr Merdle seldom gave much attention to it, or did more than rouse himself
      from his calculations and pass the wine.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they rose, so many of the magnates had something to say to Mr Merdle
      individually that he held little levees by the sideboard, and checked them
      off as they went out at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      Treasury hoped he might venture to congratulate one of England's
      world-famed capitalists and merchant-princes (he had turned that original
      sentiment in the house a few times, and it came easy to him) on a new
      achievement. To extend the triumphs of such men was to extend the triumphs
      and resources of the nation; and Treasury felt&mdash;he gave Mr Merdle to
      understand&mdash;patriotic on the subject.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, my lord,' said Mr Merdle; 'thank you. I accept your
      congratulations with pride, and I am glad you approve.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, I don't unreservedly approve, my dear Mr Merdle. Because,' smiling
      Treasury turned him by the arm towards the sideboard and spoke
      banteringly, 'it never can be worth your while to come among us and help
      us.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle felt honoured by the&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no,' said Treasury, 'that is not the light in which one so
      distinguished for practical knowledge and great foresight, can be expected
      to regard it. If we should ever be happily enabled, by accidentally
      possessing the control over circumstances, to propose to one so eminent to&mdash;to
      come among us, and give us the weight of his influence, knowledge, and
      character, we could only propose it to him as a duty. In fact, as a duty
      that he owed to Society.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle intimated that Society was the apple of his eye, and that its
      claims were paramount to every other consideration. Treasury moved on, and
      Bar came up.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar, with his little insinuating jury droop, and fingering his persuasive
      double eye-glass, hoped he might be excused if he mentioned to one of the
      greatest converters of the root of all evil into the root of all good, who
      had for a long time reflected a shining lustre on the annals even of our
      commercial country&mdash;if he mentioned, disinterestedly, and as, what we
      lawyers called in our pedantic way, amicus curiae, a fact that had come by
      accident within his knowledge. He had been required to look over the title
      of a very considerable estate in one of the eastern counties&mdash;lying,
      in fact, for Mr Merdle knew we lawyers loved to be particular, on the
      borders of two of the eastern counties. Now, the title was perfectly
      sound, and the estate was to be purchased by one who had the command of&mdash;Money
      (jury droop and persuasive eye-glass), on remarkably advantageous terms.
      This had come to Bar's knowledge only that day, and it had occurred to
      him, 'I shall have the honour of dining with my esteemed friend Mr Merdle
      this evening, and, strictly between ourselves, I will mention the
      opportunity.' Such a purchase would involve not only a great legitimate
      political influence, but some half-dozen church presentations of
      considerable annual value. Now, that Mr Merdle was already at no loss to
      discover means of occupying even his capital, and of fully employing even
      his active and vigorous intellect, Bar well knew: but he would venture to
      suggest that the question arose in his mind, whether one who had
      deservedly gained so high a position and so European a reputation did not
      owe it&mdash;we would not say to himself, but we would say to Society, to
      possess himself of such influences as these; and to exercise them&mdash;we
      would not say for his own, or for his party's, but we would say for
      Society's&mdash;benefit.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle again expressed himself as wholly devoted to that object of his
      constant consideration, and Bar took his persuasive eye-glass up the grand
      staircase. Bishop then came undesignedly sidling in the direction of the
      sideboard.
    </p>
    <p>
      Surely the goods of this world, it occurred in an accidental way to Bishop
      to remark, could scarcely be directed into happier channels than when they
      accumulated under the magic touch of the wise and sagacious, who, while
      they knew the just value of riches (Bishop tried here to look as if he
      were rather poor himself), were aware of their importance, judiciously
      governed and rightly distributed, to the welfare of our brethren at large.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle with humility expressed his conviction that Bishop couldn't mean
      him, and with inconsistency expressed his high gratification in Bishop's
      good opinion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bishop then&mdash;jauntily stepping out a little with his well-shaped
      right leg, as though he said to Mr Merdle 'don't mind the apron; a mere
      form!' put this case to his good friend:
    </p>
    <p>
      Whether it had occurred to his good friend, that Society might not
      unreasonably hope that one so blest in his undertakings, and whose example
      on his pedestal was so influential with it, would shed a little money in
      the direction of a mission or so to Africa?
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle signifying that the idea should have his best attention, Bishop
      put another case:
    </p>
    <p>
      Whether his good friend had at all interested himself in the proceedings
      of our Combined Additional Endowed Dignitaries Committee, and whether it
      had occurred to him that to shed a little money in <i>that</i> direction
      might be a great conception finely executed?
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle made a similar reply, and Bishop explained his reason for
      inquiring.
    </p>
    <p>
      Society looked to such men as his good friend to do such things. It was
      not that <i>he</i> looked to them, but that Society looked to them. Just
      as it was not Our Committee who wanted the Additional Endowed Dignitaries,
      but it was Society that was in a state of the most agonising uneasiness of
      mind until it got them. He begged to assure his good friend that he was
      extremely sensible of his good friend's regard on all occasions for the
      best interests of Society; and he considered that he was at once
      consulting those interests and expressing the feeling of Society, when he
      wished him continued prosperity, continued increase of riches, and
      continued things in general.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bishop then betook himself up-stairs, and the other magnates gradually
      floated up after him until there was no one left below but Mr Merdle. That
      gentleman, after looking at the table-cloth until the soul of the chief
      butler glowed with a noble resentment, went slowly up after the rest, and
      became of no account in the stream of people on the grand staircase. Mrs
      Merdle was at home, the best of the jewels were hung out to be seen,
      Society got what it came for, Mr Merdle drank twopennyworth of tea in a
      corner and got more than he wanted.
    </p>
    <p>
      Among the evening magnates was a famous physician, who knew everybody, and
      whom everybody knew. On entering at the door, he came upon Mr Merdle
      drinking his tea in a corner, and touched him on the arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle started. 'Oh! It's you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Any better to-day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Mr Merdle, 'I am no better.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A pity I didn't see you this morning. Pray come to me to-morrow, or let
      me come to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' he replied. 'I will come to-morrow as I drive by.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar and Bishop had both been bystanders during this short dialogue, and as
      Mr Merdle was swept away by the crowd, they made their remarks upon it to
      the Physician. Bar said, there was a certain point of mental strain beyond
      which no man could go; that the point varied with various textures of
      brain and peculiarities of constitution, as he had had occasion to notice
      in several of his learned brothers; but the point of endurance passed by a
      line's breadth, depression and dyspepsia ensued. Not to intrude on the
      sacred mysteries of medicine, he took it, now (with the jury droop and
      persuasive eye-glass), that this was Merdle's case? Bishop said that when
      he was a young man, and had fallen for a brief space into the habit of
      writing sermons on Saturdays, a habit which all young sons of the church
      should sedulously avoid, he had frequently been sensible of a depression,
      arising as he supposed from an over-taxed intellect, upon which the yolk
      of a new-laid egg, beaten up by the good woman in whose house he at that
      time lodged, with a glass of sound sherry, nutmeg, and powdered sugar
      acted like a charm. Without presuming to offer so simple a remedy to the
      consideration of so profound a professor of the great healing art, he
      would venture to inquire whether the strain, being by way of intricate
      calculations, the spirits might not (humanly speaking) be restored to
      their tone by a gentle and yet generous stimulant?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said the physician, 'yes, you are both right. But I may as well
      tell you that I can find nothing the matter with Mr Merdle. He has the
      constitution of a rhinoceros, the digestion of an ostrich, and the
      concentration of an oyster. As to nerves, Mr Merdle is of a cool
      temperament, and not a sensitive man: is about as invulnerable, I should
      say, as Achilles. How such a man should suppose himself unwell without
      reason, you may think strange. But I have found nothing the matter with
      him. He may have some deep-seated recondite complaint. I can't say. I only
      say, that at present I have not found it out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was no shadow of Mr Merdle's complaint on the bosom now displaying
      precious stones in rivalry with many similar superb jewel-stands; there
      was no shadow of Mr Merdle's complaint on young Sparkler hovering about
      the rooms, monomaniacally seeking any sufficiently ineligible young lady
      with no nonsense about her; there was no shadow of Mr Merdle's complaint
      on the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings, of whom whole colonies were present;
      or on any of the company. Even on himself, its shadow was faint enough as
      he moved about among the throng, receiving homage.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle's complaint. Society and he had so much to do with one another
      in all things else, that it is hard to imagine his complaint, if he had
      one, being solely his own affair. Had he that deep-seated recondite
      complaint, and did any doctor find it out? Patience, in the meantime, the
      shadow of the Marshalsea wall was a real darkening influence, and could be
      seen on the Dorrit Family at any stage of the sun's course.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 22. A Puzzle
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>r Clennam did not increase in favour with the Father of the Marshalsea in
      the ratio of his increasing visits. His obtuseness on the great
      Testimonial question was not calculated to awaken admiration in the
      paternal breast, but had rather a tendency to give offence in that
      sensitive quarter, and to be regarded as a positive shortcoming in point
      of gentlemanly feeling. An impression of disappointment, occasioned by the
      discovery that Mr Clennam scarcely possessed that delicacy for which, in
      the confidence of his nature, he had been inclined to give him credit,
      began to darken the fatherly mind in connection with that gentleman. The
      father went so far as to say, in his private family circle, that he feared
      Mr Clennam was not a man of high instincts. He was happy, he observed, in
      his public capacity as leader and representative of the College, to
      receive Mr Clennam when he called to pay his respects; but he didn't find
      that he got on with him personally. There appeared to be something (he
      didn't know what it was) wanting in him. Howbeit, the father did not fail
      in any outward show of politeness, but, on the contrary, honoured him with
      much attention; perhaps cherishing the hope that, although not a man of a
      sufficiently brilliant and spontaneous turn of mind to repeat his former
      testimonial unsolicited, it might still be within the compass of his
      nature to bear the part of a responsive gentleman, in any correspondence
      that way tending.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the threefold capacity, of the gentleman from outside who had been
      accidentally locked in on the night of his first appearance, of the
      gentleman from outside who had inquired into the affairs of the Father of
      the Marshalsea with the stupendous idea of getting him out, and of the
      gentleman from outside who took an interest in the child of the
      Marshalsea, Clennam soon became a visitor of mark. He was not surprised by
      the attentions he received from Mr Chivery when that officer was on the
      lock, for he made little distinction between Mr Chivery's politeness and
      that of the other turnkeys. It was on one particular afternoon that Mr
      Chivery surprised him all at once, and stood forth from his companions in
      bold relief.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Chivery, by some artful exercise of his power of clearing the Lodge,
      had contrived to rid it of all sauntering Collegians; so that Clennam,
      coming out of the prison, should find him on duty alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      '(Private) I ask your pardon, sir,' said Mr Chivery in a secret manner;
      'but which way might you be going?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am going over the Bridge.' He saw in Mr Chivery, with some
      astonishment, quite an Allegory of Silence, as he stood with his key on
      his lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      '(Private) I ask your pardon again,' said Mr Chivery, 'but could you go
      round by Horsemonger Lane? Could you by any means find time to look in at
      that address?' handing him a little card, printed for circulation among
      the connection of Chivery and Co., Tobacconists, Importers of pure
      Havannah Cigars, Bengal Cheroots, and fine-flavoured Cubas, Dealers in
      Fancy Snuffs, &amp;c. &amp;c.
    </p>
    <p>
      '(Private) It an't tobacco business,' said Mr Chivery. 'The truth is, it's
      my wife. She's wishful to say a word to you, sir, upon a point respecting&mdash;yes,'
      said Mr Chivery, answering Clennam's look of apprehension with a nod,
      'respecting <i>her</i>.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will make a point of seeing your wife directly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir. Much obliged. It an't above ten minutes out of your way.
      Please to ask for <i>Mrs</i> Chivery!' These instructions, Mr Chivery, who
      had already let him out, cautiously called through a little slide in the
      outer door, which he could draw back from within for the inspection of
      visitors when it pleased him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam, with the card in his hand, betook himself to the address
      set forth upon it, and speedily arrived there. It was a very small
      establishment, wherein a decent woman sat behind the counter working at
      her needle. Little jars of tobacco, little boxes of cigars, a little
      assortment of pipes, a little jar or two of snuff, and a little instrument
      like a shoeing horn for serving it out, composed the retail stock in
      trade.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur mentioned his name, and his having promised to call, on the
      solicitation of Mr Chivery. About something relating to Miss Dorrit, he
      believed. Mrs Chivery at once laid aside her work, rose up from her seat
      behind the counter, and deploringly shook her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may see him now,' said she, 'if you'll condescend to take a peep.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With these mysterious words, she preceded the visitor into a little
      parlour behind the shop, with a little window in it commanding a very
      little dull back-yard. In this yard a wash of sheets and table-cloths
      tried (in vain, for want of air) to get itself dried on a line or two; and
      among those flapping articles was sitting in a chair, like the last
      mariner left alive on the deck of a damp ship without the power of furling
      the sails, a little woe-begone young man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Our John,' said Mrs Chivery.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not to be deficient in interest, Clennam asked what he might be doing
      there?
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's the only change he takes,' said Mrs Chivery, shaking her head
      afresh. 'He won't go out, even in the back-yard, when there's no linen;
      but when there's linen to keep the neighbours' eyes off, he'll sit there,
      hours. Hours he will. Says he feels as if it was groves!' Mrs Chivery
      shook her head again, put her apron in a motherly way to her eyes, and
      reconducted her visitor into the regions of the business.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Please to take a seat, sir,' said Mrs Chivery. 'Miss Dorrit is the matter
      with Our John, sir; he's a breaking his heart for her, and I would wish to
      take the liberty to ask how it's to be made good to his parents when
      bust?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Chivery, who was a comfortable-looking woman much respected about
      Horsemonger Lane for her feelings and her conversation, uttered this
      speech with fell composure, and immediately afterwards began again to
      shake her head and dry her eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir,' said she in continuation, 'you are acquainted with the family, and
      have interested yourself with the family, and are influential with the
      family. If you can promote views calculated to make two young people
      happy, let me, for Our John's sake, and for both their sakes, implore you
      so to do!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been so habituated,' returned Arthur, at a loss, 'during the short
      time I have known her, to consider Little&mdash;I have been so habituated
      to consider Miss Dorrit in a light altogether removed from that in which
      you present her to me, that you quite take me by surprise. Does she know
      your son?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Brought up together, sir,' said Mrs Chivery. 'Played together.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does she know your son as her admirer?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! bless you, sir,' said Mrs Chivery, with a sort of triumphant shiver,
      'she never could have seen him on a Sunday without knowing he was that.
      His cane alone would have told it long ago, if nothing else had. Young men
      like John don't take to ivory hands a pinting, for nothing. How did I
      first know it myself? Similarly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps Miss Dorrit may not be so ready as you, you see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then she knows it, sir,' said Mrs Chivery, 'by word of mouth.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you sure?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir,' said Mrs Chivery, 'sure and certain as in this house I am. I see my
      son go out with my own eyes when in this house I was, and I see my son
      come in with my own eyes when in this house I was, and I know he done it!'
      Mrs Chivery derived a surprising force of emphasis from the foregoing
      circumstantiality and repetition.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I ask you how he came to fall into the desponding state which causes
      you so much uneasiness?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That,' said Mrs Chivery, 'took place on that same day when to this house
      I see that John with these eyes return. Never been himself in this house
      since. Never was like what he has been since, not from the hour when to
      this house seven year ago me and his father, as tenants by the quarter,
      came!' An effect in the nature of an affidavit was gained from this speech
      by Mrs Chivery's peculiar power of construction.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I venture to inquire what is your version of the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may,' said Mrs Chivery, 'and I will give it to you in honour and in
      word as true as in this shop I stand. Our John has every one's good word
      and every one's good wish. He played with her as a child when in that yard
      a child she played. He has known her ever since. He went out upon the
      Sunday afternoon when in this very parlour he had dined, and met her, with
      appointment or without appointment; which, I do not pretend to say. He
      made his offer to her. Her brother and sister is high in their views, and
      against Our John. Her father is all for himself in his views and against
      sharing her with any one. Under which circumstances she has answered Our
      John, "No, John, I cannot have you, I cannot have any husband, it is not
      my intentions ever to become a wife, it is my intentions to be always a
      sacrifice, farewell, find another worthy of you, and forget me!" This is
      the way in which she is doomed to be a constant slave to them that are not
      worthy that a constant slave she unto them should be. This is the way in
      which Our John has come to find no pleasure but in taking cold among the
      linen, and in showing in that yard, as in that yard I have myself shown
      you, a broken-down ruin that goes home to his mother's heart!' Here the
      good woman pointed to the little window, whence her son might be seen
      sitting disconsolate in the tuneless groves; and again shook her head and
      wiped her eyes, and besought him, for the united sakes of both the young
      people, to exercise his influence towards the bright reversal of these
      dismal events.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was so confident in her exposition of the case, and it was so
      undeniably founded on correct premises in so far as the relative positions
      of Little Dorrit and her family were concerned, that Clennam could not
      feel positive on the other side. He had come to attach to Little Dorrit an
      interest so peculiar&mdash;an interest that removed her from, while it
      grew out of, the common and coarse things surrounding her&mdash;that he
      found it disappointing, disagreeable, almost painful, to suppose her in
      love with young Mr Chivery in the back-yard, or any such person. On the
      other hand, he reasoned with himself that she was just as good and just as
      true in love with him, as not in love with him; and that to make a kind of
      domesticated fairy of her, on the penalty of isolation at heart from the
      only people she knew, would be but a weakness of his own fancy, and not a
      kind one. Still, her youthful and ethereal appearance, her timid manner,
      the charm of her sensitive voice and eyes, the very many respects in which
      she had interested him out of her own individuality, and the strong
      difference between herself and those about her, were not in unison, and
      were determined not to be in unison, with this newly presented idea.
    </p>
    <p>
      He told the worthy Mrs Chivery, after turning these things over in his
      mind&mdash;he did that, indeed, while she was yet speaking&mdash;that he
      might be relied upon to do his utmost at all times to promote the
      happiness of Miss Dorrit, and to further the wishes of her heart if it
      were in his power to do so, and if he could discover what they were. At
      the same time he cautioned her against assumptions and appearances;
      enjoined strict silence and secrecy, lest Miss Dorrit should be made
      unhappy; and particularly advised her to endeavour to win her son's
      confidence and so to make quite sure of the state of the case. Mrs Chivery
      considered the latter precaution superfluous, but said she would try. She
      shook her head as if she had not derived all the comfort she had fondly
      expected from this interview, but thanked him nevertheless for the trouble
      he had kindly taken. They then parted good friends, and Arthur walked
      away.
    </p>
    <p>
      The crowd in the street jostling the crowd in his mind, and the two crowds
      making a confusion, he avoided London Bridge, and turned off in the
      quieter direction of the Iron Bridge. He had scarcely set foot upon it,
      when he saw Little Dorrit walking on before him. It was a pleasant day,
      with a light breeze blowing, and she seemed to have that minute come there
      for air. He had left her in her father's room within an hour.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a timely chance, favourable to his wish of observing her face and
      manner when no one else was by. He quickened his pace; but before he
      reached her, she turned her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have I startled you?' he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought I knew the step,' she answered, hesitating.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And did you know it, Little Dorrit? You could hardly have expected mine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I did not expect any. But when I heard a step, I thought it&mdash;sounded
      like yours.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you going further?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir, I am only walking here for a little change.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They walked together, and she recovered her confiding manner with him, and
      looked up in his face as she said, after glancing around:
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is so strange. Perhaps you can hardly understand it. I sometimes have
      a sensation as if it was almost unfeeling to walk here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Unfeeling?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To see the river, and so much sky, and so many objects, and such change
      and motion. Then to go back, you know, and find him in the same cramped
      place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah yes! But going back, you must remember that you take with you the
      spirit and influence of such things to cheer him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do I? I hope I may! I am afraid you fancy too much, sir, and make me out
      too powerful. If you were in prison, could I bring such comfort to you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Little Dorrit, I am sure of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He gathered from a tremor on her lip, and a passing shadow of great
      agitation on her face, that her mind was with her father. He remained
      silent for a few moments, that she might regain her composure. The Little
      Dorrit, trembling on his arm, was less in unison than ever with Mrs
      Chivery's theory, and yet was not irreconcilable with a new fancy which
      sprung up within him, that there might be some one else in the hopeless&mdash;newer
      fancy still&mdash;in the hopeless unattainable distance.
    </p>
    <p>
      They turned, and Clennam said, Here was Maggy coming! Little Dorrit looked
      up, surprised, and they confronted Maggy, who brought herself at sight of
      them to a dead stop. She had been trotting along, so preoccupied and busy
      that she had not recognised them until they turned upon her. She was now
      in a moment so conscience-stricken that her very basket partook of the
      change.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maggy, you promised me to stop near father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So I would, Little Mother, only he wouldn't let me. If he takes and sends
      me out I must go. If he takes and says, "Maggy, you hurry away and back
      with that letter, and you shall have a sixpence if the answer's a good
      'un," I must take it. Lor, Little Mother, what's a poor thing of ten year
      old to do? And if Mr Tip&mdash;if he happens to be a coming in as I come
      out, and if he says "Where are you going, Maggy?" and if I says, "I'm a
      going So and So," and if he says, "I'll have a Try too," and if he goes
      into the George and writes a letter and if he gives it me and says, "Take
      that one to the same place, and if the answer's a good 'un I'll give you a
      shilling," it ain't my fault, mother!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur read, in Little Dorrit's downcast eyes, to whom she foresaw that
      the letters were addressed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm a going So and So. There! That's where I am a going to,' said Maggy.
      'I'm a going So and So. It ain't you, Little Mother, that's got anything
      to do with it&mdash;it's you, you know,' said Maggy, addressing Arthur.
      'You'd better come, So and So, and let me take and give 'em to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We will not be so particular as that, Maggy. Give them me here,' said
      Clennam in a low voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, then, come across the road,' answered Maggy in a very loud whisper.
      'Little Mother wasn't to know nothing of it, and she would never have
      known nothing of it if you had only gone So and So, instead of bothering
      and loitering about. It ain't my fault. I must do what I am told. They
      ought to be ashamed of themselves for telling me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam crossed to the other side, and hurriedly opened the letters. That
      from the father mentioned that most unexpectedly finding himself in the
      novel position of having been disappointed of a remittance from the City
      on which he had confidently counted, he took up his pen, being restrained
      by the unhappy circumstance of his incarceration during three-and-twenty
      years (doubly underlined), from coming himself, as he would otherwise
      certainly have done&mdash;took up his pen to entreat Mr Clennam to advance
      him the sum of Three Pounds Ten Shillings upon his I.O.U., which he begged
      to enclose. That from the son set forth that Mr Clennam would, he knew, be
      gratified to hear that he had at length obtained permanent employment of a
      highly satisfactory nature, accompanied with every prospect of complete
      success in life; but that the temporary inability of his employer to pay
      him his arrears of salary to that date (in which condition said employer
      had appealed to that generous forbearance in which he trusted he should
      never be wanting towards a fellow-creature), combined with the fraudulent
      conduct of a false friend and the present high price of provisions, had
      reduced him to the verge of ruin, unless he could by a quarter before six
      that evening raise the sum of eight pounds. This sum, Mr Clennam would be
      happy to learn, he had, through the promptitude of several friends who had
      a lively confidence in his probity, already raised, with the exception of
      a trifling balance of one pound seventeen and fourpence; the loan of which
      balance, for the period of one month, would be fraught with the usual
      beneficent consequences.
    </p>
    <p>
      These letters Clennam answered with the aid of his pencil and pocket-book,
      on the spot; sending the father what he asked for, and excusing himself
      from compliance with the demand of the son. He then commissioned Maggy to
      return with his replies, and gave her the shilling of which the failure of
      her supplemental enterprise would have disappointed her otherwise.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he rejoined Little Dorrit, and they had begun walking as before, she
      said all at once:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think I had better go. I had better go home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't be distressed,' said Clennam, 'I have answered the letters. They
      were nothing. You know what they were. They were nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I am afraid,' she returned, 'to leave him, I am afraid to leave any
      of them. When I am gone, they pervert&mdash;but they don't mean it&mdash;even
      Maggy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was a very innocent commission that she undertook, poor thing. And in
      keeping it secret from you, she supposed, no doubt, that she was only
      saving you uneasiness.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I hope so, I hope so. But I had better go home! It was but the other
      day that my sister told me I had become so used to the prison that I had
      its tone and character. It must be so. I am sure it must be when I see
      these things. My place is there. I am better there, it is unfeeling in me
      to be here, when I can do the least thing there. Good-bye. I had far
      better stay at home!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The agonised way in which she poured this out, as if it burst of itself
      from her suppressed heart, made it difficult for Clennam to keep the tears
      from his eyes as he saw and heard her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't call it home, my child!' he entreated. 'It is always painful to me
      to hear you call it home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But it is home! What else can I call home? Why should I ever forget it
      for a single moment?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You never do, dear Little Dorrit, in any good and true service.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope not, O I hope not! But it is better for me to stay there; much
      better, much more dutiful, much happier. Please don't go with me, let me
      go by myself. Good-bye, God bless you. Thank you, thank you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He felt that it was better to respect her entreaty, and did not move while
      her slight form went quickly away from him. When it had fluttered out of
      sight, he turned his face towards the water and stood thinking.
    </p>
    <p>
      She would have been distressed at any time by this discovery of the
      letters; but so much so, and in that unrestrainable way?
    </p>
    <p>
      No.
    </p>
    <p>
      When she had seen her father begging with his threadbare disguise on, when
      she had entreated him not to give her father money, she had been
      distressed, but not like this. Something had made her keenly and
      additionally sensitive just now. Now, was there some one in the hopeless
      unattainable distance? Or had the suspicion been brought into his mind, by
      his own associations of the troubled river running beneath the bridge with
      the same river higher up, its changeless tune upon the prow of the
      ferry-boat, so many miles an hour the peaceful flowing of the stream, here
      the rushes, there the lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet?
    </p>
    <p>
      He thought of his poor child, Little Dorrit, for a long time there; he
      thought of her going home; he thought of her in the night; he thought of
      her when the day came round again. And the poor child Little Dorrit
      thought of him&mdash;too faithfully, ah, too faithfully!&mdash;in the
      shadow of the Marshalsea wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 23. Machinery in Motion
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>r Meagles bestirred himself with such prompt activity in the matter of
      the negotiation with Daniel Doyce which Clennam had entrusted to him, that
      he soon brought it into business train, and called on Clennam at nine
      o'clock one morning to make his report.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Doyce is highly gratified by your good opinion,' he opened the business
      by saying, 'and desires nothing so much as that you should examine the
      affairs of the Works for yourself, and entirely understand them. He has
      handed me the keys of all his books and papers&mdash;here they are
      jingling in this pocket&mdash;and the only charge he has given me is "Let
      Mr Clennam have the means of putting himself on a perfect equality with me
      as to knowing whatever I know. If it should come to nothing after all, he
      will respect my confidence. Unless I was sure of that to begin with, I
      should have nothing to do with him." And there, you see,' said Mr Meagles,
      'you have Daniel Doyce all over.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A very honourable character.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, yes, to be sure. Not a doubt of it. Odd, but very honourable. Very
      odd though. Now, would you believe, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, with a
      hearty enjoyment of his friend's eccentricity, 'that I had a whole morning
      in What's-his-name Yard&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bleeding Heart?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A whole morning in Bleeding Heart Yard, before I could induce him to
      pursue the subject at all?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How was that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How was that, my friend? I no sooner mentioned your name in connection
      with it than he declared off.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Declared off on my account?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I no sooner mentioned your name, Clennam, than he said, "That will never
      do!" What did he mean by that? I asked him. No matter, Meagles; that would
      never do. Why would it never do? You'll hardly believe it, Clennam,' said
      Mr Meagles, laughing within himself, 'but it came out that it would never
      do, because you and he, walking down to Twickenham together, had glided
      into a friendly conversation in the course of which he had referred to his
      intention of taking a partner, supposing at the time that you were as
      firmly and finally settled as St Paul's Cathedral. "Whereas," says he, "Mr
      Clennam might now believe, if I entertained his proposition, that I had a
      sinister and designing motive in what was open free speech. Which I can't
      bear," says he, "which I really am too proud to bear."'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should as soon suspect&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course you would,' interrupted Mr Meagles, 'and so I told him. But it
      took a morning to scale that wall; and I doubt if any other man than
      myself (he likes me of old) could have got his leg over it. Well, Clennam.
      This business-like obstacle surmounted, he then stipulated that before
      resuming with you I should look over the books and form my own opinion. I
      looked over the books, and formed my own opinion. "Is it, on the whole,
      for, or against?" says he. "For," says I. "Then," says he, "you may now,
      my good friend, give Mr Clennam the means of forming his opinion. To
      enable him to do which, without bias and with perfect freedom, I shall go
      out of town for a week." And he's gone,' said Mr Meagles; 'that's the rich
      conclusion of the thing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Leaving me,' said Clennam, 'with a high sense, I must say, of his candour
      and his&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oddity,' Mr Meagles struck in. 'I should think so!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not exactly the word on Clennam's lips, but he forbore to interrupt
      his good-humoured friend.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And now,' added Mr Meagles, 'you can begin to look into matters as soon
      as you think proper. I have undertaken to explain where you may want
      explanation, but to be strictly impartial, and to do nothing more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They began their perquisitions in Bleeding Heart Yard that same forenoon.
      Little peculiarities were easily to be detected by experienced eyes in Mr
      Doyce's way of managing his affairs, but they almost always involved some
      ingenious simplification of a difficulty, and some plain road to the
      desired end. That his papers were in arrear, and that he stood in need of
      assistance to develop the capacity of his business, was clear enough; but
      all the results of his undertakings during many years were distinctly set
      forth, and were ascertainable with ease. Nothing had been done for the
      purposes of the pending investigation; everything was in its genuine
      working dress, and in a certain honest rugged order. The calculations and
      entries, in his own hand, of which there were many, were bluntly written,
      and with no very neat precision; but were always plain and directed
      straight to the purpose. It occurred to Arthur that a far more elaborate
      and taking show of business&mdash;such as the records of the
      Circumlocution Office made perhaps&mdash;might be far less serviceable, as
      being meant to be far less intelligible.
    </p>
    <p>
      Three or four days of steady application tendered him master of all the
      facts it was essential to become acquainted with. Mr Meagles was at hand
      the whole time, always ready to illuminate any dim place with the bright
      little safety-lamp belonging to the scales and scoop. Between them they
      agreed upon the sum it would be fair to offer for the purchase of a
      half-share in the business, and then Mr Meagles unsealed a paper in which
      Daniel Doyce had noted the amount at which he valued it; which was even
      something less. Thus, when Daniel came back, he found the affair as good
      as concluded.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I may now avow, Mr Clennam,' said he, with a cordial shake of the
      hand, 'that if I had looked high and low for a partner, I believe I could
      not have found one more to my mind.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say the same,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I say of both of you,' added Mr Meagles, 'that you are well matched.
      You keep him in check, Clennam, with your common sense, and you stick to
      the Works, Dan, with your&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Uncommon sense?' suggested Daniel, with his quiet smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may call it so, if you like&mdash;and each of you will be a right
      hand to the other. Here's my own right hand upon it, as a practical man,
      to both of you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The purchase was completed within a month. It left Arthur in possession of
      private personal means not exceeding a few hundred pounds; but it opened
      to him an active and promising career. The three friends dined together on
      the auspicious occasion; the factory and the factory wives and children
      made holiday and dined too; even Bleeding Heart Yard dined and was full of
      meat. Two months had barely gone by in all, when Bleeding Heart Yard had
      become so familiar with short-commons again, that the treat was forgotten
      there; when nothing seemed new in the partnership but the paint of the
      inscription on the door-posts, DOYCE AND CLENNAM; when it appeared even to
      Clennam himself, that he had had the affairs of the firm in his mind for
      years.
    </p>
    <p>
      The little counting-house reserved for his own occupation, was a room of
      wood and glass at the end of a long low workshop, filled with benches, and
      vices, and tools, and straps, and wheels; which, when they were in gear
      with the steam-engine, went tearing round as though they had a suicidal
      mission to grind the business to dust and tear the factory to pieces. A
      communication of great trap-doors in the floor and roof with the workshop
      above and the workshop below, made a shaft of light in this perspective,
      which brought to Clennam's mind the child's old picture-book, where
      similar rays were the witnesses of Abel's murder. The noises were
      sufficiently removed and shut out from the counting-house to blend into a
      busy hum, interspersed with periodical clinks and thumps. The patient
      figures at work were swarthy with the filings of iron and steel that
      danced on every bench and bubbled up through every chink in the planking.
      The workshop was arrived at by a step-ladder from the outer yard below,
      where it served as a shelter for the large grindstone where tools were
      sharpened. The whole had at once a fanciful and practical air in Clennam's
      eyes, which was a welcome change; and, as often as he raised them from his
      first work of getting the array of business documents into perfect order,
      he glanced at these things with a feeling of pleasure in his pursuit that
      was new to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Raising his eyes thus one day, he was surprised to see a bonnet labouring
      up the step-ladder. The unusual apparition was followed by another bonnet.
      He then perceived that the first bonnet was on the head of Mr F.'s Aunt,
      and that the second bonnet was on the head of Flora, who seemed to have
      propelled her legacy up the steep ascent with considerable difficulty.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0244m.jpg" alt="0244m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0244.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      Though not altogether enraptured at the sight of these visitors, Clennam
      lost no time in opening the counting-house door, and extricating them from
      the workshop; a rescue which was rendered the more necessary by Mr F.'s
      Aunt already stumbling over some impediment, and menacing steam power as
      an Institution with a stony reticule she carried.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good gracious, Arthur,&mdash;I should say Mr Clennam, far more proper&mdash;the
      climb we have had to get up here and how ever to get down again without a
      fire-escape and Mr F.'s Aunt slipping through the steps and bruised all
      over and you in the machinery and foundry way too only think, and never
      told us!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus, Flora, out of breath. Meanwhile, Mr F.'s Aunt rubbed her esteemed
      insteps with her umbrella, and vindictively glared.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Most unkind never to have come back to see us since that day, though
      naturally it was not to be expected that there should be any attraction at
      <i>our</i> house and you were much more pleasantly engaged, that's pretty
      certain, and is she fair or dark blue eyes or black I wonder, not that I
      expect that she should be anything but a perfect contrast to me in all
      particulars for I am a disappointment as I very well know and you are
      quite right to be devoted no doubt though what I am saying Arthur never
      mind I hardly know myself Good gracious!'
    </p>
    <p>
      By this time he had placed chairs for them in the counting-house. As Flora
      dropped into hers, she bestowed the old look upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And to think of Doyce and Clennam, and who Doyce can be,' said Flora;
      'delightful man no doubt and married perhaps or perhaps a daughter, now
      has he really? then one understands the partnership and sees it all, don't
      tell me anything about it for I know I have no claim to ask the question
      the golden chain that once was forged being snapped and very proper.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora put her hand tenderly on his, and gave him another of the youthful
      glances.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Arthur&mdash;force of habit, Mr Clennam every way more delicate and
      adapted to existing circumstances&mdash;I must beg to be excused for
      taking the liberty of this intrusion but I thought I might so far presume
      upon old times for ever faded never more to bloom as to call with Mr F.'s
      Aunt to congratulate and offer best wishes, A great deal superior to China
      not to be denied and much nearer though higher up!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very happy to see you,' said Clennam, 'and I thank you, Flora, very
      much for your kind remembrance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'More than I can say myself at any rate,' returned Flora, 'for I might
      have been dead and buried twenty distinct times over and no doubt whatever
      should have been before you had genuinely remembered Me or anything like
      it in spite of which one last remark I wish to make, one last explanation
      I wish to offer&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Mrs Finching,' Arthur remonstrated in alarm.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh not that disagreeable name, say Flora!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flora, is it worth troubling yourself afresh to enter into explanations?
      I assure you none are needed. I am satisfied&mdash;I am perfectly
      satisfied.'
    </p>
    <p>
      A diversion was occasioned here, by Mr F.'s Aunt making the following
      inexorable and awful statement:
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's mile-stones on the Dover road!'
    </p>
    <p>
      With such mortal hostility towards the human race did she discharge this
      missile, that Clennam was quite at a loss how to defend himself; the
      rather as he had been already perplexed in his mind by the honour of a
      visit from this venerable lady, when it was plain she held him in the
      utmost abhorrence. He could not but look at her with disconcertment, as
      she sat breathing bitterness and scorn, and staring leagues away. Flora,
      however, received the remark as if it had been of a most apposite and
      agreeable nature; approvingly observing aloud that Mr F.'s Aunt had a
      great deal of spirit. Stimulated either by this compliment, or by her
      burning indignation, that illustrious woman then added, 'Let him meet it
      if he can!' And, with a rigid movement of her stony reticule (an appendage
      of great size and of a fossil appearance), indicated that Clennam was the
      unfortunate person at whom the challenge was hurled.
    </p>
    <p>
      'One last remark,' resumed Flora, 'I was going to say I wish to make one
      last explanation I wish to offer, Mr F.'s Aunt and myself would not have
      intruded on business hours Mr F. having been in business and though the
      wine trade still business is equally business call it what you will and
      business habits are just the same as witness Mr F. himself who had his
      slippers always on the mat at ten minutes before six in the afternoon and
      his boots inside the fender at ten minutes before eight in the morning to
      the moment in all weathers light or dark&mdash;would not therefore have
      intruded without a motive which being kindly meant it may be hoped will be
      kindly taken Arthur, Mr Clennam far more proper, even Doyce and Clennam
      probably more business-like.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray say nothing in the way of apology,' Arthur entreated. 'You are
      always welcome.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very polite of you to say so Arthur&mdash;cannot remember Mr Clennam
      until the word is out, such is the habit of times for ever fled, and so
      true it is that oft in the stilly night ere slumber's chain has bound
      people, fond memory brings the light of other days around people&mdash;very
      polite but more polite than true I am afraid, for to go into the machinery
      business without so much as sending a line or a card to papa&mdash;I don't
      say me though there was a time but that is past and stern reality has now
      my gracious never mind&mdash;does not look like it you must confess.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Even Flora's commas seemed to have fled on this occasion; she was so much
      more disjointed and voluble than in the preceding interview.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Though indeed,' she hurried on, 'nothing else is to be expected and why
      should it be expected and if it's not to be expected why should it be, and
      I am far from blaming you or any one, When your mama and my papa worried
      us to death and severed the golden bowl&mdash;I mean bond but I dare say
      you know what I mean and if you don't you don't lose much and care just as
      little I will venture to add&mdash;when they severed the golden bond that
      bound us and threw us into fits of crying on the sofa nearly choked at
      least myself everything was changed and in giving my hand to Mr F. I know
      I did so with my eyes open but he was so very unsettled and in such low
      spirits that he had distractedly alluded to the river if not oil of
      something from the chemist's and I did it for the best.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My good Flora, we settled that before. It was all quite right.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's perfectly clear you think so,' returned Flora, 'for you take it very
      coolly, if I hadn't known it to be China I should have guessed myself the
      Polar regions, dear Mr Clennam you are right however and I cannot blame
      you but as to Doyce and Clennam papa's property being about here we heard
      it from Pancks and but for him we never should have heard one word about
      it I am satisfied.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, don't say that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What nonsense not to say it Arthur&mdash;Doyce and Clennam&mdash;easier
      and less trying to me than Mr Clennam&mdash;when I know it and you know it
      too and can't deny it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I do deny it, Flora. I should soon have made you a friendly visit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!' said Flora, tossing her head. 'I dare say!' and she gave him another
      of the old looks. 'However when Pancks told us I made up my mind that Mr
      F.'s Aunt and I would come and call because when papa&mdash;which was
      before that&mdash;happened to mention her name to me and to say that you
      were interested in her I said at the moment Good gracious why not have her
      here then when there's anything to do instead of putting it out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'When you say Her,' observed Clennam, by this time pretty well bewildered,
      'do you mean Mr F.'s&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My goodness, Arthur&mdash;Doyce and Clennam really easier to me with old
      remembrances&mdash;who ever heard of Mr F.'s Aunt doing needlework and
      going out by the day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Going out by the day! Do you speak of Little Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why yes of course,' returned Flora; 'and of all the strangest names I
      ever heard the strangest, like a place down in the country with a
      turnpike, or a favourite pony or a puppy or a bird or something from a
      seed-shop to be put in a garden or a flower-pot and come up speckled.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then, Flora,' said Arthur, with a sudden interest in the conversation,
      'Mr Casby was so kind as to mention Little Dorrit to you, was he? What did
      he say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh you know what papa is,' rejoined Flora, 'and how aggravatingly he sits
      looking beautiful and turning his thumbs over and over one another till he
      makes one giddy if one keeps one's eyes upon him, he said when we were
      talking of you&mdash;I don't know who began the subject Arthur (Doyce and
      Clennam) but I am sure it wasn't me, at least I hope not but you really
      must excuse my confessing more on that point.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly,' said Arthur. 'By all means.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very ready,' pouted Flora, coming to a sudden stop in a
      captivating bashfulness, 'that I must admit, Papa said you had spoken of
      her in an earnest way and I said what I have told you and that's all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's all?' said Arthur, a little disappointed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Except that when Pancks told us of your having embarked in this business
      and with difficulty persuaded us that it was really you I said to Mr F.'s
      Aunt then we would come and ask you if it would be agreeable to all
      parties that she should be engaged at our house when required for I know
      she often goes to your mama's and I know that your mama has a very touchy
      temper Arthur&mdash;Doyce and Clennam&mdash;or I never might have married
      Mr F. and might have been at this hour but I am running into nonsense.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was very kind of you, Flora, to think of this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Poor Flora rejoined with a plain sincerity which became her better than
      her youngest glances, that she was glad he thought so. She said it with so
      much heart that Clennam would have given a great deal to buy his old
      character of her on the spot, and throw it and the mermaid away for ever.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think, Flora,' he said, 'that the employment you can give Little
      Dorrit, and the kindness you can show her&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes and I will,' said Flora, quickly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure of it&mdash;will be a great assistance and support to her. I do
      not feel that I have the right to tell you what I know of her, for I
      acquired the knowledge confidentially, and under circumstances that bind
      me to silence. But I have an interest in the little creature, and a
      respect for her that I cannot express to you. Her life has been one of
      such trial and devotion, and such quiet goodness, as you can scarcely
      imagine. I can hardly think of her, far less speak of her, without feeling
      moved. Let that feeling represent what I could tell you, and commit her to
      your friendliness with my thanks.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Once more he put out his hand frankly to poor Flora; once more poor Flora
      couldn't accept it frankly, found it worth nothing openly, must make the
      old intrigue and mystery of it. As much to her own enjoyment as to his
      dismay, she covered it with a corner of her shawl as she took it. Then,
      looking towards the glass front of the counting-house, and seeing two
      figures approaching, she cried with infinite relish, 'Papa! Hush, Arthur,
      for Mercy's sake!' and tottered back to her chair with an amazing
      imitation of being in danger of swooning, in the dread surprise and
      maidenly flutter of her spirits.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Patriarch, meanwhile, came inanely beaming towards the counting-house
      in the wake of Pancks. Pancks opened the door for him, towed him in, and
      retired to his own moorings in a corner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I heard from Flora,' said the Patriarch with his benevolent smile, 'that
      she was coming to call, coming to call. And being out, I thought I'd come
      also, thought I'd come also.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The benign wisdom he infused into this declaration (not of itself
      profound), by means of his blue eyes, his shining head, and his long white
      hair, was most impressive. It seemed worth putting down among the noblest
      sentiments enunciated by the best of men. Also, when he said to Clennam,
      seating himself in the proffered chair, 'And you are in a new business, Mr
      Clennam? I wish you well, sir, I wish you well!' he seemed to have done
      benevolent wonders.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Finching has been telling me, sir,' said Arthur, after making his
      acknowledgments; the relict of the late Mr F. meanwhile protesting, with a
      gesture, against his use of that respectable name; 'that she hopes
      occasionally to employ the young needlewoman you recommended to my mother.
      For which I have been thanking her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Patriarch turning his head in a lumbering way towards Pancks, that
      assistant put up the note-book in which he had been absorbed, and took him
      in tow.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You didn't recommend her, you know,' said Pancks; 'how could you? You
      knew nothing about her, you didn't. The name was mentioned to you, and you
      passed it on. That's what <i>you</i> did.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said Clennam. 'As she justifies any recommendation, it is much the
      same thing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are glad she turns out well,' said Pancks, 'but it wouldn't have been
      your fault if she had turned out ill. The credit's not yours as it is, and
      the blame wouldn't have been yours as it might have been. You gave no
      guarantee. You knew nothing about her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are not acquainted, then,' said Arthur, hazarding a random question,
      'with any of her family?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Acquainted with any of her family?' returned Pancks. 'How should you be
      acquainted with any of her family? You never heard of 'em. You can't be
      acquainted with people you never heard of, can you? You should think not!'
    </p>
    <p>
      All this time the Patriarch sat serenely smiling; nodding or shaking his
      head benevolently, as the case required.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to being a reference,' said Pancks, 'you know, in a general way, what
      being a reference means. It's all your eye, that is! Look at your tenants
      down the Yard here. They'd all be references for one another, if you'd let
      'em. What would be the good of letting 'em? It's no satisfaction to be
      done by two men instead of one. One's enough. A person who can't pay, gets
      another person who can't pay, to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person
      with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs, to
      guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them
      able to do a walking match. And four wooden legs are more troublesome to
      you than two, when you don't want any.' Mr Pancks concluded by blowing off
      that steam of his.
    </p>
    <p>
      A momentary silence that ensued was broken by Mr F.'s Aunt, who had been
      sitting upright in a cataleptic state since her last public remark. She
      now underwent a violent twitch, calculated to produce a startling effect
      on the nerves of the uninitiated, and with the deadliest animosity
      observed:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You can't make a head and brains out of a brass knob with nothing in it.
      You couldn't do it when your Uncle George was living; much less when he's
      dead.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks was not slow to reply, with his usual calmness, 'Indeed, ma'am!
      Bless my soul! I'm surprised to hear it.' Despite his presence of mind,
      however, the speech of Mr F.'s Aunt produced a depressing effect on the
      little assembly; firstly, because it was impossible to disguise that
      Clennam's unoffending head was the particular temple of reason
      depreciated; and secondly, because nobody ever knew on these occasions
      whose Uncle George was referred to, or what spectral presence might be
      invoked under that appellation.
    </p>
    <p>
      Therefore Flora said, though still not without a certain boastfulness and
      triumph in her legacy, that Mr F.'s Aunt was 'very lively to-day, and she
      thought they had better go.' But Mr F.'s Aunt proved so lively as to take
      the suggestion in unexpected dudgeon and declare that she would not go;
      adding, with several injurious expressions, that if 'He'&mdash;too
      evidently meaning Clennam&mdash;wanted to get rid of her, 'let him chuck
      her out of winder;' and urgently expressing her desire to see 'Him'
      perform that ceremony.
    </p>
    <p>
      In this dilemma, Mr Pancks, whose resources appeared equal to any
      emergency in the Patriarchal waters, slipped on his hat, slipped out at
      the counting-house door, and slipped in again a moment afterwards with an
      artificial freshness upon him, as if he had been in the country for some
      weeks. 'Why, bless my heart, ma'am!' said Mr Pancks, rubbing up his hair
      in great astonishment, 'is that you? How do you <i>do</i>, ma'am? You are
      looking charming to-day! I am delighted to see you. Favour me with your
      arm, ma'am; we'll have a little walk together, you and me, if you'll
      honour me with your company.' And so escorted Mr F.'s Aunt down the
      private staircase of the counting-house with great gallantry and success.
      The patriarchal Mr Casby then rose with the air of having done it himself,
      and blandly followed: leaving his daughter, as she followed in her turn,
      to remark to her former lover in a distracted whisper (which she very much
      enjoyed), that they had drained the cup of life to the dregs; and further
      to hint mysteriously that the late Mr F. was at the bottom of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Alone again, Clennam became a prey to his old doubts in reference to his
      mother and Little Dorrit, and revolved the old thoughts and suspicions.
      They were all in his mind, blending themselves with the duties he was
      mechanically discharging, when a shadow on his papers caused him to look
      up for the cause. The cause was Mr Pancks. With his hat thrown back upon
      his ears as if his wiry prongs of hair had darted up like springs and cast
      it off, with his jet-black beads of eyes inquisitively sharp, with the
      fingers of his right hand in his mouth that he might bite the nails, and
      with the fingers of his left hand in reserve in his pocket for another
      course, Mr Pancks cast his shadow through the glass upon the books and
      papers.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks asked, with a little inquiring twist of his head, if he might
      come in again? Clennam replied with a nod of his head in the affirmative.
      Mr Pancks worked his way in, came alongside the desk, made himself fast by
      leaning his arms upon it, and started conversation with a puff and a
      snort.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr F.'s Aunt is appeased, I hope?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'All right, sir,' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am so unfortunate as to have awakened a strong animosity in the breast
      of that lady,' said Clennam. 'Do you know why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does <i>she</i> know why?' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suppose not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>I</i> suppose not,' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      He took out his note-book, opened it, shut it, dropped it into his hat,
      which was beside him on the desk, and looked in at it as it lay at the
      bottom of the hat: all with a great appearance of consideration.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam,' he then began, 'I am in want of information, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Connected with this firm?' asked Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'With what then, Mr Pancks? That is to say, assuming that you want it of
      me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir; yes, I want it of you,' said Pancks, 'if I can persuade you to
      furnish it. A, B, C, D. DA, DE, DI, DO. Dictionary order. Dorrit. That's
      the name, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks blew off his peculiar noise again, and fell to at his right-hand
      nails. Arthur looked searchingly at him; he returned the look.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't understand you, Mr Pancks.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's the name that I want to know about.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what do you want to know?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whatever you can and will tell me.' This comprehensive summary of his
      desires was not discharged without some heavy labouring on the part of Mr
      Pancks's machinery.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is a singular visit, Mr Pancks. It strikes me as rather
      extraordinary that you should come, with such an object, to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It may be all extraordinary together,' returned Pancks. 'It may be out of
      the ordinary course, and yet be business. In short, it is business. I am a
      man of business. What business have I in this present world, except to
      stick to business? No business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With his former doubt whether this dry hard personage were quite in
      earnest, Clennam again turned his eyes attentively upon his face. It was
      as scrubby and dingy as ever, and as eager and quick as ever, and he could
      see nothing lurking in it that was at all expressive of a latent mockery
      that had seemed to strike upon his ear in the voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now,' said Pancks, 'to put this business on its own footing, it's not my
      proprietor's.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you refer to Mr Casby as your proprietor?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Pancks nodded. 'My proprietor. Put a case. Say, at my proprietor's I hear
      name&mdash;name of young person Mr Clennam wants to serve. Say, name first
      mentioned to my proprietor by Plornish in the Yard. Say, I go to Plornish.
      Say, I ask Plornish as a matter of business for information. Say,
      Plornish, though six weeks in arrear to my proprietor, declines. Say, Mrs
      Plornish declines. Say, both refer to Mr Clennam. Put the case.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, sir,' returned Pancks, 'say, I come to him. Say, here I am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With those prongs of hair sticking up all over his head, and his breath
      coming and going very hard and short, the busy Pancks fell back a step (in
      Tug metaphor, took half a turn astern) as if to show his dingy hull
      complete, then forged a-head again, and directed his quick glance by turns
      into his hat where his note-book was, and into Clennam's face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Pancks, not to trespass on your grounds of mystery, I will be as plain
      with you as I can. Let me ask two questions. First&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All right!' said Pancks, holding up his dirty forefinger with his broken
      nail. 'I see! "What's your motive?"'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Exactly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Motive,' said Pancks, 'good. Nothing to do with my proprietor; not
      stateable at present, ridiculous to state at present; but good. Desiring
      to serve young person, name of Dorrit,' said Pancks, with his forefinger
      still up as a caution. 'Better admit motive to be good.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Secondly, and lastly, what do you want to know?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks fished up his note-book before the question was put, and
      buttoning it with care in an inner breast-pocket, and looking straight at
      Clennam all the time, replied with a pause and a puff, 'I want
      supplementary information of any sort.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam could not withhold a smile, as the panting little steam-tug, so
      useful to that unwieldy ship, the Casby, waited on and watched him as if
      it were seeking an opportunity of running in and rifling him of all he
      wanted before he could resist its manoeuvres; though there was that in Mr
      Pancks's eagerness, too, which awakened many wondering speculations in his
      mind. After a little consideration, he resolved to supply Mr Pancks with
      such leading information as it was in his power to impart him; well
      knowing that Mr Pancks, if he failed in his present research, was pretty
      sure to find other means of getting it.
    </p>
    <p>
      He, therefore, first requesting Mr Pancks to remember his voluntary
      declaration that his proprietor had no part in the disclosure, and that
      his own intentions were good (two declarations which that coaly little
      gentleman with the greatest ardour repeated), openly told him that as to
      the Dorrit lineage or former place of habitation, he had no information to
      communicate, and that his knowledge of the family did not extend beyond
      the fact that it appeared to be now reduced to five members; namely, to
      two brothers, of whom one was single, and one a widower with three
      children. The ages of the whole family he made known to Mr Pancks, as
      nearly as he could guess at them; and finally he described to him the
      position of the Father of the Marshalsea, and the course of time and
      events through which he had become invested with that character. To all
      this, Mr Pancks, snorting and blowing in a more and more portentous manner
      as he became more interested, listened with great attention; appearing to
      derive the most agreeable sensations from the painfullest parts of the
      narrative, and particularly to be quite charmed by the account of William
      Dorrit's long imprisonment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In conclusion, Mr Pancks,' said Arthur, 'I have but to say this. I have
      reasons beyond a personal regard for speaking as little as I can of the
      Dorrit family, particularly at my mother's house' (Mr Pancks nodded), 'and
      for knowing as much as I can. So devoted a man of business as you are&mdash;eh?'
    </p>
    <p>
      For Mr Pancks had suddenly made that blowing effort with unusual force.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's nothing,' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So devoted a man of business as yourself has a perfect understanding of a
      fair bargain. I wish to make a fair bargain with you, that you shall
      enlighten me concerning the Dorrit family when you have it in your power,
      as I have enlightened you. It may not give you a very flattering idea of
      my business habits, that I failed to make my terms beforehand,' continued
      Clennam; 'but I prefer to make them a point of honour. I have seen so much
      business done on sharp principles that, to tell you the truth, Mr Pancks,
      I am tired of them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks laughed. 'It's a bargain, sir,' said he. 'You shall find me
      stick to it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      After that, he stood a little while looking at Clennam, and biting his ten
      nails all round; evidently while he fixed in his mind what he had been
      told, and went over it carefully, before the means of supplying a gap in
      his memory should be no longer at hand. 'It's all right,' he said at last,
      'and now I'll wish you good day, as it's collecting day in the Yard.
      By-the-bye, though. A lame foreigner with a stick.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay. You do take a reference sometimes, I see?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When he can pay, sir,' replied Pancks. 'Take all you can get, and keep
      back all you can't be forced to give up. That's business. The lame
      foreigner with the stick wants a top room down the Yard. Is he good for
      it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am,' said Clennam, 'and I will answer for him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's enough. What I must have of Bleeding Heart Yard,' said Pancks,
      making a note of the case in his book, 'is my bond. I want my bond, you
      see. Pay up, or produce your property! That's the watchword down the Yard.
      The lame foreigner with the stick represented that you sent him; but he
      could represent (as far as that goes) that the Great Mogul sent him. He
      has been in the hospital, I believe?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. Through having met with an accident. He is only just now
      discharged.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's pauperising a man, sir, I have been shown, to let him into a
      hospital?' said Pancks. And again blew off that remarkable sound.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been shown so too,' said Clennam, coldly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks, being by that time quite ready for a start, got under steam in
      a moment, and, without any other signal or ceremony, was snorting down the
      step-ladder and working into Bleeding Heart Yard, before he seemed to be
      well out of the counting-house.
    </p>
    <p>
      Throughout the remainder of the day, Bleeding Heart Yard was in
      consternation, as the grim Pancks cruised in it; haranguing the
      inhabitants on their backslidings in respect of payment, demanding his
      bond, breathing notices to quit and executions, running down defaulters,
      sending a swell of terror on before him, and leaving it in his wake. Knots
      of people, impelled by a fatal attraction, lurked outside any house in
      which he was known to be, listening for fragments of his discourses to the
      inmates; and, when he was rumoured to be coming down the stairs, often
      could not disperse so quickly but that he would be prematurely in among
      them, demanding their own arrears, and rooting them to the spot.
      Throughout the remainder of the day, Mr Pancks's What were they up to? and
      What did they mean by it? sounded all over the Yard. Mr Pancks wouldn't
      hear of excuses, wouldn't hear of complaints, wouldn't hear of repairs,
      wouldn't hear of anything but unconditional money down. Perspiring and
      puffing and darting about in eccentric directions, and becoming hotter and
      dingier every moment, he lashed the tide of the yard into a most agitated
      and turbid state. It had not settled down into calm water again full two
      hours after he had been seen fuming away on the horizon at the top of the
      steps.
    </p>
    <p>
      There were several small assemblages of the Bleeding Hearts at the popular
      points of meeting in the Yard that night, among whom it was universally
      agreed that Mr Pancks was a hard man to have to do with; and that it was
      much to be regretted, so it was, that a gentleman like Mr Casby should put
      his rents in his hands, and never know him in his true light. For (said
      the Bleeding Hearts), if a gentleman with that head of hair and them eyes
      took his rents into his own hands, ma'am, there would be none of this
      worriting and wearing, and things would be very different.
    </p>
    <p>
      At which identical evening hour and minute, the Patriarch&mdash;who had
      floated serenely through the Yard in the forenoon before the harrying
      began, with the express design of getting up this trustfulness in his
      shining bumps and silken locks&mdash;at which identical hour and minute,
      that first-rate humbug of a thousand guns was heavily floundering in the
      little Dock of his exhausted Tug at home, and was saying, as he turned his
      thumbs:
    </p>
    <p>
      'A very bad day's work, Pancks, very bad day's work. It seems to me, sir,
      and I must insist on making this observation forcibly in justice to
      myself, that you ought to have got much more money, much more money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 24. Fortune-Telling
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ittle Dorrit received a call that same evening from Mr Plornish, who,
      having intimated that he wished to speak to her privately, in a series of
      coughs so very noticeable as to favour the idea that her father, as
      regarded her seamstress occupation, was an illustration of the axiom that
      there are no such stone-blind men as those who will not see, obtained an
      audience with her on the common staircase outside the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's been a lady at our place to-day, Miss Dorrit,' Plornish growled,
      'and another one along with her as is a old wixen if ever I met with such.
      The way she snapped a person's head off, dear me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The mild Plornish was at first quite unable to get his mind away from Mr
      F.'s Aunt. 'For,' said he, to excuse himself, 'she is, I do assure you,
      the winegariest party.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At length, by a great effort, he detached himself from the subject
      sufficiently to observe:
    </p>
    <p>
      'But she's neither here nor there just at present. The other lady, she's
      Mr Casby's daughter; and if Mr Casby an't well off, none better, it an't
      through any fault of Pancks. For, as to Pancks, he does, he really does,
      he does indeed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Plornish, after his usual manner, was a little obscure, but
      conscientiously emphatic.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what she come to our place for,' he pursued, 'was to leave word that
      if Miss Dorrit would step up to that card&mdash;which it's Mr Casby's
      house that is, and Pancks he has a office at the back, where he really
      does, beyond belief&mdash;she would be glad for to engage her. She was a
      old and a dear friend, she said particular, of Mr Clennam, and hoped for
      to prove herself a useful friend to <i>his</i> friend. Them was her words.
      Wishing to know whether Miss Dorrit could come to-morrow morning, I said I
      would see you, Miss, and inquire, and look round there to-night, to say
      yes, or, if you was engaged to-morrow, when?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can go to-morrow, thank you,' said Little Dorrit. 'This is very kind of
      you, but you are always kind.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Plornish, with a modest disavowal of his merits, opened the room door
      for her readmission, and followed her in with such an exceedingly bald
      pretence of not having been out at all, that her father might have
      observed it without being very suspicious. In his affable unconsciousness,
      however, he took no heed. Plornish, after a little conversation, in which
      he blended his former duty as a Collegian with his present privilege as a
      humble outside friend, qualified again by his low estate as a plasterer,
      took his leave; making the tour of the prison before he left, and looking
      on at a game of skittles with the mixed feelings of an old inhabitant who
      had his private reasons for believing that it might be his destiny to come
      back again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Early in the morning, Little Dorrit, leaving Maggy in high domestic trust,
      set off for the Patriarchal tent. She went by the Iron Bridge, though it
      cost her a penny, and walked more slowly in that part of her journey than
      in any other. At five minutes before eight her hand was on the Patriarchal
      knocker, which was quite as high as she could reach.
    </p>
    <p>
      She gave Mrs Finching's card to the young woman who opened the door, and
      the young woman told her that 'Miss Flora'&mdash;Flora having, on her
      return to the parental roof, reinvested herself with the title under which
      she had lived there&mdash;was not yet out of her bedroom, but she was to
      please to walk up into Miss Flora's sitting-room. She walked up into Miss
      Flora's sitting-room, as in duty bound, and there found a breakfast-table
      comfortably laid for two, with a supplementary tray upon it laid for one.
      The young woman, disappearing for a few moments, returned to say that she
      was to please to take a chair by the fire, and to take off her bonnet and
      make herself at home. But Little Dorrit, being bashful, and not used to
      make herself at home on such occasions, felt at a loss how to do it; so
      she was still sitting near the door with her bonnet on, when Flora came in
      in a hurry half an hour afterwards.
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora was so sorry to have kept her waiting, and good gracious why did she
      sit out there in the cold when she had expected to find her by the fire
      reading the paper, and hadn't that heedless girl given her the message
      then, and had she really been in her bonnet all this time, and pray for
      goodness sake let Flora take it off! Flora taking it off in the
      best-natured manner in the world, was so struck with the face disclosed,
      that she said, 'Why, what a good little thing you are, my dear!' and
      pressed her face between her hands like the gentlest of women.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was the word and the action of a moment. Little Dorrit had hardly time
      to think how kind it was, when Flora dashed at the breakfast-table full of
      business, and plunged over head and ears into loquacity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really so sorry that I should happen to be late on this morning of all
      mornings because my intention and my wish was to be ready to meet you when
      you came in and to say that any one that interested Arthur Clennam half so
      much must interest me and that I gave you the heartiest welcome and was so
      glad, instead of which they never called me and there I still am snoring I
      dare say if the truth was known and if you don't like either cold fowl or
      hot boiled ham which many people don't I dare say besides Jews and theirs
      are scruples of conscience which we must all respect though I must say I
      wish they had them equally strong when they sell us false articles for
      real that certainly ain't worth the money I shall be quite vexed,' said
      Flora.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit thanked her, and said, shyly, bread-and-butter and tea was
      all she usually&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh nonsense my dear child I can never hear of that,' said Flora, turning
      on the urn in the most reckless manner, and making herself wink by
      splashing hot water into her eyes as she bent down to look into the
      teapot. 'You are coming here on the footing of a friend and companion you
      know if you will let me take that liberty and I should be ashamed of
      myself indeed if you could come here upon any other, besides which Arthur
      Clennam spoke in such terms&mdash;you are tired my dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You turn so pale you have walked too far before breakfast and I dare say
      live a great way off and ought to have had a ride,' said Flora, 'dear dear
      is there anything that would do you good?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed I am quite well, ma'am. I thank you again and again, but I am
      quite well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then take your tea at once I beg,' said Flora, 'and this wing of fowl and
      bit of ham, don't mind me or wait for me, because I always carry in this
      tray myself to Mr F.'s Aunt who breakfasts in bed and a charming old lady
      too and very clever, Portrait of Mr F. behind the door and very like
      though too much forehead and as to a pillar with a marble pavement and
      balustrades and a mountain, I never saw him near it nor not likely in the
      wine trade, excellent man but not at all in that way.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit glanced at the portrait, very imperfectly following the
      references to that work of art.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr F. was so devoted to me that he never could bear me out of his sight,'
      said Flora, 'though of course I am unable to say how long that might have
      lasted if he hadn't been cut short while I was a new broom, worthy man but
      not poetical manly prose but not romance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit glanced at the portrait again. The artist had given it a
      head that would have been, in an intellectual point of view, top-heavy for
      Shakespeare.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Romance, however,' Flora went on, busily arranging Mr F.'s Aunt's toast,
      'as I openly said to Mr F. when he proposed to me and you will be
      surprised to hear that he proposed seven times once in a hackney-coach
      once in a boat once in a pew once on a donkey at Tunbridge Wells and the
      rest on his knees, Romance was fled with the early days of Arthur Clennam,
      our parents tore us asunder we became marble and stern reality usurped the
      throne, Mr F. said very much to his credit that he was perfectly aware of
      it and even preferred that state of things accordingly the word was spoken
      the fiat went forth and such is life you see my dear and yet we do not
      break but bend, pray make a good breakfast while I go in with the tray.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She disappeared, leaving Little Dorrit to ponder over the meaning of her
      scattered words. She soon came back again; and at last began to take her
      own breakfast, talking all the while.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see, my dear,' said Flora, measuring out a spoonful or two of some
      brown liquid that smelt like brandy, and putting it into her tea, 'I am
      obliged to be careful to follow the directions of my medical man though
      the flavour is anything but agreeable being a poor creature and it may be
      have never recovered the shock received in youth from too much giving way
      to crying in the next room when separated from Arthur, have you known him
      long?'
    </p>
    <p>
      As soon as Little Dorrit comprehended that she had been asked this
      question&mdash;for which time was necessary, the galloping pace of her new
      patroness having left her far behind&mdash;she answered that she had known
      Mr Clennam ever since his return.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be sure you couldn't have known him before unless you had been in
      China or had corresponded neither of which is likely,' returned Flora,
      'for travelling-people usually get more or less mahogany and you are not
      at all so and as to corresponding what about? that's very true unless tea,
      so it was at his mother's was it really that you knew him first, highly
      sensible and firm but dreadfully severe&mdash;ought to be the mother of
      the man in the iron mask.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Clennam has been kind to me,' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really? I am sure I am glad to hear it because as Arthur's mother it's
      naturally pleasant to my feelings to have a better opinion of her than I
      had before, though what she thinks of me when I run on as I am certain to
      do and she sits glowering at me like Fate in a go-cart&mdash;shocking
      comparison really&mdash;invalid and not her fault&mdash;I never know or
      can imagine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I find my work anywhere, ma'am?' asked Little Dorrit, looking
      timidly about; 'can I get it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You industrious little fairy,' returned Flora, taking, in another cup of
      tea, another of the doses prescribed by her medical man, 'there's not the
      slightest hurry and it's better that we should begin by being confidential
      about our mutual friend&mdash;too cold a word for me at least I don't mean
      that, very proper expression mutual friend&mdash;than become through mere
      formalities not you but me like the Spartan boy with the fox biting him,
      which I hope you'll excuse my bringing up for of all the tiresome boys
      that will go tumbling into every sort of company that boy's the
      tiresomest.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit, her face very pale, sat down again to listen. 'Hadn't I
      better work the while?' she asked. 'I can work and attend too. I would
      rather, if I may.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her earnestness was so expressive of her being uneasy without her work,
      that Flora answered, 'Well my dear whatever you like best,' and produced a
      basket of white handkerchiefs. Little Dorrit gladly put it by her side,
      took out her little pocket-housewife, threaded the needle, and began to
      hem.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What nimble fingers you have,' said Flora, 'but are you sure you are
      well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes, indeed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora put her feet upon the fender, and settled herself for a thorough
      good romantic disclosure. She started off at score, tossing her head,
      sighing in the most demonstrative manner, making a great deal of use of
      her eyebrows, and occasionally, but not often, glancing at the quiet face
      that bent over the work.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You must know my dear,' said Flora, 'but that I have no doubt you know
      already not only because I have already thrown it out in a general way but
      because I feel I carry it stamped in burning what's his names upon my brow
      that before I was introduced to the late Mr F. I had been engaged to
      Arthur Clennam&mdash;Mr Clennam in public where reserve is necessary
      Arthur here&mdash;we were all in all to one another it was the morning of
      life it was bliss it was frenzy it was everything else of that sort in the
      highest degree, when rent asunder we turned to stone in which capacity
      Arthur went to China and I became the statue bride of the late Mr F.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora, uttering these words in a deep voice, enjoyed herself immensely.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To paint,' said she, 'the emotions of that morning when all was marble
      within and Mr F.'s Aunt followed in a glass-coach which it stands to
      reason must have been in shameful repair or it never could have broken
      down two streets from the house and Mr F.'s Aunt brought home like the
      fifth of November in a rush-bottomed chair I will not attempt, suffice it
      to say that the hollow form of breakfast took place in the dining-room
      downstairs that papa partaking too freely of pickled salmon was ill for
      weeks and that Mr F. and myself went upon a continental tour to Calais
      where the people fought for us on the pier until they separated us though
      not for ever that was not yet to be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The statue bride, hardly pausing for breath, went on, with the greatest
      complacency, in a rambling manner sometimes incidental to flesh and blood.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will draw a veil over that dreamy life, Mr F. was in good spirits his
      appetite was good he liked the cookery he considered the wine weak but
      palatable and all was well, we returned to the immediate neighbourhood of
      Number Thirty Little Gosling Street London Docks and settled down, ere we
      had yet fully detected the housemaid in selling the feathers out of the
      spare bed Gout flying upwards soared with Mr F. to another sphere.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His relict, with a glance at his portrait, shook her head and wiped her
      eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I revere the memory of Mr F. as an estimable man and most indulgent
      husband, only necessary to mention Asparagus and it appeared or to hint at
      any little delicate thing to drink and it came like magic in a pint bottle
      it was not ecstasy but it was comfort, I returned to papa's roof and lived
      secluded if not happy during some years until one day papa came smoothly
      blundering in and said that Arthur Clennam awaited me below, I went below
      and found him ask me not what I found him except that he was still
      unmarried still unchanged!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The dark mystery with which Flora now enshrouded herself might have
      stopped other fingers than the nimble fingers that worked near her. They
      worked on without pause, and the busy head bent over them watching the
      stitches.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ask me not,' said Flora, 'if I love him still or if he still loves me or
      what the end is to be or when, we are surrounded by watchful eyes and it
      may be that we are destined to pine asunder it may be never more to be
      reunited not a word not a breath not a look to betray us all must be
      secret as the tomb wonder not therefore that even if I should seem
      comparatively cold to Arthur or Arthur should seem comparatively cold to
      me we have fatal reasons it is enough if we understand them hush!'
    </p>
    <p>
      All of which Flora said with so much headlong vehemence as if she really
      believed it. There is not much doubt that when she worked herself into
      full mermaid condition, she did actually believe whatever she said in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush!' repeated Flora, 'I have now told you all, confidence is
      established between us hush, for Arthur's sake I will always be a friend
      to you my dear girl and in Arthur's name you may always rely upon me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The nimble fingers laid aside the work, and the little figure rose and
      kissed her hand. 'You are very cold,' said Flora, changing to her own
      natural kind-hearted manner, and gaining greatly by the change. 'Don't
      work to-day. I am sure you are not well I am sure you are not strong.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is only that I feel a little overcome by your kindness, and by Mr
      Clennam's kindness in confiding me to one he has known and loved so long.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well really my dear,' said Flora, who had a decided tendency to be always
      honest when she gave herself time to think about it, 'it's as well to
      leave that alone now, for I couldn't undertake to say after all, but it
      doesn't signify lie down a little!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have always been strong enough to do what I want to do, and I shall be
      quite well directly,' returned Little Dorrit, with a faint smile. 'You
      have overpowered me with gratitude, that's all. If I keep near the window
      for a moment I shall be quite myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora opened a window, sat her in a chair by it, and considerately retired
      to her former place. It was a windy day, and the air stirring on Little
      Dorrit's face soon brightened it. In a very few minutes she returned to
      her basket of work, and her nimble fingers were as nimble as ever.
    </p>
    <p>
      Quietly pursuing her task, she asked Flora if Mr Clennam had told her
      where she lived? When Flora replied in the negative, Little Dorrit said
      that she understood why he had been so delicate, but that she felt sure he
      would approve of her confiding her secret to Flora, and that she would
      therefore do so now with Flora's permission. Receiving an encouraging
      answer, she condensed the narrative of her life into a few scanty words
      about herself and a glowing eulogy upon her father; and Flora took it all
      in with a natural tenderness that quite understood it, and in which there
      was no incoherence.
    </p>
    <p>
      When dinner-time came, Flora drew the arm of her new charge through hers,
      and led her down-stairs, and presented her to the Patriarch and Mr Pancks,
      who were already in the dining-room waiting to begin. (Mr F.'s Aunt was,
      for the time, laid up in ordinary in her chamber.) By those gentlemen she
      was received according to their characters; the Patriarch appearing to do
      her some inestimable service in saying that he was glad to see her, glad
      to see her; and Mr Pancks blowing off his favourite sound as a salute.
    </p>
    <p>
      In that new presence she would have been bashful enough under any
      circumstances, and particularly under Flora's insisting on her drinking a
      glass of wine and eating of the best that was there; but her constraint
      was greatly increased by Mr Pancks. The demeanour of that gentleman at
      first suggested to her mind that he might be a taker of likenesses, so
      intently did he look at her, and so frequently did he glance at the little
      note-book by his side. Observing that he made no sketch, however, and that
      he talked about business only, she began to have suspicions that he
      represented some creditor of her father's, the balance due to whom was
      noted in that pocket volume. Regarded from this point of view Mr Pancks's
      puffings expressed injury and impatience, and each of his louder snorts
      became a demand for payment.
    </p>
    <p>
      But here again she was undeceived by anomalous and incongruous conduct on
      the part of Mr Pancks himself. She had left the table half an hour, and
      was at work alone. Flora had 'gone to lie down' in the next room,
      concurrently with which retirement a smell of something to drink had
      broken out in the house. The Patriarch was fast asleep, with his
      philanthropic mouth open under a yellow pocket-handkerchief in the
      dining-room. At this quiet time, Mr Pancks softly appeared before her,
      urbanely nodding.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Find it a little dull, Miss Dorrit?' inquired Pancks in a low voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, thank you, sir,' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Busy, I see,' observed Mr Pancks, stealing into the room by inches. 'What
      are those now, Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Handkerchiefs.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are they, though!' said Pancks. 'I shouldn't have thought it.' Not in the
      least looking at them, but looking at Little Dorrit. 'Perhaps you wonder
      who I am. Shall I tell you? I am a fortune-teller.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit now began to think he was mad.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I belong body and soul to my proprietor,' said Pancks; 'you saw my
      proprietor having his dinner below. But I do a little in the other way,
      sometimes; privately, very privately, Miss Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit looked at him doubtfully, and not without alarm. 'I wish
      you'd show me the palm of your hand,' said Pancks. 'I should like to have
      a look at it. Don't let me be troublesome.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was so far troublesome that he was not at all wanted there, but she
      laid her work in her lap for a moment, and held out her left hand with her
      thimble on it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Years of toil, eh?' said Pancks, softly, touching it with his blunt
      forefinger. 'But what else are we made for? Nothing. Hallo!' looking into
      the lines. 'What's this with bars? It's a College! And what's this with a
      grey gown and a black velvet cap? it's a father! And what's this with a
      clarionet? It's an uncle! And what's this in dancing-shoes? It's a sister!
      And what's this straggling about in an idle sort of a way? It's a brother!
      And what's this thinking for 'em all? Why, this is you, Miss Dorrit!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her eyes met his as she looked up wonderingly into his face, and she
      thought that although his were sharp eyes, he was a brighter and
      gentler-looking man than she had supposed at dinner. His eyes were on her
      hand again directly, and her opportunity of confirming or correcting the
      impression was gone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, the deuce is in it,' muttered Pancks, tracing out a line in her hand
      with his clumsy finger, 'if this isn't me in the corner here! What do I
      want here? What's behind me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He carried his finger slowly down to the wrist, and round the wrist, and
      affected to look at the back of the hand for what was behind him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it any harm?' asked Little Dorrit, smiling.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Deuce a bit!' said Pancks. 'What do you think it's worth?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ought to ask you that. I am not the fortune-teller.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True,' said Pancks. 'What's it worth? You shall live to see, Miss
      Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Releasing the hand by slow degrees, he drew all his fingers through his
      prongs of hair, so that they stood up in their most portentous manner; and
      repeated slowly, 'Remember what I say, Miss Dorrit. You shall live to
      see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She could not help showing that she was much surprised, if it were only by
      his knowing so much about her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! That's it!' said Pancks, pointing at her. 'Miss Dorrit, not that,
      ever!'
    </p>
    <p>
      More surprised than before, and a little more frightened, she looked to
      him for an explanation of his last words.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not that,' said Pancks, making, with great seriousness, an imitation of a
      surprised look and manner that appeared to be unintentionally grotesque.
      'Don't do that. Never on seeing me, no matter when, no matter where. I am
      nobody. Don't take on to mind me. Don't mention me. Take no notice. Will
      you agree, Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hardly know what to say,' returned Little Dorrit, quite astounded.
      'Why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because I am a fortune-teller. Pancks the gipsy. I haven't told you so
      much of your fortune yet, Miss Dorrit, as to tell you what's behind me on
      that little hand. I have told you you shall live to see. Is it agreed,
      Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Agreed that I&mdash;am&mdash;to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To take no notice of me away from here, unless I take on first. Not to
      mind me when I come and go. It's very easy. I am no loss, I am not
      handsome, I am not good company, I am only my proprietors grubber. You
      need do no more than think, "Ah! Pancks the gipsy at his fortune-telling&mdash;he'll
      tell the rest of my fortune one day&mdash;I shall live to know it." Is it
      agreed, Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye-es,' faltered Little Dorrit, whom he greatly confused, 'I suppose so,
      while you do no harm.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good!' Mr Pancks glanced at the wall of the adjoining room, and stooped
      forward. 'Honest creature, woman of capital points, but heedless and a
      loose talker, Miss Dorrit.' With that he rubbed his hands as if the
      interview had been very satisfactory to him, panted away to the door, and
      urbanely nodded himself out again.
    </p>
    <p>
      If Little Dorrit were beyond measure perplexed by this curious conduct on
      the part of her new acquaintance, and by finding herself involved in this
      singular treaty, her perplexity was not diminished by ensuing
      circumstances. Besides that Mr Pancks took every opportunity afforded him
      in Mr Casby's house of significantly glancing at her and snorting at her&mdash;which
      was not much, after what he had done already&mdash;he began to pervade her
      daily life. She saw him in the street, constantly. When she went to Mr
      Casby's, he was always there. When she went to Mrs Clennam's, he came
      there on any pretence, as if to keep her in his sight. A week had not gone
      by, when she found him to her astonishment in the Lodge one night,
      conversing with the turnkey on duty, and to all appearance one of his
      familiar companions. Her next surprise was to find him equally at his ease
      within the prison; to hear of his presenting himself among the visitors at
      her father's Sunday levee; to see him arm in arm with a Collegiate friend
      about the yard; to learn, from Fame, that he had greatly distinguished
      himself one evening at the social club that held its meetings in the
      Snuggery, by addressing a speech to the members of the institution,
      singing a song, and treating the company to five gallons of ale&mdash;report
      madly added a bushel of shrimps. The effect on Mr Plornish of such of
      these phenomena as he became an eye-witness of in his faithful visits,
      made an impression on Little Dorrit only second to that produced by the
      phenomena themselves. They seemed to gag and bind him. He could only
      stare, and sometimes weakly mutter that it wouldn't be believed down
      Bleeding Heart Yard that this was Pancks; but he never said a word more,
      or made a sign more, even to Little Dorrit. Mr Pancks crowned his
      mysteries by making himself acquainted with Tip in some unknown manner,
      and taking a Sunday saunter into the College on that gentleman's arm.
      Throughout he never took any notice of Little Dorrit, save once or twice
      when he happened to come close to her and there was no one very near; on
      which occasions, he said in passing, with a friendly look and a puff of
      encouragement, 'Pancks the gipsy&mdash;fortune-telling.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit worked and strove as usual, wondering at all this, but
      keeping her wonder, as she had from her earliest years kept many heavier
      loads, in her own breast. A change had stolen, and was stealing yet, over
      the patient heart. Every day found her something more retiring than the
      day before. To pass in and out of the prison unnoticed, and elsewhere to
      be overlooked and forgotten, were, for herself, her chief desires.
    </p>
    <p>
      To her own room too, strangely assorted room for her delicate youth and
      character, she was glad to retreat as often as she could without desertion
      of any duty. There were afternoon times when she was unemployed, when
      visitors dropped in to play a hand at cards with her father, when she
      could be spared and was better away. Then she would flit along the yard,
      climb the scores of stairs that led to her room, and take her seat at the
      window. Many combinations did those spikes upon the wall assume, many
      light shapes did the strong iron weave itself into, many golden touches
      fell upon the rust, while Little Dorrit sat there musing. New zig-zags
      sprung into the cruel pattern sometimes, when she saw it through a burst
      of tears; but beautified or hardened still, always over it and under it
      and through it, she was fain to look in her solitude, seeing everything
      with that ineffaceable brand.
    </p>
    <p>
      A garret, and a Marshalsea garret without compromise, was Little Dorrit's
      room. Beautifully kept, it was ugly in itself, and had little but
      cleanliness and air to set it off; for what embellishment she had ever
      been able to buy, had gone to her father's room. Howbeit, for this poor
      place she showed an increasing love; and to sit in it alone became her
      favourite rest.
    </p>
    <p>
      Insomuch, that on a certain afternoon during the Pancks mysteries, when
      she was seated at her window, and heard Maggy's well-known step coming up
      the stairs, she was very much disturbed by the apprehension of being
      summoned away. As Maggy's step came higher up and nearer, she trembled and
      faltered; and it was as much as she could do to speak, when Maggy at
      length appeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Please, Little Mother,' said Maggy, panting for breath, 'you must come
      down and see him. He's here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who, Maggy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who, o' course Mr Clennam. He's in your father's room, and he says to me,
      Maggy, will you be so kind and go and say it's only me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not very well, Maggy. I had better not go. I am going to lie down.
      See! I lie down now, to ease my head. Say, with my grateful regard, that
      you left me so, or I would have come.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, it an't very polite though, Little Mother,' said the staring Maggy,
      'to turn your face away, neither!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Maggy was very susceptible to personal slights, and very ingenious in
      inventing them. 'Putting both your hands afore your face too!' she went
      on. 'If you can't bear the looks of a poor thing, it would be better to
      tell her so at once, and not go and shut her out like that, hurting her
      feelings and breaking her heart at ten year old, poor thing!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's to ease my head, Maggy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, and if you cry to ease your head, Little Mother, let me cry too.
      Don't go and have all the crying to yourself,' expostulated Maggy, 'that
      an't not being greedy.' And immediately began to blubber.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was with some difficulty that she could be induced to go back with the
      excuse; but the promise of being told a story&mdash;of old her great
      delight&mdash;on condition that she concentrated her faculties upon the
      errand and left her little mistress to herself for an hour longer,
      combined with a misgiving on Maggy's part that she had left her good
      temper at the bottom of the staircase, prevailed. So away she went,
      muttering her message all the way to keep it in her mind, and, at the
      appointed time, came back.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was very sorry, I can tell you,' she announced, 'and wanted to send a
      doctor. And he's coming again to-morrow he is and I don't think he'll have
      a good sleep to-night along o' hearing about your head, Little Mother. Oh
      my! Ain't you been a-crying!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think I have, a little, Maggy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A little! Oh!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But it's all over now&mdash;all over for good, Maggy. And my head is much
      better and cooler, and I am quite comfortable. I am very glad I did not go
      down.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her great staring child tenderly embraced her; and having smoothed her
      hair, and bathed her forehead and eyes with cold water (offices in which
      her awkward hands became skilful), hugged her again, exulted in her
      brighter looks, and stationed her in her chair by the window. Over against
      this chair, Maggy, with apoplectic exertions that were not at all
      required, dragged the box which was her seat on story-telling occasions,
      sat down upon it, hugged her own knees, and said, with a voracious
      appetite for stories, and with widely-opened eyes:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Little Mother, let's have a good 'un!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What shall it be about, Maggy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, let's have a princess,' said Maggy, 'and let her be a reg'lar one.
      Beyond all belief, you know!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit considered for a moment; and with a rather sad smile upon
      her face, which was flushed by the sunset, began:
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0266m.jpg" alt="0266m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0266.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Maggy, there was once upon a time a fine King, and he had everything he
      could wish for, and a great deal more. He had gold and silver, diamonds
      and rubies, riches of every kind. He had palaces, and he had&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hospitals,' interposed Maggy, still nursing her knees. 'Let him have
      hospitals, because they're so comfortable. Hospitals with lots of
      Chicking.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, he had plenty of them, and he had plenty of everything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Plenty of baked potatoes, for instance?' said Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Plenty of everything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lor!' chuckled Maggy, giving her knees a hug. 'Wasn't it prime!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This King had a daughter, who was the wisest and most beautiful Princess
      that ever was seen. When she was a child she understood all her lessons
      before her masters taught them to her; and when she was grown up, she was
      the wonder of the world. Now, near the Palace where this Princess lived,
      there was a cottage in which there was a poor little tiny woman, who lived
      all alone by herself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'An old woman,' said Maggy, with an unctuous smack of her lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, not an old woman. Quite a young one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wonder she warn't afraid,' said Maggy. 'Go on, please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Princess passed the cottage nearly every day, and whenever she went
      by in her beautiful carriage, she saw the poor tiny woman spinning at her
      wheel, and she looked at the tiny woman, and the tiny woman looked at her.
      So, one day she stopped the coachman a little way from the cottage, and
      got out and walked on and peeped in at the door, and there, as usual, was
      the tiny woman spinning at her wheel, and she looked at the Princess, and
      the Princess looked at her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Like trying to stare one another out,' said Maggy. 'Please go on, Little
      Mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Princess was such a wonderful Princess that she had the power of
      knowing secrets, and she said to the tiny woman, Why do you keep it there?
      This showed her directly that the Princess knew why she lived all alone by
      herself spinning at her wheel, and she kneeled down at the Princess's
      feet, and asked her never to betray her. So the Princess said, I never
      will betray you. Let me see it. So the tiny woman closed the shutter of
      the cottage window and fastened the door, and trembling from head to foot
      for fear that any one should suspect her, opened a very secret place and
      showed the Princess a shadow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lor!' said Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was the shadow of Some one who had gone by long before: of Some one
      who had gone on far away quite out of reach, never, never to come back. It
      was bright to look at; and when the tiny woman showed it to the Princess,
      she was proud of it with all her heart, as a great, great treasure. When
      the Princess had considered it a little while, she said to the tiny woman,
      And you keep watch over this every day? And she cast down her eyes, and
      whispered, Yes. Then the Princess said, Remind me why. To which the other
      replied, that no one so good and kind had ever passed that way, and that
      was why in the beginning. She said, too, that nobody missed it, that
      nobody was the worse for it, that Some one had gone on, to those who were
      expecting him&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Some one was a man then?' interposed Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit timidly said Yes, she believed so; and resumed:
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;Had gone on to those who were expecting him, and that this
      remembrance was stolen or kept back from nobody. The Princess made answer,
      Ah! But when the cottager died it would be discovered there. The tiny
      woman told her No; when that time came, it would sink quietly into her own
      grave, and would never be found.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, to be sure!' said Maggy. 'Go on, please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Princess was very much astonished to hear this, as you may suppose,
      Maggy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      ('And well she might be,' said Maggy.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'So she resolved to watch the tiny woman, and see what came of it. Every
      day she drove in her beautiful carriage by the cottage-door, and there she
      saw the tiny woman always alone by herself spinning at her wheel, and she
      looked at the tiny woman, and the tiny woman looked at her. At last one
      day the wheel was still, and the tiny woman was not to be seen. When the
      Princess made inquiries why the wheel had stopped, and where the tiny
      woman was, she was informed that the wheel had stopped because there was
      nobody to turn it, the tiny woman being dead.'
    </p>
    <p>
      ('They ought to have took her to the Hospital,' said Maggy, and then she'd
      have got over it.')
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Princess, after crying a very little for the loss of the tiny woman,
      dried her eyes and got out of her carriage at the place where she had
      stopped it before, and went to the cottage and peeped in at the door.
      There was nobody to look at her now, and nobody for her to look at, so she
      went in at once to search for the treasured shadow. But there was no sign
      of it to be found anywhere; and then she knew that the tiny woman had told
      her the truth, and that it would never give anybody any trouble, and that
      it had sunk quietly into her own grave, and that she and it were at rest
      together.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's all, Maggy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The sunset flush was so bright on Little Dorrit's face when she came thus
      to the end of her story, that she interposed her hand to shade it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Had she got to be old?' Maggy asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The tiny woman?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know,' said Little Dorrit. 'But it would have been just the same
      if she had been ever so old.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Would it raly!' said Maggy. 'Well, I suppose it would though.' And sat
      staring and ruminating.
    </p>
    <p>
      She sat so long with her eyes wide open, that at length Little Dorrit, to
      entice her from her box, rose and looked out of window. As she glanced
      down into the yard, she saw Pancks come in and leer up with the corner of
      his eye as he went by.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who's he, Little Mother?' said Maggy. She had joined her at the window
      and was leaning on her shoulder. 'I see him come in and out often.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have heard him called a fortune-teller,' said Little Dorrit. 'But I
      doubt if he could tell many people even their past or present fortunes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Couldn't have told the Princess hers?' said Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit, looking musingly down into the dark valley of the prison,
      shook her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor the tiny woman hers?' said Maggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Little Dorrit, with the sunset very bright upon her. 'But let
      us come away from the window.'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 25. Conspirators and Others
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he private residence of Mr Pancks was in Pentonville, where he lodged on
      the second-floor of a professional gentleman in an extremely small way,
      who had an inner-door within the street door, poised on a spring and
      starting open with a click like a trap; and who wrote up in the fan-light,
      RUGG, GENERAL AGENT, ACCOUNTANT, DEBTS RECOVERED.
    </p>
    <p>
      This scroll, majestic in its severe simplicity, illuminated a little slip
      of front garden abutting on the thirsty high-road, where a few of the
      dustiest of leaves hung their dismal heads and led a life of choking. A
      professor of writing occupied the first-floor, and enlivened the garden
      railings with glass-cases containing choice examples of what his pupils
      had been before six lessons and while the whole of his young family shook
      the table, and what they had become after six lessons when the young
      family was under restraint. The tenancy of Mr Pancks was limited to one
      airy bedroom; he covenanting and agreeing with Mr Rugg his landlord, that
      in consideration of a certain scale of payments accurately defined, and on
      certain verbal notice duly given, he should be at liberty to elect to
      share the Sunday breakfast, dinner, tea, or supper, or each or any or all
      of those repasts or meals of Mr and Miss Rugg (his daughter) in the
      back-parlour.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Rugg was a lady of a little property which she had acquired, together
      with much distinction in the neighbourhood, by having her heart severely
      lacerated and her feelings mangled by a middle-aged baker resident in the
      vicinity, against whom she had, by the agency of Mr Rugg, found it
      necessary to proceed at law to recover damages for a breach of promise of
      marriage. The baker having been, by the counsel for Miss Rugg, witheringly
      denounced on that occasion up to the full amount of twenty guineas, at the
      rate of about eighteen-pence an epithet, and having been cast in
      corresponding damages, still suffered occasional persecution from the
      youth of Pentonville. But Miss Rugg, environed by the majesty of the law,
      and having her damages invested in the public securities, was regarded
      with consideration.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the society of Mr Rugg, who had a round white visage, as if all his
      blushes had been drawn out of him long ago, and who had a ragged yellow
      head like a worn-out hearth broom; and in the society of Miss Rugg, who
      had little nankeen spots, like shirt buttons, all over her face, and whose
      own yellow tresses were rather scrubby than luxuriant; Mr Pancks had
      usually dined on Sundays for some few years, and had twice a week, or so,
      enjoyed an evening collation of bread, Dutch cheese, and porter. Mr Pancks
      was one of the very few marriageable men for whom Miss Rugg had no
      terrors, the argument with which he reassured himself being twofold; that
      is to say, firstly, 'that it wouldn't do twice,' and secondly, 'that he
      wasn't worth it.' Fortified within this double armour, Mr Pancks snorted
      at Miss Rugg on easy terms.
    </p>
    <p>
      Up to this time, Mr Pancks had transacted little or no business at his
      quarters in Pentonville, except in the sleeping line; but now that he had
      become a fortune-teller, he was often closeted after midnight with Mr Rugg
      in his little front-parlour office, and even after those untimely hours,
      burnt tallow in his bed-room. Though his duties as his proprietor's
      grubber were in no wise lessened; and though that service bore no greater
      resemblance to a bed of roses than was to be discovered in its many
      thorns; some new branch of industry made a constant demand upon him. When
      he cast off the Patriarch at night, it was only to take an anonymous craft
      in tow, and labour away afresh in other waters.
    </p>
    <p>
      The advance from a personal acquaintance with the elder Mr Chivery to an
      introduction to his amiable wife and disconsolate son, may have been easy;
      but easy or not, Mr Pancks soon made it. He nestled in the bosom of the
      tobacco business within a week or two after his first appearance in the
      College, and particularly addressed himself to the cultivation of a good
      understanding with Young John. In this endeavour he so prospered as to
      lure that pining shepherd forth from the groves, and tempt him to
      undertake mysterious missions; on which he began to disappear at uncertain
      intervals for as long a space as two or three days together. The prudent
      Mrs Chivery, who wondered greatly at this change, would have protested
      against it as detrimental to the Highland typification on the doorpost but
      for two forcible reasons; one, that her John was roused to take strong
      interest in the business which these starts were supposed to advance&mdash;and
      this she held to be good for his drooping spirits; the other, that Mr
      Pancks confidentially agreed to pay her, for the occupation of her son's
      time, at the handsome rate of seven and sixpence per day. The proposal
      originated with himself, and was couched in the pithy terms, 'If your John
      is weak enough, ma'am, not to take it, that is no reason why you should
      be, don't you see? So, quite between ourselves, ma'am, business being
      business, here it is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      What Mr Chivery thought of these things, or how much or how little he knew
      about them, was never gathered from himself. It has been already remarked
      that he was a man of few words; and it may be here observed that he had
      imbibed a professional habit of locking everything up. He locked himself
      up as carefully as he locked up the Marshalsea debtors. Even his custom of
      bolting his meals may have been a part of an uniform whole; but there is
      no question, that, as to all other purposes, he kept his mouth as he kept
      the Marshalsea door. He never opened it without occasion. When it was
      necessary to let anything out, he opened it a little way, held it open
      just as long as sufficed for the purpose, and locked it again. Even as he
      would be sparing of his trouble at the Marshalsea door, and would keep a
      visitor who wanted to go out, waiting for a few moments if he saw another
      visitor coming down the yard, so that one turn of the key should suffice
      for both, similarly he would often reserve a remark if he perceived
      another on its way to his lips, and would deliver himself of the two
      together. As to any key to his inner knowledge being to be found in his
      face, the Marshalsea key was as legible as an index to the individual
      characters and histories upon which it was turned.
    </p>
    <p>
      That Mr Pancks should be moved to invite any one to dinner at Pentonville,
      was an unprecedented fact in his calendar. But he invited Young John to
      dinner, and even brought him within range of the dangerous (because
      expensive) fascinations of Miss Rugg. The banquet was appointed for a
      Sunday, and Miss Rugg with her own hands stuffed a leg of mutton with
      oysters on the occasion, and sent it to the baker's&mdash;not <i>the</i>
      baker's but an opposition establishment. Provision of oranges, apples, and
      nuts was also made. And rum was brought home by Mr Pancks on Saturday
      night, to gladden the visitor's heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      The store of creature comforts was not the chief part of the visitor's
      reception. Its special feature was a foregone family confidence and
      sympathy. When Young John appeared at half-past one without the ivory hand
      and waistcoat of golden sprigs, the sun shorn of his beams by disastrous
      clouds, Mr Pancks presented him to the yellow-haired Ruggs as the young
      man he had so often mentioned who loved Miss Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad,' said Mr Rugg, challenging him specially in that character,
      'to have the distinguished gratification of making your acquaintance, sir.
      Your feelings do you honour. You are young; may you never outlive your
      feelings! If I was to outlive my own feelings, sir,' said Mr Rugg, who was
      a man of many words, and was considered to possess a remarkably good
      address; 'if I was to outlive my own feelings, I'd leave fifty pound in my
      will to the man who would put me out of existence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Rugg heaved a sigh.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My daughter, sir,' said Mr Rugg. 'Anastatia, you are no stranger to the
      state of this young man's affections. My daughter has had her trials, sir'&mdash;Mr
      Rugg might have used the word more pointedly in the singular number&mdash;'and
      she can feel for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John, almost overwhelmed by the touching nature of this greeting,
      professed himself to that effect.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What I envy you, sir, is,' said Mr Rugg, 'allow me to take your hat&mdash;we
      are rather short of pegs&mdash;I'll put it in the corner, nobody will
      tread on it there&mdash;What I envy you, sir, is the luxury of your own
      feelings. I belong to a profession in which that luxury is sometimes
      denied us.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John replied, with acknowledgments, that he only hoped he did what
      was right, and what showed how entirely he was devoted to Miss Dorrit. He
      wished to be unselfish; and he hoped he was. He wished to do anything as
      laid in his power to serve Miss Dorrit, altogether putting himself out of
      sight; and he hoped he did. It was but little that he could do, but he
      hoped he did it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir,' said Mr Rugg, taking him by the hand, 'you are a young man that it
      does one good to come across. You are a young man that I should like to
      put in the witness-box, to humanise the minds of the legal profession. I
      hope you have brought your appetite with you, and intend to play a good
      knife and fork?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir,' returned Young John, 'I don't eat much at present.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Rugg drew him a little apart. 'My daughter's case, sir,' said he, 'at
      the time when, in vindication of her outraged feelings and her sex, she
      became the plaintiff in Rugg and Bawkins. I suppose I could have put it in
      evidence, Mr Chivery, if I had thought it worth my while, that the amount
      of solid sustenance my daughter consumed at that period did not exceed ten
      ounces per week.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think I go a little beyond that, sir,' returned the other, hesitating,
      as if he confessed it with some shame.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But in your case there's no fiend in human form,' said Mr Rugg, with
      argumentative smile and action of hand. 'Observe, Mr Chivery! No fiend in
      human form!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir, certainly,' Young John added with simplicity, 'I should be very
      sorry if there was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The sentiment,' said Mr Rugg, 'is what I should have expected from your
      known principles. It would affect my daughter greatly, sir, if she heard
      it. As I perceive the mutton, I am glad she didn't hear it. Mr Pancks, on
      this occasion, pray face me. My dear, face Mr Chivery. For what we are
      going to receive, may we (and Miss Dorrit) be truly thankful!'
    </p>
    <p>
      But for a grave waggishness in Mr Rugg's manner of delivering this
      introduction to the feast, it might have appeared that Miss Dorrit was
      expected to be one of the company. Pancks recognised the sally in his
      usual way, and took in his provender in his usual way. Miss Rugg, perhaps
      making up some of her arrears, likewise took very kindly to the mutton,
      and it rapidly diminished to the bone. A bread-and-butter pudding entirely
      disappeared, and a considerable amount of cheese and radishes vanished by
      the same means. Then came the dessert.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then also, and before the broaching of the rum and water, came Mr Pancks's
      note-book. The ensuing business proceedings were brief but curious, and
      rather in the nature of a conspiracy. Mr Pancks looked over his note-book,
      which was now getting full, studiously; and picked out little extracts,
      which he wrote on separate slips of paper on the table; Mr Rugg, in the
      meanwhile, looking at him with close attention, and Young John losing his
      uncollected eye in mists of meditation. When Mr Pancks, who supported the
      character of chief conspirator, had completed his extracts, he looked them
      over, corrected them, put up his note-book, and held them like a hand at
      cards.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, there's a churchyard in Bedfordshire,' said Pancks. 'Who takes it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll take it, sir,' returned Mr Rugg, 'if no one bids.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks dealt him his card, and looked at his hand again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, there's an Enquiry in York,' said Pancks. 'Who takes it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm not good for York,' said Mr Rugg.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then perhaps,' pursued Pancks, 'you'll be so obliging, John Chivery?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John assenting, Pancks dealt him his card, and consulted his hand
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's a Church in London; I may as well take that. And a Family Bible;
      I may as well take that, too. That's two to me. Two to me,' repeated
      Pancks, breathing hard over his cards. 'Here's a Clerk at Durham for you,
      John, and an old seafaring gentleman at Dunstable for you, Mr Rugg. Two to
      me, was it? Yes, two to me. Here's a Stone; three to me. And a Still-born
      Baby; four to me. And all, for the present, told.'
    </p>
    <p>
      When he had thus disposed of his cards, all being done very quietly and in
      a suppressed tone, Mr Pancks puffed his way into his own breast-pocket and
      tugged out a canvas bag; from which, with a sparing hand, he told forth
      money for travelling expenses in two little portions. 'Cash goes out
      fast,' he said anxiously, as he pushed a portion to each of his male
      companions, 'very fast.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can only assure you, Mr Pancks,' said Young John, 'that I deeply regret
      my circumstances being such that I can't afford to pay my own charges, or
      that it's not advisable to allow me the time necessary for my doing the
      distances on foot; because nothing would give me greater satisfaction than
      to walk myself off my legs without fee or reward.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This young man's disinterestedness appeared so very ludicrous in the eyes
      of Miss Rugg, that she was obliged to effect a precipitate retirement from
      the company, and to sit upon the stairs until she had had her laugh out.
      Meanwhile Mr Pancks, looking, not without some pity, at Young John, slowly
      and thoughtfully twisted up his canvas bag as if he were wringing its
      neck. The lady, returning as he restored it to his pocket, mixed rum and
      water for the party, not forgetting her fair self, and handed to every one
      his glass. When all were supplied, Mr Rugg rose, and silently holding out
      his glass at arm's length above the centre of the table, by that gesture
      invited the other three to add theirs, and to unite in a general
      conspiratorial clink. The ceremony was effective up to a certain point,
      and would have been wholly so throughout, if Miss Rugg, as she raised her
      glass to her lips in completion of it, had not happened to look at Young
      John; when she was again so overcome by the contemptible comicality of his
      disinterestedness as to splutter some ambrosial drops of rum and water
      around, and withdraw in confusion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Such was the dinner without precedent, given by Pancks at Pentonville; and
      such was the busy and strange life Pancks led. The only waking moments at
      which he appeared to relax from his cares, and to recreate himself by
      going anywhere or saying anything without a pervading object, were when he
      showed a dawning interest in the lame foreigner with the stick, down
      Bleeding Heart Yard.
    </p>
    <p>
      The foreigner, by name John Baptist Cavalletto&mdash;they called him Mr
      Baptist in the Yard&mdash;was such a chirping, easy, hopeful little
      fellow, that his attraction for Pancks was probably in the force of
      contrast. Solitary, weak, and scantily acquainted with the most necessary
      words of the only language in which he could communicate with the people
      about him, he went with the stream of his fortunes, in a brisk way that
      was new in those parts. With little to eat, and less to drink, and nothing
      to wear but what he wore upon him, or had brought tied up in one of the
      smallest bundles that ever were seen, he put as bright a face upon it as
      if he were in the most flourishing circumstances when he first hobbled up
      and down the Yard, humbly propitiating the general good-will with his
      white teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was uphill work for a foreigner, lame or sound, to make his way with
      the Bleeding Hearts. In the first place, they were vaguely persuaded that
      every foreigner had a knife about him; in the second, they held it to be a
      sound constitutional national axiom that he ought to go home to his own
      country. They never thought of inquiring how many of their own countrymen
      would be returned upon their hands from divers parts of the world, if the
      principle were generally recognised; they considered it particularly and
      peculiarly British. In the third place, they had a notion that it was a
      sort of Divine visitation upon a foreigner that he was not an Englishman,
      and that all kinds of calamities happened to his country because it did
      things that England did not, and did not do things that England did. In
      this belief, to be sure, they had long been carefully trained by the
      Barnacles and Stiltstalkings, who were always proclaiming to them,
      officially, that no country which failed to submit itself to those two
      large families could possibly hope to be under the protection of
      Providence; and who, when they believed it, disparaged them in private as
      the most prejudiced people under the sun.
    </p>
    <p>
      This, therefore, might be called a political position of the Bleeding
      Hearts; but they entertained other objections to having foreigners in the
      Yard. They believed that foreigners were always badly off; and though they
      were as ill off themselves as they could desire to be, that did not
      diminish the force of the objection. They believed that foreigners were
      dragooned and bayoneted; and though they certainly got their own skulls
      promptly fractured if they showed any ill-humour, still it was with a
      blunt instrument, and that didn't count. They believed that foreigners
      were always immoral; and though they had an occasional assize at home, and
      now and then a divorce case or so, that had nothing to do with it. They
      believed that foreigners had no independent spirit, as never being
      escorted to the poll in droves by Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, with colours
      flying and the tune of Rule Britannia playing. Not to be tedious, they had
      many other beliefs of a similar kind.
    </p>
    <p>
      Against these obstacles, the lame foreigner with the stick had to make
      head as well as he could; not absolutely single-handed, because Mr Arthur
      Clennam had recommended him to the Plornishes (he lived at the top of the
      same house), but still at heavy odds. However, the Bleeding Hearts were
      kind hearts; and when they saw the little fellow cheerily limping about
      with a good-humoured face, doing no harm, drawing no knives, committing no
      outrageous immoralities, living chiefly on farinaceous and milk diet, and
      playing with Mrs Plornish's children of an evening, they began to think
      that although he could never hope to be an Englishman, still it would be
      hard to visit that affliction on his head. They began to accommodate
      themselves to his level, calling him 'Mr Baptist,' but treating him like a
      baby, and laughing immoderately at his lively gestures and his childish
      English&mdash;more, because he didn't mind it, and laughed too. They spoke
      to him in very loud voices as if he were stone deaf. They constructed
      sentences, by way of teaching him the language in its purity, such as were
      addressed by the savages to Captain Cook, or by Friday to Robinson Crusoe.
      Mrs Plornish was particularly ingenious in this art; and attained so much
      celebrity for saying 'Me ope you leg well soon,' that it was considered in
      the Yard but a very short remove indeed from speaking Italian. Even Mrs
      Plornish herself began to think that she had a natural call towards that
      language. As he became more popular, household objects were brought into
      requisition for his instruction in a copious vocabulary; and whenever he
      appeared in the Yard ladies would fly out at their doors crying 'Mr
      Baptist&mdash;tea-pot!' 'Mr Baptist&mdash;dust-pan!' 'Mr Baptist&mdash;flour-dredger!'
      'Mr Baptist&mdash;coffee-biggin!' At the same time exhibiting those
      articles, and penetrating him with a sense of the appalling difficulties
      of the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was in this stage of his progress, and in about the third week of his
      occupation, that Mr Pancks's fancy became attracted by the little man.
      Mounting to his attic, attended by Mrs Plornish as interpreter, he found
      Mr Baptist with no furniture but his bed on the ground, a table, and a
      chair, carving with the aid of a few simple tools, in the blithest way
      possible.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, old chap,' said Mr Pancks, 'pay up!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had his money ready, folded in a scrap of paper, and laughingly handed
      it in; then with a free action, threw out as many fingers of his right
      hand as there were shillings, and made a cut crosswise in the air for an
      odd sixpence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' said Mr Pancks, watching him, wonderingly. 'That's it, is it? You're
      a quick customer. It's all right. I didn't expect to receive it, though.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Plornish here interposed with great condescension, and explained to Mr
      Baptist. 'E please. E glad get money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The little man smiled and nodded. His bright face seemed uncommonly
      attractive to Mr Pancks. 'How's he getting on in his limb?' he asked Mrs
      Plornish.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, he's a deal better, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'We expect next week
      he'll be able to leave off his stick entirely.' (The opportunity being too
      favourable to be lost, Mrs Plornish displayed her great accomplishment by
      explaining with pardonable pride to Mr Baptist, 'E ope you leg well
      soon.')
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's a merry fellow, too,' said Mr Pancks, admiring him as if he were a
      mechanical toy. 'How does he live?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, sir,' rejoined Mrs Plornish, 'he turns out to have quite a power of
      carving them flowers that you see him at now.' (Mr Baptist, watching their
      faces as they spoke, held up his work. Mrs Plornish interpreted in her
      Italian manner, on behalf of Mr Pancks, 'E please. Double good!')
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can he live by that?' asked Mr Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He can live on very little, sir, and it is expected as he will be able,
      in time, to make a very good living. Mr Clennam got it him to do, and
      gives him odd jobs besides in at the Works next door&mdash;makes 'em for
      him, in short, when he knows he wants 'em.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what does he do with himself, now, when he ain't hard at it?' said Mr
      Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, not much as yet, sir, on accounts I suppose of not being able to
      walk much; but he goes about the Yard, and he chats without particular
      understanding or being understood, and he plays with the children, and he
      sits in the sun&mdash;he'll sit down anywhere, as if it was an arm-chair&mdash;and
      he'll sing, and he'll laugh!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Laugh!' echoed Mr Pancks. 'He looks to me as if every tooth in his head
      was always laughing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But whenever he gets to the top of the steps at t'other end of the Yard,'
      said Mrs Plornish, 'he'll peep out in the curiousest way! So that some of
      us thinks he's peeping out towards where his own country is, and some of
      us thinks he's looking for somebody he don't want to see, and some of us
      don't know what to think.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Baptist seemed to have a general understanding of what she said; or
      perhaps his quickness caught and applied her slight action of peeping. In
      any case he closed his eyes and tossed his head with the air of a man who
      had sufficient reasons for what he did, and said in his own tongue, it
      didn't matter. Altro!
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's Altro?' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hem! It's a sort of a general kind of expression, sir,' said Mrs
      Plornish.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it?' said Pancks. 'Why, then Altro to you, old chap. Good afternoon.
      Altro!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Baptist in his vivacious way repeating the word several times, Mr
      Pancks in his duller way gave it him back once. From that time it became a
      frequent custom with Pancks the gipsy, as he went home jaded at night, to
      pass round by Bleeding Heart Yard, go quietly up the stairs, look in at Mr
      Baptist's door, and, finding him in his room, to say, 'Hallo, old chap!
      Altro!' To which Mr Baptist would reply with innumerable bright nods and
      smiles, 'Altro, signore, altro, altro, altro!' After this highly condensed
      conversation, Mr Pancks would go his way with an appearance of being
      lightened and refreshed.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 26. Nobody's State of Mind
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>f Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to restrain
      himself from loving Pet, he would have lived on in a state of much
      perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own heart. Not the
      least of these would have been a contention, always waging within it,
      between a tendency to dislike Mr Henry Gowan, if not to regard him with
      positive repugnance, and a whisper that the inclination was unworthy. A
      generous nature is not prone to strong aversions, and is slow to admit
      them even dispassionately; but when it finds ill-will gaining upon it, and
      can discern between-whiles that its origin is not dispassionate, such a
      nature becomes distressed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Therefore Mr Henry Gowan would have clouded Clennam's mind, and would have
      been far oftener present to it than more agreeable persons and subjects
      but for the great prudence of his decision aforesaid. As it was, Mr Gowan
      seemed transferred to Daniel Doyce's mind; at all events, it so happened
      that it usually fell to Mr Doyce's turn, rather than to Clennam's, to
      speak of him in the friendly conversations they held together. These were
      of frequent occurrence now; as the two partners shared a portion of a
      roomy house in one of the grave old-fashioned City streets, lying not far
      from the Bank of England, by London Wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Doyce had been to Twickenham to pass the day. Clennam had excused
      himself. Mr Doyce was just come home. He put in his head at the door of
      Clennam's sitting-room to say Good night.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come in, come in!' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I saw you were reading,' returned Doyce, as he entered, 'and thought you
      might not care to be disturbed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      But for the notable resolution he had made, Clennam really might not have
      known what he had been reading; really might not have had his eyes upon
      the book for an hour past, though it lay open before him. He shut it up,
      rather quickly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are they well?' he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said Doyce; 'they are well. They are all well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Daniel had an old workmanlike habit of carrying his pocket-handkerchief in
      his hat. He took it out and wiped his forehead with it, slowly repeating,
      'They are all well. Miss Minnie looking particularly well, I thought.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Any company at the cottage?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no company.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how did you get on, you four?' asked Clennam gaily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There were five of us,' returned his partner. 'There was What's-his-name.
      He was there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who is he?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Henry Gowan.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, to be sure!' cried Clennam with unusual vivacity, 'Yes!&mdash;I
      forgot him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As I mentioned, you may remember,' said Daniel Doyce, 'he is always there
      on Sunday.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes,' returned Clennam; 'I remember now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Daniel Doyce, still wiping his forehead, ploddingly repeated. 'Yes. He was
      there, he was there. Oh yes, he was there. And his dog. <i>He</i> was
      there too.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Meagles is quite attached to&mdash;the&mdash;dog,' observed Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite so,' assented his partner. 'More attached to the dog than I am to
      the man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You mean Mr&mdash;?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean Mr Gowan, most decidedly,' said Daniel Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a gap in the conversation, which Clennam devoted to winding up
      his watch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps you are a little hasty in your judgment,' he said. 'Our judgments&mdash;I
      am supposing a general case&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course,' said Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are so liable to be influenced by many considerations, which, almost
      without our knowing it, are unfair, that it is necessary to keep a guard
      upon them. For instance, Mr&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gowan,' quietly said Doyce, upon whom the utterance of the name almost
      always devolved.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is young and handsome, easy and quick, has talent, and has seen a good
      deal of various kinds of life. It might be difficult to give an unselfish
      reason for being prepossessed against him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not difficult for me, I think, Clennam,' returned his partner. 'I see him
      bringing present anxiety, and, I fear, future sorrow, into my old friend's
      house. I see him wearing deeper lines into my old friend's face, the
      nearer he draws to, and the oftener he looks at, the face of his daughter.
      In short, I see him with a net about the pretty and affectionate creature
      whom he will never make happy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We don't know,' said Clennam, almost in the tone of a man in pain, 'that
      he will not make her happy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We don't know,' returned his partner, 'that the earth will last another
      hundred years, but we think it highly probable.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, well!' said Clennam, 'we must be hopeful, and we must at least try
      to be, if not generous (which, in this case, we have no opportunity of
      being), just. We will not disparage this gentleman, because he is
      successful in his addresses to the beautiful object of his ambition; and
      we will not question her natural right to bestow her love on one whom she
      finds worthy of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maybe, my friend,' said Doyce. 'Maybe also, that she is too young and
      petted, too confiding and inexperienced, to discriminate well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That,' said Clennam, 'would be far beyond our power of correction.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Daniel Doyce shook his head gravely, and rejoined, 'I fear so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Therefore, in a word,' said Clennam, 'we should make up our minds that it
      is not worthy of us to say any ill of Mr Gowan. It would be a poor thing
      to gratify a prejudice against him. And I resolve, for my part, not to
      depreciate him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not quite so sure of myself, and therefore I reserve my privilege of
      objecting to him,' returned the other. 'But, if I am not sure of myself, I
      am sure of you, Clennam, and I know what an upright man you are, and how
      much to be respected. Good night, <i>my</i> friend and partner!' He shook
      his hand in saying this, as if there had been something serious at the
      bottom of their conversation; and they separated.
    </p>
    <p>
      By this time they had visited the family on several occasions, and had
      always observed that even a passing allusion to Mr Henry Gowan when he was
      not among them, brought back the cloud which had obscured Mr Meagles's
      sunshine on the morning of the chance encounter at the Ferry. If Clennam
      had ever admitted the forbidden passion into his breast, this period might
      have been a period of real trial; under the actual circumstances,
      doubtless it was nothing&mdash;nothing.
    </p>
    <p>
      Equally, if his heart had given entertainment to that prohibited guest,
      his silent fighting of his way through the mental condition of this period
      might have been a little meritorious. In the constant effort not to be
      betrayed into a new phase of the besetting sin of his experience, the
      pursuit of selfish objects by low and small means, and to hold instead to
      some high principle of honour and generosity, there might have been a
      little merit. In the resolution not even to avoid Mr Meagles's house,
      lest, in the selfish sparing of himself, he should bring any slight
      distress upon the daughter through making her the cause of an estrangement
      which he believed the father would regret, there might have been a little
      merit. In the modest truthfulness of always keeping in view the greater
      equality of Mr Gowan's years and the greater attractions of his person and
      manner, there might have been a little merit. In doing all this and much
      more, in a perfectly unaffected way and with a manful and composed
      constancy, while the pain within him (peculiar as his life and history)
      was very sharp, there might have been some quiet strength of character.
      But, after the resolution he had made, of course he could have no such
      merits as these; and such a state of mind was nobody's&mdash;nobody's.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Gowan made it no concern of his whether it was nobody's or somebody's.
      He preserved his perfect serenity of manner on all occasions, as if the
      possibility of Clennam's presuming to have debated the great question were
      too distant and ridiculous to be imagined. He had always an affability to
      bestow on Clennam and an ease to treat him with, which might of itself (in
      the supposititious case of his not having taken that sagacious course)
      have been a very uncomfortable element in his state of mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I quite regret you were not with us yesterday,' said Mr Henry Gowan,
      calling on Clennam the next morning. 'We had an agreeable day up the river
      there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      So he had heard, Arthur said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'From your partner?' returned Henry Gowan. 'What a dear old fellow he is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have a great regard for him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By Jove, he is the finest creature!' said Gowan. 'So fresh, so green,
      trusts in such wonderful things!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here was one of the many little rough points that had a tendency to grate
      on Clennam's hearing. He put it aside by merely repeating that he had a
      high regard for Mr Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is charming! To see him mooning along to that time of life, laying
      down nothing by the way and picking up nothing by the way, is delightful.
      It warms a man. So unspoilt, so simple, such a good soul! Upon my life Mr
      Clennam, one feels desperately worldly and wicked in comparison with such
      an innocent creature. I speak for myself, let me add, without including
      you. You are genuine also.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you for the compliment,' said Clennam, ill at ease; 'you are too, I
      hope?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So so,' rejoined the other. 'To be candid with you, tolerably. I am not a
      great impostor. Buy one of my pictures, and I assure you, in confidence,
      it will not be worth the money. Buy one of another man's&mdash;any great
      professor who beats me hollow&mdash;and the chances are that the more you
      give him, the more he'll impose upon you. They all do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All painters?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Painters, writers, patriots, all the rest who have stands in the market.
      Give almost any man I know ten pounds, and he will impose upon you to a
      corresponding extent; a thousand pounds&mdash;to a corresponding extent;
      ten thousand pounds&mdash;to a corresponding extent. So great the success,
      so great the imposition. But what a capital world it is!' cried Gowan with
      warm enthusiasm. 'What a jolly, excellent, lovable world it is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I had rather thought,' said Clennam, 'that the principle you mention was
      chiefly acted on by&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By the Barnacles?' interrupted Gowan, laughing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'By the political gentlemen who condescend to keep the Circumlocution
      Office.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! Don't be hard upon the Barnacles,' said Gowan, laughing afresh, 'they
      are darling fellows! Even poor little Clarence, the born idiot of the
      family, is the most agreeable and most endearing blockhead! And by
      Jupiter, with a kind of cleverness in him too that would astonish you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It would. Very much,' said Clennam, drily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And after all,' cried Gowan, with that characteristic balancing of his
      which reduced everything in the wide world to the same light weight,
      'though I can't deny that the Circumlocution Office may ultimately
      shipwreck everybody and everything, still, that will probably not be in
      our time&mdash;and it's a school for gentlemen.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a very dangerous, unsatisfactory, and expensive school to the people
      who pay to keep the pupils there, I am afraid,' said Clennam, shaking his
      head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! You are a terrible fellow,' returned Gowan, airily. 'I can understand
      how you have frightened that little donkey, Clarence, the most estimable
      of moon-calves (I really love him) nearly out of his wits. But enough of
      him, and of all the rest of them. I want to present you to my mother, Mr
      Clennam. Pray do me the favour to give me the opportunity.'
    </p>
    <p>
      In nobody's state of mind, there was nothing Clennam would have desired
      less, or would have been more at a loss how to avoid.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My mother lives in a most primitive manner down in that dreary red-brick
      dungeon at Hampton Court,' said Gowan. 'If you would make your own
      appointment, suggest your own day for permitting me to take you there to
      dinner, you would be bored and she would be charmed. Really that's the
      state of the case.'
    </p>
    <p>
      What could Clennam say after this? His retiring character included a great
      deal that was simple in the best sense, because unpractised and unused;
      and in his simplicity and modesty, he could only say that he was happy to
      place himself at Mr Gowan's disposal. Accordingly he said it, and the day
      was fixed. And a dreaded day it was on his part, and a very unwelcome day
      when it came and they went down to Hampton Court together.
    </p>
    <p>
      The venerable inhabitants of that venerable pile seemed, in those times,
      to be encamped there like a sort of civilised gipsies. There was a
      temporary air about their establishments, as if they were going away the
      moment they could get anything better; there was also a dissatisfied air
      about themselves, as if they took it very ill that they had not already
      got something much better. Genteel blinds and makeshifts were more or less
      observable as soon as their doors were opened; screens not half high
      enough, which made dining-rooms out of arched passages, and warded off
      obscure corners where footboys slept at nights with their heads among the
      knives and forks; curtains which called upon you to believe that they
      didn't hide anything; panes of glass which requested you not to see them;
      many objects of various forms, feigning to have no connection with their
      guilty secret, a bed; disguised traps in walls, which were clearly
      coal-cellars; affectations of no thoroughfares, which were evidently doors
      to little kitchens. Mental reservations and artful mysteries grew out of
      these things. Callers looking steadily into the eyes of their receivers,
      pretended not to smell cooking three feet off; people, confronting closets
      accidentally left open, pretended not to see bottles; visitors with their
      heads against a partition of thin canvas, and a page and a young female at
      high words on the other side, made believe to be sitting in a primeval
      silence. There was no end to the small social accommodation-bills of this
      nature which the gipsies of gentility were constantly drawing upon, and
      accepting for, one another.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some of these Bohemians were of an irritable temperament, as constantly
      soured and vexed by two mental trials: the first, the consciousness that
      they had never got enough out of the public; the second, the consciousness
      that the public were admitted into the building. Under the latter great
      wrong, a few suffered dreadfully&mdash;particularly on Sundays, when they
      had for some time expected the earth to open and swallow the public up;
      but which desirable event had not yet occurred, in consequence of some
      reprehensible laxity in the arrangements of the Universe.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Gowan's door was attended by a family servant of several years'
      standing, who had his own crow to pluck with the public concerning a
      situation in the Post-Office which he had been for some time expecting,
      and to which he was not yet appointed. He perfectly knew that the public
      could never have got him in, but he grimly gratified himself with the idea
      that the public kept him out. Under the influence of this injury (and
      perhaps of some little straitness and irregularity in the matter of
      wages), he had grown neglectful of his person and morose in mind; and now
      beholding in Clennam one of the degraded body of his oppressors, received
      him with ignominy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Gowan, however, received him with condescension. He found her a
      courtly old lady, formerly a Beauty, and still sufficiently well-favoured
      to have dispensed with the powder on her nose and a certain impossible
      bloom under each eye. She was a little lofty with him; so was another old
      lady, dark-browed and high-nosed, and who must have had something real
      about her or she could not have existed, but it was certainly not her hair
      or her teeth or her figure or her complexion; so was a grey old gentleman
      of dignified and sullen appearance; both of whom had come to dinner. But,
      as they had all been in the British Embassy way in sundry parts of the
      earth, and as a British Embassy cannot better establish a character with
      the Circumlocution Office than by treating its compatriots with
      illimitable contempt (else it would become like the Embassies of other
      countries), Clennam felt that on the whole they let him off lightly.
    </p>
    <p>
      The dignified old gentleman turned out to be Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking,
      who had been maintained by the Circumlocution Office for many years as a
      representative of the Britannic Majesty abroad. This noble Refrigerator
      had iced several European courts in his time, and had done it with such
      complete success that the very name of Englishman yet struck cold to the
      stomachs of foreigners who had the distinguished honour of remembering him
      at a distance of a quarter of a century.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was now in retirement, and hence (in a ponderous white cravat, like a
      stiff snow-drift) was so obliging as to shade the dinner. There was a
      whisper of the pervading Bohemian character in the nomadic nature of the
      service and its curious races of plates and dishes; but the noble
      Refrigerator, infinitely better than plate or porcelain, made it superb.
      He shaded the dinner, cooled the wines, chilled the gravy, and blighted
      the vegetables.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was only one other person in the room: a microscopically small
      footboy, who waited on the malevolent man who hadn't got into the
      Post-Office. Even this youth, if his jacket could have been unbuttoned and
      his heart laid bare, would have been seen, as a distant adherent of the
      Barnacle family, already to aspire to a situation under Government.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Gowan with a gentle melancholy upon her, occasioned by her son's being
      reduced to court the swinish public as a follower of the low Arts, instead
      of asserting his birthright and putting a ring through its nose as an
      acknowledged Barnacle, headed the conversation at dinner on the evil days.
      It was then that Clennam learned for the first time what little pivots
      this great world goes round upon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If John Barnacle,' said Mrs Gowan, after the degeneracy of the times had
      been fully ascertained, 'if John Barnacle had but abandoned his most
      unfortunate idea of conciliating the mob, all would have been well, and I
      think the country would have been preserved.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old lady with the high nose assented; but added that if Augustus
      Stiltstalking had in a general way ordered the cavalry out with
      instructions to charge, she thought the country would have been preserved.
    </p>
    <p>
      The noble Refrigerator assented; but added that if William Barnacle and
      Tudor Stiltstalking, when they came over to one another and formed their
      ever-memorable coalition, had boldly muzzled the newspapers, and rendered
      it penal for any Editor-person to presume to discuss the conduct of any
      appointed authority abroad or at home, he thought the country would have
      been preserved.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was agreed that the country (another word for the Barnacles and
      Stiltstalkings) wanted preserving, but how it came to want preserving was
      not so clear. It was only clear that the question was all about John
      Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking, William Barnacle and Tudor
      Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle or Stiltstalking, because
      there was nobody else but mob. And this was the feature of the
      conversation which impressed Clennam, as a man not used to it, very
      disagreeably: making him doubt if it were quite right to sit there,
      silently hearing a great nation narrowed to such little bounds.
      Remembering, however, that in the Parliamentary debates, whether on the
      life of that nation's body or the life of its soul, the question was
      usually all about and between John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking,
      William Barnacle and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle or
      Stiltstalking, and nobody else; he said nothing on the part of mob,
      bethinking himself that mob was used to it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Henry Gowan seemed to have a malicious pleasure in playing off the
      three talkers against each other, and in seeing Clennam startled by what
      they said. Having as supreme a contempt for the class that had thrown him
      off as for the class that had not taken him on, he had no personal
      disquiet in anything that passed. His healthy state of mind appeared even
      to derive a gratification from Clennam's position of embarrassment and
      isolation among the good company; and if Clennam had been in that
      condition with which Nobody was incessantly contending, he would have
      suspected it, and would have struggled with the suspicion as a meanness,
      even while he sat at the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the course of a couple of hours the noble Refrigerator, at no time less
      than a hundred years behind the period, got about five centuries in
      arrears, and delivered solemn political oracles appropriate to that epoch.
      He finished by freezing a cup of tea for his own drinking, and retiring at
      his lowest temperature.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then Mrs Gowan, who had been accustomed in her days of a vacant arm-chair
      beside her to which to summon state to retain her devoted slaves, one by
      one, for short audiences as marks of her especial favour, invited Clennam
      with a turn of her fan to approach the presence. He obeyed, and took the
      tripod recently vacated by Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam,' said Mrs Gowan, 'apart from the happiness I have in becoming
      known to you, though in this odiously inconvenient place&mdash;a mere
      barrack&mdash;there is a subject on which I am dying to speak to you. It
      is the subject in connection with which my son first had, I believe, the
      pleasure of cultivating your acquaintance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam inclined his head, as a generally suitable reply to what he did
      not yet quite understand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'First,' said Mrs Gowan, 'now, is she really pretty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      In nobody's difficulties, he would have found it very difficult to answer;
      very difficult indeed to smile, and say 'Who?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! You know!' she returned. 'This flame of Henry's. This unfortunate
      fancy. There! If it is a point of honour that I should originate the name&mdash;Miss
      Mickles&mdash;Miggles.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Meagles,' said Clennam, 'is very beautiful.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Men are so often mistaken on those points,' returned Mrs Gowan, shaking
      her head, 'that I candidly confess to you I feel anything but sure of it,
      even now; though it is something to have Henry corroborated with so much
      gravity and emphasis. He picked the people up at Rome, I think?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The phrase would have given nobody mortal offence. Clennam replied,
      'Excuse me, I doubt if I understand your expression.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Picked the people up,' said Mrs Gowan, tapping the sticks of her closed
      fan (a large green one, which she used as a hand-screen) on her little
      table. 'Came upon them. Found them out. Stumbled against them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The people?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. The Miggles people.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I really cannot say,' said Clennam, 'where my friend Mr Meagles first
      presented Mr Henry Gowan to his daughter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am pretty sure he picked her up at Rome; but never mind where&mdash;somewhere.
      Now (this is entirely between ourselves), is she very plebeian?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really, ma'am,' returned Clennam, 'I am so undoubtedly plebeian myself,
      that I do not feel qualified to judge.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very neat!' said Mrs Gowan, coolly unfurling her screen. 'Very happy!
      From which I infer that you secretly think her manner equal to her looks?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam, after a moment's stiffness, bowed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's comforting, and I hope you may be right. Did Henry tell me you had
      travelled with them?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I travelled with my friend Mr Meagles, and his wife and daughter, during
      some months.' (Nobody's heart might have been wrung by the remembrance.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really comforting, because you must have had a large experience of them.
      You see, Mr Clennam, this thing has been going on for a long time, and I
      find no improvement in it. Therefore to have the opportunity of speaking
      to one so well informed about it as yourself, is an immense relief to me.
      Quite a boon. Quite a blessing, I am sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me,' returned Clennam, 'but I am not in Mr Henry Gowan's
      confidence. I am far from being so well informed as you suppose me to be.
      Your mistake makes my position a very delicate one. No word on this topic
      has ever passed between Mr Henry Gowan and myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Gowan glanced at the other end of the room, where her son was playing
      ecarte on a sofa, with the old lady who was for a charge of cavalry.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not in his confidence? No,' said Mrs Gowan. 'No word has passed between
      you? No. That I can imagine. But there are unexpressed confidences, Mr
      Clennam; and as you have been together intimately among these people, I
      cannot doubt that a confidence of that sort exists in the present case.
      Perhaps you have heard that I have suffered the keenest distress of mind
      from Henry's having taken to a pursuit which&mdash;well!' shrugging her
      shoulders, 'a very respectable pursuit, I dare say, and some artists are,
      as artists, quite superior persons; still, we never yet in our family have
      gone beyond an Amateur, and it is a pardonable weakness to feel a little&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      As Mrs Gowan broke off to heave a sigh, Clennam, however resolute to be
      magnanimous, could not keep down the thought that there was mighty little
      danger of the family's ever going beyond an Amateur, even as it was.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Henry,' the mother resumed, 'is self-willed and resolute; and as these
      people naturally strain every nerve to catch him, I can entertain very
      little hope, Mr Clennam, that the thing will be broken off. I apprehend
      the girl's fortune will be very small; Henry might have done much better;
      there is scarcely anything to compensate for the connection: still, he
      acts for himself; and if I find no improvement within a short time, I see
      no other course than to resign myself and make the best of these people. I
      am infinitely obliged to you for what you have told me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she shrugged her shoulders, Clennam stiffly bowed again. With an uneasy
      flush upon his face, and hesitation in his manner, he then said in a still
      lower tone than he had adopted yet:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Gowan, I scarcely know how to acquit myself of what I feel to be a
      duty, and yet I must ask you for your kind consideration in attempting to
      discharge it. A misconception on your part, a very great misconception if
      I may venture to call it so, seems to require setting right. You have
      supposed Mr Meagles and his family to strain every nerve, I think you said&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Every nerve,' repeated Mrs Gowan, looking at him in calm obstinacy, with
      her green fan between her face and the fire.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To secure Mr Henry Gowan?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady placidly assented.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now that is so far,' said Arthur, 'from being the case, that I know Mr
      Meagles to be unhappy in this matter; and to have interposed all
      reasonable obstacles with the hope of putting an end to it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Gowan shut up her great green fan, tapped him on the arm with it, and
      tapped her smiling lips. 'Why, of course,' said she. 'Just what I mean.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur watched her face for some explanation of what she did mean.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you really serious, Mr Clennam? Don't you see?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur did not see; and said so.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, don't I know my son, and don't I know that this is exactly the way
      to hold him?' said Mrs Gowan, contemptuously; 'and do not these Miggles
      people know it, at least as well as I? Oh, shrewd people, Mr Clennam:
      evidently people of business! I believe Miggles belonged to a Bank. It
      ought to have been a very profitable Bank, if he had much to do with its
      management. This is very well done, indeed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg and entreat you, ma'am&mdash;' Arthur interposed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Mr Clennam, can you really be so credulous?'
    </p>
    <p>
      It made such a painful impression upon him to hear her talking in this
      haughty tone, and to see her patting her contemptuous lips with her fan,
      that he said very earnestly, 'Believe me, ma'am, this is unjust, a
      perfectly groundless suspicion.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Suspicion?' repeated Mrs Gowan. 'Not suspicion, Mr Clennam, Certainty. It
      is very knowingly done indeed, and seems to have taken <i>you</i> in
      completely.' She laughed; and again sat tapping her lips with her fan, and
      tossing her head, as if she added, 'Don't tell me. I know such people will
      do anything for the honour of such an alliance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At this opportune moment, the cards were thrown up, and Mr Henry Gowan
      came across the room saying, 'Mother, if you can spare Mr Clennam for this
      time, we have a long way to go, and it's getting late.' Mr Clennam
      thereupon rose, as he had no choice but to do; and Mrs Gowan showed him,
      to the last, the same look and the same tapped contemptuous lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have had a portentously long audience of my mother,' said Gowan, as
      the door closed upon them. 'I fervently hope she has not bored you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      They had a little open phaeton for the journey, and were soon in it on the
      road home. Gowan, driving, lighted a cigar; Clennam declined one. Do what
      he would, he fell into such a mood of abstraction that Gowan said again,
      'I am very much afraid my mother has bored you?' To which he roused
      himself to answer, 'Not at all!' and soon relapsed again.
    </p>
    <p>
      In that state of mind which rendered nobody uneasy, his thoughtfulness
      would have turned principally on the man at his side. He would have
      thought of the morning when he first saw him rooting out the stones with
      his heel, and would have asked himself, 'Does he jerk me out of the path
      in the same careless, cruel way?' He would have thought, had this
      introduction to his mother been brought about by him because he knew what
      she would say, and that he could thus place his position before a rival
      and loftily warn him off, without himself reposing a word of confidence in
      him? He would have thought, even if there were no such design as that, had
      he brought him there to play with his repressed emotions, and torment him?
      The current of these meditations would have been stayed sometimes by a
      rush of shame, bearing a remonstrance to himself from his own open nature,
      representing that to shelter such suspicions, even for the passing moment,
      was not to hold the high, unenvious course he had resolved to keep. At
      those times, the striving within him would have been hardest; and looking
      up and catching Gowan's eyes, he would have started as if he had done him
      an injury.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then, looking at the dark road and its uncertain objects, he would have
      gradually trailed off again into thinking, 'Where are we driving, he and
      I, I wonder, on the darker road of life? How will it be with us, and with
      her, in the obscure distance?' Thinking of her, he would have been
      troubled anew with a reproachful misgiving that it was not even loyal to
      her to dislike him, and that in being so easily prejudiced against him he
      was less deserving of her than at first.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are evidently out of spirits,' said Gowan; 'I am very much afraid my
      mother must have bored you dreadfully.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Believe me, not at all,' said Clennam. 'It's nothing&mdash;nothing!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 27. Five-and-Twenty
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> frequently recurring doubt, whether Mr Pancks's desire to collect
      information relative to the Dorrit family could have any possible bearing
      on the misgivings he had imparted to his mother on his return from his
      long exile, caused Arthur Clennam much uneasiness at this period. What Mr
      Pancks already knew about the Dorrit family, what more he really wanted to
      find out, and why he should trouble his busy head about them at all, were
      questions that often perplexed him. Mr Pancks was not a man to waste his
      time and trouble in researches prompted by idle curiosity. That he had a
      specific object Clennam could not doubt. And whether the attainment of
      that object by Mr Pancks's industry might bring to light, in some untimely
      way, secret reasons which had induced his mother to take Little Dorrit by
      the hand, was a serious speculation.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not that he ever wavered either in his desire or his determination to
      repair a wrong that had been done in his father's time, should a wrong
      come to light, and be reparable. The shadow of a supposed act of
      injustice, which had hung over him since his father's death, was so vague
      and formless that it might be the result of a reality widely remote from
      his idea of it. But, if his apprehensions should prove to be well founded,
      he was ready at any moment to lay down all he had, and begin the world
      anew. As the fierce dark teaching of his childhood had never sunk into his
      heart, so that first article in his code of morals was, that he must
      begin, in practical humility, with looking well to his feet on Earth, and
      that he could never mount on wings of words to Heaven. Duty on earth,
      restitution on earth, action on earth; these first, as the first steep
      steps upward. Strait was the gate and narrow was the way; far straiter and
      narrower than the broad high road paved with vain professions and vain
      repetitions, motes from other men's eyes and liberal delivery of others to
      the judgment&mdash;all cheap materials costing absolutely nothing.
    </p>
    <p>
      No. It was not a selfish fear or hesitation that rendered him uneasy, but
      a mistrust lest Pancks might not observe his part of the understanding
      between them, and, making any discovery, might take some course upon it
      without imparting it to him. On the other hand, when he recalled his
      conversation with Pancks, and the little reason he had to suppose that
      there was any likelihood of that strange personage being on that track at
      all, there were times when he wondered that he made so much of it.
      Labouring in this sea, as all barks labour in cross seas, he tossed about
      and came to no haven.
    </p>
    <p>
      The removal of Little Dorrit herself from their customary association, did
      not mend the matter. She was so much out, and so much in her own room,
      that he began to miss her and to find a blank in her place. He had written
      to her to inquire if she were better, and she had written back, very
      gratefully and earnestly telling him not to be uneasy on her behalf, for
      she was quite well; but he had not seen her, for what, in their
      intercourse, was a long time.
    </p>
    <p>
      He returned home one evening from an interview with her father, who had
      mentioned that she was out visiting&mdash;which was what he always said
      when she was hard at work to buy his supper&mdash;and found Mr Meagles in
      an excited state walking up and down his room. On his opening the door, Mr
      Meagles stopped, faced round, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Clennam!&mdash;Tattycoram!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lost!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, bless my heart alive!' cried Clennam in amazement. 'What do you
      mean?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wouldn't count five-and-twenty, sir; couldn't be got to do it; stopped at
      eight, and took herself off.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Left your house?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never to come back,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head. 'You don't know
      that girl's passionate and proud character. A team of horses couldn't draw
      her back now; the bolts and bars of the old Bastille couldn't keep her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How did it happen? Pray sit down and tell me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to how it happened, it's not so easy to relate: because you must have
      the unfortunate temperament of the poor impetuous girl herself, before you
      can fully understand it. But it came about in this way. Pet and Mother and
      I have been having a good deal of talk together of late. I'll not disguise
      from you, Clennam, that those conversations have not been of as bright a
      kind as I could wish; they have referred to our going away again. In
      proposing to do which, I have had, in fact, an object.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Nobody's heart beat quickly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'An object,' said Mr Meagles, after a moment's pause, 'that I will not
      disguise from you, either, Clennam. There's an inclination on the part of
      my dear child which I am sorry for. Perhaps you guess the person. Henry
      Gowan.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was not unprepared to hear it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said Mr Meagles, with a heavy sigh, 'I wish to God you had never
      had to hear it. However, so it is. Mother and I have done all we could to
      get the better of it, Clennam. We have tried tender advice, we have tried
      time, we have tried absence. As yet, of no use. Our late conversations
      have been upon the subject of going away for another year at least, in
      order that there might be an entire separation and breaking off for that
      term. Upon that question, Pet has been unhappy, and therefore Mother and I
      have been unhappy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam said that he could easily believe it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' continued Mr Meagles in an apologetic way, 'I admit as a practical
      man, and I am sure Mother would admit as a practical woman, that we do, in
      families, magnify our troubles and make mountains of our molehills in a
      way that is calculated to be rather trying to people who look on&mdash;to
      mere outsiders, you know, Clennam. Still, Pet's happiness or unhappiness
      is quite a life or death question with us; and we may be excused, I hope,
      for making much of it. At all events, it might have been borne by
      Tattycoram. Now, don't you think so?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do indeed think so,' returned Clennam, in most emphatic recognition of
      this very moderate expectation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head ruefully. 'She couldn't stand
      it. The chafing and firing of that girl, the wearing and tearing of that
      girl within her own breast, has been such that I have softly said to her
      again and again in passing her, "Five-and-twenty, Tattycoram,
      five-and-twenty!" I heartily wish she could have gone on counting
      five-and-twenty day and night, and then it wouldn't have happened.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles with a despondent countenance in which the goodness of his
      heart was even more expressed than in his times of cheerfulness and
      gaiety, stroked his face down from his forehead to his chin, and shook his
      head again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I said to Mother (not that it was necessary, for she would have thought
      it all for herself), we are practical people, my dear, and we know her
      story; we see in this unhappy girl some reflection of what was raging in
      her mother's heart before ever such a creature as this poor thing was in
      the world; we'll gloss her temper over, Mother, we won't notice it at
      present, my dear, we'll take advantage of some better disposition in her
      another time. So we said nothing. But, do what we would, it seems as if it
      was to be; she broke out violently one night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How, and why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you ask me Why,' said Mr Meagles, a little disturbed by the question,
      for he was far more intent on softening her case than the family's, 'I can
      only refer you to what I have just repeated as having been pretty near my
      words to Mother. As to How, we had said Good night to Pet in her presence
      (very affectionately, I must allow), and she had attended Pet up-stairs&mdash;you
      remember she was her maid. Perhaps Pet, having been out of sorts, may have
      been a little more inconsiderate than usual in requiring services of her:
      but I don't know that I have any right to say so; she was always
      thoughtful and gentle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The gentlest mistress in the world.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, shaking him by the hand; 'you have
      often seen them together. Well! We presently heard this unfortunate
      Tattycoram loud and angry, and before we could ask what was the matter,
      Pet came back in a tremble, saying she was frightened of her. Close after
      her came Tattycoram in a flaming rage. "I hate you all three," says she,
      stamping her foot at us. "I am bursting with hate of the whole house."'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Upon which you&mdash;?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I?' said Mr Meagles, with a plain good faith that might have commanded
      the belief of Mrs Gowan herself. 'I said, count five-and-twenty,
      Tattycoram.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles again stroked his face and shook his head, with an air of
      profound regret.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She was so used to do it, Clennam, that even then, such a picture of
      passion as you never saw, she stopped short, looked me full in the face,
      and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn't control herself to
      go any further. There she broke down, poor thing, and gave the other
      seventeen to the four winds. Then it all burst out. She detested us, she
      was miserable with us, she couldn't bear it, she wouldn't bear it, she was
      determined to go away. She was younger than her young mistress, and would
      she remain to see her always held up as the only creature who was young
      and interesting, and to be cherished and loved? No. She wouldn't, she
      wouldn't, she wouldn't! What did we think she, Tattycoram, might have been
      if she had been caressed and cared for in her childhood, like her young
      mistress? As good as her? Ah! Perhaps fifty times as good. When we
      pretended to be so fond of one another, we exulted over her; that was what
      we did; we exulted over her and shamed her. And all in the house did the
      same. They talked about their fathers and mothers, and brothers and
      sisters; they liked to drag them up before her face. There was Mrs Tickit,
      only yesterday, when her little grandchild was with her, had been amused
      by the child's trying to call her (Tattycoram) by the wretched name we
      gave her; and had laughed at the name. Why, who didn't; and who were we
      that we should have a right to name her like a dog or a cat? But she
      didn't care. She would take no more benefits from us; she would fling us
      her name back again, and she would go. She would leave us that minute,
      nobody should stop her, and we should never hear of her again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles had recited all this with such a vivid remembrance of his
      original, that he was almost as flushed and hot by this time as he
      described her to have been.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, well!' he said, wiping his face. 'It was of no use trying reason
      then, with that vehement panting creature (Heaven knows what her mother's
      story must have been); so I quietly told her that she should not go at
      that late hour of night, and I gave her my hand and took her to her room,
      and locked the house doors. But she was gone this morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you know no more of her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No more,' returned Mr Meagles. 'I have been hunting about all day. She
      must have gone very early and very silently. I have found no trace of her
      down about us.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay! You want,' said Clennam, after a moment's reflection, 'to see her?
      I assume that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, assuredly; I want to give her another chance; Mother and Pet want to
      give her another chance; come! You yourself,' said Mr Meagles,
      persuasively, as if the provocation to be angry were not his own at all,
      'want to give the poor passionate girl another chance, I know, Clennam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It would be strange and hard indeed if I did not,' said Clennam, 'when
      you are all so forgiving. What I was going to ask you was, have you
      thought of that Miss Wade?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have. I did not think of her until I had pervaded the whole of our
      neighbourhood, and I don't know that I should have done so then but for
      finding Mother and Pet, when I went home, full of the idea that Tattycoram
      must have gone to her. Then, of course, I recalled what she said that day
      at dinner when you were first with us.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you any idea where Miss Wade is to be found?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To tell you the truth,' returned Mr Meagles, 'it's because I have an
      addled jumble of a notion on that subject that you found me waiting here.
      There is one of those odd impressions in my house, which do mysteriously
      get into houses sometimes, which nobody seems to have picked up in a
      distinct form from anybody, and yet which everybody seems to have got hold
      of loosely from somebody and let go again, that she lives, or was living,
      thereabouts.' Mr Meagles handed him a slip of paper, on which was written
      the name of one of the dull by-streets in the Grosvenor region, near Park
      Lane.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here is no number,' said Arthur looking over it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No number, my dear Clennam?' returned his friend. 'No anything! The very
      name of the street may have been floating in the air; for, as I tell you,
      none of my people can say where they got it from. However, it's worth an
      inquiry; and as I would rather make it in company than alone, and as you
      too were a fellow-traveller of that immovable woman's, I thought perhaps&mdash;'
      Clennam finished the sentence for him by taking up his hat again, and
      saying he was ready.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was now summer-time; a grey, hot, dusty evening. They rode to the top
      of Oxford Street, and there alighting, dived in among the great streets of
      melancholy stateliness, and the little streets that try to be as stately
      and succeed in being more melancholy, of which there is a labyrinth near
      Park Lane. Wildernesses of corner houses, with barbarous old porticoes and
      appurtenances; horrors that came into existence under some wrong-headed
      person in some wrong-headed time, still demanding the blind admiration of
      all ensuing generations and determined to do so until they tumbled down;
      frowned upon the twilight. Parasite little tenements, with the cramp in
      their whole frame, from the dwarf hall-door on the giant model of His
      Grace's in the Square to the squeezed window of the boudoir commanding the
      dunghills in the Mews, made the evening doleful. Rickety dwellings of
      undoubted fashion, but of a capacity to hold nothing comfortably except a
      dismal smell, looked like the last result of the great mansions' breeding
      in-and-in; and, where their little supplementary bows and balconies were
      supported on thin iron columns, seemed to be scrofulously resting upon
      crutches. Here and there a Hatchment, with the whole science of Heraldry
      in it, loomed down upon the street, like an Archbishop discoursing on
      Vanity. The shops, few in number, made no show; for popular opinion was as
      nothing to them. The pastrycook knew who was on his books, and in that
      knowledge could be calm, with a few glass cylinders of dowager
      peppermint-drops in his window, and half-a-dozen ancient specimens of
      currant-jelly. A few oranges formed the greengrocer's whole concession to
      the vulgar mind. A single basket made of moss, once containing plovers'
      eggs, held all that the poulterer had to say to the rabble. Everybody in
      those streets seemed (which is always the case at that hour and season) to
      be gone out to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving the dinners they had
      gone to. On the doorsteps there were lounging footmen with bright
      parti-coloured plumage and white polls, like an extinct race of monstrous
      birds; and butlers, solitary men of recluse demeanour, each of whom
      appeared distrustful of all other butlers. The roll of carriages in the
      Park was done for the day; the street lamps were lighting; and wicked
      little grooms in the tightest fitting garments, with twists in their legs
      answering to the twists in their minds, hung about in pairs, chewing
      straws and exchanging fraudulent secrets. The spotted dogs who went out
      with the carriages, and who were so associated with splendid equipages
      that it looked like a condescension in those animals to come out without
      them, accompanied helpers to and fro on messages. Here and there was a
      retiring public-house which did not require to be supported on the
      shoulders of the people, and where gentlemen out of livery were not much
      wanted.
    </p>
    <p>
      This last discovery was made by the two friends in pursuing their
      inquiries. Nothing was there, or anywhere, known of such a person as Miss
      Wade, in connection with the street they sought. It was one of the
      parasite streets; long, regular, narrow, dull and gloomy; like a brick and
      mortar funeral. They inquired at several little area gates, where a
      dejected youth stood spiking his chin on the summit of a precipitous
      little shoot of wooden steps, but could gain no information. They walked
      up the street on one side of the way, and down it on the other, what time
      two vociferous news-sellers, announcing an extraordinary event that had
      never happened and never would happen, pitched their hoarse voices into
      the secret chambers; but nothing came of it. At length they stood at the
      corner from which they had begun, and it had fallen quite dark, and they
      were no wiser.
    </p>
    <p>
      It happened that in the street they had several times passed a dingy
      house, apparently empty, with bills in the windows, announcing that it was
      to let. The bills, as a variety in the funeral procession, almost amounted
      to a decoration. Perhaps because they kept the house separated in his
      mind, or perhaps because Mr Meagles and himself had twice agreed in
      passing, 'It is clear she don't live there,' Clennam now proposed that
      they should go back and try that house before finally going away. Mr
      Meagles agreed, and back they went.
    </p>
    <p>
      They knocked once, and they rang once, without any response. 'Empty,' said
      Mr Meagles, listening. 'Once more,' said Clennam, and knocked again. After
      that knock they heard a movement below, and somebody shuffling up towards
      the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      The confined entrance was so dark that it was impossible to make out
      distinctly what kind of person opened the door; but it appeared to be an
      old woman. 'Excuse our troubling you,' said Clennam. 'Pray can you tell us
      where Miss Wade lives?' The voice in the darkness unexpectedly replied,
      'Lives here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is she at home?'
    </p>
    <p>
      No answer coming, Mr Meagles asked again. 'Pray is she at home?'
    </p>
    <p>
      After another delay, 'I suppose she is,' said the voice abruptly; 'you had
      better come in, and I'll ask.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They were summarily shut into the close black house; and the figure
      rustling away, and speaking from a higher level, said, 'Come up, if you
      please; you can't tumble over anything.' They groped their way up-stairs
      towards a faint light, which proved to be the light of the street shining
      through a window; and the figure left them shut in an airless room.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is odd, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, softly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Odd enough,' assented Clennam in the same tone, 'but we have succeeded;
      that's the main point. Here's a light coming!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The light was a lamp, and the bearer was an old woman: very dirty, very
      wrinkled and dry. 'She's at home,' she said (and the voice was the same
      that had spoken before); 'she'll come directly.' Having set the lamp down
      on the table, the old woman dusted her hands on her apron, which she might
      have done for ever without cleaning them, looked at the visitors with a
      dim pair of eyes, and backed out.
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady whom they had come to see, if she were the present occupant of
      the house, appeared to have taken up her quarters there as she might have
      established herself in an Eastern caravanserai. A small square of carpet
      in the middle of the room, a few articles of furniture that evidently did
      not belong to the room, and a disorder of trunks and travelling articles,
      formed the whole of her surroundings. Under some former regular
      inhabitant, the stifling little apartment had broken out into a pier-glass
      and a gilt table; but the gilding was as faded as last year's flowers, and
      the glass was so clouded that it seemed to hold in magic preservation all
      the fogs and bad weather it had ever reflected. The visitors had had a
      minute or two to look about them, when the door opened and Miss Wade came
      in.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was exactly the same as when they had parted, just as handsome, just
      as scornful, just as repressed. She manifested no surprise in seeing them,
      nor any other emotion. She requested them to be seated; and declining to
      take a seat herself, at once anticipated any introduction of their
      business.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I apprehend,' she said, 'that I know the cause of your favouring me with
      this visit. We may come to it at once.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The cause then, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'is Tattycoram.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So I supposed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, 'will you be so kind as to say whether you
      know anything of her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Surely. I know she is here with me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'allow me to make known to you that I
      shall be happy to have her back, and that my wife and daughter will be
      happy to have her back. She has been with us a long time: we don't forget
      her claims upon us, and I hope we know how to make allowances.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You hope to know how to make allowances?' she returned, in a level,
      measured voice. 'For what?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think my friend would say, Miss Wade,' Arthur Clennam interposed,
      seeing Mr Meagles rather at a loss, 'for the passionate sense that
      sometimes comes upon the poor girl, of being at a disadvantage. Which
      occasionally gets the better of better remembrances.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady broke into a smile as she turned her eyes upon him. 'Indeed?' was
      all she answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      She stood by the table so perfectly composed and still after this
      acknowledgment of his remark that Mr Meagles stared at her under a sort of
      fascination, and could not even look to Clennam to make another move.
      After waiting, awkwardly enough, for some moments, Arthur said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps it would be well if Mr Meagles could see her, Miss Wade?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That is easily done,' said she. 'Come here, child.' She had opened a door
      while saying this, and now led the girl in by the hand. It was very
      curious to see them standing together: the girl with her disengaged
      fingers plaiting the bosom of her dress, half irresolutely, half
      passionately; Miss Wade with her composed face attentively regarding her,
      and suggesting to an observer, with extraordinary force, in her composure
      itself (as a veil will suggest the form it covers), the unquenchable
      passion of her own nature.
    </p>
    <p>
      'See here,' she said, in the same level way as before. 'Here is your
      patron, your master. He is willing to take you back, my dear, if you are
      sensible of the favour and choose to go. You can be, again, a foil to his
      pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant wilfulness, and a toy in the
      house showing the goodness of the family. You can have your droll name
      again, playfully pointing you out and setting you apart, as it is right
      that you should be pointed out and set apart. (Your birth, you know; you
      must not forget your birth.) You can again be shown to this gentleman's
      daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, as a living reminder of her own
      superiority and her gracious condescension. You can recover all these
      advantages and many more of the same kind which I dare say start up in
      your memory while I speak, and which you lose in taking refuge with me&mdash;you
      can recover them all by telling these gentlemen how humbled and penitent
      you are, and by going back to them to be forgiven. What do you say,
      Harriet? Will you go?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The girl who, under the influence of these words, had gradually risen in
      anger and heightened in colour, answered, raising her lustrous black eyes
      for the moment, and clenching her hand upon the folds it had been
      puckering up, 'I'd die sooner!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Wade, still standing at her side holding her hand, looked quietly
      round and said with a smile, 'Gentlemen! What do you do upon that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Poor Mr Meagles's inexpressible consternation in hearing his motives and
      actions so perverted, had prevented him from interposing any word until
      now; but now he regained the power of speech.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tattycoram,' said he, 'for I'll call you by that name still, my good
      girl, conscious that I meant nothing but kindness when I gave it to you,
      and conscious that you know it&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't!' said she, looking up again, and almost rending herself with the
      same busy hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, not now, perhaps,' said Mr Meagles; 'not with that lady's eyes so
      intent upon you, Tattycoram,' she glanced at them for a moment, 'and that
      power over you, which we see she exercises; not now, perhaps, but at
      another time. Tattycoram, I'll not ask that lady whether she believes what
      she has said, even in the anger and ill blood in which I and my friend
      here equally know she has spoken, though she subdues herself, with a
      determination that any one who has once seen her is not likely to forget.
      I'll not ask you, with your remembrance of my house and all belonging to
      it, whether you believe it. I'll only say that you have no profession to
      make to me or mine, and no forgiveness to entreat; and that all in the
      world that I ask you to do, is, to count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She looked at him for an instant, and then said frowningly, 'I won't. Miss
      Wade, take me away, please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The contention that raged within her had no softening in it now; it was
      wholly between passionate defiance and stubborn defiance. Her rich colour,
      her quick blood, her rapid breath, were all setting themselves against the
      opportunity of retracing their steps. 'I won't. I won't. I won't!' she
      repeated in a low, thick voice. 'I'd be torn to pieces first. I'd tear
      myself to pieces first!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Wade, who had released her hold, laid her hand protectingly on the
      girl's neck for a moment, and then said, looking round with her former
      smile and speaking exactly in her former tone, 'Gentlemen! What do you do
      upon that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Tattycoram, Tattycoram!' cried Mr Meagles, adjuring her besides with
      an earnest hand. 'Hear that lady's voice, look at that lady's face,
      consider what is in that lady's heart, and think what a future lies before
      you. My child, whatever you may think, that lady's influence over you&mdash;astonishing
      to us, and I should hardly go too far in saying terrible to us to see&mdash;is
      founded in passion fiercer than yours, and temper more violent than yours.
      What can you two be together? What can come of it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am alone here, gentlemen,' observed Miss Wade, with no change of voice
      or manner. 'Say anything you will.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Politeness must yield to this misguided girl, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles,
      'at her present pass; though I hope not altogether to dismiss it, even
      with the injury you do her so strongly before me. Excuse me for reminding
      you in her hearing&mdash;I must say it&mdash;that you were a mystery to
      all of us, and had nothing in common with any of us when she unfortunately
      fell in your way. I don't know what you are, but you don't hide, can't
      hide, what a dark spirit you have within you. If it should happen that you
      are a woman, who, from whatever cause, has a perverted delight in making a
      sister-woman as wretched as she is (I am old enough to have heard of
      such), I warn her against you, and I warn you against yourself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gentlemen!' said Miss Wade, calmly. 'When you have concluded&mdash;Mr
      Clennam, perhaps you will induce your friend&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not without another effort,' said Mr Meagles, stoutly. 'Tattycoram, my
      poor dear girl, count five-and-twenty.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0296m.jpg" alt="0296m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0296.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Do not reject the hope, the certainty, this kind man offers you,' said
      Clennam in a low emphatic voice. 'Turn to the friends you have not
      forgotten. Think once more!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I won't! Miss Wade,' said the girl, with her bosom swelling high, and
      speaking with her hand held to her throat, 'take me away!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tattycoram,' said Mr Meagles. 'Once more yet! The only thing I ask of you
      in the world, my child! Count five-and-twenty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She put her hands tightly over her ears, confusedly tumbling down her
      bright black hair in the vehemence of the action, and turned her face
      resolutely to the wall. Miss Wade, who had watched her under this final
      appeal with that strange attentive smile, and that repressing hand upon
      her own bosom with which she had watched her in her struggle at
      Marseilles, then put her arm about her waist as if she took possession of
      her for evermore.
    </p>
    <p>
      And there was a visible triumph in her face when she turned it to dismiss
      the visitors.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As it is the last time I shall have the honour,' she said, 'and as you
      have spoken of not knowing what I am, and also of the foundation of my
      influence here, you may now know that it is founded in a common cause.
      What your broken plaything is as to birth, I am. She has no name, I have
      no name. Her wrong is my wrong. I have nothing more to say to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was addressed to Mr Meagles, who sorrowfully went out. As Clennam
      followed, she said to him, with the same external composure and in the
      same level voice, but with a smile that is only seen on cruel faces: a
      very faint smile, lifting the nostril, scarcely touching the lips, and not
      breaking away gradually, but instantly dismissed when done with:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope the wife of your dear friend Mr Gowan, may be happy in the
      contrast of her extraction to this girl's and mine, and in the high good
      fortune that awaits her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 28. Nobody's Disappearance
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ot resting satisfied with the endeavours he had made to recover his lost
      charge, Mr Meagles addressed a letter of remonstrance, breathing nothing
      but goodwill, not only to her, but to Miss Wade too. No answer coming to
      these epistles, or to another written to the stubborn girl by the hand of
      her late young mistress, which might have melted her if anything could
      (all three letters were returned weeks afterwards as having been refused
      at the house-door), he deputed Mrs Meagles to make the experiment of a
      personal interview. That worthy lady being unable to obtain one, and being
      steadfastly denied admission, Mr Meagles besought Arthur to essay once
      more what he could do. All that came of his compliance was, his discovery
      that the empty house was left in charge of the old woman, that Miss Wade
      was gone, that the waifs and strays of furniture were gone, and that the
      old woman would accept any number of half-crowns and thank the donor
      kindly, but had no information whatever to exchange for those coins,
      beyond constantly offering for perusal a memorandum relative to fixtures,
      which the house-agent's young man had left in the hall.
    </p>
    <p>
      Unwilling, even under this discomfiture, to resign the ingrate and leave
      her hopeless, in case of her better dispositions obtaining the mastery
      over the darker side of her character, Mr Meagles, for six successive
      days, published a discreetly covert advertisement in the morning papers,
      to the effect that if a certain young person who had lately left home
      without reflection, would at any time apply to his address at Twickenham,
      everything would be as it had been before, and no reproaches need be
      apprehended. The unexpected consequences of this notification suggested to
      the dismayed Mr Meagles for the first time that some hundreds of young
      persons must be leaving their homes without reflection every day; for
      shoals of wrong young people came down to Twickenham, who, not finding
      themselves received with enthusiasm, generally demanded compensation by
      way of damages, in addition to coach-hire there and back. Nor were these
      the only uninvited clients whom the advertisement produced. The swarm of
      begging-letter writers, who would seem to be always watching eagerly for
      any hook, however small, to hang a letter upon, wrote to say that having
      seen the advertisement, they were induced to apply with confidence for
      various sums, ranging from ten shillings to fifty pounds: not because they
      knew anything about the young person, but because they felt that to part
      with those donations would greatly relieve the advertiser's mind. Several
      projectors, likewise, availed themselves of the same opportunity to
      correspond with Mr Meagles; as, for example, to apprise him that their
      attention having been called to the advertisement by a friend, they begged
      to state that if they should ever hear anything of the young person, they
      would not fail to make it known to him immediately, and that in the
      meantime if he would oblige them with the funds necessary for bringing to
      perfection a certain entirely novel description of Pump, the happiest
      results would ensue to mankind.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles and his family, under these combined discouragements, had begun
      reluctantly to give up Tattycoram as irrecoverable, when the new and
      active firm of Doyce and Clennam, in their private capacities, went down
      on a Saturday to stay at the cottage until Monday. The senior partner took
      the coach, and the junior partner took his walking-stick.
    </p>
    <p>
      A tranquil summer sunset shone upon him as he approached the end of his
      walk, and passed through the meadows by the river side. He had that sense
      of peace, and of being lightened of a weight of care, which country quiet
      awakens in the breasts of dwellers in towns. Everything within his view
      was lovely and placid. The rich foliage of the trees, the luxuriant grass
      diversified with wild flowers, the little green islands in the river, the
      beds of rushes, the water-lilies floating on the surface of the stream,
      the distant voices in boats borne musically towards him on the ripple of
      the water and the evening air, were all expressive of rest. In the
      occasional leap of a fish, or dip of an oar, or twittering of a bird not
      yet at roost, or distant barking of a dog, or lowing of a cow&mdash;in all
      such sounds, there was the prevailing breath of rest, which seemed to
      encompass him in every scent that sweetened the fragrant air. The long
      lines of red and gold in the sky, and the glorious track of the descending
      sun, were all divinely calm. Upon the purple tree-tops far away, and on
      the green height near at hand up which the shades were slowly creeping,
      there was an equal hush. Between the real landscape and its shadow in the
      water, there was no division; both were so untroubled and clear, and,
      while so fraught with solemn mystery of life and death, so hopefully
      reassuring to the gazer's soothed heart, because so tenderly and
      mercifully beautiful.
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam had stopped, not for the first time by many times, to look about
      him and suffer what he saw to sink into his soul, as the shadows, looked
      at, seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the water. He was slowly
      resuming his way, when he saw a figure in the path before him which he
      had, perhaps, already associated with the evening and its impressions.
    </p>
    <p>
      Minnie was there, alone. She had some roses in her hand, and seemed to
      have stood still on seeing him, waiting for him. Her face was towards him,
      and she appeared to have been coming from the opposite direction. There
      was a flutter in her manner, which Clennam had never seen in it before;
      and as he came near her, it entered his mind all at once that she was
      there of a set purpose to speak to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      She gave him her hand, and said, 'You wonder to see me here by myself? But
      the evening is so lovely, I have strolled further than I meant at first. I
      thought it likely I might meet you, and that made me more confident. You
      always come this way, do you not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      As Clennam said that it was his favourite way, he felt her hand falter on
      his arm, and saw the roses shake.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you let me give you one, Mr Clennam? I gathered them as I came out
      of the garden. Indeed, I almost gathered them for you, thinking it so
      likely I might meet you. Mr Doyce arrived more than an hour ago, and told
      us you were walking down.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His own hand shook, as he accepted a rose or two from hers and thanked
      her. They were now by an avenue of trees. Whether they turned into it on
      his movement or on hers matters little. He never knew how that was.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is very grave here,' said Clennam, 'but very pleasant at this hour.
      Passing along this deep shade, and out at that arch of light at the other
      end, we come upon the ferry and the cottage by the best approach, I
      think.'
    </p>
    <p>
      In her simple garden-hat and her light summer dress, with her rich brown
      hair naturally clustering about her, and her wonderful eyes raised to his
      for a moment with a look in which regard for him and trustfulness in him
      were strikingly blended with a kind of timid sorrow for him, she was so
      beautiful that it was well for his peace&mdash;or ill for his peace, he
      did not quite know which&mdash;that he had made that vigorous resolution
      he had so often thought about.
    </p>
    <p>
      She broke a momentary silence by inquiring if he knew that papa had been
      thinking of another tour abroad? He said he had heard it mentioned. She
      broke another momentary silence by adding, with some hesitation, that papa
      had abandoned the idea.
    </p>
    <p>
      At this, he thought directly, 'they are to be married.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam,' she said, hesitating more timidly yet, and speaking so low
      that he bent his head to hear her. 'I should very much like to give you my
      confidence, if you would not mind having the goodness to receive it. I
      should have very much liked to have given it to you long ago, because&mdash;I
      felt that you were becoming so much our friend.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How can I be otherwise than proud of it at any time! Pray give it to me.
      Pray trust me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I could never have been afraid of trusting you,' she returned, raising
      her eyes frankly to his face. 'I think I would have done so some time ago,
      if I had known how. But I scarcely know how, even now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Gowan,' said Arthur Clennam, 'has reason to be very happy. God bless
      his wife and him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She wept, as she tried to thank him. He reassured her, took her hand as it
      lay with the trembling roses in it on his arm, took the remaining roses
      from it, and put it to his lips. At that time, it seemed to him, he first
      finally resigned the dying hope that had flickered in nobody's heart so
      much to its pain and trouble; and from that time he became in his own
      eyes, as to any similar hope or prospect, a very much older man who had
      done with that part of life.
    </p>
    <p>
      He put the roses in his breast and they walked on for a little while,
      slowly and silently, under the umbrageous trees. Then he asked her, in a
      voice of cheerful kindness, was there anything else that she would say to
      him as her friend and her father's friend, many years older than herself;
      was there any trust she would repose in him, any service she would ask of
      him, any little aid to her happiness that she could give him the lasting
      gratification of believing it was in his power to render?
    </p>
    <p>
      She was going to answer, when she was so touched by some little hidden
      sorrow or sympathy&mdash;what could it have been?&mdash;that she said,
      bursting into tears again: 'O Mr Clennam! Good, generous, Mr Clennam, pray
      tell me you do not blame me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I blame you?' said Clennam. 'My dearest girl! I blame you? No!'
    </p>
    <p>
      After clasping both her hands upon his arm, and looking confidentially up
      into his face, with some hurried words to the effect that she thanked him
      from her heart (as she did, if it be the source of earnestness), she
      gradually composed herself, with now and then a word of encouragement from
      him, as they walked on slowly and almost silently under the darkening
      trees.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And, now, Minnie Gowan,' at length said Clennam, smiling; 'will you ask
      me nothing?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I have very much to ask of you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's well! I hope so; I am not disappointed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know how I am loved at home, and how I love home. You can hardly
      think it perhaps, dear Mr Clennam,' she spoke with great agitation,
      'seeing me going from it of my own free will and choice, but I do so
      dearly love it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure of that,' said Clennam. 'Can you suppose I doubt it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no. But it is strange, even to me, that loving it so much and being
      so much beloved in it, I can bear to cast it away. It seems so neglectful
      of it, so unthankful.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear girl,' said Clennam, 'it is in the natural progress and change of
      time. All homes are left so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I know; but all homes are not left with such a blank in them as
      there will be in mine when I am gone. Not that there is any scarcity of
      far better and more endearing and more accomplished girls than I am; not
      that I am much, but that they have made so much of me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Pet's affectionate heart was overcharged, and she sobbed while she
      pictured what would happen.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know what a change papa will feel at first, and I know that at first I
      cannot be to him anything like what I have been these many years. And it
      is then, Mr Clennam, then more than at any time, that I beg and entreat
      you to remember him, and sometimes to keep him company when you can spare
      a little while; and to tell him that you know I was fonder of him when I
      left him, than I ever was in all my life. For there is nobody&mdash;he
      told me so himself when he talked to me this very day&mdash;there is
      nobody he likes so well as you, or trusts so much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      A clue to what had passed between the father and daughter dropped like a
      heavy stone into the well of Clennam's heart, and swelled the water to his
      eyes. He said, cheerily, but not quite so cheerily as he tried to say,
      that it should be done&mdash;that he gave her his faithful promise.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I do not speak of mama,' said Pet, more moved by, and more pretty in,
      her innocent grief, than Clennam could trust himself even to consider&mdash;for
      which reason he counted the trees between them and the fading light as
      they slowly diminished in number&mdash;'it is because mama will understand
      me better in this action, and will feel my loss in a different way, and
      will look forward in a different manner. But you know what a dear, devoted
      mother she is, and you will remember her too; will you not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Let Minnie trust him, Clennam said, let Minnie trust him to do all she
      wished.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And, dear Mr Clennam,' said Minnie, 'because papa and one whom I need not
      name, do not fully appreciate and understand one another yet, as they will
      by-and-by; and because it will be the duty, and the pride, and pleasure of
      my new life, to draw them to a better knowledge of one another, and to be
      a happiness to one another, and to be proud of one another, and to love
      one another, both loving me so dearly; oh, as you are a kind, true man!
      when I am first separated from home (I am going a long distance away), try
      to reconcile papa to him a little more, and use your great influence to
      keep him before papa's mind free from prejudice and in his real form. Will
      you do this for me, as you are a noble-hearted friend?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Poor Pet! Self-deceived, mistaken child! When were such changes ever made
      in men's natural relations to one another: when was such reconcilement of
      ingrain differences ever effected! It has been tried many times by other
      daughters, Minnie; it has never succeeded; nothing has ever come of it but
      failure.
    </p>
    <p>
      So Clennam thought. So he did not say; it was too late. He bound himself
      to do all she asked, and she knew full well that he would do it.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were now at the last tree in the avenue. She stopped, and withdrew
      her arm. Speaking to him with her eyes lifted up to his, and with the hand
      that had lately rested on his sleeve trembling by touching one of the
      roses in his breast as an additional appeal to him, she said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Mr Clennam, in my happiness&mdash;for I am happy, though you have
      seen me crying&mdash;I cannot bear to leave any cloud between us. If you
      have anything to forgive me (not anything that I have wilfully done, but
      any trouble I may have caused you without meaning it, or having it in my
      power to help it), forgive me to-night out of your noble heart!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He stooped to meet the guileless face that met his without shrinking. He
      kissed it, and answered, Heaven knew that he had nothing to forgive. As he
      stooped to meet the innocent face once again, she whispered, 'Good-bye!'
      and he repeated it. It was taking leave of all his old hopes&mdash;all
      nobody's old restless doubts. They came out of the avenue next moment,
      arm-in-arm as they had entered it: and the trees seemed to close up behind
      them in the darkness, like their own perspective of the past.
    </p>
    <p>
      The voices of Mr and Mrs Meagles and Doyce were audible directly, speaking
      near the garden gate. Hearing Pet's name among them, Clennam called out,
      'She is here, with me.' There was some little wondering and laughing until
      they came up; but as soon as they had all come together, it ceased, and
      Pet glided away.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles, Doyce, and Clennam, without speaking, walked up and down on
      the brink of the river, in the light of the rising moon, for a few
      minutes; and then Doyce lingered behind, and went into the house. Mr
      Meagles and Clennam walked up and down together for a few minutes more
      without speaking, until at length the former broke silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Arthur,' said he, using that familiar address for the first time in their
      communication, 'do you remember my telling you, as we walked up and down
      one hot morning, looking over the harbour at Marseilles, that Pet's baby
      sister who was dead seemed to Mother and me to have grown as she had
      grown, and changed as she had changed?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You remember my saying that our thoughts had never been able to separate
      those twin sisters, and that, in our fancy, whatever Pet was, the other
      was?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, very well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, much subdued, 'I carry that fancy further
      to-night. I feel to-night, my dear fellow, as if you had loved my dead
      child very tenderly, and had lost her when she was like what Pet is now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you!' murmured Clennam, 'thank you!' And pressed his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you come in?' said Mr Meagles, presently.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In a little while.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0305m.jpg" alt="0305m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0305.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles fell away, and he was left alone. When he had walked on the
      river's brink in the peaceful moonlight for some half an hour, he put his
      hand in his breast and tenderly took out the handful of roses. Perhaps he
      put them to his heart, perhaps he put them to his lips, but certainly he
      bent down on the shore and gently launched them on the flowing river. Pale
      and unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them away.
    </p>
    <p>
      The lights were bright within doors when he entered, and the faces on
      which they shone, his own face not excepted, were soon quietly cheerful.
      They talked of many subjects (his partner never had had such a ready store
      to draw upon for the beguiling of the time), and so to bed, and to sleep.
      While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the
      river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near
      our hearts, flow from us to the eternal seas.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 29. Mrs Flintwinch goes on Dreaming
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he house in the city preserved its heavy dulness through all these
      transactions, and the invalid within it turned the same unvarying round of
      life. Morning, noon, and night, morning, noon, and night, each recurring
      with its accompanying monotony, always the same reluctant return of the
      same sequences of machinery, like a dragging piece of clockwork.
    </p>
    <p>
      The wheeled chair had its associated remembrances and reveries, one may
      suppose, as every place that is made the station of a human being has.
      Pictures of demolished streets and altered houses, as they formerly were
      when the occupant of the chair was familiar with them, images of people as
      they too used to be, with little or no allowance made for the lapse of
      time since they were seen; of these, there must have been many in the long
      routine of gloomy days. To stop the clock of busy existence at the hour
      when we were personally sequestered from it, to suppose mankind stricken
      motionless when we were brought to a stand-still, to be unable to measure
      the changes beyond our view by any larger standard than the shrunken one
      of our own uniform and contracted existence, is the infirmity of many
      invalids, and the mental unhealthiness of almost all recluses.
    </p>
    <p>
      What scenes and actors the stern woman most reviewed, as she sat from
      season to season in her one dark room, none knew but herself. Mr
      Flintwinch, with his wry presence brought to bear upon her daily like some
      eccentric mechanical force, would perhaps have screwed it out of her, if
      there had been less resistance in her; but she was too strong for him. So
      far as Mistress Affery was concerned, to regard her liege-lord and her
      disabled mistress with a face of blank wonder, to go about the house after
      dark with her apron over her head, always to listen for the strange noises
      and sometimes to hear them, and never to emerge from her ghostly, dreamy,
      sleep-waking state, was occupation enough for her.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a fair stroke of business doing, as Mistress Affery made out,
      for her husband had abundant occupation in his little office, and saw more
      people than had been used to come there for some years. This might easily
      be, the house having been long deserted; but he did receive letters, and
      comers, and keep books, and correspond. Moreover, he went about to other
      counting-houses, and to wharves, and docks, and to the Custom House, and
      to Garraway's Coffee House, and the Jerusalem Coffee House, and on
      'Change; so that he was much in and out. He began, too, sometimes of an
      evening, when Mrs Clennam expressed no particular wish for his society, to
      resort to a tavern in the neighbourhood to look at the shipping news and
      closing prices in the evening paper, and even to exchange small
      socialities with mercantile Sea Captains who frequented that
      establishment. At some period of every day, he and Mrs Clennam held a
      council on matters of business; and it appeared to Affery, who was always
      groping about, listening and watching, that the two clever ones were
      making money.
    </p>
    <p>
      The state of mind into which Mr Flintwinch's dazed lady had fallen, had
      now begun to be so expressed in all her looks and actions that she was
      held in very low account by the two clever ones, as a person, never of
      strong intellect, who was becoming foolish. Perhaps because her appearance
      was not of a commercial cast, or perhaps because it occurred to him that
      his having taken her to wife might expose his judgment to doubt in the
      minds of customers, Mr Flintwinch laid his commands upon her that she
      should hold her peace on the subject of her conjugal relations, and should
      no longer call him Jeremiah out of the domestic trio. Her frequent
      forgetfulness of this admonition intensified her startled manner, since Mr
      Flintwinch's habit of avenging himself on her remissness by making springs
      after her on the staircase, and shaking her, occasioned her to be always
      nervously uncertain when she might be thus waylaid next.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit had finished a long day's work in Mrs Clennam's room, and
      was neatly gathering up her shreds and odds and ends before going home. Mr
      Pancks, whom Affery had just shown in, was addressing an inquiry to Mrs
      Clennam on the subject of her health, coupled with the remark that,
      'happening to find himself in that direction,' he had looked in to
      inquire, on behalf of his proprietor, how she found herself. Mrs Clennam,
      with a deep contraction of her brows, was looking at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Casby knows,' said she, 'that I am not subject to changes. The change
      that I await here is the great change.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, ma'am?' returned Mr Pancks, with a wandering eye towards the
      figure of the little seamstress on her knee picking threads and fraying of
      her work from the carpet. 'You look nicely, ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I bear what I have to bear,' she answered. 'Do you what you have to do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, ma'am,' said Mr Pancks, 'such is my endeavour.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are often in this direction, are you not?' asked Mrs Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, yes, ma'am,' said Pancks, 'rather so lately; I have lately been
      round this way a good deal, owing to one thing and another.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Beg Mr Casby and his daughter not to trouble themselves, by deputy, about
      me. When they wish to see me, they know I am here to see them. They have
      no need to trouble themselves to send. You have no need to trouble
      yourself to come.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not the least trouble, ma'am,' said Mr Pancks. 'You really are looking
      uncommonly nicely, ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you. Good evening.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The dismissal, and its accompanying finger pointed straight at the door,
      was so curt and direct that Mr Pancks did not see his way to prolong his
      visit. He stirred up his hair with his sprightliest expression, glanced at
      the little figure again, said 'Good evening, ma 'am; don't come down, Mrs
      Affery, I know the road to the door,' and steamed out. Mrs Clennam, her
      chin resting on her hand, followed him with attentive and darkly
      distrustful eyes; and Affery stood looking at her as if she were
      spell-bound.
    </p>
    <p>
      Slowly and thoughtfully, Mrs Clennam's eyes turned from the door by which
      Pancks had gone out, to Little Dorrit, rising from the carpet. With her
      chin drooping more heavily on her hand, and her eyes vigilant and
      lowering, the sick woman sat looking at her until she attracted her
      attention. Little Dorrit coloured under such a gaze, and looked down. Mrs
      Clennam still sat intent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Little Dorrit,' she said, when she at last broke silence, 'what do you
      know of that man?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know anything of him, ma'am, except that I have seen him about,
      and that he has spoken to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What has he said to you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't understand what he has said, he is so strange. But nothing rough
      or disagreeable.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why does he come here to see you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know, ma'am,' said Little Dorrit, with perfect frankness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know that he does come here to see you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have fancied so,' said Little Dorrit. 'But why he should come here or
      anywhere for that, ma'am, I can't think.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam cast her eyes towards the ground, and with her strong, set
      face, as intent upon a subject in her mind as it had lately been upon the
      form that seemed to pass out of her view, sat absorbed. Some minutes
      elapsed before she came out of this thoughtfulness, and resumed her hard
      composure.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit in the meanwhile had been waiting to go, but afraid to
      disturb her by moving. She now ventured to leave the spot where she had
      been standing since she had risen, and to pass gently round by the wheeled
      chair. She stopped at its side to say 'Good night, ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam put out her hand, and laid it on her arm. Little Dorrit,
      confused under the touch, stood faltering. Perhaps some momentary
      recollection of the story of the Princess may have been in her mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tell me, Little Dorrit,' said Mrs Clennam, 'have you many friends now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very few, ma'am. Besides you, only Miss Flora and&mdash;one more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Meaning,' said Mrs Clennam, with her unbent finger again pointing to the
      door, 'that man?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no, ma'am!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Some friend of his, perhaps?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No ma'am.' Little Dorrit earnestly shook her head. 'Oh no! No one at all
      like him, or belonging to him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said Mrs Clennam, almost smiling. 'It is no affair of mine. I ask,
      because I take an interest in you; and because I believe I was your friend
      when you had no other who could serve you. Is that so?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, ma'am; indeed it is. I have been here many a time when, but for you
      and the work you gave me, we should have wanted everything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We,' repeated Mrs Clennam, looking towards the watch, once her dead
      husband's, which always lay upon her table. 'Are there many of you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only father and I, now. I mean, only father and I to keep regularly out
      of what we get.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you undergone many privations? You and your father and who else
      there may be of you?' asked Mrs Clennam, speaking deliberately, and
      meditatively turning the watch over and over.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sometimes it has been rather hard to live,' said Little Dorrit, in her
      soft voice, and timid uncomplaining way; 'but I think not harder&mdash;as
      to that&mdash;than many people find it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's well said!' Mrs Clennam quickly returned. 'That's the truth! You
      are a good, thoughtful girl. You are a grateful girl too, or I much
      mistake you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is only natural to be that. There is no merit in being that,' said
      Little Dorrit. 'I am indeed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam, with a gentleness of which the dreaming Affery had never
      dreamed her to be capable, drew down the face of her little seamstress,
      and kissed her on the forehead.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now go, Little Dorrit,' said she,'or you will be late, poor child!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In all the dreams Mistress Affery had been piling up since she first
      became devoted to the pursuit, she had dreamed nothing more astonishing
      than this. Her head ached with the idea that she would find the other
      clever one kissing Little Dorrit next, and then the two clever ones
      embracing each other and dissolving into tears of tenderness for all
      mankind. The idea quite stunned her, as she attended the light footsteps
      down the stairs, that the house door might be safely shut.
    </p>
    <p>
      On opening it to let Little Dorrit out, she found Mr Pancks, instead of
      having gone his way, as in any less wonderful place and among less
      wonderful phenomena he might have been reasonably expected to do,
      fluttering up and down the court outside the house. The moment he saw
      Little Dorrit, he passed her briskly, said with his finger to his nose (as
      Mrs Affery distinctly heard), 'Pancks the gipsy, fortune-telling,' and
      went away. 'Lord save us, here's a gipsy and a fortune-teller in it now!'
      cried Mistress Affery. 'What next!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She stood at the open door, staggering herself with this enigma, on a
      rainy, thundery evening. The clouds were flying fast, and the wind was
      coming up in gusts, banging some neighbouring shutters that had broken
      loose, twirling the rusty chimney-cowls and weather-cocks, and rushing
      round and round a confined adjacent churchyard as if it had a mind to blow
      the dead citizens out of their graves. The low thunder, muttering in all
      quarters of the sky at once, seemed to threaten vengeance for this
      attempted desecration, and to mutter, 'Let them rest! Let them rest!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Affery, whose fear of thunder and lightning was only to be
      equalled by her dread of the haunted house with a premature and
      preternatural darkness in it, stood undecided whether to go in or not,
      until the question was settled for her by the door blowing upon her in a
      violent gust of wind and shutting her out. 'What's to be done now, what's
      to be done now!' cried Mistress Affery, wringing her hands in this last
      uneasy dream of all; 'when she's all alone by herself inside, and can no
      more come down to open it than the churchyard dead themselves!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In this dilemma, Mistress Affery, with her apron as a hood to keep the
      rain off, ran crying up and down the solitary paved enclosure several
      times. Why she should then stoop down and look in at the keyhole of the
      door as if an eye would open it, it would be difficult to say; but it is
      none the less what most people would have done in the same situation, and
      it is what she did.
    </p>
    <p>
      From this posture she started up suddenly, with a half scream, feeling
      something on her shoulder. It was the touch of a hand; of a man's hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      The man was dressed like a traveller, in a foraging cap with fur about it,
      and a heap of cloak. He looked like a foreigner. He had a quantity of hair
      and moustache&mdash;jet black, except at the shaggy ends, where it had a
      tinge of red&mdash;and a high hook nose. He laughed at Mistress Affery's
      start and cry; and as he laughed, his moustache went up under his nose,
      and his nose came down over his moustache.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's the matter?' he asked in plain English. 'What are you frightened
      at?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At you,' panted Affery.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Me, madam?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And the dismal evening, and&mdash;and everything,' said Affery. 'And
      here! The wind has been and blown the door to, and I can't get in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hah!' said the gentleman, who took that very coolly. 'Indeed! Do you know
      such a name as Clennam about here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord bless us, I should think I did, I should think I did!' cried Affery,
      exasperated into a new wringing of hands by the inquiry.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where about here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where!' cried Affery, goaded into another inspection of the keyhole.
      'Where but here in this house? And she's all alone in her room, and lost
      the use of her limbs and can't stir to help herself or me, and t'other
      clever one's out, and Lord forgive me!' cried Affery, driven into a
      frantic dance by these accumulated considerations, 'if I ain't a-going
      headlong out of my mind!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Taking a warmer view of the matter now that it concerned himself, the
      gentleman stepped back to glance at the house, and his eye soon rested on
      the long narrow window of the little room near the hall-door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where may the lady be who has lost the use of her limbs, madam?' he
      inquired, with that peculiar smile which Mistress Affery could not choose
      but keep her eyes upon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Up there!' said Affery. 'Them two windows.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hah! I am of a fair size, but could not have the honour of presenting
      myself in that room without a ladder. Now, madam, frankly&mdash;frankness
      is a part of my character&mdash;shall I open the door for you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, bless you, sir, for a dear creetur, and do it at once,' cried
      Affery, 'for she may be a-calling to me at this very present minute, or
      may be setting herself a fire and burning herself to death, or there's no
      knowing what may be happening to her, and me a-going out of my mind at
      thinking of it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay, my good madam!' He restrained her impatience with a smooth white
      hand. 'Business-hours, I apprehend, are over for the day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes, yes,' cried Affery. 'Long ago.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let me make, then, a fair proposal. Fairness is a part of my character. I
      am just landed from the packet-boat, as you may see.' He showed her that
      his cloak was very wet, and that his boots were saturated with water; she
      had previously observed that he was dishevelled and sallow, as if from a
      rough voyage, and so chilled that he could not keep his teeth from
      chattering. 'I am just landed from the packet-boat, madam, and have been
      delayed by the weather: the infernal weather! In consequence of this,
      madam, some necessary business that I should otherwise have transacted
      here within the regular hours (necessary business because money-business),
      still remains to be done. Now, if you will fetch any authorised
      neighbouring somebody to do it in return for my opening the door, I'll
      open the door. If this arrangement should be objectionable, I'll&mdash;'
      and with the same smile he made a significant feint of backing away.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Affery, heartily glad to effect the proposed compromise, gave in
      her willing adhesion to it. The gentleman at once requested her to do him
      the favour of holding his cloak, took a short run at the narrow window,
      made a leap at the sill, clung his way up the bricks, and in a moment had
      his hand at the sash, raising it. His eyes looked so very sinister, as he
      put his leg into the room and glanced round at Mistress Affery, that she
      thought with a sudden coldness, if he were to go straight up-stairs to
      murder the invalid, what could she do to prevent him?
    </p>
    <p>
      Happily he had no such purpose; for he reappeared, in a moment, at the
      house door. 'Now, my dear madam,' he said, as he took back his cloak and
      threw it on, 'if you have the goodness to&mdash;what the Devil's that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The strangest of sounds. Evidently close at hand from the peculiar shock
      it communicated to the air, yet subdued as if it were far off. A tremble,
      a rumble, and a fall of some light dry matter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What the Devil is it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know what it is, but I've heard the like of it over and over
      again,' said Affery, who had caught his arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      He could hardly be a very brave man, even she thought in her dreamy start
      and fright, for his trembling lips had turned colourless. After listening
      a few moments, he made light of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bah! Nothing! Now, my dear madam, I think you spoke of some clever
      personage. Will you be so good as to confront me with that genius?' He
      held the door in his hand, as though he were quite ready to shut her out
      again if she failed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't you say anything about the door and me, then,' whispered Affery.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not a word.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And don't you stir from here, or speak if she calls, while I run round
      the corner.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam, I am a statue.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Affery had so vivid a fear of his going stealthily up-stairs the moment
      her back was turned, that after hurrying out of sight, she returned to the
      gateway to peep at him. Seeing him still on the threshold, more out of the
      house than in it, as if he had no love for darkness and no desire to probe
      its mysteries, she flew into the next street, and sent a message into the
      tavern to Mr Flintwinch, who came out directly. The two returning together&mdash;the
      lady in advance, and Mr Flintwinch coming up briskly behind, animated with
      the hope of shaking her before she could get housed&mdash;saw the
      gentleman standing in the same place in the dark, and heard the strong
      voice of Mrs Clennam calling from her room, 'Who is it? What is it? Why
      does no one answer? Who <i>is</i> that, down there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 30. The Word of a Gentleman
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Mr and Mrs Flintwinch panted up to the door of the old house in the
      twilight, Jeremiah within a second of Affery, the stranger started back.
      'Death of my soul!' he exclaimed. 'Why, how did you get here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch, to whom these words were spoken, repaid the stranger's
      wonder in full. He gazed at him with blank astonishment; he looked over
      his own shoulder, as expecting to see some one he had not been aware of
      standing behind him; he gazed at the stranger again, speechlessly, at a
      loss to know what he meant; he looked to his wife for explanation;
      receiving none, he pounced upon her, and shook her with such heartiness
      that he shook her cap off her head, saying between his teeth, with grim
      raillery, as he did it, 'Affery, my woman, you must have a dose, my woman!
      This is some of your tricks! You have been dreaming again, mistress.
      What's it about? Who is it? What does it mean! Speak out or be choked!
      It's the only choice I'll give you.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0314m.jpg" alt="0314m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0314.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      Supposing Mistress Affery to have any power of election at the moment, her
      choice was decidedly to be choked; for she answered not a syllable to this
      adjuration, but, with her bare head wagging violently backwards and
      forwards, resigned herself to her punishment. The stranger, however,
      picking up her cap with an air of gallantry, interposed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Permit me,' said he, laying his hand on the shoulder of Jeremiah, who
      stopped and released his victim. 'Thank you. Excuse me. Husband and wife I
      know, from this playfulness. Haha! Always agreeable to see that relation
      playfully maintained. Listen! May I suggest that somebody up-stairs, in
      the dark, is becoming energetically curious to know what is going on
      here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      This reference to Mrs Clennam's voice reminded Mr Flintwinch to step into
      the hall and call up the staircase. 'It's all right, I am here, Affery is
      coming with your light.' Then he said to the latter flustered woman, who
      was putting her cap on, 'Get out with you, and get up-stairs!' and then
      turned to the stranger and said to him, 'Now, sir, what might you please
      to want?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid,' said the stranger, 'I must be so troublesome as to propose
      a candle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True,' assented Jeremiah. 'I was going to do so. Please to stand where
      you are while I get one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The visitor was standing in the doorway, but turned a little into the
      gloom of the house as Mr Flintwinch turned, and pursued him with his eyes
      into the little room, where he groped about for a phosphorus box. When he
      found it, it was damp, or otherwise out of order; and match after match
      that he struck into it lighted sufficiently to throw a dull glare about
      his groping face, and to sprinkle his hands with pale little spots of
      fire, but not sufficiently to light the candle. The stranger, taking
      advantage of this fitful illumination of his visage, looked intently and
      wonderingly at him. Jeremiah, when he at last lighted the candle, knew he
      had been doing this, by seeing the last shade of a lowering watchfulness
      clear away from his face, as it broke into the doubtful smile that was a
      large ingredient in its expression.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Be so good,' said Jeremiah, closing the house door, and taking a pretty
      sharp survey of the smiling visitor in his turn, 'as to step into my
      counting-house.&mdash;It's all right, I tell you!' petulantly breaking off
      to answer the voice up-stairs, still unsatisfied, though Affery was there,
      speaking in persuasive tones. 'Don't I tell you it's all right? Preserve
      the woman, has she no reason at all in her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Timorous,' remarked the stranger.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Timorous?' said Mr Flintwinch, turning his head to retort, as he went
      before with the candle. 'More courageous than ninety men in a hundred,
      sir, let me tell you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Though an invalid?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Many years an invalid. Mrs Clennam. The only one of that name left in the
      House now. My partner.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Saying something apologetically as he crossed the hall, to the effect that
      at that time of night they were not in the habit of receiving any one, and
      were always shut up, Mr Flintwinch led the way into his own office, which
      presented a sufficiently business-like appearance. Here he put the light
      on his desk, and said to the stranger, with his wryest twist upon him,
      'Your commands.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My name is Blandois.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Blandois. I don't know it,' said Jeremiah.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought it possible,' resumed the other, 'that you might have been
      advised from Paris&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We have had no advice from Paris respecting anybody of the name of
      Blandois,' said Jeremiah.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Jeremiah stood in his favourite attitude. The smiling Mr Blandois, opening
      his cloak to get his hand to a breast-pocket, paused to say, with a laugh
      in his glittering eyes, which it occurred to Mr Flintwinch were too near
      together:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are so like a friend of mine! Not so identically the same as I
      supposed when I really did for the moment take you to be the same in the
      dusk&mdash;for which I ought to apologise; permit me to do so; a readiness
      to confess my errors is, I hope, a part of the frankness of my character&mdash;still,
      however, uncommonly like.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed?' said Jeremiah, perversely. 'But I have not received any letter
      of advice from anywhere respecting anybody of the name of Blandois.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Just so,' said the stranger.
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>Just</i> so,' said Jeremiah.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Blandois, not at all put out by this omission on the part of the
      correspondents of the house of Clennam and Co., took his pocket-book from
      his breast-pocket, selected a letter from that receptacle, and handed it
      to Mr Flintwinch. 'No doubt you are well acquainted with the writing.
      Perhaps the letter speaks for itself, and requires no advice. You are a
      far more competent judge of such affairs than I am. It is my misfortune to
      be, not so much a man of business, as what the world calls (arbitrarily) a
      gentleman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch took the letter, and read, under date of Paris, 'We have to
      present to you, on behalf of a highly esteemed correspondent of our Firm,
      M. Blandois, of this city,' &amp;c. &amp;c. 'Such facilities as he may
      require and such attentions as may lie in your power,' &amp;c. &amp;c.
      'Also have to add that if you will honour M. Blandois' drafts at sight to
      the extent of, say Fifty Pounds sterling (50<i>l</i>.),' &amp;c. &amp;c.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very good, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Take a chair. To the extent of
      anything that our House can do&mdash;we are in a retired, old-fashioned,
      steady way of business, sir&mdash;we shall be happy to render you our best
      assistance. I observe, from the date of this, that we could not yet be
      advised of it. Probably you came over with the delayed mail that brings
      the advice.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That I came over with the delayed mail, sir,' returned Mr Blandois,
      passing his white hand down his high-hooked nose, 'I know to the cost of
      my head and stomach: the detestable and intolerable weather having racked
      them both. You see me in the plight in which I came out of the packet
      within this half-hour. I ought to have been here hours ago, and then I
      should not have to apologise&mdash;permit me to apologise&mdash;for
      presenting myself so unreasonably, and frightening&mdash;no, by-the-bye,
      you said not frightening; permit me to apologise again&mdash;the esteemed
      lady, Mrs Clennam, in her invalid chamber above stairs.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Swagger and an air of authorised condescension do so much, that Mr
      Flintwinch had already begun to think this a highly gentlemanly personage.
      Not the less unyielding with him on that account, he scraped his chin and
      said, what could he have the honour of doing for Mr Blandois to-night, out
      of business hours?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Faith!' returned that gentleman, shrugging his cloaked shoulders, 'I must
      change, and eat and drink, and be lodged somewhere. Have the kindness to
      advise me, a total stranger, where, and money is a matter of perfect
      indifference until to-morrow. The nearer the place, the better. Next door,
      if that's all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch was slowly beginning, 'For a gentleman of your habits, there
      is not in this immediate neighbourhood any hotel&mdash;' when Mr Blandois
      took him up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So much for my habits! my dear sir,' snapping his fingers. 'A citizen of
      the world has no habits. That I am, in my poor way, a gentleman, by
      Heaven! I will not deny, but I have no unaccommodating prejudiced habits.
      A clean room, a hot dish for dinner, and a bottle of not absolutely
      poisonous wine, are all I want tonight. But I want that much without the
      trouble of going one unnecessary inch to get it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is,' said Mr Flintwinch, with more than his usual deliberation, as
      he met, for a moment, Mr Blandois' shining eyes, which were restless;
      'there is a coffee-house and tavern close here, which, so far, I can
      recommend; but there's no style about it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dispense with style!' said Mr Blandois, waving his hand. 'Do me the
      honour to show me the house, and introduce me there (if I am not too
      troublesome), and I shall be infinitely obliged.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch, upon this, looked up his hat, and lighted Mr Blandois
      across the hall again. As he put the candle on a bracket, where the dark
      old panelling almost served as an extinguisher for it, he bethought
      himself of going up to tell the invalid that he would not be absent five
      minutes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oblige me,' said the visitor, on his saying so, 'by presenting my card of
      visit. Do me the favour to add that I shall be happy to wait on Mrs
      Clennam, to offer my personal compliments, and to apologise for having
      occasioned any agitation in this tranquil corner, if it should suit her
      convenience to endure the presence of a stranger for a few minutes, after
      he shall have changed his wet clothes and fortified himself with something
      to eat and drink.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Jeremiah made all despatch, and said, on his return, 'She'll be glad to
      see you, sir; but, being conscious that her sick room has no attractions,
      wishes me to say that she won't hold you to your offer, in case you should
      think better of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To think better of it,' returned the gallant Blandois, 'would be to
      slight a lady; to slight a lady would be to be deficient in chivalry
      towards the sex; and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character!'
      Thus expressing himself, he threw the draggled skirt of his cloak over his
      shoulder, and accompanied Mr Flintwinch to the tavern; taking up on the
      road a porter who was waiting with his portmanteau on the outer side of
      the gateway.
    </p>
    <p>
      The house was kept in a homely manner, and the condescension of Mr
      Blandois was infinite. It seemed to fill to inconvenience the little bar
      in which the widow landlady and her two daughters received him; it was
      much too big for the narrow wainscoted room with a bagatelle-board in it,
      that was first proposed for his reception; it perfectly swamped the little
      private holiday sitting-room of the family, which was finally given up to
      him. Here, in dry clothes and scented linen, with sleeked hair, a great
      ring on each forefinger and a massive show of watch-chain, Mr Blandois
      waiting for his dinner, lolling on a window-seat with his knees drawn up,
      looked (for all the difference in the setting of the jewel) fearfully and
      wonderfully like a certain Monsieur Rigaud who had once so waited for his
      breakfast, lying on the stone ledge of the iron grating of a cell in a
      villainous dungeon at Marseilles.
    </p>
    <p>
      His greed at dinner, too, was closely in keeping with the greed of
      Monsieur Rigaud at breakfast. His avaricious manner of collecting all the
      eatables about him, and devouring some with his eyes while devouring
      others with his jaws, was the same manner. His utter disregard of other
      people, as shown in his way of tossing the little womanly toys of
      furniture about, flinging favourite cushions under his boots for a softer
      rest, and crushing delicate coverings with his big body and his great
      black head, had the same brute selfishness at the bottom of it. The softly
      moving hands that were so busy among the dishes had the old wicked
      facility of the hands that had clung to the bars. And when he could eat no
      more, and sat sucking his delicate fingers one by one and wiping them on a
      cloth, there wanted nothing but the substitution of vine-leaves to finish
      the picture.
    </p>
    <p>
      On this man, with his moustache going up and his nose coming down in that
      most evil of smiles, and with his surface eyes looking as if they belonged
      to his dyed hair, and had had their natural power of reflecting light
      stopped by some similar process, Nature, always true, and never working in
      vain, had set the mark, Beware! It was not her fault, if the warning were
      fruitless. She is never to blame in any such instance.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Blandois, having finished his repast and cleaned his fingers, took a
      cigar from his pocket, and, lying on the window-seat again, smoked it out
      at his leisure, occasionally apostrophising the smoke as it parted from
      his thin lips in a thin stream:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Blandois, you shall turn the tables on society, my little child. Haha!
      Holy blue, you have begun well, Blandois! At a pinch, an excellent master
      in English or French; a man for the bosom of families! You have a quick
      perception, you have humour, you have ease, you have insinuating manners,
      you have a good appearance; in effect, you are a gentleman! A gentleman
      you shall live, my small boy, and a gentleman you shall die. You shall
      win, however the game goes. They shall all confess your merit, Blandois.
      You shall subdue the society which has grievously wronged you, to your own
      high spirit. Death of my soul! You are high spirited by right and by
      nature, my Blandois!'
    </p>
    <p>
      To such soothing murmurs did this gentleman smoke out his cigar and drink
      out his bottle of wine. Both being finished, he shook himself into a
      sitting attitude; and with the concluding serious apostrophe, 'Hold, then!
      Blandois, you ingenious one, have all your wits about you!' arose and went
      back to the house of Clennam and Co.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was received at the door by Mistress Affery, who, under instructions
      from her lord, had lighted up two candles in the hall and a third on the
      staircase, and who conducted him to Mrs Clennam's room. Tea was prepared
      there, and such little company arrangements had been made as usually
      attended the reception of expected visitors. They were slight on the
      greatest occasion, never extending beyond the production of the China
      tea-service, and the covering of the bed with a sober and sad drapery. For
      the rest, there was the bier-like sofa with the block upon it, and the
      figure in the widow's dress, as if attired for execution; the fire topped
      by the mound of damped ashes; the grate with its second little mound of
      ashes; the kettle and the smell of black dye; all as they had been for
      fifteen years.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch presented the gentleman commended to the consideration of
      Clennam and Co. Mrs Clennam, who had the letter lying before her, bent her
      head and requested him to sit. They looked very closely at one another.
      That was but natural curiosity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thank you, sir, for thinking of a disabled woman like me. Few who come
      here on business have any remembrance to bestow on one so removed from
      observation. It would be idle to expect that they should have. Out of
      sight, out of mind. While I am grateful for the exception, I don't
      complain of the rule.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Blandois, in his most gentlemanly manner, was afraid he had disturbed
      her by unhappily presenting himself at such an unconscionable time. For
      which he had already offered his best apologies to Mr&mdash;he begged
      pardon&mdash;but by name had not the distinguished honour&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Flintwinch has been connected with the House many years.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Blandois was Mr Flintwinch's most obedient humble servant. He entreated
      Mr Flintwinch to receive the assurance of his profoundest consideration.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My husband being dead,' said Mrs Clennam, 'and my son preferring another
      pursuit, our old House has no other representative in these days than Mr
      Flintwinch.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you call yourself?' was the surly demand of that gentleman. 'You
      have the head of two men.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My sex disqualifies me,' she proceeded with merely a slight turn of her
      eyes in Jeremiah's direction, 'from taking a responsible part in the
      business, even if I had the ability; and therefore Mr Flintwinch combines
      my interest with his own, and conducts it. It is not what it used to be;
      but some of our old friends (principally the writers of this letter) have
      the kindness not to forget us, and we retain the power of doing what they
      entrust to us as efficiently as we ever did. This however is not
      interesting to you. You are English, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Faith, madam, no; I am neither born nor bred in England. In effect, I am
      of no country,' said Mr Blandois, stretching out his leg and smiting it:
      'I descend from half-a-dozen countries.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been much about the world?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is true. By Heaven, madam, I have been here and there and everywhere!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have no ties, probably. Are not married?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam,' said Mr Blandois, with an ugly fall of his eyebrows, 'I adore
      your sex, but I am not married&mdash;never was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Affery, who stood at the table near him, pouring out the tea,
      happened in her dreamy state to look at him as he said these words, and to
      fancy that she caught an expression in his eyes which attracted her own
      eyes so that she could not get them away. The effect of this fancy was to
      keep her staring at him with the tea-pot in her hand, not only to her own
      great uneasiness, but manifestly to his, too; and, through them both, to
      Mrs Clennam's and Mr Flintwinch's. Thus a few ghostly moments supervened,
      when they were all confusedly staring without knowing why.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Affery,' her mistress was the first to say, 'what is the matter with
      you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know,' said Mistress Affery, with her disengaged left hand
      extended towards the visitor. 'It ain't me. It's him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What does this good woman mean?' cried Mr Blandois, turning white, hot,
      and slowly rising with a look of such deadly wrath that it contrasted
      surprisingly with the slight force of his words. 'How is it possible to
      understand this good creature?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's <i>not</i> possible,' said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself rapidly
      in that direction. 'She don't know what she means. She's an idiot, a
      wanderer in her mind. She shall have a dose, she shall have such a dose!
      Get along with you, my woman,' he added in her ear, 'get along with you,
      while you know you're Affery, and before you're shaken to yeast.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Affery, sensible of the danger in which her identity stood,
      relinquished the tea-pot as her husband seized it, put her apron over her
      head, and in a twinkling vanished. The visitor gradually broke into a
      smile, and sat down again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'll excuse her, Mr Blandois,' said Jeremiah, pouring out the tea
      himself, 'she's failing and breaking up; that's what she's about. Do you
      take sugar, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, no tea for me.&mdash;Pardon my observing it, but that's a very
      remarkable watch!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The tea-table was drawn up near the sofa, with a small interval between it
      and Mrs Clennam's own particular table. Mr Blandois in his gallantry had
      risen to hand that lady her tea (her dish of toast was already there), and
      it was in placing the cup conveniently within her reach that the watch,
      lying before her as it always did, attracted his attention. Mrs Clennam
      looked suddenly up at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I be permitted? Thank you. A fine old-fashioned watch,' he said,
      taking it in his hand. 'Heavy for use, but massive and genuine. I have a
      partiality for everything genuine. Such as I am, I am genuine myself. Hah!
      A gentleman's watch with two cases in the old fashion. May I remove it
      from the outer case? Thank you. Aye? An old silk watch-lining, worked with
      beads! I have often seen these among old Dutch people and Belgians. Quaint
      things!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They are old-fashioned, too,' said Mrs Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very. But this is not so old as the watch, I think?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Extraordinary how they used to complicate these cyphers!' remarked Mr
      Blandois, glancing up with his own smile again. 'Now is this D. N. F.? It
      might be almost anything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Those are the letters.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch, who had been observantly pausing all this time with a cup
      of tea in his hand, and his mouth open ready to swallow the contents,
      began to do so: always entirely filling his mouth before he emptied it at
      a gulp; and always deliberating again before he refilled it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'D. N. F. was some tender, lovely, fascinating fair-creature, I make no
      doubt,' observed Mr Blandois, as he snapped on the case again. 'I adore
      her memory on the assumption. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I adore
      but too readily. It may be a vice, it may be a virtue, but adoration of
      female beauty and merit constitutes three parts of my character, madam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch had by this time poured himself out another cup of tea,
      which he was swallowing in gulps as before, with his eyes directed to the
      invalid.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may be heart-free here, sir,' she returned to Mr Blandois. 'Those
      letters are not intended, I believe, for the initials of any name.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of a motto, perhaps,' said Mr Blandois, casually.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of a sentence. They have always stood, I believe, for Do Not Forget!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And naturally,' said Mr Blandois, replacing the watch and stepping
      backward to his former chair, 'you do <i>not</i> forget.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch, finishing his tea, not only took a longer gulp than he had
      taken yet, but made his succeeding pause under new circumstances: that is
      to say, with his head thrown back and his cup held still at his lips,
      while his eyes were still directed at the invalid. She had that force of
      face, and that concentrated air of collecting her firmness or obstinacy,
      which represented in her case what would have been gesture and action in
      another, as she replied with her deliberate strength of speech:
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir, I do not forget. To lead a life as monotonous as mine has been
      during many years, is not the way to forget. To lead a life of
      self-correction is not the way to forget. To be sensible of having (as we
      all have, every one of us, all the children of Adam!) offences to expiate
      and peace to make, does not justify the desire to forget. Therefore I have
      long dismissed it, and I neither forget nor wish to forget.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch, who had latterly been shaking the sediment at the bottom of
      his tea-cup, round and round, here gulped it down, and putting the cup in
      the tea-tray, as done with, turned his eyes upon Mr Blandois as if to ask
      him what he thought of that?
    </p>
    <p>
      'All expressed, madam,' said Mr Blandois, with his smoothest bow and his
      white hand on his breast, 'by the word "naturally," which I am proud to
      have had sufficient apprehension and appreciation (but without
      appreciation I could not be Blandois) to employ.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me, sir,' she returned, 'if I doubt the likelihood of a gentleman
      of pleasure, and change, and politeness, accustomed to court and to be
      courted&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh madam! By Heaven!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;If I doubt the likelihood of such a character quite comprehending
      what belongs to mine in my circumstances. Not to obtrude doctrine upon
      you,' she looked at the rigid pile of hard pale books before her, '(for
      you go your own way, and the consequences are on your own head), I will
      say this much: that I shape my course by pilots, strictly by proved and
      tried pilots, under whom I cannot be shipwrecked&mdash;can not be&mdash;and
      that if I were unmindful of the admonition conveyed in those three
      letters, I should not be half as chastened as I am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was curious how she seized the occasion to argue with some invisible
      opponent. Perhaps with her own better sense, always turning upon herself
      and her own deception.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I forgot my ignorances in my life of health and freedom, I might
      complain of the life to which I am now condemned. I never do; I never have
      done. If I forgot that this scene, the Earth, is expressly meant to be a
      scene of gloom, and hardship, and dark trial, for the creatures who are
      made out of its dust, I might have some tenderness for its vanities. But I
      have no such tenderness. If I did not know that we are, every one, the
      subject (most justly the subject) of a wrath that must be satisfied, and
      against which mere actions are nothing, I might repine at the difference
      between me, imprisoned here, and the people who pass that gateway yonder.
      But I take it as a grace and favour to be elected to make the satisfaction
      I am making here, to know what I know for certain here, and to work out
      what I have worked out here. My affliction might otherwise have had no
      meaning to me. Hence I would forget, and I do forget, nothing. Hence I am
      contented, and say it is better with me than with millions.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she spoke these words, she put her hand upon the watch, and restored it
      to the precise spot on her little table which it always occupied. With her
      touch lingering upon it, she sat for some moments afterwards, looking at
      it steadily and half-defiantly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Blandois, during this exposition, had been strictly attentive, keeping
      his eyes fastened on the lady, and thoughtfully stroking his moustache
      with his two hands. Mr Flintwinch had been a little fidgety, and now
      struck in.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, there, there!' said he. 'That is quite understood, Mrs Clennam,
      and you have spoken piously and well. Mr Blandois, I suspect, is not of a
      pious cast.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'On the contrary, sir!' that gentleman protested, snapping his fingers.
      'Your pardon! It's a part of my character. I am sensitive, ardent,
      conscientious, and imaginative. A sensitive, ardent, conscientious, and
      imaginative man, Mr Flintwinch, must be that, or nothing!'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was an inkling of suspicion in Mr Flintwinch's face that he might be
      nothing, as he swaggered out of his chair (it was characteristic of this
      man, as it is of all men similarly marked, that whatever he did, he
      overdid, though it were sometimes by only a hairsbreadth), and approached
      to take his leave of Mrs Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'With what will appear to you the egotism of a sick old woman, sir,' she
      then said, 'though really through your accidental allusion, I have been
      led away into the subject of myself and my infirmities. Being so
      considerate as to visit me, I hope you will be likewise so considerate as
      to overlook that. Don't compliment me, if you please.' For he was
      evidently going to do it. 'Mr Flintwinch will be happy to render you any
      service, and I hope your stay in this city may prove agreeable.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Blandois thanked her, and kissed his hand several times. 'This is an
      old room,' he remarked, with a sudden sprightliness of manner, looking
      round when he got near the door, 'I have been so interested that I have
      not observed it. But it's a genuine old room.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is a genuine old house,' said Mrs Clennam, with her frozen smile. 'A
      place of no pretensions, but a piece of antiquity.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Faith!' cried the visitor. 'If Mr Flintwinch would do me the favour to
      take me through the rooms on my way out, he could hardly oblige me more.
      An old house is a weakness with me. I have many weaknesses, but none
      greater. I love and study the picturesque in all its varieties. I have
      been called picturesque myself. It is no merit to be picturesque&mdash;I
      have greater merits, perhaps&mdash;but I may be, by an accident. Sympathy,
      sympathy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you beforehand, Mr Blandois, that you'll find it very dingy and
      very bare,' said Jeremiah, taking up the candle. 'It's not worth your
      looking at.'But Mr Blandois, smiting him in a friendly manner on the back,
      only laughed; so the said Blandois kissed his hand again to Mrs Clennam,
      and they went out of the room together.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't care to go up-stairs?' said Jeremiah, on the landing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'On the contrary, Mr Flintwinch; if not tiresome to you, I shall be
      ravished!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch, therefore, wormed himself up the staircase, and Mr Blandois
      followed close. They ascended to the great garret bed-room which Arthur
      had occupied on the night of his return. 'There, Mr Blandois!' said
      Jeremiah, showing it, 'I hope you may think that worth coming so high to
      see. I confess I don't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Blandois being enraptured, they walked through other garrets and
      passages, and came down the staircase again. By this time Mr Flintwinch
      had remarked that he never found the visitor looking at any room, after
      throwing one quick glance around, but always found the visitor looking at
      him, Mr Flintwinch. With this discovery in his thoughts, he turned about
      on the staircase for another experiment. He met his eyes directly; and on
      the instant of their fixing one another, the visitor, with that ugly play
      of nose and moustache, laughed (as he had done at every similar moment
      since they left Mrs Clennam's chamber) a diabolically silent laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      As a much shorter man than the visitor, Mr Flintwinch was at the physical
      disadvantage of being thus disagreeably leered at from a height; and as he
      went first down the staircase, and was usually a step or two lower than
      the other, this disadvantage was at the time increased. He postponed
      looking at Mr Blandois again until this accidental inequality was removed
      by their having entered the late Mr Clennam's room. But, then twisting
      himself suddenly round upon him, he found his look unchanged.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A most admirable old house,' smiled Mr Blandois. 'So mysterious. Do you
      never hear any haunted noises here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Noises,' returned Mr Flintwinch. 'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor see any devils?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not,' said Mr Flintwinch, grimly screwing himself at his questioner, 'not
      any that introduce themselves under that name and in that capacity.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Haha! A portrait here, I see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      (Still looking at Mr Flintwinch, as if he were the portrait.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a portrait, sir, as you observe.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I ask the subject, Mr Flintwinch?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, deceased. Her husband.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Former owner of the remarkable watch, perhaps?' said the visitor.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch, who had cast his eyes towards the portrait, twisted himself
      about again, and again found himself the subject of the same look and
      smile. 'Yes, Mr Blandois,' he replied tartly. 'It was his, and his uncle's
      before him, and Lord knows who before him; and that's all I can tell you
      of its pedigree.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's a strongly marked character, Mr Flintwinch, our friend up-stairs.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir,' said Jeremiah, twisting himself at the visitor again, as he
      did during the whole of this dialogue, like some screw-machine that fell
      short of its grip; for the other never changed, and he always felt obliged
      to retreat a little. 'She is a remarkable woman. Great fortitude&mdash;great
      strength of mind.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They must have been very happy,' said Blandois.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who?' demanded Mr Flintwinch, with another screw at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Blandois shook his right forefinger towards the sick room, and his left
      forefinger towards the portrait, and then, putting his arms akimbo and
      striding his legs wide apart, stood smiling down at Mr Flintwinch with the
      advancing nose and the retreating moustache.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As happy as most other married people, I suppose,' returned Mr
      Flintwinch. 'I can't say. I don't know. There are secrets in all
      families.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Secrets!' cried Mr Blandois, quickly. 'Say it again, my son.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say,' replied Mr Flintwinch, upon whom he had swelled himself so
      suddenly that Mr Flintwinch found his face almost brushed by the dilated
      chest. 'I say there are secrets in all families.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So there are,' cried the other, clapping him on both shoulders, and
      rolling him backwards and forwards. 'Haha! you are right. So there are!
      Secrets! Holy Blue! There are the devil's own secrets in some families, Mr
      Flintwinch!' With that, after clapping Mr Flintwinch on both shoulders
      several times, as if in a friendly and humorous way he were rallying him
      on a joke he had made, he threw up his arms, threw back his head, hooked
      his hands together behind it, and burst into a roar of laughter. It was in
      vain for Mr Flintwinch to try another screw at him. He had his laugh out.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, favour me with the candle a moment,' he said, when he had done. 'Let
      us have a look at the husband of the remarkable lady. Hah!' holding up the
      light at arm's length. 'A decided expression of face here too, though not
      of the same character. Looks as if he were saying, what is it&mdash;Do Not
      Forget&mdash;does he not, Mr Flintwinch? By Heaven, sir, he does!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As he returned the candle, he looked at him once more; and then, leisurely
      strolling out with him into the hall, declared it to be a charming old
      house indeed, and one which had so greatly pleased him that he would not
      have missed inspecting it for a hundred pounds.
    </p>
    <p>
      Throughout these singular freedoms on the part of Mr Blandois, which
      involved a general alteration in his demeanour, making it much coarser and
      rougher, much more violent and audacious than before, Mr Flintwinch, whose
      leathern face was not liable to many changes, preserved its immobility
      intact. Beyond now appearing perhaps, to have been left hanging a trifle
      too long before that friendly operation of cutting down, he outwardly
      maintained an equable composure. They had brought their survey to a close
      in the little room at the side of the hall, and he stood there, eyeing Mr
      Blandois.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad you are so well satisfied, sir,' was his calm remark. 'I didn't
      expect it. You seem to be quite in good spirits.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In admirable spirits,' returned Blandois. 'Word of honour! never more
      refreshed in spirits. Do you ever have presentiments, Mr Flintwinch?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not sure that I know what you mean by the term, sir,' replied that
      gentleman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say, in this case, Mr Flintwinch, undefined anticipations of pleasure to
      come.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can't say I'm sensible of such a sensation at present,' returned Mr
      Flintwinch with the utmost gravity. 'If I should find it coming on, I'll
      mention it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now I,' said Blandois, 'I, my son, have a presentiment to-night that we
      shall be well acquainted. Do you find it coming on?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'N-no,' returned Mr Flintwinch, deliberately inquiring of himself. 'I
      can't say I do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have a strong presentiment that we shall become intimately acquainted.&mdash;You
      have no feeling of that sort yet?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not yet,' said Mr Flintwinch.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Blandois, taking him by both shoulders again, rolled him about a little
      in his former merry way, then drew his arm through his own, and invited
      him to come off and drink a bottle of wine like a dear deep old dog as he
      was.
    </p>
    <p>
      Without a moment's indecision, Mr Flintwinch accepted the invitation, and
      they went out to the quarters where the traveller was lodged, through a
      heavy rain which had rattled on the windows, roofs, and pavements, ever
      since nightfall. The thunder and lightning had long ago passed over, but
      the rain was furious. On their arrival at Mr Blandois' room, a bottle of
      port wine was ordered by that gallant gentleman; who (crushing every
      pretty thing he could collect, in the soft disposition of his dainty
      figure) coiled himself upon the window-seat, while Mr Flintwinch took a
      chair opposite to him, with the table between them. Mr Blandois proposed
      having the largest glasses in the house, to which Mr Flintwinch assented.
      The bumpers filled, Mr Blandois, with a roystering gaiety, clinked the top
      of his glass against the bottom of Mr Flintwinch's, and the bottom of his
      glass against the top of Mr Flintwinch's, and drank to the intimate
      acquaintance he foresaw. Mr Flintwinch gravely pledged him, and drank all
      the wine he could get, and said nothing. As often as Mr Blandois clinked
      glasses (which was at every replenishment), Mr Flintwinch stolidly did his
      part of the clinking, and would have stolidly done his companion's part of
      the wine as well as his own: being, except in the article of palate, a
      mere cask.
    </p>
    <p>
      In short, Mr Blandois found that to pour port wine into the reticent
      Flintwinch was, not to open him but to shut him up. Moreover, he had the
      appearance of a perfect ability to go on all night; or, if occasion were,
      all next day and all next night; whereas Mr Blandois soon grew
      indistinctly conscious of swaggering too fiercely and boastfully. He
      therefore terminated the entertainment at the end of the third bottle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You will draw upon us to-morrow, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch, with a
      business-like face at parting.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My Cabbage,' returned the other, taking him by the collar with both
      hands, 'I'll draw upon you; have no fear. Adieu, my Flintwinch. Receive at
      parting;' here he gave him a southern embrace, and kissed him soundly on
      both cheeks; 'the word of a gentleman! By a thousand Thunders, you shall
      see me again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He did not present himself next day, though the letter of advice came duly
      to hand. Inquiring after him at night, Mr Flintwinch found, with surprise,
      that he had paid his bill and gone back to the Continent by way of Calais.
      Nevertheless, Jeremiah scraped out of his cogitating face a lively
      conviction that Mr Blandois would keep his word on this occasion, and
      would be seen again.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 31. Spirit
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>nybody may pass, any day, in the thronged thoroughfares of the
      metropolis, some meagre, wrinkled, yellow old man (who might be supposed
      to have dropped from the stars, if there were any star in the Heavens dull
      enough to be suspected of casting off so feeble a spark), creeping along
      with a scared air, as though bewildered and a little frightened by the
      noise and bustle. This old man is always a little old man. If he were ever
      a big old man, he has shrunk into a little old man; if he were always a
      little old man, he has dwindled into a less old man. His coat is a colour,
      and cut, that never was the mode anywhere, at any period. Clearly, it was
      not made for him, or for any individual mortal. Some wholesale contractor
      measured Fate for five thousand coats of such quality, and Fate has lent
      this old coat to this old man, as one of a long unfinished line of many
      old men. It has always large dull metal buttons, similar to no other
      buttons. This old man wears a hat, a thumbed and napless and yet an
      obdurate hat, which has never adapted itself to the shape of his poor
      head. His coarse shirt and his coarse neckcloth have no more individuality
      than his coat and hat; they have the same character of not being his&mdash;of
      not being anybody's. Yet this old man wears these clothes with a certain
      unaccustomed air of being dressed and elaborated for the public ways; as
      though he passed the greater part of his time in a nightcap and gown. And
      so, like the country mouse in the second year of a famine, come to see the
      town mouse, and timidly threading his way to the town-mouse's lodging
      through a city of cats, this old man passes in the streets.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sometimes, on holidays towards evening, he will be seen to walk with a
      slightly increased infirmity, and his old eyes will glimmer with a moist
      and marshy light. Then the little old man is drunk. A very small measure
      will overset him; he may be bowled off his unsteady legs with a half-pint
      pot. Some pitying acquaintance&mdash;chance acquaintance very often&mdash;has
      warmed up his weakness with a treat of beer, and the consequence will be
      the lapse of a longer time than usual before he shall pass again. For the
      little old man is going home to the Workhouse; and on his good behaviour
      they do not let him out often (though methinks they might, considering the
      few years he has before him to go out in, under the sun); and on his bad
      behaviour they shut him up closer than ever in a grove of two score and
      nineteen more old men, every one of whom smells of all the others.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Plornish's father,&mdash;a poor little reedy piping old gentleman,
      like a worn-out bird; who had been in what he called the music-binding
      business, and met with great misfortunes, and who had seldom been able to
      make his way, or to see it or to pay it, or to do anything at all with it
      but find it no thoroughfare,&mdash;had retired of his own accord to the
      Workhouse which was appointed by law to be the Good Samaritan of his
      district (without the twopence, which was bad political economy), on the
      settlement of that execution which had carried Mr Plornish to the
      Marshalsea College. Previous to his son-in-law's difficulties coming to
      that head, Old Nandy (he was always so called in his legal Retreat, but he
      was Old Mr Nandy among the Bleeding Hearts) had sat in a corner of the
      Plornish fireside, and taken his bite and sup out of the Plornish
      cupboard. He still hoped to resume that domestic position when Fortune
      should smile upon his son-in-law; in the meantime, while she preserved an
      immovable countenance, he was, and resolved to remain, one of these little
      old men in a grove of little old men with a community of flavour.
    </p>
    <p>
      But no poverty in him, and no coat on him that never was the mode, and no
      Old Men's Ward for his dwelling-place, could quench his daughter's
      admiration. Mrs Plornish was as proud of her father's talents as she could
      possibly have been if they had made him Lord Chancellor. She had as firm a
      belief in the sweetness and propriety of his manners as she could possibly
      have had if he had been Lord Chamberlain. The poor little old man knew
      some pale and vapid little songs, long out of date, about Chloe, and
      Phyllis, and Strephon being wounded by the son of Venus; and for Mrs
      Plornish there was no such music at the Opera as the small internal
      flutterings and chirpings wherein he would discharge himself of these
      ditties, like a weak, little, broken barrel-organ, ground by a baby. On
      his 'days out,' those flecks of light in his flat vista of pollard old
      men,' it was at once Mrs Plornish's delight and sorrow, when he was strong
      with meat, and had taken his full halfpenny-worth of porter, to say, 'Sing
      us a song, Father.' Then he would give them Chloe, and if he were in
      pretty good spirits, Phyllis also&mdash;Strephon he had hardly been up to
      since he went into retirement&mdash;and then would Mrs Plornish declare
      she did believe there never was such a singer as Father, and wipe her
      eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      If he had come from Court on these occasions, nay, if he had been the
      noble Refrigerator come home triumphantly from a foreign court to be
      presented and promoted on his last tremendous failure, Mrs Plornish could
      not have handed him with greater elevation about Bleeding Heart Yard.
      'Here's Father,' she would say, presenting him to a neighbour. 'Father
      will soon be home with us for good, now. Ain't Father looking well?
      Father's a sweeter singer than ever; you'd never have forgotten it, if
      you'd aheard him just now.' As to Mr Plornish, he had married these
      articles of belief in marrying Mr Nandy's daughter, and only wondered how
      it was that so gifted an old gentleman had not made a fortune. This he
      attributed, after much reflection, to his musical genius not having been
      scientifically developed in his youth. 'For why,' argued Mr Plornish, 'why
      go a-binding music when you've got it in yourself? That's where it is, I
      consider.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Nandy had a patron: one patron. He had a patron who in a certain
      sumptuous way&mdash;an apologetic way, as if he constantly took an
      admiring audience to witness that he really could not help being more free
      with this old fellow than they might have expected, on account of his
      simplicity and poverty&mdash;was mightily good to him. Old Nandy had been
      several times to the Marshalsea College, communicating with his son-in-law
      during his short durance there; and had happily acquired to himself, and
      had by degrees and in course of time much improved, the patronage of the
      Father of that national institution.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit was in the habit of receiving this old man as if the old man
      held of him in vassalage under some feudal tenure. He made little treats
      and teas for him, as if he came in with his homage from some outlying
      district where the tenantry were in a primitive state. It seemed as if
      there were moments when he could by no means have sworn but that the old
      man was an ancient retainer of his, who had been meritoriously faithful.
      When he mentioned him, he spoke of him casually as his old pensioner. He
      had a wonderful satisfaction in seeing him, and in commenting on his
      decayed condition after he was gone. It appeared to him amazing that he
      could hold up his head at all, poor creature. 'In the Workhouse, sir, the
      Union; no privacy, no visitors, no station, no respect, no speciality.
      Most deplorable!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was Old Nandy's birthday, and they let him out. He said nothing about
      its being his birthday, or they might have kept him in; for such old men
      should not be born. He passed along the streets as usual to Bleeding Heart
      Yard, and had his dinner with his daughter and son-in-law, and gave them
      Phyllis. He had hardly concluded, when Little Dorrit looked in to see how
      they all were.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dorrit,' said Mrs Plornish, 'here's Father! Ain't he looking nice?
      And such voice he's in!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit gave him her hand, and smilingly said she had not seen him
      this long time.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, they're rather hard on poor Father,' said Mrs Plornish with a
      lengthening face, 'and don't let him have half as much change and fresh
      air as would benefit him. But he'll soon be home for good, now. Won't you,
      Father?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my dear, I hope so. In good time, please God.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here Mr Plornish delivered himself of an oration which he invariably made,
      word for word the same, on all such opportunities. It was couched in the
      following terms:
    </p>
    <p>
      'John Edward Nandy. Sir. While there's a ounce of wittles or drink of any
      sort in this present roof, you're fully welcome to your share on it. While
      there's a handful of fire or a mouthful of bed in this present roof,
      you're fully welcome to your share on it. If so be as there should be
      nothing in this present roof, you should be as welcome to your share on it
      as if it was something, much or little. And this is what I mean and so I
      don't deceive you, and consequently which is to stand out is to entreat of
      you, and therefore why not do it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      To this lucid address, which Mr Plornish always delivered as if he had
      composed it (as no doubt he had) with enormous labour, Mrs Plornish's
      father pipingly replied:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thank you kindly, Thomas, and I know your intentions well, which is the
      same I thank you kindly for. But no, Thomas. Until such times as it's not
      to take it out of your children's mouths, which take it is, and call it by
      what name you will it do remain and equally deprive, though may they come,
      and too soon they can not come, no Thomas, no!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Plornish, who had been turning her face a little away with a corner of
      her apron in her hand, brought herself back to the conversation again by
      telling Miss Dorrit that Father was going over the water to pay his
      respects, unless she knew of any reason why it might not be agreeable.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her answer was, 'I am going straight home, and if he will come with me I
      shall be so glad to take care of him&mdash;so glad,' said Little Dorrit,
      always thoughtful of the feelings of the weak, 'of his company.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, Father!' cried Mrs Plornish. 'Ain't you a gay young man to be
      going for a walk along with Miss Dorrit! Let me tie your neck-handkerchief
      into a regular good bow, for you're a regular beau yourself, Father, if
      ever there was one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With this filial joke his daughter smartened him up, and gave him a loving
      hug, and stood at the door with her weak child in her arms, and her strong
      child tumbling down the steps, looking after her little old father as he
      toddled away with his arm under Little Dorrit's.
    </p>
    <p>
      They walked at a slow pace, and Little Dorrit took him by the Iron Bridge
      and sat him down there for a rest, and they looked over at the water and
      talked about the shipping, and the old man mentioned what he would do if
      he had a ship full of gold coming home to him (his plan was to take a
      noble lodging for the Plornishes and himself at a Tea Gardens, and live
      there all the rest of their lives, attended on by the waiter), and it was
      a special birthday of the old man. They were within five minutes of their
      destination, when, at the corner of her own street, they came upon Fanny
      in her new bonnet bound for the same port.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, good gracious me, Amy!' cried that young lady starting. 'You never
      mean it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mean what, Fanny dear?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well! I could have believed a great deal of you,' returned the young lady
      with burning indignation, 'but I don't think even I could have believed
      this, of even you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny!' cried Little Dorrit, wounded and astonished.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! Don't Fanny me, you mean little thing, don't! The idea of coming
      along the open streets, in the broad light of day, with a Pauper!' (firing
      off the last word as if it were a ball from an air-gun).
    </p>
    <p>
      'O Fanny!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you not to Fanny me, for I'll not submit to it! I never knew such
      a thing. The way in which you are resolved and determined to disgrace us
      on all occasions, is really infamous. You bad little thing!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does it disgrace anybody,' said Little Dorrit, very gently, 'to take care
      of this poor old man?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, miss,' returned her sister, 'and you ought to know it does. And you
      do know it does, and you do it because you know it does. The principal
      pleasure of your life is to remind your family of their misfortunes. And
      the next great pleasure of your existence is to keep low company. But,
      however, if you have no sense of decency, I have. You'll please to allow
      me to go on the other side of the way, unmolested.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With this, she bounced across to the opposite pavement. The old disgrace,
      who had been deferentially bowing a pace or two off (for Little Dorrit had
      let his arm go in her wonder, when Fanny began), and who had been hustled
      and cursed by impatient passengers for stopping the way, rejoined his
      companion, rather giddy, and said, 'I hope nothing's wrong with your
      honoured father, Miss? I hope there's nothing the matter in the honoured
      family?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no,' returned Little Dorrit. 'No, thank you. Give me your arm again,
      Mr Nandy. We shall soon be there now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      So she talked to him as she had talked before, and they came to the Lodge
      and found Mr Chivery on the lock, and went in. Now, it happened that the
      Father of the Marshalsea was sauntering towards the Lodge at the moment
      when they were coming out of it, entering the prison arm in arm. As the
      spectacle of their approach met his view, he displayed the utmost
      agitation and despondency of mind; and&mdash;altogether regardless of Old
      Nandy, who, making his reverence, stood with his hat in his hand, as he
      always did in that gracious presence&mdash;turned about, and hurried in at
      his own doorway and up the staircase.
    </p>
    <p>
      Leaving the old unfortunate, whom in an evil hour she had taken under her
      protection, with a hurried promise to return to him directly, Little
      Dorrit hastened after her father, and, on the staircase, found Fanny
      following her, and flouncing up with offended dignity. The three came into
      the room almost together; and the Father sat down in his chair, buried his
      face in his hands, and uttered a groan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course,' said Fanny. 'Very proper. Poor, afflicted Pa! Now, I hope you
      believe me, Miss?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it, father?' cried Little Dorrit, bending over him. 'Have I made
      you unhappy, father? Not I, I hope!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You hope, indeed! I dare say! Oh, you'&mdash;Fanny paused for a
      sufficiently strong expression&mdash;'you Common-minded little Amy! You
      complete prison-child!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He stopped these angry reproaches with a wave of his hand, and sobbed out,
      raising his face and shaking his melancholy head at his younger daughter,
      'Amy, I know that you are innocent in intention. But you have cut me to
      the soul.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Innocent in intention!' the implacable Fanny struck in. 'Stuff in
      intention! Low in intention! Lowering of the family in intention!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Father!' cried Little Dorrit, pale and trembling. 'I am very sorry. Pray
      forgive me. Tell me how it is, that I may not do it again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How it is, you prevaricating little piece of goods!' cried Fanny. 'You
      know how it is. I have told you already, so don't fly in the face of
      Providence by attempting to deny it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush! Amy,' said the father, passing his pocket-handkerchief several
      times across his face, and then grasping it convulsively in the hand that
      dropped across his knee, 'I have done what I could to keep you select
      here; I have done what I could to retain you a position here. I may have
      succeeded; I may not. You may know it; you may not. I give no opinion. I
      have endured everything here but humiliation. That I have happily been
      spared&mdash;until this day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here his convulsive grasp unclosed itself, and he put his
      pocket-handkerchief to his eyes again. Little Dorrit, on the ground beside
      him, with her imploring hand upon his arm, watched him remorsefully.
      Coming out of his fit of grief, he clenched his pocket-handkerchief once
      more.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Humiliation I have happily been spared until this day. Through all my
      troubles there has been that&mdash;Spirit in myself, and that&mdash;that
      submission to it, if I may use the term, in those about me, which has
      spared me&mdash;ha&mdash;humiliation. But this day, this minute, I have
      keenly felt it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course! How could it be otherwise?' exclaimed the irrepressible Fanny.
      'Careering and prancing about with a Pauper!' (air-gun again).
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, dear father,' cried Little Dorrit, 'I don't justify myself for
      having wounded your dear heart&mdash;no! Heaven knows I don't!' She
      clasped her hands in quite an agony of distress. 'I do nothing but beg and
      pray you to be comforted and overlook it. But if I had not known that you
      were kind to the old man yourself, and took much notice of him, and were
      always glad to see him, I would not have come here with him, father, I
      would not, indeed. What I have been so unhappy as to do, I have done in
      mistake. I would not wilfully bring a tear to your eyes, dear love!' said
      Little Dorrit, her heart well-nigh broken, 'for anything the world could
      give me, or anything it could take away.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny, with a partly angry and partly repentant sob, began to cry herself,
      and to say&mdash;as this young lady always said when she was half in
      passion and half out of it, half spiteful with herself and half spiteful
      with everybody else&mdash;that she wished she were dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Father of the Marshalsea in the meantime took his younger daughter to
      his breast, and patted her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, there! Say no more, Amy, say no more, my child. I will forget it
      as soon as I can. I,' with hysterical cheerfulness, 'I&mdash;shall soon be
      able to dismiss it. It is perfectly true, my dear, that I am always glad
      to see my old pensioner&mdash;as such, as such&mdash;and that I do&mdash;ha&mdash;extend
      as much protection and kindness to the&mdash;hum&mdash;the bruised reed&mdash;I
      trust I may so call him without impropriety&mdash;as in my circumstances,
      I can. It is quite true that this is the case, my dear child. At the same
      time, I preserve in doing this, if I may&mdash;ha&mdash;if I may use the
      expression&mdash;Spirit. Becoming Spirit. And there are some things which
      are,' he stopped to sob, 'irreconcilable with that, and wound that&mdash;wound
      it deeply. It is not that I have seen my good Amy attentive, and&mdash;ha&mdash;condescending
      to my old pensioner&mdash;it is not <i>that</i> that hurts me. It is, if I
      am to close the painful subject by being explicit, that I have seen my
      child, my own child, my own daughter, coming into this College out of the
      public streets&mdash;smiling! smiling!&mdash;arm in arm with&mdash;O my
      God, a livery!'
    </p>
    <p>
      This reference to the coat of no cut and no time, the unfortunate
      gentleman gasped forth, in a scarcely audible voice, and with his clenched
      pocket-handkerchief raised in the air. His excited feelings might have
      found some further painful utterance, but for a knock at the door, which
      had been already twice repeated, and to which Fanny (still wishing herself
      dead, and indeed now going so far as to add, buried) cried 'Come in!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, Young John!' said the Father, in an altered and calmed voice. 'What
      is it, Young John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A letter for you, sir, being left in the Lodge just this minute, and a
      message with it, I thought, happening to be there myself, sir, I would
      bring it to your room.' The speaker's attention was much distracted by the
      piteous spectacle of Little Dorrit at her father's feet, with her head
      turned away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, John? Thank you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The letter is from Mr Clennam, sir&mdash;it's the answer&mdash;and the
      message was, sir, that Mr Clennam also sent his compliments, and word that
      he would do himself the pleasure of calling this afternoon, hoping to see
      you, and likewise,' attention more distracted than before, 'Miss Amy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' As the Father glanced into the letter (there was a bank-note in it),
      he reddened a little, and patted Amy on the head afresh. 'Thank you, Young
      John. Quite right. Much obliged to you for your attention. No one
      waiting?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir, no one waiting.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, John. How is your mother, Young John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir, she's not quite as well as we could wish&mdash;in fact,
      we none of us are, except father&mdash;but she's pretty well, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say we sent our remembrances, will you? Say kind remembrances, if you
      please, Young John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir, I will.' And Mr Chivery junior went his way, having
      spontaneously composed on the spot an entirely new epitaph for himself, to
      the effect that Here lay the body of John Chivery, Who, Having at such a
      date, Beheld the idol of his life, In grief and tears, And feeling unable
      to bear the harrowing spectacle, Immediately repaired to the abode of his
      inconsolable parents, And terminated his existence by his own rash act.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, there, Amy!' said the Father, when Young John had closed the door,
      'let us say no more about it.' The last few minutes had improved his
      spirits remarkably, and he was quite lightsome. 'Where is my old pensioner
      all this while? We must not leave him by himself any longer, or he will
      begin to suppose he is not welcome, and that would pain me. Will you fetch
      him, my child, or shall I?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you wouldn't mind, father,' said Little Dorrit, trying to bring her
      sobbing to a close.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly I will go, my dear. I forgot; your eyes are rather red. There!
      Cheer up, Amy. Don't be uneasy about me. I am quite myself again, my love,
      quite myself. Go to your room, Amy, and make yourself look comfortable and
      pleasant to receive Mr Clennam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I would rather stay in my own room, Father,' returned Little Dorrit,
      finding it more difficult than before to regain her composure. 'I would
      far rather not see Mr Clennam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, fie, fie, my dear, that's folly. Mr Clennam is a very gentlemanly man&mdash;very
      gentlemanly. A little reserved at times; but I will say extremely
      gentlemanly. I couldn't think of your not being here to receive Mr
      Clennam, my dear, especially this afternoon. So go and freshen yourself
      up, Amy; go and freshen yourself up, like a good girl.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus directed, Little Dorrit dutifully rose and obeyed: only pausing for a
      moment as she went out of the room, to give her sister a kiss of
      reconciliation. Upon which, that young lady, feeling much harassed in her
      mind, and having for the time worn out the wish with which she generally
      relieved it, conceived and executed the brilliant idea of wishing Old
      Nandy dead, rather than that he should come bothering there like a
      disgusting, tiresome, wicked wretch, and making mischief between two
      sisters.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Father of the Marshalsea, even humming a tune, and wearing his black
      velvet cap a little on one side, so much improved were his spirits, went
      down into the yard, and found his old pensioner standing there hat in hand
      just within the gate, as he had stood all this time. 'Come, Nandy!' said
      he, with great suavity. 'Come up-stairs, Nandy; you know the way; why
      don't you come up-stairs?' He went the length, on this occasion, of giving
      him his hand and saying, 'How are you, Nandy? Are you pretty well?' To
      which that vocalist returned, 'I thank you, honoured sir, I am all the
      better for seeing your honour.' As they went along the yard, the Father of
      the Marshalsea presented him to a Collegian of recent date. 'An old
      acquaintance of mine, sir, an old pensioner.' And then said, 'Be covered,
      my good Nandy; put your hat on,' with great consideration.
    </p>
    <p>
      His patronage did not stop here; for he charged Maggy to get the tea
      ready, and instructed her to buy certain tea-cakes, fresh butter, eggs,
      cold ham, and shrimps: to purchase which collation he gave her a bank-note
      for ten pounds, laying strict injunctions on her to be careful of the
      change. These preparations were in an advanced stage of progress, and his
      daughter Amy had come back with her work, when Clennam presented himself;
      whom he most graciously received, and besought to join their meal.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, my love, you know Mr Clennam even better than I have the happiness
      of doing. Fanny, my dear, you are acquainted with Mr Clennam.' Fanny
      acknowledged him haughtily; the position she tacitly took up in all such
      cases being that there was a vast conspiracy to insult the family by not
      understanding it, or sufficiently deferring to it, and here was one of the
      conspirators. 'This, Mr Clennam, you must know, is an old pensioner of
      mine, Old Nandy, a very faithful old man.' (He always spoke of him as an
      object of great antiquity, but he was two or three years younger than
      himself.) 'Let me see. You know Plornish, I think? I think my daughter Amy
      has mentioned to me that you know poor Plornish?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O yes!' said Arthur Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, sir, this is Mrs Plornish's father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed? I am glad to see him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You would be more glad if you knew his many good qualities, Mr Clennam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope I shall come to know them through knowing him,' said Arthur,
      secretly pitying the bowed and submissive figure.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is a holiday with him, and he comes to see his old friends, who are
      always glad to see him,' observed the Father of the Marshalsea. Then he
      added behind his hand, ('Union, poor old fellow. Out for the day.')
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0336m.jpg" alt="0336m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0336.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      By this time Maggy, quietly assisted by her Little Mother, had spread the
      board, and the repast was ready. It being hot weather and the prison very
      close, the window was as wide open as it could be pushed. 'If Maggy will
      spread that newspaper on the window-sill, my dear,' remarked the Father
      complacently and in a half whisper to Little Dorrit, 'my old pensioner can
      have his tea there, while we are having ours.'
    </p>
    <p>
      So, with a gulf between him and the good company of about a foot in width,
      standard measure, Mrs Plornish's father was handsomely regaled. Clennam
      had never seen anything like his magnanimous protection by that other
      Father, he of the Marshalsea; and was lost in the contemplation of its
      many wonders.
    </p>
    <p>
      The most striking of these was perhaps the relishing manner in which he
      remarked on the pensioner's infirmities and failings, as if he were a
      gracious Keeper making a running commentary on the decline of the harmless
      animal he exhibited.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not ready for more ham yet, Nandy? Why, how slow you are! (His last
      teeth,' he explained to the company, 'are going, poor old boy.')
    </p>
    <p>
      At another time, he said, 'No shrimps, Nandy?' and on his not instantly
      replying, observed, ('His hearing is becoming very defective. He'll be
      deaf directly.')
    </p>
    <p>
      At another time he asked him, 'Do you walk much, Nandy, about the yard
      within the walls of that place of yours?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir; no. I haven't any great liking for that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, to be sure,' he assented. 'Very natural.' Then he privately informed
      the circle ('Legs going.')
    </p>
    <p>
      Once he asked the pensioner, in that general clemency which asked him
      anything to keep him afloat, how old his younger grandchild was?
    </p>
    <p>
      'John Edward,' said the pensioner, slowly laying down his knife and fork
      to consider. 'How old, sir? Let me think now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Father of the Marshalsea tapped his forehead ('Memory weak.')
    </p>
    <p>
      'John Edward, sir? Well, I really forget. I couldn't say at this minute,
      sir, whether it's two and two months, or whether it's two and five months.
      It's one or the other.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't distress yourself by worrying your mind about it,' he returned,
      with infinite forbearance. ('Faculties evidently decaying&mdash;old man
      rusts in the life he leads!')
    </p>
    <p>
      The more of these discoveries that he persuaded himself he made in the
      pensioner, the better he appeared to like him; and when he got out of his
      chair after tea to bid the pensioner good-bye, on his intimating that he
      feared, honoured sir, his time was running out, he made himself look as
      erect and strong as possible.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We don't call this a shilling, Nandy, you know,' he said, putting one in
      his hand. 'We call it tobacco.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Honoured sir, I thank you. It shall buy tobacco. My thanks and duty to
      Miss Amy and Miss Fanny. I wish you good night, Mr Clennam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And mind you don't forget us, you know, Nandy,' said the Father. 'You
      must come again, mind, whenever you have an afternoon. You must not come
      out without seeing us, or we shall be jealous. Good night, Nandy. Be very
      careful how you descend the stairs, Nandy; they are rather uneven and
      worn.' With that he stood on the landing, watching the old man down: and
      when he came into the room again, said, with a solemn satisfaction on him,
      'A melancholy sight that, Mr Clennam, though one has the consolation of
      knowing that he doesn't feel it himself. The poor old fellow is a dismal
      wreck. Spirit broken and gone&mdash;pulverised&mdash;crushed out of him,
      sir, completely!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As Clennam had a purpose in remaining, he said what he could responsive to
      these sentiments, and stood at the window with their enunciator, while
      Maggy and her Little Mother washed the tea-service and cleared it away. He
      noticed that his companion stood at the window with the air of an affable
      and accessible Sovereign, and that, when any of his people in the yard
      below looked up, his recognition of their salutes just stopped short of a
      blessing.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Little Dorrit had her work on the table, and Maggy hers on the
      bedstead, Fanny fell to tying her bonnet as a preliminary to her
      departure. Arthur, still having his purpose, still remained. At this time
      the door opened, without any notice, and Mr Tip came in. He kissed Amy as
      she started up to meet him, nodded to Fanny, nodded to his father, gloomed
      on the visitor without further recognition, and sat down.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tip, dear,' said Little Dorrit, mildly, shocked by this, 'don't you see&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I see, Amy. If you refer to the presence of any visitor you have
      here&mdash;I say, if you refer to that,' answered Tip, jerking his head
      with emphasis towards his shoulder nearest Clennam, 'I see!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that all you say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's all I say. And I suppose,' added the lofty young man, after a
      moment's pause, 'that visitor will understand me, when I say that's all I
      say. In short, I suppose the visitor will understand that he hasn't used
      me like a gentleman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not understand that,' observed the obnoxious personage referred to
      with tranquillity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No? Why, then, to make it clearer to you, sir, I beg to let you know that
      when I address what I call a properly-worded appeal, and an urgent appeal,
      and a delicate appeal, to an individual, for a small temporary
      accommodation, easily within his power&mdash;easily within his power,
      mind!&mdash;and when that individual writes back word to me that he begs
      to be excused, I consider that he doesn't treat me like a gentleman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Father of the Marshalsea, who had surveyed his son in silence, no
      sooner heard this sentiment, than he began in angry voice:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'How dare you&mdash;' But his son stopped him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, don't ask me how I dare, father, because that's bosh. As to the fact
      of the line of conduct I choose to adopt towards the individual present,
      you ought to be proud of my showing a proper spirit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should think so!' cried Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A proper spirit?' said the Father. 'Yes, a proper spirit; a becoming
      spirit. Is it come to this that my son teaches me&mdash;<i>me</i>&mdash;spirit!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, don't let us bother about it, father, or have any row on the
      subject. I have fully made up my mind that the individual present has not
      treated me like a gentleman. And there's an end of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But there is not an end of it, sir,' returned the Father. 'But there
      shall not be an end of it. You have made up your mind? You have made up
      your mind?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, <i>I</i> have. What's the good of keeping on like that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because,' returned the Father, in a great heat, 'you had no right to make
      up your mind to what is monstrous, to what is&mdash;ha&mdash;immoral, to
      what is&mdash;hum&mdash;parricidal. No, Mr Clennam, I beg, sir. Don't ask
      me to desist; there is a&mdash;hum&mdash;a general principle involved
      here, which rises even above considerations of&mdash;ha&mdash;hospitality.
      I object to the assertion made by my son. I&mdash;ha&mdash;I personally
      repel it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, what is it to you, father?' returned the son, over his shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it to me, sir? I have a&mdash;hum&mdash;a spirit, sir, that will
      not endure it. I,' he took out his pocket-handkerchief again and dabbed
      his face. 'I am outraged and insulted by it. Let me suppose the case that
      I myself may at a certain time&mdash;ha&mdash;or times, have made a&mdash;hum&mdash;an
      appeal, and a properly-worded appeal, and a delicate appeal, and an urgent
      appeal to some individual for a small temporary accommodation. Let me
      suppose that that accommodation could have been easily extended, and was
      not extended, and that that individual informed me that he begged to be
      excused. Am I to be told by my own son, that I therefore received
      treatment not due to a gentleman, and that I&mdash;ha&mdash;I submitted to
      it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      His daughter Amy gently tried to calm him, but he would not on any account
      be calmed. He said his spirit was up, and wouldn't endure this.
    </p>
    <p>
      Was he to be told that, he wished to know again, by his own son on his own
      hearth, to his own face? Was that humiliation to be put upon him by his
      own blood?
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are putting it on yourself, father, and getting into all this injury
      of your own accord!' said the young gentleman morosely. 'What I have made
      up my mind about has nothing to do with you. What I said had nothing to do
      with you. Why need you go trying on other people's hats?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I reply it has everything to do with me,' returned the Father. 'I point
      out to you, sir, with indignation, that&mdash;hum&mdash;the&mdash;ha&mdash;delicacy
      and peculiarity of your father's position should strike you dumb, sir, if
      nothing else should, in laying down such&mdash;ha&mdash;such unnatural
      principles. Besides; if you are not filial, sir, if you discard that duty,
      you are at least&mdash;hum&mdash;not a Christian? Are you&mdash;ha&mdash;an
      Atheist? And is it Christian, let me ask you, to stigmatise and denounce
      an individual for begging to be excused this time, when the same
      individual may&mdash;ha&mdash;respond with the required accommodation next
      time? Is it the part of a Christian not to&mdash;hum&mdash;not to try him
      again?' He had worked himself into quite a religious glow and fervour.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I see precious well,' said Mr Tip, rising, 'that I shall get no sensible
      or fair argument here to-night, and so the best thing I can do is to cut.
      Good night, Amy. Don't be vexed. I am very sorry it happens here, and you
      here, upon my soul I am; but I can't altogether part with my spirit, even
      for your sake, old girl.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With those words he put on his hat and went out, accompanied by Miss
      Fanny; who did not consider it spirited on her part to take leave of
      Clennam with any less opposing demonstration than a stare, importing that
      she had always known him for one of the large body of conspirators.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they were gone, the Father of the Marshalsea was at first inclined to
      sink into despondency again, and would have done so, but that a gentleman
      opportunely came up within a minute or two to attend him to the Snuggery.
      It was the gentleman Clennam had seen on the night of his own accidental
      detention there, who had that impalpable grievance about the
      misappropriated Fund on which the Marshal was supposed to batten. He
      presented himself as deputation to escort the Father to the Chair, it
      being an occasion on which he had promised to preside over the assembled
      Collegians in the enjoyment of a little Harmony.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Such, you see, Mr Clennam,' said the Father, 'are the incongruities of my
      position here. But a public duty! No man, I am sure, would more readily
      recognise a public duty than yourself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam besought him not to delay a moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, my dear, if you can persuade Mr Clennam to stay longer, I can leave
      the honours of our poor apology for an establishment with confidence in
      your hands, and perhaps you may do something towards erasing from Mr
      Clennam's mind the&mdash;ha&mdash;untoward and unpleasant circumstance
      which has occurred since tea-time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam assured him that it had made no impression on his mind, and
      therefore required no erasure.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear sir,' said the Father, with a removal of his black cap and a
      grasp of Clennam's hand, combining to express the safe receipt of his note
      and enclosure that afternoon, 'Heaven ever bless you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      So, at last, Clennam's purpose in remaining was attained, and he could
      speak to Little Dorrit with nobody by. Maggy counted as nobody, and she
      was by.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 32. More Fortune-Telling
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>aggy sat at her work in her great white cap with its quantity of opaque
      frilling hiding what profile she had (she had none to spare), and her
      serviceable eye brought to bear upon her occupation, on the window side of
      the room. What with her flapping cap, and what with her unserviceable eye,
      she was quite partitioned off from her Little Mother, whose seat was
      opposite the window. The tread and shuffle of feet on the pavement of the
      yard had much diminished since the taking of the Chair, the tide of
      Collegians having set strongly in the direction of Harmony. Some few who
      had no music in their souls, or no money in their pockets, dawdled about;
      and the old spectacle of the visitor-wife and the depressed unseasoned
      prisoner still lingered in corners, as broken cobwebs and such unsightly
      discomforts draggle in corners of other places. It was the quietest time
      the College knew, saving the night hours when the Collegians took the
      benefit of the act of sleep. The occasional rattle of applause upon the
      tables of the Snuggery, denoted the successful termination of a morsel of
      Harmony; or the responsive acceptance, by the united children, of some
      toast or sentiment offered to them by their Father. Occasionally, a vocal
      strain more sonorous than the generality informed the listener that some
      boastful bass was in blue water, or in the hunting field, or with the
      reindeer, or on the mountain, or among the heather; but the Marshal of the
      Marshalsea knew better, and had got him hard and fast.
    </p>
    <p>
      As Arthur Clennam moved to sit down by the side of Little Dorrit, she
      trembled so that she had much ado to hold her needle. Clennam gently put
      his hand upon her work, and said, 'Dear Little Dorrit, let me lay it
      down.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She yielded it to him, and he put it aside. Her hands were then nervously
      clasping together, but he took one of them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How seldom I have seen you lately, Little Dorrit!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been busy, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I heard only to-day,' said Clennam, 'by mere accident, of your having
      been with those good people close by me. Why not come to me, then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;I don't know. Or rather, I thought you might be busy too. You
      generally are now, are you not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He saw her trembling little form and her downcast face, and the eyes that
      drooped the moment they were raised to his&mdash;he saw them almost with
      as much concern as tenderness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My child, your manner is so changed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The trembling was now quite beyond her control. Softly withdrawing her
      hand, and laying it in her other hand, she sat before him with her head
      bent and her whole form trembling.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My own Little Dorrit,' said Clennam, compassionately.
    </p>
    <p>
      She burst into tears. Maggy looked round of a sudden, and stared for at
      least a minute; but did not interpose. Clennam waited some little while
      before he spoke again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I cannot bear,' he said then, 'to see you weep; but I hope this is a
      relief to an overcharged heart.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes it is, sir. Nothing but that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, well! I feared you would think too much of what passed here just
      now. It is of no moment; not the least. I am only unfortunate to have come
      in the way. Let it go by with these tears. It is not worth one of them.
      One of them? Such an idle thing should be repeated, with my glad consent,
      fifty times a day, to save you a moment's heart-ache, Little Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She had taken courage now, and answered, far more in her usual manner,
      'You are so good! But even if there was nothing else in it to be sorry for
      and ashamed of, it is such a bad return to you&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush!' said Clennam, smiling and touching her lips with his hand.
      'Forgetfulness in you who remember so many and so much, would be new
      indeed. Shall I remind you that I am not, and that I never was, anything
      but the friend whom you agreed to trust? No. You remember it, don't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I try to do so, or I should have broken the promise just now, when my
      mistaken brother was here. You will consider his bringing-up in this
      place, and will not judge him hardly, poor fellow, I know!' In raising her
      eyes with these words, she observed his face more nearly than she had done
      yet, and said, with a quick change of tone, 'You have not been ill, Mr
      Clennam?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor tried? Nor hurt?' she asked him, anxiously.
    </p>
    <p>
      It fell to Clennam now, to be not quite certain how to answer. He said in
      reply:
    </p>
    <p>
      'To speak the truth, I have been a little troubled, but it is over. Do I
      show it so plainly? I ought to have more fortitude and self-command than
      that. I thought I had. I must learn them of you. Who could teach me
      better!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He never thought that she saw in him what no one else could see. He never
      thought that in the whole world there were no other eyes that looked upon
      him with the same light and strength as hers.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But it brings me to something that I wish to say,' he continued, 'and
      therefore I will not quarrel even with my own face for telling tales and
      being unfaithful to me. Besides, it is a privilege and pleasure to confide
      in my Little Dorrit. Let me confess then, that, forgetting how grave I
      was, and how old I was, and how the time for such things had gone by me
      with the many years of sameness and little happiness that made up my long
      life far away, without marking it&mdash;that, forgetting all this, I
      fancied I loved some one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do I know her, sir?' asked Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, my child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not the lady who has been kind to me for your sake?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flora. No, no. Do you think&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never quite thought so,' said Little Dorrit, more to herself than him.
      'I did wonder at it a little.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said Clennam, abiding by the feeling that had fallen on him in the
      avenue on the night of the roses, the feeling that he was an older man,
      who had done with that tender part of life, 'I found out my mistake, and I
      thought about it a little&mdash;in short, a good deal&mdash;and got wiser.
      Being wiser, I counted up my years and considered what I am, and looked
      back, and looked forward, and found that I should soon be grey. I found
      that I had climbed the hill, and passed the level ground upon the top, and
      was descending quickly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      If he had known the sharpness of the pain he caused the patient heart, in
      speaking thus! While doing it, too, with the purpose of easing and serving
      her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I found that the day when any such thing would have been graceful in me,
      or good in me, or hopeful or happy for me or any one in connection with
      me, was gone, and would never shine again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      O! If he had known, if he had known! If he could have seen the dagger in
      his hand, and the cruel wounds it struck in the faithful bleeding breast
      of his Little Dorrit!
    </p>
    <p>
      'All that is over, and I have turned my face from it. Why do I speak of
      this to Little Dorrit? Why do I show you, my child, the space of years
      that there is between us, and recall to you that I have passed, by the
      amount of your whole life, the time that is present to you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because you trust me, I hope. Because you know that nothing can touch you
      without touching me; that nothing can make you happy or unhappy, but it
      must make me, who am so grateful to you, the same.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He heard the thrill in her voice, he saw her earnest face, he saw her
      clear true eyes, he saw the quickened bosom that would have joyfully
      thrown itself before him to receive a mortal wound directed at his breast,
      with the dying cry, 'I love him!' and the remotest suspicion of the truth
      never dawned upon his mind. No. He saw the devoted little creature with
      her worn shoes, in her common dress, in her jail-home; a slender child in
      body, a strong heroine in soul; and the light of her domestic story made
      all else dark to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For those reasons assuredly, Little Dorrit, but for another too. So far
      removed, so different, and so much older, I am the better fitted for your
      friend and adviser. I mean, I am the more easily to be trusted; and any
      little constraint that you might feel with another, may vanish before me.
      Why have you kept so retired from me? Tell me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am better here. My place and use are here. I am much better here,' said
      Little Dorrit, faintly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So you said that day upon the bridge. I thought of it much afterwards.
      Have you no secret you could entrust to me, with hope and comfort, if you
      would!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Secret? No, I have no secret,' said Little Dorrit in some trouble.
    </p>
    <p>
      They had been speaking in low voices; more because it was natural to what
      they said to adopt that tone, than with any care to reserve it from Maggy
      at her work. All of a sudden Maggy stared again, and this time spoke:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say! Little Mother!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Maggy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you an't got no secret of your own to tell him, tell him that about
      the Princess. <i>She</i> had a secret, you know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Princess had a secret?' said Clennam, in some surprise. 'What
      Princess was that, Maggy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lor! How you do go and bother a gal of ten,' said Maggy, 'catching the
      poor thing up in that way. Whoever said the Princess had a secret? <i>I</i>
      never said so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon. I thought you did.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, I didn't. How could I, when it was her as wanted to find it out? It
      was the little woman as had the secret, and she was always a spinning at
      her wheel. And so she says to her, why do you keep it there? And so the
      t'other one says to her, no I don't; and so the t'other one says to her,
      yes you do; and then they both goes to the cupboard, and there it is. And
      she wouldn't go into the Hospital, and so she died. <i>You</i> know,
      Little Mother; tell him that. For it was a reg'lar good secret, that was!'
      cried Maggy, hugging herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur looked at Little Dorrit for help to comprehend this, and was struck
      by seeing her so timid and red. But, when she told him that it was only a
      Fairy Tale she had one day made up for Maggy, and that there was nothing
      in it which she wouldn't be ashamed to tell again to anybody else, even if
      she could remember it, he left the subject where it was.
    </p>
    <p>
      However, he returned to his own subject by first entreating her to see him
      oftener, and to remember that it was impossible to have a stronger
      interest in her welfare than he had, or to be more set upon promoting it
      than he was. When she answered fervently, she well knew that, she never
      forgot it, he touched upon his second and more delicate point&mdash;the
      suspicion he had formed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Little Dorrit,' he said, taking her hand again, and speaking lower than
      he had spoken yet, so that even Maggy in the small room could not hear
      him, 'another word. I have wanted very much to say this to you; I have
      tried for opportunities. Don't mind me, who, for the matter of years,
      might be your father or your uncle. Always think of me as quite an old
      man. I know that all your devotion centres in this room, and that nothing
      to the last will ever tempt you away from the duties you discharge here.
      If I were not sure of it, I should, before now, have implored you, and
      implored your father, to let me make some provision for you in a more
      suitable place. But you may have an interest&mdash;I will not say, now,
      though even that might be&mdash;may have, at another time, an interest in
      some one else; an interest not incompatible with your affection here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was very, very pale, and silently shook her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It may be, dear Little Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. No. No.' She shook her head, after each slow repetition of the word,
      with an air of quiet desolation that he remembered long afterwards. The
      time came when he remembered it well, long afterwards, within those prison
      walls; within that very room.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, if it ever should be, tell me so, my dear child. Entrust the truth
      to me, point out the object of such an interest to me, and I will try with
      all the zeal, and honour, and friendship and respect that I feel for you,
      good Little Dorrit of my heart, to do you a lasting service.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O thank you, thank you! But, O no, O no, O no!' She said this, looking at
      him with her work-worn hands folded together, and in the same resigned
      accents as before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I press for no confidence now. I only ask you to repose unhesitating
      trust in me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can I do less than that, when you are so good!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you will trust me fully? Will have no secret unhappiness, or
      anxiety, concealed from me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Almost none.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you have none now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She shook her head. But she was very pale.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When I lie down to-night, and my thoughts come back&mdash;as they will,
      for they do every night, even when I have not seen you&mdash;to this sad
      place, I may believe that there is no grief beyond this room, now, and its
      usual occupants, which preys on Little Dorrit's mind?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She seemed to catch at these words&mdash;that he remembered, too, long
      afterwards&mdash;and said, more brightly, 'Yes, Mr Clennam; yes, you may!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The crazy staircase, usually not slow to give notice when any one was
      coming up or down, here creaked under a quick tread, and a further sound
      was heard upon it, as if a little steam-engine with more steam than it
      knew what to do with, were working towards the room. As it approached,
      which it did very rapidly, it laboured with increased energy; and, after
      knocking at the door, it sounded as if it were stooping down and snorting
      in at the keyhole.
    </p>
    <p>
      Before Maggy could open the door, Mr Pancks, opening it from without,
      stood without a hat and with his bare head in the wildest condition,
      looking at Clennam and Little Dorrit, over her shoulder. He had a lighted
      cigar in his hand, and brought with him airs of ale and tobacco smoke.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pancks the gipsy,' he observed out of breath, 'fortune-telling.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He stood dingily smiling, and breathing hard at them, with a most curious
      air; as if, instead of being his proprietor's grubber, he were the
      triumphant proprietor of the Marshalsea, the Marshal, all the turnkeys,
      and all the Collegians. In his great self-satisfaction he put his cigar to
      his lips (being evidently no smoker), and took such a pull at it, with his
      right eye shut up tight for the purpose, that he underwent a convulsion of
      shuddering and choking. But even in the midst of that paroxysm, he still
      essayed to repeat his favourite introduction of himself, 'Pa-ancks the
      gi-ipsy, fortune-telling.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am spending the evening with the rest of 'em,' said Pancks. 'I've been
      singing. I've been taking a part in White sand and grey sand. <i>I</i>
      don't know anything about it. Never mind. I'll take any part in anything.
      It's all the same, if you're loud enough.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At first Clennam supposed him to be intoxicated. But he soon perceived
      that though he might be a little the worse (or better) for ale, the staple
      of his excitement was not brewed from malt, or distilled from any grain or
      berry.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How d'ye do, Miss Dorrit?' said Pancks. 'I thought you wouldn't mind my
      running round, and looking in for a moment. Mr Clennam I heard was here,
      from Mr Dorrit. How are you, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam thanked him, and said he was glad to see him so gay.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gay!' said Pancks. 'I'm in wonderful feather, sir. I can't stop a minute,
      or I shall be missed, and I don't want 'em to miss me.&mdash;Eh, Miss
      Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He seemed to have an insatiate delight in appealing to her and looking at
      her; excitedly sticking his hair up at the same moment, like a dark
      species of cockatoo.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I haven't been here half an hour. I knew Mr Dorrit was in the chair, and
      I said, "I'll go and support him!" I ought to be down in Bleeding Heart
      Yard by rights; but I can worry them to-morrow.&mdash;Eh, Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      His little black eyes sparkled electrically. His very hair seemed to
      sparkle as he roughened it. He was in that highly-charged state that one
      might have expected to draw sparks and snaps from him by presenting a
      knuckle to any part of his figure.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Capital company here,' said Pancks.&mdash;'Eh, Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was half afraid of him, and irresolute what to say. He laughed, with a
      nod towards Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't mind him, Miss Dorrit. He's one of us. We agreed that you shouldn't
      take on to mind me before people, but we didn't mean Mr Clennam. He's one
      of us. He's in it. An't you, Mr Clennam?&mdash;Eh, Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The excitement of this strange creature was fast communicating itself to
      Clennam. Little Dorrit with amazement, saw this, and observed that they
      exchanged quick looks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was making a remark,' said Pancks, 'but I declare I forget what it was.
      Oh, I know! Capital company here. I've been treating 'em all round.&mdash;Eh,
      Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very generous of you,' she returned, noticing another of the quick looks
      between the two.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all,' said Pancks. 'Don't mention it. I'm coming into my property,
      that's the fact. I can afford to be liberal. I think I'll give 'em a treat
      here. Tables laid in the yard. Bread in stacks. Pipes in faggots. Tobacco
      in hayloads. Roast beef and plum-pudding for every one. Quart of double
      stout a head. Pint of wine too, if they like it, and the authorities give
      permission.&mdash;Eh, Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was thrown into such a confusion by his manner, or rather by Clennam's
      growing understanding of his manner (for she looked to him after every
      fresh appeal and cockatoo demonstration on the part of Mr Pancks), that
      she only moved her lips in answer, without forming any word.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And oh, by-the-bye!' said Pancks, 'you were to live to know what was
      behind us on that little hand of yours. And so you shall, you shall, my
      darling.&mdash;Eh, Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had suddenly checked himself. Where he got all the additional black
      prongs from, that now flew up all over his head like the myriads of points
      that break out in the large change of a great firework, was a wonderful
      mystery.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I shall be missed;' he came back to that; 'and I don't want 'em to
      miss me. Mr Clennam, you and I made a bargain. I said you should find me
      stick to it. You shall find me stick to it now, sir, if you'll step out of
      the room a moment. Miss Dorrit, I wish you good night. Miss Dorrit, I wish
      you good fortune.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He rapidly shook her by both hands, and puffed down stairs. Arthur
      followed him with such a hurried step, that he had very nearly tumbled
      over him on the last landing, and rolled him down into the yard.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it, for Heaven's sake!' Arthur demanded, when they burst out
      there both together.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stop a moment, sir. Mr Rugg. Let me introduce him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With those words he presented another man without a hat, and also with a
      cigar, and also surrounded with a halo of ale and tobacco smoke, which
      man, though not so excited as himself, was in a state which would have
      been akin to lunacy but for its fading into sober method when compared
      with the rampancy of Mr Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, Mr Rugg,' said Pancks. 'Stop a moment. Come to the pump.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They adjourned to the pump. Mr Pancks, instantly putting his head under
      the spout, requested Mr Rugg to take a good strong turn at the handle. Mr
      Rugg complying to the letter, Mr Pancks came forth snorting and blowing to
      some purpose, and dried himself on his handkerchief.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am the clearer for that,' he gasped to Clennam standing astonished.
      'But upon my soul, to hear her father making speeches in that chair,
      knowing what we know, and to see her up in that room in that dress,
      knowing what we know, is enough to&mdash;give me a back, Mr Rugg&mdash;a
      little higher, sir,&mdash;that'll do!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Then and there, on that Marshalsea pavement, in the shades of evening, did
      Mr Pancks, of all mankind, fly over the head and shoulders of Mr Rugg of
      Pentonville, General Agent, Accountant, and Recoverer of Debts. Alighting
      on his feet, he took Clennam by the button-hole, led him behind the pump,
      and pantingly produced from his pocket a bundle of papers.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Rugg, also, pantingly produced from his pocket a bundle of papers.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay!' said Clennam in a whisper.'You have made a discovery.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks answered, with an unction which there is no language to convey,
      'We rather think so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does it implicate any one?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How implicate, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In any suppression or wrong dealing of any kind?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not a bit of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank God!' said Clennam to himself. 'Now show me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are to understand'&mdash;snorted Pancks, feverishly unfolding papers,
      and speaking in short high-pressure blasts of sentences, 'Where's the
      Pedigree? Where's Schedule number four, Mr Rugg? Oh! all right! Here we
      are.&mdash;You are to understand that we are this very day virtually
      complete. We shan't be legally for a day or two. Call it at the outside a
      week. We've been at it night and day for I don't know how long. Mr Rugg,
      you know how long? Never mind. Don't say. You'll only confuse me. You
      shall tell her, Mr Clennam. Not till we give you leave. Where's that rough
      total, Mr Rugg? Oh! Here we are! There sir! That's what you'll have to
      break to her. That man's your Father of the Marshalsea!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 33. Mrs Merdle's Complaint
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">R</span>esigning herself to inevitable fate by making the best of those people,
      the Miggleses, and submitting her philosophy to the draught upon it, of
      which she had foreseen the likelihood in her interview with Arthur, Mrs
      Gowan handsomely resolved not to oppose her son's marriage. In her
      progress to, and happy arrival at, this resolution, she was possibly
      influenced, not only by her maternal affections but by three politic
      considerations.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of these, the first may have been that her son had never signified the
      smallest intention to ask her consent, or any mistrust of his ability to
      dispense with it; the second, that the pension bestowed upon her by a
      grateful country (and a Barnacle) would be freed from any little filial
      inroads, when her Henry should be married to the darling only child of a
      man in very easy circumstances; the third, that Henry's debts must clearly
      be paid down upon the altar-railing by his father-in-law. When, to these
      three-fold points of prudence there is added the fact that Mrs Gowan
      yielded her consent the moment she knew of Mr Meagles having yielded his,
      and that Mr Meagles's objection to the marriage had been the sole obstacle
      in its way all along, it becomes the height of probability that the relict
      of the deceased Commissioner of nothing particular, turned these ideas in
      her sagacious mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      Among her connections and acquaintances, however, she maintained her
      individual dignity and the dignity of the blood of the Barnacles, by
      diligently nursing the pretence that it was a most unfortunate business;
      that she was sadly cut up by it; that this was a perfect fascination under
      which Henry laboured; that she had opposed it for a long time, but what
      could a mother do; and the like. She had already called Arthur Clennam to
      bear witness to this fable, as a friend of the Meagles family; and she
      followed up the move by now impounding the family itself for the same
      purpose. In the first interview she accorded to Mr Meagles, she slided
      herself into the position of disconsolately but gracefully yielding to
      irresistible pressure. With the utmost politeness and good-breeding, she
      feigned that it was she&mdash;not he&mdash;who had made the difficulty,
      and who at length gave way; and that the sacrifice was hers&mdash;not his.
      The same feint, with the same polite dexterity, she foisted on Mrs
      Meagles, as a conjuror might have forced a card on that innocent lady;
      and, when her future daughter-in-law was presented to her by her son, she
      said on embracing her, 'My dear, what have you done to Henry that has
      bewitched him so!' at the same time allowing a few tears to carry before
      them, in little pills, the cosmetic powder on her nose; as a delicate but
      touching signal that she suffered much inwardly for the show of composure
      with which she bore her misfortune.
    </p>
    <p>
      Among the friends of Mrs Gowan (who piqued herself at once on being
      Society, and on maintaining intimate and easy relations with that Power),
      Mrs Merdle occupied a front row. True, the Hampton Court Bohemians,
      without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an upstart; but they
      turned them down again, by falling flat on their faces to worship his
      wealth. In which compensating adjustment of their noses, they were pretty
      much like Treasury, Bar, and Bishop, and all the rest of them.
    </p>
    <p>
      To Mrs Merdle, Mrs Gowan repaired on a visit of self-condolence, after
      having given the gracious consent aforesaid. She drove into town for the
      purpose in a one-horse carriage irreverently called at that period of
      English history, a pill-box. It belonged to a job-master in a small way,
      who drove it himself, and who jobbed it by the day, or hour, to most of
      the old ladies in Hampton Court Palace; but it was a point of ceremony, in
      that encampment, that the whole equipage should be tacitly regarded as the
      private property of the jobber for the time being, and that the job-master
      should betray personal knowledge of nobody but the jobber in possession.
      So the Circumlocution Barnacles, who were the largest job-masters in the
      universe, always pretended to know of no other job but the job immediately
      in hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Merdle was at home, and was in her nest of crimson and gold, with the
      parrot on a neighbouring stem watching her with his head on one side, as
      if he took her for another splendid parrot of a larger species. To whom
      entered Mrs Gowan, with her favourite green fan, which softened the light
      on the spots of bloom.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear soul,' said Mrs Gowan, tapping the back of her friend's hand with
      this fan after a little indifferent conversation, 'you are my only
      comfort. That affair of Henry's that I told you of, is to take place. Now,
      how does it strike you? I am dying to know, because you represent and
      express Society so well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Merdle reviewed the bosom which Society was accustomed to review; and
      having ascertained that show-window of Mr Merdle's and the London
      jewellers' to be in good order, replied:
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to marriage on the part of a man, my dear, Society requires that he
      should retrieve his fortunes by marriage. Society requires that he should
      gain by marriage. Society requires that he should found a handsome
      establishment by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise, what he has to
      do with marriage. Bird, be quiet!'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0351m.jpg" alt="0351m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0351.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      For the parrot on his cage above them, presiding over the conference as if
      he were a judge (and indeed he looked rather like one), had wound up the
      exposition with a shriek.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cases there are,' said Mrs Merdle, delicately crooking the little finger
      of her favourite hand, and making her remarks neater by that neat action;
      'cases there are where a man is not young or elegant, and is rich, and has
      a handsome establishment already. Those are of a different kind. In such
      cases&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Merdle shrugged her snowy shoulders and put her hand upon the
      jewel-stand, checking a little cough, as though to add, 'why, a man looks
      out for this sort of thing, my dear.' Then the parrot shrieked again, and
      she put up her glass to look at him, and said, 'Bird! Do be quiet!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, young men,' resumed Mrs Merdle, 'and by young men you know what I
      mean, my love&mdash;I mean people's sons who have the world before them&mdash;they
      must place themselves in a better position towards Society by marriage, or
      Society really will not have any patience with their making fools of
      themselves. Dreadfully worldly all this sounds,' said Mrs Merdle, leaning
      back in her nest and putting up her glass again, 'does it not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But it is true,' said Mrs Gowan, with a highly moral air.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear, it is not to be disputed for a moment,' returned Mrs Merdle;
      'because Society has made up its mind on the subject, and there is nothing
      more to be said. If we were in a more primitive state, if we lived under
      roofs of leaves, and kept cows and sheep and creatures instead of banker's
      accounts (which would be delicious; my dear, I am pastoral to a degree, by
      nature), well and good. But we don't live under leaves, and keep cows and
      sheep and creatures. I perfectly exhaust myself sometimes, in pointing out
      the distinction to Edmund Sparkler.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Gowan, looking over her green fan when this young gentleman's name was
      mentioned, replied as follows:
    </p>
    <p>
      'My love, you know the wretched state of the country&mdash;those
      unfortunate concessions of John Barnacle's!&mdash;and you therefore know
      the reasons for my being as poor as Thingummy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A church mouse?' Mrs Merdle suggested with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was thinking of the other proverbial church person&mdash;Job,' said Mrs
      Gowan. 'Either will do. It would be idle to disguise, consequently, that
      there is a wide difference between the position of your son and mine. I
      may add, too, that Henry has talent&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Which Edmund certainly has not,' said Mrs Merdle, with the greatest
      suavity.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;and that his talent, combined with disappointment,' Mrs Gowan went
      on, 'has led him into a pursuit which&mdash;ah dear me! You know, my dear.
      Such being Henry's different position, the question is what is the most
      inferior class of marriage to which I can reconcile myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Merdle was so much engaged with the contemplation of her arms
      (beautiful-formed arms, and the very thing for bracelets), that she
      omitted to reply for a while. Roused at length by the silence, she folded
      the arms, and with admirable presence of mind looked her friend full in
      the face, and said interrogatively, 'Ye-es? And then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And then, my dear,' said Mrs Gowan not quite so sweetly as before, 'I
      should be glad to hear what you have to say to it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here the parrot, who had been standing on one leg since he screamed last,
      burst into a fit of laughter, bobbed himself derisively up and down on
      both legs, and finished by standing on one leg again, and pausing for a
      reply, with his head as much awry as he could possibly twist it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sounds mercenary to ask what the gentleman is to get with the lady,' said
      Mrs Merdle; 'but Society is perhaps a little mercenary, you know, my
      dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'From what I can make out,' said Mrs Gowan, 'I believe I may say that
      Henry will be relieved from debt&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Much in debt?' asked Mrs Merdle through her eyeglass.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why tolerably, I should think,' said Mrs Gowan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Meaning the usual thing; I understand; just so,' Mrs Merdle observed in a
      comfortable sort of way.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And that the father will make them an allowance of three hundred a-year,
      or perhaps altogether something more, which, in Italy-'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! Going to Italy?' said Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For Henry to study. You need be at no loss to guess why, my dear. That
      dreadful Art&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      True. Mrs Merdle hastened to spare the feelings of her afflicted friend.
      She understood. Say no more!
    </p>
    <p>
      'And that,' said Mrs Gowan, shaking her despondent head, 'that's all.
      That,' repeated Mrs Gowan, furling her green fan for the moment, and
      tapping her chin with it (it was on the way to being a double chin; might
      be called a chin and a half at present), 'that's all! On the death of the
      old people, I suppose there will be more to come; but how it may be
      restricted or locked up, I don't know. And as to that, they may live for
      ever. My dear, they are just the kind of people to do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, Mrs Merdle, who really knew her friend Society pretty well, and who
      knew what Society's mothers were, and what Society's daughters were, and
      what Society's matrimonial market was, and how prices ruled in it, and
      what scheming and counter-scheming took place for the high buyers, and
      what bargaining and huckstering went on, thought in the depths of her
      capacious bosom that this was a sufficiently good catch. Knowing, however,
      what was expected of her, and perceiving the exact nature of the fiction
      to be nursed, she took it delicately in her arms, and put her required
      contribution of gloss upon it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And that is all, my dear?' said she, heaving a friendly sigh. 'Well,
      well! The fault is not yours. You have nothing to reproach yourself with.
      You must exercise the strength of mind for which you are renowned, and
      make the best of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The girl's family have made,' said Mrs Gowan, 'of course, the most
      strenuous endeavours to&mdash;as the lawyers say&mdash;to have and to hold
      Henry.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course they have, my dear,' said Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have persisted in every possible objection, and have worried myself
      morning, noon, and night, for means to detach Henry from the connection.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No doubt you have, my dear,' said Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And all of no use. All has broken down beneath me. Now tell me, my love.
      Am I justified in at last yielding my most reluctant consent to Henry's
      marrying among people not in Society; or, have I acted with inexcusable
      weakness?'
    </p>
    <p>
      In answer to this direct appeal, Mrs Merdle assured Mrs Gowan (speaking as
      a Priestess of Society) that she was highly to be commended, that she was
      much to be sympathised with, that she had taken the highest of parts, and
      had come out of the furnace refined. And Mrs Gowan, who of course saw
      through her own threadbare blind perfectly, and who knew that Mrs Merdle
      saw through it perfectly, and who knew that Society would see through it
      perfectly, came out of this form, notwithstanding, as she had gone into
      it, with immense complacency and gravity.
    </p>
    <p>
      The conference was held at four or five o'clock in the afternoon, when all
      the region of Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was resonant of
      carriage-wheels and double-knocks. It had reached this point when Mr
      Merdle came home from his daily occupation of causing the British name to
      be more and more respected in all parts of the civilised globe capable of
      the appreciation of world-wide commercial enterprise and gigantic
      combinations of skill and capital. For, though nobody knew with the least
      precision what Mr Merdle's business was, except that it was to coin money,
      these were the terms in which everybody defined it on all ceremonious
      occasions, and which it was the last new polite reading of the parable of
      the camel and the needle's eye to accept without inquiry.
    </p>
    <p>
      For a gentleman who had this splendid work cut out for him, Mr Merdle
      looked a little common, and rather as if, in the course of his vast
      transactions, he had accidentally made an interchange of heads with some
      inferior spirit. He presented himself before the two ladies in the course
      of a dismal stroll through his mansion, which had no apparent object but
      escape from the presence of the chief butler.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon,' he said, stopping short in confusion; 'I didn't know
      there was anybody here but the parrot.'
    </p>
    <p>
      However, as Mrs Merdle said, 'You can come in!' and as Mrs Gowan said she
      was just going, and had already risen to take her leave, he came in, and
      stood looking out at a distant window, with his hands crossed under his
      uneasy coat-cuffs, clasping his wrists as if he were taking himself into
      custody. In this attitude he fell directly into a reverie from which he
      was only aroused by his wife's calling to him from her ottoman, when they
      had been for some quarter of an hour alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh? Yes?' said Mr Merdle, turning towards her. 'What is it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it?' repeated Mrs Merdle. 'It is, I suppose, that you have not
      heard a word of my complaint.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your complaint, Mrs Merdle?' said Mr Merdle. 'I didn't know that you were
      suffering from a complaint. What complaint?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A complaint of you,' said Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! A complaint of me,' said Mr Merdle. 'What is the&mdash;what have I&mdash;what
      may you have to complain of in me, Mrs Merdle?'
    </p>
    <p>
      In his withdrawing, abstracted, pondering way, it took him some time to
      shape this question. As a kind of faint attempt to convince himself that
      he was the master of the house, he concluded by presenting his forefinger
      to the parrot, who expressed his opinion on that subject by instantly
      driving his bill into it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You were saying, Mrs Merdle,' said Mr Merdle, with his wounded finger in
      his mouth, 'that you had a complaint against me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A complaint which I could scarcely show the justice of more emphatically,
      than by having to repeat it,' said Mrs Merdle. 'I might as well have
      stated it to the wall. I had far better have stated it to the bird. He
      would at least have screamed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't want me to scream, Mrs Merdle, I suppose,' said Mr Merdle,
      taking a chair.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed I don't know,' retorted Mrs Merdle, 'but that you had better do
      that, than be so moody and distraught. One would at least know that you
      were sensible of what was going on around you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A man might scream, and yet not be that, Mrs Merdle,' said Mr Merdle,
      heavily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And might be dogged, as you are at present, without screaming,' returned
      Mrs Merdle. 'That's very true. If you wish to know the complaint I make
      against you, it is, in so many plain words, that you really ought not to
      go into Society unless you can accommodate yourself to Society.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle, so twisting his hands into what hair he had upon his head that
      he seemed to lift himself up by it as he started out of his chair, cried:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, in the name of all the infernal powers, Mrs Merdle, who does more
      for Society than I do? Do you see these premises, Mrs Merdle? Do you see
      this furniture, Mrs Merdle? Do you look in the glass and see yourself, Mrs
      Merdle? Do you know the cost of all this, and who it's all provided for?
      And yet will you tell me that I oughtn't to go into Society? I, who shower
      money upon it in this way? I, who might always be said&mdash;to&mdash;to&mdash;to
      harness myself to a watering-cart full of money, and go about saturating
      Society every day of my life.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, don't be violent, Mr Merdle,' said Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Violent?' said Mr Merdle. 'You are enough to make me desperate. You don't
      know half of what I do to accommodate Society. You don't know anything of
      the sacrifices I make for it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know,' returned Mrs Merdle, 'that you receive the best in the land. I
      know that you move in the whole Society of the country. And I believe I
      know (indeed, not to make any ridiculous pretence about it, I know I know)
      who sustains you in it, Mr Merdle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Merdle,' retorted that gentleman, wiping his dull red and yellow
      face, 'I know that as well as you do. If you were not an ornament to
      Society, and if I was not a benefactor to Society, you and I would never
      have come together. When I say a benefactor to it, I mean a person who
      provides it with all sorts of expensive things to eat and drink and look
      at. But, to tell me that I am not fit for it after all I have done for it&mdash;after
      all I have done for it,' repeated Mr Merdle, with a wild emphasis that
      made his wife lift up her eyelids, 'after all&mdash;all!&mdash;to tell me
      I have no right to mix with it after all, is a pretty reward.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say,' answered Mrs Merdle composedly, 'that you ought to make yourself
      fit for it by being more degage, and less preoccupied. There is a positive
      vulgarity in carrying your business affairs about with you as you do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do I carry them about, Mrs Merdle?' asked Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you carry them about?' said Mrs Merdle. 'Look at yourself in the
      glass.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle involuntarily turned his eyes in the direction of the nearest
      mirror, and asked, with a slow determination of his turbid blood to his
      temples, whether a man was to be called to account for his digestion?
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have a physician,' said Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He does me no good,' said Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Merdle changed her ground.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Besides,' said she, 'your digestion is nonsense. I don't speak of your
      digestion. I speak of your manner.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Merdle,' returned her husband, 'I look to you for that. You supply
      manner, and I supply money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't expect you,' said Mrs Merdle, reposing easily among her cushions,
      'to captivate people. I don't want you to take any trouble upon yourself,
      or to try to be fascinating. I simply request you to care about nothing&mdash;or
      seem to care about nothing&mdash;as everybody else does.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do I ever say I care about anything?' asked Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say? No! Nobody would attend to you if you did. But you show it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Show what? What do I show?' demanded Mr Merdle hurriedly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have already told you. You show that you carry your business cares an
      projects about, instead of leaving them in the City, or wherever else they
      belong to,' said Mrs Merdle. 'Or seeming to. Seeming would be quite
      enough: I ask no more. Whereas you couldn't be more occupied with your
      day's calculations and combinations than you habitually show yourself to
      be, if you were a carpenter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A carpenter!' repeated Mr Merdle, checking something like a groan. 'I
      shouldn't so much mind being a carpenter, Mrs Merdle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And my complaint is,' pursued the lady, disregarding the low remark,
      'that it is not the tone of Society, and that you ought to correct it, Mr
      Merdle. If you have any doubt of my judgment, ask even Edmund Sparkler.'
      The door of the room had opened, and Mrs Merdle now surveyed the head of
      her son through her glass. 'Edmund; we want you here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler, who had merely put in his head and looked round the room
      without entering (as if he were searching the house for that young lady
      with no nonsense about her), upon this followed up his head with his body,
      and stood before them. To whom, in a few easy words adapted to his
      capacity, Mrs Merdle stated the question at issue.
    </p>
    <p>
      The young gentleman, after anxiously feeling his shirt-collar as if it
      were his pulse and he were hypochondriacal, observed, 'That he had heard
      it noticed by fellers.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edmund Sparkler has heard it noticed,' said Mrs Merdle, with languid
      triumph. 'Why, no doubt everybody has heard it noticed!' Which in truth
      was no unreasonable inference; seeing that Mr Sparkler would probably be
      the last person, in any assemblage of the human species, to receive an
      impression from anything that passed in his presence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And Edmund Sparkler will tell you, I dare say,' said Mrs Merdle, waving
      her favourite hand towards her husband, 'how he has heard it noticed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I couldn't,' said Mr Sparkler, after feeling his pulse as before,
      'couldn't undertake to say what led to it&mdash;'cause memory desperate
      loose. But being in company with the brother of a doosed fine gal&mdash;well
      educated too&mdash;with no biggodd nonsense about her&mdash;at the period
      alluded to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There! Never mind the sister,' remarked Mrs Merdle, a little impatiently.
      'What did the brother say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Didn't say a word, ma'am,' answered Mr Sparkler. 'As silent a feller as
      myself. Equally hard up for a remark.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Somebody said something,' returned Mrs Merdle. 'Never mind who it was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      ('Assure you I don't in the least,' said Mr Sparkler.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'But tell us what it was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler referred to his pulse again, and put himself through some
      severe mental discipline before he replied:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fellers referring to my Governor&mdash;expression not my own&mdash;occasionally
      compliment my Governor in a very handsome way on being immensely rich and
      knowing&mdash;perfect phenomenon of Buyer and Banker and that&mdash;but
      say the Shop sits heavily on him. Say he carried the Shop about, on his
      back rather&mdash;like Jew clothesmen with too much business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Which,' said Mrs Merdle, rising, with her floating drapery about her, 'is
      exactly my complaint. Edmund, give me your arm up-stairs.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle, left alone to meditate on a better conformation of himself to
      Society, looked out of nine windows in succession, and appeared to see
      nine wastes of space. When he had thus entertained himself he went
      down-stairs, and looked intently at all the carpets on the ground-floor;
      and then came up-stairs again, and looked intently at all the carpets on
      the first-floor; as if they were gloomy depths, in unison with his
      oppressed soul. Through all the rooms he wandered, as he always did, like
      the last person on earth who had any business to approach them. Let Mrs
      Merdle announce, with all her might, that she was at Home ever so many
      nights in a season, she could not announce more widely and unmistakably
      than Mr Merdle did that he was never at home.
    </p>
    <p>
      At last he met the chief butler, the sight of which splendid retainer
      always finished him. Extinguished by this great creature, he sneaked to
      his dressing-room, and there remained shut up until he rode out to dinner,
      with Mrs Merdle, in her own handsome chariot. At dinner, he was envied and
      flattered as a being of might, was Treasuried, Barred, and Bishoped, as
      much as he would; and an hour after midnight came home alone, and being
      instantly put out again in his own hall, like a rushlight, by the chief
      butler, went sighing to bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 34. A Shoal of Barnacles
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>r Henry Gowan and the dog were established frequenters of the cottage,
      and the day was fixed for the wedding. There was to be a convocation of
      Barnacles on the occasion, in order that that very high and very large
      family might shed as much lustre on the marriage as so dim an event was
      capable of receiving.
    </p>
    <p>
      To have got the whole Barnacle family together would have been impossible
      for two reasons. Firstly, because no building could have held all the
      members and connections of that illustrious house. Secondly, because
      wherever there was a square yard of ground in British occupation under the
      sun or moon, with a public post upon it, sticking to that post was a
      Barnacle. No intrepid navigator could plant a flag-staff upon any spot of
      earth, and take possession of it in the British name, but to that spot of
      earth, so soon as the discovery was known, the Circumlocution Office sent
      out a Barnacle and a despatch-box. Thus the Barnacles were all over the
      world, in every direction&mdash;despatch-boxing the compass.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, while the so-potent art of Prospero himself would have failed in
      summoning the Barnacles from every speck of ocean and dry land on which
      there was nothing (except mischief) to be done and anything to be
      pocketed, it was perfectly feasible to assemble a good many Barnacles.
      This Mrs Gowan applied herself to do; calling on Mr Meagles frequently
      with new additions to the list, and holding conferences with that
      gentleman when he was not engaged (as he generally was at this period) in
      examining and paying the debts of his future son-in-law, in the apartment
      of scales and scoop.
    </p>
    <p>
      One marriage guest there was, in reference to whose presence Mr Meagles
      felt a nearer interest and concern than in the attendance of the most
      elevated Barnacle expected; though he was far from insensible of the
      honour of having such company. This guest was Clennam. But Clennam had
      made a promise he held sacred, among the trees that summer night, and, in
      the chivalry of his heart, regarded it as binding him to many implied
      obligations. In forgetfulness of himself, and delicate service to her on
      all occasions, he was never to fail; to begin it, he answered Mr Meagles
      cheerfully, 'I shall come, of course.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His partner, Daniel Doyce, was something of a stumbling-block in Mr
      Meagles's way, the worthy gentleman being not at all clear in his own
      anxious mind but that the mingling of Daniel with official Barnacleism
      might produce some explosive combination, even at a marriage breakfast.
      The national offender, however, lightened him of his uneasiness by coming
      down to Twickenham to represent that he begged, with the freedom of an old
      friend, and as a favour to one, that he might not be invited. 'For,' said
      he, 'as my business with this set of gentlemen was to do a public duty and
      a public service, and as their business with me was to prevent it by
      wearing my soul out, I think we had better not eat and drink together with
      a show of being of one mind.' Mr Meagles was much amused by his friend's
      oddity; and patronised him with a more protecting air of allowance than
      usual, when he rejoined: 'Well, well, Dan, you shall have your own
      crotchety way.'
    </p>
    <p>
      To Mr Henry Gowan, as the time approached, Clennam tried to convey by all
      quiet and unpretending means, that he was frankly and disinterestedly
      desirous of tendering him any friendship he would accept. Mr Gowan treated
      him in return with his usual ease, and with his usual show of confidence,
      which was no confidence at all.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see, Clennam,' he happened to remark in the course of conversation
      one day, when they were walking near the Cottage within a week of the
      marriage, 'I am a disappointed man. That you know already.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Upon my word,' said Clennam, a little embarrassed, 'I scarcely know how.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why,' returned Gowan, 'I belong to a clan, or a clique, or a family, or a
      connection, or whatever you like to call it, that might have provided for
      me in any one of fifty ways, and that took it into its head not to do it
      at all. So here I am, a poor devil of an artist.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam was beginning, 'But on the other hand&mdash;' when Gowan took him
      up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes, I know. I have the good fortune of being beloved by a beautiful
      and charming girl whom I love with all my heart.'
    </p>
    <p>
      ('Is there much of it?' Clennam thought. And as he thought it, felt
      ashamed of himself.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'And of finding a father-in-law who is a capital fellow and a liberal good
      old boy. Still, I had other prospects washed and combed into my childish
      head when it was washed and combed for me, and I took them to a public
      school when I washed and combed it for myself, and I am here without them,
      and thus I am a disappointed man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam thought (and as he thought it, again felt ashamed of himself), was
      this notion of being disappointed in life, an assertion of station which
      the bridegroom brought into the family as his property, having already
      carried it detrimentally into his pursuit? And was it a hopeful or a
      promising thing anywhere?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not bitterly disappointed, I think,' he said aloud.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hang it, no; not bitterly,' laughed Gowan. 'My people are not worth that&mdash;though
      they are charming fellows, and I have the greatest affection for them.
      Besides, it's pleasant to show them that I can do without them, and that
      they may all go to the Devil. And besides, again, most men are
      disappointed in life, somehow or other, and influenced by their
      disappointment. But it's a dear good world, and I love it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It lies fair before you now,' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fair as this summer river,' cried the other, with enthusiasm, 'and by
      Jove I glow with admiration of it, and with ardour to run a race in it.
      It's the best of old worlds! And my calling! The best of old callings,
      isn't it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Full of interest and ambition, I conceive,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And imposition,' added Gowan, laughing; 'we won't leave out the
      imposition. I hope I may not break down in that; but there, my being a
      disappointed man may show itself. I may not be able to face it out gravely
      enough. Between you and me, I think there is some danger of my being just
      enough soured not to be able to do that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To do what?' asked Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To keep it up. To help myself in my turn, as the man before me helps
      himself in his, and pass the bottle of smoke. To keep up the pretence as
      to labour, and study, and patience, and being devoted to my art, and
      giving up many solitary days to it, and abandoning many pleasures for it,
      and living in it, and all the rest of it&mdash;in short, to pass the
      bottle of smoke according to rule.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But it is well for a man to respect his own vocation, whatever it is; and
      to think himself bound to uphold it, and to claim for it the respect it
      deserves; is it not?' Arthur reasoned. 'And your vocation, Gowan, may
      really demand this suit and service. I confess I should have thought that
      all Art did.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What a good fellow you are, Clennam!' exclaimed the other, stopping to
      look at him, as if with irrepressible admiration. 'What a capital fellow!
      <i>You</i> have never been disappointed. That's easy to see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It would have been so cruel if he had meant it, that Clennam firmly
      resolved to believe he did not mean it. Gowan, without pausing, laid his
      hand upon his shoulder, and laughingly and lightly went on:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Clennam, I don't like to dispel your generous visions, and I would give
      any money (if I had any), to live in such a rose-coloured mist. But what I
      do in my trade, I do to sell. What all we fellows do, we do to sell. If we
      didn't want to sell it for the most we can get for it, we shouldn't do it.
      Being work, it has to be done; but it's easily enough done. All the rest
      is hocus-pocus. Now here's one of the advantages, or disadvantages, of
      knowing a disappointed man. You hear the truth.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Whatever he had heard, and whether it deserved that name or another, it
      sank into Clennam's mind. It so took root there, that he began to fear
      Henry Gowan would always be a trouble to him, and that so far he had
      gained little or nothing from the dismissal of Nobody, with all his
      inconsistencies, anxieties, and contradictions. He found a contest still
      always going on in his breast between his promise to keep Gowan in none
      but good aspects before the mind of Mr Meagles, and his enforced
      observation of Gowan in aspects that had no good in them. Nor could he
      quite support his own conscientious nature against misgivings that he
      distorted and discoloured himself, by reminding himself that he never
      sought those discoveries, and that he would have avoided them with
      willingness and great relief. For he never could forget what he had been;
      and he knew that he had once disliked Gowan for no better reason than that
      he had come in his way.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harassed by these thoughts, he now began to wish the marriage over, Gowan
      and his young wife gone, and himself left to fulfil his promise, and
      discharge the generous function he had accepted. This last week was, in
      truth, an uneasy interval for the whole house. Before Pet, or before
      Gowan, Mr Meagles was radiant; but Clennam had more than once found him
      alone, with his view of the scales and scoop much blurred, and had often
      seen him look after the lovers, in the garden or elsewhere when he was not
      seen by them, with the old clouded face on which Gowan had fallen like a
      shadow. In the arrangement of the house for the great occasion, many
      little reminders of the old travels of the father and mother and daughter
      had to be disturbed and passed from hand to hand; and sometimes, in the
      midst of these mute witnesses, to the life they had had together, even Pet
      herself would yield to lamenting and weeping. Mrs Meagles, the blithest
      and busiest of mothers, went about singing and cheering everybody; but
      she, honest soul, had her flights into store rooms, where she would cry
      until her eyes were red, and would then come out, attributing that
      appearance to pickled onions and pepper, and singing clearer than ever.
      Mrs Tickit, finding no balsam for a wounded mind in Buchan's Domestic
      Medicine, suffered greatly from low spirits, and from moving recollections
      of Minnie's infancy. When the latter was powerful with her, she usually
      sent up secret messages importing that she was not in parlour condition as
      to her attire, and that she solicited a sight of 'her child' in the
      kitchen; there, she would bless her child's face, and bless her child's
      heart, and hug her child, in a medley of tears and congratulations,
      chopping-boards, rolling-pins, and pie-crust, with the tenderness of an
      old attached servant, which is a very pretty tenderness indeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      But all days come that are to be; and the marriage-day was to be, and it
      came; and with it came all the Barnacles who were bidden to the feast.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was Mr Tite Barnacle, from the Circumlocution Office, and Mews
      Street, Grosvenor Square, with the expensive Mrs Tite Barnacle <i>nee</i>
      Stiltstalking, who made the Quarter Days so long in coming, and the three
      expensive Miss Tite Barnacles, double-loaded with accomplishments and
      ready to go off, and yet not going off with the sharpness of flash and
      bang that might have been expected, but rather hanging fire. There was
      Barnacle junior, also from the Circumlocution Office, leaving the Tonnage
      of the country, which he was somehow supposed to take under his
      protection, to look after itself, and, sooth to say, not at all impairing
      the efficiency of its protection by leaving it alone. There was the
      engaging Young Barnacle, deriving from the sprightly side of the family,
      also from the Circumlocution Office, gaily and agreeably helping the
      occasion along, and treating it, in his sparkling way, as one of the
      official forms and fees of the Church Department of How not to do it.
      There were three other Young Barnacles from three other offices, insipid
      to all the senses, and terribly in want of seasoning, doing the marriage
      as they would have 'done' the Nile, Old Rome, the new singer, or
      Jerusalem.
    </p>
    <p>
      But there was greater game than this. There was Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle
      himself, in the odour of Circumlocution&mdash;with the very smell of
      Despatch-Boxes upon him. Yes, there was Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, who
      had risen to official heights on the wings of one indignant idea, and that
      was, My Lords, that I am yet to be told that it behoves a Minister of this
      free country to set bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to
      fetter the public spirit, to contract the enterprise, to damp the
      independent self-reliance, of its people. That was, in other words, that
      this great statesman was always yet to be told that it behoved the Pilot
      of the ship to do anything but prosper in the private loaf and fish trade
      ashore, the crew being able, by dint of hard pumping, to keep the ship
      above water without him. On this sublime discovery in the great art How
      not to do it, Lord Decimus had long sustained the highest glory of the
      Barnacle family; and let any ill-advised member of either House but try
      How to do it by bringing in a Bill to do it, that Bill was as good as dead
      and buried when Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle rose up in his place and
      solemnly said, soaring into indignant majesty as the Circumlocution
      cheering soared around him, that he was yet to be told, My Lords, that it
      behoved him as the Minister of this free country, to set bounds to the
      philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to fetter the public spirit, to
      contract the enterprise, to damp the independent self-reliance, of its
      people. The discovery of this Behoving Machine was the discovery of the
      political perpetual motion. It never wore out, though it was always going
      round and round in all the State Departments.
    </p>
    <p>
      And there, with his noble friend and relative Lord Decimus, was William
      Barnacle, who had made the ever-famous coalition with Tudor Stiltstalking,
      and who always kept ready his own particular recipe for How not to do it;
      sometimes tapping the Speaker, and drawing it fresh out of him, with a
      'First, I will beg you, sir, to inform the House what Precedent we have
      for the course into which the honourable gentleman would precipitate us;'
      sometimes asking the honourable gentleman to favour him with his own
      version of the Precedent; sometimes telling the honourable gentleman that
      he (William Barnacle) would search for a Precedent; and oftentimes
      crushing the honourable gentleman flat on the spot by telling him there
      was no Precedent. But Precedent and Precipitate were, under all
      circumstances, the well-matched pair of battle-horses of this able
      Circumlocutionist. No matter that the unhappy honourable gentleman had
      been trying in vain, for twenty-five years, to precipitate William
      Barnacle into this&mdash;William Barnacle still put it to the House, and
      (at second-hand or so) to the country, whether he was to be precipitated
      into this. No matter that it was utterly irreconcilable with the nature of
      things and course of events that the wretched honourable gentleman could
      possibly produce a Precedent for this&mdash;William Barnacle would
      nevertheless thank the honourable gentleman for that ironical cheer, and
      would close with him upon that issue, and would tell him to his teeth that
      there Was NO Precedent for this. It might perhaps have been objected that
      the William Barnacle wisdom was not high wisdom or the earth it bamboozled
      would never have been made, or, if made in a rash mistake, would have
      remained blank mud. But Precedent and Precipitate together frightened all
      objection out of most people.
    </p>
    <p>
      And there, too, was another Barnacle, a lively one, who had leaped through
      twenty places in quick succession, and was always in two or three at once,
      and who was the much-respected inventor of an art which he practised with
      great success and admiration in all Barnacle Governments. This was, when
      he was asked a Parliamentary question on any one topic, to return an
      answer on any other. It had done immense service, and brought him into
      high esteem with the Circumlocution Office.
    </p>
    <p>
      And there, too, was a sprinkling of less distinguished Parliamentary
      Barnacles, who had not as yet got anything snug, and were going through
      their probation to prove their worthiness. These Barnacles perched upon
      staircases and hid in passages, waiting their orders to make houses or not
      to make houses; and they did all their hearing, and ohing, and cheering,
      and barking, under directions from the heads of the family; and they put
      dummy motions on the paper in the way of other men's motions; and they
      stalled disagreeable subjects off until late in the night and late in the
      session, and then with virtuous patriotism cried out that it was too late;
      and they went down into the country, whenever they were sent, and swore
      that Lord Decimus had revived trade from a swoon, and commerce from a fit,
      and had doubled the harvest of corn, quadrupled the harvest of hay, and
      prevented no end of gold from flying out of the Bank. Also these Barnacles
      were dealt, by the heads of the family, like so many cards below the
      court-cards, to public meetings and dinners; where they bore testimony to
      all sorts of services on the part of their noble and honourable relatives,
      and buttered the Barnacles on all sorts of toasts. And they stood, under
      similar orders, at all sorts of elections; and they turned out of their
      own seats, on the shortest notice and the most unreasonable terms, to let
      in other men; and they fetched and carried, and toadied and jobbed, and
      corrupted, and ate heaps of dirt, and were indefatigable in the public
      service. And there was not a list, in all the Circumlocution Office, of
      places that might fall vacant anywhere within half a century, from a lord
      of the Treasury to a Chinese consul, and up again to a governor-general of
      India, but as applicants for such places, the names of some or of every
      one of these hungry and adhesive Barnacles were down.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was necessarily but a sprinkling of any class of Barnacles that
      attended the marriage, for there were not two score in all, and what is
      that subtracted from Legion! But the sprinkling was a swarm in the
      Twickenham cottage, and filled it. A Barnacle (assisted by a Barnacle)
      married the happy pair, and it behoved Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle himself
      to conduct Mrs Meagles to breakfast.
    </p>
    <p>
      The entertainment was not as agreeable and natural as it might have been.
      Mr Meagles, hove down by his good company while he highly appreciated it,
      was not himself. Mrs Gowan was herself, and that did not improve him. The
      fiction that it was not Mr Meagles who had stood in the way, but that it
      was the Family greatness, and that the Family greatness had made a
      concession, and there was now a soothing unanimity, pervaded the affair,
      though it was never openly expressed. Then the Barnacles felt that they
      for their parts would have done with the Meagleses when the present
      patronising occasion was over; and the Meagleses felt the same for their
      parts. Then Gowan asserting his rights as a disappointed man who had his
      grudge against the family, and who, perhaps, had allowed his mother to
      have them there, as much in the hope it might give them some annoyance as
      with any other benevolent object, aired his pencil and his poverty
      ostentatiously before them, and told them he hoped in time to settle a
      crust of bread and cheese on his wife, and that he begged such of them as
      (more fortunate than himself) came in for any good thing, and could buy a
      picture, to please to remember the poor painter. Then Lord Decimus, who
      was a wonder on his own Parliamentary pedestal, turned out to be the
      windiest creature here: proposing happiness to the bride and bridegroom in
      a series of platitudes that would have made the hair of any sincere
      disciple and believer stand on end; and trotting, with the complacency of
      an idiotic elephant, among howling labyrinths of sentences which he seemed
      to take for high roads, and never so much as wanted to get out of. Then Mr
      Tite Barnacle could not but feel that there was a person in company, who
      would have disturbed his life-long sitting to Sir Thomas Lawrence in full
      official character, if such disturbance had been possible: while Barnacle
      junior did, with indignation, communicate to two vapid gentlemen, his
      relatives, that there was a feller here, look here, who had come to our
      Department without an appointment and said he wanted to know, you know;
      and that, look here, if he was to break out now, as he might you know (for
      you never could tell what an ungentlemanly Radical of that sort would be
      up to next), and was to say, look here, that he wanted to know this
      moment, you know, that would be jolly; wouldn't it?
    </p>
    <p>
      The pleasantest part of the occasion by far, to Clennam, was the
      painfullest. When Mr and Mrs Meagles at last hung about Pet in the room
      with the two pictures (where the company were not), before going with her
      to the threshold which she could never recross to be the old Pet and the
      old delight, nothing could be more natural and simple than the three were.
      Gowan himself was touched, and answered Mr Meagles's 'O Gowan, take care
      of her, take care of her!' with an earnest 'Don't be so broken-hearted,
      sir. By Heaven I will!'
    </p>
    <p>
      And so, with the last sobs and last loving words, and a last look to
      Clennam of confidence in his promise, Pet fell back in the carriage, and
      her husband waved his hand, and they were away for Dover; though not until
      the faithful Mrs Tickit, in her silk gown and jet black curls, had rushed
      out from some hiding-place, and thrown both her shoes after the carriage:
      an apparition which occasioned great surprise to the distinguished company
      at the windows.
    </p>
    <p>
      The said company being now relieved from further attendance, and the chief
      Barnacles being rather hurried (for they had it in hand just then to send
      a mail or two which was in danger of going straight to its destination,
      beating about the seas like the Flying Dutchman, and to arrange with
      complexity for the stoppage of a good deal of important business otherwise
      in peril of being done), went their several ways; with all affability
      conveying to Mr and Mrs Meagles that general assurance that what they had
      been doing there, they had been doing at a sacrifice for Mr and Mrs
      Meagles's good, which they always conveyed to Mr John Bull in their
      official condescension to that most unfortunate creature.
    </p>
    <p>
      A miserable blank remained in the house and in the hearts of the father
      and mother and Clennam. Mr Meagles called only one remembrance to his aid,
      that really did him good.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's very gratifying, Arthur,' he said, 'after all, to look back upon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The past?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes&mdash;but I mean the company.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It had made him much more low and unhappy at the time, but now it really
      did him good. 'It's very gratifying,' he said, often repeating the remark
      in the course of the evening. 'Such high company!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 35. What was behind Mr Pancks on Little Dorrit's Hand
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was at this time that Mr Pancks, in discharge of his compact with
      Clennam, revealed to him the whole of his gipsy story, and told him Little
      Dorrit's fortune. Her father was heir-at-law to a great estate that had
      long lain unknown of, unclaimed, and accumulating. His right was now
      clear, nothing interposed in his way, the Marshalsea gates stood open, the
      Marshalsea walls were down, a few flourishes of his pen, and he was
      extremely rich.
    </p>
    <p>
      In his tracking out of the claim to its complete establishment, Mr Pancks
      had shown a sagacity that nothing could baffle, and a patience and secrecy
      that nothing could tire. 'I little thought, sir,' said Pancks, 'when you
      and I crossed Smithfield that night, and I told you what sort of a
      Collector I was, that this would come of it. I little thought, sir, when I
      told you you were not of the Clennams of Cornwall, that I was ever going
      to tell you who were of the Dorrits of Dorsetshire.' He then went on to
      detail. How, having that name recorded in his note-book, he was first
      attracted by the name alone. How, having often found two exactly similar
      names, even belonging to the same place, to involve no traceable
      consanguinity, near or distant, he did not at first give much heed to
      this, except in the way of speculation as to what a surprising change
      would be made in the condition of a little seamstress, if she could be
      shown to have any interest in so large a property. How he rather supposed
      himself to have pursued the idea into its next degree, because there was
      something uncommon in the quiet little seamstress, which pleased him and
      provoked his curiosity. How he had felt his way inch by inch, and 'Moled
      it out, sir' (that was Mr Pancks's expression), grain by grain. How, in
      the beginning of the labour described by this new verb, and to render
      which the more expressive Mr Pancks shut his eyes in pronouncing it and
      shook his hair over them, he had alternated from sudden lights and hopes
      to sudden darkness and no hopes, and back again, and back again. How he
      had made acquaintances in the Prison, expressly that he might come and go
      there as all other comers and goers did; and how his first ray of light
      was unconsciously given him by Mr Dorrit himself and by his son; to both
      of whom he easily became known; with both of whom he talked much, casually
      ('but always Moleing you'll observe,' said Mr Pancks): and from whom he
      derived, without being at all suspected, two or three little points of
      family history which, as he began to hold clues of his own, suggested
      others. How it had at length become plain to Mr Pancks that he had made a
      real discovery of the heir-at-law to a great fortune, and that his
      discovery had but to be ripened to legal fulness and perfection. How he
      had, thereupon, sworn his landlord, Mr Rugg, to secrecy in a solemn
      manner, and taken him into Moleing partnership. How they had employed John
      Chivery as their sole clerk and agent, seeing to whom he was devoted. And
      how, until the present hour, when authorities mighty in the Bank and
      learned in the law declared their successful labours ended, they had
      confided in no other human being.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So if the whole thing had broken down, sir,' concluded Pancks, 'at the
      very last, say the day before the other day when I showed you our papers
      in the Prison yard, or say that very day, nobody but ourselves would have
      been cruelly disappointed, or a penny the worse.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam, who had been almost incessantly shaking hands with him throughout
      the narrative, was reminded by this to say, in an amazement which even the
      preparation he had had for the main disclosure smoothed down, 'My dear Mr
      Pancks, this must have cost you a great sum of money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pretty well, sir,' said the triumphant Pancks. 'No trifle, though we did
      it as cheap as it could be done. And the outlay was a difficulty, let me
      tell you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A difficulty!' repeated Clennam. 'But the difficulties you have so
      wonderfully conquered in the whole business!' shaking his hand again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll tell you how I did it,' said the delighted Pancks, putting his hair
      into a condition as elevated as himself. 'First, I spent all I had of my
      own. That wasn't much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry for it,' said Clennam: 'not that it matters now, though. Then,
      what did you do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then,' answered Pancks, 'I borrowed a sum of my proprietor.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of Mr Casby?' said Clennam. 'He's a fine old fellow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Noble old boy; an't he?' said Mr Pancks, entering on a series of the
      dryest snorts. 'Generous old buck. Confiding old boy. Philanthropic old
      buck. Benevolent old boy! Twenty per cent. I engaged to pay him, sir. But
      we never do business for less at our shop.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur felt an awkward consciousness of having, in his exultant condition,
      been a little premature.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I said to that boiling-over old Christian,' Mr Pancks pursued, appearing
      greatly to relish this descriptive epithet, 'that I had got a little
      project on hand; a hopeful one; I told him a hopeful one; which wanted a
      certain small capital. I proposed to him to lend me the money on my note.
      Which he did, at twenty; sticking the twenty on in a business-like way,
      and putting it into the note, to look like a part of the principal. If I
      had broken down after that, I should have been his grubber for the next
      seven years at half wages and double grind. But he's a perfect Patriarch;
      and it would do a man good to serve him on such terms&mdash;on any terms.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur for his life could not have said with confidence whether Pancks
      really thought so or not.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When that was gone, sir,' resumed Pancks, 'and it did go, though I
      dribbled it out like so much blood, I had taken Mr Rugg into the secret. I
      proposed to borrow of Mr Rugg (or of Miss Rugg; it's the same thing; she
      made a little money by a speculation in the Common Pleas once). He lent it
      at ten, and thought that pretty high. But Mr Rugg's a red-haired man, sir,
      and gets his hair cut. And as to the crown of his hat, it's high. And as
      to the brim of his hat, it's narrow. And there's no more benevolence
      bubbling out of him, than out of a ninepin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your own recompense for all this, Mr Pancks,' said Clennam, 'ought to be
      a large one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't mistrust getting it, sir,' said Pancks. 'I have made no bargain.
      I owed you one on that score; now I have paid it. Money out of pocket made
      good, time fairly allowed for, and Mr Rugg's bill settled, a thousand
      pounds would be a fortune to me. That matter I place in your hands. I
      authorize you now to break all this to the family in any way you think
      best. Miss Amy Dorrit will be with Mrs Finching this morning. The sooner
      done the better. Can't be done too soon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This conversation took place in Clennam's bed-room, while he was yet in
      bed. For Mr Pancks had knocked up the house and made his way in, very
      early in the morning; and, without once sitting down or standing still,
      had delivered himself of the whole of his details (illustrated with a
      variety of documents) at the bedside. He now said he would 'go and look up
      Mr Rugg', from whom his excited state of mind appeared to require another
      back; and bundling up his papers, and exchanging one more hearty shake of
      the hand with Clennam, he went at full speed down-stairs, and steamed off.
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam, of course, resolved to go direct to Mr Casby's. He dressed and
      got out so quickly that he found himself at the corner of the patriarchal
      street nearly an hour before her time; but he was not sorry to have the
      opportunity of calming himself with a leisurely walk.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he returned to the street, and had knocked at the bright brass
      knocker, he was informed that she had come, and was shown up-stairs to
      Flora's breakfast-room. Little Dorrit was not there herself, but Flora
      was, and testified the greatest amazement at seeing him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good gracious, Arthur&mdash;Doyce and Clennam!' cried that lady, 'who
      would have ever thought of seeing such a sight as this and pray excuse a
      wrapper for upon my word I really never and a faded check too which is
      worse but our little friend is making me, not that I need mind mentioning
      it to you for you must know that there are such things a skirt, and having
      arranged that a trying on should take place after breakfast is the reason
      though I wish not so badly starched.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ought to make an apology,' said Arthur, 'for so early and abrupt a
      visit; but you will excuse it when I tell you the cause.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In times for ever fled Arthur,' returned Mrs Finching, 'pray excuse me
      Doyce and Clennam infinitely more correct and though unquestionably
      distant still 'tis distance lends enchantment to the view, at least I
      don't mean that and if I did I suppose it would depend considerably on the
      nature of the view, but I'm running on again and you put it all out of my
      head.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She glanced at him tenderly, and resumed:
    </p>
    <p>
      'In times for ever fled I was going to say it would have sounded strange
      indeed for Arthur Clennam&mdash;Doyce and Clennam naturally quite
      different&mdash;to make apologies for coming here at any time, but that is
      past and what is past can never be recalled except in his own case as poor
      Mr F. said when he was in spirits Cucumber and therefore never ate it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was making the tea when Arthur came in, and now hastily finished that
      operation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa,' she said, all mystery and whisper, as she shut down the tea-pot
      lid, 'is sitting prosingly breaking his new laid egg in the back parlour
      over the City article exactly like the Woodpecker Tapping and need never
      know that you are here, and our little friend you are well aware may be
      fully trusted when she comes down from cutting out on the large table
      overhead.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur then told her, in the fewest words, that it was their little friend
      he came to see; and what he had to announce to their little friend. At
      which astounding intelligence, Flora clasped her hands, fell into a
      tremble, and shed tears of sympathy and pleasure, like the good-natured
      creature she really was.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For gracious sake let me get out of the way first,' said Flora, putting
      her hands to her ears and moving towards the door, 'or I know I shall go
      off dead and screaming and make everybody worse, and the dear little thing
      only this morning looking so nice and neat and good and yet so poor and
      now a fortune is she really and deserves it too! and might I mention it to
      Mr F.'s Aunt Arthur not Doyce and Clennam for this once or if
      objectionable not on any account.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur nodded his free permission, since Flora shut out all verbal
      communication. Flora nodded in return to thank him, and hurried out of the
      room.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit's step was already on the stairs, and in another moment she
      was at the door. Do what he could to compose his face, he could not convey
      so much of an ordinary expression into it, but that the moment she saw it
      she dropped her work, and cried, 'Mr Clennam! What's the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing, nothing. That is, no misfortune has happened. I have come to
      tell you something, but it is a piece of great good-fortune.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-fortune?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wonderful fortune!'
    </p>
    <p>
      They stood in a window, and her eyes, full of light, were fixed upon his
      face. He put an arm about her, seeing her likely to sink down. She put a
      hand upon that arm, partly to rest upon it, and partly so to preserve
      their relative positions as that her intent look at him should be shaken
      by no change of attitude in either of them. Her lips seemed to repeat
      'Wonderful fortune?' He repeated it again, aloud.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Little Dorrit! Your father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The ice of the pale face broke at the word, and little lights and shoots
      of expression passed all over it. They were all expressions of pain. Her
      breath was faint and hurried. Her heart beat fast. He would have clasped
      the little figure closer, but he saw that the eyes appealed to him not to
      be moved.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your father can be free within this week. He does not know it; we must go
      to him from here, to tell him of it. Your father will be free within a few
      days. Your father will be free within a few hours. Remember we must go to
      him from here, to tell him of it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      That brought her back. Her eyes were closing, but they opened again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is not all the good-fortune. This is not all the wonderful
      good-fortune, my dear Little Dorrit. Shall I tell you more?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her lips shaped 'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your father will be no beggar when he is free. He will want for nothing.
      Shall I tell you more? Remember! He knows nothing of it; we must go to
      him, from here, to tell him of it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She seemed to entreat him for a little time. He held her in his arm, and,
      after a pause, bent down his ear to listen.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did you ask me to go on?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He will be a rich man. He is a rich man. A great sum of money is waiting
      to be paid over to him as his inheritance; you are all henceforth very
      wealthy. Bravest and best of children, I thank Heaven that you are
      rewarded!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As he kissed her, she turned her head towards his shoulder, and raised her
      arm towards his neck; cried out 'Father! Father! Father!' and swooned
      away.
    </p>
    <p>
      Upon which Flora returned to take care of her, and hovered about her on a
      sofa, intermingling kind offices and incoherent scraps of conversation in
      a manner so confounding, that whether she pressed the Marshalsea to take a
      spoonful of unclaimed dividends, for it would do her good; or whether she
      congratulated Little Dorrit's father on coming into possession of a
      hundred thousand smelling-bottles; or whether she explained that she put
      seventy-five thousand drops of spirits of lavender on fifty thousand
      pounds of lump sugar, and that she entreated Little Dorrit to take that
      gentle restorative; or whether she bathed the foreheads of Doyce and
      Clennam in vinegar, and gave the late Mr F. more air; no one with any
      sense of responsibility could have undertaken to decide. A tributary
      stream of confusion, moreover, poured in from an adjoining bedroom, where
      Mr F.'s Aunt appeared, from the sound of her voice, to be in a horizontal
      posture, awaiting her breakfast; and from which bower that inexorable lady
      snapped off short taunts, whenever she could get a hearing, as, 'Don't
      believe it's his doing!' and 'He needn't take no credit to himself for
      it!' and 'It'll be long enough, I expect, afore he'll give up any of his
      own money!' all designed to disparage Clennam's share in the discovery,
      and to relieve those inveterate feelings with which Mr F.'s Aunt regarded
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Little Dorrit's solicitude to get to her father, and to carry the
      joyful tidings to him, and not to leave him in his jail a moment with this
      happiness in store for him and still unknown to him, did more for her
      speedy restoration than all the skill and attention on earth could have
      done. 'Come with me to my dear father. Pray come and tell my dear father!'
      were the first words she said. Her father, her father. She spoke of
      nothing but him, thought of nothing but him. Kneeling down and pouring out
      her thankfulness with uplifted hands, her thanks were for her father.
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora's tenderness was quite overcome by this, and she launched out among
      the cups and saucers into a wonderful flow of tears and speech.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I declare,' she sobbed, 'I never was so cut up since your mama and my
      papa not Doyce and Clennam for this once but give the precious little
      thing a cup of tea and make her put it to her lips at least pray Arthur
      do, not even Mr F.'s last illness for that was of another kind and gout is
      not a child's affection though very painful for all parties and Mr F. a
      martyr with his leg upon a rest and the wine trade in itself inflammatory
      for they will do it more or less among themselves and who can wonder, it
      seems like a dream I am sure to think of nothing at all this morning and
      now Mines of money is it really, but you must know my darling love because
      you never will be strong enough to tell him all about it upon teaspoons,
      mightn't it be even best to try the directions of my own medical man for
      though the flavour is anything but agreeable still I force myself to do it
      as a prescription and find the benefit, you'd rather not why no my dear
      I'd rather not but still I do it as a duty, everybody will congratulate
      you some in earnest and some not and many will congratulate you with all
      their hearts but none more so I do assure you from the bottom of my own I
      do myself though sensible of blundering and being stupid, and will be
      judged by Arthur not Doyce and Clennam for this once so good-bye darling
      and God bless you and may you be very happy and excuse the liberty, vowing
      that the dress shall never be finished by anybody else but shall be laid
      by for a keepsake just as it is and called Little Dorrit though why that
      strangest of denominations at any time I never did myself and now I never
      shall!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus Flora, in taking leave of her favourite. Little Dorrit thanked her,
      and embraced her, over and over again; and finally came out of the house
      with Clennam, and took coach for the Marshalsea.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a strangely unreal ride through the old squalid streets, with a
      sensation of being raised out of them into an airy world of wealth and
      grandeur. When Arthur told her that she would soon ride in her own
      carriage through very different scenes, when all the familiar experiences
      would have vanished away, she looked frightened. But when he substituted
      her father for herself, and told her how he would ride in his carriage,
      and how great and grand he would be, her tears of joy and innocent pride
      fell fast. Seeing that the happiness her mind could realise was all
      shining upon him, Arthur kept that single figure before her; and so they
      rode brightly through the poor streets in the prison neighbourhood to
      carry him the great news.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Mr Chivery, who was on duty, admitted them into the Lodge, he saw
      something in their faces which filled him with astonishment. He stood
      looking after them, when they hurried into the prison, as though he
      perceived that they had come back accompanied by a ghost a-piece. Two or
      three Collegians whom they passed, looked after them too, and presently
      joining Mr Chivery, formed a little group on the Lodge steps, in the midst
      of which there spontaneously originated a whisper that the Father was
      going to get his discharge. Within a few minutes, it was heard in the
      remotest room in the College.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit opened the door from without, and they both entered. He was
      sitting in his old grey gown and his old black cap, in the sunlight by the
      window, reading his newspaper. His glasses were in his hand, and he had
      just looked round; surprised at first, no doubt, by her step upon the
      stairs, not expecting her until night; surprised again, by seeing Arthur
      Clennam in her company. As they came in, the same unwonted look in both of
      them which had already caught attention in the yard below, struck him. He
      did not rise or speak, but laid down his glasses and his newspaper on the
      table beside him, and looked at them with his mouth a little open and his
      lips trembling. When Arthur put out his hand, he touched it, but not with
      his usual state; and then he turned to his daughter, who had sat down
      close beside him with her hands upon his shoulder, and looked attentively
      in her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Father! I have been made so happy this morning!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been made so happy, my dear?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By Mr Clennam, father. He brought me such joyful and wonderful
      intelligence about you! If he had not with his great kindness and
      gentleness, prepared me for it, father&mdash;prepared me for it, father&mdash;I
      think I could not have borne it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her agitation was exceedingly great, and the tears rolled down her face.
      He put his hand suddenly to his heart, and looked at Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Compose yourself, sir,' said Clennam, 'and take a little time to think.
      To think of the brightest and most fortunate accidents of life. We have
      all heard of great surprises of joy. They are not at an end, sir. They are
      rare, but not at an end.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam? Not at an end? Not at an end for&mdash;' He touched himself
      upon the breast, instead of saying 'me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' returned Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What surprise,' he asked, keeping his left hand over his heart, and there
      stopping in his speech, while with his right hand he put his glasses
      exactly level on the table: 'what such surprise can be in store for me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let me answer with another question. Tell me, Mr Dorrit, what surprise
      would be the most unlooked for and the most acceptable to you. Do not be
      afraid to imagine it, or to say what it would be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked steadfastly at Clennam, and, so looking at him, seemed to change
      into a very old haggard man. The sun was bright upon the wall beyond the
      window, and on the spikes at top. He slowly stretched out the hand that
      had been upon his heart, and pointed at the wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is down,' said Clennam. 'Gone!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He remained in the same attitude, looking steadfastly at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And in its place,' said Clennam, slowly and distinctly, 'are the means to
      possess and enjoy the utmost that they have so long shut out. Mr Dorrit,
      there is not the smallest doubt that within a few days you will be free,
      and highly prosperous. I congratulate you with all my soul on this change
      of fortune, and on the happy future into which you are soon to carry the
      treasure you have been blest with here&mdash;the best of all the riches
      you can have elsewhere&mdash;the treasure at your side.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With those words, he pressed his hand and released it; and his daughter,
      laying her face against his, encircled him in the hour of his prosperity
      with her arms, as she had in the long years of his adversity encircled him
      with her love and toil and truth; and poured out her full heart in
      gratitude, hope, joy, blissful ecstasy, and all for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall see him as I never saw him yet. I shall see my dear love, with
      the dark cloud cleared away. I shall see him, as my poor mother saw him
      long ago. O my dear, my dear! O father, father! O thank God, thank God!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He yielded himself to her kisses and caresses, but did not return them,
      except that he put an arm about her. Neither did he say one word. His
      steadfast look was now divided between her and Clennam, and he began to
      shake as if he were very cold. Explaining to Little Dorrit that he would
      run to the coffee-house for a bottle of wine, Arthur fetched it with all
      the haste he could use. While it was being brought from the cellar to the
      bar, a number of excited people asked him what had happened; when he
      hurriedly informed them that Mr Dorrit had succeeded to a fortune.
    </p>
    <p>
      On coming back with the wine in his hand, he found that she had placed her
      father in his easy chair, and had loosened his shirt and neckcloth. They
      filled a tumbler with wine, and held it to his lips. When he had swallowed
      a little, he took the glass himself and emptied it. Soon after that, he
      leaned back in his chair and cried, with his handkerchief before his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      After this had lasted a while Clennam thought it a good season for
      diverting his attention from the main surprise, by relating its details.
      Slowly, therefore, and in a quiet tone of voice, he explained them as best
      he could, and enlarged on the nature of Pancks's service.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He shall be&mdash;ha&mdash;he shall be handsomely recompensed, sir,' said
      the Father, starting up and moving hurriedly about the room. 'Assure
      yourself, Mr Clennam, that everybody concerned shall be&mdash;ha&mdash;shall
      be nobly rewarded. No one, my dear sir, shall say that he has an
      unsatisfied claim against me. I shall repay the&mdash;hum&mdash;the
      advances I have had from you, sir, with peculiar pleasure. I beg to be
      informed at your earliest convenience, what advances you have made my
      son.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had no purpose in going about the room, but he was not still a moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Everybody,' he said, 'shall be remembered. I will not go away from here
      in anybody's debt. All the people who have been&mdash;ha&mdash;well
      behaved towards myself and my family, shall be rewarded. Chivery shall be
      rewarded. Young John shall be rewarded. I particularly wish, and intend,
      to act munificently, Mr Clennam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you allow me,' said Arthur, laying his purse on the table, 'to
      supply any present contingencies, Mr Dorrit? I thought it best to bring a
      sum of money for the purpose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir, thank you. I accept with readiness, at the present
      moment, what I could not an hour ago have conscientiously taken. I am
      obliged to you for the temporary accommodation. Exceedingly temporary, but
      well timed&mdash;well timed.' His hand had closed upon the money, and he
      carried it about with him. 'Be so kind, sir, as to add the amount to those
      former advances to which I have already referred; being careful, if you
      please, not to omit advances made to my son. A mere verbal statement of
      the gross amount is all I shall&mdash;ha&mdash;all I shall require.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His eye fell upon his daughter at this point, and he stopped for a moment
      to kiss her, and to pat her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It will be necessary to find a milliner, my love, and to make a speedy
      and complete change in your very plain dress. Something must be done with
      Maggy too, who at present is&mdash;ha&mdash;barely respectable, barely
      respectable. And your sister, Amy, and your brother. And <i>my</i>
      brother, your uncle&mdash;poor soul, I trust this will rouse him&mdash;messengers
      must be despatched to fetch them. They must be informed of this. We must
      break it to them cautiously, but they must be informed directly. We owe it
      as a duty to them and to ourselves, from this moment, not to let them&mdash;hum&mdash;not
      to let them do anything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was the first intimation he had ever given, that he was privy to the
      fact that they did something for a livelihood.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was still jogging about the room, with the purse clutched in his hand,
      when a great cheering arose in the yard. 'The news has spread already,'
      said Clennam, looking down from the window. 'Will you show yourself to
      them, Mr Dorrit? They are very earnest, and they evidently wish it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;hum&mdash;ha&mdash;I confess I could have desired, Amy my dear,'
      he said, jogging about in a more feverish flutter than before, 'to have
      made some change in my dress first, and to have bought a&mdash;hum&mdash;a
      watch and chain. But if it must be done as it is, it&mdash;ha&mdash;it
      must be done. Fasten the collar of my shirt, my dear. Mr Clennam, would
      you oblige me&mdash;hum&mdash;with a blue neckcloth you will find in that
      drawer at your elbow. Button my coat across at the chest, my love. It
      looks&mdash;ha&mdash;it looks broader, buttoned.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With his trembling hand he pushed his grey hair up, and then, taking
      Clennam and his daughter for supporters, appeared at the window leaning on
      an arm of each. The Collegians cheered him very heartily, and he kissed
      his hand to them with great urbanity and protection. When he withdrew into
      the room again, he said 'Poor creatures!' in a tone of much pity for their
      miserable condition.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was deeply anxious that he should lie down to compose
      himself. On Arthur's speaking to her of his going to inform Pancks that he
      might now appear as soon as he would, and pursue the joyful business to
      its close, she entreated him in a whisper to stay with her until her
      father should be quite calm and at rest. He needed no second entreaty; and
      she prepared her father's bed, and begged him to lie down. For another
      half-hour or more he would be persuaded to do nothing but go about the
      room, discussing with himself the probabilities for and against the
      Marshal's allowing the whole of the prisoners to go to the windows of the
      official residence which commanded the street, to see himself and family
      depart for ever in a carriage&mdash;which, he said, he thought would be a
      Sight for them. But gradually he began to droop and tire, and at last
      stretched himself upon the bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      She took her faithful place beside him, fanning him and cooling his
      forehead; and he seemed to be falling asleep (always with the money in his
      hand), when he unexpectedly sat up and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, I beg your pardon. Am I to understand, my dear sir, that I
      could&mdash;ha&mdash;could pass through the Lodge at this moment, and&mdash;hum&mdash;take
      a walk?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think not, Mr Dorrit,' was the unwilling reply. 'There are certain
      forms to be completed; and although your detention here is now in itself a
      form, I fear it is one that for a little longer has to be observed too.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At this he shed tears again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is but a few hours, sir,' Clennam cheerfully urged upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A few hours, sir,' he returned in a sudden passion. 'You talk very easily
      of hours, sir! How long do you suppose, sir, that an hour is to a man who
      is choking for want of air?'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was his last demonstration for that time; as, after shedding some more
      tears and querulously complaining that he couldn't breathe, he slowly fell
      into a slumber. Clennam had abundant occupation for his thoughts, as he
      sat in the quiet room watching the father on his bed, and the daughter
      fanning his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit had been thinking too. After softly putting his grey hair
      aside, and touching his forehead with her lips, she looked towards Arthur,
      who came nearer to her, and pursued in a low whisper the subject of her
      thoughts.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, will he pay all his debts before he leaves here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No doubt. All.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All the debts for which he had been imprisoned here, all my life and
      longer?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No doubt.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was something of uncertainty and remonstrance in her look; something
      that was not all satisfaction. He wondered to detect it, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are glad that he should do so?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you?' asked Little Dorrit, wistfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Am I? Most heartily glad!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then I know I ought to be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And are you not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It seems to me hard,' said Little Dorrit, 'that he should have lost so
      many years and suffered so much, and at last pay all the debts as well. It
      seems to me hard that he should pay in life and money both.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear child&mdash;' Clennam was beginning.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I know I am wrong,' she pleaded timidly, 'don't think any worse of
      me; it has grown up with me here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The prison, which could spoil so many things, had tainted Little Dorrit's
      mind no more than this. Engendered as the confusion was, in compassion for
      the poor prisoner, her father, it was the first speck Clennam had ever
      seen, it was the last speck Clennam ever saw, of the prison atmosphere
      upon her.
    </p>
    <p>
      He thought this, and forbore to say another word. With the thought, her
      purity and goodness came before him in their brightest light. The little
      spot made them the more beautiful.
    </p>
    <p>
      Worn out with her own emotions, and yielding to the silence of the room,
      her hand slowly slackened and failed in its fanning movement, and her head
      dropped down on the pillow at her father's side. Clennam rose softly,
      opened and closed the door without a sound, and passed from the prison,
      carrying the quiet with him into the turbulent streets.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 36. The Marshalsea becomes an Orphan
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>nd now the day arrived when Mr Dorrit and his family were to leave the
      prison for ever, and the stones of its much-trodden pavement were to know
      them no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      The interval had been short, but he had greatly complained of its length,
      and had been imperious with Mr Rugg touching the delay. He had been high
      with Mr Rugg, and had threatened to employ some one else. He had requested
      Mr Rugg not to presume upon the place in which he found him, but to do his
      duty, sir, and to do it with promptitude. He had told Mr Rugg that he knew
      what lawyers and agents were, and that he would not submit to imposition.
      On that gentleman's humbly representing that he exerted himself to the
      utmost, Miss Fanny was very short with him; desiring to know what less he
      could do, when he had been told a dozen times that money was no object,
      and expressing her suspicion that he forgot whom he talked to.
    </p>
    <p>
      Towards the Marshal, who was a Marshal of many years' standing, and with
      whom he had never had any previous difference, Mr Dorrit comported himself
      with severity. That officer, on personally tendering his congratulations,
      offered the free use of two rooms in his house for Mr Dorrit's occupation
      until his departure. Mr Dorrit thanked him at the moment, and replied that
      he would think of it; but the Marshal was no sooner gone than he sat down
      and wrote him a cutting note, in which he remarked that he had never on
      any former occasion had the honour of receiving his congratulations (which
      was true, though indeed there had not been anything particular to
      congratulate him upon), and that he begged, on behalf of himself and
      family, to repudiate the Marshal's offer, with all those thanks which its
      disinterested character and its perfect independence of all worldly
      considerations demanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      Although his brother showed so dim a glimmering of interest in their
      altered fortunes that it was very doubtful whether he understood them, Mr
      Dorrit caused him to be measured for new raiment by the hosiers, tailors,
      hatters, and bootmakers whom he called in for himself; and ordered that
      his old clothes should be taken from him and burned. Miss Fanny and Mr Tip
      required no direction in making an appearance of great fashion and
      elegance; and the three passed this interval together at the best hotel in
      the neighbourhood&mdash;though truly, as Miss Fanny said, the best was
      very indifferent. In connection with that establishment, Mr Tip hired a
      cabriolet, horse, and groom, a very neat turn out, which was usually to be
      observed for two or three hours at a time gracing the Borough High Street,
      outside the Marshalsea court-yard. A modest little hired chariot and pair
      was also frequently to be seen there; in alighting from and entering which
      vehicle, Miss Fanny fluttered the Marshal's daughters by the display of
      inaccessible bonnets.
    </p>
    <p>
      A great deal of business was transacted in this short period. Among other
      items, Messrs Peddle and Pool, solicitors, of Monument Yard, were
      instructed by their client Edward Dorrit, Esquire, to address a letter to
      Mr Arthur Clennam, enclosing the sum of twenty-four pounds nine shillings
      and eightpence, being the amount of principal and interest computed at the
      rate of five per cent. per annum, in which their client believed himself
      to be indebted to Mr Clennam. In making this communication and remittance,
      Messrs Peddle and Pool were further instructed by their client to remind
      Mr Clennam that the favour of the advance now repaid (including gate-fees)
      had not been asked of him, and to inform him that it would not have been
      accepted if it had been openly proffered in his name. With which they
      requested a stamped receipt, and remained his obedient servants. A great
      deal of business had likewise to be done, within the
      so-soon-to-be-orphaned Marshalsea, by Mr Dorrit so long its Father,
      chiefly arising out of applications made to him by Collegians for small
      sums of money. To these he responded with the greatest liberality, and
      with no lack of formality; always first writing to appoint a time at which
      the applicant might wait upon him in his room, and then receiving him in
      the midst of a vast accumulation of documents, and accompanying his
      donation (for he said in every such case, 'it is a donation, not a loan')
      with a great deal of good counsel: to the effect that he, the expiring
      Father of the Marshalsea, hoped to be long remembered, as an example that
      a man might preserve his own and the general respect even there.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Collegians were not envious. Besides that they had a personal and
      traditional regard for a Collegian of so many years' standing, the event
      was creditable to the College, and made it famous in the newspapers.
      Perhaps more of them thought, too, than were quite aware of it, that the
      thing might in the lottery of chances have happened to themselves, or that
      something of the sort might yet happen to themselves some day or other.
      They took it very well. A few were low at the thought of being left
      behind, and being left poor; but even these did not grudge the family
      their brilliant reverse. There might have been much more envy in politer
      places. It seems probable that mediocrity of fortune would have been
      disposed to be less magnanimous than the Collegians, who lived from hand
      to mouth&mdash;from the pawnbroker's hand to the day's dinner.
    </p>
    <p>
      They got up an address to him, which they presented in a neat frame and
      glass (though it was not afterwards displayed in the family mansion or
      preserved among the family papers); and to which he returned a gracious
      answer. In that document he assured them, in a Royal manner, that he
      received the profession of their attachment with a full conviction of its
      sincerity; and again generally exhorted them to follow his example&mdash;which,
      at least in so far as coming into a great property was concerned, there is
      no doubt they would have gladly imitated. He took the same occasion of
      inviting them to a comprehensive entertainment, to be given to the whole
      College in the yard, and at which he signified he would have the honour of
      taking a parting glass to the health and happiness of all those whom he
      was about to leave behind.
    </p>
    <p>
      He did not in person dine at this public repast (it took place at two in
      the afternoon, and his dinners now came in from the hotel at six), but his
      son was so good as to take the head of the principal table, and to be very
      free and engaging. He himself went about among the company, and took
      notice of individuals, and saw that the viands were of the quality he had
      ordered, and that all were served. On the whole, he was like a baron of
      the olden time in a rare good humour. At the conclusion of the repast, he
      pledged his guests in a bumper of old Madeira; and told them that he hoped
      they had enjoyed themselves, and what was more, that they would enjoy
      themselves for the rest of the evening; that he wished them well; and that
      he bade them welcome. His health being drunk with acclamations, he was not
      so baronial after all but that in trying to return thanks he broke down,
      in the manner of a mere serf with a heart in his breast, and wept before
      them all. After this great success, which he supposed to be a failure, he
      gave them 'Mr Chivery and his brother officers;' whom he had beforehand
      presented with ten pounds each, and who were all in attendance. Mr Chivery
      spoke to the toast, saying, What you undertake to lock up, lock up; but
      remember that you are, in the words of the fettered African, a man and a
      brother ever. The list of toasts disposed of, Mr Dorrit urbanely went
      through the motions of playing a game of skittles with the Collegian who
      was the next oldest inhabitant to himself; and left the tenantry to their
      diversions.
    </p>
    <p>
      But all these occurrences preceded the final day. And now the day arrived
      when he and his family were to leave the prison for ever, and when the
      stones of its much-trodden pavement were to know them no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      Noon was the hour appointed for the departure. As it approached, there was
      not a Collegian within doors, nor a turnkey absent. The latter class of
      gentlemen appeared in their Sunday clothes, and the greater part of the
      Collegians were brightened up as much as circumstances allowed. Two or
      three flags were even displayed, and the children put on odds and ends of
      ribbon. Mr Dorrit himself, at this trying time, preserved a serious but
      graceful dignity. Much of his great attention was given to his brother, as
      to whose bearing on the great occasion he felt anxious.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Frederick,' said he, 'if you will give me your arm we will pass
      among our friends together. I think it is right that we should go out arm
      in arm, my dear Frederick.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hah!' said Frederick. 'Yes, yes, yes, yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And if, my dear Frederick&mdash;if you could, without putting any great
      constraint upon yourself, throw a little (pray excuse me, Frederick), a
      little polish into your usual demeanour&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'William, William,' said the other, shaking his head, 'it's for you to do
      all that. I don't know how. All forgotten, forgotten!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, my dear fellow,' returned William, 'for that very reason, if for no
      other, you must positively try to rouse yourself. What you have forgotten
      you must now begin to recall, my dear Frederick. Your position&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh?' said Frederick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your position, my dear Frederick.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mine?' He looked first at his own figure, and then at his brother's, and
      then, drawing a long breath, cried, 'Hah, to be sure! Yes, yes, yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your position, my dear Frederick, is now a fine one. Your position, as my
      brother, is a very fine one. And I know that it belongs to your
      conscientious nature to try to become worthy of it, my dear Frederick, and
      to try to adorn it. To be no discredit to it, but to adorn it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'William,' said the other weakly, and with a sigh, 'I will do anything you
      wish, my brother, provided it lies in my power. Pray be so kind as to
      recollect what a limited power mine is. What would you wish me to do
      to-day, brother? Say what it is, only say what it is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dearest Frederick, nothing. It is not worth troubling so good a heart
      as yours with.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray trouble it,' returned the other. 'It finds it no trouble, William,
      to do anything it can for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      William passed his hand across his eyes, and murmured with august
      satisfaction, 'Blessings on your attachment, my poor dear fellow!' Then he
      said aloud, 'Well, my dear Frederick, if you will only try, as we walk
      out, to show that you are alive to the occasion&mdash;that you think about
      it&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What would you advise me to think about it?' returned his submissive
      brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! my dear Frederick, how can I answer you? I can only say what, in
      leaving these good people, I think myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's it!' cried his brother. 'That will help me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I find that I think, my dear Frederick, and with mixed emotions in which
      a softened compassion predominates, What will they do without me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True,' returned his brother. 'Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'll think that as we
      go, What will they do without my brother! Poor things! What will they do
      without him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Twelve o'clock having just struck, and the carriage being reported ready
      in the outer court-yard, the brothers proceeded down-stairs arm-in-arm.
      Edward Dorrit, Esquire (once Tip), and his sister Fanny followed, also
      arm-in-arm; Mr Plornish and Maggy, to whom had been entrusted the removal
      of such of the family effects as were considered worth removing, followed,
      bearing bundles and burdens to be packed in a cart.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0381m.jpg" alt="0381m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0381.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      In the yard, were the Collegians and turnkeys. In the yard, were Mr Pancks
      and Mr Rugg, come to see the last touch given to their work. In the yard,
      was Young John making a new epitaph for himself, on the occasion of his
      dying of a broken heart. In the yard, was the Patriarchal Casby, looking
      so tremendously benevolent that many enthusiastic Collegians grasped him
      fervently by the hand, and the wives and female relatives of many more
      Collegians kissed his hand, nothing doubting that he had done it all. In
      the yard, was the man with the shadowy grievance respecting the Fund which
      the Marshal embezzled, who had got up at five in the morning to complete
      the copying of a perfectly unintelligible history of that transaction,
      which he had committed to Mr Dorrit's care, as a document of the last
      importance, calculated to stun the Government and effect the Marshal's
      downfall. In the yard, was the insolvent whose utmost energies were always
      set on getting into debt, who broke into prison with as much pains as
      other men have broken out of it, and who was always being cleared and
      complimented; while the insolvent at his elbow&mdash;a mere little,
      snivelling, striving tradesman, half dead of anxious efforts to keep out
      of debt&mdash;found it a hard matter, indeed, to get a Commissioner to
      release him with much reproof and reproach. In the yard, was the man of
      many children and many burdens, whose failure astonished everybody; in the
      yard, was the man of no children and large resources, whose failure
      astonished nobody. There, were the people who were always going out
      to-morrow, and always putting it off; there, were the people who had come
      in yesterday, and who were much more jealous and resentful of this freak
      of fortune than the seasoned birds. There, were some who, in pure meanness
      of spirit, cringed and bowed before the enriched Collegian and his family;
      there, were others who did so really because their eyes, accustomed to the
      gloom of their imprisonment and poverty, could not support the light of
      such bright sunshine. There, were many whose shillings had gone into his
      pocket to buy him meat and drink; but none who were now obtrusively Hail
      fellow well met! with him, on the strength of that assistance. It was
      rather to be remarked of the caged birds, that they were a little shy of
      the bird about to be so grandly free, and that they had a tendency to
      withdraw themselves towards the bars, and seem a little fluttered as he
      passed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Through these spectators the little procession, headed by the two
      brothers, moved slowly to the gate. Mr Dorrit, yielding to the vast
      speculation how the poor creatures were to get on without him, was great,
      and sad, but not absorbed. He patted children on the head like Sir Roger
      de Coverley going to church, he spoke to people in the background by their
      Christian names, he condescended to all present, and seemed for their
      consolation to walk encircled by the legend in golden characters, 'Be
      comforted, my people! Bear it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      At last three honest cheers announced that he had passed the gate, and
      that the Marshalsea was an orphan. Before they had ceased to ring in the
      echoes of the prison walls, the family had got into their carriage, and
      the attendant had the steps in his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then, and not before, 'Good Gracious!' cried Miss Fanny all at once,
      'Where's Amy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her father had thought she was with her sister. Her sister had thought she
      was 'somewhere or other.' They had all trusted to finding her, as they had
      always done, quietly in the right place at the right moment. This going
      away was perhaps the very first action of their joint lives that they had
      got through without her.
    </p>
    <p>
      A minute might have been consumed in the ascertaining of these points,
      when Miss Fanny, who, from her seat in the carriage, commanded the long
      narrow passage leading to the Lodge, flushed indignantly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now I do say, Pa,' cried she, 'that this is disgraceful!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is disgraceful, Fanny?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do say,' she repeated, 'this is perfectly infamous! Really almost
      enough, even at such a time as this, to make one wish one was dead! Here
      is that child Amy, in her ugly old shabby dress, which she was so
      obstinate about, Pa, which I over and over again begged and prayed her to
      change, and which she over and over again objected to, and promised to
      change to-day, saying she wished to wear it as long as ever she remained
      in there with you&mdash;which was absolutely romantic nonsense of the
      lowest kind&mdash;here is that child Amy disgracing us to the last moment
      and at the last moment, by being carried out in that dress after all. And
      by that Mr Clennam too!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The offence was proved, as she delivered the indictment. Clennam appeared
      at the carriage-door, bearing the little insensible figure in his arms.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She has been forgotten,' he said, in a tone of pity not free from
      reproach. 'I ran up to her room (which Mr Chivery showed me) and found the
      door open, and that she had fainted on the floor, dear child. She appeared
      to have gone to change her dress, and to have sunk down overpowered. It
      may have been the cheering, or it may have happened sooner. Take care of
      this poor cold hand, Miss Dorrit. Don't let it fall.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir,' returned Miss Dorrit, bursting into tears. 'I believe I
      know what to do, if you will give me leave. Dear Amy, open your eyes,
      that's a love! Oh, Amy, Amy, I really am so vexed and ashamed! Do rouse
      yourself, darling! Oh, why are they not driving on! Pray, Pa, do drive
      on!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The attendant, getting between Clennam and the carriage-door, with a sharp
      'By your leave, sir!' bundled up the steps, and they drove away.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0039" id="link2H_4_0039"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 1. Fellow Travellers
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to the
      highest ridges of the Alps.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was vintage time in the valleys on the Swiss side of the Pass of the
      Great Saint Bernard, and along the banks of the Lake of Geneva. The air
      there was charged with the scent of gathered grapes. Baskets, troughs, and
      tubs of grapes stood in the dim village doorways, stopped the steep and
      narrow village streets, and had been carrying all day along the roads and
      lanes. Grapes, split and crushed under foot, lay about everywhere. The
      child carried in a sling by the laden peasant woman toiling home, was
      quieted with picked-up grapes; the idiot sunning his big goitre under the
      leaves of the wooden chalet by the way to the Waterfall, sat munching
      grapes; the breath of the cows and goats was redolent of leaves and stalks
      of grapes; the company in every little cabaret were eating, drinking,
      talking grapes. A pity that no ripe touch of this generous abundance could
      be given to the thin, hard, stony wine, which after all was made from the
      grapes!
    </p>
    <p>
      The air had been warm and transparent through the whole of the bright day.
      Shining metal spires and church-roofs, distant and rarely seen, had
      sparkled in the view; and the snowy mountain-tops had been so clear that
      unaccustomed eyes, cancelling the intervening country, and slighting their
      rugged heights for something fabulous, would have measured them as within
      a few hours easy reach. Mountain-peaks of great celebrity in the valleys,
      whence no trace of their existence was visible sometimes for months
      together, had been since morning plain and near in the blue sky. And now,
      when it was dark below, though they seemed solemnly to recede, like
      spectres who were going to vanish, as the red dye of the sunset faded out
      of them and left them coldly white, they were yet distinctly defined in
      their loneliness above the mists and shadows.
    </p>
    <p>
      Seen from these solitudes, and from the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard,
      which was one of them, the ascending Night came up the mountain like a
      rising water. When it at last rose to the walls of the convent of the
      Great Saint Bernard, it was as if that weather-beaten structure were
      another Ark, and floated on the shadowy waves.
    </p>
    <p>
      Darkness, outstripping some visitors on mules, had risen thus to the rough
      convent walls, when those travellers were yet climbing the mountain. As
      the heat of the glowing day when they had stopped to drink at the streams
      of melted ice and snow, was changed to the searching cold of the frosty
      rarefied night air at a great height, so the fresh beauty of the lower
      journey had yielded to barrenness and desolation. A craggy track, up which
      the mules in single file scrambled and turned from block to block, as
      though they were ascending the broken staircase of a gigantic ruin, was
      their way now. No trees were to be seen, nor any vegetable growth save a
      poor brown scrubby moss, freezing in the chinks of rock. Blackened
      skeleton arms of wood by the wayside pointed upward to the convent as if
      the ghosts of former travellers overwhelmed by the snow haunted the scene
      of their distress. Icicle-hung caves and cellars built for refuges from
      sudden storms, were like so many whispers of the perils of the place;
      never-resting wreaths and mazes of mist wandered about, hunted by a
      moaning wind; and snow, the besetting danger of the mountain, against
      which all its defences were taken, drifted sharply down.
    </p>
    <p>
      The file of mules, jaded by their day's work, turned and wound slowly up
      the deep ascent; the foremost led by a guide on foot, in his broad-brimmed
      hat and round jacket, carrying a mountain staff or two upon his shoulder,
      with whom another guide conversed. There was no speaking among the string
      of riders. The sharp cold, the fatigue of the journey, and a new sensation
      of a catching in the breath, partly as if they had just emerged from very
      clear crisp water, and partly as if they had been sobbing, kept them
      silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length, a light on the summit of the rocky staircase gleamed through
      the snow and mist. The guides called to the mules, the mules pricked up
      their drooping heads, the travellers' tongues were loosened, and in a
      sudden burst of slipping, climbing, jingling, clinking, and talking, they
      arrived at the convent door.
    </p>
    <p>
      Other mules had arrived not long before, some with peasant riders and some
      with goods, and had trodden the snow about the door into a pool of mud.
      Riding-saddles and bridles, pack-saddles and strings of bells, mules and
      men, lanterns, torches, sacks, provender, barrels, cheeses, kegs of honey
      and butter, straw bundles and packages of many shapes, were crowded
      confusedly together in this thawed quagmire and about the steps. Up here
      in the clouds, everything was seen through cloud, and seemed dissolving
      into cloud. The breath of the men was cloud, the breath of the mules was
      cloud, the lights were encircled by cloud, speakers close at hand were not
      seen for cloud, though their voices and all other sounds were surprisingly
      clear. Of the cloudy line of mules hastily tied to rings in the wall, one
      would bite another, or kick another, and then the whole mist would be
      disturbed: with men diving into it, and cries of men and beasts coming out
      of it, and no bystander discerning what was wrong. In the midst of this,
      the great stable of the convent, occupying the basement story and entered
      by the basement door, outside which all the disorder was, poured forth its
      contribution of cloud, as if the whole rugged edifice were filled with
      nothing else, and would collapse as soon as it had emptied itself, leaving
      the snow to fall upon the bare mountain summit.
    </p>
    <p>
      While all this noise and hurry were rife among the living travellers,
      there, too, silently assembled in a grated house half-a-dozen paces
      removed, with the same cloud enfolding them and the same snow flakes
      drifting in upon them, were the dead travellers found upon the mountain.
      The mother, storm-belated many winters ago, still standing in the corner
      with her baby at her breast; the man who had frozen with his arm raised to
      his mouth in fear or hunger, still pressing it with his dry lips after
      years and years. An awful company, mysteriously come together! A wild
      destiny for that mother to have foreseen! 'Surrounded by so many and such
      companions upon whom I never looked, and never shall look, I and my child
      will dwell together inseparable, on the Great Saint Bernard, outlasting
      generations who will come to see us, and will never know our name, or one
      word of our story but the end.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The living travellers thought little or nothing of the dead just then.
      They thought much more of alighting at the convent door, and warming
      themselves at the convent fire. Disengaged from the turmoil, which was
      already calming down as the crowd of mules began to be bestowed in the
      stable, they hurried shivering up the steps and into the building. There
      was a smell within, coming up from the floor, of tethered beasts, like the
      smell of a menagerie of wild animals. There were strong arched galleries
      within, huge stone piers, great staircases, and thick walls pierced with
      small sunken windows&mdash;fortifications against the mountain storms, as
      if they had been human enemies. There were gloomy vaulted sleeping-rooms
      within, intensely cold, but clean and hospitably prepared for guests.
      Finally, there was a parlour for guests to sit in and sup in, where a
      table was already laid, and where a blazing fire shone red and high.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0390m.jpg" alt="0390m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0390.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      In this room, after having had their quarters for the night allotted to
      them by two young Fathers, the travellers presently drew round the hearth.
      They were in three parties; of whom the first, as the most numerous and
      important, was the slowest, and had been overtaken by one of the others on
      the way up. It consisted of an elderly lady, two grey-haired gentlemen,
      two young ladies, and their brother. These were attended (not to mention
      four guides), by a courier, two footmen, and two waiting-maids: which
      strong body of inconvenience was accommodated elsewhere under the same
      roof. The party that had overtaken them, and followed in their train,
      consisted of only three members: one lady and two gentlemen. The third
      party, which had ascended from the valley on the Italian side of the Pass,
      and had arrived first, were four in number: a plethoric, hungry, and
      silent German tutor in spectacles, on a tour with three young men, his
      pupils, all plethoric, hungry, and silent, and all in spectacles.
    </p>
    <p>
      These three groups sat round the fire eyeing each other drily, and waiting
      for supper. Only one among them, one of the gentlemen belonging to the
      party of three, made advances towards conversation. Throwing out his lines
      for the Chief of the important tribe, while addressing himself to his own
      companions, he remarked, in a tone of voice which included all the company
      if they chose to be included, that it had been a long day, and that he
      felt for the ladies. That he feared one of the young ladies was not a
      strong or accustomed traveller, and had been over-fatigued two or three
      hours ago. That he had observed, from his station in the rear, that she
      sat her mule as if she were exhausted. That he had, twice or thrice
      afterwards, done himself the honour of inquiring of one of the guides,
      when he fell behind, how the lady did. That he had been enchanted to learn
      that she had recovered her spirits, and that it had been but a passing
      discomfort. That he trusted (by this time he had secured the eyes of the
      Chief, and addressed him) he might be permitted to express his hope that
      she was now none the worse, and that she would not regret having made the
      journey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My daughter, I am obliged to you, sir,' returned the Chief, 'is quite
      restored, and has been greatly interested.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'New to mountains, perhaps?' said the insinuating traveller.
    </p>
    <p>
      'New to&mdash;ha&mdash;to mountains,' said the Chief.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you are familiar with them, sir?' the insinuating traveller assumed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am&mdash;hum&mdash;tolerably familiar. Not of late years. Not of late
      years,' replied the Chief, with a flourish of his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      The insinuating traveller, acknowledging the flourish with an inclination
      of his head, passed from the Chief to the second young lady, who had not
      yet been referred to otherwise than as one of the ladies in whose behalf
      he felt so sensitive an interest.
    </p>
    <p>
      He hoped she was not incommoded by the fatigues of the day.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Incommoded, certainly,' returned the young lady, 'but not tired.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The insinuating traveller complimented her on the justice of the
      distinction. It was what he had meant to say. Every lady must doubtless be
      incommoded by having to do with that proverbially unaccommodating animal,
      the mule.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We have had, of course,' said the young lady, who was rather reserved and
      haughty, 'to leave the carriages and fourgon at Martigny. And the
      impossibility of bringing anything that one wants to this inaccessible
      place, and the necessity of leaving every comfort behind, is not
      convenient.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A savage place indeed,' said the insinuating traveller.
    </p>
    <p>
      The elderly lady, who was a model of accurate dressing, and whose manner
      was perfect, considered as a piece of machinery, here interposed a remark
      in a low soft voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, like other inconvenient places,' she observed, 'it must be seen. As
      a place much spoken of, it is necessary to see it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O! I have not the least objection to seeing it, I assure you, Mrs
      General,' returned the other, carelessly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You, madam,' said the insinuating traveller, 'have visited this spot
      before?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' returned Mrs General. 'I have been here before. Let me commend you,
      my dear,' to the former young lady, 'to shade your face from the hot wood,
      after exposure to the mountain air and snow. You, too, my dear,' to the
      other and younger lady, who immediately did so; while the former merely
      said, 'Thank you, Mrs General, I am Perfectly comfortable, and prefer
      remaining as I am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The brother, who had left his chair to open a piano that stood in the
      room, and who had whistled into it and shut it up again, now came
      strolling back to the fire with his glass in his eye. He was dressed in
      the very fullest and completest travelling trim. The world seemed hardly
      large enough to yield him an amount of travel proportionate to his
      equipment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'These fellows are an immense time with supper,' he drawled. 'I wonder
      what they'll give us! Has anybody any idea?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not roast man, I believe,' replied the voice of the second gentleman of
      the party of three.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suppose not. What d'ye mean?' he inquired.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That, as you are not to be served for the general supper, perhaps you
      will do us the favour of not cooking yourself at the general fire,'
      returned the other.
    </p>
    <p>
      The young gentleman who was standing in an easy attitude on the hearth,
      cocking his glass at the company, with his back to the blaze and his coat
      tucked under his arms, something as if he were Of the Poultry species and
      were trussed for roasting, lost countenance at this reply; he seemed about
      to demand further explanation, when it was discovered&mdash;through all
      eyes turning on the speaker&mdash;that the lady with him, who was young
      and beautiful, had not heard what had passed through having fainted with
      her head upon his shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think,' said the gentleman in a subdued tone, 'I had best carry her
      straight to her room. Will you call to some one to bring a light?'
      addressing his companion, 'and to show the way? In this strange rambling
      place I don't know that I could find it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, let me call my maid,' cried the taller of the young ladies.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, let me put this water to her lips,' said the shorter, who had not
      spoken yet.
    </p>
    <p>
      Each doing what she suggested, there was no want of assistance. Indeed,
      when the two maids came in (escorted by the courier, lest any one should
      strike them dumb by addressing a foreign language to them on the road),
      there was a prospect of too much assistance. Seeing this, and saying as
      much in a few words to the slighter and younger of the two ladies, the
      gentleman put his wife's arm over his shoulder, lifted her up, and carried
      her away.
    </p>
    <p>
      His friend, being left alone with the other visitors, walked slowly up and
      down the room without coming to the fire again, pulling his black
      moustache in a contemplative manner, as if he felt himself committed to
      the late retort. While the subject of it was breathing injury in a corner,
      the Chief loftily addressed this gentleman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your friend, sir,' said he, 'is&mdash;ha&mdash;is a little impatient;
      and, in his impatience, is not perhaps fully sensible of what he owes to&mdash;hum&mdash;to&mdash;but
      we will waive that, we will waive that. Your friend is a little impatient,
      sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It may be so, sir,' returned the other. 'But having had the honour of
      making that gentleman's acquaintance at the hotel at Geneva, where we and
      much good company met some time ago, and having had the honour of
      exchanging company and conversation with that gentleman on several
      subsequent excursions, I can hear nothing&mdash;no, not even from one of
      your appearance and station, sir&mdash;detrimental to that gentleman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are in no danger, sir, of hearing any such thing from me. In
      remarking that your friend has shown impatience, I say no such thing. I
      make that remark, because it is not to be doubted that my son, being by
      birth and by&mdash;ha&mdash;by education a&mdash;hum&mdash;a gentleman,
      would have readily adapted himself to any obligingly expressed wish on the
      subject of the fire being equally accessible to the whole of the present
      circle. Which, in principle, I&mdash;ha&mdash;for all are&mdash;hum&mdash;equal
      on these occasions&mdash;I consider right.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good,' was the reply. 'And there it ends! I am your son's obedient
      servant. I beg your son to receive the assurance of my profound
      consideration. And now, sir, I may admit, freely admit, that my friend is
      sometimes of a sarcastic temper.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The lady is your friend's wife, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The lady is my friend's wife, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is very handsome.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir, she is peerless. They are still in the first year of their marriage.
      They are still partly on a marriage, and partly on an artistic, tour.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your friend is an artist, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The gentleman replied by kissing the fingers of his right hand, and
      wafting the kiss the length of his arm towards Heaven. As who should say,
      I devote him to the celestial Powers as an immortal artist!
    </p>
    <p>
      'But he is a man of family,' he added. 'His connections are of the best.
      He is more than an artist: he is highly connected. He may, in effect, have
      repudiated his connections, proudly, impatiently, sarcastically (I make
      the concession of both words); but he has them. Sparks that have been
      struck out during our intercourse have shown me this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well! I hope,' said the lofty gentleman, with the air of finally
      disposing of the subject, 'that the lady's indisposition may be only
      temporary.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir, I hope so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mere fatigue, I dare say.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not altogether mere fatigue, sir, for her mule stumbled to-day, and she
      fell from the saddle. She fell lightly, and was up again without
      assistance, and rode from us laughing; but she complained towards evening
      of a slight bruise in the side. She spoke of it more than once, as we
      followed your party up the mountain.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The head of the large retinue, who was gracious but not familiar, appeared
      by this time to think that he had condescended more than enough. He said
      no more, and there was silence for some quarter of an hour until supper
      appeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      With the supper came one of the young Fathers (there seemed to be no old
      Fathers) to take the head of the table. It was like the supper of an
      ordinary Swiss hotel, and good red wine grown by the convent in more
      genial air was not wanting. The artist traveller calmly came and took his
      place at table when the rest sat down, with no apparent sense upon him of
      his late skirmish with the completely dressed traveller.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray,' he inquired of the host, over his soup, 'has your convent many of
      its famous dogs now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Monsieur, it has three.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I saw three in the gallery below. Doubtless the three in question.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The host, a slender, bright-eyed, dark young man of polite manners, whose
      garment was a black gown with strips of white crossed over it like braces,
      and who no more resembled the conventional breed of Saint Bernard monks
      than he resembled the conventional breed of Saint Bernard dogs, replied,
      doubtless those were the three in question.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I think,' said the artist traveller, 'I have seen one of them
      before.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was possible. He was a dog sufficiently well known. Monsieur might have
      easily seen him in the valley or somewhere on the lake, when he (the dog)
      had gone down with one of the order to solicit aid for the convent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Which is done in its regular season of the year, I think?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Monsieur was right.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And never without a dog. The dog is very important.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again Monsieur was right. The dog was very important. People were justly
      interested in the dog. As one of the dogs celebrated everywhere,
      Ma'amselle would observe.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ma'amselle was a little slow to observe it, as though she were not yet
      well accustomed to the French tongue. Mrs General, however, observed it
      for her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ask him if he has saved many lives?' said, in his native English, the
      young man who had been put out of countenance.
    </p>
    <p>
      The host needed no translation of the question. He promptly replied in
      French, 'No. Not this one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not?' the same gentleman asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon,' returned the host composedly, 'give him the opportunity and he
      will do it without doubt. For example, I am well convinced,' smiling
      sedately, as he cut up the dish of veal to be handed round, on the young
      man who had been put out of countenance, 'that if you, Monsieur, would
      give him the opportunity, he would hasten with great ardour to fulfil his
      duty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The artist traveller laughed. The insinuating traveller (who evinced a
      provident anxiety to get his full share of the supper), wiping some drops
      of wine from his moustache with a piece of bread, joined the conversation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is becoming late in the year, my Father,' said he, 'for
      tourist-travellers, is it not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, it is late. Yet two or three weeks, at most, and we shall be left to
      the winter snows.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And then,' said the insinuating traveller, 'for the scratching dogs and
      the buried children, according to the pictures!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon,' said the host, not quite understanding the allusion. 'How, then
      the scratching dogs and the buried children according to the pictures?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The artist traveller struck in again before an answer could be given.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't you know,' he coldly inquired across the table of his companion,
      'that none but smugglers come this way in the winter or can have any
      possible business this way?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Holy blue! No; never heard of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So it is, I believe. And as they know the signs of the weather tolerably
      well, they don't give much employment to the dogs&mdash;who have
      consequently died out rather&mdash;though this house of entertainment is
      conveniently situated for themselves. Their young families, I am told,
      they usually leave at home. But it's a grand idea!' cried the artist
      traveller, unexpectedly rising into a tone of enthusiasm. 'It's a sublime
      idea. It's the finest idea in the world, and brings tears into a man's
      eyes, by Jupiter!' He then went on eating his veal with great composure.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was enough of mocking inconsistency at the bottom of this speech to
      make it rather discordant, though the manner was refined and the person
      well-favoured, and though the depreciatory part of it was so skilfully
      thrown off as to be very difficult for one not perfectly acquainted with
      the English language to understand, or, even understanding, to take
      offence at: so simple and dispassionate was its tone. After finishing his
      veal in the midst of silence, the speaker again addressed his friend.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look,' said he, in his former tone, 'at this gentleman our host, not yet
      in the prime of life, who in so graceful a way and with such courtly
      urbanity and modesty presides over us! Manners fit for a crown! Dine with
      the Lord Mayor of London (if you can get an invitation) and observe the
      contrast. This dear fellow, with the finest cut face I ever saw, a face in
      perfect drawing, leaves some laborious life and comes up here I don't know
      how many feet above the level of the sea, for no other purpose on earth
      (except enjoying himself, I hope, in a capital refectory) than to keep an
      hotel for idle poor devils like you and me, and leave the bill to our
      consciences! Why, isn't it a beautiful sacrifice? What do we want more to
      touch us? Because rescued people of interesting appearance are not, for
      eight or nine months out of every twelve, holding on here round the necks
      of the most sagacious of dogs carrying wooden bottles, shall we disparage
      the place? No! Bless the place. It's a great place, a glorious place!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The chest of the grey-haired gentleman who was the Chief of the important
      party, had swelled as if with a protest against his being numbered among
      poor devils. No sooner had the artist traveller ceased speaking than he
      himself spoke with great dignity, as having it incumbent on him to take
      the lead in most places, and having deserted that duty for a little while.
    </p>
    <p>
      He weightily communicated his opinion to their host, that his life must be
      a very dreary life here in the winter.
    </p>
    <p>
      The host allowed to Monsieur that it was a little monotonous. The air was
      difficult to breathe for a length of time consecutively. The cold was very
      severe. One needed youth and strength to bear it. However, having them and
      the blessing of Heaven&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      Yes, that was very good. 'But the confinement,' said the grey-haired
      gentleman.
    </p>
    <p>
      There were many days, even in bad weather, when it was possible to walk
      about outside. It was the custom to beat a little track, and take exercise
      there.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But the space,' urged the grey-haired gentleman. 'So small. So&mdash;ha&mdash;very
      limited.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Monsieur would recall to himself that there were the refuges to visit, and
      that tracks had to be made to them also.
    </p>
    <p>
      Monsieur still urged, on the other hand, that the space was so&mdash;ha&mdash;hum&mdash;so
      very contracted. More than that, it was always the same, always the same.
    </p>
    <p>
      With a deprecating smile, the host gently raised and gently lowered his
      shoulders. That was true, he remarked, but permit him to say that almost
      all objects had their various points of view. Monsieur and he did not see
      this poor life of his from the same point of view. Monsieur was not used
      to confinement.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;ha&mdash;yes, very true,' said the grey-haired gentleman. He
      seemed to receive quite a shock from the force of the argument.
    </p>
    <p>
      Monsieur, as an English traveller, surrounded by all means of travelling
      pleasantly; doubtless possessing fortune, carriages, and servants&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perfectly, perfectly. Without doubt,' said the gentleman.
    </p>
    <p>
      Monsieur could not easily place himself in the position of a person who
      had not the power to choose, I will go here to-morrow, or there next day;
      I will pass these barriers, I will enlarge those bounds. Monsieur could
      not realise, perhaps, how the mind accommodated itself in such things to
      the force of necessity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is true,' said Monsieur. 'We will&mdash;ha&mdash;not pursue the
      subject. You are&mdash;hum&mdash;quite accurate, I have no doubt. We will
      say no more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The supper having come to a close, he drew his chair away as he spoke, and
      moved back to his former place by the fire. As it was very cold at the
      greater part of the table, the other guests also resumed their former
      seats by the fire, designing to toast themselves well before going to bed.
      The host, when they rose from the table, bowed to all present, wished them
      good night, and withdrew. But first the insinuating traveller had asked
      him if they could have some wine made hot; and as he had answered Yes, and
      had presently afterwards sent it in, that traveller, seated in the centre
      of the group, and in the full heat of the fire, was soon engaged in
      serving it out to the rest.
    </p>
    <p>
      At this time, the younger of the two young ladies, who had been silently
      attentive in her dark corner (the fire-light was the chief light in the
      sombre room, the lamp being smoky and dull) to what had been said of the
      absent lady, glided out. She was at a loss which way to turn when she had
      softly closed the door; but, after a little hesitation among the sounding
      passages and the many ways, came to a room in a corner of the main
      gallery, where the servants were at their supper. From these she obtained
      a lamp, and a direction to the lady's room.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was up the great staircase on the story above. Here and there, the bare
      white walls were broken by an iron grate, and she thought as she went
      along that the place was something like a prison. The arched door of the
      lady's room, or cell, was not quite shut. After knocking at it two or
      three times without receiving an answer, she pushed it gently open, and
      looked in.
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady lay with closed eyes on the outside of the bed, protected from
      the cold by the blankets and wrappers with which she had been covered when
      she revived from her fainting fit. A dull light placed in the deep recess
      of the window, made little impression on the arched room. The visitor
      timidly stepped to the bed, and said, in a soft whisper, 'Are you better?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady had fallen into a slumber, and the whisper was too low to awake
      her. Her visitor, standing quite still, looked at her attentively.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is very pretty,' she said to herself. 'I never saw so beautiful a
      face. O how unlike me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a curious thing to say, but it had some hidden meaning, for it
      filled her eyes with tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know I must be right. I know he spoke of her that evening. I could very
      easily be wrong on any other subject, but not on this, not on this!'
    </p>
    <p>
      With a quiet and tender hand she put aside a straying fold of the
      sleeper's hair, and then touched the hand that lay outside the covering.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I like to look at her,' she breathed to herself. 'I like to see what has
      affected him so much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She had not withdrawn her hand, when the sleeper opened her eyes and
      started.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray don't be alarmed. I am only one of the travellers from down-stairs.
      I came to ask if you were better, and if I could do anything for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think you have already been so kind as to send your servants to my
      assistance?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, not I; that was my sister. Are you better?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Much better. It is only a slight bruise, and has been well looked to, and
      is almost easy now. It made me giddy and faint in a moment. It had hurt me
      before; but at last it overpowered me all at once.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I stay with you until some one comes? Would you like it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should like it, for it is lonely here; but I am afraid you will feel
      the cold too much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't mind cold. I am not delicate, if I look so.' She quickly moved
      one of the two rough chairs to the bedside, and sat down. The other as
      quickly moved a part of some travelling wrapper from herself, and drew it
      over her, so that her arm, in keeping it about her, rested on her
      shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have so much the air of a kind nurse,' said the lady, smiling on her,
      'that you seem as if you had come to me from home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very glad of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was dreaming of home when I woke just now. Of my old home, I mean,
      before I was married.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And before you were so far away from it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been much farther away from it than this; but then I took the best
      part of it with me, and missed nothing. I felt solitary as I dropped
      asleep here, and, missing it a little, wandered back to it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a sorrowfully affectionate and regretful sound in her voice,
      which made her visitor refrain from looking at her for the moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is a curious chance which at last brings us together, under this
      covering in which you have wrapped me,' said the visitor after a pause;
      'for do you know, I think I have been looking for you some time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Looking for me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe I have a little note here, which I was to give to you whenever
      I found you. This is it. Unless I greatly mistake, it is addressed to you?
      Is it not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady took it, and said yes, and read it. Her visitor watched her as
      she did so. It was very short. She flushed a little as she put her lips to
      her visitor's cheek, and pressed her hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The dear young friend to whom he presents me, may be a comfort to me at
      some time, he says. She is truly a comfort to me the first time I see
      her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps you don't,' said the visitor, hesitating&mdash;'perhaps you don't
      know my story? Perhaps he never told you my story?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no, why should he! I have scarcely the right to tell it myself at
      present, because I have been entreated not to do so. There is not much in
      it, but it might account to you for my asking you not to say anything
      about the letter here. You saw my family with me, perhaps? Some of them&mdash;I
      only say this to you&mdash;are a little proud, a little prejudiced.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You shall take it back again,' said the other; 'and then my husband is
      sure not to see it. He might see it and speak of it, otherwise, by some
      accident. Will you put it in your bosom again, to be certain?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She did so with great care. Her small, slight hand was still upon the
      letter, when they heard some one in the gallery outside.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I promised,' said the visitor, rising, 'that I would write to him after
      seeing you (I could hardly fail to see you sooner or later), and tell him
      if you were well and happy. I had better say you were well and happy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes, yes! Say I was very well and very happy. And that I thanked him
      affectionately, and would never forget him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall see you in the morning. After that we are sure to meet again
      before very long. Good night!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good night. Thank you, thank you. Good night, my dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Both of them were hurried and fluttered as they exchanged this parting,
      and as the visitor came out of the door. She had expected to meet the
      lady's husband approaching it; but the person in the gallery was not he:
      it was the traveller who had wiped the wine-drops from his moustache with
      the piece of bread. When he heard the step behind him, he turned round&mdash;for
      he was walking away in the dark.
    </p>
    <p>
      His politeness, which was extreme, would not allow of the young lady's
      lighting herself down-stairs, or going down alone. He took her lamp, held
      it so as to throw the best light on the stone steps, and followed her all
      the way to the supper-room. She went down, not easily hiding how much she
      was inclined to shrink and tremble; for the appearance of this traveller
      was particularly disagreeable to her. She had sat in her quiet corner
      before supper imagining what he would have been in the scenes and places
      within her experience, until he inspired her with an aversion that made
      him little less than terrific.
    </p>
    <p>
      He followed her down with his smiling politeness, followed her in, and
      resumed his seat in the best place in the hearth. There with the
      wood-fire, which was beginning to burn low, rising and falling upon him in
      the dark room, he sat with his legs thrust out to warm, drinking the hot
      wine down to the lees, with a monstrous shadow imitating him on the wall
      and ceiling.
    </p>
    <p>
      The tired company had broken up, and all the rest were gone to bed except
      the young lady's father, who dozed in his chair by the fire. The traveller
      had been at the pains of going a long way up-stairs to his sleeping-room
      to fetch his pocket-flask of brandy. He told them so, as he poured its
      contents into what was left of the wine, and drank with a new relish.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I ask, sir, if you are on your way to Italy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The grey-haired gentleman had roused himself, and was preparing to
      withdraw. He answered in the affirmative.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I also!' said the traveller. 'I shall hope to have the honour of offering
      my compliments in fairer scenes, and under softer circumstances, than on
      this dismal mountain.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The gentleman bowed, distantly enough, and said he was obliged to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We poor gentlemen, sir,' said the traveller, pulling his moustache dry
      with his hand, for he had dipped it in the wine and brandy; 'we poor
      gentlemen do not travel like princes, but the courtesies and graces of
      life are precious to us. To your health, sir!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir, I thank you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To the health of your distinguished family&mdash;of the fair ladies, your
      daughters!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir, I thank you again, I wish you good night. My dear, are our&mdash;ha&mdash;our
      people in attendance?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They are close by, father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Permit me!' said the traveller, rising and holding the door open, as the
      gentleman crossed the room towards it with his arm drawn through his
      daughter's. 'Good repose! To the pleasure of seeing you once more! To
      to-morrow!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As he kissed his hand, with his best manner and his daintiest smile, the
      young lady drew a little nearer to her father, and passed him with a dread
      of touching him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Humph!' said the insinuating traveller, whose manner shrunk, and whose
      voice dropped when he was left alone. 'If they all go to bed, why I must
      go. They are in a devil of a hurry. One would think the night would be
      long enough, in this freezing silence and solitude, if one went to bed two
      hours hence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Throwing back his head in emptying his glass, he cast his eyes upon the
      travellers' book, which lay on the piano, open, with pens and ink beside
      it, as if the night's names had been registered when he was absent. Taking
      it in his hand, he read these entries.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      William Dorrit, Esquire
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Frederick Dorrit, Esquire
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Edward Dorrit, Esquire
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Miss Dorrit
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Miss Amy Dorrit
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Mrs General
    </p>
    <p class="indent30">
      and Suite.
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      From France to Italy.
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Mr and Mrs Henry Gowan.
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      From France to Italy.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      To which he added, in a small complicated hand, ending with a long lean
      flourish, not unlike a lasso thrown at all the rest of the names:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Blandois. Paris.
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      From France to Italy.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      And then, with his nose coming down over his moustache and his moustache
      going up and under his nose, repaired to his allotted cell.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 2. Mrs General
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is indispensable to present the accomplished lady who was of sufficient
      importance in the suite of the Dorrit Family to have a line to herself in
      the Travellers' Book.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General was the daughter of a clerical dignitary in a cathedral town,
      where she had led the fashion until she was as near forty-five as a single
      lady can be. A stiff commissariat officer of sixty, famous as a martinet,
      had then become enamoured of the gravity with which she drove the
      proprieties four-in-hand through the cathedral town society, and had
      solicited to be taken beside her on the box of the cool coach of ceremony
      to which that team was harnessed. His proposal of marriage being accepted
      by the lady, the commissary took his seat behind the proprieties with
      great decorum, and Mrs General drove until the commissary died. In the
      course of their united journey, they ran over several people who came in
      the way of the proprieties; but always in a high style and with composure.
    </p>
    <p>
      The commissary having been buried with all the decorations suitable to the
      service (the whole team of proprieties were harnessed to his hearse, and
      they all had feathers and black velvet housings with his coat of arms in
      the corner), Mrs General began to inquire what quantity of dust and ashes
      was deposited at the bankers'. It then transpired that the commissary had
      so far stolen a march on Mrs General as to have bought himself an annuity
      some years before his marriage, and to have reserved that circumstance in
      mentioning, at the period of his proposal, that his income was derived
      from the interest of his money. Mrs General consequently found her means
      so much diminished, that, but for the perfect regulation of her mind, she
      might have felt disposed to question the accuracy of that portion of the
      late service which had declared that the commissary could take nothing
      away with him.
    </p>
    <p>
      In this state of affairs it occurred to Mrs General, that she might 'form
      the mind,' and eke the manners of some young lady of distinction. Or, that
      she might harness the proprieties to the carriage of some rich young
      heiress or widow, and become at once the driver and guard of such vehicle
      through the social mazes. Mrs General's communication of this idea to her
      clerical and commissariat connection was so warmly applauded that, but for
      the lady's undoubted merit, it might have appeared as though they wanted
      to get rid of her. Testimonials representing Mrs General as a prodigy of
      piety, learning, virtue, and gentility, were lavishly contributed from
      influential quarters; and one venerable archdeacon even shed tears in
      recording his testimony to her perfections (described to him by persons on
      whom he could rely), though he had never had the honour and moral
      gratification of setting eyes on Mrs General in all his life.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus delegated on her mission, as it were by Church and State, Mrs
      General, who had always occupied high ground, felt in a condition to keep
      it, and began by putting herself up at a very high figure. An interval of
      some duration elapsed, in which there was no bid for Mrs General. At
      length a county-widower, with a daughter of fourteen, opened negotiations
      with the lady; and as it was a part either of the native dignity or of the
      artificial policy of Mrs General (but certainly one or the other) to
      comport herself as if she were much more sought than seeking, the widower
      pursued Mrs General until he prevailed upon her to form his daughter's
      mind and manners.
    </p>
    <p>
      The execution of this trust occupied Mrs General about seven years, in the
      course of which time she made the tour of Europe, and saw most of that
      extensive miscellany of objects which it is essential that all persons of
      polite cultivation should see with other people's eyes, and never with
      their own. When her charge was at length formed, the marriage, not only of
      the young lady, but likewise of her father, the widower, was resolved on.
      The widower then finding Mrs General both inconvenient and expensive,
      became of a sudden almost as much affected by her merits as the archdeacon
      had been, and circulated such praises of her surpassing worth, in all
      quarters where he thought an opportunity might arise of transferring the
      blessing to somebody else, that Mrs General was a name more honourable
      than ever.
    </p>
    <p>
      The phoenix was to let, on this elevated perch, when Mr Dorrit, who had
      lately succeeded to his property, mentioned to his bankers that he wished
      to discover a lady, well-bred, accomplished, well connected, well
      accustomed to good society, who was qualified at once to complete the
      education of his daughters, and to be their matron or chaperon. Mr
      Dorrit's bankers, as bankers of the county-widower, instantly said, 'Mrs
      General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Pursuing the light so fortunately hit upon, and finding the concurrent
      testimony of the whole of Mrs General's acquaintance to be of the pathetic
      nature already recorded, Mr Dorrit took the trouble of going down to the
      county of the county-widower to see Mrs General, in whom he found a lady
      of a quality superior to his highest expectations.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Might I be excused,' said Mr Dorrit, 'if I inquired&mdash;ha&mdash;what
      remune&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, indeed,' returned Mrs General, stopping the word, 'it is a subject
      on which I prefer to avoid entering. I have never entered on it with my
      friends here; and I cannot overcome the delicacy, Mr Dorrit, with which I
      have always regarded it. I am not, as I hope you are aware, a governess&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O dear no!' said Mr Dorrit. 'Pray, madam, do not imagine for a moment
      that I think so.' He really blushed to be suspected of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General gravely inclined her head. 'I cannot, therefore, put a price
      upon services which it is a pleasure to me to render if I can render them
      spontaneously, but which I could not render in mere return for any
      consideration. Neither do I know how, or where, to find a case parallel to
      my own. It is peculiar.'
    </p>
    <p>
      No doubt. But how then (Mr Dorrit not unnaturally hinted) could the
      subject be approached?
    </p>
    <p>
      'I cannot object,' said Mrs General&mdash;'though even that is
      disagreeable to me&mdash;to Mr Dorrit's inquiring, in confidence of my
      friends here, what amount they have been accustomed, at quarterly
      intervals, to pay to my credit at my bankers'.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit bowed his acknowledgements.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Permit me to add,' said Mrs General, 'that beyond this, I can never
      resume the topic. Also that I can accept no second or inferior position.
      If the honour were proposed to me of becoming known to Mr Dorrit's family&mdash;I
      think two daughters were mentioned?&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Two daughters.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I could only accept it on terms of perfect equality, as a companion,
      protector, Mentor, and friend.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, in spite of his sense of his importance, felt as if it would be
      quite a kindness in her to accept it on any conditions. He almost said as
      much.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think,' repeated Mrs General, 'two daughters were mentioned?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Two daughters,' said Mr Dorrit again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It would therefore,' said Mrs General, 'be necessary to add a third more
      to the payment (whatever its amount may prove to be), which my friends
      here have been accustomed to make to my bankers'.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit lost no time in referring the delicate question to the
      county-widower, and finding that he had been accustomed to pay three
      hundred pounds a-year to the credit of Mrs General, arrived, without any
      severe strain on his arithmetic, at the conclusion that he himself must
      pay four. Mrs General being an article of that lustrous surface which
      suggests that it is worth any money, he made a formal proposal to be
      allowed to have the honour and pleasure of regarding her as a member of
      his family. Mrs General conceded that high privilege, and here she was.
    </p>
    <p>
      In person, Mrs General, including her skirts which had much to do with it,
      was of a dignified and imposing appearance; ample, rustling, gravely
      voluminous; always upright behind the proprieties. She might have been
      taken&mdash;had been taken&mdash;to the top of the Alps and the bottom of
      Herculaneum, without disarranging a fold in her dress, or displacing a
      pin. If her countenance and hair had rather a floury appearance, as though
      from living in some transcendently genteel Mill, it was rather because she
      was a chalky creation altogether, than because she mended her complexion
      with violet powder, or had turned grey. If her eyes had no expression, it
      was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles,
      it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription
      on her face. A cool, waxy, blown-out woman, who had never lighted well.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it
      from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or
      rails on which she started little trains of other people's opinions, which
      never overtook one another, and never got anywhere. Even her propriety
      could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but Mrs
      General's way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and make
      believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of
      forming a mind&mdash;to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards,
      lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was the easiest way, and,
      beyond all comparison, the properest.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents, miseries,
      and offences, were never to be mentioned before her. Passion was to go to
      sleep in the presence of Mrs General, and blood was to change to milk and
      water. The little that was left in the world, when all these deductions
      were made, it was Mrs General's province to varnish. In that formation
      process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of
      pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came under
      consideration. The more cracked it was, the more Mrs General varnished it.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was varnish in Mrs General's voice, varnish in Mrs General's touch,
      an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs General's figure. Mrs General's dreams
      ought to have been varnished&mdash;if she had any&mdash;lying asleep in
      the arms of the good Saint Bernard, with the feathery snow falling on his
      house-top.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 3. On the Road
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he bright morning sun dazzled the eyes, the snow had ceased, the mists
      had vanished, the mountain air was so clear and light that the new
      sensation of breathing it was like the having entered on a new existence.
      To help the delusion, the solid ground itself seemed gone, and the
      mountain, a shining waste of immense white heaps and masses, to be a
      region of cloud floating between the blue sky above and the earth far
      below.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some dark specks in the snow, like knots upon a little thread, beginning
      at the convent door and winding away down the descent in broken lengths
      which were not yet pieced together, showed where the Brethren were at work
      in several places clearing the track. Already the snow had begun to be
      foot-thawed again about the door. Mules were busily brought out, tied to
      the rings in the wall, and laden; strings of bells were buckled on,
      burdens were adjusted, the voices of drivers and riders sounded musically.
      Some of the earliest had even already resumed their journey; and, both on
      the level summit by the dark water near the convent, and on the downward
      way of yesterday's ascent, little moving figures of men and mules, reduced
      to miniatures by the immensity around, went with a clear tinkling of bells
      and a pleasant harmony of tongues.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the supper-room of last night, a new fire, piled upon the feathery
      ashes of the old one, shone upon a homely breakfast of loaves, butter, and
      milk. It also shone on the courier of the Dorrit family, making tea for
      his party from a supply he had brought up with him, together with several
      other small stores which were chiefly laid in for the use of the strong
      body of inconvenience. Mr Gowan and Blandois of Paris had already
      breakfasted, and were walking up and down by the lake, smoking their
      cigars.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gowan, eh?' muttered Tip, otherwise Edward Dorrit, Esquire, turning over
      the leaves of the book, when the courier had left them to breakfast. 'Then
      Gowan is the name of a puppy, that's all I have got to say! If it was
      worth my while, I'd pull his nose. But it isn't worth my while&mdash;fortunately
      for him. How's his wife, Amy? I suppose you know. You generally know
      things of that sort.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is better, Edward. But they are not going to-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! They are not going to-day! Fortunately for that fellow too,' said
      Tip, 'or he and I might have come into collision.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is thought better here that she should lie quiet to-day, and not be
      fatigued and shaken by the ride down until to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'With all my heart. But you talk as if you had been nursing her. You
      haven't been relapsing into (Mrs General is not here) into old habits,
      have you, Amy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He asked her the question with a sly glance of observation at Miss Fanny,
      and at his father too.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have only been in to ask her if I could do anything for her, Tip,' said
      Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You needn't call me Tip, Amy child,' returned that young gentleman with a
      frown; 'because that's an old habit, and one you may as well lay aside.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I didn't mean to say so, Edward dear. I forgot. It was so natural once,
      that it seemed at the moment the right word.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes!' Miss Fanny struck in. 'Natural, and right word, and once, and
      all the rest of it! Nonsense, you little thing! I know perfectly well why
      you have been taking such an interest in this Mrs Gowan. You can't blind
      <i>me</i>.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will not try to, Fanny. Don't be angry.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! angry!' returned that young lady with a flounce. 'I have no patience'
      (which indeed was the truth).
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, Fanny,' said Mr Dorrit, raising his eyebrows, 'what do you mean?
      Explain yourself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! Never mind, Pa,' replied Miss Fanny, 'it's no great matter. Amy will
      understand me. She knew, or knew of, this Mrs Gowan before yesterday, and
      she may as well admit that she did.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My child,' said Mr Dorrit, turning to his younger daughter, 'has your
      sister&mdash;any&mdash;ha&mdash;authority for this curious statement?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'However meek we are,' Miss Fanny struck in before she could answer, 'we
      don't go creeping into people's rooms on the tops of cold mountains, and
      sitting perishing in the frost with people, unless we know something about
      them beforehand. It's not very hard to divine whose friend Mrs Gowan is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whose friend?' inquired her father.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pa, I am sorry to say,' returned Miss Fanny, who had by this time
      succeeded in goading herself into a state of much ill-usage and grievance,
      which she was often at great pains to do: 'that I believe her to be a
      friend of that very objectionable and unpleasant person, who, with a total
      absence of all delicacy, which our experience might have led us to expect
      from him, insulted us and outraged our feelings in so public and wilful a
      manner on an occasion to which it is understood among us that we will not
      more pointedly allude.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, my child,' said Mr Dorrit, tempering a bland severity with a
      dignified affection, 'is this the case?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit mildly answered, yes it was.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes it is!' cried Miss Fanny. 'Of course! I said so! And now, Pa, I do
      declare once for all'&mdash;this young lady was in the habit of declaring
      the same thing once for all every day of her life, and even several times
      in a day&mdash;'that this is shameful! I do declare once for all that it
      ought to be put a stop to. Is it not enough that we have gone through what
      is only known to ourselves, but are we to have it thrown in our faces,
      perseveringly and systematically, by the very person who should spare our
      feelings most? Are we to be exposed to this unnatural conduct every moment
      of our lives? Are we never to be permitted to forget? I say again, it is
      absolutely infamous!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Amy,' observed her brother, shaking his head, 'you know I stand by
      you whenever I can, and on most occasions. But I must say, that, upon my
      soul, I do consider it rather an unaccountable mode of showing your
      sisterly affection, that you should back up a man who treated me in the
      most ungentlemanly way in which one man can treat another. And who,' he
      added convincingly, 'must be a low-minded thief, you know, or he never
      could have conducted himself as he did.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And see,' said Miss Fanny, 'see what is involved in this! Can we ever
      hope to be respected by our servants? Never. Here are our two women, and
      Pa's valet, and a footman, and a courier, and all sorts of dependents, and
      yet in the midst of these, we are to have one of ourselves rushing about
      with tumblers of cold water, like a menial! Why, a policeman,' said Miss
      Fanny, 'if a beggar had a fit in the street, could but go plunging about
      with tumblers, as this very Amy did in this very room before our very eyes
      last night!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't so much mind that, once in a way,' remarked Mr Edward; 'but your
      Clennam, as he thinks proper to call himself, is another thing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is part of the same thing,' returned Miss Fanny, 'and of a piece with
      all the rest. He obtruded himself upon us in the first instance. We never
      wanted him. I always showed him, for one, that I could have dispensed with
      his company with the greatest pleasure. He then commits that gross outrage
      upon our feelings, which he never could or would have committed but for
      the delight he took in exposing us; and then we are to be demeaned for the
      service of his friends! Why, I don't wonder at this Mr Gowan's conduct
      towards you. What else was to be expected when he was enjoying our past
      misfortunes&mdash;gloating over them at the moment!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Father&mdash;Edward&mdash;no indeed!' pleaded Little Dorrit. 'Neither Mr
      nor Mrs Gowan had ever heard our name. They were, and they are, quite
      ignorant of our history.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So much the worse,' retorted Fanny, determined not to admit anything in
      extenuation, 'for then you have no excuse. If they had known about us, you
      might have felt yourself called upon to conciliate them. That would have
      been a weak and ridiculous mistake, but I can respect a mistake, whereas I
      can't respect a wilful and deliberate abasing of those who should be
      nearest and dearest to us. No. I can't respect that. I can do nothing but
      denounce that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never offend you wilfully, Fanny,' said Little Dorrit, 'though you are
      so hard with me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you should be more careful, Amy,' returned her sister. 'If you do
      such things by accident, you should be more careful. If I happened to have
      been born in a peculiar place, and under peculiar circumstances that
      blunted my knowledge of propriety, I fancy I should think myself bound to
      consider at every step, "Am I going, ignorantly, to compromise any near
      and dear relations?" That is what I fancy <i>I</i> should do, if it was <i>my</i>
      case.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit now interposed, at once to stop these painful subjects by his
      authority, and to point their moral by his wisdom.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said he to his younger daughter, 'I beg you to&mdash;ha&mdash;to
      say no more. Your sister Fanny expresses herself strongly, but not without
      considerable reason. You have now a&mdash;hum&mdash;a great position to
      support. That great position is not occupied by yourself alone, but by&mdash;ha&mdash;by
      me, and&mdash;ha hum&mdash;by us. Us. Now, it is incumbent upon all people
      in an exalted position, but it is particularly so on this family, for
      reasons which I&mdash;ha&mdash;will not dwell upon, to make themselves
      respected. To be vigilant in making themselves respected. Dependants, to
      respect us, must be&mdash;ha&mdash;kept at a distance and&mdash;hum&mdash;kept
      down. Down. Therefore, your not exposing yourself to the remarks of our
      attendants by appearing to have at any time dispensed with their services
      and performed them for yourself, is&mdash;ha&mdash;highly important.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, who can doubt it?' cried Miss Fanny. 'It's the essence of
      everything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny,' returned her father, grandiloquently, 'give me leave, my dear. We
      then come to&mdash;ha&mdash;to Mr Clennam. I am free to say that I do not,
      Amy, share your sister's sentiments&mdash;that is to say altogether&mdash;hum&mdash;
      altogether&mdash;in reference to Mr Clennam. I am content to regard that
      individual in the light of&mdash;ha&mdash;generally&mdash;a well-behaved
      person. Hum. A well-behaved person. Nor will I inquire whether Mr Clennam
      did, at any time, obtrude himself on&mdash;ha&mdash;my society. He knew my
      society to be&mdash;hum&mdash;sought, and his plea might be that he
      regarded me in the light of a public character. But there were
      circumstances attending my&mdash;ha&mdash;slight knowledge of Mr Clennam
      (it was very slight), which,' here Mr Dorrit became extremely grave and
      impressive, 'would render it highly indelicate in Mr Clennam to&mdash;ha&mdash;to
      seek to renew communication with me or with any member of my family under
      existing circumstances. If Mr Clennam has sufficient delicacy to perceive
      the impropriety of any such attempt, I am bound as a responsible gentleman
      to&mdash;ha&mdash;defer to that delicacy on his part. If, on the other
      hand, Mr Clennam has not that delicacy, I cannot for a moment&mdash;ha&mdash;hold
      any correspondence with so&mdash;hum&mdash;coarse a mind. In either case,
      it would appear that Mr Clennam is put altogether out of the question, and
      that we have nothing to do with him or he with us. Ha&mdash;Mrs General!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The entrance of the lady whom he announced, to take her place at the
      breakfast-table, terminated the discussion. Shortly afterwards, the
      courier announced that the valet, and the footman, and the two maids, and
      the four guides, and the fourteen mules, were in readiness; so the
      breakfast party went out to the convent door to join the cavalcade.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Gowan stood aloof with his cigar and pencil, but Mr Blandois was on the
      spot to pay his respects to the ladies. When he gallantly pulled off his
      slouched hat to Little Dorrit, she thought he had even a more sinister
      look, standing swart and cloaked in the snow, than he had in the
      fire-light over-night. But, as both her father and her sister received his
      homage with some favour, she refrained from expressing any distrust of
      him, lest it should prove to be a new blemish derived from her prison
      birth.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nevertheless, as they wound down the rugged way while the convent was yet
      in sight, she more than once looked round, and descried Mr Blandois,
      backed by the convent smoke which rose straight and high from the chimneys
      in a golden film, always standing on one jutting point looking down after
      them. Long after he was a mere black stick in the snow, she felt as though
      she could yet see that smile of his, that high nose, and those eyes that
      were too near it. And even after that, when the convent was gone and some
      light morning clouds veiled the pass below it, the ghastly skeleton arms
      by the wayside seemed to be all pointing up at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      More treacherous than snow, perhaps, colder at heart, and harder to melt,
      Blandois of Paris by degrees passed out of her mind, as they came down
      into the softer regions. Again the sun was warm, again the streams
      descending from glaciers and snowy caverns were refreshing to drink at,
      again they came among the pine-trees, the rocky rivulets, the verdant
      heights and dales, the wooden chalets and rough zigzag fences of Swiss
      country. Sometimes the way so widened that she and her father could ride
      abreast. And then to look at him, handsomely clothed in his fur and
      broadcloths, rich, free, numerously served and attended, his eyes roving
      far away among the glories of the landscape, no miserable screen before
      them to darken his sight and cast its shadow on him, was enough.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her uncle was so far rescued from that shadow of old, that he wore the
      clothes they gave him, and performed some ablutions as a sacrifice to the
      family credit, and went where he was taken, with a certain patient animal
      enjoyment, which seemed to express that the air and change did him good.
      In all other respects, save one, he shone with no light but such as was
      reflected from his brother. His brother's greatness, wealth, freedom, and
      grandeur, pleased him without any reference to himself. Silent and
      retiring, he had no use for speech when he could hear his brother speak;
      no desire to be waited on, so that the servants devoted themselves to his
      brother. The only noticeable change he originated in himself, was an
      alteration in his manner to his younger niece. Every day it refined more
      and more into a marked respect, very rarely shown by age to youth, and
      still more rarely susceptible, one would have said, of the fitness with
      which he invested it. On those occasions when Miss Fanny did declare once
      for all, he would take the next opportunity of baring his grey head before
      his younger niece, and of helping her to alight, or handing her to the
      carriage, or showing her any other attention, with the profoundest
      deference. Yet it never appeared misplaced or forced, being always
      heartily simple, spontaneous, and genuine. Neither would he ever consent,
      even at his brother's request, to be helped to any place before her, or to
      take precedence of her in anything. So jealous was he of her being
      respected, that, on this very journey down from the Great Saint Bernard,
      he took sudden and violent umbrage at the footman's being remiss to hold
      her stirrup, though standing near when she dismounted; and unspeakably
      astonished the whole retinue by charging at him on a hard-headed mule,
      riding him into a corner, and threatening to trample him to death.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were a goodly company, and the Innkeepers all but worshipped them.
      Wherever they went, their importance preceded them in the person of the
      courier riding before, to see that the rooms of state were ready. He was
      the herald of the family procession. The great travelling-carriage came
      next: containing, inside, Mr Dorrit, Miss Dorrit, Miss Amy Dorrit, and Mrs
      General; outside, some of the retainers, and (in fine weather) Edward
      Dorrit, Esquire, for whom the box was reserved. Then came the chariot
      containing Frederick Dorrit, Esquire, and an empty place occupied by
      Edward Dorrit, Esquire, in wet weather. Then came the fourgon with the
      rest of the retainers, the heavy baggage, and as much as it could carry of
      the mud and dust which the other vehicles left behind.
    </p>
    <p>
      These equipages adorned the yard of the hotel at Martigny, on the return
      of the family from their mountain excursion. Other vehicles were there,
      much company being on the road, from the patched Italian Vettura&mdash;like
      the body of a swing from an English fair put upon a wooden tray on wheels,
      and having another wooden tray without wheels put atop of it&mdash;to the
      trim English carriage. But there was another adornment of the hotel which
      Mr Dorrit had not bargained for. Two strange travellers embellished one of
      his rooms.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Innkeeper, hat in hand in the yard, swore to the courier that he was
      blighted, that he was desolated, that he was profoundly afflicted, that he
      was the most miserable and unfortunate of beasts, that he had the head of
      a wooden pig. He ought never to have made the concession, he said, but the
      very genteel lady had so passionately prayed him for the accommodation of
      that room to dine in, only for a little half-hour, that he had been
      vanquished. The little half-hour was expired, the lady and gentleman were
      taking their little dessert and half-cup of coffee, the note was paid, the
      horses were ordered, they would depart immediately; but, owing to an
      unhappy destiny and the curse of Heaven, they were not yet gone.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nothing could exceed Mr Dorrit's indignation, as he turned at the foot of
      the staircase on hearing these apologies. He felt that the family dignity
      was struck at by an assassin's hand. He had a sense of his dignity, which
      was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when
      nobody else had any perception of the fact. His life was made an agony by
      the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly engaged in
      dissecting his dignity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it possible, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, reddening excessively, 'that you
      have&mdash;ha&mdash;had the audacity to place one of my rooms at the
      disposition of any other person?'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0411m.jpg" alt="0411m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0411.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      Thousands of pardons! It was the host's profound misfortune to have been
      overcome by that too genteel lady. He besought Monseigneur not to enrage
      himself. He threw himself on Monseigneur for clemency. If Monseigneur
      would have the distinguished goodness to occupy the other salon especially
      reserved for him, for but five minutes, all would go well.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir,' said Mr Dorrit. 'I will not occupy any salon. I will leave your
      house without eating or drinking, or setting foot in it. How do you dare
      to act like this? Who am I that you&mdash;ha&mdash;separate me from other
      gentlemen?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Alas! The host called all the universe to witness that Monseigneur was the
      most amiable of the whole body of nobility, the most important, the most
      estimable, the most honoured. If he separated Monseigneur from others, it
      was only because he was more distinguished, more cherished, more generous,
      more renowned.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't tell me so, sir,' returned Mr Dorrit, in a mighty heat. 'You have
      affronted me. You have heaped insults upon me. How dare you? Explain
      yourself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Ah, just Heaven, then, how could the host explain himself when he had
      nothing more to explain; when he had only to apologise, and confide
      himself to the so well-known magnanimity of Monseigneur!
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, panting with anger, 'that you separate
      me&mdash;ha&mdash;from other gentlemen; that you make distinctions between
      me and other gentlemen of fortune and station. I demand of you, why? I
      wish to know on&mdash;ha&mdash;what authority, on whose authority. Reply
      sir. Explain. Answer why.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Permit the landlord humbly to submit to Monsieur the Courier then, that
      Monseigneur, ordinarily so gracious, enraged himself without cause. There
      was no why. Monsieur the Courier would represent to Monseigneur, that he
      deceived himself in suspecting that there was any why, but the why his
      devoted servant had already had the honour to present to him. The very
      genteel lady&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Silence!' cried Mr Dorrit. 'Hold your tongue! I will hear no more of the
      very genteel lady; I will hear no more of you. Look at this family&mdash;my
      family&mdash;a family more genteel than any lady. You have treated this
      family with disrespect; you have been insolent to this family. I'll ruin
      you. Ha&mdash;send for the horses, pack the carriages, I'll not set foot
      in this man's house again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      No one had interfered in the dispute, which was beyond the French
      colloquial powers of Edward Dorrit, Esquire, and scarcely within the
      province of the ladies. Miss Fanny, however, now supported her father with
      great bitterness; declaring, in her native tongue, that it was quite clear
      there was something special in this man's impertinence; and that she
      considered it important that he should be, by some means, forced to give
      up his authority for making distinctions between that family and other
      wealthy families. What the reasons of his presumption could be, she was at
      a loss to imagine; but reasons he must have, and they ought to be torn
      from him.
    </p>
    <p>
      All the guides, mule-drivers, and idlers in the yard, had made themselves
      parties to the angry conference, and were much impressed by the courier's
      now bestirring himself to get the carriages out. With the aid of some
      dozen people to each wheel, this was done at a great cost of noise; and
      then the loading was proceeded with, pending the arrival of the horses
      from the post-house.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the very genteel lady's English chariot being already horsed and at
      the inn-door, the landlord had slipped up-stairs to represent his hard
      case. This was notified to the yard by his now coming down the staircase
      in attendance on the gentleman and the lady, and by his pointing out the
      offended majesty of Mr Dorrit to them with a significant motion of his
      hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Beg your pardon,' said the gentleman, detaching himself from the lady,
      and coming forward. 'I am a man of few words and a bad hand at an
      explanation&mdash;but lady here is extremely anxious that there should be
      no Row. Lady&mdash;a mother of mine, in point of fact&mdash;wishes me to
      say that she hopes no Row.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, still panting under his injury, saluted the gentleman, and
      saluted the lady, in a distant, final, and invincible manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, but really&mdash;here, old feller; you!' This was the gentleman's way
      of appealing to Edward Dorrit, Esquire, on whom he pounced as a great and
      providential relief. 'Let you and I try to make this all right. Lady so
      very much wishes no Row.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edward Dorrit, Esquire, led a little apart by the button, assumed a
      diplomatic expression of countenance in replying, 'Why you must confess,
      that when you bespeak a lot of rooms beforehand, and they belong to you,
      it's not pleasant to find other people in 'em.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said the other, 'I know it isn't. I admit it. Still, let you and I
      try to make it all right, and avoid Row. The fault is not this chap's at
      all, but my mother's. Being a remarkably fine woman with no bigodd
      nonsense about her&mdash;well educated, too&mdash;she was too many for
      this chap. Regularly pocketed him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If that's the case&mdash;' Edward Dorrit, Esquire, began.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Assure you 'pon my soul 'tis the case. Consequently,' said the other
      gentleman, retiring on his main position, 'why Row?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edmund,' said the lady from the doorway, 'I hope you have explained, or
      are explaining, to the satisfaction of this gentleman and his family that
      the civil landlord is not to blame?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Assure you, ma'am,' returned Edmund, 'perfectly paralysing myself with
      trying it on.' He then looked steadfastly at Edward Dorrit, Esquire, for
      some seconds, and suddenly added, in a burst of confidence, 'Old feller!
      <i>Is</i> it all right?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know, after all,' said the lady, gracefully advancing a step or
      two towards Mr Dorrit, 'but that I had better say myself, at once, that I
      assured this good man I took all the consequences on myself of occupying
      one of a stranger's suite of rooms during his absence, for just as much
      (or as little) time as I could dine in. I had no idea the rightful owner
      would come back so soon, nor had I any idea that he had come back, or I
      should have hastened to make restoration of my ill-gotten chamber, and to
      have offered my explanation and apology. I trust in saying this&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      For a moment the lady, with a glass at her eye, stood transfixed and
      speechless before the two Miss Dorrits. At the same moment, Miss Fanny, in
      the foreground of a grand pictorial composition, formed by the family, the
      family equipages, and the family servants, held her sister tight under one
      arm to detain her on the spot, and with the other arm fanned herself with
      a distinguished air, and negligently surveyed the lady from head to foot.
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady, recovering herself quickly&mdash;for it was Mrs Merdle and she
      was not easily dashed&mdash;went on to add that she trusted in saying
      this, she apologised for her boldness, and restored this well-behaved
      landlord to the favour that was so very valuable to him. Mr Dorrit, on the
      altar of whose dignity all this was incense, made a gracious reply; and
      said that his people should&mdash;ha&mdash;countermand his horses, and he
      would&mdash;hum&mdash;overlook what he had at first supposed to be an
      affront, but now regarded as an honour. Upon this the bosom bent to him;
      and its owner, with a wonderful command of feature, addressed a winning
      smile of adieu to the two sisters, as young ladies of fortune in whose
      favour she was much prepossessed, and whom she had never had the
      gratification of seeing before.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not so, however, Mr Sparkler. This gentleman, becoming transfixed at the
      same moment as his lady-mother, could not by any means unfix himself
      again, but stood stiffly staring at the whole composition with Miss Fanny
      in the Foreground. On his mother saying, 'Edmund, we are quite ready; will
      you give me your arm?' he seemed, by the motion of his lips, to reply with
      some remark comprehending the form of words in which his shining talents
      found the most frequent utterance, but he relaxed no muscle. So fixed was
      his figure, that it would have been matter of some difficulty to bend him
      sufficiently to get him in the carriage-door, if he had not received the
      timely assistance of a maternal pull from within. He was no sooner within
      than the pad of the little window in the back of the chariot disappeared,
      and his eye usurped its place. There it remained as long as so small an
      object was discernible, and probably much longer, staring (as though
      something inexpressibly surprising should happen to a codfish) like an
      ill-executed eye in a large locket.
    </p>
    <p>
      This encounter was so highly agreeable to Miss Fanny, and gave her so much
      to think of with triumph afterwards, that it softened her asperities
      exceedingly. When the procession was again in motion next day, she
      occupied her place in it with a new gaiety; and showed such a flow of
      spirits indeed, that Mrs General looked rather surprised.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was glad to be found no fault with, and to see that Fanny
      was pleased; but her part in the procession was a musing part, and a quiet
      one. Sitting opposite her father in the travelling-carriage, and recalling
      the old Marshalsea room, her present existence was a dream. All that she
      saw was new and wonderful, but it was not real; it seemed to her as if
      those visions of mountains and picturesque countries might melt away at
      any moment, and the carriage, turning some abrupt corner, bring up with a
      jolt at the old Marshalsea gate.
    </p>
    <p>
      To have no work to do was strange, but not half so strange as having
      glided into a corner where she had no one to think for, nothing to plan
      and contrive, no cares of others to load herself with. Strange as that
      was, it was far stranger yet to find a space between herself and her
      father, where others occupied themselves in taking care of him, and where
      she was never expected to be. At first, this was so much more unlike her
      old experience than even the mountains themselves, that she had been
      unable to resign herself to it, and had tried to retain her old place
      about him. But he had spoken to her alone, and had said that people&mdash;ha&mdash;people
      in an exalted position, my dear, must scrupulously exact respect from
      their dependents; and that for her, his daughter, Miss Amy Dorrit, of the
      sole remaining branch of the Dorrits of Dorsetshire, to be known to&mdash;hum&mdash;to
      occupy herself in fulfilling the functions of&mdash;ha hum&mdash;a valet,
      would be incompatible with that respect. Therefore, my dear, he&mdash;ha&mdash;he
      laid his parental injunctions upon her, to remember that she was a lady,
      who had now to conduct herself with&mdash;hum&mdash;a proper pride, and to
      preserve the rank of a lady; and consequently he requested her to abstain
      from doing what would occasion&mdash;ha&mdash;unpleasant and derogatory
      remarks. She had obeyed without a murmur. Thus it had been brought about
      that she now sat in her corner of the luxurious carriage with her little
      patient hands folded before her, quite displaced even from the last point
      of the old standing ground in life on which her feet had lingered.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was from this position that all she saw appeared unreal; the more
      surprising the scenes, the more they resembled the unreality of her own
      inner life as she went through its vacant places all day long. The gorges
      of the Simplon, its enormous depths and thundering waterfalls, the
      wonderful road, the points of danger where a loose wheel or a faltering
      horse would have been destruction, the descent into Italy, the opening of
      that beautiful land as the rugged mountain-chasm widened and let them out
      from a gloomy and dark imprisonment&mdash;all a dream&mdash;only the old
      mean Marshalsea a reality. Nay, even the old mean Marshalsea was shaken to
      its foundations when she pictured it without her father. She could
      scarcely believe that the prisoners were still lingering in the close
      yard, that the mean rooms were still every one tenanted, and that the
      turnkey still stood in the Lodge letting people in and out, all just as
      she well knew it to be.
    </p>
    <p>
      With a remembrance of her father's old life in prison hanging about her
      like the burden of a sorrowful tune, Little Dorrit would wake from a dream
      of her birth-place into a whole day's dream. The painted room in which she
      awoke, often a humbled state-chamber in a dilapidated palace, would begin
      it; with its wild red autumnal vine-leaves overhanging the glass, its
      orange-trees on the cracked white terrace outside the window, a group of
      monks and peasants in the little street below, misery and magnificence
      wrestling with each other upon every rood of ground in the prospect, no
      matter how widely diversified, and misery throwing magnificence with the
      strength of fate. To this would succeed a labyrinth of bare passages and
      pillared galleries, with the family procession already preparing in the
      quadrangle below, through the carriages and luggage being brought together
      by the servants for the day's journey. Then breakfast in another painted
      chamber, damp-stained and of desolate proportions; and then the departure,
      which, to her timidity and sense of not being grand enough for her place
      in the ceremonies, was always an uneasy thing. For then the courier (who
      himself would have been a foreign gentleman of high mark in the
      Marshalsea) would present himself to report that all was ready; and then
      her father's valet would pompously induct him into his travelling-cloak;
      and then Fanny's maid, and her own maid (who was a weight on Little
      Dorrit's mind&mdash;absolutely made her cry at first, she knew so little
      what to do with her), would be in attendance; and then her brother's man
      would complete his master's equipment; and then her father would give his
      arm to Mrs General, and her uncle would give his to her, and, escorted by
      the landlord and Inn servants, they would swoop down-stairs. There, a
      crowd would be collected to see them enter their carriages, which, amidst
      much bowing, and begging, and prancing, and lashing, and clattering, they
      would do; and so they would be driven madly through narrow unsavoury
      streets, and jerked out at the town gate.
    </p>
    <p>
      Among the day's unrealities would be roads where the bright red vines were
      looped and garlanded together on trees for many miles; woods of olives;
      white villages and towns on hill-sides, lovely without, but frightful in
      their dirt and poverty within; crosses by the way; deep blue lakes with
      fairy islands, and clustering boats with awnings of bright colours and
      sails of beautiful forms; vast piles of building mouldering to dust;
      hanging-gardens where the weeds had grown so strong that their stems, like
      wedges driven home, had split the arch and rent the wall; stone-terraced
      lanes, with the lizards running into and out of every chink; beggars of
      all sorts everywhere: pitiful, picturesque, hungry, merry; children
      beggars and aged beggars. Often at posting-houses and other halting
      places, these miserable creatures would appear to her the only realities
      of the day; and many a time, when the money she had brought to give them
      was all given away, she would sit with her folded hands, thoughtfully
      looking after some diminutive girl leading her grey father, as if the
      sight reminded her of something in the days that were gone.
    </p>
    <p>
      Again, there would be places where they stayed the week together in
      splendid rooms, had banquets every day, rode out among heaps of wonders,
      walked through miles of palaces, and rested in dark corners of great
      churches; where there were winking lamps of gold and silver among pillars
      and arches, kneeling figures dotted about at confessionals and on the
      pavements; where there was the mist and scent of incense; where there were
      pictures, fantastic images, gaudy altars, great heights and distances, all
      softly lighted through stained glass, and the massive curtains that hung
      in the doorways. From these cities they would go on again, by the roads of
      vines and olives, through squalid villages, where there was not a hovel
      without a gap in its filthy walls, not a window with a whole inch of glass
      or paper; where there seemed to be nothing to support life, nothing to
      eat, nothing to make, nothing to grow, nothing to hope, nothing to do but
      die.
    </p>
    <p>
      Again they would come to whole towns of palaces, whose proper inmates were
      all banished, and which were all changed into barracks: troops of idle
      soldiers leaning out of the state windows, where their accoutrements hung
      drying on the marble architecture, and showing to the mind like hosts of
      rats who were (happily) eating away the props of the edifices that
      supported them, and must soon, with them, be smashed on the heads of the
      other swarms of soldiers and the swarms of priests, and the swarms of
      spies, who were all the ill-looking population left to be ruined, in the
      streets below.
    </p>
    <p>
      Through such scenes, the family procession moved on to Venice. And here it
      dispersed for a time, as they were to live in Venice some few months in a
      palace (itself six times as big as the whole Marshalsea) on the Grand
      Canal.
    </p>
    <p>
      In this crowning unreality, where all the streets were paved with water,
      and where the deathlike stillness of the days and nights was broken by no
      sound but the softened ringing of church-bells, the rippling of the
      current, and the cry of the gondoliers turning the corners of the flowing
      streets, Little Dorrit, quite lost by her task being done, sat down to
      muse. The family began a gay life, went here and there, and turned night
      into day; but she was timid of joining in their gaieties, and only asked
      leave to be left alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sometimes she would step into one of the gondolas that were always kept in
      waiting, moored to painted posts at the door&mdash;when she could escape
      from the attendance of that oppressive maid, who was her mistress, and a
      very hard one&mdash;and would be taken all over the strange city. Social
      people in other gondolas began to ask each other who the little solitary
      girl was whom they passed, sitting in her boat with folded hands, looking
      so pensively and wonderingly about her. Never thinking that it would be
      worth anybody's while to notice her or her doings, Little Dorrit, in her
      quiet, scared, lost manner, went about the city none the less.
    </p>
    <p>
      But her favourite station was the balcony of her own room, overhanging the
      canal, with other balconies below, and none above. It was of massive stone
      darkened by ages, built in a wild fancy which came from the East to that
      collection of wild fancies; and Little Dorrit was little indeed, leaning
      on the broad-cushioned ledge, and looking over. As she liked no place of
      an evening half so well, she soon began to be watched for, and many eyes
      in passing gondolas were raised, and many people said, There was the
      little figure of the English girl who was always alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      Such people were not realities to the little figure of the English girl;
      such people were all unknown to her. She would watch the sunset, in its
      long low lines of purple and red, and its burning flush high up into the
      sky: so glowing on the buildings, and so lightening their structure, that
      it made them look as if their strong walls were transparent, and they
      shone from within. She would watch those glories expire; and then, after
      looking at the black gondolas underneath, taking guests to music and
      dancing, would raise her eyes to the shining stars. Was there no party of
      her own, in other times, on which the stars had shone? To think of that
      old gate now!
    </p>
    <p>
      She would think of that old gate, and of herself sitting at it in the dead
      of the night, pillowing Maggy's head; and of other places and of other
      scenes associated with those different times. And then she would lean upon
      her balcony, and look over at the water, as though they all lay underneath
      it. When she got to that, she would musingly watch its running, as if, in
      the general vision, it might run dry, and show her the prison again, and
      herself, and the old room, and the old inmates, and the old visitors: all
      lasting realities that had never changed.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 4. A Letter from Little Dorrit
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>ear Mr Clennam,
    </p>
    <p>
      I write to you from my own room at Venice, thinking you will be glad to
      hear from me. But I know you cannot be so glad to hear from me as I am to
      write to you; for everything about you is as you have been accustomed to
      see it, and you miss nothing&mdash;unless it should be me, which can only
      be for a very little while together and very seldom&mdash;while everything
      in my life is so strange, and I miss so much.
    </p>
    <p>
      When we were in Switzerland, which appears to have been years ago, though
      it was only weeks, I met young Mrs Gowan, who was on a mountain excursion
      like ourselves. She told me she was very well and very happy. She sent you
      the message, by me, that she thanked you affectionately and would never
      forget you. She was quite confiding with me, and I loved her almost as
      soon as I spoke to her. But there is nothing singular in that; who could
      help loving so beautiful and winning a creature! I could not wonder at any
      one loving her. No indeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      It will not make you uneasy on Mrs Gowan's account, I hope&mdash;for I
      remember that you said you had the interest of a true friend in her&mdash;if
      I tell you that I wish she could have married some one better suited to
      her. Mr Gowan seems fond of her, and of course she is very fond of him,
      but I thought he was not earnest enough&mdash;I don't mean in that respect&mdash;I
      mean in anything. I could not keep it out of my mind that if I was Mrs
      Gowan (what a change that would be, and how I must alter to become like
      her!) I should feel that I was rather lonely and lost, for the want of
      some one who was steadfast and firm in purpose. I even thought she felt
      this want a little, almost without knowing it. But mind you are not made
      uneasy by this, for she was 'very well and very happy.' And she looked
      most beautiful.
    </p>
    <p>
      I expect to meet her again before long, and indeed have been expecting for
      some days past to see her here. I will ever be as good a friend to her as
      I can for your sake. Dear Mr Clennam, I dare say you think little of
      having been a friend to me when I had no other (not that I have any other
      now, for I have made no new friends), but I think much of it, and I never
      can forget it.
    </p>
    <p>
      I wish I knew&mdash;but it is best for no one to write to me&mdash;how Mr
      and Mrs Plornish prosper in the business which my dear father bought for
      them, and that old Mr Nandy lives happily with them and his two
      grandchildren, and sings all his songs over and over again. I cannot quite
      keep back the tears from my eyes when I think of my poor Maggy, and of the
      blank she must have felt at first, however kind they all are to her,
      without her Little Mother. Will you go and tell her, as a strict secret,
      with my love, that she never can have regretted our separation more than I
      have regretted it? And will you tell them all that I have thought of them
      every day, and that my heart is faithful to them everywhere? O, if you
      could know how faithful, you would almost pity me for being so far away
      and being so grand!
    </p>
    <p>
      You will be glad, I am sure, to know that my dear father is very well in
      health, and that all these changes are highly beneficial to him, and that
      he is very different indeed from what he used to be when you used to see
      him. There is an improvement in my uncle too, I think, though he never
      complained of old, and never exults now. Fanny is very graceful, quick,
      and clever. It is natural to her to be a lady; she has adapted herself to
      our new fortunes with wonderful ease.
    </p>
    <p>
      This reminds me that I have not been able to do so, and that I sometimes
      almost despair of ever being able to do so. I find that I cannot learn.
      Mrs General is always with us, and we speak French and speak Italian, and
      she takes pains to form us in many ways. When I say we speak French and
      Italian, I mean they do. As for me, I am so slow that I scarcely get on at
      all. As soon as I begin to plan, and think, and try, all my planning,
      thinking, and trying go in old directions, and I begin to feel careful
      again about the expenses of the day, and about my dear father, and about
      my work, and then I remember with a start that there are no such cares
      left, and that in itself is so new and improbable that it sets me
      wandering again. I should not have the courage to mention this to any one
      but you.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is the same with all these new countries and wonderful sights. They are
      very beautiful, and they astonish me, but I am not collected enough&mdash;not
      familiar enough with myself, if you can quite understand what I mean&mdash;to
      have all the pleasure in them that I might have. What I knew before them,
      blends with them, too, so curiously. For instance, when we were among the
      mountains, I often felt (I hesitate to tell such an idle thing, dear Mr
      Clennam, even to you) as if the Marshalsea must be behind that great rock;
      or as if Mrs Clennam's room where I have worked so many days, and where I
      first saw you, must be just beyond that snow. Do you remember one night
      when I came with Maggy to your lodging in Covent Garden? That room I have
      often and often fancied I have seen before me, travelling along for miles
      by the side of our carriage, when I have looked out of the carriage-window
      after dark. We were shut out that night, and sat at the iron gate, and
      walked about till morning. I often look up at the stars, even from the
      balcony of this room, and believe that I am in the street again, shut out
      with Maggy. It is the same with people that I left in England.
    </p>
    <p>
      When I go about here in a gondola, I surprise myself looking into other
      gondolas as if I hoped to see them. It would overcome me with joy to see
      them, but I don't think it would surprise me much, at first. In my
      fanciful times, I fancy that they might be anywhere; and I almost expect
      to see their dear faces on the bridges or the quays.
    </p>
    <p>
      Another difficulty that I have will seem very strange to you. It must seem
      very strange to any one but me, and does even to me: I often feel the old
      sad pity for&mdash;I need not write the word&mdash;for him. Changed as he
      is, and inexpressibly blest and thankful as I always am to know it, the
      old sorrowful feeling of compassion comes upon me sometimes with such
      strength that I want to put my arms round his neck, tell him how I love
      him, and cry a little on his breast. I should be glad after that, and
      proud and happy. But I know that I must not do this; that he would not
      like it, that Fanny would be angry, that Mrs General would be amazed; and
      so I quiet myself. Yet in doing so, I struggle with the feeling that I
      have come to be at a distance from him; and that even in the midst of all
      the servants and attendants, he is deserted, and in want of me.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dear Mr Clennam, I have written a great deal about myself, but I must
      write a little more still, or what I wanted most of all to say in this
      weak letter would be left out of it. In all these foolish thoughts of
      mine, which I have been so hardy as to confess to you because I know you
      will understand me if anybody can, and will make more allowance for me
      than anybody else would if you cannot&mdash;in all these thoughts, there
      is one thought scarcely ever&mdash;never&mdash;out of my memory, and that
      is that I hope you sometimes, in a quiet moment, have a thought for me. I
      must tell you that as to this, I have felt, ever since I have been away,
      an anxiety which I am very anxious to relieve. I have been afraid that you
      may think of me in a new light, or a new character. Don't do that, I could
      not bear that&mdash;it would make me more unhappy than you can suppose. It
      would break my heart to believe that you thought of me in any way that
      would make me stranger to you than I was when you were so good to me. What
      I have to pray and entreat of you is, that you will never think of me as
      the daughter of a rich person; that you will never think of me as dressing
      any better, or living any better, than when you first knew me. That you
      will remember me only as the little shabby girl you protected with so much
      tenderness, from whose threadbare dress you have kept away the rain, and
      whose wet feet you have dried at your fire. That you will think of me
      (when you think of me at all), and of my true affection and devoted
      gratitude, always without change, as of
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Your poor child,
    </p>
    <h3>
      <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;LITTLE
      DORRIT.=
    </h3>
    <p>
      P.S.&mdash;Particularly remember that you are not to be uneasy about Mrs
      Gowan. Her words were, 'Very well and very happy.' And she looked most
      beautiful.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 5. Something Wrong Somewhere
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he family had been a month or two at Venice, when Mr Dorrit, who was much
      among Counts and Marquises, and had but scant leisure, set an hour of one
      day apart, beforehand, for the purpose of holding some conference with Mrs
      General.
    </p>
    <p>
      The time he had reserved in his mind arriving, he sent Mr Tinkler, his
      valet, to Mrs General's apartment (which would have absorbed about a third
      of the area of the Marshalsea), to present his compliments to that lady,
      and represent him as desiring the favour of an interview. It being that
      period of the forenoon when the various members of the family had coffee
      in their own chambers, some couple of hours before assembling at breakfast
      in a faded hall which had once been sumptuous, but was now the prey of
      watery vapours and a settled melancholy, Mrs General was accessible to the
      valet. That envoy found her on a little square of carpet, so extremely
      diminutive in reference to the size of her stone and marble floor that she
      looked as if she might have had it spread for the trying on of a
      ready-made pair of shoes; or as if she had come into possession of the
      enchanted piece of carpet, bought for forty purses by one of the three
      princes in the Arabian Nights, and had that moment been transported on it,
      at a wish, into a palatial saloon with which it had no connection.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General, replying to the envoy, as she set down her empty coffee-cup,
      that she was willing at once to proceed to Mr Dorrit's apartment, and
      spare him the trouble of coming to her (which, in his gallantry, he had
      proposed), the envoy threw open the door, and escorted Mrs General to the
      presence. It was quite a walk, by mysterious staircases and corridors,
      from Mrs General's apartment,&mdash;hoodwinked by a narrow side street
      with a low gloomy bridge in it, and dungeon-like opposite tenements, their
      walls besmeared with a thousand downward stains and streaks, as if every
      crazy aperture in them had been weeping tears of rust into the Adriatic
      for centuries&mdash;to Mr Dorrit's apartment: with a whole English
      house-front of window, a prospect of beautiful church-domes rising into
      the blue sky sheer out of the water which reflected them, and a hushed
      murmur of the Grand Canal laving the doorways below, where his gondolas
      and gondoliers attended his pleasure, drowsily swinging in a little forest
      of piles.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, in a resplendent dressing-gown and cap&mdash;the dormant grub
      that had so long bided its time among the Collegians had burst into a rare
      butterfly&mdash;rose to receive Mrs General. A chair to Mrs General. An
      easier chair, sir; what are you doing, what are you about, what do you
      mean? Now, leave us!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs General,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I took the liberty&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By no means,' Mrs General interposed. 'I was quite at your disposition. I
      had had my coffee.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;I took the liberty,' said Mr Dorrit again, with the magnificent
      placidity of one who was above correction, 'to solicit the favour of a
      little private conversation with you, because I feel rather worried
      respecting my&mdash;ha&mdash;my younger daughter. You will have observed a
      great difference of temperament, madam, between my two daughters?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Said Mrs General in response, crossing her gloved hands (she was never
      without gloves, and they never creased and always fitted), 'There is a
      great difference.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I ask to be favoured with your view of it?' said Mr Dorrit, with a
      deference not incompatible with majestic serenity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny,' returned Mrs General, 'has force of character and self-reliance.
      Amy, none.'
    </p>
    <p>
      None? O Mrs General, ask the Marshalsea stones and bars. O Mrs General,
      ask the milliner who taught her to work, and the dancing-master who taught
      her sister to dance. O Mrs General, Mrs General, ask me, her father, what
      I owe her; and hear my testimony touching the life of this slighted little
      creature from her childhood up!
    </p>
    <p>
      No such adjuration entered Mr. Dorrit's head. He looked at Mrs General,
      seated in her usual erect attitude on her coach-box behind the
      proprieties, and he said in a thoughtful manner, 'True, madam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I would not,' said Mrs General, 'be understood to say, observe, that
      there is nothing to improve in Fanny. But there is material there&mdash;perhaps,
      indeed, a little too much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you be kind enough, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'to be&mdash;ha&mdash;more
      explicit? I do not quite understand my elder daughter's having&mdash;hum&mdash;too
      much material. What material?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny,' returned Mrs General, 'at present forms too many opinions.
      Perfect breeding forms none, and is never demonstrative.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Lest he himself should be found deficient in perfect breeding, Mr Dorrit
      hastened to reply, 'Unquestionably, madam, you are right.' Mrs General
      returned, in her emotionless and expressionless manner, 'I believe so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you are aware, my dear madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'that my daughters had
      the misfortune to lose their lamented mother when they were very young;
      and that, in consequence of my not having been until lately the recognised
      heir to my property, they have lived with me as a comparatively poor,
      though always proud, gentleman, in&mdash;ha hum&mdash;retirement!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not,' said Mrs General, 'lose sight of the circumstance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam,' pursued Mr Dorrit, 'of my daughter Fanny, under her present
      guidance and with such an example constantly before her&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      (Mrs General shut her eyes.)
    </p>
    <p>
      &mdash;'I have no misgivings. There is adaptability of character in Fanny.
      But my younger daughter, Mrs General, rather worries and vexes my
      thoughts. I must inform you that she has always been my favourite.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is no accounting,' said Mrs General, 'for these partialities.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ha&mdash;no,' assented Mr Dorrit. 'No. Now, madam, I am troubled by
      noticing that Amy is not, so to speak, one of ourselves. She does not care
      to go about with us; she is lost in the society we have here; our tastes
      are evidently not her tastes. Which,' said Mr Dorrit, summing up with
      judicial gravity, 'is to say, in other words, that there is something
      wrong in&mdash;ha&mdash;Amy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May we incline to the supposition,' said Mrs General, with a little touch
      of varnish, 'that something is referable to the novelty of the position?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Excuse me, madam,' observed Mr Dorrit, rather quickly. 'The daughter of a
      gentleman, though&mdash;ha&mdash;himself at one time comparatively far
      from affluent&mdash;comparatively&mdash;and herself reared in&mdash;hum&mdash;retirement,
      need not of necessity find this position so very novel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True,' said Mrs General, 'true.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Therefore, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I took the liberty' (he laid an
      emphasis on the phrase and repeated it, as though he stipulated, with
      urbane firmness, that he must not be contradicted again), 'I took the
      liberty of requesting this interview, in order that I might mention the
      topic to you, and inquire how you would advise me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, 'I have conversed with Amy several
      times since we have been residing here, on the general subject of the
      formation of a demeanour. She has expressed herself to me as wondering
      exceedingly at Venice. I have mentioned to her that it is better not to
      wonder. I have pointed out to her that the celebrated Mr Eustace, the
      classical tourist, did not think much of it; and that he compared the
      Rialto, greatly to its disadvantage, with Westminster and Blackfriars
      Bridges. I need not add, after what you have said, that I have not yet
      found my arguments successful. You do me the honour to ask me what to
      advise. It always appears to me (if this should prove to be a baseless
      assumption, I shall be pardoned), that Mr Dorrit has been accustomed to
      exercise influence over the minds of others.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hum&mdash;madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I have been at the head of&mdash;ha of
      a considerable community. You are right in supposing that I am not
      unaccustomed to&mdash;an influential position.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am happy,' returned Mrs General, 'to be so corroborated. I would
      therefore the more confidently recommend that Mr Dorrit should speak to
      Amy himself, and make his observations and wishes known to her. Being his
      favourite, besides, and no doubt attached to him, she is all the more
      likely to yield to his influence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I had anticipated your suggestion, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'but&mdash;ha&mdash;was
      not sure that I might&mdash;hum&mdash;not encroach on&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'On my province, Mr Dorrit?' said Mrs General, graciously. 'Do not mention
      it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then, with your leave, madam,' resumed Mr Dorrit, ringing his little bell
      to summon his valet, 'I will send for her at once.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does Mr Dorrit wish me to remain?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps, if you have no other engagement, you would not object for a
      minute or two&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      So, Tinkler the valet was instructed to find Miss Amy's maid, and to
      request that subordinate to inform Miss Amy that Mr Dorrit wished to see
      her in his own room. In delivering this charge to Tinkler, Mr Dorrit
      looked severely at him, and also kept a jealous eye upon him until he went
      out at the door, mistrusting that he might have something in his mind
      prejudicial to the family dignity; that he might have even got wind of
      some Collegiate joke before he came into the service, and might be
      derisively reviving its remembrance at the present moment. If Tinkler had
      happened to smile, however faintly and innocently, nothing would have
      persuaded Mr Dorrit, to the hour of his death, but that this was the case.
      As Tinkler happened, however, very fortunately for himself, to be of a
      serious and composed countenance, he escaped the secret danger that
      threatened him. And as on his return&mdash;when Mr Dorrit eyed him again&mdash;he
      announced Miss Amy as if she had come to a funeral, he left a vague
      impression on Mr Dorrit's mind that he was a well-conducted young fellow,
      who had been brought up in the study of his Catechism by a widowed mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, 'you have just now been the subject of some
      conversation between myself and Mrs General. We agree that you scarcely
      seem at home here. Ha&mdash;how is this?'
    </p>
    <p>
      A pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think, father, I require a little time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa is a preferable mode of address,' observed Mrs General. 'Father is
      rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the
      lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good words
      for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable,
      in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in
      company&mdash;on entering a room, for instance&mdash;Papa, potatoes,
      poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, my child,' said Mr Dorrit, 'attend to the&mdash;hum&mdash;precepts
      of Mrs General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Poor Little Dorrit, with a rather forlorn glance at that eminent
      varnisher, promised to try.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You say, Amy,' pursued Mr Dorrit, 'that you think you require time. Time
      for what?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Another pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To become accustomed to the novelty of my life, was all I meant,' said
      Little Dorrit, with her loving eyes upon her father; whom she had very
      nearly addressed as poultry, if not prunes and prism too, in her desire to
      submit herself to Mrs General and please him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit frowned, and looked anything but pleased. 'Amy,' he returned,
      'it appears to me, I must say, that you have had abundance of time for
      that. Ha&mdash;you surprise me. You disappoint me. Fanny has conquered any
      such little difficulties, and&mdash;hum&mdash;why not you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope I shall do better soon,' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope so,' returned her father. 'I&mdash;ha&mdash;I most devoutly hope
      so, Amy. I sent for you, in order that I might say&mdash;hum&mdash;impressively
      say, in the presence of Mrs General, to whom we are all so much indebted
      for obligingly being present among us, on&mdash;ha&mdash;on this or any
      other occasion,' Mrs General shut her eyes, 'that I&mdash;ha hum&mdash;am
      not pleased with you. You make Mrs General's a thankless task. You&mdash;ha&mdash;embarrass
      me very much. You have always (as I have informed Mrs General) been my
      favourite child; I have always made you a&mdash;hum&mdash;a friend and
      companion; in return, I beg&mdash;I&mdash;ha&mdash;I <i>do</i> beg, that
      you accommodate yourself better to&mdash;hum&mdash;circumstances, and
      dutifully do what becomes your&mdash;your station.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit was even a little more fragmentary than usual, being excited on
      the subject and anxious to make himself particularly emphatic.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do beg,' he repeated, 'that this may be attended to, and that you will
      seriously take pains and try to conduct yourself in a manner both becoming
      your position as&mdash;ha&mdash;Miss Amy Dorrit, and satisfactory to
      myself and Mrs General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      That lady shut her eyes again, on being again referred to; then, slowly
      opening them and rising, added these words:
    </p>
    <p>
      'If Miss Amy Dorrit will direct her own attention to, and will accept of
      my poor assistance in, the formation of a surface, Mr. Dorrit will have no
      further cause of anxiety. May I take this opportunity of remarking, as an
      instance in point, that it is scarcely delicate to look at vagrants with
      the attention which I have seen bestowed upon them by a very dear young
      friend of mine? They should not be looked at. Nothing disagreeable should
      ever be looked at. Apart from such a habit standing in the way of that
      graceful equanimity of surface which is so expressive of good breeding, it
      hardly seems compatible with refinement of mind. A truly refined mind will
      seem to be ignorant of the existence of anything that is not perfectly
      proper, placid, and pleasant.' Having delivered this exalted sentiment,
      Mrs General made a sweeping obeisance, and retired with an expression of
      mouth indicative of Prunes and Prism.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit, whether speaking or silent, had preserved her quiet
      earnestness and her loving look. It had not been clouded, except for a
      passing moment, until now. But now that she was left alone with him the
      fingers of her lightly folded hands were agitated, and there was repressed
      emotion in her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not for herself. She might feel a little wounded, but her care was not for
      herself. Her thoughts still turned, as they always had turned, to him. A
      faint misgiving, which had hung about her since their accession to
      fortune, that even now she could never see him as he used to be before the
      prison days, had gradually begun to assume form in her mind. She felt
      that, in what he had just now said to her and in his whole bearing towards
      her, there was the well-known shadow of the Marshalsea wall. It took a new
      shape, but it was the old sad shadow. She began with sorrowful
      unwillingness to acknowledge to herself that she was not strong enough to
      keep off the fear that no space in the life of man could overcome that
      quarter of a century behind the prison bars. She had no blame to bestow
      upon him, therefore: nothing to reproach him with, no emotions in her
      faithful heart but great compassion and unbounded tenderness.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is why it was, that, even as he sat before her on his sofa, in the
      brilliant light of a bright Italian day, the wonderful city without and
      the splendours of an old palace within, she saw him at the moment in the
      long-familiar gloom of his Marshalsea lodging, and wished to take her seat
      beside him, and comfort him, and be again full of confidence with him, and
      of usefulness to him. If he divined what was in her thoughts, his own were
      not in tune with it. After some uneasy moving in his seat, he got up and
      walked about, looking very much dissatisfied.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is there anything else you wish to say to me, dear father?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no. Nothing else.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry you have not been pleased with me, dear. I hope you will not
      think of me with displeasure now. I am going to try, more than ever, to
      adapt myself as you wish to what surrounds me&mdash;for indeed I have
      tried all along, though I have failed, I know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy,' he returned, turning short upon her. 'You&mdash;ha&mdash;habitually
      hurt me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hurt you, father! I!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is a&mdash;hum&mdash;a topic,' said Mr Dorrit, looking all about
      the ceiling of the room, and never at the attentive, uncomplainingly
      shocked face, 'a painful topic, a series of events which I wish&mdash;ha&mdash;altogether
      to obliterate. This is understood by your sister, who has already
      remonstrated with you in my presence; it is understood by your brother; it
      is understood by&mdash;ha hum&mdash;by every one of delicacy and
      sensitiveness except yourself&mdash;ha&mdash;I am sorry to say, except
      yourself. You, Amy&mdash;hum&mdash;you alone and only you&mdash;constantly
      revive the topic, though not in words.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She laid her hand on his arm. She did nothing more. She gently touched
      him. The trembling hand may have said, with some expression, 'Think of me,
      think how I have worked, think of my many cares!' But she said not a
      syllable herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a reproach in the touch so addressed to him that she had not
      foreseen, or she would have withheld her hand. He began to justify himself
      in a heated, stumbling, angry manner, which made nothing of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was there all those years. I was&mdash;ha&mdash;universally
      acknowledged as the head of the place. I&mdash;hum&mdash;I caused you to
      be respected there, Amy. I&mdash;ha hum&mdash;I gave my family a position
      there. I deserve a return. I claim a return. I say, sweep it off the face
      of the earth and begin afresh. Is that much? I ask, is <i>that</i> much?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He did not once look at her, as he rambled on in this way; but
      gesticulated at, and appealed to, the empty air.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have suffered. Probably I know how much I have suffered better than any
      one&mdash;ha&mdash;I say than any one! If <i>I</i> can put that aside, if
      <i>I</i> can eradicate the marks of what I have endured, and can emerge
      before the world&mdash;a&mdash;ha&mdash;gentleman unspoiled, unspotted&mdash;is
      it a great deal to expect&mdash;I say again, is it a great deal to expect&mdash;that
      my children should&mdash;hum&mdash;do the same and sweep that accursed
      experience off the face of the earth?'
    </p>
    <p>
      In spite of his flustered state, he made all these exclamations in a
      carefully suppressed voice, lest the valet should overhear anything.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Accordingly, they do it. Your sister does it. Your brother does it. You
      alone, my favourite child, whom I made the friend and companion of my life
      when you were a mere&mdash;hum&mdash;Baby, do not do it. You alone say you
      can't do it. I provide you with valuable assistance to do it. I attach an
      accomplished and highly bred lady&mdash;ha&mdash;Mrs General, to you, for
      the purpose of doing it. Is it surprising that I should be displeased? Is
      it necessary that I should defend myself for expressing my displeasure?
      No!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Notwithstanding which, he continued to defend himself, without any
      abatement of his flushed mood.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am careful to appeal to that lady for confirmation, before I express
      any displeasure at all. I&mdash;hum&mdash;I necessarily make that appeal
      within limited bounds, or I&mdash;ha&mdash;should render legible, by that
      lady, what I desire to be blotted out. Am I selfish? Do I complain for my
      own sake? No. No. Principally for&mdash;ha hum&mdash;your sake, Amy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This last consideration plainly appeared, from his manner of pursuing it,
      to have just that instant come into his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I said I was hurt. So I am. So I&mdash;ha&mdash;am determined to be,
      whatever is advanced to the contrary. I am hurt that my daughter, seated
      in the&mdash;hum&mdash;lap of fortune, should mope and retire and proclaim
      herself unequal to her destiny. I am hurt that she should&mdash;ha&mdash;systematically
      reproduce what the rest of us blot out; and seem&mdash;hum&mdash;I had
      almost said positively anxious&mdash;to announce to wealthy and
      distinguished society that she was born and bred in&mdash;ha hum&mdash;a
      place that I myself decline to name. But there is no inconsistency&mdash;ha&mdash;not
      the least, in my feeling hurt, and yet complaining principally for your
      sake, Amy. I do; I say again, I do. It is for your sake that I wish you,
      under the auspices of Mrs General, to form a&mdash;hum&mdash;a surface. It
      is for your sake that I wish you to have a&mdash;ha&mdash;truly refined
      mind, and (in the striking words of Mrs General) to be ignorant of
      everything that is not perfectly proper, placid, and pleasant.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had been running down by jerks, during his last speech, like a sort of
      ill-adjusted alarum. The touch was still upon his arm. He fell silent; and
      after looking about the ceiling again for a little while, looked down at
      her. Her head drooped, and he could not see her face; but her touch was
      tender and quiet, and in the expression of her dejected figure there was
      no blame&mdash;nothing but love. He began to whimper, just as he had done
      that night in the prison when she afterwards sat at his bedside till
      morning; exclaimed that he was a poor ruin and a poor wretch in the midst
      of his wealth; and clasped her in his arms. 'Hush, hush, my own dear! Kiss
      me!' was all she said to him. His tears were soon dried, much sooner than
      on the former occasion; and he was presently afterwards very high with his
      valet, as a way of righting himself for having shed any.
    </p>
    <p>
      With one remarkable exception, to be recorded in its place, this was the
      only time, in his life of freedom and fortune, when he spoke to his
      daughter Amy of the old days.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, now, the breakfast hour arrived; and with it Miss Fanny from her
      apartment, and Mr Edward from his apartment. Both these young persons of
      distinction were something the worse for late hours. As to Miss Fanny, she
      had become the victim of an insatiate mania for what she called 'going
      into society;'and would have gone into it head-foremost fifty times
      between sunset and sunrise, if so many opportunities had been at her
      disposal. As to Mr Edward, he, too, had a large acquaintance, and was
      generally engaged (for the most part, in diceing circles, or others of a
      kindred nature), during the greater part of every night. For this
      gentleman, when his fortunes changed, had stood at the great advantage of
      being already prepared for the highest associates, and having little to
      learn: so much was he indebted to the happy accidents which had made him
      acquainted with horse-dealing and billiard-marking.
    </p>
    <p>
      At breakfast, Mr Frederick Dorrit likewise appeared. As the old gentleman
      inhabited the highest story of the palace, where he might have practised
      pistol-shooting without much chance of discovery by the other inmates, his
      younger niece had taken courage to propose the restoration to him of his
      clarionet, which Mr Dorrit had ordered to be confiscated, but which she
      had ventured to preserve. Notwithstanding some objections from Miss Fanny,
      that it was a low instrument, and that she detested the sound of it, the
      concession had been made. But it was then discovered that he had had
      enough of it, and never played it, now that it was no longer his means of
      getting bread. He had insensibly acquired a new habit of shuffling into
      the picture-galleries, always with his twisted paper of snuff in his hand
      (much to the indignation of Miss Fanny, who had proposed the purchase of a
      gold box for him that the family might not be discredited, which he had
      absolutely refused to carry when it was bought); and of passing hours and
      hours before the portraits of renowned Venetians. It was never made out
      what his dazed eyes saw in them; whether he had an interest in them merely
      as pictures, or whether he confusedly identified them with a glory that
      was departed, like the strength of his own mind. But he paid his court to
      them with great exactness, and clearly derived pleasure from the pursuit.
      After the first few days, Little Dorrit happened one morning to assist at
      these attentions. It so evidently heightened his gratification that she
      often accompanied him afterwards, and the greatest delight of which the
      old man had shown himself susceptible since his ruin, arose out of these
      excursions, when he would carry a chair about for her from picture to
      picture, and stand behind it, in spite of all her remonstrances, silently
      presenting her to the noble Venetians.
    </p>
    <p>
      It fell out that, at this family breakfast, he referred to their having
      seen in a gallery, on the previous day, the lady and gentleman whom they
      had encountered on the Great Saint Bernard, 'I forget the name,' said he.
      'I dare say you remember them, William? I dare say you do, Edward?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>I</i> remember 'em well enough,' said the latter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should think so,' observed Miss Fanny, with a toss of her head and a
      glance at her sister. 'But they would not have been recalled to our
      remembrance, I suspect, if Uncle hadn't tumbled over the subject.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear, what a curious phrase,' said Mrs General. 'Would not
      inadvertently lighted upon, or accidentally referred to, be better?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you very much, Mrs General,' returned the young lady, 'no, I think
      not. On the whole I prefer my own expression.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was always Miss Fanny's way of receiving a suggestion from Mrs
      General. But she always stored it up in her mind, and adopted it at
      another time.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should have mentioned our having met Mr and Mrs Gowan, Fanny,' said
      Little Dorrit, 'even if Uncle had not. I have scarcely seen you since, you
      know. I meant to have spoken of it at breakfast; because I should like to
      pay a visit to Mrs Gowan, and to become better acquainted with her, if
      Papa and Mrs General do not object.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Amy,' said Fanny, 'I am sure I am glad to find you at last
      expressing a wish to become better acquainted with anybody in Venice.
      Though whether Mr and Mrs Gowan are desirable acquaintances, remains to be
      determined.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Gowan I spoke of, dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No doubt,' said Fanny. 'But you can't separate her from her husband, I
      believe, without an Act of Parliament.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think, Papa,' inquired Little Dorrit, with diffidence and
      hesitation, 'there is any objection to my making this visit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really,' he replied, 'I&mdash;ha&mdash;what is Mrs General's view?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General's view was, that not having the honour of any acquaintance
      with the lady and gentleman referred to, she was not in a position to
      varnish the present article. She could only remark, as a general principle
      observed in the varnishing trade, that much depended on the quarter from
      which the lady under consideration was accredited to a family so
      conspicuously niched in the social temple as the family of Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      At this remark the face of Mr Dorrit gloomed considerably. He was about
      (connecting the accrediting with an obtrusive person of the name of
      Clennam, whom he imperfectly remembered in some former state of existence)
      to black-ball the name of Gowan finally, when Edward Dorrit, Esquire, came
      into the conversation, with his glass in his eye, and the preliminary
      remark of 'I say&mdash;you there! Go out, will you!'&mdash;which was
      addressed to a couple of men who were handing the dishes round, as a
      courteous intimation that their services could be temporarily dispensed
      with.
    </p>
    <p>
      Those menials having obeyed the mandate, Edward Dorrit, Esquire,
      proceeded.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps it's a matter of policy to let you all know that these Gowans&mdash;in
      whose favour, or at least the gentleman's, I can't be supposed to be much
      prepossessed myself&mdash;are known to people of importance, if that makes
      any difference.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That, I would say,' observed the fair varnisher, 'Makes the greatest
      difference. The connection in question, being really people of importance
      and consideration&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to that,' said Edward Dorrit, Esquire, 'I'll give you the means of
      judging for yourself. You are acquainted, perhaps, with the famous name of
      Merdle?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The great Merdle!' exclaimed Mrs General.
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>The</i> Merdle,' said Edward Dorrit, Esquire. 'They are known to him.
      Mrs Gowan&mdash;I mean the dowager, my polite friend's mother&mdash;is
      intimate with Mrs Merdle, and I know these two to be on their visiting
      list.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If so, a more undeniable guarantee could not be given,' said Mrs General
      to Mr Dorrit, raising her gloves and bowing her head, as if she were doing
      homage to some visible graven image.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg to ask my son, from motives of&mdash;ah&mdash;curiosity,' Mr Dorrit
      observed, with a decided change in his manner, 'how he becomes possessed
      of this&mdash;hum&mdash;timely information?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's not a long story, sir,' returned Edward Dorrit, Esquire, 'and you
      shall have it out of hand. To begin with, Mrs Merdle is the lady you had
      the parley with at what's-his-name place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Martigny,' interposed Miss Fanny with an air of infinite languor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Martigny,' assented her brother, with a slight nod and a slight wink; in
      acknowledgment of which, Miss Fanny looked surprised, and laughed and
      reddened.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How can that be, Edward?' said Mr Dorrit. 'You informed me that the name
      of the gentleman with whom you conferred was&mdash;ha&mdash;Sparkler.
      Indeed, you showed me his card. Hum. Sparkler.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No doubt of it, father; but it doesn't follow that his mother's name must
      be the same. Mrs Merdle was married before, and he is her son. She is in
      Rome now; where probably we shall know more of her, as you decide to
      winter there. Sparkler is just come here. I passed last evening in company
      with Sparkler. Sparkler is a very good fellow on the whole, though rather
      a bore on one subject, in consequence of being tremendously smitten with a
      certain young lady.' Here Edward Dorrit, Esquire, eyed Miss Fanny through
      his glass across the table. 'We happened last night to compare notes about
      our travels, and I had the information I have given you from Sparkler
      himself.' Here he ceased; continuing to eye Miss Fanny through his glass,
      with a face much twisted, and not ornamentally so, in part by the action
      of keeping his glass in his eye, and in part by the great subtlety of his
      smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Under these circumstances,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I believe I express the
      sentiments of&mdash;ha&mdash;Mrs General, no less than my own, when I say
      that there is no objection, but&mdash;ha hum&mdash;quite the contrary&mdash;to
      your gratifying your desire, Amy. I trust I may&mdash;ha&mdash;hail&mdash;this
      desire,' said Mr Dorrit, in an encouraging and forgiving manner, 'as an
      auspicious omen. It is quite right to know these people. It is a very
      proper thing. Mr Merdle's is a name of&mdash;ha&mdash;world-wide repute.
      Mr Merdle's undertakings are immense. They bring him in such vast sums of
      money that they are regarded as&mdash;hum&mdash;national benefits. Mr
      Merdle is the man of this time. The name of Merdle is the name of the age.
      Pray do everything on my behalf that is civil to Mr and Mrs Gowan, for we
      will&mdash;ha&mdash;we will certainly notice them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This magnificent accordance of Mr Dorrit's recognition settled the matter.
      It was not observed that Uncle had pushed away his plate, and forgotten
      his breakfast; but he was not much observed at any time, except by Little
      Dorrit. The servants were recalled, and the meal proceeded to its
      conclusion. Mrs General rose and left the table. Little Dorrit rose and
      left the table. When Edward and Fanny remained whispering together across
      it, and when Mr Dorrit remained eating figs and reading a French
      newspaper, Uncle suddenly fixed the attention of all three by rising out
      of his chair, striking his hand upon the table, and saying, 'Brother! I
      protest against it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      If he had made a proclamation in an unknown tongue, and given up the ghost
      immediately afterwards, he could not have astounded his audience more. The
      paper fell from Mr Dorrit's hand, and he sat petrified, with a fig half
      way to his mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Brother!' said the old man, conveying a surprising energy into his
      trembling voice, 'I protest against it! I love you; you know I love you
      dearly. In these many years I have never been untrue to you in a single
      thought. Weak as I am, I would at any time have struck any man who spoke
      ill of you. But, brother, brother, brother, I protest against it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was extraordinary to see of what a burst of earnestness such a decrepit
      man was capable. His eyes became bright, his grey hair rose on his head,
      markings of purpose on his brow and face which had faded from them for
      five-and-twenty years, started out again, and there was an energy in his
      hand that made its action nervous once more.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Frederick!' exclaimed Mr Dorrit faintly. 'What is wrong? What is
      the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How dare you,' said the old man, turning round on Fanny, 'how dare you do
      it? Have you no memory? Have you no heart?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Uncle?' cried Fanny, affrighted and bursting into tears, 'why do you
      attack me in this cruel manner? What have I done?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Done?' returned the old man, pointing to her sister's place, 'where's
      your affectionate invaluable friend? Where's your devoted guardian?
      Where's your more than mother? How dare you set up superiorities against
      all these characters combined in your sister? For shame, you false girl,
      for shame!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I love Amy,' cried Miss Fanny, sobbing and weeping, 'as well as I love my
      life&mdash;better than I love my life. I don't deserve to be so treated. I
      am as grateful to Amy, and as fond of Amy, as it's possible for any human
      being to be. I wish I was dead. I never was so wickedly wronged. And only
      because I am anxious for the family credit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To the winds with the family credit!' cried the old man, with great scorn
      and indignation. 'Brother, I protest against pride. I protest against
      ingratitude. I protest against any one of us here who have known what we
      have known, and have seen what we have seen, setting up any pretension
      that puts Amy at a moment's disadvantage, or to the cost of a moment's
      pain. We may know that it's a base pretension by its having that effect.
      It ought to bring a judgment on us. Brother, I protest against it in the
      sight of God!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As his hand went up above his head and came down on the table, it might
      have been a blacksmith's. After a few moments' silence, it had relaxed
      into its usual weak condition. He went round to his brother with his
      ordinary shuffling step, put the hand on his shoulder, and said, in a
      softened voice, 'William, my dear, I felt obliged to say it; forgive me,
      for I felt obliged to say it!' and then went, in his bowed way, out of the
      palace hall, just as he might have gone out of the Marshalsea room.
    </p>
    <p>
      All this time Fanny had been sobbing and crying, and still continued to do
      so. Edward, beyond opening his mouth in amazement, had not opened his
      lips, and had done nothing but stare. Mr Dorrit also had been utterly
      discomfited, and quite unable to assert himself in any way. Fanny was now
      the first to speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never, never, never was so used!' she sobbed. 'There never was anything
      so harsh and unjustifiable, so disgracefully violent and cruel! Dear,
      kind, quiet little Amy, too, what would she feel if she could know that
      she had been innocently the means of exposing me to such treatment! But
      I'll never tell her! No, good darling, I'll never tell her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      This helped Mr Dorrit to break his silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said he, 'I&mdash;ha&mdash;approve of your resolution. It will
      be&mdash;ha hum&mdash;much better not to speak of this to Amy. It might&mdash;hum&mdash;it
      might distress her. Ha. No doubt it would distress her greatly. It is
      considerate and right to avoid doing so. We will&mdash;ha&mdash;keep this
      to ourselves.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But the cruelty of Uncle!' cried Miss Fanny. 'O, I never can forgive the
      wanton cruelty of Uncle!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said Mr Dorrit, recovering his tone, though he remained
      unusually pale, 'I must request you not to say so. You must remember that
      your uncle is&mdash;ha&mdash;not what he formerly was. You must remember
      that your uncle's state requires&mdash;hum&mdash;great forbearance from
      us, great forbearance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure,' cried Fanny, piteously, 'it is only charitable to suppose
      that there must be something wrong in him somewhere, or he never could
      have so attacked Me, of all the people in the world.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny,' returned Mr Dorrit in a deeply fraternal tone, 'you know, with
      his innumerable good points, what a&mdash;hum&mdash;wreck your uncle is;
      and, I entreat you by the fondness that I have for him, and by the
      fidelity that you know I have always shown him, to&mdash;ha&mdash;to draw
      your own conclusions, and to spare my brotherly feelings.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This ended the scene; Edward Dorrit, Esquire, saying nothing throughout,
      but looking, to the last, perplexed and doubtful. Miss Fanny awakened much
      affectionate uneasiness in her sister's mind that day by passing the
      greater part of it in violent fits of embracing her, and in alternately
      giving her brooches, and wishing herself dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 6. Something Right Somewhere
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o be in the halting state of Mr Henry Gowan; to have left one of two
      powers in disgust; to want the necessary qualifications for finding
      promotion with another, and to be loitering moodily about on neutral
      ground, cursing both; is to be in a situation unwholesome for the mind,
      which time is not likely to improve. The worst class of sum worked in the
      every-day world is cyphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are always
      in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and
      never in Addition as to their own.
    </p>
    <p>
      The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recompense in the discontented
      boast of being disappointed, is a habit fraught with degeneracy. A certain
      idle carelessness and recklessness of consistency soon comes of it. To
      bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its
      perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth,
      in any game, without growing the worse for it.
    </p>
    <p>
      In his expressed opinions of all performances in the Art of painting that
      were completely destitute of merit, Gowan was the most liberal fellow on
      earth. He would declare such a man to have more power in his little finger
      (provided he had none), than such another had (provided he had much) in
      his whole mind and body. If the objection were taken that the thing
      commended was trash, he would reply, on behalf of his art, 'My good
      fellow, what do we all turn out but trash? <i>I</i> turn out nothing else,
      and I make you a present of the confession.'
    </p>
    <p>
      To make a vaunt of being poor was another of the incidents of his
      splenetic state, though this may have had the design in it of showing that
      he ought to be rich; just as he would publicly laud and decry the
      Barnacles, lest it should be forgotten that he belonged to the family.
      Howbeit, these two subjects were very often on his lips; and he managed
      them so well that he might have praised himself by the month together, and
      not have made himself out half so important a man as he did by his light
      disparagement of his claims on anybody's consideration.
    </p>
    <p>
      Out of this same airy talk of his, it always soon came to be understood,
      wherever he and his wife went, that he had married against the wishes of
      his exalted relations, and had had much ado to prevail on them to
      countenance her. He never made the representation, on the contrary seemed
      to laugh the idea to scorn; but it did happen that, with all his pains to
      depreciate himself, he was always in the superior position. From the days
      of their honeymoon, Minnie Gowan felt sensible of being usually regarded
      as the wife of a man who had made a descent in marrying her, but whose
      chivalrous love for her had cancelled that inequality.
    </p>
    <p>
      To Venice they had been accompanied by Monsieur Blandois of Paris, and at
      Venice Monsieur Blandois of Paris was very much in the society of Gowan.
      When they had first met this gallant gentleman at Geneva, Gowan had been
      undecided whether to kick him or encourage him; and had remained for about
      four-and-twenty hours, so troubled to settle the point to his
      satisfaction, that he had thought of tossing up a five-franc piece on the
      terms, 'Tails, kick; heads, encourage,' and abiding by the voice of the
      oracle. It chanced, however, that his wife expressed a dislike to the
      engaging Blandois, and that the balance of feeling in the hotel was
      against him. Upon it, Gowan resolved to encourage him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Why this perversity, if it were not in a generous fit?&mdash;which it was
      not. Why should Gowan, very much the superior of Blandois of Paris, and
      very well able to pull that prepossessing gentleman to pieces and find out
      the stuff he was made of, take up with such a man? In the first place, he
      opposed the first separate wish he observed in his wife, because her
      father had paid his debts and it was desirable to take an early
      opportunity of asserting his independence. In the second place, he opposed
      the prevalent feeling, because with many capacities of being otherwise, he
      was an ill-conditioned man. He found a pleasure in declaring that a
      courtier with the refined manners of Blandois ought to rise to the
      greatest distinction in any polished country. He found a pleasure in
      setting up Blandois as the type of elegance, and making him a satire upon
      others who piqued themselves on personal graces. He seriously protested
      that the bow of Blandois was perfect, that the address of Blandois was
      irresistible, and that the picturesque ease of Blandois would be cheaply
      purchased (if it were not a gift, and unpurchasable) for a hundred
      thousand francs. That exaggeration in the manner of the man which has been
      noticed as appertaining to him and to every such man, whatever his
      original breeding, as certainly as the sun belongs to this system, was
      acceptable to Gowan as a caricature, which he found it a humorous resource
      to have at hand for the ridiculing of numbers of people who necessarily
      did more or less of what Blandois overdid. Thus he had taken up with him;
      and thus, negligently strengthening these inclinations with habit, and
      idly deriving some amusement from his talk, he had glided into a way of
      having him for a companion. This, though he supposed him to live by his
      wits at play-tables and the like; though he suspected him to be a coward,
      while he himself was daring and courageous; though he thoroughly knew him
      to be disliked by Minnie; and though he cared so little for him, after
      all, that if he had given her any tangible personal cause to regard him
      with aversion, he would have had no compunction whatever in flinging him
      out of the highest window in Venice into the deepest water of the city.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit would have been glad to make her visit to Mrs Gowan, alone;
      but as Fanny, who had not yet recovered from her Uncle's protest, though
      it was four-and-twenty hours of age, pressingly offered her company, the
      two sisters stepped together into one of the gondolas under Mr Dorrit's
      window, and, with the courier in attendance, were taken in high state to
      Mrs Gowan's lodging. In truth, their state was rather too high for the
      lodging, which was, as Fanny complained, 'fearfully out of the way,' and
      which took them through a complexity of narrow streets of water, which the
      same lady disparaged as 'mere ditches.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The house, on a little desert island, looked as if it had broken away from
      somewhere else, and had floated by chance into its present anchorage in
      company with a vine almost as much in want of training as the poor
      wretches who were lying under its leaves. The features of the surrounding
      picture were, a church with hoarding and scaffolding about it, which had
      been under suppositious repair so long that the means of repair looked a
      hundred years old, and had themselves fallen into decay; a quantity of
      washed linen, spread to dry in the sun; a number of houses at odds with
      one another and grotesquely out of the perpendicular, like rotten
      pre-Adamite cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of mites; and a
      feverish bewilderment of windows, with their lattice-blinds all hanging
      askew, and something draggled and dirty dangling out of most of them.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the first-floor of the house was a Bank&mdash;a surprising experience
      for any gentleman of commercial pursuits bringing laws for all mankind
      from a British city&mdash;where two spare clerks, like dried dragoons, in
      green velvet caps adorned with golden tassels, stood, bearded, behind a
      small counter in a small room, containing no other visible objects than an
      empty iron-safe with the door open, a jug of water, and a papering of
      garland of roses; but who, on lawful requisition, by merely dipping their
      hands out of sight, could produce exhaustless mounds of five-franc pieces.
      Below the Bank was a suite of three or four rooms with barred windows,
      which had the appearance of a jail for criminal rats. Above the Bank was
      Mrs Gowan's residence.
    </p>
    <p>
      Notwithstanding that its walls were blotched, as if missionary maps were
      bursting out of them to impart geographical knowledge; notwithstanding
      that its weird furniture was forlornly faded and musty, and that the
      prevailing Venetian odour of bilge water and an ebb tide on a weedy shore
      was very strong; the place was better within, than it promised. The door
      was opened by a smiling man like a reformed assassin&mdash;a temporary
      servant&mdash;who ushered them into the room where Mrs Gowan sat, with the
      announcement that two beautiful English ladies were come to see the
      mistress.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Gowan, who was engaged in needlework, put her work aside in a covered
      basket, and rose, a little hurriedly. Miss Fanny was excessively courteous
      to her, and said the usual nothings with the skill of a veteran.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa was extremely sorry,' proceeded Fanny, 'to be engaged to-day (he is
      so much engaged here, our acquaintance being so wretchedly large!); and
      particularly requested me to bring his card for Mr Gowan. That I may be
      sure to acquit myself of a commission which he impressed upon me at least
      a dozen times, allow me to relieve my conscience by placing it on the
      table at once.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Which she did with veteran ease.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We have been,' said Fanny, 'charmed to understand that you know the
      Merdles. We hope it may be another means of bringing us together.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They are friends,' said Mrs Gowan, 'of Mr Gowan's family. I have not yet
      had the pleasure of a personal introduction to Mrs Merdle, but I suppose I
      shall be presented to her at Rome.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed?' returned Fanny, with an appearance of amiably quenching her own
      superiority. 'I think you'll like her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know her very well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, you see,' said Fanny, with a frank action of her pretty shoulders,
      'in London one knows every one. We met her on our way here, and, to say
      the truth, papa was at first rather cross with her for taking one of the
      rooms that our people had ordered for us. However, of course, that soon
      blew over, and we were all good friends again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Although the visit had as yet given Little Dorrit no opportunity of
      conversing with Mrs Gowan, there was a silent understanding between them,
      which did as well. She looked at Mrs Gowan with keen and unabated
      interest; the sound of her voice was thrilling to her; nothing that was
      near her, or about her, or at all concerned her, escaped Little Dorrit.
      She was quicker to perceive the slightest matter here, than in any other
      case&mdash;but one.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been quite well,' she now said, 'since that night?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite, my dear. And you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I am always well,' said Little Dorrit, timidly. 'I&mdash;yes, thank
      you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was no reason for her faltering and breaking off, other than that
      Mrs Gowan had touched her hand in speaking to her, and their looks had
      met. Something thoughtfully apprehensive in the large, soft eyes, had
      checked Little Dorrit in an instant.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't know that you are a favourite of my husband's, and that I am
      almost bound to be jealous of you?' said Mrs Gowan.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit, blushing, shook her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He will tell you, if he tells you what he tells me, that you are quieter
      and quicker of resource than any one he ever saw.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He speaks far too well of me,' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I doubt that; but I don't at all doubt that I must tell him you are here.
      I should never be forgiven, if I were to let you&mdash;and Miss Dorrit&mdash;go,
      without doing so. May I? You can excuse the disorder and discomfort of a
      painter's studio?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The inquiries were addressed to Miss Fanny, who graciously replied that
      she would be beyond anything interested and enchanted. Mrs Gowan went to a
      door, looked in beyond it, and came back. 'Do Henry the favour to come
      in,' said she, 'I knew he would be pleased!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The first object that confronted Little Dorrit, entering first, was
      Blandois of Paris in a great cloak and a furtive slouched hat, standing on
      a throne platform in a corner, as he had stood on the Great Saint Bernard,
      when the warning arms seemed to be all pointing up at him. She recoiled
      from this figure, as it smiled at her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't be alarmed,' said Gowan, coming from his easel behind the door.
      'It's only Blandois. He is doing duty as a model to-day. I am making a
      study of him. It saves me money to turn him to some use. We poor painters
      have none to spare.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Blandois of Paris pulled off his slouched hat, and saluted the ladies
      without coming out of his corner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A thousand pardons!' said he. 'But the Professore here is so inexorable
      with me, that I am afraid to stir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't stir, then,' said Gowan coolly, as the sisters approached the
      easel. 'Let the ladies at least see the original of the daub, that they
      may know what it's meant for. There he stands, you see. A bravo waiting
      for his prey, a distinguished noble waiting to save his country, the
      common enemy waiting to do somebody a bad turn, an angelic messenger
      waiting to do somebody a good turn&mdash;whatever you think he looks most
      like!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say, Professore Mio, a poor gentleman waiting to do homage to elegance
      and beauty,' remarked Blandois.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Or say, Cattivo Soggetto Mio,' returned Gowan, touching the painted face
      with his brush in the part where the real face had moved, 'a murderer
      after the fact. Show that white hand of yours, Blandois. Put it outside
      the cloak. Keep it still.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Blandois' hand was unsteady; but he laughed, and that would naturally
      shake it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was formerly in some scuffle with another murderer, or with a victim,
      you observe,' said Gowan, putting in the markings of the hand with a
      quick, impatient, unskilful touch, 'and these are the tokens of it.
      Outside the cloak, man!&mdash;Corpo di San Marco, what are you thinking
      of?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Blandois of Paris shook with a laugh again, so that his hand shook more;
      now he raised it to twist his moustache, which had a damp appearance; and
      now he stood in the required position, with a little new swagger.
    </p>
    <p>
      His face was so directed in reference to the spot where Little Dorrit
      stood by the easel, that throughout he looked at her. Once attracted by
      his peculiar eyes, she could not remove her own, and they had looked at
      each other all the time. She trembled now; Gowan, feeling it, and
      supposing her to be alarmed by the large dog beside him, whose head she
      caressed in her hand, and who had just uttered a low growl, glanced at her
      to say, 'He won't hurt you, Miss Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not afraid of him,' she returned in the same breath; 'but will you
      look at him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      In a moment Gowan had thrown down his brush, and seized the dog with both
      hands by the collar.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0439m.jpg" alt="0439m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0439.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Blandois! How can you be such a fool as to provoke him! By Heaven, and
      the other place too, he'll tear you to bits! Lie down! Lion! Do you hear
      my voice, you rebel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The great dog, regardless of being half-choked by his collar, was
      obdurately pulling with his dead weight against his master, resolved to
      get across the room. He had been crouching for a spring at the moment when
      his master caught him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lion! Lion!' He was up on his hind legs, and it was a wrestle between
      master and dog. 'Get back! Down, Lion! Get out of his sight, Blandois!
      What devil have you conjured into the dog?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have done nothing to him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Get out of his sight or I can't hold the wild beast! Get out of the room!
      By my soul, he'll kill you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The dog, with a ferocious bark, made one other struggle as Blandois
      vanished; then, in the moment of the dog's submission, the master, little
      less angry than the dog, felled him with a blow on the head, and standing
      over him, struck him many times severely with the heel of his boot, so
      that his mouth was presently bloody.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now get you into that corner and lie down,' said Gowan, 'or I'll take you
      out and shoot you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Lion did as he was ordered, and lay down licking his mouth and chest.
      Lion's master stopped for a moment to take breath, and then, recovering
      his usual coolness of manner, turned to speak to his frightened wife and
      her visitors. Probably the whole occurrence had not occupied two minutes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, come, Minnie! You know he is always good-humoured and tractable.
      Blandois must have irritated him,&mdash;made faces at him. The dog has his
      likings and dislikings, and Blandois is no great favourite of his; but I
      am sure you will give him a character, Minnie, for never having been like
      this before.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Minnie was too much disturbed to say anything connected in reply; Little
      Dorrit was already occupied in soothing her; Fanny, who had cried out
      twice or thrice, held Gowan's arm for protection; Lion, deeply ashamed of
      having caused them this alarm, came trailing himself along the ground to
      the feet of his mistress.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You furious brute,' said Gowan, striking him with his foot again. 'You
      shall do penance for this.' And he struck him again, and yet again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'O, pray don't punish him any more,' cried Little Dorrit. 'Don't hurt him.
      See how gentle he is!' At her entreaty, Gowan spared him; and he deserved
      her intercession, for truly he was as submissive, and as sorry, and as
      wretched as a dog could be.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not easy to recover this shock and make the visit unrestrained,
      even though Fanny had not been, under the best of circumstances, the least
      trifle in the way. In such further communication as passed among them
      before the sisters took their departure, Little Dorrit fancied it was
      revealed to her that Mr Gowan treated his wife, even in his very fondness,
      too much like a beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of the depths
      of feeling which she knew must lie below that surface, that she doubted if
      there could be any such depths in himself. She wondered whether his want
      of earnestness might be the natural result of his want of such qualities,
      and whether it was with people as with ships, that, in too shallow and
      rocky waters, their anchors had no hold, and they drifted anywhere.
    </p>
    <p>
      He attended them down the staircase, jocosely apologising for the poor
      quarters to which such poor fellows as himself were limited, and remarking
      that when the high and mighty Barnacles, his relatives, who would be
      dreadfully ashamed of them, presented him with better, he would live in
      better to oblige them. At the water's edge they were saluted by Blandois,
      who looked white enough after his late adventure, but who made very light
      of it notwithstanding,&mdash;laughing at the mention of Lion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Leaving the two together under the scrap of vine upon the causeway, Gowan
      idly scattering the leaves from it into the water, and Blandois lighting a
      cigarette, the sisters were paddled away in state as they had come. They
      had not glided on for many minutes, when Little Dorrit became aware that
      Fanny was more showy in manner than the occasion appeared to require, and,
      looking about for the cause through the window and through the open door,
      saw another gondola evidently in waiting on them.
    </p>
    <p>
      As this gondola attended their progress in various artful ways; sometimes
      shooting on a-head, and stopping to let them pass; sometimes, when the way
      was broad enough, skimming along side by side with them; and sometimes
      following close astern; and as Fanny gradually made no disguise that she
      was playing off graces upon somebody within it, of whom she at the same
      time feigned to be unconscious; Little Dorrit at length asked who it was?
    </p>
    <p>
      To which Fanny made the short answer, 'That gaby.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who?' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear child,' returned Fanny (in a tone suggesting that before her
      Uncle's protest she might have said, You little fool, instead), 'how slow
      you are! Young Sparkler.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She lowered the window on her side, and, leaning back and resting her
      elbow on it negligently, fanned herself with a rich Spanish fan of black
      and gold. The attendant gondola, having skimmed forward again, with some
      swift trace of an eye in the window, Fanny laughed coquettishly and said,
      'Did you ever see such a fool, my love?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think he means to follow you all the way?' asked Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My precious child,' returned Fanny, 'I can't possibly answer for what an
      idiot in a state of desperation may do, but I should think it highly
      probable. It's not such an enormous distance. All Venice would scarcely be
      that, I imagine, if he's dying for a glimpse of me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And is he?' asked Little Dorrit in perfect simplicity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, my love, that really is an awkward question for me to answer,' said
      her sister. 'I believe he is. You had better ask Edward. He tells Edward
      he is, I believe. I understand he makes a perfect spectacle of himself at
      the Casino, and that sort of places, by going on about me. But you had
      better ask Edward if you want to know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wonder he doesn't call,' said Little Dorrit after thinking a moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Amy, your wonder will soon cease, if I am rightly informed. I
      should not be at all surprised if he called to-day. The creature has only
      been waiting to get his courage up, I suspect.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you see him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, my darling,' said Fanny, 'that's just as it may happen. Here he
      is again. Look at him. O, you simpleton!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler had, undeniably, a weak appearance; with his eye in the window
      like a knot in the glass, and no reason on earth for stopping his bark
      suddenly, except the real reason.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When you asked me if I will see him, my dear,' said Fanny, almost as well
      composed in the graceful indifference of her attitude as Mrs Merdle
      herself, 'what do you mean?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean,' said Little Dorrit&mdash;'I think I rather mean what do you
      mean, dear Fanny?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny laughed again, in a manner at once condescending, arch, and affable;
      and said, putting her arm round her sister in a playfully affectionate
      way:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now tell me, my little pet. When we saw that woman at Martigny, how did
      you think she carried it off? Did you see what she decided on in a
      moment?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Fanny.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then I'll tell you, Amy. She settled with herself, now I'll never refer
      to that meeting under such different circumstances, and I'll never pretend
      to have any idea that these are the same girls. That's <i>her</i> way out
      of a difficulty. What did I tell you when we came away from Harley Street
      that time? She is as insolent and false as any woman in the world. But in
      the first capacity, my love, she may find people who can match her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      A significant turn of the Spanish fan towards Fanny's bosom, indicated
      with great expression where one of these people was to be found.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not only that,' pursued Fanny, 'but she gives the same charge to Young
      Sparkler; and doesn't let him come after me until she has got it
      thoroughly into his most ridiculous of all ridiculous noddles (for one
      really can't call it a head), that he is to pretend to have been first
      struck with me in that Inn Yard.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why?' asked Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why? Good gracious, my love!' (again very much in the tone of You stupid
      little creature) 'how can you ask? Don't you see that I may have become a
      rather desirable match for a noddle? And don't you see that she puts the
      deception upon us, and makes a pretence, while she shifts it from her own
      shoulders (very good shoulders they are too, I must say),' observed Miss
      Fanny, glancing complacently at herself, 'of considering our feelings?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But we can always go back to the plain truth.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, but if you please we won't,' retorted Fanny. 'No; I am not going to
      have that done, Amy. The pretext is none of mine; it's hers, and she shall
      have enough of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      In the triumphant exaltation of her feelings, Miss Fanny, using her
      Spanish fan with one hand, squeezed her sister's waist with the other, as
      if she were crushing Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' repeated Fanny. 'She shall find me go her way. She took it, and I'll
      follow it. And, with the blessing of fate and fortune, I'll go on
      improving that woman's acquaintance until I have given her maid, before
      her eyes, things from my dressmaker's ten times as handsome and expensive
      as she once gave me from hers!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was silent; sensible that she was not to be heard on any
      question affecting the family dignity, and unwilling to lose to no purpose
      her sister's newly and unexpectedly restored favour. She could not concur,
      but she was silent. Fanny well knew what she was thinking of; so well,
      that she soon asked her.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her reply was, 'Do you mean to encourage Mr Sparkler, Fanny?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Encourage him, my dear?' said her sister, smiling contemptuously, 'that
      depends upon what you call encourage. No, I don't mean to encourage him.
      But I'll make a slave of him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit glanced seriously and doubtfully in her face, but Fanny was
      not to be so brought to a check. She furled her fan of black and gold, and
      used it to tap her sister's nose; with the air of a proud beauty and a
      great spirit, who toyed with and playfully instructed a homely companion.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall make him fetch and carry, my dear, and I shall make him subject
      to me. And if I don't make his mother subject to me, too, it shall not be
      my fault.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think&mdash;dear Fanny, don't be offended, we are so comfortable
      together now&mdash;that you can quite see the end of that course?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can't say I have so much as looked for it yet, my dear,' answered
      Fanny, with supreme indifference; 'all in good time. Such are my
      intentions. And really they have taken me so long to develop, that here we
      are at home. And Young Sparkler at the door, inquiring who is within. By
      the merest accident, of course!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In effect, the swain was standing up in his gondola, card-case in hand,
      affecting to put the question to a servant. This conjunction of
      circumstances led to his immediately afterwards presenting himself before
      the young ladies in a posture, which in ancient times would not have been
      considered one of favourable augury for his suit; since the gondoliers of
      the young ladies, having been put to some inconvenience by the chase, so
      neatly brought their own boat in the gentlest collision with the bark of
      Mr Sparkler, as to tip that gentleman over like a larger species of
      ninepin, and cause him to exhibit the soles of his shoes to the object of
      his dearest wishes: while the nobler portions of his anatomy struggled at
      the bottom of his boat in the arms of one of his men.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0445m.jpg" alt="0445m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0445.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      However, as Miss Fanny called out with much concern, Was the gentleman
      hurt, Mr Sparkler rose more restored than might have been expected, and
      stammered for himself with blushes, 'Not at all so.' Miss Fanny had no
      recollection of having ever seen him before, and was passing on, with a
      distant inclination of her head, when he announced himself by name. Even
      then she was in a difficulty from being unable to call it to mind, until
      he explained that he had had the honour of seeing her at Martigny. Then
      she remembered him, and hoped his lady-mother was well.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you,' stammered Mr Sparkler, 'she's uncommonly well&mdash;at least,
      poorly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In Venice?' said Miss Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In Rome,' Mr Sparkler answered. 'I am here by myself, myself. I came to
      call upon Mr Edward Dorrit myself. Indeed, upon Mr Dorrit likewise. In
      fact, upon the family.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Turning graciously to the attendants, Miss Fanny inquired whether her papa
      or brother was within? The reply being that they were both within, Mr
      Sparkler humbly offered his arm. Miss Fanny accepting it, was squired up
      the great staircase by Mr Sparkler, who, if he still believed (which there
      is not any reason to doubt) that she had no nonsense about her, rather
      deceived himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arrived in a mouldering reception-room, where the faded hangings, of a sad
      sea-green, had worn and withered until they looked as if they might have
      claimed kindred with the waifs of seaweed drifting under the windows, or
      clinging to the walls and weeping for their imprisoned relations, Miss
      Fanny despatched emissaries for her father and brother. Pending whose
      appearance, she showed to great advantage on a sofa, completing Mr
      Sparkler's conquest with some remarks upon Dante&mdash;known to that
      gentleman as an eccentric man in the nature of an Old File, who used to
      put leaves round his head, and sit upon a stool for some unaccountable
      purpose, outside the cathedral at Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit welcomed the visitor with the highest urbanity, and most courtly
      manners. He inquired particularly after Mrs Merdle. He inquired
      particularly after Mr Merdle. Mr Sparkler said, or rather twitched out of
      himself in small pieces by the shirt-collar, that Mrs Merdle having
      completely used up her place in the country, and also her house at
      Brighton, and being, of course, unable, don't you see, to remain in London
      when there wasn't a soul there, and not feeling herself this year quite up
      to visiting about at people's places, had resolved to have a touch at
      Rome, where a woman like herself, with a proverbially fine appearance, and
      with no nonsense about her, couldn't fail to be a great acquisition. As to
      Mr Merdle, he was so much wanted by the men in the City and the rest of
      those places, and was such a doosed extraordinary phenomenon in Buying and
      Banking and that, that Mr Sparkler doubted if the monetary system of the
      country would be able to spare him; though that his work was occasionally
      one too many for him, and that he would be all the better for a temporary
      shy at an entirely new scene and climate, Mr Sparkler did not conceal. As
      to himself, Mr Sparkler conveyed to the Dorrit family that he was going,
      on rather particular business, wherever they were going.
    </p>
    <p>
      This immense conversational achievement required time, but was effected.
      Being effected, Mr Dorrit expressed his hope that Mr Sparkler would
      shortly dine with them. Mr Sparkler received the idea so kindly that Mr
      Dorrit asked what he was going to do that day, for instance? As he was
      going to do nothing that day (his usual occupation, and one for which he
      was particularly qualified), he was secured without postponement; being
      further bound over to accompany the ladies to the Opera in the evening.
    </p>
    <p>
      At dinner-time Mr Sparkler rose out of the sea, like Venus's son taking
      after his mother, and made a splendid appearance ascending the great
      staircase. If Fanny had been charming in the morning, she was now thrice
      charming, very becomingly dressed in her most suitable colours, and with
      an air of negligence upon her that doubled Mr Sparkler's fetters, and
      riveted them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hear you are acquainted, Mr Sparkler,' said his host at dinner, 'with&mdash;ha&mdash;Mr
      Gowan. Mr Henry Gowan?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perfectly, sir,' returned Mr Sparkler. 'His mother and my mother are
      cronies in fact.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I had thought of it, Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, with a patronage as
      magnificent as that of Lord Decimus himself, 'you should have despatched a
      note to them, asking them to dine to-day. Some of our people could have&mdash;ha&mdash;fetched
      them, and taken them home. We could have spared a&mdash;hum&mdash;gondola
      for that purpose. I am sorry to have forgotten this. Pray remind me of
      them to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was not without doubts how Mr Henry Gowan might take their
      patronage; but she promised not to fail in the reminder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, does Mr Henry Gowan paint&mdash;ha&mdash;Portraits?' inquired Mr
      Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler opined that he painted anything, if he could get the job.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has no particular walk?' said Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler, stimulated by Love to brilliancy, replied that for a
      particular walk a man ought to have a particular pair of shoes; as, for
      example, shooting, shooting-shoes; cricket, cricket-shoes. Whereas, he
      believed that Henry Gowan had no particular pair of shoes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No speciality?' said Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      This being a very long word for Mr Sparkler, and his mind being exhausted
      by his late effort, he replied, 'No, thank you. I seldom take it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said Mr Dorrit. 'It would be very agreeable to me to present a
      gentleman so connected, with some&mdash;ha&mdash;Testimonial of my desire
      to further his interests, and develop the&mdash;hum&mdash;germs of his
      genius. I think I must engage Mr Gowan to paint my picture. If the result
      should be&mdash;ha&mdash;mutually satisfactory, I might afterwards engage
      him to try his hand upon my family.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The exquisitely bold and original thought presented itself to Mr Sparkler,
      that there was an opening here for saying there were some of the family
      (emphasising 'some' in a marked manner) to whom no painter could render
      justice. But, for want of a form of words in which to express the idea, it
      returned to the skies.
    </p>
    <p>
      This was the more to be regretted as Miss Fanny greatly applauded the
      notion of the portrait, and urged her papa to act upon it. She surmised,
      she said, that Mr Gowan had lost better and higher opportunities by
      marrying his pretty wife; and Love in a cottage, painting pictures for
      dinner, was so delightfully interesting, that she begged her papa to give
      him the commission whether he could paint a likeness or not: though indeed
      both she and Amy knew he could, from having seen a speaking likeness on
      his easel that day, and having had the opportunity of comparing it with
      the original. These remarks made Mr Sparkler (as perhaps they were
      intended to do) nearly distracted; for while on the one hand they
      expressed Miss Fanny's susceptibility of the tender passion, she herself
      showed such an innocent unconsciousness of his admiration that his eyes
      goggled in his head with jealousy of an unknown rival.
    </p>
    <p>
      Descending into the sea again after dinner, and ascending out of it at the
      Opera staircase, preceded by one of their gondoliers, like an attendant
      Merman, with a great linen lantern, they entered their box, and Mr
      Sparkler entered on an evening of agony. The theatre being dark, and the
      box light, several visitors lounged in during the representation; in whom
      Fanny was so interested, and in conversation with whom she fell into such
      charming attitudes, as she had little confidences with them, and little
      disputes concerning the identity of people in distant boxes, that the
      wretched Sparkler hated all mankind. But he had two consolations at the
      close of the performance. She gave him her fan to hold while she adjusted
      her cloak, and it was his blessed privilege to give her his arm
      down-stairs again. These crumbs of encouragement, Mr Sparkler thought,
      would just keep him going; and it is not impossible that Miss Dorrit
      thought so too.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Merman with his light was ready at the box-door, and other Mermen with
      other lights were ready at many of the doors. The Dorrit Merman held his
      lantern low, to show the steps, and Mr Sparkler put on another heavy set
      of fetters over his former set, as he watched her radiant feet twinkling
      down the stairs beside him. Among the loiterers here, was Blandois of
      Paris. He spoke, and moved forward beside Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was in front with her brother and Mrs General (Mr Dorrit had
      remained at home), but on the brink of the quay they all came together.
      She started again to find Blandois close to her, handing Fanny into the
      boat.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gowan has had a loss,' he said, 'since he was made happy to-day by a
      visit from fair ladies.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A loss?' repeated Fanny, relinquished by the bereaved Sparkler, and
      taking her seat.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A loss,' said Blandois. 'His dog Lion.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit's hand was in his, as he spoke.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is dead,' said Blandois.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dead?' echoed Little Dorrit. 'That noble dog?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Faith, dear ladies!' said Blandois, smiling and shrugging his shoulders,
      'somebody has poisoned that noble dog. He is as dead as the Doges!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 7. Mostly, Prunes and Prism
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>rs General, always on her coach-box keeping the proprieties well
      together, took pains to form a surface on her very dear young friend, and
      Mrs General's very dear young friend tried hard to receive it. Hard as she
      had tried in her laborious life to attain many ends, she had never tried
      harder than she did now, to be varnished by Mrs General. It made her
      anxious and ill at ease to be operated upon by that smoothing hand, it is
      true; but she submitted herself to the family want in its greatness as she
      had submitted herself to the family want in its littleness, and yielded to
      her own inclinations in this thing no more than she had yielded to her
      hunger itself, in the days when she had saved her dinner that her father
      might have his supper.
    </p>
    <p>
      One comfort that she had under the Ordeal by General was more sustaining
      to her, and made her more grateful than to a less devoted and affectionate
      spirit, not habituated to her struggles and sacrifices, might appear quite
      reasonable; and, indeed, it may often be observed in life, that spirits
      like Little Dorrit do not appear to reason half as carefully as the folks
      who get the better of them. The continued kindness of her sister was this
      comfort to Little Dorrit. It was nothing to her that the kindness took the
      form of tolerant patronage; she was used to that. It was nothing to her
      that it kept her in a tributary position, and showed her in attendance on
      the flaming car in which Miss Fanny sat on an elevated seat, exacting
      homage; she sought no better place. Always admiring Fanny's beauty, and
      grace, and readiness, and not now asking herself how much of her
      disposition to be strongly attached to Fanny was due to her own heart, and
      how much to Fanny's, she gave her all the sisterly fondness her great
      heart contained.
    </p>
    <p>
      The wholesale amount of Prunes and Prism which Mrs General infused into
      the family life, combined with the perpetual plunges made by Fanny into
      society, left but a very small residue of any natural deposit at the
      bottom of the mixture. This rendered confidences with Fanny doubly
      precious to Little Dorrit, and heightened the relief they afforded her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy,' said Fanny to her one night when they were alone, after a day so
      tiring that Little Dorrit was quite worn out, though Fanny would have
      taken another dip into society with the greatest pleasure in life, 'I am
      going to put something into your little head. You won't guess what it is,
      I suspect.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't think that's likely, dear,' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, I'll give you a clue, child,' said Fanny. 'Mrs General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Prunes and Prism, in a thousand combinations, having been wearily in the
      ascendant all day&mdash;everything having been surface and varnish and
      show without substance&mdash;Little Dorrit looked as if she had hoped that
      Mrs General was safely tucked up in bed for some hours.
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>Now</i>, can you guess, Amy?' said Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, dear. Unless I have done anything,' said Little Dorrit, rather
      alarmed, and meaning anything calculated to crack varnish and ruffle
      surface.
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny was so very much amused by the misgiving, that she took up her
      favourite fan (being then seated at her dressing-table with her armoury of
      cruel instruments about her, most of them reeking from the heart of
      Sparkler), and tapped her sister frequently on the nose with it, laughing
      all the time.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, our Amy, our Amy!' said Fanny. 'What a timid little goose our Amy is!
      But this is nothing to laugh at. On the contrary, I am very cross, my
      dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As it is not with me, Fanny, I don't mind,' returned her sister, smiling.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! But I do mind,' said Fanny, 'and so will you, Pet, when I enlighten
      you. Amy, has it never struck you that somebody is monstrously polite to
      Mrs General?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Everybody is polite to Mrs General,' said Little Dorrit. 'Because&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because she freezes them into it?' interrupted Fanny. 'I don't mean that;
      quite different from that. Come! Has it never struck you, Amy, that Pa is
      monstrously polite to Mrs General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Amy, murmuring 'No,' looked quite confounded.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No; I dare say not. But he is,' said Fanny. 'He is, Amy. And remember my
      words. Mrs General has designs on Pa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Fanny, do you think it possible that Mrs General has designs on any
      one?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do I think it possible?' retorted Fanny. 'My love, I know it. I tell you
      she has designs on Pa. And more than that, I tell you Pa considers her
      such a wonder, such a paragon of accomplishment, and such an acquisition
      to our family, that he is ready to get himself into a state of perfect
      infatuation with her at any moment. And that opens a pretty picture of
      things, I hope? Think of me with Mrs General for a Mama!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit did not reply, 'Think of me with Mrs General for a Mama;'
      but she looked anxious, and seriously inquired what had led Fanny to these
      conclusions.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord, my darling,' said Fanny, tartly. 'You might as well ask me how I
      know when a man is struck with myself! But, of course I do know. It
      happens pretty often: but I always know it. I know this in much the same
      way, I suppose. At all events, I know it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You never heard Papa say anything?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say anything?' repeated Fanny. 'My dearest, darling child, what necessity
      has he had, yet awhile, to say anything?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you have never heard Mrs General say anything?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My goodness me, Amy,' returned Fanny, 'is she the sort of woman to say
      anything? Isn't it perfectly plain and clear that she has nothing to do at
      present but to hold herself upright, keep her aggravating gloves on, and
      go sweeping about? Say anything! If she had the ace of trumps in her hand
      at whist, she wouldn't say anything, child. It would come out when she
      played it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At least, you may be mistaken, Fanny. Now, may you not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O yes, I <i>may</i> be,' said Fanny, 'but I am not. However, I am glad
      you can contemplate such an escape, my dear, and I am glad that you can
      take this for the present with sufficient coolness to think of such a
      chance. It makes me hope that you may be able to bear the connection. I
      should not be able to bear it, and I should not try. I'd marry young
      Sparkler first.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O, you would never marry him, Fanny, under any circumstances.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Upon my word, my dear,' rejoined that young lady with exceeding
      indifference, 'I wouldn't positively answer even for that. There's no
      knowing what might happen. Especially as I should have many opportunities,
      afterwards, of treating that woman, his mother, in her own style. Which I
      most decidedly should not be slow to avail myself of, Amy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      No more passed between the sisters then; but what had passed gave the two
      subjects of Mrs General and Mr Sparkler great prominence in Little
      Dorrit's mind, and thenceforth she thought very much of both.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General, having long ago formed her own surface to such perfection
      that it hid whatever was below it (if anything), no observation was to be
      made in that quarter. Mr Dorrit was undeniably very polite to her and had
      a high opinion of her; but Fanny, impetuous at most times, might easily be
      wrong for all that. Whereas, the Sparkler question was on the different
      footing that any one could see what was going on there, and Little Dorrit
      saw it and pondered on it with many doubts and wonderings.
    </p>
    <p>
      The devotion of Mr Sparkler was only to be equalled by the caprice and
      cruelty of his enslaver. Sometimes she would prefer him to such
      distinction of notice, that he would chuckle aloud with joy; next day, or
      next hour, she would overlook him so completely, and drop him into such an
      abyss of obscurity, that he would groan under a weak pretence of coughing.
      The constancy of his attendance never touched Fanny: though he was so
      inseparable from Edward, that, when that gentleman wished for a change of
      society, he was under the irksome necessity of gliding out like a
      conspirator in disguised boats and by secret doors and back ways; though
      he was so solicitous to know how Mr Dorrit was, that he called every other
      day to inquire, as if Mr Dorrit were the prey of an intermittent fever;
      though he was so constantly being paddled up and down before the principal
      windows, that he might have been supposed to have made a wager for a large
      stake to be paddled a thousand miles in a thousand hours; though whenever
      the gondola of his mistress left the gate, the gondola of Mr Sparkler shot
      out from some watery ambush and gave chase, as if she were a fair smuggler
      and he a custom-house officer. It was probably owing to this fortification
      of the natural strength of his constitution with so much exposure to the
      air, and the salt sea, that Mr Sparkler did not pine outwardly; but,
      whatever the cause, he was so far from having any prospect of moving his
      mistress by a languishing state of health, that he grew bluffer every day,
      and that peculiarity in his appearance of seeming rather a swelled boy
      than a young man, became developed to an extraordinary degree of ruddy
      puffiness.
    </p>
    <p>
      Blandois calling to pay his respects, Mr Dorrit received him with
      affability as the friend of Mr Gowan, and mentioned to him his idea of
      commissioning Mr Gowan to transmit him to posterity. Blandois highly
      extolling it, it occurred to Mr Dorrit that it might be agreeable to
      Blandois to communicate to his friend the great opportunity reserved for
      him. Blandois accepted the commission with his own free elegance of
      manner, and swore he would discharge it before he was an hour older. On
      his imparting the news to Gowan, that Master gave Mr Dorrit to the Devil
      with great liberality some round dozen of times (for he resented patronage
      almost as much as he resented the want of it), and was inclined to quarrel
      with his friend for bringing him the message.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It may be a defect in my mental vision, Blandois,' said he, 'but may I
      die if I see what you have to do with this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Death of my life,' replied Blandois, 'nor I neither, except that I
      thought I was serving my friend.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By putting an upstart's hire in his pocket?' said Gowan, frowning. 'Do
      you mean that? Tell your other friend to get his head painted for the sign
      of some public-house, and to get it done by a sign-painter. Who am I, and
      who is he?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Professore,' returned the ambassador, 'and who is Blandois?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Without appearing at all interested in the latter question, Gowan angrily
      whistled Mr Dorrit away. But, next day, he resumed the subject by saying
      in his off-hand manner and with a slighting laugh, 'Well, Blandois, when
      shall we go to this Maecenas of yours? We journeymen must take jobs when
      we can get them. When shall we go and look after this job?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'When you will,' said the injured Blandois, 'as you please. What have I to
      do with it? What is it to me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can tell you what it is to me,' said Gowan. 'Bread and cheese. One must
      eat! So come along, my Blandois.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit received them in the presence of his daughters and of Mr
      Sparkler, who happened, by some surprising accident, to be calling there.
      'How are you, Sparkler?' said Gowan carelessly. 'When you have to live by
      your mother wit, old boy, I hope you may get on better than I do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit then mentioned his proposal. 'Sir,' said Gowan, laughing, after
      receiving it gracefully enough, 'I am new to the trade, and not expert at
      its mysteries. I believe I ought to look at you in various lights, tell
      you you are a capital subject, and consider when I shall be sufficiently
      disengaged to devote myself with the necessary enthusiasm to the fine
      picture I mean to make of you. I assure you,' and he laughed again, 'I
      feel quite a traitor in the camp of those dear, gifted, good, noble
      fellows, my brother artists, by not doing the hocus-pocus better. But I
      have not been brought up to it, and it's too late to learn it. Now, the
      fact is, I am a very bad painter, but not much worse than the generality.
      If you are going to throw away a hundred guineas or so, I am as poor as a
      poor relation of great people usually is, and I shall be very much obliged
      to you, if you'll throw them away upon me. I'll do the best I can for the
      money; and if the best should be bad, why even then, you may probably have
      a bad picture with a small name to it, instead of a bad picture with a
      large name to it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This tone, though not what he had expected, on the whole suited Mr Dorrit
      remarkably well. It showed that the gentleman, highly connected, and not a
      mere workman, would be under an obligation to him. He expressed his
      satisfaction in placing himself in Mr Gowan's hands, and trusted that he
      would have the pleasure, in their characters of private gentlemen, of
      improving his acquaintance.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very good,' said Gowan. 'I have not forsworn society since I
      joined the brotherhood of the brush (the most delightful fellows on the
      face of the earth), and am glad enough to smell the old fine gunpowder now
      and then, though it did blow me into mid-air and my present calling.
      You'll not think, Mr Dorrit,' and here he laughed again in the easiest
      way, 'that I am lapsing into the freemasonry of the craft&mdash;for it's
      not so; upon my life I can't help betraying it wherever I go, though, by
      Jupiter, I love and honour the craft with all my might&mdash;if I propose
      a stipulation as to time and place?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Ha! Mr Dorrit could erect no&mdash;hum&mdash;suspicion of that kind on Mr
      Gowan's frankness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Again you are very good,' said Gowan. 'Mr Dorrit, I hear you are going to
      Rome. I am going to Rome, having friends there. Let me begin to do you the
      injustice I have conspired to do you, there&mdash;not here. We shall all
      be hurried during the rest of our stay here; and though there's not a
      poorer man with whole elbows in Venice, than myself, I have not quite got
      all the Amateur out of me yet&mdash;comprising the trade again, you see!&mdash;and
      can't fall on to order, in a hurry, for the mere sake of the sixpences.'
    </p>
    <p>
      These remarks were not less favourably received by Mr Dorrit than their
      predecessors. They were the prelude to the first reception of Mr and Mrs
      Gowan at dinner, and they skilfully placed Gowan on his usual ground in
      the new family.
    </p>
    <p>
      His wife, too, they placed on her usual ground. Miss Fanny understood,
      with particular distinctness, that Mrs Gowan's good looks had cost her
      husband very dear; that there had been a great disturbance about her in
      the Barnacle family; and that the Dowager Mrs Gowan, nearly heart-broken,
      had resolutely set her face against the marriage until overpowered by her
      maternal feelings. Mrs General likewise clearly understood that the
      attachment had occasioned much family grief and dissension. Of honest Mr
      Meagles no mention was made; except that it was natural enough that a
      person of that sort should wish to raise his daughter out of his own
      obscurity, and that no one could blame him for trying his best to do so.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit's interest in the fair subject of this easily accepted
      belief was too earnest and watchful to fail in accurate observation. She
      could see that it had its part in throwing upon Mrs Gowan the touch of a
      shadow under which she lived, and she even had an instinctive knowledge
      that there was not the least truth in it. But it had an influence in
      placing obstacles in the way of her association with Mrs Gowan by making
      the Prunes and Prism school excessively polite to her, but not very
      intimate with her; and Little Dorrit, as an enforced sizar of that
      college, was obliged to submit herself humbly to its ordinances.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nevertheless, there was a sympathetic understanding already established
      between the two, which would have carried them over greater difficulties,
      and made a friendship out of a more restricted intercourse. As though
      accidents were determined to be favourable to it, they had a new assurance
      of congeniality in the aversion which each perceived that the other felt
      towards Blandois of Paris; an aversion amounting to the repugnance and
      horror of a natural antipathy towards an odious creature of the reptile
      kind.
    </p>
    <p>
      And there was a passive congeniality between them, besides this active
      one. To both of them, Blandois behaved in exactly the same manner; and to
      both of them his manner had uniformly something in it, which they both
      knew to be different from his bearing towards others. The difference was
      too minute in its expression to be perceived by others, but they knew it
      to be there. A mere trick of his evil eyes, a mere turn of his smooth
      white hand, a mere hair's-breadth of addition to the fall of his nose and
      the rise of the moustache in the most frequent movement of his face,
      conveyed to both of them, equally, a swagger personal to themselves. It
      was as if he had said, 'I have a secret power in this quarter. I know what
      I know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This had never been felt by them both in so great a degree, and never by
      each so perfectly to the knowledge of the other, as on a day when he came
      to Mr Dorrit's to take his leave before quitting Venice. Mrs Gowan was
      herself there for the same purpose, and he came upon the two together; the
      rest of the family being out. The two had not been together five minutes,
      and the peculiar manner seemed to convey to them, 'You were going to talk
      about me. Ha! Behold me here to prevent it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gowan is coming here?' said Blandois, with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Gowan replied he was not coming.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not coming!' said Blandois. 'Permit your devoted servant, when you leave
      here, to escort you home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you: I am not going home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not going home!' said Blandois. 'Then I am forlorn.'
    </p>
    <p>
      That he might be; but he was not so forlorn as to roam away and leave them
      together. He sat entertaining them with his finest compliments, and his
      choicest conversation; but he conveyed to them, all the time, 'No, no, no,
      dear ladies. Behold me here expressly to prevent it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He conveyed it to them with so much meaning, and he had such a diabolical
      persistency in him, that at length, Mrs Gowan rose to depart. On his
      offering his hand to Mrs Gowan to lead her down the staircase, she
      retained Little Dorrit's hand in hers, with a cautious pressure, and said,
      'No, thank you. But, if you will please to see if my boatman is there, I
      shall be obliged to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It left him no choice but to go down before them. As he did so, hat in
      hand, Mrs Gowan whispered:
    </p>
    <p>
      'He killed the dog.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does Mr Gowan know it?' Little Dorrit whispered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No one knows it. Don't look towards me; look towards him. He will turn
      his face in a moment. No one knows it, but I am sure he did. You are?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;I think so,' Little Dorrit answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Henry likes him, and he will not think ill of him; he is so generous and
      open himself. But you and I feel sure that we think of him as he deserves.
      He argued with Henry that the dog had been already poisoned when he
      changed so, and sprang at him. Henry believes it, but we do not. I see he
      is listening, but can't hear. Good-bye, my love! Good-bye!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The last words were spoken aloud, as the vigilant Blandois stopped, turned
      his head, and looked at them from the bottom of the staircase. Assuredly
      he did look then, though he looked his politest, as if any real
      philanthropist could have desired no better employment than to lash a
      great stone to his neck, and drop him into the water flowing beyond the
      dark arched gateway in which he stood. No such benefactor to mankind being
      on the spot, he handed Mrs Gowan to her boat, and stood there until it had
      shot out of the narrow view; when he handed himself into his own boat and
      followed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit had sometimes thought, and now thought again as she retraced
      her steps up the staircase, that he had made his way too easily into her
      father's house. But so many and such varieties of people did the same,
      through Mr Dorrit's participation in his elder daughter's society mania,
      that it was hardly an exceptional case. A perfect fury for making
      acquaintances on whom to impress their riches and importance, had seized
      the House of Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      It appeared on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this same society
      in which they lived, greatly resembled a superior sort of Marshalsea.
      Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much as people had come
      into the prison; through debt, through idleness, relationship, curiosity,
      and general unfitness for getting on at home. They were brought into these
      foreign towns in the custody of couriers and local followers, just as the
      debtors had been brought into the prison. They prowled about the churches
      and picture-galleries, much in the old, dreary, prison-yard manner. They
      were usually going away again to-morrow or next week, and rarely knew
      their own minds, and seldom did what they said they would do, or went
      where they said they would go: in all this again, very like the prison
      debtors. They paid high for poor accommodation, and disparaged a place
      while they pretended to like it: which was exactly the Marshalsea custom.
      They were envied when they went away by people left behind, feigning not
      to want to go: and that again was the Marshalsea habit invariably. A
      certain set of words and phrases, as much belonging to tourists as the
      College and the Snuggery belonged to the jail, was always in their mouths.
      They had precisely the same incapacity for settling down to anything, as
      the prisoners used to have; they rather deteriorated one another, as the
      prisoners used to do; and they wore untidy dresses, and fell into a
      slouching way of life: still, always like the people in the Marshalsea.
    </p>
    <p>
      The period of the family's stay at Venice came, in its course, to an end,
      and they moved, with their retinue, to Rome. Through a repetition of the
      former Italian scenes, growing more dirty and more haggard as they went
      on, and bringing them at length to where the very air was diseased, they
      passed to their destination. A fine residence had been taken for them on
      the Corso, and there they took up their abode, in a city where everything
      seemed to be trying to stand still for ever on the ruins of something else&mdash;except
      the water, which, following eternal laws, tumbled and rolled from its
      glorious multitude of fountains.
    </p>
    <p>
      Here it seemed to Little Dorrit that a change came over the Marshalsea
      spirit of their society, and that Prunes and Prism got the upper hand.
      Everybody was walking about St Peter's and the Vatican on somebody else's
      cork legs, and straining every visible object through somebody else's
      sieve. Nobody said what anything was, but everybody said what the Mrs
      Generals, Mr Eustace, or somebody else said it was. The whole body of
      travellers seemed to be a collection of voluntary human sacrifices, bound
      hand and foot, and delivered over to Mr Eustace and his attendants, to
      have the entrails of their intellects arranged according to the taste of
      that sacred priesthood. Through the rugged remains of temples and tombs
      and palaces and senate halls and theatres and amphitheatres of ancient
      days, hosts of tongue-tied and blindfolded moderns were carefully feeling
      their way, incessantly repeating Prunes and Prism in the endeavour to set
      their lips according to the received form. Mrs General was in her pure
      element. Nobody had an opinion. There was a formation of surface going on
      around her on an amazing scale, and it had not a flaw of courage or honest
      free speech in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Another modification of Prunes and Prism insinuated itself on Little
      Dorrit's notice very shortly after their arrival. They received an early
      visit from Mrs Merdle, who led that extensive department of life in the
      Eternal City that winter; and the skilful manner in which she and Fanny
      fenced with one another on the occasion, almost made her quiet sister
      wink, like the glittering of small-swords.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So delighted,' said Mrs Merdle, 'to resume an acquaintance so
      inauspiciously begun at Martigny.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At Martigny, of course,' said Fanny. 'Charmed, I am sure!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I understand,' said Mrs Merdle, 'from my son Edmund Sparkler, that he has
      already improved that chance occasion. He has returned quite transported
      with Venice.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed?' returned the careless Fanny. 'Was he there long?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I might refer that question to Mr Dorrit,' said Mrs Merdle, turning the
      bosom towards that gentleman; 'Edmund having been so much indebted to him
      for rendering his stay agreeable.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, pray don't speak of it,' returned Fanny. 'I believe Papa had the
      pleasure of inviting Mr Sparkler twice or thrice,&mdash;but it was
      nothing. We had so many people about us, and kept such open house, that if
      he had that pleasure, it was less than nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Except, my dear,' said Mr Dorrit, 'except&mdash;ha&mdash;as it afforded
      me unusual gratification to&mdash;hum&mdash;show by any means, however
      slight and worthless, the&mdash;ha, hum&mdash;high estimation in which, in&mdash;ha&mdash;common
      with the rest of the world, I hold so distinguished and princely a
      character as Mr Merdle's.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The bosom received this tribute in its most engaging manner. 'Mr Merdle,'
      observed Fanny, as a means of dismissing Mr Sparkler into the background,
      'is quite a theme of Papa's, you must know, Mrs Merdle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been&mdash;ha&mdash;disappointed, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'to
      understand from Mr Sparkler that there is no great&mdash;hum&mdash;probability
      of Mr Merdle's coming abroad.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, indeed,' said Mrs Merdle, 'he is so much engaged and in such
      request, that I fear not. He has not been able to get abroad for years.
      You, Miss Dorrit, I believe have been almost continually abroad for a long
      time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh dear yes,' drawled Fanny, with the greatest hardihood. 'An immense
      number of years.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So I should have inferred,' said Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Exactly,' said Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I trust, however,' resumed Mr Dorrit, 'that if I have not the&mdash;hum&mdash;great
      advantage of becoming known to Mr Merdle on this side of the Alps or
      Mediterranean, I shall have that honour on returning to England. It is an
      honour I particularly desire and shall particularly esteem.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Merdle,' said Mrs Merdle, who had been looking admiringly at Fanny
      through her eye-glass, 'will esteem it, I am sure, no less.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit, still habitually thoughtful and solitary though no longer
      alone, at first supposed this to be mere Prunes and Prism. But as her
      father when they had been to a brilliant reception at Mrs Merdle's, harped
      at their own family breakfast-table on his wish to know Mr Merdle, with
      the contingent view of benefiting by the advice of that wonderful man in
      the disposal of his fortune, she began to think it had a real meaning, and
      to entertain a curiosity on her own part to see the shining light of the
      time.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0044" id="link2HCH0044"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 8. The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that 'It Never Does'
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hile the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves
      for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily being sketched out
      of all earthly proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling pencils
      innumerable, the firm of Doyce and Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart
      Yard, and the vigorous clink of iron upon iron was heard there through the
      working hours.
    </p>
    <p>
      The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into sound
      trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious devices, had
      done much to enhance the character of the factory. As an ingenious man, he
      had necessarily to encounter every discouragement that the ruling powers
      for a length of time had been able by any means to put in the way of this
      class of culprits; but that was only reasonable self-defence in the
      powers, since How to do it must obviously be regarded as the natural and
      mortal enemy of How not to do it. In this was to be found the basis of the
      wise system, by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution Office, of
      warning every ingenious British subject to be ingenious at his peril: of
      harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by making his remedy
      uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at the best of confiscating
      his property after a short term of enjoyment, as though invention were on
      a par with felony. The system had uniformly found great favour with the
      Barnacles, and that was only reasonable, too; for one who worthily invents
      must be in earnest, and the Barnacles abhorred and dreaded nothing half so
      much. That again was very reasonable; since in a country suffering under
      the affliction of a great amount of earnestness, there might, in an
      exceeding short space of time, be not a single Barnacle left sticking to a
      post.
    </p>
    <p>
      Daniel Doyce faced his condition with its pains and penalties attached to
      it, and soberly worked on for the work's sake. Clennam cheering him with a
      hearty co-operation, was a moral support to him, besides doing good
      service in his business relation. The concern prospered, and the partners
      were fast friends.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Daniel could not forget the old design of so many years. It was not in
      reason to be expected that he should; if he could have lightly forgotten
      it, he could never have conceived it, or had the patience and perseverance
      to work it out. So Clennam thought, when he sometimes observed him of an
      evening looking over the models and drawings, and consoling himself by
      muttering with a sigh as he put them away again, that the thing was as
      true as it ever was.
    </p>
    <p>
      To show no sympathy with so much endeavour, and so much disappointment,
      would have been to fail in what Clennam regarded as among the implied
      obligations of his partnership. A revival of the passing interest in the
      subject which had been by chance awakened at the door of the
      Circumlocution Office, originated in this feeling. He asked his partner to
      explain the invention to him; 'having a lenient consideration,' he
      stipulated, 'for my being no workman, Doyce.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No workman?' said Doyce. 'You would have been a thorough workman if you
      had given yourself to it. You have as good a head for understanding such
      things as I have met with.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A totally uneducated one, I am sorry to add,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know that,' returned Doyce, 'and I wouldn't have you say that. No
      man of sense who has been generally improved, and has improved himself,
      can be called quite uneducated as to anything. I don't particularly favour
      mysteries. I would as soon, on a fair and clear explanation, be judged by
      one class of man as another, provided he had the qualification I have
      named.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At all events,' said Clennam&mdash;'this sounds as if we were exchanging
      compliments, but we know we are not&mdash;I shall have the advantage of as
      plain an explanation as can be given.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said Daniel, in his steady even way,'I'll try to make it so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character, of
      explaining what he himself perceived, and meant, with the direct force and
      distinctness with which it struck his own mind. His manner of
      demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that it was not easy to
      mistake him. There was something almost ludicrous in the complete
      irreconcilability of a vague conventional notion that he must be a
      visionary man, with the precise, sagacious travelling of his eye and thumb
      over the plans, their patient stoppages at particular points, their
      careful returns to other points whence little channels of explanation had
      to be traced up, and his steady manner of making everything good and
      everything sound at each important stage, before taking his hearer on a
      line's-breadth further. His dismissal of himself from his description, was
      hardly less remarkable. He never said, I discovered this adaptation or
      invented that combination; but showed the whole thing as if the Divine
      artificer had made it, and he had happened to find it; so modest he was
      about it, such a pleasant touch of respect was mingled with his quiet
      admiration of it, and so calmly convinced he was that it was established
      on irrefragable laws.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not only that evening, but for several succeeding evenings, Clennam was
      quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued it, and the
      oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and the shrewd eye
      kindling with pleasure in it and love of it&mdash;instrument for probing
      his heart though it had been made for twelve long years&mdash;the less he
      could reconcile it to his younger energy to let it go without one effort
      more. At length he said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Doyce, it came to this at last&mdash;that the business was to be sunk
      with Heaven knows how many more wrecks, or begun all over again?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' returned Doyce, 'that's what the noblemen and gentlemen made of it
      after a dozen years.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And pretty fellows too!' said Clennam, bitterly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The usual thing!' observed Doyce. 'I must not make a martyr of myself,
      when I am one of so large a company.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Relinquish it, or begin it all over again?' mused Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That was exactly the long and the short of it,' said Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then, my friend,' cried Clennam, starting up and taking his
      work-roughened hand, 'it shall be begun all over again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Doyce looked alarmed, and replied in a hurry&mdash;for him, 'No, no.
      Better put it by. Far better put it by. It will be heard of, one day. I
      can put it by. You forget, my good Clennam; I <i>have</i> put it by. It's
      all at an end.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Doyce,' returned Clennam, 'at an end as far as your efforts and
      rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as far as mine are. I am younger
      than you: I have only once set foot in that precious office, and I am
      fresh game for them. Come! I'll try them. You shall do exactly as you have
      been doing since we have been together. I will add (as I easily can) to
      what I have been doing, the attempt to get public justice done to you;
      and, unless I have some success to report, you shall hear no more of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to consent, and again and again urged
      that they had better put it by. But it was natural that he should
      gradually allow himself to be over-persuaded by Clennam, and should yield.
      Yield he did. So Arthur resumed the long and hopeless labour of striving
      to make way with the Circumlocution Office.
    </p>
    <p>
      The waiting-rooms of that Department soon began to be familiar with his
      presence, and he was generally ushered into them by its janitors much as a
      pickpocket might be shown into a police-office; the principal difference
      being that the object of the latter class of public business is to keep
      the pickpocket, while the Circumlocution object was to get rid of Clennam.
      However, he was resolved to stick to the Great Department; and so the work
      of form-filling, corresponding, minuting, memorandum-making, signing,
      counter-signing, counter-counter-signing, referring backwards and
      forwards, and referring sideways, crosswise, and zig-zag, recommenced.
    </p>
    <p>
      Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution Office, not previously
      mentioned in the present record. When that admirable Department got into
      trouble, and was, by some infuriated members of Parliament whom the
      smaller Barnacles almost suspected of labouring under diabolic possession,
      attacked on the merits of no individual case, but as an Institution wholly
      abominable and Bedlamite; then the noble or right honourable Barnacle who
      represented it in the House, would smite that member and cleave him
      asunder, with a statement of the quantity of business (for the prevention
      of business) done by the Circumlocution Office. Then would that noble or
      right honourable Barnacle hold in his hand a paper containing a few
      figures, to which, with the permission of the House, he would entreat its
      attention. Then would the inferior Barnacles exclaim, obeying
      orders,'Hear, Hear, Hear!' and 'Read!' Then would the noble or right
      honourable Barnacle perceive, sir, from this little document, which he
      thought might carry conviction even to the perversest mind (Derisive
      laughter and cheering from the Barnacle fry), that within the short
      compass of the last financial half-year, this much-maligned Department
      (Cheers) had written and received fifteen thousand letters (Loud cheers),
      had written twenty-four thousand minutes (Louder cheers), and thirty-two
      thousand five hundred and seventeen memoranda (Vehement cheering). Nay, an
      ingenious gentleman connected with the Department, and himself a valuable
      public servant, had done him the favour to make a curious calculation of
      the amount of stationery consumed in it during the same period. It formed
      a part of this same short document; and he derived from it the remarkable
      fact that the sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted to the public
      service would pave the footways on both sides of Oxford Street from end to
      end, and leave nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Immense
      cheering and laughter); while of tape&mdash;red tape&mdash;it had used
      enough to stretch, in graceful festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to the
      General Post Office. Then, amidst a burst of official exultation, would
      the noble or right honourable Barnacle sit down, leaving the mutilated
      fragments of the Member on the field. No one, after that exemplary
      demolition of him, would have the hardihood to hint that the more the
      Circumlocution Office did, the less was done, and that the greatest
      blessing it could confer on an unhappy public would be to do nothing.
    </p>
    <p>
      With sufficient occupation on his hands, now that he had this additional
      task&mdash;such a task had many and many a serviceable man died of before
      his day&mdash;Arthur Clennam led a life of slight variety. Regular visits
      to his mother's dull sick room, and visits scarcely less regular to Mr
      Meagles at Twickenham, were its only changes during many months.
    </p>
    <p>
      He sadly and sorely missed Little Dorrit. He had been prepared to miss her
      very much, but not so much. He knew to the full extent only through
      experience, what a large place in his life was left blank when her
      familiar little figure went out of it. He felt, too, that he must
      relinquish the hope of its return, understanding the family character
      sufficiently well to be assured that he and she were divided by a broad
      ground of separation. The old interest he had had in her, and her old
      trusting reliance on him, were tinged with melancholy in his mind: so soon
      had change stolen over them, and so soon had they glided into the past
      with other secret tendernesses.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he received her letter he was greatly moved, but did not the less
      sensibly feel that she was far divided from him by more than distance. It
      helped him to a clearer and keener perception of the place assigned him by
      the family. He saw that he was cherished in her grateful remembrance
      secretly, and that they resented him with the jail and the rest of its
      belongings.
    </p>
    <p>
      Through all these meditations which every day of his life crowded about
      her, he thought of her otherwise in the old way. She was his innocent
      friend, his delicate child, his dear Little Dorrit. This very change of
      circumstances fitted curiously in with the habit, begun on the night when
      the roses floated away, of considering himself as a much older man than
      his years really made him. He regarded her from a point of view which in
      its remoteness, tender as it was, he little thought would have been
      unspeakable agony to her. He speculated about her future destiny, and
      about the husband she might have, with an affection for her which would
      have drained her heart of its dearest drop of hope, and broken it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Everything about him tended to confirm him in the custom of looking on
      himself as an elderly man, from whom such aspirations as he had combated
      in the case of Minnie Gowan (though that was not so long ago either,
      reckoning by months and seasons), were finally departed. His relations
      with her father and mother were like those on which a widower son-in-law
      might have stood. If the twin sister who was dead had lived to pass away
      in the bloom of womanhood, and he had been her husband, the nature of his
      intercourse with Mr and Mrs Meagles would probably have been just what it
      was. This imperceptibly helped to render habitual the impression within
      him, that he had done with, and dismissed that part of life.
    </p>
    <p>
      He invariably heard of Minnie from them, as telling them in her letters
      how happy she was, and how she loved her husband; but inseparable from
      that subject, he invariably saw the old cloud on Mr Meagles's face. Mr
      Meagles had never been quite so radiant since the marriage as before. He
      had never quite recovered the separation from Pet. He was the same
      good-humoured, open creature; but as if his face, from being much turned
      towards the pictures of his two children which could show him only one
      look, unconsciously adopted a characteristic from them, it always had now,
      through all its changes of expression, a look of loss in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      One wintry Saturday when Clennam was at the cottage, the Dowager Mrs Gowan
      drove up, in the Hampton Court equipage which pretended to be the
      exclusive equipage of so many individual proprietors. She descended, in
      her shady ambuscade of green fan, to favour Mr and Mrs Meagles with a
      call.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how do you both do, Papa and Mama Meagles?' said she, encouraging her
      humble connections. 'And when did you last hear from or about my poor
      fellow?'
    </p>
    <p>
      My poor fellow was her son; and this mode of speaking of him politely kept
      alive, without any offence in the world, the pretence that he had fallen a
      victim to the Meagles' wiles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And the dear pretty one?' said Mrs Gowan. 'Have you later news of her
      than I have?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Which also delicately implied that her son had been captured by mere
      beauty, and under its fascination had forgone all sorts of worldly
      advantages.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure,' said Mrs Gowan, without straining her attention on the
      answers she received, 'it's an unspeakable comfort to know they continue
      happy. My poor fellow is of such a restless disposition, and has been so
      used to roving about, and to being inconstant and popular among all manner
      of people, that it's the greatest comfort in life. I suppose they're as
      poor as mice, Papa Meagles?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles, fidgety under the question, replied, 'I hope not, ma'am. I
      hope they will manage their little income.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! my dearest Meagles!' returned the lady, tapping him on the arm with
      the green fan and then adroitly interposing it between a yawn and the
      company, 'how can you, as a man of the world and one of the most
      business-like of human beings&mdash;for you know you are business-like,
      and a great deal too much for us who are not&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      (Which went to the former purpose, by making Mr Meagles out to be an
      artful schemer.)
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;How can you talk about their managing their little means? My poor
      dear fellow! The idea of his managing hundreds! And the sweet pretty
      creature too. The notion of her managing! Papa Meagles! Don't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, gravely, 'I am sorry to admit, then, that
      Henry certainly does anticipate his means.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear good man&mdash;I use no ceremony with you, because we are a kind
      of relations;&mdash;positively, Mama Meagles,' exclaimed Mrs Gowan
      cheerfully, as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for the
      first time, 'a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this world none of
      us can have <i>everything</i> our own way.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This again went to the former point, and showed Mr Meagles with all good
      breeding that, so far, he had been brilliantly successful in his deep
      designs. Mrs Gowan thought the hit so good a one, that she dwelt upon it;
      repeating 'Not <i>everything</i>. No, no; in this world we must not expect
      <i>everything</i>, Papa Meagles.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And may I ask, ma'am,' retorted Mr Meagles, a little heightened in
      colour, 'who does expect everything?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, nobody, nobody!' said Mrs Gowan. 'I was going to say&mdash;but you
      put me out. You interrupting Papa, what was I going to say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Drooping her large green fan, she looked musingly at Mr Meagles while she
      thought about it; a performance not tending to the cooling of that
      gentleman's rather heated spirits.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! Yes, to be sure!' said Mrs Gowan. 'You must remember that my poor
      fellow has always been accustomed to expectations. They may have been
      realised, or they may not have been realised&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let us say, then, may not have been realised,' observed Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Dowager for a moment gave him an angry look; but tossed it off with
      her head and her fan, and pursued the tenor of her way in her former
      manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It makes no difference. My poor fellow has been accustomed to that sort
      of thing, and of course you knew it, and were prepared for the
      consequences. I myself always clearly foresaw the consequences, and am not
      surprised. And you must not be surprised. In fact, can't be surprised.
      Must have been prepared for it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles looked at his wife and at Clennam; bit his lip; and coughed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And now here's my poor fellow,' Mrs Gowan pursued, 'receiving notice that
      he is to hold himself in expectation of a baby, and all the expenses
      attendant on such an addition to his family! Poor Henry! But it can't be
      helped now; it's too late to help it now. Only don't talk of anticipating
      means, Papa Meagles, as a discovery; because that would be too much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Too much, ma'am?' said Mr Meagles, as seeking an explanation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, there!' said Mrs Gowan, putting him in his inferior place with an
      expressive action of her hand. 'Too much for my poor fellow's mother to
      bear at this time of day. They are fast married, and can't be unmarried.
      There, there! I know that! You needn't tell me that, Papa Meagles. I know
      it very well. What was it I said just now? That it was a great comfort
      they continued happy. It is to be hoped they will still continue happy. It
      is to be hoped Pretty One will do everything she can to make my poor
      fellow happy, and keep him contented. Papa and Mama Meagles, we had better
      say no more about it. We never did look at this subject from the same
      side, and we never shall. There, there! Now I am good.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Truly, having by this time said everything she could say in maintenance of
      her wonderfully mythical position, and in admonition to Mr Meagles that he
      must not expect to bear his honours of alliance too cheaply, Mrs Gowan was
      disposed to forgo the rest. If Mr Meagles had submitted to a glance of
      entreaty from Mrs Meagles, and an expressive gesture from Clennam, he
      would have left her in the undisturbed enjoyment of this state of mind.
      But Pet was the darling and pride of his heart; and if he could ever have
      championed her more devotedly, or loved her better, than in the days when
      she was the sunlight of his house, it would have been now, when, as its
      daily grace and delight, she was lost to it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Gowan, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'I have been a plain man all my life.
      If I was to try&mdash;no matter whether on myself, on somebody else, or
      both&mdash;any genteel mystifications, I should probably not succeed in
      them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa Meagles,' returned the Dowager, with an affable smile, but with the
      bloom on her cheeks standing out a little more vividly than usual as the
      neighbouring surface became paler,'probably not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Therefore, my good madam,' said Mr Meagles, at great pains to restrain
      himself, 'I hope I may, without offence, ask to have no such mystification
      played off upon me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama Meagles,' observed Mrs Gowan, 'your good man is incomprehensible.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her turning to that worthy lady was an artifice to bring her into the
      discussion, quarrel with her, and vanquish her. Mr Meagles interposed to
      prevent that consummation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother,' said he, 'you are inexpert, my dear, and it is not a fair match.
      Let me beg of you to remain quiet. Come, Mrs Gowan, come! Let us try to be
      sensible; let us try to be good-natured; let us try to be fair. Don't you
      pity Henry, and I won't pity Pet. And don't be one-sided, my dear madam;
      it's not considerate, it's not kind. Don't let us say that we hope Pet
      will make Henry happy, or even that we hope Henry will make Pet happy,'
      (Mr Meagles himself did not look happy as he spoke the words,) 'but let us
      hope they will make each other happy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sure, and there leave it, father,' said Mrs Meagles the kind-hearted
      and comfortable.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, mother, no,' returned Mr Meagles, 'not exactly there. I can't quite
      leave it there; I must say just half-a-dozen words more. Mrs Gowan, I hope
      I am not over-sensitive. I believe I don't look it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed you do not,' said Mrs Gowan, shaking her head and the great green
      fan together, for emphasis.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, ma'am; that's well. Notwithstanding which, I feel a little&mdash;I
      don't want to use a strong word&mdash;now shall I say hurt?' asked Mr
      Meagles at once with frankness and moderation, and with a conciliatory
      appeal in his tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say what you like,' answered Mrs Gowan. 'It is perfectly indifferent to
      me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, don't say that,' urged Mr Meagles, 'because that's not responding
      amiably. I feel a little hurt when I hear references made to consequences
      having been foreseen, and to its being too late now, and so forth.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>Do</i> you, Papa Meagles?' said Mrs Gowan. 'I am not surprised.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, ma'am,' reasoned Mr Meagles, 'I was in hopes you would have been at
      least surprised, because to hurt me wilfully on so tender a subject is
      surely not generous.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not responsible,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for your conscience, you know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Poor Mr Meagles looked aghast with astonishment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I am unluckily obliged to carry a cap about with me, which is yours
      and fits you,' pursued Mrs Gowan, 'don't blame me for its pattern, Papa
      Meagles, I beg!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, good Lord, ma'am!' Mr Meagles broke out, 'that's as much as to state&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Meagles,' said Mrs Gowan, who became extremely
      deliberate and prepossessing in manner whenever that gentleman became at
      all warm, 'perhaps to prevent confusion, I had better speak for myself
      than trouble your kindness to speak for me. It's as much as to state, you
      begin. If you please, I will finish the sentence. It is as much as to
      state&mdash;not that I wish to press it or even recall it, for it is of no
      use now, and my only wish is to make the best of existing circumstances&mdash;that
      from the first to the last I always objected to this match of yours, and
      at a very late period yielded a most unwilling consent to it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother!' cried Mr Meagles. 'Do you hear this! Arthur! Do you hear this!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The room being of a convenient size,' said Mrs Gowan, looking about as
      she fanned herself, 'and quite charmingly adapted in all respects to
      conversation, I should imagine I am audible in any part of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Some moments passed in silence, before Mr Meagles could hold himself in
      his chair with sufficient security to prevent his breaking out of it at
      the next word he spoke. At last he said: 'Ma'am, I am very unwilling to
      revive them, but I must remind you what my opinions and my course were,
      all along, on that unfortunate subject.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O, my dear sir!' said Mrs Gowan, smiling and shaking her head with
      accusatory intelligence, 'they were well understood by me, I assure you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'knew unhappiness before that time, I
      never knew anxiety before that time. It was a time of such distress to me
      that&mdash;' That Mr Meagles could really say no more about it, in short,
      but passed his handkerchief before his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I understood the whole affair,' said Mrs Gowan, composedly looking over
      her fan. 'As you have appealed to Mr Clennam, I may appeal to Mr Clennam,
      too. He knows whether I did or not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very unwilling,' said Clennam, looked to by all parties, 'to take
      any share in this discussion, more especially because I wish to preserve
      the best understanding and the clearest relations with Mr Henry Gowan. I
      have very strong reasons indeed, for entertaining that wish. Mrs Gowan
      attributed certain views of furthering the marriage to my friend here, in
      conversation with me before it took place; and I endeavoured to undeceive
      her. I represented that I knew him (as I did and do) to be strenuously
      opposed to it, both in opinion and action.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see?' said Mrs Gowan, turning the palms of her hands towards Mr
      Meagles, as if she were Justice herself, representing to him that he had
      better confess, for he had not a leg to stand on. 'You see? Very good! Now
      Papa and Mama Meagles both!' here she rose; 'allow me to take the liberty
      of putting an end to this rather formidable controversy. I will not say
      another word upon its merits. I will only say that it is an additional
      proof of what one knows from all experience; that this kind of thing never
      answers&mdash;as my poor fellow himself would say, that it never pays&mdash;in
      one word, that it never does.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles asked, What kind of thing?
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is in vain,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for people to attempt to get on together
      who have such extremely different antecedents; who are jumbled against
      each other in this accidental, matrimonial sort of way; and who cannot
      look at the untoward circumstance which has shaken them together in the
      same light. It never does.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles was beginning, 'Permit me to say, ma'am&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, don't,' returned Mrs Gowan. 'Why should you! It is an ascertained
      fact. It never does. I will therefore, if you please, go my way, leaving
      you to yours. I shall at all times be happy to receive my poor fellow's
      pretty wife, and I shall always make a point of being on the most
      affectionate terms with her. But as to these terms, semi-family and
      semi-stranger, semi-goring and semi-boring, they form a state of things
      quite amusing in its impracticability. I assure you it never does.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Dowager here made a smiling obeisance, rather to the room than to any
      one in it, and therewith took a final farewell of Papa and Mama Meagles.
      Clennam stepped forward to hand her to the Pill-Box which was at the
      service of all the Pills in Hampton Court Palace; and she got into that
      vehicle with distinguished serenity, and was driven away.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thenceforth the Dowager, with a light and careless humour, often recounted
      to her particular acquaintance how, after a hard trial, she had found it
      impossible to know those people who belonged to Henry's wife, and who had
      made that desperate set to catch him. Whether she had come to the
      conclusion beforehand, that to get rid of them would give her favourite
      pretence a better air, might save her some occasional inconvenience, and
      could risk no loss (the pretty creature being fast married, and her father
      devoted to her), was best known to herself. Though this history has its
      opinion on that point too, and decidedly in the affirmative.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0045" id="link2HCH0045"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 9. Appearance and Disappearance
    </h2>
    <p>
      'Arthur, my dear boy,' said Mr Meagles, on the evening of the following
      day, 'Mother and I have been talking this over, and we don't feel
      comfortable in remaining as we are. That elegant connection of ours&mdash;that
      dear lady who was here yesterday&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I understand,' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Even that affable and condescending ornament of society,' pursued Mr
      Meagles, 'may misrepresent us, we are afraid. We could bear a great deal,
      Arthur, for her sake; but we think we would rather not bear that, if it
      was all the same to her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good,' said Arthur. 'Go on.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see,' proceeded Mr Meagles 'it might put us wrong with our
      son-in-law, it might even put us wrong with our daughter, and it might
      lead to a great deal of domestic trouble. You see, don't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, indeed,' returned Arthur, 'there is much reason in what you say.' He
      had glanced at Mrs Meagles, who was always on the good and sensible side;
      and a petition had shone out of her honest face that he would support Mr
      Meagles in his present inclinings.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So we are very much disposed, are Mother and I,' said Mr Meagles, 'to
      pack up bags and baggage and go among the Allongers and Marshongers once
      more. I mean, we are very much disposed to be off, strike right through
      France into Italy, and see our Pet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I don't think,' replied Arthur, touched by the motherly anticipation
      in the bright face of Mrs Meagles (she must have been very like her
      daughter, once), 'that you could do better. And if you ask me for my
      advice, it is that you set off to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it really, though?' said Mr Meagles. 'Mother, this is being backed in
      an idea!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mother, with a look which thanked Clennam in a manner very agreeable to
      him, answered that it was indeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The fact is, besides, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, the old cloud coming over
      his face, 'that my son-in-law is already in debt again, and that I suppose
      I must clear him again. It may be as well, even on this account, that I
      should step over there, and look him up in a friendly way. Then again,
      here's Mother foolishly anxious (and yet naturally too) about Pet's state
      of health, and that she should not be left to feel lonesome at the present
      time. It's undeniably a long way off, Arthur, and a strange place for the
      poor love under all the circumstances. Let her be as well cared for as any
      lady in that land, still it is a long way off. just as Home is Home though
      it's never so Homely, why you see,' said Mr Meagles, adding a new version
      to the proverb, 'Rome is Rome, though it's never so Romely.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All perfectly true,' observed Arthur, 'and all sufficient reasons for
      going.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad you think so; it decides me. Mother, my dear, you may get
      ready. We have lost our pleasant interpreter (she spoke three foreign
      languages beautifully, Arthur; you have heard her many a time), and you
      must pull me through it, Mother, as well as you can. I require a deal of
      pulling through, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head, 'a deal of
      pulling through. I stick at everything beyond a noun-substantive&mdash;and
      I stick at him, if he's at all a tight one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now I think of it,' returned Clennam, 'there's Cavalletto. He shall go
      with you, if you like. I could not afford to lose him, but you will bring
      him safe back.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well! I am much obliged to you, my boy,' said Mr Meagles, turning it
      over, 'but I think not. No, I think I'll be pulled through by Mother.
      Cavallooro (I stick at his very name to start with, and it sounds like the
      chorus to a comic song) is so necessary to you, that I don't like the
      thought of taking him away. More than that, there's no saying when we may
      come home again; and it would never do to take him away for an indefinite
      time. The cottage is not what it was. It only holds two little people less
      than it ever did, Pet, and her poor unfortunate maid Tattycoram; but it
      seems empty now. Once out of it, there's no knowing when we may come back
      to it. No, Arthur, I'll be pulled through by Mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They would do best by themselves perhaps, after all, Clennam thought;
      therefore did not press his proposal.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you would come down and stay here for a change, when it wouldn't
      trouble you,' Mr Meagles resumed, 'I should be glad to think&mdash;and so
      would Mother too, I know&mdash;that you were brightening up the old place
      with a bit of life it was used to when it was full, and that the Babies on
      the wall there had a kind eye upon them sometimes. You so belong to the
      spot, and to them, Arthur, and we should every one of us have been so
      happy if it had fallen out&mdash;but, let us see&mdash;how's the weather
      for travelling now?' Mr Meagles broke off, cleared his throat, and got up
      to look out of the window.
    </p>
    <p>
      They agreed that the weather was of high promise; and Clennam kept the
      talk in that safe direction until it had become easy again, when he gently
      diverted it to Henry Gowan and his quick sense and agreeable qualities
      when he was delicately dealt with; he likewise dwelt on the indisputable
      affection he entertained for his wife. Clennam did not fail of his effect
      upon good Mr Meagles, whom these commendations greatly cheered; and who
      took Mother to witness that the single and cordial desire of his heart in
      reference to their daughter's husband, was harmoniously to exchange
      friendship for friendship, and confidence for confidence. Within a few
      hours the cottage furniture began to be wrapped up for preservation in the
      family absence&mdash;or, as Mr Meagles expressed it, the house began to
      put its hair in papers&mdash;and within a few days Father and Mother were
      gone, Mrs Tickit and Dr Buchan were posted, as of yore, behind the parlour
      blind, and Arthur's solitary feet were rustling among the dry fallen
      leaves in the garden walks.
    </p>
    <p>
      As he had a liking for the spot, he seldom let a week pass without paying
      a visit. Sometimes, he went down alone from Saturday to Monday; sometimes
      his partner accompanied him; sometimes, he merely strolled for an hour or
      two about the house and garden, saw that all was right, and returned to
      London again. At all times, and under all circumstances, Mrs Tickit, with
      her dark row of curls, and Dr Buchan, sat in the parlour window, looking
      out for the family return.
    </p>
    <p>
      On one of his visits Mrs Tickit received him with the words, 'I have
      something to tell you, Mr Clennam, that will surprise you.' So surprising
      was the something in question, that it actually brought Mrs Tickit out of
      the parlour window and produced her in the garden walk, when Clennam went
      in at the gate on its being opened for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it, Mrs Tickit?' said he.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir,' returned that faithful housekeeper, having taken him into the
      parlour and closed the door; 'if ever I saw the led away and deluded child
      in my life, I saw her identically in the dusk of yesterday evening.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't mean Tatty&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Coram yes I do!' quoth Mrs Tickit, clearing the disclosure at a leap.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam,' returned Mrs Tickit, 'I was a little heavy in my eyes, being
      that I was waiting longer than customary for my cup of tea which was then
      preparing by Mary Jane. I was not sleeping, nor what a person would term
      correctly, dozing. I was more what a person would strictly call watching
      with my eyes closed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Without entering upon an inquiry into this curious abnormal condition,
      Clennam said, 'Exactly. Well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, sir,' proceeded Mrs Tickit, 'I was thinking of one thing and
      thinking of another, just as you yourself might. Just as anybody might.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Precisely so,' said Clennam. 'Well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And when I do think of one thing and do think of another,' pursued Mrs
      Tickit, 'I hardly need to tell you, Mr Clennam, that I think of the
      family. Because, dear me! a person's thoughts,' Mrs Tickit said this with
      an argumentative and philosophic air, 'however they may stray, will go
      more or less on what is uppermost in their minds. They <i>will</i> do it,
      sir, and a person can't prevent them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur subscribed to this discovery with a nod.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You find it so yourself, sir, I'll be bold to say,' said Mrs Tickit, 'and
      we all find it so. It an't our stations in life that changes us, Mr
      Clennam; thoughts is free!&mdash;As I was saying, I was thinking of one
      thing and thinking of another, and thinking very much of the family. Not
      of the family in the present times only, but in the past times too. For
      when a person does begin thinking of one thing and thinking of another in
      that manner, as it's getting dark, what I say is, that all times seem to
      be present, and a person must get out of that state and consider before
      they can say which is which.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He nodded again; afraid to utter a word, lest it should present any new
      opening to Mrs Tickit's conversational powers.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In consequence of which,' said Mrs Tickit, 'when I quivered my eyes and
      saw her actual form and figure looking in at the gate, I let them close
      again without so much as starting, for that actual form and figure came so
      pat to the time when it belonged to the house as much as mine or your own,
      that I never thought at the moment of its having gone away. But, sir, when
      I quivered my eyes again, and saw that it wasn't there, then it all
      flooded upon me with a fright, and I jumped up.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You ran out directly?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ran out,' assented Mrs Tickit, 'as fast as ever my feet would carry me;
      and if you'll credit it, Mr Clennam, there wasn't in the whole shining
      Heavens, no not so much as a finger of that young woman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Passing over the absence from the firmament of this novel constellation,
      Arthur inquired of Mrs Tickit if she herself went beyond the gate?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Went to and fro, and high and low,' said Mrs Tickit, 'and saw no sign of
      her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He then asked Mrs Tickit how long a space of time she supposed there might
      have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she had experienced?
      Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her reply, had no settled
      opinion between five seconds and ten minutes. She was so plainly at sea on
      this part of the case, and had so clearly been startled out of slumber,
      that Clennam was much disposed to regard the appearance as a dream.
      Without hurting Mrs Tickit's feelings with that infidel solution of her
      mystery, he took it away from the cottage with him; and probably would
      have retained it ever afterwards if a circumstance had not soon happened
      to change his opinion.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was passing at nightfall along the Strand, and the lamp-lighter was
      going on before him, under whose hand the street-lamps, blurred by the
      foggy air, burst out one after another, like so many blazing sunflowers
      coming into full-blow all at once,&mdash;when a stoppage on the pavement,
      caused by a train of coal-waggons toiling up from the wharves at the
      river-side, brought him to a stand-still. He had been walking quickly, and
      going with some current of thought, and the sudden check given to both
      operations caused him to look freshly about him, as people under such
      circumstances usually do.
    </p>
    <p>
      Immediately, he saw in advance&mdash;a few people intervening, but still
      so near to him that he could have touched them by stretching out his arm&mdash;Tattycoram
      and a strange man of a remarkable appearance: a swaggering man, with a
      high nose, and a black moustache as false in its colour as his eyes were
      false in their expression, who wore his heavy cloak with the air of a
      foreigner. His dress and general appearance were those of a man on travel,
      and he seemed to have very recently joined the girl. In bending down
      (being much taller than she was), listening to whatever she said to him,
      he looked over his shoulder with the suspicious glance of one who was not
      unused to be mistrustful that his footsteps might be dogged. It was then
      that Clennam saw his face; as his eyes lowered on the people behind him in
      the aggregate, without particularly resting upon Clennam's face or any
      other.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had scarcely turned his head about again, and it was still bent down,
      listening to the girl, when the stoppage ceased, and the obstructed stream
      of people flowed on. Still bending his head and listening to the girl, he
      went on at her side, and Clennam followed them, resolved to play this
      unexpected play out, and see where they went.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had hardly made the determination (though he was not long about it),
      when he was again as suddenly brought up as he had been by the stoppage.
      They turned short into the Adelphi,&mdash;the girl evidently leading,&mdash;and
      went straight on, as if they were going to the Terrace which overhangs the
      river.
    </p>
    <p>
      There is always, to this day, a sudden pause in that place to the roar of
      the great thoroughfare. The many sounds become so deadened that the change
      is like putting cotton in the ears, or having the head thickly muffled. At
      that time the contrast was far greater; there being no small steam-boats
      on the river, no landing places but slippery wooden stairs and
      foot-causeways, no railroad on the opposite bank, no hanging bridge or
      fish-market near at hand, no traffic on the nearest bridge of stone,
      nothing moving on the stream but watermen's wherries and coal-lighters.
      Long and broad black tiers of the latter, moored fast in the mud as if
      they were never to move again, made the shore funereal and silent after
      dark; and kept what little water-movement there was, far out towards
      mid-stream. At any hour later than sunset, and not least at that hour when
      most of the people who have anything to eat at home are going home to eat
      it, and when most of those who have nothing have hardly yet slunk out to
      beg or steal, it was a deserted place and looked on a deserted scene.
    </p>
    <p>
      Such was the hour when Clennam stopped at the corner, observing the girl
      and the strange man as they went down the street. The man's footsteps were
      so noisy on the echoing stones that he was unwilling to add the sound of
      his own. But when they had passed the turning and were in the darkness of
      the dark corner leading to the terrace, he made after them with such
      indifferent appearance of being a casual passenger on his way, as he could
      assume.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he rounded the dark corner, they were walking along the terrace
      towards a figure which was coming towards them. If he had seen it by
      itself, under such conditions of gas-lamp, mist, and distance, he might
      not have known it at first sight, but with the figure of the girl to
      prompt him, he at once recognised Miss Wade.
    </p>
    <p>
      He stopped at the corner, seeming to look back expectantly up the street
      as if he had made an appointment with some one to meet him there; but he
      kept a careful eye on the three. When they came together, the man took off
      his hat, and made Miss Wade a bow. The girl appeared to say a few words as
      though she presented him, or accounted for his being late, or early, or
      what not; and then fell a pace or so behind, by herself. Miss Wade and the
      man then began to walk up and down; the man having the appearance of being
      extremely courteous and complimentary in manner; Miss Wade having the
      appearance of being extremely haughty.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they came down to the corner and turned, she was saying, 'If I pinch
      myself for it, sir, that is my business. Confine yourself to yours, and
      ask me no question.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By Heaven, ma'am!' he replied, making her another bow. 'It was my
      profound respect for the strength of your character, and my admiration of
      your beauty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want neither the one nor the other from any one,' said she, 'and
      certainly not from you of all creatures. Go on with your report.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Am I pardoned?' he asked, with an air of half abashed gallantry.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are paid,' she said, 'and that is all you want.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Whether the girl hung behind because she was not to hear the business, or
      as already knowing enough about it, Clennam could not determine. They
      turned and she turned. She looked away at the river, as she walked with
      her hands folded before her; and that was all he could make of her without
      showing his face. There happened, by good fortune, to be a lounger really
      waiting for some one; and he sometimes looked over the railing at the
      water, and sometimes came to the dark corner and looked up the street,
      rendering Arthur less conspicuous.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Miss Wade and the man came back again, she was saying, 'You must wait
      until to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A thousand pardons?' he returned. 'My faith! Then it's not convenient
      to-night?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. I tell you I must get it before I can give it to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She stopped in the roadway, as if to put an end to the conference. He of
      course stopped too. And the girl stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a little inconvenient,' said the man. 'A little. But, Holy Blue!
      that's nothing in such a service. I am without money to-night, by chance.
      I have a good banker in this city, but I would not wish to draw upon the
      house until the time when I shall draw for a round sum.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Harriet,' said Miss Wade, 'arrange with him&mdash;this gentleman here&mdash;for
      sending him some money to-morrow.' She said it with a slur of the word
      gentleman which was more contemptuous than any emphasis, and walked slowly
      on.
    </p>
    <p>
      The man bent his head again, and the girl spoke to him as they both
      followed her. Clennam ventured to look at the girl as they moved away. He
      could note that her rich black eyes were fastened upon the man with a
      scrutinising expression, and that she kept at a little distance from him,
      as they walked side by side to the further end of the terrace.
    </p>
    <p>
      A loud and altered clank upon the pavement warned him, before he could
      discern what was passing there, that the man was coming back alone.
      Clennam lounged into the road, towards the railing; and the man passed at
      a quick swing, with the end of his cloak thrown over his shoulder, singing
      a scrap of a French song.
    </p>
    <p>
      The whole vista had no one in it now but himself. The lounger had lounged
      out of view, and Miss Wade and Tattycoram were gone. More than ever bent
      on seeing what became of them, and on having some information to give his
      good friend, Mr Meagles, he went out at the further end of the terrace,
      looking cautiously about him. He rightly judged that, at first at all
      events, they would go in a contrary direction from their late companion.
      He soon saw them in a neighbouring bye-street, which was not a
      thoroughfare, evidently allowing time for the man to get well out of their
      way. They walked leisurely arm-in-arm down one side of the street, and
      returned on the opposite side. When they came back to the street-corner,
      they changed their pace for the pace of people with an object and a
      distance before them, and walked steadily away. Clennam, no less steadily,
      kept them in sight.
    </p>
    <p>
      They crossed the Strand, and passed through Covent Garden (under the
      windows of his old lodging where dear Little Dorrit had come that night),
      and slanted away north-east, until they passed the great building whence
      Tattycoram derived her name, and turned into the Gray's Inn Road. Clennam
      was quite at home here, in right of Flora, not to mention the Patriarch
      and Pancks, and kept them in view with ease. He was beginning to wonder
      where they might be going next, when that wonder was lost in the greater
      wonder with which he saw them turn into the Patriarchal street. That
      wonder was in its turn swallowed up on the greater wonder with which he
      saw them stop at the Patriarchal door. A low double knock at the bright
      brass knocker, a gleam of light into the road from the opened door, a
      brief pause for inquiry and answer and the door was shut, and they were
      housed.
    </p>
    <p>
      After looking at the surrounding objects for assurance that he was not in
      an odd dream, and after pacing a little while before the house, Arthur
      knocked at the door. It was opened by the usual maid-servant, and she
      showed him up at once, with her usual alacrity, to Flora's sitting-room.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was no one with Flora but Mr F.'s Aunt, which respectable
      gentlewoman, basking in a balmy atmosphere of tea and toast, was ensconced
      in an easy-chair by the fireside, with a little table at her elbow, and a
      clean white handkerchief spread over her lap on which two pieces of toast
      at that moment awaited consumption. Bending over a steaming vessel of tea,
      and looking through the steam, and breathing forth the steam, like a
      malignant Chinese enchantress engaged in the performance of unholy rites,
      Mr F.'s Aunt put down her great teacup and exclaimed, 'Drat him, if he
      an't come back again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It would seem from the foregoing exclamation that this uncompromising
      relative of the lamented Mr F., measuring time by the acuteness of her
      sensations and not by the clock, supposed Clennam to have lately gone
      away; whereas at least a quarter of a year had elapsed since he had had
      the temerity to present himself before her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My goodness Arthur!' cried Flora, rising to give him a cordial reception,
      'Doyce and Clennam what a start and a surprise for though not far from the
      machinery and foundry business and surely might be taken sometimes if at
      no other time about mid-day when a glass of sherry and a humble sandwich
      of whatever cold meat in the larder might not come amiss nor taste the
      worse for being friendly for you know you buy it somewhere and wherever
      bought a profit must be made or they would never keep the place it stands
      to reason without a motive still never seen and learnt now not to be
      expected, for as Mr F. himself said if seeing is believing not seeing is
      believing too and when you don't see you may fully believe you're not
      remembered not that I expect you Arthur Doyce and Clennam to remember me
      why should I for the days are gone but bring another teacup here directly
      and tell her fresh toast and pray sit near the fire.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur was in the greatest anxiety to explain the object of his visit; but
      was put off for the moment, in spite of himself, by what he understood of
      the reproachful purport of these words, and by the genuine pleasure she
      testified in seeing him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And now pray tell me something all you know,' said Flora, drawing her
      chair near to his, 'about the good dear quiet little thing and all the
      changes of her fortunes carriage people now no doubt and horses without
      number most romantic, a coat of arms of course and wild beasts on their
      hind legs showing it as if it was a copy they had done with mouths from
      ear to ear good gracious, and has she her health which is the first
      consideration after all for what is wealth without it Mr F. himself so
      often saying when his twinges came that sixpence a day and find yourself
      and no gout so much preferable, not that he could have lived on anything
      like it being the last man or that the previous little thing though far
      too familiar an expression now had any tendency of that sort much too
      slight and small but looked so fragile bless her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr F.'s Aunt, who had eaten a piece of toast down to the crust, here
      solemnly handed the crust to Flora, who ate it for her as a matter of
      business. Mr F.'s Aunt then moistened her ten fingers in slow succession
      at her lips, and wiped them in exactly the same order on the white
      handkerchief; then took the other piece of toast, and fell to work upon
      it. While pursuing this routine, she looked at Clennam with an expression
      of such intense severity that he felt obliged to look at her in return,
      against his personal inclinations.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is in Italy, with all her family, Flora,' he said, when the dreaded
      lady was occupied again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In Italy is she really?' said Flora, 'with the grapes growing everywhere
      and lava necklaces and bracelets too that land of poetry with burning
      mountains picturesque beyond belief though if the organ-boys come away
      from the neighbourhood not to be scorched nobody can wonder being so young
      and bringing their white mice with them most humane, and is she really in
      that favoured land with nothing but blue about her and dying gladiators
      and Belvederes though Mr F. himself did not believe for his objection when
      in spirits was that the images could not be true there being no medium
      between expensive quantities of linen badly got up and all in creases and
      none whatever, which certainly does not seem probable though perhaps in
      consequence of the extremes of rich and poor which may account for it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur tried to edge a word in, but Flora hurried on again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Venice Preserved too,' said she, 'I think you have been there is it well
      or ill preserved for people differ so and Maccaroni if they really eat it
      like the conjurors why not cut it shorter, you are acquainted Arthur&mdash;dear
      Doyce and Clennam at least not dear and most assuredly not Doyce for I
      have not the pleasure but pray excuse me&mdash;acquainted I believe with
      Mantua what <i>has</i> it got to do with Mantua-making for I never have
      been able to conceive?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe there is no connection, Flora, between the two,' Arthur was
      beginning, when she caught him up again.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0476m.jpg" alt="0476m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0476.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Upon your word no isn't there I never did but that's like me I run away
      with an idea and having none to spare I keep it, alas there was a time
      dear Arthur that is to say decidedly not dear nor Arthur neither but you
      understand me when one bright idea gilded the what's-his-name horizon of
      et cetera but it is darkly clouded now and all is over.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur's increasing wish to speak of something very different was by this
      time so plainly written on his face, that Flora stopped in a tender look,
      and asked him what it was?
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have the greatest desire, Flora, to speak to some one who is now in
      this house&mdash;with Mr Casby no doubt. Some one whom I saw come in, and
      who, in a misguided and deplorable way, has deserted the house of a friend
      of mine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa sees so many and such odd people,' said Flora, rising, 'that I
      shouldn't venture to go down for any one but you Arthur but for you I
      would willingly go down in a diving-bell much more a dining-room and will
      come back directly if you'll mind and at the same time not mind Mr F.'s
      Aunt while I'm gone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With those words and a parting glance, Flora bustled out, leaving Clennam
      under dreadful apprehension of this terrible charge.
    </p>
    <p>
      The first variation which manifested itself in Mr F.'s Aunt's demeanour
      when she had finished her piece of toast, was a loud and prolonged sniff.
      Finding it impossible to avoid construing this demonstration into a
      defiance of himself, its gloomy significance being unmistakable, Clennam
      looked plaintively at the excellent though prejudiced lady from whom it
      emanated, in the hope that she might be disarmed by a meek submission.
    </p>
    <p>
      'None of your eyes at me,' said Mr F.'s Aunt, shivering with hostility.
      'Take that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That' was the crust of the piece of toast. Clennam accepted the boon with
      a look of gratitude, and held it in his hand under the pressure of a
      little embarrassment, which was not relieved when Mr F.'s Aunt, elevating
      her voice into a cry of considerable power, exclaimed, 'He has a proud
      stomach, this chap! He's too proud a chap to eat it!' and, coming out of
      her chair, shook her venerable fist so very close to his nose as to tickle
      the surface. But for the timely return of Flora, to find him in this
      difficult situation, further consequences might have ensued. Flora,
      without the least discomposure or surprise, but congratulating the old
      lady in an approving manner on being 'very lively to-night', handed her
      back to her chair.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has a proud stomach, this chap,' said Mr F.'s relation, on being
      reseated. 'Give him a meal of chaff!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I don't think he would like that, aunt,' returned Flora.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Give him a meal of chaff, I tell you,' said Mr F.'s Aunt, glaring round
      Flora on her enemy. 'It's the only thing for a proud stomach. Let him eat
      up every morsel. Drat him, give him a meal of chaff!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Under a general pretence of helping him to this refreshment, Flora got him
      out on the staircase; Mr F.'s Aunt even then constantly reiterating, with
      inexpressible bitterness, that he was 'a chap,' and had a 'proud stomach,'
      and over and over again insisting on that equine provision being made for
      him which she had already so strongly prescribed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Such an inconvenient staircase and so many corner-stairs Arthur,'
      whispered Flora, 'would you object to putting your arm round me under my
      pelerine?'
    </p>
    <p>
      With a sense of going down-stairs in a highly-ridiculous manner, Clennam
      descended in the required attitude, and only released his fair burden at
      the dining-room door; indeed, even there she was rather difficult to be
      got rid of, remaining in his embrace to murmur, 'Arthur, for mercy's sake,
      don't breathe it to papa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She accompanied Arthur into the room, where the Patriarch sat alone, with
      his list shoes on the fender, twirling his thumbs as if he had never left
      off. The youthful Patriarch, aged ten, looked out of his picture-frame
      above him with no calmer air than he. Both smooth heads were alike
      beaming, blundering, and bumpy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well, sir, I hope you
      are well. Please to sit down, please to sit down.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I had hoped, sir,' said Clennam, doing so, and looking round with a face
      of blank disappointment, 'not to find you alone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, indeed?' said the Patriarch, sweetly. 'Ah, indeed?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I told you so you know papa,' cried Flora.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, to be sure!' returned the Patriarch. 'Yes, just so. Ah, to be sure!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, sir,'demanded Clennam, anxiously, 'is Miss Wade gone?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss&mdash;? Oh, you call her Wade,' returned Mr Casby. 'Highly proper.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur quickly returned, 'What do you call her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wade,' said Mr Casby. 'Oh, always Wade.'
    </p>
    <p>
      After looking at the philanthropic visage and the long silky white hair
      for a few seconds, during which Mr Casby twirled his thumbs, and smiled at
      the fire as if he were benevolently wishing it to burn him that he might
      forgive it, Arthur began:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, Mr Casby&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not so, not so,' said the Patriarch, 'not so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;But, Miss Wade had an attendant with her&mdash;a young woman
      brought up by friends of mine, over whom her influence is not considered
      very salutary, and to whom I should be glad to have the opportunity of
      giving the assurance that she has not yet forfeited the interest of those
      protectors.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really, really?' returned the Patriarch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you therefore be so good as to give me the address of Miss Wade?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear, dear, dear!' said the Patriarch, 'how very unfortunate! If you had
      only sent in to me when they were here! I observed the young woman, Mr
      Clennam. A fine full-coloured young woman, Mr Clennam, with very dark hair
      and very dark eyes. If I mistake not, if I mistake not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur assented, and said once more with new expression, 'If you would be
      so good as to give me the address.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear, dear, dear!' exclaimed the Patriarch in sweet regret. 'Tut, tut,
      tut! what a pity, what a pity! I have no address, sir. Miss Wade mostly
      lives abroad, Mr Clennam. She has done so for some years, and she is (if I
      may say so of a fellow-creature and a lady) fitful and uncertain to a
      fault, Mr Clennam. I may not see her again for a long, long time. I may
      never see her again. What a pity, what a pity!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam saw now, that he had as much hope of getting assistance out of the
      Portrait as out of the Patriarch; but he said nevertheless:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Casby, could you, for the satisfaction of the friends I have
      mentioned, and under any obligation of secrecy that you may consider it
      your duty to impose, give me any information at all touching Miss Wade? I
      have seen her abroad, and I have seen her at home, but I know nothing of
      her. Could you give me any account of her whatever?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'None,' returned the Patriarch, shaking his big head with his utmost
      benevolence. 'None at all. Dear, dear, dear! What a real pity that she
      stayed so short a time, and you delayed! As confidential agency business,
      agency business, I have occasionally paid this lady money; but what
      satisfaction is it to you, sir, to know that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Truly, none at all,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Truly,' assented the Patriarch, with a shining face as he
      philanthropically smiled at the fire, 'none at all, sir. You hit the wise
      answer, Mr Clennam. Truly, none at all, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His turning of his smooth thumbs over one another as he sat there, was so
      typical to Clennam of the way in which he would make the subject revolve
      if it were pursued, never showing any new part of it nor allowing it to
      make the smallest advance, that it did much to help to convince him of his
      labour having been in vain. He might have taken any time to think about
      it, for Mr Casby, well accustomed to get on anywhere by leaving everything
      to his bumps and his white hair, knew his strength to lie in silence. So
      there Casby sat, twirling and twirling, and making his polished head and
      forehead look largely benevolent in every knob.
    </p>
    <p>
      With this spectacle before him, Arthur had risen to go, when from the
      inner Dock where the good ship Pancks was hove down when out in no
      cruising ground, the noise was heard of that steamer labouring towards
      him. It struck Arthur that the noise began demonstratively far off, as
      though Mr Pancks sought to impress on any one who might happen to think
      about it, that he was working on from out of hearing.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks and he shook hands, and the former brought his employer a letter
      or two to sign. Mr Pancks in shaking hands merely scratched his eyebrow
      with his left forefinger and snorted once, but Clennam, who understood him
      better now than of old, comprehended that he had almost done for the
      evening and wished to say a word to him outside. Therefore, when he had
      taken his leave of Mr Casby, and (which was a more difficult process) of
      Flora, he sauntered in the neighbourhood on Mr Pancks's line of road.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had waited but a short time when Mr Pancks appeared. Mr Pancks shaking
      hands again with another expressive snort, and taking off his hat to put
      his hair up, Arthur thought he received his cue to speak to him as one who
      knew pretty well what had just now passed. Therefore he said, without any
      preface:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suppose they were really gone, Pancks?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' replied Pancks. 'They were really gone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does he know where to find that lady?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can't say. I should think so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks did not? No, Mr Pancks did not. Did Mr Pancks know anything
      about her?
    </p>
    <p>
      'I expect,' rejoined that worthy, 'I know as much about her as she knows
      about herself. She is somebody's child&mdash;anybody's, nobody's. Put her
      in a room in London here with any six people old enough to be her parents,
      and her parents may be there for anything she knows. They may be in any
      house she sees, they may be in any churchyard she passes, she may run
      against 'em in any street, she may make chance acquaintance of 'em at any
      time; and never know it. She knows nothing about 'em. She knows nothing
      about any relative whatever. Never did. Never will.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Casby could enlighten her, perhaps?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May be,' said Pancks. 'I expect so, but don't know. He has long had money
      (not overmuch as I make out) in trust to dole out to her when she can't do
      without it. Sometimes she's proud and won't touch it for a length of time;
      sometimes she's so poor that she must have it. She writhes under her life.
      A woman more angry, passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived. She
      came for money to-night. Said she had peculiar occasion for it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think,' observed Clennam musing, 'I by chance know what occasion&mdash;I
      mean into whose pocket the money is to go.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed?' said Pancks. 'If it's a compact, I recommend that party to be
      exact in it. I wouldn't trust myself to that woman, young and handsome as
      she is, if I had wronged her; no, not for twice my proprietor's money!
      Unless,' Pancks added as a saving clause, 'I had a lingering illness on
      me, and wanted to get it over.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur, hurriedly reviewing his own observation of her, found it to tally
      pretty nearly with Mr Pancks's view.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The wonder is to me,' pursued Pancks, 'that she has never done for my
      proprietor, as the only person connected with her story she can lay hold
      of. Mentioning that, I may tell you, between ourselves, that I am
      sometimes tempted to do for him myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur started and said, 'Dear me, Pancks, don't say that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Understand me,' said Pancks, extending five cropped coaly finger-nails on
      Arthur's arm; 'I don't mean, cut his throat. But by all that's precious,
      if he goes too far, I'll cut his hair!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Having exhibited himself in the new light of enunciating this tremendous
      threat, Mr Pancks, with a countenance of grave import, snorted several
      times and steamed away.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0046" id="link2HCH0046"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 10. The Dreams of Mrs Flintwinch thicken
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he shady waiting-rooms of the Circumlocution Office, where he passed a
      good deal of time in company with various troublesome Convicts who were
      under sentence to be broken alive on that wheel, had afforded Arthur
      Clennam ample leisure, in three or four successive days, to exhaust the
      subject of his late glimpse of Miss Wade and Tattycoram. He had been able
      to make no more of it and no less of it, and in this unsatisfactory
      condition he was fain to leave it.
    </p>
    <p>
      During this space he had not been to his mother's dismal old house. One of
      his customary evenings for repairing thither now coming round, he left his
      dwelling and his partner at nearly nine o'clock, and slowly walked in the
      direction of that grim home of his youth.
    </p>
    <p>
      It always affected his imagination as wrathful, mysterious, and sad; and
      his imagination was sufficiently impressible to see the whole
      neighbourhood under some tinge of its dark shadow. As he went along, upon
      a dreary night, the dim streets by which he went, seemed all depositories
      of oppressive secrets. The deserted counting-houses, with their secrets of
      books and papers locked up in chests and safes; the banking-houses, with
      their secrets of strong rooms and wells, the keys of which were in a very
      few secret pockets and a very few secret breasts; the secrets of all the
      dispersed grinders in the vast mill, among whom there were doubtless
      plunderers, forgers, and trust-betrayers of many sorts, whom the light of
      any day that dawned might reveal; he could have fancied that these things,
      in hiding, imparted a heaviness to the air. The shadow thickening and
      thickening as he approached its source, he thought of the secrets of the
      lonely church-vaults, where the people who had hoarded and secreted in
      iron coffers were in their turn similarly hoarded, not yet at rest from
      doing harm; and then of the secrets of the river, as it rolled its turbid
      tide between two frowning wildernesses of secrets, extending, thick and
      dense, for many miles, and warding off the free air and the free country
      swept by winds and wings of birds.
    </p>
    <p>
      The shadow still darkening as he drew near the house, the melancholy room
      which his father had once occupied, haunted by the appealing face he had
      himself seen fade away with him when there was no other watcher by the
      bed, arose before his mind. Its close air was secret. The gloom, and must,
      and dust of the whole tenement, were secret. At the heart of it his mother
      presided, inflexible of face, indomitable of will, firmly holding all the
      secrets of her own and his father's life, and austerely opposing herself,
      front to front, to the great final secret of all life.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had turned into the narrow and steep street from which the court of
      enclosure wherein the house stood opened, when another footstep turned
      into it behind him, and so close upon his own that he was jostled to the
      wall. As his mind was teeming with these thoughts, the encounter took him
      altogether unprepared, so that the other passenger had had time to say,
      boisterously, 'Pardon! Not my fault!' and to pass on before the instant
      had elapsed which was requisite to his recovery of the realities about
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      When that moment had flashed away, he saw that the man striding on before
      him was the man who had been so much in his mind during the last few days.
      It was no casual resemblance, helped out by the force of the impression
      the man made upon him. It was the man; the man he had followed in company
      with the girl, and whom he had overheard talking to Miss Wade.
    </p>
    <p>
      The street was a sharp descent and was crooked too, and the man (who
      although not drunk had the air of being flushed with some strong drink)
      went down it so fast that Clennam lost him as he looked at him. With no
      defined intention of following him, but with an impulse to keep the figure
      in view a little longer, Clennam quickened his pace to pass the twist in
      the street which hid him from his sight. On turning it, he saw the man no
      more.
    </p>
    <p>
      Standing now, close to the gateway of his mother's house, he looked down
      the street: but it was empty. There was no projecting shadow large enough
      to obscure the man; there was no turning near that he could have taken;
      nor had there been any audible sound of the opening and closing of a door.
      Nevertheless, he concluded that the man must have had a key in his hand,
      and must have opened one of the many house-doors and gone in.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ruminating on this strange chance and strange glimpse, he turned into the
      court-yard. As he looked, by mere habit, towards the feebly lighted
      windows of his mother's room, his eyes encountered the figure he had just
      lost, standing against the iron railings of the little waste enclosure
      looking up at those windows and laughing to himself. Some of the many
      vagrant cats who were always prowling about there by night, and who had
      taken fright at him, appeared to have stopped when he had stopped, and
      were looking at him with eyes by no means unlike his own from tops of
      walls and porches, and other safe points of pause. He had only halted for
      a moment to entertain himself thus; he immediately went forward, throwing
      the end of his cloak off his shoulder as he went, ascended the unevenly
      sunken steps, and knocked a sounding knock at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam's surprise was not so absorbing but that he took his resolution
      without any incertitude. He went up to the door too, and ascended the
      steps too. His friend looked at him with a braggart air, and sang to
      himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      'Who passes by this road so late?
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Compagnon de la Majolaine;
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Who passes by this road so late?
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Always gay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      After which he knocked again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are impatient, sir,' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am, sir. Death of my life, sir,' returned the stranger, 'it's my
      character to be impatient!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The sound of Mistress Affery cautiously chaining the door before she
      opened it, caused them both to look that way. Affery opened it a very
      little, with a flaring candle in her hands and asked who was that, at that
      time of night, with that knock! 'Why, Arthur!' she added with
      astonishment, seeing him first. 'Not you sure? Ah, Lord save us! No,' she
      cried out, seeing the other. 'Him again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's true! Him again, dear Mrs Flintwinch,' cried the stranger. 'Open the
      door, and let me take my dear friend Jeremiah to my arms! Open the door,
      and let me hasten myself to embrace my Flintwinch!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's not at home,' cried Affery.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fetch him!' cried the stranger. 'Fetch my Flintwinch! Tell him that it is
      his old Blandois, who comes from arriving in England; tell him that it is
      his little boy who is here, his cabbage, his well-beloved! Open the door,
      beautiful Mrs Flintwinch, and in the meantime let me to pass upstairs, to
      present my compliments&mdash;homage of Blandois&mdash;to my lady! My lady
      lives always? It is well. Open then!'
    </p>
    <p>
      To Arthur's increased surprise, Mistress Affery, stretching her eyes wide
      at himself, as if in warning that this was not a gentleman for him to
      interfere with, drew back the chain, and opened the door. The stranger,
      without ceremony, walked into the hall, leaving Arthur to follow him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Despatch then! Achieve then! Bring my Flintwinch! Announce me to my
      lady!' cried the stranger, clanking about the stone floor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray tell me, Affery,' said Arthur aloud and sternly, as he surveyed him
      from head to foot with indignation; 'who is this gentleman?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray tell me, Affery,' the stranger repeated in his turn, 'who&mdash;ha,
      ha, ha!&mdash;who is this gentleman?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The voice of Mrs Clennam opportunely called from her chamber above,
      'Affery, let them both come up. Arthur, come straight to me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Arthur?' exclaimed Blandois, taking off his hat at arm's length, and
      bringing his heels together from a great stride in making him a
      flourishing bow. 'The son of my lady? I am the all-devoted of the son of
      my lady!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur looked at him again in no more flattering manner than before, and,
      turning on his heel without acknowledgment, went up-stairs. The visitor
      followed him up-stairs. Mistress Affery took the key from behind the door,
      and deftly slipped out to fetch her lord.
    </p>
    <p>
      A bystander, informed of the previous appearance of Monsieur Blandois in
      that room, would have observed a difference in Mrs Clennam's present
      reception of him. Her face was not one to betray it; and her suppressed
      manner, and her set voice, were equally under her control. It wholly
      consisted in her never taking her eyes off his face from the moment of his
      entrance, and in her twice or thrice, when he was becoming noisy, swaying
      herself a very little forward in the chair in which she sat upright, with
      her hands immovable upon its elbows; as if she gave him the assurance that
      he should be presently heard at any length he would. Arthur did not fail
      to observe this; though the difference between the present occasion and
      the former was not within his power of observation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madame,' said Blandois, 'do me the honour to present me to Monsieur, your
      son. It appears to me, madame, that Monsieur, your son, is disposed to
      complain of me. He is not polite.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir,' said Arthur, striking in expeditiously, 'whoever you are, and
      however you come to be here, if I were the master of this house I would
      lose no time in placing you on the outside of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you are not,' said his mother, without looking at him. 'Unfortunately
      for the gratification of your unreasonable temper, you are not the master,
      Arthur.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I make no claim to be, mother. If I object to this person's manner of
      conducting himself here, and object to it so much, that if I had any
      authority here I certainly would not suffer him to remain a minute, I
      object on your account.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In the case of objection being necessary,' she returned, 'I could object
      for myself. And of course I should.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The subject of their dispute, who had seated himself, laughed aloud, and
      rapped his legs with his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have no right,' said Mrs Clennam, always intent on Blandois, however
      directly she addressed her son, 'to speak to the prejudice of any
      gentleman (least of all a gentleman from another country), because he does
      not conform to your standard, or square his behaviour by your rules. It is
      possible that the gentleman may, on similar grounds, object to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope so,' returned Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The gentleman,' pursued Mrs Clennam, 'on a former occasion brought a
      letter of recommendation to us from highly esteemed and responsible
      correspondents. I am perfectly unacquainted with the gentleman's object in
      coming here at present. I am entirely ignorant of it, and cannot be
      supposed likely to be able to form the remotest guess at its nature;' her
      habitual frown became stronger, as she very slowly and weightily
      emphasised those words; 'but, when the gentleman proceeds to explain his
      object, as I shall beg him to have the goodness to do to myself and
      Flintwinch, when Flintwinch returns, it will prove, no doubt, to be one
      more or less in the usual way of our business, which it will be both our
      business and our pleasure to advance. It can be nothing else.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We shall see, madame!' said the man of business.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We shall see,' she assented. 'The gentleman is acquainted with
      Flintwinch; and when the gentleman was in London last, I remember to have
      heard that he and Flintwinch had some entertainment or good-fellowship
      together. I am not in the way of knowing much that passes outside this
      room, and the jingle of little worldly things beyond it does not much
      interest me; but I remember to have heard that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Right, madame. It is true.' He laughed again, and whistled the burden of
      the tune he had sung at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Therefore, Arthur,' said his mother, 'the gentleman comes here as an
      acquaintance, and no stranger; and it is much to be regretted that your
      unreasonable temper should have found offence in him. I regret it. I say
      so to the gentleman. You will not say so, I know; therefore I say it for
      myself and Flintwinch, since with us two the gentleman's business lies.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The key of the door below was now heard in the lock, and the door was
      heard to open and close. In due sequence Mr Flintwinch appeared; on whose
      entrance the visitor rose from his chair, laughing loud, and folded him in
      a close embrace.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How goes it, my cherished friend!' said he. 'How goes the world, my
      Flintwinch? Rose-coloured? So much the better, so much the better! Ah, but
      you look charming! Ah, but you look young and fresh as the flowers of
      Spring! Ah, good little boy! Brave child, brave child!'
    </p>
    <p>
      While heaping these compliments on Mr Flintwinch, he rolled him about with
      a hand on each of his shoulders, until the staggerings of that gentleman,
      who under the circumstances was dryer and more twisted than ever, were
      like those of a teetotum nearly spent.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0486m.jpg" alt="0486m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0486.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'I had a presentiment, last time, that we should be better and more
      intimately acquainted. Is it coming on you, Flintwinch? Is it yet coming
      on?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, no, sir,' retorted Mr Flintwinch. 'Not unusually. Hadn't you better
      be seated? You have been calling for some more of that port, sir, I
      guess?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, Little joker! Little pig!' cried the visitor. 'Ha ha ha ha!' And
      throwing Mr Flintwinch away, as a closing piece of raillery, he sat down
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      The amazement, suspicion, resentment, and shame, with which Arthur looked
      on at all this, struck him dumb. Mr Flintwinch, who had spun backward some
      two or three yards under the impetus last given to him, brought himself up
      with a face completely unchanged in its stolidity except as it was
      affected by shortness of breath, and looked hard at Arthur. Not a whit
      less reticent and wooden was Mr Flintwinch outwardly, than in the usual
      course of things: the only perceptible difference in him being that the
      knot of cravat which was generally under his ear, had worked round to the
      back of his head: where it formed an ornamental appendage not unlike a
      bagwig, and gave him something of a courtly appearance.
    </p>
    <p>
      As Mrs Clennam never removed her eyes from Blandois (on whom they had some
      effect, as a steady look has on a lower sort of dog), so Jeremiah never
      removed his from Arthur. It was as if they had tacitly agreed to take
      their different provinces. Thus, in the ensuing silence, Jeremiah stood
      scraping his chin and looking at Arthur as though he were trying to screw
      his thoughts out of him with an instrument.
    </p>
    <p>
      After a little, the visitor, as if he felt the silence irksome, rose, and
      impatiently put himself with his back to the sacred fire which had burned
      through so many years. Thereupon Mrs Clennam said, moving one of her hands
      for the first time, and moving it very slightly with an action of
      dismissal:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Please to leave us to our business, Arthur.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, I do so with reluctance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never mind with what,' she returned, 'or with what not. Please to leave
      us. Come back at any other time when you may consider it a duty to bury
      half an hour wearily here. Good night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She held up her muffled fingers that he might touch them with his,
      according to their usual custom, and he stood over her wheeled chair to
      touch her face with his lips. He thought, then, that her cheek was more
      strained than usual, and that it was colder. As he followed the direction
      of her eyes, in rising again, towards Mr Flintwinch's good friend, Mr
      Blandois, Mr Blandois snapped his finger and thumb with one loud
      contemptuous snap.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I leave your&mdash;your business acquaintance in my mother's room, Mr
      Flintwinch,' said Clennam, 'with a great deal of surprise and a great deal
      of unwillingness.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The person referred to snapped his finger and thumb again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good night, mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I had a friend once, my good comrade Flintwinch,' said Blandois, standing
      astride before the fire, and so evidently saying it to arrest Clennam's
      retreating steps, that he lingered near the door; 'I had a friend once,
      who had heard so much of the dark side of this city and its ways, that he
      wouldn't have confided himself alone by night with two people who had an
      interest in getting him under the ground&mdash;my faith! not even in a
      respectable house like this&mdash;unless he was bodily too strong for
      them. Bah! What a poltroon, my Flintwinch! Eh?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A cur, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Agreed! A cur. But he wouldn't have done it, my Flintwinch, unless he had
      known them to have the will to silence him, without the power. He wouldn't
      have drunk from a glass of water under such circumstances&mdash;not even
      in a respectable house like this, my Flintwinch&mdash;unless he had seen
      one of them drink first, and swallow too!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Disdaining to speak, and indeed not very well able, for he was
      half-choking, Clennam only glanced at the visitor as he passed out. The
      visitor saluted him with another parting snap, and his nose came down over
      his moustache and his moustache went up under his nose, in an ominous and
      ugly smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For Heaven's sake, Affery,' whispered Clennam, as she opened the door for
      him in the dark hall, and he groped his way to the sight of the night-sky,
      'what is going on here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her own appearance was sufficiently ghastly, standing in the dark with her
      apron thrown over her head, and speaking behind it in a low, deadened
      voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't ask me anything, Arthur. I've been in a dream for ever so long. Go
      away!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He went out, and she shut the door upon him. He looked up at the windows
      of his mother's room, and the dim light, deadened by the yellow blinds,
      seemed to say a response after Affery, and to mutter, 'Don't ask me
      anything. Go away!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0047" id="link2HCH0047"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 11. A Letter from Little Dorrit
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>ear Mr Clennam,
    </p>
    <p>
      As I said in my last that it was best for nobody to write to me, and as my
      sending you another little letter can therefore give you no other trouble
      than the trouble of reading it (perhaps you may not find leisure for even
      that, though I hope you will some day), I am now going to devote an hour
      to writing to you again. This time, I write from Rome.
    </p>
    <p>
      We left Venice before Mr and Mrs Gowan did, but they were not so long upon
      the road as we were, and did not travel by the same way, and so when we
      arrived we found them in a lodging here, in a place called the Via
      Gregoriana. I dare say you know it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now I am going to tell you all I can about them, because I know that is
      what you most want to hear. Theirs is not a very comfortable lodging, but
      perhaps I thought it less so when I first saw it than you would have done,
      because you have been in many different countries and have seen many
      different customs. Of course it is a far, far better place&mdash;millions
      of times&mdash;than any I have ever been used to until lately; and I fancy
      I don't look at it with my own eyes, but with hers. For it would be easy
      to see that she has always been brought up in a tender and happy home,
      even if she had not told me so with great love for it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Well, it is a rather bare lodging up a rather dark common staircase, and
      it is nearly all a large dull room, where Mr Gowan paints. The windows are
      blocked up where any one could look out, and the walls have been all drawn
      over with chalk and charcoal by others who have lived there before&mdash;oh,&mdash;I
      should think, for years! There is a curtain more dust-coloured than red,
      which divides it, and the part behind the curtain makes the private
      sitting-room. When I first saw her there she was alone, and her work had
      fallen out of her hand, and she was looking up at the sky shining through
      the tops of the windows. Pray do not be uneasy when I tell you, but it was
      not quite so airy, nor so bright, nor so cheerful, nor so happy and
      youthful altogether as I should have liked it to be.
    </p>
    <p>
      On account of Mr Gowan's painting Papa's picture (which I am not quite
      convinced I should have known from the likeness if I had not seen him
      doing it), I have had more opportunities of being with her since then than
      I might have had without this fortunate chance. She is very much alone.
      Very much alone indeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Shall I tell you about the second time I saw her? I went one day, when it
      happened that I could run round by myself, at four or five o'clock in the
      afternoon. She was then dining alone, and her solitary dinner had been
      brought in from somewhere, over a kind of brazier with a fire in it, and
      she had no company or prospect of company, that I could see, but the old
      man who had brought it. He was telling her a long story (of robbers
      outside the walls being taken up by a stone statue of a Saint), to
      entertain her&mdash;as he said to me when I came out, 'because he had a
      daughter of his own, though she was not so pretty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      I ought now to mention Mr Gowan, before I say what little more I have to
      say about her. He must admire her beauty, and he must be proud of her, for
      everybody praises it, and he must be fond of her, and I do not doubt that
      he is&mdash;but in his way. You know his way, and if it appears as
      careless and discontented in your eyes as it does in mine, I am not wrong
      in thinking that it might be better suited to her. If it does not seem so
      to you, I am quite sure I am wholly mistaken; for your unchanged poor
      child confides in your knowledge and goodness more than she could ever
      tell you if she was to try. But don't be frightened, I am not going to
      try.
    </p>
    <p>
      Owing (as I think, if you think so too) to Mr Gowan's unsettled and
      dissatisfied way, he applies himself to his profession very little. He
      does nothing steadily or patiently; but equally takes things up and throws
      them down, and does them, or leaves them undone, without caring about
      them. When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings for the
      picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no belief in
      anybody else, because he has no belief in himself. Is it so? I wonder what
      you will say when you come to this! I know how you will look, and I can
      almost hear the voice in which you would tell me on the Iron Bridge.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Gowan goes out a good deal among what is considered the best company
      here&mdash;though he does not look as if he enjoyed it or liked it when he
      is with it&mdash;and she sometimes accompanies him, but lately she has
      gone out very little. I think I have noticed that they have an
      inconsistent way of speaking about her, as if she had made some great
      self-interested success in marrying Mr Gowan, though, at the same time,
      the very same people, would not have dreamed of taking him for themselves
      or their daughters. Then he goes into the country besides, to think about
      making sketches; and in all places where there are visitors, he has a
      large acquaintance and is very well known. Besides all this, he has a
      friend who is much in his society both at home and away from home, though
      he treats this friend very coolly and is very uncertain in his behaviour
      to him. I am quite sure (because she has told me so), that she does not
      like this friend. He is so revolting to me, too, that his being away from
      here, at present, is quite a relief to my mind. How much more to hers!
    </p>
    <p>
      But what I particularly want you to know, and why I have resolved to tell
      you so much while I am afraid it may make you a little uncomfortable
      without occasion, is this. She is so true and so devoted, and knows so
      completely that all her love and duty are his for ever, that you may be
      certain she will love him, admire him, praise him, and conceal all his
      faults, until she dies. I believe she conceals them, and always will
      conceal them, even from herself. She has given him a heart that can never
      be taken back; and however much he may try it, he will never wear out its
      affection. You know the truth of this, as you know everything, far far
      better than I; but I cannot help telling you what a nature she shows, and
      that you can never think too well of her.
    </p>
    <p>
      I have not yet called her by her name in this letter, but we are such
      friends now that I do so when we are quietly together, and she speaks to
      me by my name&mdash;I mean, not my Christian name, but the name you gave
      me. When she began to call me Amy, I told her my short story, and that you
      had always called me Little Dorrit. I told her that the name was much
      dearer to me than any other, and so she calls me Little Dorrit too.
    </p>
    <p>
      Perhaps you have not heard from her father or mother yet, and may not know
      that she has a baby son. He was born only two days ago, and just a week
      after they came. It has made them very happy. However, I must tell you, as
      I am to tell you all, that I fancy they are under a constraint with Mr
      Gowan, and that they feel as if his mocking way with them was sometimes a
      slight given to their love for her. It was but yesterday, when I was
      there, that I saw Mr Meagles change colour, and get up and go out, as if
      he was afraid that he might say so, unless he prevented himself by that
      means. Yet I am sure they are both so considerate, good-humoured, and
      reasonable, that he might spare them. It is hard in him not to think of
      them a little more.
    </p>
    <p>
      I stopped at the last full stop to read all this over. It looked at first
      as if I was taking on myself to understand and explain so much, that I was
      half inclined not to send it. But when I thought it over a little, I felt
      more hopeful for your knowing at once that I had only been watchful for
      you, and had only noticed what I think I have noticed, because I was
      quickened by your interest in it. Indeed, you may be sure that is the
      truth.
    </p>
    <p>
      And now I have done with the subject in the present letter, and have
      little left to say.
    </p>
    <p>
      We are all quite well, and Fanny improves every day. You can hardly think
      how kind she is to me, and what pains she takes with me. She has a lover,
      who has followed her, first all the way from Switzerland, and then all the
      way from Venice, and who has just confided to me that he means to follow
      her everywhere. I was much confused by his speaking to me about it, but he
      would. I did not know what to say, but at last I told him that I thought
      he had better not. For Fanny (but I did not tell him this) is much too
      spirited and clever to suit him. Still, he said he would, all the same. I
      have no lover, of course.
    </p>
    <p>
      If you should ever get so far as this in this long letter, you will
      perhaps say, Surely Little Dorrit will not leave off without telling me
      something about her travels, and surely it is time she did. I think it is
      indeed, but I don't know what to tell you. Since we left Venice we have
      been in a great many wonderful places, Genoa and Florence among them, and
      have seen so many wonderful sights, that I am almost giddy when I think
      what a crowd they make. But you can tell me so much more about them than I
      can tell you, that why should I tire you with my accounts and
      descriptions?
    </p>
    <p>
      Dear Mr Clennam, as I had the courage to tell you what the familiar
      difficulties in my travelling mind were before, I will not be a coward
      now. One of my frequent thoughts is this:&mdash;Old as these cities are,
      their age itself is hardly so curious, to my reflections, as that they
      should have been in their places all through those days when I did not
      even know of the existence of more than two or three of them, and when I
      scarcely knew of anything outside our old walls. There is something
      melancholy in it, and I don't know why. When we went to see the famous
      leaning tower at Pisa, it was a bright sunny day, and it and the buildings
      near it looked so old, and the earth and the sky looked so young, and its
      shadow on the ground was so soft and retired! I could not at first think
      how beautiful it was, or how curious, but I thought, 'O how many times
      when the shadow of the wall was falling on our room, and when that weary
      tread of feet was going up and down the yard&mdash;O how many times this
      place was just as quiet and lovely as it is to-day!' It quite overpowered
      me. My heart was so full that tears burst out of my eyes, though I did
      what I could to restrain them. And I have the same feeling often&mdash;often.
    </p>
    <p>
      Do you know that since the change in our fortunes, though I appear to
      myself to have dreamed more than before, I have always dreamed of myself
      as very young indeed! I am not very old, you may say. No, but that is not
      what I mean. I have always dreamed of myself as a child learning to do
      needlework. I have often dreamed of myself as back there, seeing faces in
      the yard little known, and which I should have thought I had quite
      forgotten; but, as often as not, I have been abroad here&mdash;in
      Switzerland, or France, or Italy&mdash;somewhere where we have been&mdash;yet
      always as that little child. I have dreamed of going down to Mrs General,
      with the patches on my clothes in which I can first remember myself. I
      have over and over again dreamed of taking my place at dinner at Venice
      when we have had a large company, in the mourning for my poor mother which
      I wore when I was eight years old, and wore long after it was threadbare
      and would mend no more. It has been a great distress to me to think how
      irreconcilable the company would consider it with my father's wealth, and
      how I should displease and disgrace him and Fanny and Edward by so plainly
      disclosing what they wished to keep secret. But I have not grown out of
      the little child in thinking of it; and at the self-same moment I have
      dreamed that I have sat with the heart-ache at table, calculating the
      expenses of the dinner, and quite distracting myself with thinking how
      they were ever to be made good. I have never dreamed of the change in our
      fortunes itself; I have never dreamed of your coming back with me that
      memorable morning to break it; I have never even dreamed of you.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dear Mr Clennam, it is possible that I have thought of you&mdash;and
      others&mdash;so much by day, that I have no thoughts left to wander round
      you by night. For I must now confess to you that I suffer from
      home-sickness&mdash;that I long so ardently and earnestly for home, as
      sometimes, when no one sees me, to pine for it. I cannot bear to turn my
      face further away from it. My heart is a little lightened when we turn
      towards it, even for a few miles, and with the knowledge that we are soon
      to turn away again. So dearly do I love the scene of my poverty and your
      kindness. O so dearly, O so dearly!
    </p>
    <p>
      Heaven knows when your poor child will see England again. We are all fond
      of the life here (except me), and there are no plans for our return. My
      dear father talks of a visit to London late in this next spring, on some
      affairs connected with the property, but I have no hope that he will bring
      me with him.
    </p>
    <p>
      I have tried to get on a little better under Mrs General's instruction,
      and I hope I am not quite so dull as I used to be. I have begun to speak
      and understand, almost easily, the hard languages I told you about. I did
      not remember, at the moment when I wrote last, that you knew them both;
      but I remembered it afterwards, and it helped me on. God bless you, dear
      Mr Clennam. Do not forget
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Your ever grateful and affectionate
    </p>
    <h3>
      <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;LITTLE
      DORRIT.=
    </h3>
    <p>
      P.S.&mdash;Particularly remember that Minnie Gowan deserves the best
      remembrance in which you can hold her. You cannot think too generously or
      too highly of her. I forgot Mr Pancks last time. Please, if you should see
      him, give him your Little Dorrit's kind regard. He was very good to Little
      D.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0048" id="link2HCH0048"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 12. In which a Great Patriotic Conference is holden
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he famous name of Merdle became, every day, more famous in the land.
      Nobody knew that the Merdle of such high renown had ever done any good to
      any one, alive or dead, or to any earthly thing; nobody knew that he had
      any capacity or utterance of any sort in him, which had ever thrown, for
      any creature, the feeblest farthing-candle ray of light on any path of
      duty or diversion, pain or pleasure, toil or rest, fact or fancy, among
      the multiplicity of paths in the labyrinth trodden by the sons of Adam;
      nobody had the smallest reason for supposing the clay of which this object
      of worship was made, to be other than the commonest clay, with as clogged
      a wick smouldering inside of it as ever kept an image of humanity from
      tumbling to pieces. All people knew (or thought they knew) that he had
      made himself immensely rich; and, for that reason alone, prostrated
      themselves before him, more degradedly and less excusably than the darkest
      savage creeps out of his hole in the ground to propitiate, in some log or
      reptile, the Deity of his benighted soul.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nay, the high priests of this worship had the man before them as a protest
      against their meanness. The multitude worshipped on trust&mdash;though
      always distinctly knowing why&mdash;but the officiators at the altar had
      the man habitually in their view. They sat at his feasts, and he sat at
      theirs. There was a spectre always attendant on him, saying to these high
      priests, 'Are such the signs you trust, and love to honour; this head,
      these eyes, this mode of speech, the tone and manner of this man? You are
      the levers of the Circumlocution Office, and the rulers of men. When
      half-a-dozen of you fall out by the ears, it seems that mother earth can
      give birth to no other rulers. Does your qualification lie in the superior
      knowledge of men which accepts, courts, and puffs this man? Or, if you are
      competent to judge aright the signs I never fail to show you when he
      appears among you, is your superior honesty your qualification?' Two
      rather ugly questions these, always going about town with Mr Merdle; and
      there was a tacit agreement that they must be stifled.
    </p>
    <p>
      In Mrs Merdle's absence abroad, Mr Merdle still kept the great house open
      for the passage through it of a stream Of visitors. A few of these took
      affable possession of the establishment. Three or four ladies of
      distinction and liveliness used to say to one another, 'Let us dine at our
      dear Merdle's next Thursday. Whom shall we have?' Our dear Merdle would
      then receive his instructions; and would sit heavily among the company at
      table and wander lumpishly about his drawing-rooms afterwards, only
      remarkable for appearing to have nothing to do with the entertainment
      beyond being in its way.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Chief Butler, the Avenging Spirit of this great man's life, relaxed
      nothing of his severity. He looked on at these dinners when the bosom was
      not there, as he looked on at other dinners when the bosom was there; and
      his eye was a basilisk to Mr Merdle. He was a hard man, and would never
      bate an ounce of plate or a bottle of wine. He would not allow a dinner to
      be given, unless it was up to his mark. He set forth the table for his own
      dignity. If the guests chose to partake of what was served, he saw no
      objection; but it was served for the maintenance of his rank. As he stood
      by the sideboard he seemed to announce, 'I have accepted office to look at
      this which is now before me, and to look at nothing less than this.' If he
      missed the presiding bosom, it was as a part of his own state of which he
      was, from unavoidable circumstances, temporarily deprived, just as he
      might have missed a centre-piece, or a choice wine-cooler, which had been
      sent to the Banker's.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle issued invitations for a Barnacle dinner. Lord Decimus was to be
      there, Mr Tite Barnacle was to be there, the pleasant young Barnacle was
      to be there; and the Chorus of Parliamentary Barnacles who went about the
      provinces when the House was up, warbling the praises of their Chief, were
      to be represented there. It was understood to be a great occasion. Mr
      Merdle was going to take up the Barnacles. Some delicate little
      negotiations had occurred between him and the noble Decimus&mdash;the
      young Barnacle of engaging manners acting as negotiator&mdash;and Mr
      Merdle had decided to cast the weight of his great probity and great
      riches into the Barnacle scale. Jobbery was suspected by the malicious;
      perhaps because it was indisputable that if the adherence of the immortal
      Enemy of Mankind could have been secured by a job, the Barnacles would
      have jobbed him&mdash;for the good of the country, for the good of the
      country.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Merdle had written to this magnificent spouse of hers, whom it was
      heresy to regard as anything less than all the British Merchants since the
      days of Whittington rolled into one, and gilded three feet deep all over&mdash;had
      written to this spouse of hers, several letters from Rome, in quick
      succession, urging upon him with importunity that now or never was the
      time to provide for Edmund Sparkler. Mrs Merdle had shown him that the
      case of Edmund was urgent, and that infinite advantages might result from
      his having some good thing directly. In the grammar of Mrs Merdle's verbs
      on this momentous subject, there was only one mood, the Imperative; and
      that Mood had only one Tense, the Present. Mrs Merdle's verbs were so
      pressingly presented to Mr Merdle to conjugate, that his sluggish blood
      and his long coat-cuffs became quite agitated.
    </p>
    <p>
      In which state of agitation, Mr Merdle, evasively rolling his eyes round
      the Chief Butler's shoes without raising them to the index of that
      stupendous creature's thoughts, had signified to him his intention of
      giving a special dinner: not a very large dinner, but a very special
      dinner. The Chief Butler had signified, in return, that he had no
      objection to look on at the most expensive thing in that way that could be
      done; and the day of the dinner was now come.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle stood in one of his drawing-rooms, with his back to the fire,
      waiting for the arrival of his important guests. He seldom or never took
      the liberty of standing with his back to the fire unless he was quite
      alone. In the presence of the Chief Butler, he could not have done such a
      deed. He would have clasped himself by the wrists in that constabulary
      manner of his, and have paced up and down the hearthrug, or gone creeping
      about among the rich objects of furniture, if his oppressive retainer had
      appeared in the room at that very moment. The sly shadows which seemed to
      dart out of hiding when the fire rose, and to dart back into it when the
      fire fell, were sufficient witnesses of his making himself so easy. They
      were even more than sufficient, if his uncomfortable glances at them might
      be taken to mean anything.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle's right hand was filled with the evening paper, and the evening
      paper was full of Mr Merdle. His wonderful enterprise, his wonderful
      wealth, his wonderful Bank, were the fattening food of the evening paper
      that night. The wonderful Bank, of which he was the chief projector,
      establisher, and manager, was the latest of the many Merdle wonders. So
      modest was Mr Merdle withal, in the midst of these splendid achievements,
      that he looked far more like a man in possession of his house under a
      distraint, than a commercial Colossus bestriding his own hearthrug, while
      the little ships were sailing into dinner.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0497m.jpg" alt="0497m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0497.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      Behold the vessels coming into port! The engaging young Barnacle was the
      first arrival; but Bar overtook him on the staircase. Bar, strengthened as
      usual with his double eye-glass and his little jury droop, was overjoyed
      to see the engaging young Barnacle; and opined that we were going to sit
      in Banco, as we lawyers called it, to take a special argument?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed,' said the sprightly young Barnacle, whose name was Ferdinand;
      'how so?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nay,' smiled Bar. 'If you don't know, how can I know? You are in the
      innermost sanctuary of the temple; I am one of the admiring concourse on
      the plain without.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar could be light in hand, or heavy in hand, according to the customer he
      had to deal with. With Ferdinand Barnacle he was gossamer. Bar was
      likewise always modest and self-depreciatory&mdash;in his way. Bar was a
      man of great variety; but one leading thread ran through the woof of all
      his patterns. Every man with whom he had to do was in his eyes a jury-man;
      and he must get that jury-man over, if he could.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Our illustrious host and friend,' said Bar; 'our shining mercantile star;&mdash;going
      into politics?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Going? He has been in Parliament some time, you know,' returned the
      engaging young Barnacle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'True,' said Bar, with his light-comedy laugh for special jury-men, which
      was a very different thing from his low-comedy laugh for comic tradesmen
      on common juries: 'he has been in Parliament for some time. Yet hitherto
      our star has been a vacillating and wavering star? Humph?'
    </p>
    <p>
      An average witness would have been seduced by the Humph? into an
      affirmative answer, But Ferdinand Barnacle looked knowingly at Bar as he
      strolled up-stairs, and gave him no answer at all.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Just so, just so,' said Bar, nodding his head, for he was not to be put
      off in that way, 'and therefore I spoke of our sitting <i>in Banco</i> to
      take a special argument&mdash;meaning this to be a high and solemn
      occasion, when, as Captain Macheath says, "the judges are met: a terrible
      show!" We lawyers are sufficiently liberal, you see, to quote the Captain,
      though the Captain is severe upon us. Nevertheless, I think I could put in
      evidence an admission of the Captain's,' said Bar, with a little jocose
      roll of his head; for, in his legal current of speech, he always assumed
      the air of rallying himself with the best grace in the world; 'an
      admission of the Captain's that Law, in the gross, is at least intended to
      be impartial. For what says the Captain, if I quote him correctly&mdash;and
      if not,' with a light-comedy touch of his double eye-glass on his
      companion's shoulder, 'my learned friend will set me right:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      "Since laws were made for every degree,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      To curb vice in others as well as in me,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      I wonder we ha'n't better company
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Upon Tyburn Tree!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      These words brought them to the drawing-room, where Mr Merdle stood before
      the fire. So immensely astounded was Mr Merdle by the entrance of Bar with
      such a reference in his mouth, that Bar explained himself to have been
      quoting Gay. 'Assuredly not one of our Westminster Hall authorities,' said
      he, 'but still no despicable one to a man possessing the largely-practical
      Mr Merdle's knowledge of the world.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle looked as if he thought he would say something, but subsequently
      looked as if he thought he wouldn't. The interval afforded time for Bishop
      to be announced.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bishop came in with meekness, and yet with a strong and rapid step as if
      he wanted to get his seven-league dress-shoes on, and go round the world
      to see that everybody was in a satisfactory state. Bishop had no idea that
      there was anything significant in the occasion. That was the most
      remarkable trait in his demeanour. He was crisp, fresh, cheerful, affable,
      bland; but so surprisingly innocent.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar sidled up to prefer his politest inquiries in reference to the health
      of Mrs Bishop. Mrs Bishop had been a little unfortunate in the article of
      taking cold at a Confirmation, but otherwise was well. Young Mr Bishop was
      also well. He was down, with his young wife and little family, at his Cure
      of Souls.
    </p>
    <p>
      The representatives of the Barnacle Chorus dropped in next, and Mr
      Merdle's physician dropped in next. Bar, who had a bit of one eye and a
      bit of his double eye-glass for every one who came in at the door, no
      matter with whom he was conversing or what he was talking about, got among
      them all by some skilful means, without being seen to get at them, and
      touched each individual gentleman of the jury on his own individual
      favourite spot. With some of the Chorus, he laughed about the sleepy
      member who had gone out into the lobby the other night, and voted the
      wrong way: with others, he deplored that innovating spirit in the time
      which could not even be prevented from taking an unnatural interest in the
      public service and the public money: with the physician he had a word to
      say about the general health; he had also a little information to ask him
      for, concerning a professional man of unquestioned erudition and polished
      manners&mdash;but those credentials in their highest development he
      believed were the possession of other professors of the healing art (jury
      droop)&mdash;whom he had happened to have in the witness-box the day
      before yesterday, and from whom he had elicited in cross-examination that
      he claimed to be one of the exponents of this new mode of treatment which
      appeared to Bar to&mdash;eh?&mdash;well, Bar thought so; Bar had thought,
      and hoped, Physician would tell him so. Without presuming to decide where
      doctors disagreed, it did appear to Bar, viewing it as a question of
      common sense and not of so-called legal penetration, that this new system
      was&mdash;might be, in the presence of so great an authority&mdash;say,
      Humbug? Ah! Fortified by such encouragement, he could venture to say
      Humbug; and now Bar's mind was relieved.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Tite Barnacle, who, like Dr Johnson's celebrated acquaintance, had only
      one idea in his head and that was a wrong one, had appeared by this time.
      This eminent gentleman and Mr Merdle, seated diverse ways and with
      ruminating aspects on a yellow ottoman in the light of the fire, holding
      no verbal communication with each other, bore a strong general resemblance
      to the two cows in the Cuyp picture over against them.
    </p>
    <p>
      But now, Lord Decimus arrived. The Chief Butler, who up to this time had
      limited himself to a branch of his usual function by looking at the
      company as they entered (and that, with more of defiance than favour), put
      himself so far out of his way as to come up-stairs with him and announce
      him. Lord Decimus being an overpowering peer, a bashful young member of
      the Lower House who was the last fish but one caught by the Barnacles, and
      who had been invited on this occasion to commemorate his capture, shut his
      eyes when his Lordship came in.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord Decimus, nevertheless, was glad to see the Member. He was also glad
      to see Mr Merdle, glad to see Bishop, glad to see Bar, glad to see
      Physician, glad to see Tite Barnacle, glad to see Chorus, glad to see
      Ferdinand his private secretary. Lord Decimus, though one of the greatest
      of the earth, was not remarkable for ingratiatory manners, and Ferdinand
      had coached him up to the point of noticing all the fellows he might find
      there, and saying he was glad to see them. When he had achieved this rush
      of vivacity and condescension, his Lordship composed himself into the
      picture after Cuyp, and made a third cow in the group.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar, who felt that he had got all the rest of the jury and must now lay
      hold of the Foreman, soon came sidling up, double eye-glass in hand. Bar
      tendered the weather, as a subject neatly aloof from official reserve, for
      the Foreman's consideration. Bar said that he was told (as everybody
      always is told, though who tells them, and why, will ever remain a
      mystery), that there was to be no wall-fruit this year. Lord Decimus had
      not heard anything amiss of his peaches, but rather believed, if his
      people were correct, he was to have no apples. No apples? Bar was lost in
      astonishment and concern. It would have been all one to him, in reality,
      if there had not been a pippin on the surface of the earth, but his show
      of interest in this apple question was positively painful. Now, to what,
      Lord Decimus&mdash;for we troublesome lawyers loved to gather information,
      and could never tell how useful it might prove to us&mdash;to what, Lord
      Decimus, was this to be attributed? Lord Decimus could not undertake to
      propound any theory about it. This might have stopped another man; but
      Bar, sticking to him fresh as ever, said, 'As to pears, now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Long after Bar got made Attorney-General, this was told of him as a
      master-stroke. Lord Decimus had a reminiscence about a pear-tree formerly
      growing in a garden near the back of his dame's house at Eton, upon which
      pear-tree the only joke of his life perennially bloomed. It was a joke of
      a compact and portable nature, turning on the difference between Eton
      pears and Parliamentary pairs; but it was a joke, a refined relish of
      which would seem to have appeared to Lord Decimus impossible to be had
      without a thorough and intimate acquaintance with the tree. Therefore, the
      story at first had no idea of such a tree, sir, then gradually found it in
      winter, carried it through the changing season, saw it bud, saw it
      blossom, saw it bear fruit, saw the fruit ripen; in short, cultivated the
      tree in that diligent and minute manner before it got out of the bed-room
      window to steal the fruit, that many thanks had been offered up by belated
      listeners for the trees having been planted and grafted prior to Lord
      Decimus's time. Bar's interest in apples was so overtopped by the wrapt
      suspense in which he pursued the changes of these pears, from the moment
      when Lord Decimus solemnly opened with 'Your mentioning pears recalls to
      my remembrance a pear-tree,' down to the rich conclusion, 'And so we pass,
      through the various changes of life, from Eton pears to Parliamentary
      pairs,' that he had to go down-stairs with Lord Decimus, and even then to
      be seated next to him at table in order that he might hear the anecdote
      out. By that time, Bar felt that he had secured the Foreman, and might go
      to dinner with a good appetite.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a dinner to provoke an appetite, though he had not had one. The
      rarest dishes, sumptuously cooked and sumptuously served; the choicest
      fruits; the most exquisite wines; marvels of workmanship in gold and
      silver, china and glass; innumerable things delicious to the senses of
      taste, smell, and sight, were insinuated into its composition. O, what a
      wonderful man this Merdle, what a great man, what a master man, how
      blessedly and enviably endowed&mdash;in one word, what a rich man!
    </p>
    <p>
      He took his usual poor eighteenpennyworth of food in his usual indigestive
      way, and had as little to say for himself as ever a wonderful man had.
      Fortunately Lord Decimus was one of those sublimities who have no occasion
      to be talked to, for they can be at any time sufficiently occupied with
      the contemplation of their own greatness. This enabled the bashful young
      Member to keep his eyes open long enough at a time to see his dinner. But,
      whenever Lord Decimus spoke, he shut them again.
    </p>
    <p>
      The agreeable young Barnacle, and Bar, were the talkers of the party.
      Bishop would have been exceedingly agreeable also, but that his innocence
      stood in his way. He was so soon left behind. When there was any little
      hint of anything being in the wind, he got lost directly. Worldly affairs
      were too much for him; he couldn't make them out at all.
    </p>
    <p>
      This was observable when Bar said, incidentally, that he was happy to have
      heard that we were soon to have the advantage of enlisting on the good
      side, the sound and plain sagacity&mdash;not demonstrative or
      ostentatious, but thoroughly sound and practical&mdash;of our friend Mr
      Sparkler.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ferdinand Barnacle laughed, and said oh yes, he believed so. A vote was a
      vote, and always acceptable.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar was sorry to miss our good friend Mr Sparkler to-day, Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is away with Mrs Merdle,' returned that gentleman, slowly coming out
      of a long abstraction, in the course of which he had been fitting a
      tablespoon up his sleeve. 'It is not indispensable for him to be on the
      spot.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The magic name of Merdle,' said Bar, with the jury droop, 'no doubt will
      suffice for all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why&mdash;yes&mdash;I believe so,' assented Mr Merdle, putting the spoon
      aside, and clumsily hiding each of his hands in the coat-cuff of the other
      hand. 'I believe the people in my interest down there will not make any
      difficulty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Model people!' said Bar.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad you approve of them,' said Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And the people of those other two places, now,' pursued Bar, with a
      bright twinkle in his keen eye, as it slightly turned in the direction of
      his magnificent neighbour; 'we lawyers are always curious, always
      inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds,
      since there is no knowing when and where they may fit into some corner;&mdash;the
      people of those other two places now? Do they yield so laudably to the
      vast and cumulative influence of such enterprise and such renown; do those
      little rills become absorbed so quietly and easily, and, as it were by the
      influence of natural laws, so beautifully, in the swoop of the majestic
      stream as it flows upon its wondrous way enriching the surrounding lands;
      that their course is perfectly to be calculated, and distinctly to be
      predicated?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle, a little troubled by Bar's eloquence, looked fitfully about the
      nearest salt-cellar for some moments, and then said hesitating:
    </p>
    <p>
      'They are perfectly aware, sir, of their duty to Society. They will return
      anybody I send to them for that purpose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cheering to know,' said Bar. 'Cheering to know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The three places in question were three little rotten holes in this
      Island, containing three little ignorant, drunken, guzzling, dirty,
      out-of-the-way constituencies, that had reeled into Mr Merdle's pocket.
      Ferdinand Barnacle laughed in his easy way, and airily said they were a
      nice set of fellows. Bishop, mentally perambulating among paths of peace,
      was altogether swallowed up in absence of mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray,' asked Lord Decimus, casting his eyes around the table, 'what is
      this story I have heard of a gentleman long confined in a debtors' prison
      proving to be of a wealthy family, and having come into the inheritance of
      a large sum of money? I have met with a variety of allusions to it. Do you
      know anything of it, Ferdinand?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I only know this much,' said Ferdinand, 'that he has given the Department
      with which I have the honour to be associated;' this sparkling young
      Barnacle threw off the phrase sportively, as who should say, We know all
      about these forms of speech, but we must keep it up, we must keep the game
      alive; 'no end of trouble, and has put us into innumerable fixes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fixes?' repeated Lord Decimus, with a majestic pausing and pondering on
      the word that made the bashful Member shut his eyes quite tight. 'Fixes?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A very perplexing business indeed,' observed Mr Tite Barnacle, with an
      air of grave resentment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What,' said Lord Decimus, 'was the character of his business; what was
      the nature of these&mdash;a&mdash;Fixes, Ferdinand?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, it's a good story, as a story,' returned that gentleman; 'as good a
      thing of its kind as need be. This Mr Dorrit (his name is Dorrit) had
      incurred a responsibility to us, ages before the fairy came out of the
      Bank and gave him his fortune, under a bond he had signed for the
      performance of a contract which was not at all performed. He was a partner
      in a house in some large way&mdash;spirits, or buttons, or wine, or
      blacking, or oatmeal, or woollen, or pork, or hooks and eyes, or iron, or
      treacle, or shoes, or something or other that was wanted for troops, or
      seamen, or somebody&mdash;and the house burst, and we being among the
      creditors, detainees were lodged on the part of the Crown in a scientific
      manner, and all the rest of it. When the fairy had appeared and he wanted
      to pay us off, Egad we had got into such an exemplary state of checking
      and counter-checking, signing and counter-signing, that it was six months
      before we knew how to take the money, or how to give a receipt for it. It
      was a triumph of public business,' said this handsome young Barnacle,
      laughing heartily, 'You never saw such a lot of forms in your life. "Why,"
      the attorney said to me one day, "if I wanted this office to give me two
      or three thousand pounds instead of take it, I couldn't have more trouble
      about it." "You are right, old fellow," I told him, "and in future you'll
      know that we have something to do here."' The pleasant young Barnacle
      finished by once more laughing heartily. He was a very easy, pleasant
      fellow indeed, and his manners were exceedingly winning.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Tite Barnacle's view of the business was of a less airy character. He
      took it ill that Mr Dorrit had troubled the Department by wanting to pay
      the money, and considered it a grossly informal thing to do after so many
      years. But Mr Tite Barnacle was a buttoned-up man, and consequently a
      weighty one. All buttoned-up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are
      believed in. Whether or no the reserved and never-exercised power of
      unbuttoning, fascinates mankind; whether or no wisdom is supposed to
      condense and augment when buttoned up, and to evaporate when unbuttoned;
      it is certain that the man to whom importance is accorded is the
      buttoned-up man. Mr Tite Barnacle never would have passed for half his
      current value, unless his coat had been always buttoned-up to his white
      cravat.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I ask,' said Lord Decimus, 'if Mr Darrit&mdash;or Dorrit&mdash;has
      any family?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Nobody else replying, the host said, 'He has two daughters, my lord.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! you are acquainted with him?' asked Lord Decimus.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Merdle is. Mr Sparkler is, too. In fact,' said Mr Merdle, 'I rather
      believe that one of the young ladies has made an impression on Edmund
      Sparkler. He is susceptible, and&mdash;I&mdash;think&mdash;the conquest&mdash;'
      Here Mr Merdle stopped, and looked at the table-cloth, as he usually did
      when he found himself observed or listened to.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar was uncommonly pleased to find that the Merdle family, and this
      family, had already been brought into contact. He submitted, in a low
      voice across the table to Bishop, that it was a kind of analogical
      illustration of those physical laws, in virtue of which Like flies to
      Like. He regarded this power of attraction in wealth to draw wealth to it,
      as something remarkably interesting and curious&mdash;something
      indefinably allied to the loadstone and gravitation. Bishop, who had
      ambled back to earth again when the present theme was broached,
      acquiesced. He said it was indeed highly important to Society that one in
      the trying situation of unexpectedly finding himself invested with a power
      for good or for evil in Society, should become, as it were, merged in the
      superior power of a more legitimate and more gigantic growth, the
      influence of which (as in the case of our friend at whose board we sat)
      was habitually exercised in harmony with the best interests of Society.
      Thus, instead of two rival and contending flames, a larger and a lesser,
      each burning with a lurid and uncertain glare, we had a blended and a
      softened light whose genial ray diffused an equable warmth throughout the
      land. Bishop seemed to like his own way of putting the case very much, and
      rather dwelt upon it; Bar, meanwhile (not to throw away a jury-man),
      making a show of sitting at his feet and feeding on his precepts.
    </p>
    <p>
      The dinner and dessert being three hours long, the bashful Member cooled
      in the shadow of Lord Decimus faster than he warmed with food and drink,
      and had but a chilly time of it. Lord Decimus, like a tall tower in a flat
      country, seemed to project himself across the table-cloth, hide the light
      from the honourable Member, cool the honourable Member's marrow, and give
      him a woeful idea of distance. When he asked this unfortunate traveller to
      take wine, he encompassed his faltering steps with the gloomiest of
      shades; and when he said, 'Your health sir!' all around him was barrenness
      and desolation.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length Lord Decimus, with a coffee-cup in his hand, began to hover
      about among the pictures, and to cause an interesting speculation to arise
      in all minds as to the probabilities of his ceasing to hover, and enabling
      the smaller birds to flutter up-stairs; which could not be done until he
      had urged his noble pinions in that direction. After some delay, and
      several stretches of his wings which came to nothing, he soared to the
      drawing-rooms.
    </p>
    <p>
      And here a difficulty arose, which always does arise when two people are
      specially brought together at a dinner to confer with one another.
      Everybody (except Bishop, who had no suspicion of it) knew perfectly well
      that this dinner had been eaten and drunk, specifically to the end that
      Lord Decimus and Mr Merdle should have five minutes' conversation
      together. The opportunity so elaborately prepared was now arrived, and it
      seemed from that moment that no mere human ingenuity could so much as get
      the two chieftains into the same room. Mr Merdle and his noble guest
      persisted in prowling about at opposite ends of the perspective. It was in
      vain for the engaging Ferdinand to bring Lord Decimus to look at the
      bronze horses near Mr Merdle. Then Mr Merdle evaded, and wandered away. It
      was in vain for him to bring Mr Merdle to Lord Decimus to tell him the
      history of the unique Dresden vases. Then Lord Decimus evaded and wandered
      away, while he was getting his man up to the mark.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did you ever see such a thing as this?' said Ferdinand to Bar when he had
      been baffled twenty times.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Often,' returned Bar.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Unless I butt one of them into an appointed corner, and you butt the
      other,' said Ferdinand,'it will not come off after all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very good,' said Bar. 'I'll butt Merdle, if you like; but not my lord.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Ferdinand laughed, in the midst of his vexation. 'Confound them both!'
      said he, looking at his watch. 'I want to get away. Why the deuce can't
      they come together! They both know what they want and mean to do. Look at
      them!'
    </p>
    <p>
      They were still looming at opposite ends of the perspective, each with an
      absurd pretence of not having the other on his mind, which could not have
      been more transparently ridiculous though his real mind had been chalked
      on his back. Bishop, who had just now made a third with Bar and Ferdinand,
      but whose innocence had again cut him out of the subject and washed him in
      sweet oil, was seen to approach Lord Decimus and glide into conversation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must get Merdle's doctor to catch and secure him, I suppose,' said
      Ferdinand; 'and then I must lay hold of my illustrious kinsman, and decoy
      him if I can&mdash;drag him if I can't&mdash;to the conference.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Since you do me the honour,' said Bar, with his slyest smile, to ask for
      my poor aid, it shall be yours with the greatest pleasure. I don't think
      this is to be done by one man. But if you will undertake to pen my lord
      into that furthest drawing-room where he is now so profoundly engaged, I
      will undertake to bring our dear Merdle into the presence, without the
      possibility of getting away.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Done!' said Ferdinand. 'Done!' said Bar.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar was a sight wondrous to behold, and full of matter, when, jauntily
      waving his double eye-glass by its ribbon, and jauntily drooping to an
      Universe of Jurymen, he, in the most accidental manner ever seen, found
      himself at Mr Merdle's shoulder, and embraced that opportunity of
      mentioning a little point to him, on which he particularly wished to be
      guided by the light of his practical knowledge. (Here he took Mr Merdle's
      arm and walked him gently away.) A banker, whom we would call A. B.,
      advanced a considerable sum of money, which we would call fifteen thousand
      pounds, to a client or customer of his, whom he would call P. Q. (Here, as
      they were getting towards Lord Decimus, he held Mr Merdle tight.) As a
      security for the repayment of this advance to P. Q. whom we would call a
      widow lady, there were placed in A. B.'s hands the title-deeds of a
      freehold estate, which we would call Blinkiter Doddles. Now, the point was
      this. A limited right of felling and lopping in the woods of Blinkiter
      Doddles, lay in the son of P. Q. then past his majority, and whom we would
      call X. Y.&mdash;but really this was too bad! In the presence of Lord
      Decimus, to detain the host with chopping our dry chaff of law, was really
      too bad! Another time! Bar was truly repentant, and would not say another
      syllable. Would Bishop favour him with half-a-dozen words? (He had now set
      Mr Merdle down on a couch, side by side with Lord Decimus, and to it they
      must go, now or never.)
    </p>
    <p>
      And now the rest of the company, highly excited and interested, always
      excepting Bishop, who had not the slightest idea that anything was going
      on, formed in one group round the fire in the next drawing-room, and
      pretended to be chatting easily on the infinite variety of small topics,
      while everybody's thoughts and eyes were secretly straying towards the
      secluded pair. The Chorus were excessively nervous, perhaps as labouring
      under the dreadful apprehension that some good thing was going to be
      diverted from them! Bishop alone talked steadily and evenly. He conversed
      with the great Physician on that relaxation of the throat with which young
      curates were too frequently afflicted, and on the means of lessening the
      great prevalence of that disorder in the church. Physician, as a general
      rule, was of opinion that the best way to avoid it was to know how to
      read, before you made a profession of reading. Bishop said dubiously, did
      he really think so? And Physician said, decidedly, yes he did.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ferdinand, meanwhile, was the only one of the party who skirmished on the
      outside of the circle; he kept about mid-way between it and the two, as if
      some sort of surgical operation were being performed by Lord Decimus on Mr
      Merdle, or by Mr Merdle on Lord Decimus, and his services might at any
      moment be required as Dresser. In fact, within a quarter of an hour Lord
      Decimus called to him 'Ferdinand!' and he went, and took his place in the
      conference for some five minutes more. Then a half-suppressed gasp broke
      out among the Chorus; for Lord Decimus rose to take his leave. Again
      coached up by Ferdinand to the point of making himself popular, he shook
      hands in the most brilliant manner with the whole company, and even said
      to Bar, 'I hope you were not bored by my pears?' To which Bar retorted,
      'Eton, my lord, or Parliamentary?' neatly showing that he had mastered the
      joke, and delicately insinuating that he could never forget it while his
      life remained.
    </p>
    <p>
      All the grave importance that was buttoned up in Mr Tite Barnacle, took
      itself away next; and Ferdinand took himself away next, to the opera. Some
      of the rest lingered a little, marrying golden liqueur glasses to Buhl
      tables with sticky rings; on the desperate chance of Mr Merdle's saying
      something. But Merdle, as usual, oozed sluggishly and muddily about his
      drawing-room, saying never a word.
    </p>
    <p>
      In a day or two it was announced to all the town, that Edmund Sparkler,
      Esquire, son-in-law of the eminent Mr Merdle of worldwide renown, was made
      one of the Lords of the Circumlocution Office; and proclamation was
      issued, to all true believers, that this admirable appointment was to be
      hailed as a graceful and gracious mark of homage, rendered by the graceful
      and gracious Decimus, to that commercial interest which must ever in a
      great commercial country&mdash;and all the rest of it, with blast of
      trumpet. So, bolstered by this mark of Government homage, the wonderful
      Bank and all the other wonderful undertakings went on and went up; and
      gapers came to Harley Street, Cavendish Square, only to look at the house
      where the golden wonder lived.
    </p>
    <p>
      And when they saw the Chief Butler looking out at the hall-door in his
      moments of condescension, the gapers said how rich he looked, and wondered
      how much money he had in the wonderful Bank. But, if they had known that
      respectable Nemesis better, they would not have wondered about it, and
      might have stated the amount with the utmost precision.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0049" id="link2HCH0049"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 13. The Progress of an Epidemic
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hat it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical
      one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of
      the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no
      pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health,
      and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions: is a fact as
      firmly established by experience as that we human creatures breathe an
      atmosphere. A blessing beyond appreciation would be conferred upon
      mankind, if the tainted, in whose weakness or wickedness these virulent
      disorders are bred, could be instantly seized and placed in close
      confinement (not to say summarily smothered) before the poison is
      communicable.
    </p>
    <p>
      As a vast fire will fill the air to a great distance with its roar, so the
      sacred flame which the mighty Barnacles had fanned caused the air to
      resound more and more with the name of Merdle. It was deposited on every
      lip, and carried into every ear. There never was, there never had been,
      there never again should be, such a man as Mr Merdle. Nobody, as
      aforesaid, knew what he had done; but everybody knew him to be the
      greatest that had appeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      Down in Bleeding Heart Yard, where there was not one unappropriated
      halfpenny, as lively an interest was taken in this paragon of men as on
      the Stock Exchange. Mrs Plornish, now established in the small grocery and
      general trade in a snug little shop at the crack end of the Yard, at the
      top of the steps, with her little old father and Maggy acting as
      assistants, habitually held forth about him over the counter in
      conversation with her customers. Mr Plornish, who had a small share in a
      small builder's business in the neighbourhood, said, trowel in hand, on
      the tops of scaffolds and on the tiles of houses, that people did tell him
      as Mr Merdle was <i>the</i> one, mind you, to put us all to rights in
      respects of that which all on us looked to, and to bring us all safe home
      as much as we needed, mind you, fur toe be brought. Mr Baptist, sole
      lodger of Mr and Mrs Plornish was reputed in whispers to lay by the
      savings which were the result of his simple and moderate life, for
      investment in one of Mr Merdle's certain enterprises. The female Bleeding
      Hearts, when they came for ounces of tea, and hundredweights of talk, gave
      Mrs Plornish to understand, That how, ma'am, they had heard from their
      cousin Mary Anne, which worked in the line, that his lady's dresses would
      fill three waggons. That how she was as handsome a lady, ma'am, as lived,
      no matter wheres, and a busk like marble itself. That how, according to
      what they was told, ma'am, it was her son by a former husband as was took
      into the Government; and a General he had been, and armies he had marched
      again and victory crowned, if all you heard was to be believed. That how
      it was reported that Mr Merdle's words had been, that if they could have
      made it worth his while to take the whole Government he would have took it
      without a profit, but that take it he could not and stand a loss. That how
      it was not to be expected, ma'am, that he should lose by it, his ways
      being, as you might say and utter no falsehood, paved with gold; but that
      how it was much to be regretted that something handsome hadn't been got up
      to make it worth his while; for it was such and only such that knowed the
      heighth to which the bread and butchers' meat had rose, and it was such
      and only such that both could and would bring that heighth down.
    </p>
    <p>
      So rife and potent was the fever in Bleeding Heart Yard, that Mr Pancks's
      rent-days caused no interval in the patients. The disease took the
      singular form, on those occasions, of causing the infected to find an
      unfathomable excuse and consolation in allusions to the magic name.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, then!' Mr Pancks would say, to a defaulting lodger. 'Pay up! Come
      on!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I haven't got it, Mr Pancks,' Defaulter would reply. 'I tell you the
      truth, sir, when I say I haven't got so much as a single sixpence of it to
      bless myself with.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This won't do, you know,' Mr Pancks would retort. 'You don't expect it <i>will</i>
      do; do you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Defaulter would admit, with a low-spirited 'No, sir,' having no such
      expectation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My proprietor isn't going to stand this, you know,' Mr Pancks would
      proceed. 'He don't send me here for this. Pay up! Come!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Defaulter would make answer, 'Ah, Mr Pancks. If I was the rich
      gentleman whose name is in everybody's mouth&mdash;if my name was Merdle,
      sir&mdash;I'd soon pay up, and be glad to do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Dialogues on the rent-question usually took place at the house-doors or in
      the entries, and in the presence of several deeply interested Bleeding
      Hearts. They always received a reference of this kind with a low murmur of
      response, as if it were convincing; and the Defaulter, however black and
      discomfited before, always cheered up a little in making it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I was Mr Merdle, sir, you wouldn't have cause to complain of me then.
      No, believe me!' the Defaulter would proceed with a shake of the head.
      'I'd pay up so quick then, Mr Pancks, that you shouldn't have to ask me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The response would be heard again here, implying that it was impossible to
      say anything fairer, and that this was the next thing to paying the money
      down.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks would be now reduced to saying as he booked the case, 'Well!
      You'll have the broker in, and be turned out; that's what'll happen to
      you. It's no use talking to me about Mr Merdle. You are not Mr Merdle, any
      more than I am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir,' the Defaulter would reply. 'I only wish you <i>were</i> him,
      sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The response would take this up quickly; replying with great feeling,
      'Only wish you <i>were</i> him, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'd be easier with us if you were Mr Merdle, sir,' the Defaulter would
      go on with rising spirits, 'and it would be better for all parties. Better
      for our sakes, and better for yours, too. You wouldn't have to worry no
      one, then, sir. You wouldn't have to worry us, and you wouldn't have to
      worry yourself. You'd be easier in your own mind, sir, and you'd leave
      others easier, too, you would, if you were Mr Merdle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks, in whom these impersonal compliments produced an irresistible
      sheepishness, never rallied after such a charge. He could only bite his
      nails and puff away to the next Defaulter. The responsive Bleeding Hearts
      would then gather round the Defaulter whom he had just abandoned, and the
      most extravagant rumours would circulate among them, to their great
      comfort, touching the amount of Mr Merdle's ready money.
    </p>
    <p>
      From one of the many such defeats of one of many rent-days, Mr Pancks,
      having finished his day's collection, repaired with his note-book under
      his arm to Mrs Plornish's corner. Mr Pancks's object was not professional,
      but social. He had had a trying day, and wanted a little brightening. By
      this time he was on friendly terms with the Plornish family, having often
      looked in upon them at similar seasons, and borne his part in
      recollections of Miss Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Plornish's shop-parlour had been decorated under her own eye, and
      presented, on the side towards the shop, a little fiction in which Mrs
      Plornish unspeakably rejoiced. This poetical heightening of the parlour
      consisted in the wall being painted to represent the exterior of a
      thatched cottage; the artist having introduced (in as effective a manner
      as he found compatible with their highly disproportionate dimensions) the
      real door and window. The modest sunflower and hollyhock were depicted as
      flourishing with great luxuriance on this rustic dwelling, while a
      quantity of dense smoke issuing from the chimney indicated good cheer
      within, and also, perhaps, that it had not been lately swept. A faithful
      dog was represented as flying at the legs of the friendly visitor, from
      the threshold; and a circular pigeon-house, enveloped in a cloud of
      pigeons, arose from behind the garden-paling. On the door (when it was
      shut), appeared the semblance of a brass-plate, presenting the
      inscription, Happy Cottage, T. and M. Plornish; the partnership expressing
      man and wife. No Poetry and no Art ever charmed the imagination more than
      the union of the two in this counterfeit cottage charmed Mrs Plornish. It
      was nothing to her that Plornish had a habit of leaning against it as he
      smoked his pipe after work, when his hat blotted out the pigeon-house and
      all the pigeons, when his back swallowed up the dwelling, when his hands
      in his pockets uprooted the blooming garden and laid waste the adjacent
      country. To Mrs Plornish, it was still a most beautiful cottage, a most
      wonderful deception; and it made no difference that Mr Plornish's eye was
      some inches above the level of the gable bed-room in the thatch. To come
      out into the shop after it was shut, and hear her father sing a song
      inside this cottage, was a perfect Pastoral to Mrs Plornish, the Golden
      Age revived. And truly if that famous period had been revived, or had ever
      been at all, it may be doubted whether it would have produced many more
      heartily admiring daughters than the poor woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      Warned of a visitor by the tinkling bell at the shop-door, Mrs Plornish
      came out of Happy Cottage to see who it might be. 'I guessed it was you,
      Mr Pancks,' said she, 'for it's quite your regular night; ain't it? Here's
      father, you see, come out to serve at the sound of the bell, like a brisk
      young shopman. Ain't he looking well? Father's more pleased to see you
      than if you was a customer, for he dearly loves a gossip; and when it
      turns upon Miss Dorrit, he loves it all the more. You never heard father
      in such voice as he is at present,' said Mrs Plornish, her own voice
      quavering, she was so proud and pleased. 'He gave us Strephon last night
      to that degree that Plornish gets up and makes him this speech across the
      table. "John Edward Nandy," says Plornish to father, "I never heard you
      come the warbles as I have heard you come the warbles this night." An't it
      gratifying, Mr Pancks, though; really?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks, who had snorted at the old man in his friendliest manner,
      replied in the affirmative, and casually asked whether that lively Altro
      chap had come in yet? Mrs Plornish answered no, not yet, though he had
      gone to the West-End with some work, and had said he should be back by
      tea-time. Mr Pancks was then hospitably pressed into Happy Cottage, where
      he encountered the elder Master Plornish just come home from school.
      Examining that young student, lightly, on the educational proceedings of
      the day, he found that the more advanced pupils who were in the large text
      and the letter M, had been set the copy 'Merdle, Millions.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how are <i>you</i> getting on, Mrs Plornish,' said Pancks, 'since
      we're mentioning millions?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very steady, indeed, sir,' returned Mrs Plornish. 'Father, dear, would
      you go into the shop and tidy the window a little bit before tea, your
      taste being so beautiful?'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Edward Nandy trotted away, much gratified, to comply with his
      daughter's request. Mrs Plornish, who was always in mortal terror of
      mentioning pecuniary affairs before the old gentleman, lest any disclosure
      she made might rouse his spirit and induce him to run away to the
      workhouse, was thus left free to be confidential with Mr Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's quite true that the business is very steady indeed,' said Mrs
      Plornish, lowering her voice; 'and has a excellent connection. The only
      thing that stands in its way, sir, is the Credit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This drawback, rather severely felt by most people who engaged in
      commercial transactions with the inhabitants of Bleeding Heart Yard, was a
      large stumbling-block in Mrs Plornish's trade. When Mr Dorrit had
      established her in the business, the Bleeding Hearts had shown an amount
      of emotion and a determination to support her in it, that did honour to
      human nature. Recognising her claim upon their generous feelings as one
      who had long been a member of their community, they pledged themselves,
      with great feeling, to deal with Mrs Plornish, come what would and bestow
      their patronage on no other establishment. Influenced by these noble
      sentiments, they had even gone out of their way to purchase little
      luxuries in the grocery and butter line to which they were unaccustomed;
      saying to one another, that if they did stretch a point, was it not for a
      neighbour and a friend, and for whom ought a point to be stretched if not
      for such? So stimulated, the business was extremely brisk, and the
      articles in stock went off with the greatest celerity. In short, if the
    </p>
    <p>
      Bleeding Hearts had but paid, the undertaking would have been a complete
      success; whereas, by reason of their exclusively confining themselves to
      owing, the profits actually realised had not yet begun to appear in the
      books.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0512m.jpg" alt="0512m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0512.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks was making a very porcupine of himself by sticking his hair up
      in the contemplation of this state of accounts, when old Mr Nandy,
      re-entering the cottage with an air of mystery, entreated them to come and
      look at the strange behaviour of Mr Baptist, who seemed to have met with
      something that had scared him. All three going into the shop, and watching
      through the window, then saw Mr Baptist, pale and agitated, go through the
      following extraordinary performances. First, he was observed hiding at the
      top of the steps leading down into the Yard, and peeping up and down the
      street with his head cautiously thrust out close to the side of the
      shop-door. After very anxious scrutiny, he came out of his retreat, and
      went briskly down the street as if he were going away altogether; then,
      suddenly turned about, and went, at the same pace, and with the same
      feint, up the street. He had gone no further up the street than he had
      gone down, when he crossed the road and disappeared. The object of this
      last manoeuvre was only apparent, when his entering the shop with a sudden
      twist, from the steps again, explained that he had made a wide and obscure
      circuit round to the other, or Doyce and Clennam, end of the Yard, and had
      come through the Yard and bolted in. He was out of breath by that time, as
      he might well be, and his heart seemed to jerk faster than the little
      shop-bell, as it quivered and jingled behind him with his hasty shutting
      of the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hallo, old chap!' said Mr Pancks. 'Altro, old boy! What's the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Baptist, or Signor Cavalletto, understood English now almost as well as
      Mr Pancks himself, and could speak it very well too. Nevertheless, Mrs
      Plornish, with a pardonable vanity in that accomplishment of hers which
      made her all but Italian, stepped in as interpreter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'E ask know,' said Mrs Plornish, 'what go wrong?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come into the happy little cottage, Padrona,' returned Mr Baptist,
      imparting great stealthiness to his flurried back-handed shake of his
      right forefinger. 'Come there!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Plornish was proud of the title Padrona, which she regarded as
      signifying: not so much Mistress of the house, as Mistress of the Italian
      tongue. She immediately complied with Mr Baptist's request, and they all
      went into the cottage.
    </p>
    <p>
      'E ope you no fright,' said Mrs Plornish then, interpreting Mr Pancks in a
      new way with her usual fertility of resource. 'What appen? Peaka Padrona!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have seen some one,' returned Baptist. 'I have rincontrato him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Im? Oo him?' asked Mrs Plornish.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A bad man. A baddest man. I have hoped that I should never see him
      again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ow you know him bad?' asked Mrs Plornish.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It does not matter, Padrona. I know it too well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'E see you?' asked Mrs Plornish.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. I hope not. I believe not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He says,' Mrs Plornish then interpreted, addressing her father and Pancks
      with mild condescension, 'that he has met a bad man, but he hopes the bad
      man didn't see him&mdash;Why,' inquired Mrs Plornish, reverting to the
      Italian language, 'why ope bad man no see?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Padrona, dearest,' returned the little foreigner whom she so
      considerately protected, 'do not ask, I pray. Once again I say it matters
      not. I have fear of this man. I do not wish to see him, I do not wish to
      be known of him&mdash;never again! Enough, most beautiful. Leave it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The topic was so disagreeable to him, and so put his usual liveliness to
      the rout, that Mrs Plornish forbore to press him further: the rather as
      the tea had been drawing for some time on the hob. But she was not the
      less surprised and curious for asking no more questions; neither was Mr
      Pancks, whose expressive breathing had been labouring hard since the
      entrance of the little man, like a locomotive engine with a great load
      getting up a steep incline. Maggy, now better dressed than of yore, though
      still faithful to the monstrous character of her cap, had been in the
      background from the first with open mouth and eyes, which staring and
      gaping features were not diminished in breadth by the untimely suppression
      of the subject. However, no more was said about it, though much appeared
      to be thought on all sides: by no means excepting the two young
      Plornishes, who partook of the evening meal as if their eating the bread
      and butter were rendered almost superfluous by the painful probability of
      the worst of men shortly presenting himself for the purpose of eating
      them. Mr Baptist, by degrees began to chirp a little; but never stirred
      from the seat he had taken behind the door and close to the window, though
      it was not his usual place. As often as the little bell rang, he started
      and peeped out secretly, with the end of the little curtain in his hand
      and the rest before his face; evidently not at all satisfied but that the
      man he dreaded had tracked him through all his doublings and turnings,
      with the certainty of a terrible bloodhound.
    </p>
    <p>
      The entrance, at various times, of two or three customers and of Mr
      Plornish, gave Mr Baptist just enough of this employment to keep the
      attention of the company fixed upon him. Tea was over, and the children
      were abed, and Mrs Plornish was feeling her way to the dutiful proposal
      that her father should favour them with Chloe, when the bell rang again,
      and Mr Clennam came in.
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam had been poring late over his books and letters; for the
      waiting-rooms of the Circumlocution Office ravaged his time sorely. Over
      and above that, he was depressed and made uneasy by the late occurrence at
      his mother's. He looked worn and solitary. He felt so, too; but,
      nevertheless, was returning home from his counting-house by that end of
      the Yard to give them the intelligence that he had received another letter
      from Miss Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      The news made a sensation in the cottage which drew off the general
      attention from Mr Baptist. Maggy, who pushed her way into the foreground
      immediately, would have seemed to draw in the tidings of her Little Mother
      equally at her ears, nose, mouth, and eyes, but that the last were
      obstructed by tears. She was particularly delighted when Clennam assured
      her that there were hospitals, and very kindly conducted hospitals, in
      Rome. Mr Pancks rose into new distinction in virtue of being specially
      remembered in the letter. Everybody was pleased and interested, and
      Clennam was well repaid for his trouble.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you are tired, sir. Let me make you a cup of tea,' said Mrs Plornish,
      'if you'd condescend to take such a thing in the cottage; and many thanks
      to you, too, I am sure, for bearing us in mind so kindly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Plornish deeming it incumbent on him, as host, to add his personal
      acknowledgments, tendered them in the form which always expressed his
      highest ideal of a combination of ceremony with sincerity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'John Edward Nandy,' said Mr Plornish, addressing the old gentleman. 'Sir.
      It's not too often that you see unpretending actions without a spark of
      pride, and therefore when you see them give grateful honour unto the same,
      being that if you don't, and live to want 'em, it follows serve you
      right.'
    </p>
    <p>
      To which Mr Nandy replied:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am heartily of your opinion, Thomas, and which your opinion is the same
      as mine, and therefore no more words and not being backwards with that
      opinion, which opinion giving it as yes, Thomas, yes, is the opinion in
      which yourself and me must ever be unanimously jined by all, and where
      there is not difference of opinion there can be none but one opinion,
      which fully no, Thomas, Thomas, no!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur, with less formality, expressed himself gratified by their high
      appreciation of so very slight an attention on his part; and explained as
      to the tea that he had not yet dined, and was going straight home to
      refresh after a long day's labour, or he would have readily accepted the
      hospitable offer. As Mr Pancks was somewhat noisily getting his steam up
      for departure, he concluded by asking that gentleman if he would walk with
      him? Mr Pancks said he desired no better engagement, and the two took
      leave of Happy Cottage.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you will come home with me, Pancks,' said Arthur, when they got into
      the street, 'and will share what dinner or supper there is, it will be
      next door to an act of charity; for I am weary and out of sorts to-night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ask me to do a greater thing than that,' said Pancks, 'when you want it
      done, and I'll do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Between this eccentric personage and Clennam, a tacit understanding and
      accord had been always improving since Mr Pancks flew over Mr Rugg's back
      in the Marshalsea Yard. When the carriage drove away on the memorable day
      of the family's departure, these two had looked after it together, and had
      walked slowly away together. When the first letter came from little
      Dorrit, nobody was more interested in hearing of her than Mr Pancks. The
      second letter, at that moment in Clennam's breast-pocket, particularly
      remembered him by name. Though he had never before made any profession or
      protestation to Clennam, and though what he had just said was little
      enough as to the words in which it was expressed, Clennam had long had a
      growing belief that Mr Pancks, in his own odd way, was becoming attached
      to him. All these strings intertwining made Pancks a very cable of
      anchorage that night.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am quite alone,' Arthur explained as they walked on. 'My partner is
      away, busily engaged at a distance on his branch of our business, and you
      shall do just as you like.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you. You didn't take particular notice of little Altro just now;
      did you?' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. Why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's a bright fellow, and I like him,' said Pancks. 'Something has gone
      amiss with him to-day. Have you any idea of any cause that can have
      overset him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You surprise me! None whatever.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks gave his reasons for the inquiry. Arthur was quite unprepared
      for them, and quite unable to suggest an explanation of them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps you'll ask him,' said Pancks, 'as he's a stranger?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ask him what?' returned Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What he has on his mind.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ought first to see for myself that he has something on his mind, I
      think,' said Clennam. 'I have found him in every way so diligent, so
      grateful (for little enough), and so trustworthy, that it might look like
      suspecting him. And that would be very unjust.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True,' said Pancks. 'But, I say! You oughtn't to be anybody's proprietor,
      Mr Clennam. You're much too delicate.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'For the matter of that,' returned Clennam laughing, 'I have not a large
      proprietary share in Cavalletto. His carving is his livelihood. He keeps
      the keys of the Factory, watches it every alternate night, and acts as a
      sort of housekeeper to it generally; but we have little work in the way of
      his ingenuity, though we give him what we have. No! I am rather his
      adviser than his proprietor. To call me his standing counsel and his
      banker would be nearer the fact. Speaking of being his banker, is it not
      curious, Pancks, that the ventures which run just now in so many people's
      heads, should run even in little Cavalletto's?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ventures?' retorted Pancks, with a snort. 'What ventures?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'These Merdle enterprises.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! Investments,' said Pancks. 'Ay, ay! I didn't know you were speaking
      of investments.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His quick way of replying caused Clennam to look at him, with a doubt
      whether he meant more than he said. As it was accompanied, however, with a
      quickening of his pace and a corresponding increase in the labouring of
      his machinery, Arthur did not pursue the matter, and they soon arrived at
      his house.
    </p>
    <p>
      A dinner of soup and a pigeon-pie, served on a little round table before
      the fire, and flavoured with a bottle of good wine, oiled Mr Pancks's
      works in a highly effective manner; so that when Clennam produced his
      Eastern pipe, and handed Mr Pancks another Eastern pipe, the latter
      gentleman was perfectly comfortable.
    </p>
    <p>
      They puffed for a while in silence, Mr Pancks like a steam-vessel with
      wind, tide, calm water, and all other sea-going conditions in her favour.
      He was the first to speak, and he spoke thus:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. Investments is the word.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam, with his former look, said 'Ah!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am going back to it, you see,' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. I see you are going back to it,' returned Clennam, wondering why.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wasn't it a curious thing that they should run in little Altro's head?
      Eh?' said Pancks as he smoked. 'Wasn't that how you put it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That was what I said.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay! But think of the whole Yard having got it. Think of their all meeting
      me with it, on my collecting days, here and there and everywhere. Whether
      they pay, or whether they don't pay. Merdle, Merdle, Merdle. Always
      Merdle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very strange how these runs on an infatuation prevail,' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'An't it?' returned Pancks. After smoking for a minute or so, more drily
      than comported with his recent oiling, he added: 'Because you see these
      people don't understand the subject.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not a bit,' assented Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not a bit,' cried Pancks. 'Know nothing of figures. Know nothing of money
      questions. Never made a calculation. Never worked it, sir!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If they had&mdash;' Clennam was going on to say; when Mr Pancks, without
      change of countenance, produced a sound so far surpassing all his usual
      efforts, nasal or bronchial, that he stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If they had?' repeated Pancks in an inquiring tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought you&mdash;spoke,' said Arthur, hesitating what name to give the
      interruption.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all,' said Pancks. 'Not yet. I may in a minute. If they had?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If they had,' observed Clennam, who was a little at a loss how to take
      his friend, 'why, I suppose they would have known better.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How so, Mr Clennam?' Pancks asked quickly, and with an odd effect of
      having been from the commencement of the conversation loaded with the
      heavy charge he now fired off. 'They're right, you know. They don't mean
      to be, but they're right.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Right in sharing Cavalletto's inclination to speculate with Mr Merdle?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Per-fectly, sir,' said Pancks. 'I've gone into it. I've made the
      calculations. I've worked it. They're safe and genuine.' Relieved by
      having got to this, Mr Pancks took as long a pull as his lungs would
      permit at his Eastern pipe, and looked sagaciously and steadily at Clennam
      while inhaling and exhaling too.
    </p>
    <p>
      In those moments, Mr Pancks began to give out the dangerous infection with
      which he was laden. It is the manner of communicating these diseases; it
      is the subtle way in which they go about.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean, my good Pancks,' asked Clennam emphatically, 'that you would
      put that thousand pounds of yours, let us say, for instance, out at this
      kind of interest?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly,' said Pancks. 'Already done it, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks took another long inhalation, another long exhalation, another
      long sagacious look at Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you, Mr Clennam, I've gone into it,' said Pancks. 'He's a man of
      immense resources&mdash;enormous capital&mdash;government influence.
      They're the best schemes afloat. They're safe. They're certain.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' returned Clennam, looking first at him gravely and then at the
      fire gravely. 'You surprise me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bah!' Pancks retorted. 'Don't say that, sir. It's what you ought to do
      yourself! Why don't you do as I do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Of whom Mr Pancks had taken the prevalent disease, he could no more have
      told than if he had unconsciously taken a fever. Bred at first, as many
      physical diseases are, in the wickedness of men, and then disseminated in
      their ignorance, these epidemics, after a period, get communicated to many
      sufferers who are neither ignorant nor wicked. Mr Pancks might, or might
      not, have caught the illness himself from a subject of this class; but in
      this category he appeared before Clennam, and the infection he threw off
      was all the more virulent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you have really invested,' Clennam had already passed to that word,
      'your thousand pounds, Pancks?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be sure, sir!' replied Pancks boldly, with a puff of smoke. 'And only
      wish it ten!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, Clennam had two subjects lying heavy on his lonely mind that night;
      the one, his partner's long-deferred hope; the other, what he had seen and
      heard at his mother's. In the relief of having this companion, and of
      feeling that he could trust him, he passed on to both, and both brought
      him round again, with an increase and acceleration of force, to his point
      of departure.
    </p>
    <p>
      It came about in the simplest manner. Quitting the investment subject,
      after an interval of silent looking at the fire through the smoke of his
      pipe, he told Pancks how and why he was occupied with the great National
      Department. 'A hard case it has been, and a hard case it is on Doyce,' he
      finished by saying, with all the honest feeling the topic roused in him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hard indeed,' Pancks acquiesced. 'But you manage for him, Mr Clennam?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you mean?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Manage the money part of the business?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. As well as I can.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Manage it better, sir,' said Pancks. 'Recompense him for his toils and
      disappointments. Give him the chances of the time. He'll never benefit
      himself in that way, patient and preoccupied workman. He looks to you,
      sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do my best, Pancks,' returned Clennam, uneasily. 'As to duly weighing
      and considering these new enterprises of which I have had no experience, I
      doubt if I am fit for it, I am growing old.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Growing old?' cried Pancks. 'Ha, ha!'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was something so indubitably genuine in the wonderful laugh, and
      series of snorts and puffs, engendered in Mr Pancks's astonishment at, and
      utter rejection of, the idea, that his being quite in earnest could not be
      questioned.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Growing old?' cried Pancks. 'Hear, hear, hear! Old? Hear him, hear him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The positive refusal expressed in Mr Pancks's continued snorts, no less
      than in these exclamations, to entertain the sentiment for a single
      instant, drove Arthur away from it. Indeed, he was fearful of something
      happening to Mr Pancks in the violent conflict that took place between the
      breath he jerked out of himself and the smoke he jerked into himself. This
      abandonment of the second topic threw him on the third.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Young, old, or middle-aged, Pancks,' he said, when there was a favourable
      pause, 'I am in a very anxious and uncertain state; a state that even
      leads me to doubt whether anything now seeming to belong to me, may be
      really mine. Shall I tell you how this is? Shall I put a great trust in
      you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You shall, sir,' said Pancks, 'if you believe me worthy of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may!' Mr Pancks's short and sharp rejoinder, confirmed by the sudden
      outstretching of his coaly hand, was most expressive and convincing.
      Arthur shook the hand warmly.
    </p>
    <p>
      He then, softening the nature of his old apprehensions as much as was
      possible consistently with their being made intelligible and never
      alluding to his mother by name, but speaking vaguely of a relation of his,
      confided to Mr Pancks a broad outline of the misgivings he entertained,
      and of the interview he had witnessed. Mr Pancks listened with such
      interest that, regardless of the charms of the Eastern pipe, he put it in
      the grate among the fire-irons, and occupied his hands during the whole
      recital in so erecting the loops and hooks of hair all over his head, that
      he looked, when it came to a conclusion, like a journeyman Hamlet in
      conversation with his father's spirit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Brings me back, sir,' was his exclamation then, with a startling touch on
      Clennam's knee, 'brings me back, sir, to the Investments! I don't say
      anything of your making yourself poor to repair a wrong you never
      committed. That's you. A man must be himself. But I say this, fearing you
      may want money to save your own blood from exposure and disgrace&mdash;make
      as much as you can!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur shook his head, but looked at him thoughtfully too.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Be as rich as you can, sir,' Pancks adjured him with a powerful
      concentration of all his energies on the advice. 'Be as rich as you
      honestly can. It's your duty. Not for your sake, but for the sake of
      others. Take time by the forelock. Poor Mr Doyce (who really <i>is</i>
      growing old) depends upon you. Your relative depends upon you. You don't
      know what depends upon you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, well, well!' returned Arthur. 'Enough for to-night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'One word more, Mr Clennam,' retorted Pancks, 'and then enough for
      to-night. Why should you leave all the gains to the gluttons, knaves, and
      impostors? Why should you leave all the gains that are to be got to my
      proprietor and the like of him? Yet you're always doing it. When I say
      you, I mean such men as you. You know you are. Why, I see it every day of
      my life. I see nothing else. It's my business to see it. Therefore I say,'
      urged Pancks, 'Go in and win!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But what of Go in and lose?' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can't be done, sir,' returned Pancks. 'I have looked into it. Name up
      everywhere&mdash;immense resources&mdash;enormous capital&mdash;great
      position&mdash;high connection&mdash;government influence. Can't be done!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Gradually, after this closing exposition, Mr Pancks subsided; allowed his
      hair to droop as much as it ever would droop on the utmost persuasion;
      reclaimed the pipe from the fire-irons, filled it anew, and smoked it out.
      They said little more; but were company to one another in silently
      pursuing the same subjects, and did not part until midnight. On taking his
      leave, Mr Pancks, when he had shaken hands with Clennam, worked completely
      round him before he steamed out at the door. This, Arthur received as an
      assurance that he might implicitly rely on Pancks, if he ever should come
      to need assistance; either in any of the matters of which they had spoken
      that night, or any other subject that could in any way affect himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      At intervals all next day, and even while his attention was fixed on other
      things, he thought of Mr Pancks's investment of his thousand pounds, and
      of his having 'looked into it.' He thought of Mr Pancks's being so
      sanguine in this matter, and of his not being usually of a sanguine
      character. He thought of the great National Department, and of the delight
      it would be to him to see Doyce better off. He thought of the darkly
      threatening place that went by the name of Home in his remembrance, and of
      the gathering shadows which made it yet more darkly threatening than of
      old. He observed anew that wherever he went, he saw, or heard, or touched,
      the celebrated name of Merdle; he found it difficult even to remain at his
      desk a couple of hours, without having it presented to one of his bodily
      senses through some agency or other. He began to think it was curious too
      that it should be everywhere, and that nobody but he should seem to have
      any mistrust of it. Though indeed he began to remember, when he got to
      this, even <i>he</i> did not mistrust it; he had only happened to keep
      aloof from it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Such symptoms, when a disease of the kind is rife, are usually the signs
      of sickening.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0050" id="link2HCH0050"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 14. Taking Advice
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen it became known to the Britons on the shore of the yellow Tiber that
      their intelligent compatriot, Mr Sparkler, was made one of the Lords of
      their Circumlocution Office, they took it as a piece of news with which
      they had no nearer concern than with any other piece of news&mdash;any
      other Accident or Offence&mdash;in the English papers. Some laughed; some
      said, by way of complete excuse, that the post was virtually a sinecure,
      and any fool who could spell his name was good enough for it; some, and
      these the more solemn political oracles, said that Decimus did wisely to
      strengthen himself, and that the sole constitutional purpose of all places
      within the gift of Decimus, was, that Decimus <i>should</i> strengthen
      himself. A few bilious Britons there were who would not subscribe to this
      article of faith; but their objection was purely theoretical. In a
      practical point of view, they listlessly abandoned the matter, as being
      the business of some other Britons unknown, somewhere, or nowhere. In like
      manner, at home, great numbers of Britons maintained, for as long as
      four-and-twenty consecutive hours, that those invisible and anonymous
      Britons 'ought to take it up;' and that if they quietly acquiesced in it,
      they deserved it. But of what class the remiss Britons were composed, and
      where the unlucky creatures hid themselves, and why they hid themselves,
      and how it constantly happened that they neglected their interests, when
      so many other Britons were quite at a loss to account for their not
      looking after those interests, was not, either upon the shore of the
      yellow Tiber or the shore of the black Thames, made apparent to men.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Merdle circulated the news, as she received congratulations on it,
      with a careless grace that displayed it to advantage, as the setting
      displays the jewel. Yes, she said, Edmund had taken the place. Mr Merdle
      wished him to take it, and he had taken it. She hoped Edmund might like
      it, but really she didn't know. It would keep him in town a good deal, and
      he preferred the country. Still, it was not a disagreeable position&mdash;and
      it was a position. There was no denying that the thing was a compliment to
      Mr Merdle, and was not a bad thing for Edmund if he liked it. It was just
      as well that he should have something to do, and it was just as well that
      he should have something for doing it. Whether it would be more agreeable
      to Edmund than the army, remained to be seen.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus the Bosom; accomplished in the art of seeming to make things of small
      account, and really enhancing them in the process. While Henry Gowan, whom
      Decimus had thrown away, went through the whole round of his acquaintance
      between the Gate of the People and the town of Albano, vowing, almost (but
      not quite) with tears in his eyes, that Sparkler was the
      sweetest-tempered, simplest-hearted, altogether most lovable jackass that
      ever grazed on the public common; and that only one circumstance could
      have delighted him (Gowan) more, than his (the beloved jackass's) getting
      this post, and that would have been his (Gowan's) getting it himself. He
      said it was the very thing for Sparkler. There was nothing to do, and he
      would do it charmingly; there was a handsome salary to draw, and he would
      draw it charmingly; it was a delightful, appropriate, capital appointment;
      and he almost forgave the donor his slight of himself, in his joy that the
      dear donkey for whom he had so great an affection was so admirably
      stabled. Nor did his benevolence stop here. He took pains, on all social
      occasions, to draw Mr Sparkler out, and make him conspicuous before the
      company; and, although the considerate action always resulted in that
      young gentleman's making a dreary and forlorn mental spectacle of himself,
      the friendly intention was not to be doubted.
    </p>
    <p>
      Unless, indeed, it chanced to be doubted by the object of Mr Sparkler's
      affections. Miss Fanny was now in the difficult situation of being
      universally known in that light, and of not having dismissed Mr Sparkler,
      however capriciously she used him. Hence, she was sufficiently identified
      with the gentleman to feel compromised by his being more than usually
      ridiculous; and hence, being by no means deficient in quickness, she
      sometimes came to his rescue against Gowan, and did him very good service.
      But, while doing this, she was ashamed of him, undetermined whether to get
      rid of him or more decidedly encourage him, distracted with apprehensions
      that she was every day becoming more and more immeshed in her
      uncertainties, and tortured by misgivings that Mrs Merdle triumphed in her
      distress. With this tumult in her mind, it is no subject for surprise that
      Miss Fanny came home one night in a state of agitation from a concert and
      ball at Mrs Merdle's house, and on her sister affectionately trying to
      soothe her, pushed that sister away from the toilette-table at which she
      sat angrily trying to cry, and declared with a heaving bosom that she
      detested everybody, and she wished she was dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Fanny, what is the matter? Tell me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Matter, you little Mole,' said Fanny. 'If you were not the blindest of
      the blind, you would have no occasion to ask me. The idea of daring to
      pretend to assert that you have eyes in your head, and yet ask me what's
      the matter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it Mr Sparkler, dear?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mis-ter Spark-ler!' repeated Fanny, with unbounded scorn, as if he were
      the last subject in the Solar system that could possibly be near her mind.
      'No, Miss Bat, it is not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Immediately afterwards, she became remorseful for having called her sister
      names; declaring with sobs that she knew she made herself hateful, but
      that everybody drove her to it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't think you are well to-night, dear Fanny.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stuff and nonsense!' replied the young lady, turning angry again; 'I am
      as well as you are. Perhaps I might say better, and yet make no boast of
      it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Poor Little Dorrit, not seeing her way to the offering of any soothing
      words that would escape repudiation, deemed it best to remain quiet. At
      first, Fanny took this ill, too; protesting to her looking-glass, that of
      all the trying sisters a girl could have, she did think the most trying
      sister was a flat sister. That she knew she was at times a wretched
      temper; that she knew she made herself hateful; that when she made herself
      hateful, nothing would do her half the good as being told so; but that,
      being afflicted with a flat sister, she never <i>was</i> told so, and the
      consequence resulted that she was absolutely tempted and goaded into
      making herself disagreeable. Besides (she angrily told her looking-glass),
      she didn't want to be forgiven. It was not a right example, that she
      should be constantly stooping to be forgiven by a younger sister. And this
      was the Art of it&mdash;that she was always being placed in the position
      of being forgiven, whether she liked it or not. Finally she burst into
      violent weeping, and, when her sister came and sat close at her side to
      comfort her, said, 'Amy, you're an Angel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, I tell you what, my Pet,' said Fanny, when her sister's gentleness
      had calmed her, 'it now comes to this; that things cannot and shall not go
      on as they are at present going on, and that there must be an end of this,
      one way or another.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As the announcement was vague, though very peremptory, Little Dorrit
      returned, 'Let us talk about it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite so, my dear,' assented Fanny, as she dried her eyes. 'Let us talk
      about it. I am rational again now, and you shall advise me. <i>Will</i>
      you advise me, my sweet child?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Even Amy smiled at this notion, but she said, 'I will, Fanny, as well as I
      can.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, dearest Amy,' returned Fanny, kissing her. 'You are my
      anchor.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Having embraced her Anchor with great affection, Fanny took a bottle of
      sweet toilette water from the table, and called to her maid for a fine
      handkerchief. She then dismissed that attendant for the night, and went on
      to be advised; dabbing her eyes and forehead from time to time to cool
      them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My love,' Fanny began, 'our characters and points of view are
      sufficiently different (kiss me again, my darling), to make it very
      probable that I shall surprise you by what I am going to say. What I am
      going to say, my dear, is, that notwithstanding our property, we labour,
      socially speaking, under disadvantages. You don't quite understand what I
      mean, Amy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have no doubt I shall,' said Amy, mildly, 'after a few words more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, my dear, what I mean is, that we are, after all, newcomers into
      fashionable life.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure, Fanny,' Little Dorrit interposed in her zealous admiration,
      'no one need find that out in you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, my dear child, perhaps not,' said Fanny, 'though it's most kind and
      most affectionate in you, you precious girl, to say so.' Here she dabbed
      her sister's forehead, and blew upon it a little. 'But you are,' resumed
      Fanny, 'as is well known, the dearest little thing that ever was! To
      resume, my child. Pa is extremely gentlemanly and extremely well informed,
      but he is, in some trifling respects, a little different from other
      gentlemen of his fortune: partly on account of what he has gone through,
      poor dear: partly, I fancy, on account of its often running in his mind
      that other people are thinking about that, while he is talking to them.
      Uncle, my love, is altogether unpresentable. Though a dear creature to
      whom I am tenderly attached, he is, socially speaking, shocking. Edward is
      frightfully expensive and dissipated. I don't mean that there is anything
      ungenteel in that itself&mdash;far from it&mdash;but I do mean that he
      doesn't do it well, and that he doesn't, if I may so express myself, get
      the money's-worth in the sort of dissipated reputation that attaches to
      him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Poor Edward!' sighed Little Dorrit, with the whole family history in the
      sigh.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. And poor you and me, too,' returned Fanny, rather sharply. 'Very
      true! Then, my dear, we have no mother, and we have a Mrs General. And I
      tell you again, darling, that Mrs General, if I may reverse a common
      proverb and adapt it to her, is a cat in gloves who <i>will</i> catch
      mice. That woman, I am quite sure and confident, will be our
      mother-in-law.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can hardly think, Fanny&mdash;' Fanny stopped her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, don't argue with me about it, Amy,' said she, 'because I know
      better.' Feeling that she had been sharp again, she dabbed her sister's
      forehead again, and blew upon it again. 'To resume once more, my dear. It
      then becomes a question with me (I am proud and spirited, Amy, as you very
      well know: too much so, I dare say) whether I shall make up my mind to
      take it upon myself to carry the family through.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How?' asked her sister, anxiously.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will not,' said Fanny, without answering the question, 'submit to be
      mother-in-lawed by Mrs General; and I will not submit to be, in any
      respect whatever, either patronised or tormented by Mrs Merdle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit laid her hand upon the hand that held the bottle of sweet
      water, with a still more anxious look. Fanny, quite punishing her own
      forehead with the vehement dabs she now began to give it, fitfully went
      on.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That he has somehow or other, and how is of no consequence, attained a
      very good position, no one can deny. That it is a very good connection, no
      one can deny. And as to the question of clever or not clever, I doubt very
      much whether a clever husband would be suitable to me. I cannot submit. I
      should not be able to defer to him enough.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O, my dear Fanny!' expostulated Little Dorrit, upon whom a kind of terror
      had been stealing as she perceived what her sister meant. 'If you loved
      any one, all this feeling would change. If you loved any one, you would no
      more be yourself, but you would quite lose and forget yourself in your
      devotion to him. If you loved him, Fanny&mdash;' Fanny had stopped the
      dabbing hand, and was looking at her fixedly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'O, indeed!' cried Fanny. 'Really? Bless me, how much some people know of
      some subjects! They say every one has a subject, and I certainly seem to
      have hit upon yours, Amy. There, you little thing, I was only in fun,'
      dabbing her sister's forehead; 'but don't you be a silly puss, and don't
      you think flightily and eloquently about degenerate impossibilities.
      There! Now, I'll go back to myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Fanny, let me say first, that I would far rather we worked for a
      scanty living again than I would see you rich and married to Mr Sparkler.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>Let</i> you say, my dear?' retorted Fanny. 'Why, of course, I will <i>let</i>
      you say anything. There is no constraint upon you, I hope. We are together
      to talk it over. And as to marrying Mr Sparkler, I have not the slightest
      intention of doing so to-night, my dear, or to-morrow morning either.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But at some time?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At no time, for anything I know at present,' answered Fanny, with
      indifference. Then, suddenly changing her indifference into a burning
      restlessness, she added, 'You talk about the clever men, you little thing!
      It's all very fine and easy to talk about the clever men; but where are
      they? <i>I</i> don't see them anywhere near <i>me</i>!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Fanny, so short a time&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Short time or long time,' interrupted Fanny. 'I am impatient of our
      situation. I don't like our situation, and very little would induce me to
      change it. Other girls, differently reared and differently circumstanced
      altogether, might wonder at what I say or may do. Let them. They are
      driven by their lives and characters; I am driven by mine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny, my dear Fanny, you know that you have qualities to make you the
      wife of one very superior to Mr Sparkler.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, my dear Amy,' retorted Fanny, parodying her words, 'I know that I
      wish to have a more defined and distinct position, in which I can assert
      myself with greater effect against that insolent woman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Would you therefore&mdash;forgive my asking, Fanny&mdash;therefore marry
      her son?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, perhaps,' said Fanny, with a triumphant smile. 'There may be many
      less promising ways of arriving at an end than that, my dear. That piece
      of insolence may think, now, that it would be a great success to get her
      son off upon me, and shelve me. But, perhaps, she little thinks how I
      would retort upon her if I married her son. I would oppose her in
      everything, and compete with her. I would make it the business of my
      life.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny set down the bottle when she came to this, and walked about the
      room; always stopping and standing still while she spoke.
    </p>
    <p>
      'One thing I could certainly do, my child: I could make her older. And I
      would!'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was followed by another walk.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I would talk of her as an old woman. I would pretend to know&mdash;if I
      didn't, but I should from her son&mdash;all about her age. And she should
      hear me say, Amy: affectionately, quite dutifully and affectionately: how
      well she looked, considering her time of life. I could make her seem older
      at once, by being myself so much younger. I may not be as handsome as she
      is; I am not a fair judge of that question, I suppose; but I know I am
      handsome enough to be a thorn in her side. And I would be!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear sister, would you condemn yourself to an unhappy life for this?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It wouldn't be an unhappy life, Amy. It would be the life I am fitted
      for. Whether by disposition, or whether by circumstances, is no matter; I
      am better fitted for such a life than for almost any other.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was something of a desolate tone in those words; but, with a short
      proud laugh she took another walk, and after passing a great looking-glass
      came to another stop.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Figure! Figure, Amy! Well. The woman has a good figure. I will give her
      her due, and not deny it. But is it so far beyond all others that it is
      altogether unapproachable? Upon my word, I am not so sure of it. Give some
      much younger woman the latitude as to dress that she has, being married;
      and we would see about that, my dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Something in the thought that was agreeable and flattering, brought her
      back to her seat in a gayer temper. She took her sister's hands in hers,
      and clapped all four hands above her head as she looked in her sister's
      face laughing:
    </p>
    <p>
      'And the dancer, Amy, that she has quite forgotten&mdash;the dancer who
      bore no sort of resemblance to me, and of whom I never remind her, oh dear
      no!&mdash;should dance through her life, and dance in her way, to such a
      tune as would disturb her insolent placidity a little. Just a little, my
      dear Amy, just a little!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Meeting an earnest and imploring look in Amy's face, she brought the four
      hands down, and laid only one on Amy's lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, don't argue with me, child,' she said in a sterner way, 'because it
      is of no use. I understand these subjects much better than you do. I have
      not nearly made up my mind, but it may be. Now we have talked this over
      comfortably, and may go to bed. You best and dearest little mouse, Good
      night!' With those words Fanny weighed her Anchor, and&mdash;having taken
      so much advice&mdash;left off being advised for that occasion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thenceforward, Amy observed Mr Sparkler's treatment by his enslaver, with
      new reasons for attaching importance to all that passed between them.
      There were times when Fanny appeared quite unable to endure his mental
      feebleness, and when she became so sharply impatient of it that she would
      all but dismiss him for good. There were other times when she got on much
      better with him; when he amused her, and when her sense of superiority
      seemed to counterbalance that opposite side of the scale. If Mr Sparkler
      had been other than the faithfullest and most submissive of swains, he was
      sufficiently hard pressed to have fled from the scene of his trials, and
      have set at least the whole distance from Rome to London between himself
      and his enchantress. But he had no greater will of his own than a boat has
      when it is towed by a steam-ship; and he followed his cruel mistress
      through rough and smooth, on equally strong compulsion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Merdle, during these passages, said little to Fanny, but said more
      about her. She was, as it were, forced to look at her through her
      eye-glass, and in general conversation to allow commendations of her
      beauty to be wrung from her by its irresistible demands. The defiant
      character it assumed when Fanny heard these extollings (as it generally
      happened that she did), was not expressive of concessions to the impartial
      bosom; but the utmost revenge the bosom took was, to say audibly, 'A
      spoilt beauty&mdash;but with that face and shape, who could wonder?'
    </p>
    <p>
      It might have been about a month or six weeks after the night of the new
      advice, when Little Dorrit began to think she detected some new
      understanding between Mr Sparkler and Fanny. Mr Sparkler, as if in
      attendance to some compact, scarcely ever spoke without first looking
      towards Fanny for leave. That young lady was too discreet ever to look
      back again; but, if Mr Sparkler had permission to speak, she remained
      silent; if he had not, she herself spoke. Moreover, it became plain
      whenever Henry Gowan attempted to perform the friendly office of drawing
      him out, that he was not to be drawn. And not only that, but Fanny would
      presently, without any pointed application in the world, chance to say
      something with such a sting in it that Gowan would draw back as if he had
      put his hand into a bee-hive.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was yet another circumstance which went a long way to confirm Little
      Dorrit in her fears, though it was not a great circumstance in itself. Mr
      Sparkler's demeanour towards herself changed. It became fraternal.
      Sometimes, when she was in the outer circle of assemblies&mdash;at their
      own residence, at Mrs Merdle's, or elsewhere&mdash;she would find herself
      stealthily supported round the waist by Mr Sparkler's arm. Mr Sparkler
      never offered the slightest explanation of this attention; but merely
      smiled with an air of blundering, contented, good-natured proprietorship,
      which, in so heavy a gentleman, was ominously expressive.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was at home one day, thinking about Fanny with a heavy
      heart. They had a room at one end of their drawing-room suite, nearly all
      irregular bay-window, projecting over the street, and commanding all the
      picturesque life and variety of the Corso, both up and down. At three or
      four o'clock in the afternoon, English time, the view from this window was
      very bright and peculiar; and Little Dorrit used to sit and muse here,
      much as she had been used to while away the time in her balcony at Venice.
      Seated thus one day, she was softly touched on the shoulder, and Fanny
      said, 'Well, Amy dear,' and took her seat at her side. Their seat was a
      part of the window; when there was anything in the way of a procession
      going on, they used to have bright draperies hung out of the window, and
      used to kneel or sit on this seat, and look out at it, leaning on the
      brilliant colour. But there was no procession that day, and Little Dorrit
      was rather surprised by Fanny's being at home at that hour, as she was
      generally out on horseback then.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Amy,' said Fanny, 'what are you thinking of, little one?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was thinking of you, Fanny.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No? What a coincidence! I declare here's some one else. You were not
      thinking of this some one else too; were you, Amy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Amy <i>had</i> been thinking of this some one else too; for it was Mr
      Sparkler. She did not say so, however, as she gave him her hand. Mr
      Sparkler came and sat down on the other side of her, and she felt the
      fraternal railing come behind her, and apparently stretch on to include
      Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, my little sister,' said Fanny with a sigh, 'I suppose you know what
      this means?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She's as beautiful as she's doated on,' stammered Mr Sparkler&mdash;'and
      there's no nonsense about her&mdash;it's arranged&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You needn't explain, Edmund,' said Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, my love,' said Mr Sparkler.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In short, pet,' proceeded Fanny, 'on the whole, we are engaged. We must
      tell papa about it either to-night or to-morrow, according to the
      opportunities. Then it's done, and very little more need be said.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Fanny,' said Mr Sparkler, with deference, 'I should like to say a
      word to Amy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, well! Say it for goodness' sake,' returned the young lady.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am convinced, my dear Amy,' said Mr Sparkler, 'that if ever there was a
      girl, next to your highly endowed and beautiful sister, who had no
      nonsense about her&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We know all about that, Edmund,' interposed Miss Fanny. 'Never mind that.
      Pray go on to something else besides our having no nonsense about us.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my love,' said Mr Sparkler. 'And I assure you, Amy, that nothing can
      be a greater happiness to myself, myself&mdash;next to the happiness of
      being so highly honoured with the choice of a glorious girl who hasn't an
      atom of&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, Edmund, pray!' interrupted Fanny, with a slight pat of her pretty
      foot upon the floor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My love, you're quite right,' said Mr Sparkler, 'and I know I have a
      habit of it. What I wished to declare was, that nothing can be a greater
      happiness to myself, myself-next to the happiness of being united to
      pre-eminently the most glorious of girls&mdash;than to have the happiness
      of cultivating the affectionate acquaintance of Amy. I may not myself,'
      said Mr Sparkler manfully, 'be up to the mark on some other subjects at a
      short notice, and I am aware that if you were to poll Society the general
      opinion would be that I am not; but on the subject of Amy I AM up to the
      mark!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler kissed her, in witness thereof.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A knife and fork and an apartment,' proceeded Mr Sparkler, growing, in
      comparison with his oratorical antecedents, quite diffuse, 'will ever be
      at Amy's disposal. My Governor, I am sure, will always be proud to
      entertain one whom I so much esteem. And regarding my mother,' said Mr
      Sparkler, 'who is a remarkably fine woman, with&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edmund, Edmund!' cried Miss Fanny, as before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'With submission, my soul,' pleaded Mr Sparkler. 'I know I have a habit of
      it, and I thank you very much, my adorable girl, for taking the trouble to
      correct it; but my mother is admitted on all sides to be a remarkably fine
      woman, and she really hasn't any.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That may be, or may not be,' returned Fanny, 'but pray don't mention it
      any more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will not, my love,' said Mr Sparkler.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then, in fact, you have nothing more to say, Edmund; have you?' inquired
      Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So far from it, my adorable girl,' answered Mr Sparkler, 'I apologise for
      having said so much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler perceived, by a kind of inspiration, that the question implied
      had he not better go? He therefore withdrew the fraternal railing, and
      neatly said that he thought he would, with submission, take his leave. He
      did not go without being congratulated by Amy, as well as she could
      discharge that office in the flutter and distress of her spirits.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he was gone, she said, 'O Fanny, Fanny!' and turned to her sister in
      the bright window, and fell upon her bosom and cried there. Fanny laughed
      at first; but soon laid her face against her sister's and cried too&mdash;a
      little. It was the last time Fanny ever showed that there was any hidden,
      suppressed, or conquered feeling in her on the matter. From that hour the
      way she had chosen lay before her, and she trod it with her own imperious
      self-willed step.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0051" id="link2HCH0051"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 15. No just Cause or Impediment why these Two Persons
    </h2>
    <p>
      should not be joined together
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, on being informed by his elder daughter that she had accepted
      matrimonial overtures from Mr Sparkler, to whom she had plighted her
      troth, received the communication at once with great dignity and with a
      large display of parental pride; his dignity dilating with the widened
      prospect of advantageous ground from which to make acquaintances, and his
      parental pride being developed by Miss Fanny's ready sympathy with that
      great object of his existence. He gave her to understand that her noble
      ambition found harmonious echoes in his heart; and bestowed his blessing
      on her, as a child brimful of duty and good principle, self-devoted to the
      aggrandisement of the family name.
    </p>
    <p>
      To Mr Sparkler, when Miss Fanny permitted him to appear, Mr Dorrit said,
      he would not disguise that the alliance Mr Sparkler did him the honour to
      propose was highly congenial to his feelings; both as being in unison with
      the spontaneous affections of his daughter Fanny, and as opening a family
      connection of a gratifying nature with Mr Merdle, the master spirit of the
      age. Mrs Merdle also, as a leading lady rich in distinction, elegance,
      grace, and beauty, he mentioned in very laudatory terms. He felt it his
      duty to remark (he was sure a gentleman of Mr Sparkler's fine sense would
      interpret him with all delicacy), that he could not consider this proposal
      definitely determined on, until he should have had the privilege of
      holding some correspondence with Mr Merdle; and of ascertaining it to be
      so far accordant with the views of that eminent gentleman as that his (Mr
      Dorrit's) daughter would be received on that footing which her station in
      life and her dowry and expectations warranted him in requiring that she
      should maintain in what he trusted he might be allowed, without the
      appearance of being mercenary, to call the Eye of the Great World. While
      saying this, which his character as a gentleman of some little station,
      and his character as a father, equally demanded of him, he would not be so
      diplomatic as to conceal that the proposal remained in hopeful abeyance
      and under conditional acceptance, and that he thanked Mr Sparkler for the
      compliment rendered to himself and to his family. He concluded with some
      further and more general observations on the&mdash;ha&mdash;character of
      an independent gentleman, and the&mdash;hum&mdash;character of a possibly
      too partial and admiring parent. To sum the whole up shortly, he received
      Mr Sparkler's offer very much as he would have received three or four
      half-crowns from him in the days that were gone.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler, finding himself stunned by the words thus heaped upon his
      inoffensive head, made a brief though pertinent rejoinder; the same being
      neither more nor less than that he had long perceived Miss Fanny to have
      no nonsense about her, and that he had no doubt of its being all right
      with his Governor. At that point the object of his affections shut him up
      like a box with a spring lid, and sent him away.
    </p>
    <p>
      Proceeding shortly afterwards to pay his respects to the Bosom, Mr Dorrit
      was received by it with great consideration. Mrs Merdle had heard of this
      affair from Edmund. She had been surprised at first, because she had not
      thought Edmund a marrying man. Society had not thought Edmund a marrying
      man. Still, of course she had seen, as a woman (we women did instinctively
      see these things, Mr Dorrit!), that Edmund had been immensely captivated
      by Miss Dorrit, and she had openly said that Mr Dorrit had much to answer
      for in bringing so charming a girl abroad to turn the heads of his
      countrymen.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have I the honour to conclude, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'that the
      direction which Mr Sparkler's affections have taken, is&mdash;ha-approved
      of by you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I assure you, Mr Dorrit,' returned the lady, 'that, personally, I am
      charmed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      That was very gratifying to Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Personally,' repeated Mrs Merdle, 'charmed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This casual repetition of the word 'personally,' moved Mr Dorrit to
      express his hope that Mr Merdle's approval, too, would not be wanting?
    </p>
    <p>
      'I cannot,' said Mrs Merdle, 'take upon myself to answer positively for Mr
      Merdle; gentlemen, especially gentlemen who are what Society calls
      capitalists, having their own ideas of these matters. But I should think&mdash;merely
      giving an opinion, Mr Dorrit&mdash;I should think Mr Merdle would be upon
      the whole,' here she held a review of herself before adding at her
      leisure, 'quite charmed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At the mention of gentlemen whom Society called capitalists, Mr Dorrit had
      coughed, as if some internal demur were breaking out of him. Mrs Merdle
      had observed it, and went on to take up the cue.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Though, indeed, Mr Dorrit, it is scarcely necessary for me to make that
      remark, except in the mere openness of saying what is uppermost to one
      whom I so highly regard, and with whom I hope I may have the pleasure of
      being brought into still more agreeable relations. For one cannot but see
      the great probability of your considering such things from Mr Merdle's own
      point of view, except indeed that circumstances have made it Mr Merdle's
      accidental fortune, or misfortune, to be engaged in business transactions,
      and that they, however vast, may a little cramp his horizons. I am a very
      child as to having any notion of business,' said Mrs Merdle; 'but I am
      afraid, Mr Dorrit, it may have that tendency.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This skilful see-saw of Mr Dorrit and Mrs Merdle, so that each of them
      sent the other up, and each of them sent the other down, and neither had
      the advantage, acted as a sedative on Mr Dorrit's cough. He remarked with
      his utmost politeness, that he must beg to protest against its being
      supposed, even by Mrs Merdle, the accomplished and graceful (to which
      compliment she bent herself), that such enterprises as Mr Merdle's, apart
      as they were from the puny undertakings of the rest of men, had any lower
      tendency than to enlarge and expand the genius in which they were
      conceived. 'You are generosity itself,' said Mrs Merdle in return, smiling
      her best smile; 'let us hope so. But I confess I am almost superstitious
      in my ideas about business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit threw in another compliment here, to the effect that business,
      like the time which was precious in it, was made for slaves; and that it
      was not for Mrs Merdle, who ruled all hearts at her supreme pleasure, to
      have anything to do with it. Mrs Merdle laughed, and conveyed to Mr Dorrit
      an idea that the Bosom flushed&mdash;which was one of her best effects.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say so much,' she then explained, 'merely because Mr Merdle has always
      taken the greatest interest in Edmund, and has always expressed the
      strongest desire to advance his prospects. Edmund's public position, I
      think you know. His private position rests solely with Mr Merdle. In my
      foolish incapacity for business, I assure you I know no more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit again expressed, in his own way, the sentiment that business was
      below the ken of enslavers and enchantresses. He then mentioned his
      intention, as a gentleman and a parent, of writing to Mr Merdle. Mrs
      Merdle concurred with all her heart&mdash;or with all her art, which was
      exactly the same thing&mdash;and herself despatched a preparatory letter
      by the next post to the eighth wonder of the world.
    </p>
    <p>
      In his epistolary communication, as in his dialogues and discourses on the
      great question to which it related, Mr Dorrit surrounded the subject with
      flourishes, as writing-masters embellish copy-books and ciphering-books:
      where the titles of the elementary rules of arithmetic diverge into swans,
      eagles, griffins, and other calligraphic recreations, and where the
      capital letters go out of their minds and bodies into ecstasies of pen and
      ink. Nevertheless, he did render the purport of his letter sufficiently
      clear, to enable Mr Merdle to make a decent pretence of having learnt it
      from that source. Mr Merdle replied to it accordingly. Mr Dorrit replied
      to Mr Merdle; Mr Merdle replied to Mr Dorrit; and it was soon announced
      that the corresponding powers had come to a satisfactory understanding.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, and not before, Miss Fanny burst upon the scene, completely arrayed
      for her new part. Now and not before, she wholly absorbed Mr Sparkler in
      her light, and shone for both, and twenty more. No longer feeling that
      want of a defined place and character which had caused her so much
      trouble, this fair ship began to steer steadily on a shaped course, and to
      swim with a weight and balance that developed her sailing qualities.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The preliminaries being so satisfactorily arranged, I think I will now,
      my dear,' said Mr Dorrit, 'announce&mdash;ha&mdash;formally, to Mrs
      General&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa,' returned Fanny, taking him up short upon that name, 'I don't see
      what Mrs General has got to do with it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said Mr Dorrit, 'it will be an act of courtesy to&mdash;hum&mdash;a
      lady, well bred and refined&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I am sick of Mrs General's good breeding and refinement, papa,' said
      Fanny. 'I am tired of Mrs General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tired,' repeated Mr Dorrit in reproachful astonishment, 'of&mdash;ha&mdash;Mrs
      General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite disgusted with her, papa,' said Fanny. 'I really don't see what she
      has to do with my marriage. Let her keep to her own matrimonial projects&mdash;if
      she has any.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny,' returned Mr Dorrit, with a grave and weighty slowness upon him,
      contrasting strongly with his daughter's levity: 'I beg the favour of your
      explaining&mdash;ha&mdash;what it is you mean.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean, papa,' said Fanny, 'that if Mrs General should happen to have any
      matrimonial projects of her own, I dare say they are quite enough to
      occupy her spare time. And that if she has not, so much the better; but
      still I don't wish to have the honour of making announcements to her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Permit me to ask you, Fanny,' said Mr Dorrit, 'why not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because she can find my engagement out for herself, papa,' retorted
      Fanny. 'She is watchful enough, I dare say. I think I have seen her so.
      Let her find it out for herself. If she should not find it out for
      herself, she will know it when I am married. And I hope you will not
      consider me wanting in affection for you, papa, if I say it strikes me
      that will be quite enough for Mrs General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny,' returned Mr Dorrit, 'I am amazed, I am displeased by this&mdash;hum&mdash;this
      capricious and unintelligible display of animosity towards&mdash;ha&mdash;Mrs
      General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do not, if you please, papa,' urged Fanny, 'call it animosity, because I
      assure you I do not consider Mrs General worth my animosity.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At this, Mr Dorrit rose from his chair with a fixed look of severe
      reproof, and remained standing in his dignity before his daughter. His
      daughter, turning the bracelet on her arm, and now looking at him, and now
      looking from him, said, 'Very well, papa. I am truly sorry if you don't
      like it; but I can't help it. I am not a child, and I am not Amy, and I
      must speak.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny,' gasped Mr Dorrit, after a majestic silence, 'if I request you to
      remain here, while I formally announce to Mrs General, as an exemplary
      lady, who is&mdash;hum&mdash;a trusted member of this family, the&mdash;ha&mdash;the
      change that is contemplated among us; if I&mdash;ha&mdash;not only request
      it, but&mdash;hum&mdash;insist upon it&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, papa,' Fanny broke in with pointed significance, 'if you make so much
      of it as that, I have in duty nothing to do but comply. I hope I may have
      my thoughts upon the subject, however, for I really cannot help it under
      the circumstances.' So, Fanny sat down with a meekness which, in the
      junction of extremes, became defiance; and her father, either not deigning
      to answer, or not knowing what to answer, summoned Mr Tinkler into his
      presence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Tinkler, unused to receive such short orders in connection with the
      fair varnisher, paused. Mr Dorrit, seeing the whole Marshalsea and all its
      testimonials in the pause, instantly flew at him with, 'How dare you, sir?
      What do you mean?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, sir,' pleaded Mr Tinkler, 'I was wishful to know&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You wished to know nothing, sir,' cried Mr Dorrit, highly flushed. 'Don't
      tell me you did. Ha. You didn't. You are guilty of mockery, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I assure you, sir&mdash;' Mr Tinkler began.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't assure me!' said Mr Dorrit. 'I will not be assured by a domestic.
      You are guilty of mockery. You shall leave me&mdash;hum&mdash;the whole
      establishment shall leave me. What are you waiting for?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only for my orders, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's false,' said Mr Dorrit, 'you have your orders. Ha&mdash;hum. My
      compliments to Mrs General, and I beg the favour of her coming to me, if
      quite convenient, for a few minutes. Those are your orders.'
    </p>
    <p>
      In his execution of this mission, Mr Tinkler perhaps expressed that Mr
      Dorrit was in a raging fume. However that was, Mrs General's skirts were
      very speedily heard outside, coming along&mdash;one might almost have said
      bouncing along&mdash;with unusual expedition. Albeit, they settled down at
      the door and swept into the room with their customary coolness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs General,' said Mr Dorrit, 'take a chair.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General, with a graceful curve of acknowledgment, descended into the
      chair which Mr Dorrit offered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam,' pursued that gentleman, 'as you have had the kindness to
      undertake the&mdash;hum&mdash;formation of my daughters, and as I am
      persuaded that nothing nearly affecting them can&mdash;ha&mdash;be
      indifferent to you&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wholly impossible,' said Mrs General in the calmest of ways.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;I therefore wish to announce to you, madam, that my daughter now
      present&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General made a slight inclination of her head to Fanny, who made a
      very low inclination of her head to Mrs General, and came loftily upright
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;That my daughter Fanny is&mdash;ha&mdash;contracted to be married
      to Mr Sparkler, with whom you are acquainted. Hence, madam, you will be
      relieved of half your difficult charge&mdash;ha&mdash;difficult charge.'
      Mr Dorrit repeated it with his angry eye on Fanny. 'But not, I hope, to
      the&mdash;hum&mdash;diminution of any other portion, direct or indirect,
      of the footing you have at present the kindness to occupy in my family.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, with her gloved hands resting on one
      another in exemplary repose, 'is ever considerate, and ever but too
      appreciative of my friendly services.'
    </p>
    <p>
      (Miss Fanny coughed, as much as to say, 'You are right.')
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dorrit has no doubt exercised the soundest discretion of which the
      circumstances admitted, and I trust will allow me to offer her my sincere
      congratulations. When free from the trammels of passion,' Mrs General
      closed her eyes at the word, as if she could not utter it, and see
      anybody; 'when occurring with the approbation of near relatives; and when
      cementing the proud structure of a family edifice; these are usually
      auspicious events. I trust Miss Dorrit will allow me to offer her my best
      congratulations.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here Mrs General stopped, and added internally, for the setting of her
      face, 'Papa, potatoes, poultry, Prunes, and prism.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dorrit,' she superadded aloud, 'is ever most obliging; and for the
      attention, and I will add distinction, of having this confidence imparted
      to me by himself and Miss Dorrit at this early time, I beg to offer the
      tribute of my thanks. My thanks, and my congratulations, are equally the
      meed of Mr Dorrit and of Miss Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To me,' observed Miss Fanny, 'they are excessively gratifying&mdash;inexpressibly
      so. The relief of finding that you have no objection to make, Mrs General,
      quite takes a load off my mind, I am sure. I hardly know what I should
      have done,' said Fanny, 'if you had interposed any objection, Mrs
      General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General changed her gloves, as to the right glove being uppermost and
      the left undermost, with a Prunes and Prism smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To preserve your approbation, Mrs General,' said Fanny, returning the
      smile with one in which there was no trace of those ingredients, 'will of
      course be the highest object of my married life; to lose it, would of
      course be perfect wretchedness. I am sure your great kindness will not
      object, and I hope papa will not object, to my correcting a small mistake
      you have made, however. The best of us are so liable to mistakes, that
      even you, Mrs General, have fallen into a little error. The attention and
      distinction you have so impressively mentioned, Mrs General, as attaching
      to this confidence, are, I have no doubt, of the most complimentary and
      gratifying description; but they don't at all proceed from me. The merit
      of having consulted you on the subject would have been so great in me,
      that I feel I must not lay claim to it when it really is not mine. It is
      wholly papa's. I am deeply obliged to you for your encouragement and
      patronage, but it was papa who asked for it. I have to thank you, Mrs
      General, for relieving my breast of a great weight by so handsomely giving
      your consent to my engagement, but you have really nothing to thank me
      for. I hope you will always approve of my proceedings after I have left
      home and that my sister also may long remain the favoured object of your
      condescension, Mrs General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With this address, which was delivered in her politest manner, Fanny left
      the room with an elegant and cheerful air&mdash;to tear up-stairs with a
      flushed face as soon as she was out of hearing, pounce in upon her sister,
      call her a little Dormouse, shake her for the better opening of her eyes,
      tell her what had passed below, and ask her what she thought of Pa now?
    </p>
    <p>
      Towards Mrs Merdle, the young lady comported herself with great
      independence and self-possession; but not as yet with any more decided
      opening of hostilities. Occasionally they had a slight skirmish, as when
      Fanny considered herself patted on the back by that lady, or as when Mrs
      Merdle looked particularly young and well; but Mrs Merdle always soon
      terminated those passages of arms by sinking among her cushions with the
      gracefullest indifference, and finding her attention otherwise engaged.
      Society (for that mysterious creature sat upon the Seven Hills too) found
      Miss Fanny vastly improved by her engagement. She was much more
      accessible, much more free and engaging, much less exacting; insomuch that
      she now entertained a host of followers and admirers, to the bitter
      indignation of ladies with daughters to marry, who were to be regarded as
      Having revolted from Society on the Miss Dorrit grievance, and erected a
      rebellious standard. Enjoying the flutter she caused. Miss Dorrit not only
      haughtily moved through it in her own proper person, but haughtily, even
      Ostentatiously, led Mr Sparkler through it too: seeming to say to them
      all, 'If I think proper to march among you in triumphal procession
      attended by this weak captive in bonds, rather than a stronger one, that
      is my business. Enough that I choose to do it!' Mr Sparkler for his part,
      questioned nothing; but went wherever he was taken, did whatever he was
      told, felt that for his bride-elect to be distinguished was for him to be
      distinguished on the easiest terms, and was truly grateful for being so
      openly acknowledged.
    </p>
    <p>
      The winter passing on towards the spring while this condition of affairs
      prevailed, it became necessary for Mr Sparkler to repair to England, and
      take his appointed part in the expression and direction of its genius,
      learning, commerce, spirit, and sense. The land of Shakespeare, Milton,
      Bacon, Newton, Watt, the land of a host of past and present abstract
      philosophers, natural philosophers, and subduers of Nature and Art in
      their myriad forms, called to Mr Sparkler to come and take care of it,
      lest it should perish. Mr Sparkler, unable to resist the agonised cry from
      the depths of his country's soul, declared that he must go.
    </p>
    <p>
      It followed that the question was rendered pressing when, where, and how
      Mr Sparkler should be married to the foremost girl in all this world with
      no nonsense about her. Its solution, after some little mystery and
      secrecy, Miss Fanny herself announced to her sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, my child,' said she, seeking her out one day, 'I am going to tell
      you something. It is only this moment broached; and naturally I hurry to
      you the moment it <i>is</i> broached.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your marriage, Fanny?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My precious child,' said Fanny, 'don't anticipate me. Let me impart my
      confidence to you, you flurried little thing, in my own way. As to your
      guess, if I answered it literally, I should answer no. For really it is
      not my marriage that is in question, half as much as it is Edmund's.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit looked, and perhaps not altogether without cause, somewhat
      at a loss to understand this fine distinction.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am in no difficulty,' exclaimed Fanny, 'and in no hurry. I am not
      wanted at any public office, or to give any vote anywhere else. But Edmund
      is. And Edmund is deeply dejected at the idea of going away by himself,
      and, indeed, I don't like that he should be trusted by himself. For, if
      it's possible&mdash;and it generally is&mdash;to do a foolish thing, he is
      sure to do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she concluded this impartial summary of the reliance that might be
      safely placed upon her future husband, she took off, with an air of
      business, the bonnet she wore, and dangled it by its strings upon the
      ground.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is far more Edmund's question, therefore, than mine. However, we need
      say no more about that. That is self-evident on the face of it. Well, my
      dearest Amy! The point arising, is he to go by himself, or is he not to go
      by himself, this other point arises, are we to be married here and
      shortly, or are we to be married at home months hence?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I see I am going to lose you, Fanny.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What a little thing you are,' cried Fanny, half tolerant and half
      impatient, 'for anticipating one! Pray, my darling, hear me out. That
      woman,' she spoke of Mrs Merdle, of course, 'remains here until after
      Easter; so, in the case of my being married here and going to London with
      Edmund, I should have the start of her. That is something. Further, Amy.
      That woman being out of the way, I don't know that I greatly object to Mr
      Merdle's proposal to Pa that Edmund and I should take up our abode in that
      house&mdash;<i>you</i> know&mdash;where you once went with a dancer, my
      dear, until our own house can be chosen and fitted up. Further still, Amy.
      Papa having always intended to go to town himself, in the spring,&mdash;you
      see, if Edmund and I were married here, we might go off to Florence, where
      papa might join us, and we might all three travel home together. Mr Merdle
      has entreated Pa to stay with him in that same mansion I have mentioned,
      and I suppose he will. But he is master of his own actions; and upon that
      point (which is not at all material) I can't speak positively.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The difference between papa's being master of his own actions and Mr
      Sparkler's being nothing of the sort, was forcibly expressed by Fanny in
      her manner of stating the case. Not that her sister noticed it; for she
      was divided between regret at the coming separation, and a lingering wish
      that she had been included in the plans for visiting England.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And these are the arrangements, Fanny dear?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Arrangements!' repeated Fanny. 'Now, really, child, you are a little
      trying. You know I particularly guarded myself against laying my words
      open to any such construction. What I said was, that certain questions
      present themselves; and these are the questions.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit's thoughtful eyes met hers, tenderly and quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, my own sweet girl,' said Fanny, weighing her bonnet by the strings
      with considerable impatience, 'it's no use staring. A little owl could
      stare. I look to you for advice, Amy. What do you advise me to do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think,' asked Little Dorrit, persuasively, after a short
      hesitation, 'do you think, Fanny, that if you were to put it off for a few
      months, it might be, considering all things, best?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, little Tortoise,' retorted Fanny, with exceeding sharpness. 'I don't
      think anything of the kind.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here, she threw her bonnet from her altogether, and flounced into a chair.
      But, becoming affectionate almost immediately, she flounced out of it
      again, and kneeled down on the floor to take her sister, chair and all, in
      her arms.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't suppose I am hasty or unkind, darling, because I really am not. But
      you are such a little oddity! You make one bite your head off, when one
      wants to be soothing beyond everything. Didn't I tell you, you dearest
      baby, that Edmund can't be trusted by himself? And don't you know that he
      can't?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes, Fanny. You said so, I know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you know it, I know,' retorted Fanny. 'Well, my precious child! If he
      is not to be trusted by himself, it follows, I suppose, that I should go
      with him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It&mdash;seems so, love,' said Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Therefore, having heard the arrangements that are feasible to carry out
      that object, am I to understand, dearest Amy, that on the whole you advise
      me to make them?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It&mdash;seems so, love,' said Little Dorrit again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very well,' cried Fanny with an air of resignation, 'then I suppose it
      must be done! I came to you, my sweet, the moment I saw the doubt, and the
      necessity of deciding. I have now decided. So let it be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      After yielding herself up, in this pattern manner, to sisterly advice and
      the force of circumstances, Fanny became quite benignant: as one who had
      laid her own inclinations at the feet of her dearest friend, and felt a
      glow of conscience in having made the sacrifice. 'After all, my Amy,' she
      said to her sister, 'you are the best of small creatures, and full of good
      sense; and I don't know what I shall ever do without you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      With which words she folded her in a closer embrace, and a really fond
      one.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not that I contemplate doing without You, Amy, by any means, for I hope
      we shall ever be next to inseparable. And now, my pet, I am going to give
      you a word of advice. When you are left alone here with Mrs General&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am to be left alone here with Mrs General?' said Little Dorrit,
      quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, of course, my precious, till papa comes back! Unless you call Edward
      company, which he certainly is not, even when he is here, and still more
      certainly is not when he is away at Naples or in Sicily. I was going to
      say&mdash;but you are such a beloved little Marplot for putting one out&mdash;when
      you are left alone here with Mrs General, Amy, don't you let her slide
      into any sort of artful understanding with you that she is looking after
      Pa, or that Pa is looking after her. She will if she can. I know her sly
      manner of feeling her way with those gloves of hers. But don't you
      comprehend her on any account. And if Pa should tell you when he comes
      back, that he has it in contemplation to make Mrs General your mama (which
      is not the less likely because I am going away), my advice to you is, that
      you say at once, "Papa, I beg to object most strongly. Fanny cautioned me
      about this, and she objected, and I object." I don't mean to say that any
      objection from you, Amy, is likely to be of the smallest effect, or that I
      think you likely to make it with any degree of firmness. But there is a
      principle involved&mdash;a filial principle&mdash;and I implore you not to
      submit to be mother-in-lawed by Mrs General, without asserting it in
      making every one about you as uncomfortable as possible. I don't expect
      you to stand by it&mdash;indeed, I know you won't, Pa being concerned&mdash;but
      I wish to rouse you to a sense of duty. As to any help from me, or as to
      any opposition that I can offer to such a match, you shall not be left in
      the lurch, my love. Whatever weight I may derive from my position as a
      married girl not wholly devoid of attractions&mdash;used, as that position
      always shall be, to oppose that woman&mdash;I will bring to bear, you May
      depend upon it, on the head and false hair (for I am confident it's not
      all real, ugly as it is and unlikely as it appears that any One in their
      Senses would go to the expense of buying it) of Mrs General!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit received this counsel without venturing to oppose it but
      without giving Fanny any reason to believe that she intended to act upon
      it. Having now, as it were, formally wound up her single life and arranged
      her worldly affairs, Fanny proceeded with characteristic ardour to prepare
      for the serious change in her condition.
    </p>
    <p>
      The preparation consisted in the despatch of her maid to Paris under the
      protection of the Courier, for the purchase of that outfit for a bride on
      which it would be extremely low, in the present narrative, to bestow an
      English name, but to which (on a vulgar principle it observes of adhering
      to the language in which it professes to be written) it declines to give a
      French one. The rich and beautiful wardrobe purchased by these agents, in
      the course of a few weeks made its way through the intervening country,
      bristling with custom-houses, garrisoned by an immense army of shabby
      mendicants in uniform who incessantly repeated the Beggar's Petition over
      it, as if every individual warrior among them were the ancient Belisarius:
      and of whom there were so many Legions, that unless the Courier had
      expended just one bushel and a half of silver money relieving their
      distresses, they would have worn the wardrobe out before it got to Rome,
      by turning it over and over. Through all such dangers, however, it was
      triumphantly brought, inch by inch, and arrived at its journey's end in
      fine condition.
    </p>
    <p>
      There it was exhibited to select companies of female viewers, in whose
      gentle bosoms it awakened implacable feelings. Concurrently, active
      preparations were made for the day on which some of its treasures were to
      be publicly displayed. Cards of breakfast-invitation were sent out to half
      the English in the city of Romulus; the other half made arrangements to be
      under arms, as criticising volunteers, at various outer points of the
      solemnity. The most high and illustrious English Signor Edgardo Dorrit,
      came post through the deep mud and ruts (from forming a surface under the
      improving Neapolitan nobility), to grace the occasion. The best hotel and
      all its culinary myrmidons, were set to work to prepare the feast. The
      drafts of Mr Dorrit almost constituted a run on the Torlonia Bank. The
      British Consul hadn't had such a marriage in the whole of his Consularity.
    </p>
    <p>
      The day came, and the She-Wolf in the Capitol might have snarled with envy
      to see how the Island Savages contrived these things now-a-days. The
      murderous-headed statues of the wicked Emperors of the Soldiery, whom
      sculptors had not been able to flatter out of their villainous
      hideousness, might have come off their pedestals to run away with the
      Bride. The choked old fountain, where erst the gladiators washed, might
      have leaped into life again to honour the ceremony. The Temple of Vesta
      might have sprung up anew from its ruins, expressly to lend its
      countenance to the occasion. Might have done; but did not. Like sentient
      things&mdash;even like the lords and ladies of creation sometimes&mdash;might
      have done much, but did nothing. The celebration went off with admirable
      pomp; monks in black robes, white robes, and russet robes stopped to look
      after the carriages; wandering peasants in fleeces of sheep, begged and
      piped under the house-windows; the English volunteers defiled; the day
      wore on to the hour of vespers; the festival wore away; the thousand
      churches rang their bells without any reference to it; and St Peter denied
      that he had anything to do with it.
    </p>
    <p>
      But by that time the Bride was near the end of the first day's journey
      towards Florence. It was the peculiarity of the nuptials that they were
      all Bride. Nobody noticed the Bridegroom. Nobody noticed the first
      Bridesmaid. Few could have seen Little Dorrit (who held that post) for the
      glare, even supposing many to have sought her. So, the Bride had mounted
      into her handsome chariot, incidentally accompanied by the Bridegroom; and
      after rolling for a few minutes smoothly over a fair pavement, had begun
      to jolt through a Slough of Despond, and through a long, long avenue of
      wrack and ruin. Other nuptial carriages are said to have gone the same
      road, before and since.
    </p>
    <p>
      If Little Dorrit found herself left a little lonely and a little low that
      night, nothing would have done so much against her feeling of depression
      as the being able to sit at work by her father, as in the old time, and
      help him to his supper and his rest. But that was not to be thought of
      now, when they sat in the state-equipage with Mrs General on the
      coach-box. And as to supper! If Mr Dorrit had wanted supper, there was an
      Italian cook and there was a Swiss confectioner, who must have put on caps
      as high as the Pope's Mitre, and have performed the mysteries of
      Alchemists in a copper-saucepaned laboratory below, before he could have
      got it.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was sententious and didactic that night. If he had been simply loving,
      he would have done Little Dorrit more good; but she accepted him as he was&mdash;when
      had she not accepted him as he was!&mdash;and made the most and best of
      him. Mrs General at length retired. Her retirement for the night was
      always her frostiest ceremony, as if she felt it necessary that the human
      imagination should be chilled into stone to prevent its following her.
      When she had gone through her rigid preliminaries, amounting to a sort of
      genteel platoon-exercise, she withdrew. Little Dorrit then put her arm
      round her father's neck, to bid him good night.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, my dear,' said Mr Dorrit, taking her by the hand, 'this is the close
      of a day, that has&mdash;ha&mdash;greatly impressed and gratified me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A little tired you, dear, too?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Mr Dorrit, 'no: I am not sensible of fatigue when it arises
      from an occasion so&mdash;hum&mdash;replete with gratification of the
      purest kind.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit was glad to find him in such heart, and smiled from her own
      heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' he continued, 'this is an occasion&mdash;ha&mdash;teeming with
      a good example. With a good example, my favourite and attached child&mdash;hum&mdash;to
      you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit, fluttered by his words, did not know what to say, though he
      stopped as if he expected her to say something.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy,' he resumed; 'your dear sister, our Fanny, has contracted ha hum&mdash;a
      marriage, eminently calculated to extend the basis of our&mdash;ha&mdash;connection,
      and to&mdash;hum&mdash;consolidate our social relations. My love, I trust
      that the time is not far distant when some&mdash;ha&mdash;eligible partner
      may be found for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no! Let me stay with you. I beg and pray that I may stay with you! I
      want nothing but to stay and take care of you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She said it like one in sudden alarm.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nay, Amy, Amy,' said Mr Dorrit. 'This is weak and foolish, weak and
      foolish. You have a&mdash;ha&mdash;responsibility imposed upon you by your
      position. It is to develop that position, and be&mdash;hum&mdash;worthy of
      that position. As to taking care of me; I can&mdash;ha&mdash;take care of
      myself. Or,' he added after a moment, 'if I should need to be taken care
      of, I&mdash;hum&mdash;can, with the&mdash;ha&mdash;blessing of Providence,
      be taken care of, I&mdash;ha hum&mdash;I cannot, my dear child, think of
      engrossing, and&mdash;ha&mdash;as it were, sacrificing you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      O what a time of day at which to begin that profession of self-denial; at
      which to make it, with an air of taking credit for it; at which to believe
      it, if such a thing could be!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't speak, Amy. I positively say I cannot do it. I&mdash;ha&mdash;must
      not do it. My&mdash;hum&mdash;conscience would not allow it. I therefore,
      my love, take the opportunity afforded by this gratifying and impressive
      occasion of&mdash;ha&mdash;solemnly remarking, that it is now a cherished
      wish and purpose of mine to see you&mdash;ha&mdash;eligibly (I repeat
      eligibly) married.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no, dear! Pray!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I am well persuaded that if the topic were
      referred to any person of superior social knowledge, of superior delicacy
      and sense&mdash;let us say, for instance, to&mdash;ha&mdash;Mrs General&mdash;that
      there would not be two opinions as to the&mdash;hum&mdash;affectionate
      character and propriety of my sentiments. But, as I know your loving and
      dutiful nature from&mdash;hum&mdash;from experience, I am quite satisfied
      that it is necessary to say no more. I have&mdash;hum&mdash;no husband to
      propose at present, my dear: I have not even one in view. I merely wish
      that we should&mdash;ha&mdash;understand each other. Hum. Good night, my
      dear and sole remaining daughter. Good night. God bless you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      If the thought ever entered Little Dorrit's head that night, that he could
      give her up lightly now in his prosperity, and when he had it in his mind
      to replace her with a second wife, she drove it away. Faithful to him
      still, as in the worst times through which she had borne him
      single-handed, she drove the thought away; and entertained no harder
      reflection, in her tearful unrest, than that he now saw everything through
      their wealth, and through the care he always had upon him that they should
      continue rich, and grow richer.
    </p>
    <p>
      They sat in their equipage of state, with Mrs General on the box, for
      three weeks longer, and then he started for Florence to join Fanny. Little
      Dorrit would have been glad to bear him company so far, only for the sake
      of her own love, and then to have turned back alone, thinking of dear
      England. But, though the Courier had gone on with the Bride, the Valet was
      next in the line; and the succession would not have come to her, as long
      as any one could be got for money.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General took life easily&mdash;as easily, that is, as she could take
      anything&mdash;when the Roman establishment remained in their sole
      occupation; and Little Dorrit would often ride out in a hired carriage
      that was left them, and alight alone and wander among the ruins of old
      Rome. The ruins of the vast old Amphitheatre, of the old Temples, of the
      old commemorative Arches, of the old trodden highways, of the old tombs,
      besides being what they were, to her were ruins of the old Marshalsea&mdash;ruins
      of her own old life&mdash;ruins of the faces and forms that of old peopled
      it&mdash;ruins of its loves, hopes, cares, and joys. Two ruined spheres of
      action and suffering were before the solitary girl often sitting on some
      broken fragment; and in the lonely places, under the blue sky, she saw
      them both together.
    </p>
    <p>
      Up, then, would come Mrs General; taking all the colour out of everything,
      as Nature and Art had taken it out of herself; writing Prunes and Prism,
      in Mr Eustace's text, wherever she could lay a hand; looking everywhere
      for Mr Eustace and company, and seeing nothing else; scratching up the
      driest little bones of antiquity, and bolting them whole without any human
      visitings&mdash;like a Ghoule in gloves.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0052" id="link2HCH0052"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 16. Getting on
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he newly married pair, on their arrival in Harley Street, Cavendish
      Square, London, were received by the Chief Butler. That great man was not
      interested in them, but on the whole endured them. People must continue to
      be married and given in marriage, or Chief Butlers would not be wanted. As
      nations are made to be taxed, so families are made to be butlered. The
      Chief Butler, no doubt, reflected that the course of nature required the
      wealthy population to be kept up, on his account.
    </p>
    <p>
      He therefore condescended to look at the carriage from the Hall-door
      without frowning at it, and said, in a very handsome way, to one of his
      men, 'Thomas, help with the luggage.' He even escorted the Bride up-stairs
      into Mr Merdle's presence; but this must be considered as an act of homage
      to the sex (of which he was an admirer, being notoriously captivated by
      the charms of a certain Duchess), and not as a committal of himself with
      the family.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle was slinking about the hearthrug, waiting to welcome Mrs
      Sparkler. His hand seemed to retreat up his sleeve as he advanced to do
      so, and he gave her such a superfluity of coat-cuff that it was like being
      received by the popular conception of Guy Fawkes. When he put his lips to
      hers, besides, he took himself into custody by the wrists, and backed
      himself among the ottomans and chairs and tables as if he were his own
      Police officer, saying to himself, 'Now, none of that! Come! I've got you,
      you know, and you go quietly along with me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Sparkler, installed in the rooms of state&mdash;the innermost
      sanctuary of down, silk, chintz, and fine linen&mdash;felt that so far her
      triumph was good, and her way made, step by step. On the day before her
      marriage, she had bestowed on Mrs Merdle's maid with an air of gracious
      indifference, in Mrs Merdle's presence, a trifling little keepsake
      (bracelet, bonnet, and two dresses, all new) about four times as valuable
      as the present formerly made by Mrs Merdle to her. She was now established
      in Mrs Merdle's own rooms, to which some extra touches had been given to
      render them more worthy of her occupation. In her mind's eye, as she
      lounged there, surrounded by every luxurious accessory that wealth could
      obtain or invention devise, she saw the fair bosom that beat in unison
      with the exultation of her thoughts, competing with the bosom that had
      been famous so long, outshining it, and deposing it. Happy? Fanny must
      have been happy. No more wishing one's self dead now.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Courier had not approved of Mr Dorrit's staying in the house of a
      friend, and had preferred to take him to an hotel in Brook Street,
      Grosvenor Square. Mr Merdle ordered his carriage to be ready early in the
      morning that he might wait upon Mr Dorrit immediately after breakfast.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bright the carriage looked, sleek the horses looked, gleaming the harness
      looked, luscious and lasting the liveries looked. A rich, responsible
      turn-out. An equipage for a Merdle. Early people looked after it as it
      rattled along the streets, and said, with awe in their breath, 'There he
      goes!'
    </p>
    <p>
      There he went, until Brook Street stopped him. Then, forth from its
      magnificent case came the jewel; not lustrous in itself, but quite the
      contrary.
    </p>
    <p>
      Commotion in the office of the hotel. Merdle! The landlord, though a
      gentleman of a haughty spirit who had just driven a pair of thorough-bred
      horses into town, turned out to show him up-stairs. The clerks and
      servants cut him off by back-passages, and were found accidentally
      hovering in doorways and angles, that they might look upon him. Merdle! O
      ye sun, moon, and stars, the great man! The rich man, who had in a manner
      revised the New Testament, and already entered into the kingdom of Heaven.
      The man who could have any one he chose to dine with him, and who had made
      the money! As he went up the stairs, people were already posted on the
      lower stairs, that his shadow might fall upon them when he came down. So
      were the sick brought out and laid in the track of the Apostle&mdash;who
      had <i>not</i> got into the good society, and had <i>not</i> made the
      money.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, dressing-gowned and newspapered, was at his breakfast. The
      Courier, with agitation in his voice, announced 'Miss Mairdale!' Mr
      Dorrit's overwrought heart bounded as he leaped up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Merdle, this is&mdash;ha&mdash;indeed an honour. Permit me to express
      the&mdash;hum&mdash;sense, the high sense, I entertain of this&mdash;ha
      hum&mdash;highly gratifying act of attention. I am well aware, sir, of the
      many demands upon your time, and its&mdash;ha&mdash;enormous value,' Mr
      Dorrit could not say enormous roundly enough for his own satisfaction.
      'That you should&mdash;ha&mdash;at this early hour, bestow any of your
      priceless time upon me, is&mdash;ha&mdash;a compliment that I acknowledge
      with the greatest esteem.' Mr Dorrit positively trembled in addressing the
      great man.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle uttered, in his subdued, inward, hesitating voice, a few sounds
      that were to no purpose whatever; and finally said, 'I am glad to see you,
      sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very kind,' said Mr Dorrit. 'Truly kind.' By this time the
      visitor was seated, and was passing his great hand over his exhausted
      forehead. 'You are well, I hope, Mr Merdle?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am as well as I&mdash;yes, I am as well as I usually am,' said Mr
      Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your occupations must be immense.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tolerably so. But&mdash;Oh dear no, there's not much the matter with <i>me</i>,'
      said Mr Merdle, looking round the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A little dyspeptic?' Mr Dorrit hinted.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very likely. But I&mdash;Oh, I am well enough,' said Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      There were black traces on his lips where they met, as if a little train
      of gunpowder had been fired there; and he looked like a man who, if his
      natural temperament had been quicker, would have been very feverish that
      morning. This, and his heavy way of passing his hand over his forehead,
      had prompted Mr Dorrit's solicitous inquiries.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Merdle,' Mr Dorrit insinuatingly pursued, 'I left, as you will be
      prepared to hear, the&mdash;ha&mdash;observed of all observers, the&mdash;hum&mdash;admired
      of all admirers, the leading fascination and charm of Society in Rome. She
      was looking wonderfully well when I quitted it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Merdle,' said Mr Merdle, 'is generally considered a very attractive
      woman. And she is, no doubt. I am sensible of her being so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who can be otherwise?' responded Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle turned his tongue in his closed mouth&mdash;it seemed rather a
      stiff and unmanageable tongue&mdash;moistened his lips, passed his hand
      over his forehead again, and looked all round the room again, principally
      under the chairs.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But,' he said, looking Mr Dorrit in the face for the first time, and
      immediately afterwards dropping his eyes to the buttons of Mr Dorrit's
      waistcoat; 'if we speak of attractions, your daughter ought to be the
      subject of our conversation. She is extremely beautiful. Both in face and
      figure, she is quite uncommon. When the young people arrived last night, I
      was really surprised to see such charms.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit's gratification was such that he said&mdash;ha&mdash;he could
      not refrain from telling Mr Merdle verbally, as he had already done by
      letter, what honour and happiness he felt in this union of their families.
      And he offered his hand. Mr Merdle looked at the hand for a little while,
      took it on his for a moment as if his were a yellow salver or fish-slice,
      and then returned it to Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought I would drive round the first thing,' said Mr Merdle, 'to offer
      my services, in case I can do anything for you; and to say that I hope you
      will at least do me the honour of dining with me to-day, and every day
      when you are not better engaged during your stay in town.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit was enraptured by these attentions.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you stay long, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have not at present the intention,' said Mr Dorrit, 'of&mdash;ha&mdash;exceeding
      a fortnight.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's a very short stay, after so long a journey,' returned Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hum. Yes,' said Mr Dorrit. 'But the truth is&mdash;ha&mdash;my dear Mr
      Merdle, that I find a foreign life so well suited to my health and taste,
      that I&mdash;hum&mdash;have but two objects in my present visit to London.
      First, the&mdash;ha&mdash;the distinguished happiness and&mdash;ha&mdash;privilege
      which I now enjoy and appreciate; secondly, the arrangement&mdash;hum&mdash;the
      laying out, that is to say, in the best way, of&mdash;ha, hum&mdash;my
      money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, sir,' said Mr Merdle, after turning his tongue again, 'if I can be
      of any use to you in that respect, you may command me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit's speech had had more hesitation in it than usual, as he
      approached the ticklish topic, for he was not perfectly clear how so
      exalted a potentate might take it. He had doubts whether reference to any
      individual capital, or fortune, might not seem a wretchedly retail affair
      to so wholesale a dealer. Greatly relieved by Mr Merdle's affable offer of
      assistance, he caught at it directly, and heaped acknowledgments upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I scarcely&mdash;ha&mdash;dared,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I assure you, to hope
      for so&mdash;hum&mdash;vast an advantage as your direct advice and
      assistance. Though of course I should, under any circumstances, like the&mdash;ha,
      hum&mdash;rest of the civilised world, have followed in Mr Merdle's
      train.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know we may almost say we are related, sir,' said Mr Merdle,
      curiously interested in the pattern of the carpet, 'and, therefore, you
      may consider me at your service.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ha. Very handsome, indeed!' cried Mr Dorrit. 'Ha. Most handsome!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It would not,' said Mr Merdle, 'be at the present moment easy for what I
      may call a mere outsider to come into any of the good things&mdash;of
      course I speak of my own good things&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course, of course!' cried Mr Dorrit, in a tone implying that there
      were no other good things.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;Unless at a high price. At what we are accustomed to term a very
      long figure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit laughed in the buoyancy of his spirit. Ha, ha, ha! Long figure.
      Good. Ha. Very expressive to be sure!
    </p>
    <p>
      'However,' said Mr Merdle, 'I do generally retain in my own hands the
      power of exercising some preference&mdash;people in general would be
      pleased to call it favour&mdash;as a sort of compliment for my care and
      trouble.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And public spirit and genius,' Mr Dorrit suggested.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle, with a dry, swallowing action, seemed to dispose of those
      qualities like a bolus; then added, 'As a sort of return for it. I will
      see, if you please, how I can exert this limited power (for people are
      jealous, and it is limited), to your advantage.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very good,' replied Mr Dorrit. 'You are <i>very</i> good.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course,' said Mr Merdle, 'there must be the strictest integrity and
      uprightness in these transactions; there must be the purest faith between
      man and man; there must be unimpeached and unimpeachable confidence; or
      business could not be carried on.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit hailed these generous sentiments with fervour.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Therefore,' said Mr Merdle, 'I can only give you a preference to a
      certain extent.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I perceive. To a defined extent,' observed Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Defined extent. And perfectly above-board. As to my advice, however,'
      said Mr Merdle, 'that is another matter. That, such as it is&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Oh! Such as it was! (Mr Dorrit could not bear the faintest appearance of
      its being depreciated, even by Mr Merdle himself.)
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;That, there is nothing in the bonds of spotless honour between
      myself and my fellow-man to prevent my parting with, if I choose. And
      that,' said Mr Merdle, now deeply intent upon a dust-cart that was passing
      the windows, 'shall be at your command whenever you think proper.'
    </p>
    <p>
      New acknowledgments from Mr Dorrit. New passages of Mr Merdle's hand over
      his forehead. Calm and silence. Contemplation of Mr Dorrit's waistcoat
      buttons by Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My time being rather precious,' said Mr Merdle, suddenly getting up, as
      if he had been waiting in the interval for his legs and they had just
      come, 'I must be moving towards the City. Can I take you anywhere, sir? I
      shall be happy to set you down, or send you on. My carriage is at your
      disposal.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit bethought himself that he had business at his banker's. His
      banker's was in the City. That was fortunate; Mr Merdle would take him
      into the City. But, surely, he might not detain Mr Merdle while he assumed
      his coat? Yes, he might and must; Mr Merdle insisted on it. So Mr Dorrit,
      retiring into the next room, put himself under the hands of his valet, and
      in five minutes came back glorious.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then said Mr Merdle, 'Allow me, sir. Take my arm!' Then leaning on Mr
      Merdle's arm, did Mr Dorrit descend the staircase, seeing the worshippers
      on the steps, and feeling that the light of Mr Merdle shone by reflection
      in himself. Then the carriage, and the ride into the City; and the people
      who looked at them; and the hats that flew off grey heads; and the general
      bowing and crouching before this wonderful mortal the like of which
      prostration of spirit was not to be seen&mdash;no, by high Heaven, no! It
      may be worth thinking of by Fawners of all denominations&mdash;in
      Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's Cathedral put together, on any Sunday
      in the year. It was a rapturous dream to Mr Dorrit to find himself set
      aloft in this public car of triumph, making a magnificent progress to that
      befitting destination, the golden Street of the Lombards.
    </p>
    <p>
      There Mr Merdle insisted on alighting and going his way a-foot, and
      leaving his poor equipage at Mr Dorrit's disposition. So the dream
      increased in rapture when Mr Dorrit came out of the bank alone, and people
      looked at <i>him</i> in default of Mr Merdle, and when, with the ears of
      his mind, he heard the frequent exclamation as he rolled glibly along, 'A
      wonderful man to be Mr Merdle's friend!'
    </p>
    <p>
      At dinner that day, although the occasion was not foreseen and provided
      for, a brilliant company of such as are not made of the dust of the earth,
      but of some superior article for the present unknown, shed their lustrous
      benediction upon Mr Dorrit's daughter's marriage. And Mr Dorrit's daughter
      that day began, in earnest, her competition with that woman not present;
      and began it so well that Mr Dorrit could all but have taken his
      affidavit, if required, that Mrs Sparkler had all her life been lying at
      full length in the lap of luxury, and had never heard of such a rough word
      in the English tongue as Marshalsea.
    </p>
    <p>
      Next day, and the day after, and every day, all graced by more dinner
      company, cards descended on Mr Dorrit like theatrical snow. As the friend
      and relative by marriage of the illustrious Merdle, Bar, Bishop, Treasury,
      Chorus, Everybody, wanted to make or improve Mr Dorrit's acquaintance. In
      Mr Merdle's heap of offices in the City, when Mr Dorrit appeared at any of
      them on his business taking him Eastward (which it frequently did, for it
      throve amazingly), the name of Dorrit was always a passport to the great
      presence of Merdle. So the dream increased in rapture every hour, as Mr
      Dorrit felt increasingly sensible that this connection had brought him
      forward indeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Only one thing sat otherwise than auriferously, and at the same time
      lightly, on Mr Dorrit's mind. It was the Chief Butler. That stupendous
      character looked at him, in the course of his official looking at the
      dinners, in a manner that Mr Dorrit considered questionable. He looked at
      him, as he passed through the hall and up the staircase, going to dinner,
      with a glazed fixedness that Mr Dorrit did not like. Seated at table in
      the act of drinking, Mr Dorrit still saw him through his wine-glass,
      regarding him with a cold and ghostly eye. It misgave him that the Chief
      Butler must have known a Collegian, and must have seen him in the College&mdash;perhaps
      had been presented to him. He looked as closely at the Chief Butler as
      such a man could be looked at, and yet he did not recall that he had ever
      seen him elsewhere. Ultimately he was inclined to think that there was no
      reverence in the man, no sentiment in the great creature. But he was not
      relieved by that; for, let him think what he would, the Chief Butler had
      him in his supercilious eye, even when that eye was on the plate and other
      table-garniture; and he never let him out of it. To hint to him that this
      confinement in his eye was disagreeable, or to ask him what he meant, was
      an act too daring to venture upon; his severity with his employers and
      their visitors being terrific, and he never permitting himself to be
      approached with the slightest liberty.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0053" id="link2HCH0053"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 17. Missing
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he term of Mr Dorrit's visit was within two days of being out, and he was
      about to dress for another inspection by the Chief Butler (whose victims
      were always dressed expressly for him), when one of the servants of the
      hotel presented himself bearing a card. Mr Dorrit, taking it, read:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Finching.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The servant waited in speechless deference.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Man, man,' said Mr Dorrit, turning upon him with grievous indignation,
      'explain your motive in bringing me this ridiculous name. I am wholly
      unacquainted with it. Finching, sir?' said Mr Dorrit, perhaps avenging
      himself on the Chief Butler by Substitute. 'Ha! What do you mean by
      Finching?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The man, man, seemed to mean Flinching as much as anything else, for he
      backed away from Mr Dorrit's severe regard, as he replied, 'A lady, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know no such lady, sir,' said Mr Dorrit. 'Take this card away. I know
      no Finching of either sex.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ask your pardon, sir. The lady said she was aware she might be unknown by
      name. But she begged me to say, sir, that she had formerly the honour of
      being acquainted with Miss Dorrit. The lady said, sir, the youngest Miss
      Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit knitted his brows and rejoined, after a moment or two, 'Inform
      Mrs Finching, sir,' emphasising the name as if the innocent man were
      solely responsible for it, 'that she can come up.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had reflected, in his momentary pause, that unless she were admitted
      she might leave some message, or might say something below, having a
      disgraceful reference to that former state of existence. Hence the
      concession, and hence the appearance of Flora, piloted in by the man, man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have not the pleasure,' said Mr Dorrit, standing with the card in his
      hand, and with an air which imported that it would scarcely have been a
      first-class pleasure if he had had it, 'of knowing either this name, or
      yourself, madam. Place a chair, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The responsible man, with a start, obeyed, and went out on tiptoe. Flora,
      putting aside her veil with a bashful tremor upon her, proceeded to
      introduce herself. At the same time a singular combination of perfumes was
      diffused through the room, as if some brandy had been put by mistake in a
      lavender-water bottle, or as if some lavender-water had been put by
      mistake in a brandy-bottle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg Mr Dorrit to offer a thousand apologies and indeed they would be
      far too few for such an intrusion which I know must appear extremely bold
      in a lady and alone too, but I thought it best upon the whole however
      difficult and even apparently improper though Mr F.'s Aunt would have
      willingly accompanied me and as a character of great force and spirit
      would probably have struck one possessed of such a knowledge of life as no
      doubt with so many changes must have been acquired, for Mr F. himself said
      frequently that although well educated in the neighbourhood of Blackheath
      at as high as eighty guineas which is a good deal for parents and the
      plate kept back too on going away but that is more a meanness than its
      value that he had learnt more in his first years as a commercial traveller
      with a large commission on the sale of an article that nobody would hear
      of much less buy which preceded the wine trade a long time than in the
      whole six years in that academy conducted by a college Bachelor, though
      why a Bachelor more clever than a married man I do not see and never did
      but pray excuse me that is not the point.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit stood rooted to the carpet, a statue of mystification.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must openly admit that I have no pretensions,' said Flora, 'but having
      known the dear little thing which under altered circumstances appears a
      liberty but is not so intended and Goodness knows there was no favour in
      half-a-crown a-day to such a needle as herself but quite the other way and
      as to anything lowering in it far from it the labourer is worthy of his
      hire and I am sure I only wish he got it oftener and more animal food and
      less rheumatism in the back and legs poor soul.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam,' said Mr Dorrit, recovering his breath by a great effort, as the
      relict of the late Mr Finching stopped to take hers; 'madam,' said Mr
      Dorrit, very red in the face, 'if I understand you to refer to&mdash;ha&mdash;to
      anything in the antecedents of&mdash;hum&mdash;a daughter of mine,
      involving&mdash;ha hum&mdash;daily compensation, madam, I beg to observe
      that the&mdash;ha&mdash;fact, assuming it&mdash;ha&mdash;to be fact, never
      was within my knowledge. Hum. I should not have permitted it. Ha. Never!
      Never!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Unnecessary to pursue the subject,' returned Flora, 'and would not have
      mentioned it on any account except as supposing it a favourable and only
      letter of introduction but as to being fact no doubt whatever and you may
      set your mind at rest for the very dress I have on now can prove it and
      sweetly made though there is no denying that it would tell better on a
      better figure for my own is much too fat though how to bring it down I
      know not, pray excuse me I am roving off again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit backed to his chair in a stony way, and seated himself, as Flora
      gave him a softening look and played with her parasol.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The dear little thing,' said Flora, 'having gone off perfectly limp and
      white and cold in my own house or at least papa's for though not a
      freehold still a long lease at a peppercorn on the morning when Arthur&mdash;foolish
      habit of our youthful days and Mr Clennam far more adapted to existing
      circumstances particularly addressing a stranger and that stranger a
      gentleman in an elevated station&mdash;communicated the glad tidings
      imparted by a person of name of Pancks emboldens me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At the mention of these two names, Mr Dorrit frowned, stared, frowned
      again, hesitated with his fingers at his lips, as he had hesitated long
      ago, and said, 'Do me the favour to&mdash;ha&mdash;state your pleasure,
      madam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dorrit,' said Flora, 'you are very kind in giving me permission and
      highly natural it seems to me that you should be kind for though more
      stately I perceive a likeness filled out of course but a likeness still,
      the object of my intruding is my own without the slightest consultation
      with any human being and most decidedly not with Arthur&mdash;pray excuse
      me Doyce and Clennam I don't know what I am saying Mr Clennam solus&mdash;for
      to put that individual linked by a golden chain to a purple time when all
      was ethereal out of any anxiety would be worth to me the ransom of a
      monarch not that I have the least idea how much that would come to but
      using it as the total of all I have in the world and more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, without greatly regarding the earnestness of these latter
      words, repeated, 'State your pleasure, madam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's not likely I well know,' said Flora, 'but it's possible and being
      possible when I had the gratification of reading in the papers that you
      had arrived from Italy and were going back I made up my mind to try it for
      you might come across him or hear something of him and if so what a
      blessing and relief to all!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Allow me to ask, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, with his ideas in wild
      confusion, 'to whom&mdash;ha&mdash;TO WHOM,' he repeated it with a raised
      voice in mere desperation, 'you at present allude?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To the foreigner from Italy who disappeared in the City as no doubt you
      have read in the papers equally with myself,' said Flora, 'not referring
      to private sources by the name of Pancks from which one gathers what
      dreadfully ill-natured things some people are wicked enough to whisper
      most likely judging others by themselves and what the uneasiness and
      indignation of Arthur&mdash;quite unable to overcome it Doyce and Clennam&mdash;cannot
      fail to be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It happened, fortunately for the elucidation of any intelligible result,
      that Mr Dorrit had heard or read nothing about the matter. This caused Mrs
      Finching, with many apologies for being in great practical difficulties as
      to finding the way to her pocket among the stripes of her dress at length
      to produce a police handbill, setting forth that a foreign gentleman of
      the name of Blandois, last from Venice, had unaccountably disappeared on
      such a night in such a part of the city of London; that he was known to
      have entered such a house, at such an hour; that he was stated by the
      inmates of that house to have left it, about so many minutes before
      midnight; and that he had never been beheld since. This, with exact
      particulars of time and locality, and with a good detailed description of
      the foreign gentleman who had so mysteriously vanished, Mr Dorrit read at
      large.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Blandois!' said Mr Dorrit. 'Venice! And this description! I know this
      gentleman. He has been in my house. He is intimately acquainted with a
      gentleman of good family (but in indifferent circumstances), of whom I am
      a&mdash;hum&mdash;patron.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then my humble and pressing entreaty is the more,' said Flora, 'that in
      travelling back you will have the kindness to look for this foreign
      gentleman along all the roads and up and down all the turnings and to make
      inquiries for him at all the hotels and orange-trees and vineyards and
      volcanoes and places for he must be somewhere and why doesn't he come
      forward and say he's there and clear all parties up?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, referring to the handbill again, 'who is
      Clennam and Co.? Ha. I see the name mentioned here, in connection with the
      occupation of the house which Monsieur Blandois was seen to enter: who is
      Clennam and Co.? Is it the individual of whom I had formerly&mdash;hum&mdash;some&mdash;ha&mdash;slight
      transitory knowledge, and to whom I believe you have referred? Is it&mdash;ha&mdash;that
      person?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a very different person indeed,' replied Flora, 'with no limbs and
      wheels instead and the grimmest of women though his mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Clennam and Co. a&mdash;hum&mdash;a mother!' exclaimed Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And an old man besides,' said Flora.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit looked as if he must immediately be driven out of his mind by
      this account. Neither was it rendered more favourable to sanity by Flora's
      dashing into a rapid analysis of Mr Flintwinch's cravat, and describing
      him, without the lightest boundary line of separation between his identity
      and Mrs Clennam's, as a rusty screw in gaiters. Which compound of man and
      woman, no limbs, wheels, rusty screw, grimness, and gaiters, so completely
      stupefied Mr Dorrit, that he was a spectacle to be pitied.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I would not detain you one moment longer,' said Flora, upon whom his
      condition wrought its effect, though she was quite unconscious of having
      produced it, 'if you would have the goodness to give your promise as a
      gentleman that both in going back to Italy and in Italy too you would look
      for this Mr Blandois high and low and if you found or heard of him make
      him come forward for the clearing of all parties.'
    </p>
    <p>
      By that time Mr Dorrit had so far recovered from his bewilderment, as to
      be able to say, in a tolerably connected manner, that he should consider
      that his duty. Flora was delighted with her success, and rose to take her
      leave.
    </p>
    <p>
      'With a million thanks,' said she, 'and my address upon my card in case of
      anything to be communicated personally, I will not send my love to the
      dear little thing for it might not be acceptable, and indeed there is no
      dear little thing left in the transformation so why do it but both myself
      and Mr F.'s Aunt ever wish her well and lay no claim to any favour on our
      side you may be sure of that but quite the other way for what she
      undertook to do she did and that is more than a great many of us do, not
      to say anything of her doing it as well as it could be done and I myself
      am one of them for I have said ever since I began to recover the blow of
      Mr F's death that I would learn the Organ of which I am extremely fond but
      of which I am ashamed to say I do not yet know a note, good evening!'
    </p>
    <p>
      When Mr Dorrit, who attended her to the room-door, had had a little time
      to collect his senses, he found that the interview had summoned back
      discarded reminiscences which jarred with the Merdle dinner-table. He
      wrote and sent off a brief note excusing himself for that day, and ordered
      dinner presently in his own rooms at the hotel. He had another reason for
      this. His time in London was very nearly out, and was anticipated by
      engagements; his plans were made for returning; and he thought it behoved
      his importance to pursue some direct inquiry into the Blandois
      disappearance, and be in a condition to carry back to Mr Henry Gowan the
      result of his own personal investigation. He therefore resolved that he
      would take advantage of that evening's freedom to go down to Clennam and
      Co.'s, easily to be found by the direction set forth in the handbill; and
      see the place, and ask a question or two there himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      Having dined as plainly as the establishment and the Courier would let
      him, and having taken a short sleep by the fire for his better recovery
      from Mrs Finching, he set out in a hackney-cabriolet alone. The deep bell
      of St Paul's was striking nine as he passed under the shadow of Temple
      Bar, headless and forlorn in these degenerate days.
    </p>
    <p>
      As he approached his destination through the by-streets and water-side
      ways, that part of London seemed to him an uglier spot at such an hour
      than he had ever supposed it to be. Many long years had passed since he
      had seen it; he had never known much of it; and it wore a mysterious and
      dismal aspect in his eyes. So powerfully was his imagination impressed by
      it, that when his driver stopped, after having asked the way more than
      once, and said to the best of his belief this was the gateway they wanted,
      Mr Dorrit stood hesitating, with the coach-door in his hand, half afraid
      of the dark look of the place.
    </p>
    <p>
      Truly, it looked as gloomy that night as even it had ever looked. Two of
      the handbills were posted on the entrance wall, one on either side, and as
      the lamp flickered in the night air, shadows passed over them, not unlike
      the shadows of fingers following the lines. A watch was evidently kept
      upon the place. As Mr Dorrit paused, a man passed in from over the way,
      and another man passed out from some dark corner within; and both looked
      at him in passing, and both remained standing about.
    </p>
    <p>
      As there was only one house in the enclosure, there was no room for
      uncertainty, so he went up the steps of that house and knocked. There was
      a dim light in two windows on the first-floor. The door gave back a
      dreary, vacant sound, as though the house were empty; but it was not, for
      a light was visible, and a step was audible, almost directly. They both
      came to the door, and a chain grated, and a woman with her apron thrown
      over her face and head stood in the aperture.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who is it?' said the woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, much amazed by this appearance, replied that he was from Italy,
      and that he wished to ask a question relative to the missing person, whom
      he knew.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hi!' cried the woman, raising a cracked voice. 'Jeremiah!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Upon this, a dry old man appeared, whom Mr Dorrit thought he identified by
      his gaiters, as the rusty screw. The woman was under apprehensions of the
      dry old man, for she whisked her apron away as he approached, and
      disclosed a pale affrighted face. 'Open the door, you fool,' said the old
      man; 'and let the gentleman in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, not without a glance over his shoulder towards his driver and
      the cabriolet, walked into the dim hall. 'Now, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch,
      'you can ask anything here you think proper; there are no secrets here,
      sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Before a reply could be made, a strong stern voice, though a woman's,
      called from above, 'Who is it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who is it?' returned Jeremiah. 'More inquiries. A gentleman from Italy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bring him up here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch muttered, as if he deemed that unnecessary; but, turning to
      Mr Dorrit, said, 'Mrs Clennam. She <i>will</i> do as she likes. I'll show
      you the way.' He then preceded Mr Dorrit up the blackened staircase; that
      gentleman, not unnaturally looking behind him on the road, saw the woman
      following, with her apron thrown over her head again in her former ghastly
      manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam had her books open on her little table. 'Oh!' said she
      abruptly, as she eyed her visitor with a steady look. 'You are from Italy,
      sir, are you. Well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit was at a loss for any more distinct rejoinder at the moment than
      'Ha&mdash;well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where is this missing man? Have you come to give us information where he
      is? I hope you have?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So far from it, I&mdash;hum&mdash;have come to seek information.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Unfortunately for us, there is none to be got here. Flintwinch, show the
      gentleman the handbill. Give him several to take away. Hold the light for
      him to read it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch did as he was directed, and Mr Dorrit read it through, as if
      he had not previously seen it; glad enough of the opportunity of
      collecting his presence of mind, which the air of the house and of the
      people in it had a little disturbed. While his eyes were on the paper, he
      felt that the eyes of Mr Flintwinch and of Mrs Clennam were on him. He
      found, when he looked up, that this sensation was not a fanciful one.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now you know as much,' said Mrs Clennam, 'as we know, sir. Is Mr Blandois
      a friend of yours?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No&mdash;a&mdash;hum&mdash;an acquaintance,' answered Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have no commission from him, perhaps?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I? Ha. Certainly not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The searching look turned gradually to the floor, after taking Mr
      Flintwinch's face in its way. Mr Dorrit, discomfited by finding that he
      was the questioned instead of the questioner, applied himself to the
      reversal of that unexpected order of things.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am&mdash;ha&mdash;a gentleman of property, at present residing in Italy
      with my family, my servants, and&mdash;hum&mdash;my rather large
      establishment. Being in London for a short time on affairs connected with&mdash;ha&mdash;my
      estate, and hearing of this strange disappearance, I wished to make myself
      acquainted with the circumstances at first-hand, because there is&mdash;ha
      hum&mdash;an English gentleman in Italy whom I shall no doubt see on my
      return, who has been in habits of close and daily intimacy with Monsieur
      Blandois. Mr Henry Gowan. You may know the name.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never heard of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam said it, and Mr Flintwinch echoed it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wishing to&mdash;ha&mdash;make the narrative coherent and consecutive to
      him,' said Mr Dorrit, 'may I ask&mdash;say, three questions?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thirty, if you choose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you known Monsieur Blandois long?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not a twelvemonth. Mr Flintwinch here, will refer to the books and tell
      you when, and by whom at Paris he was introduced to us. If that,' Mrs
      Clennam added, 'should be any satisfaction to you. It is poor satisfaction
      to us.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you seen him often?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. Twice. Once before, and&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That once,' suggested Mr Flintwinch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And that once.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, with a growing fancy upon him as he
      recovered his importance, that he was in some superior way in the
      Commission of the Peace; 'pray, madam, may I inquire, for the greater
      satisfaction of the gentleman whom I have the honour to&mdash;ha&mdash;retain,
      or protect or let me say to&mdash;hum&mdash;know&mdash;to know&mdash;Was
      Monsieur Blandois here on business on the night indicated in this present
      sheet?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'On what he called business,' returned Mrs Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is&mdash;ha&mdash;excuse me&mdash;is its nature to be communicated?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was evidently impracticable to pass the barrier of that reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The question has been asked before,' said Mrs Clennam, 'and the answer
      has been, No. We don't choose to publish our transactions, however
      unimportant, to all the town. We say, No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean, he took away no money with him, for example,' said Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He took away none of ours, sir, and got none here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suppose,' observed Mr Dorrit, glancing from Mrs Clennam to Mr
      Flintwinch, and from Mr Flintwinch to Mrs Clennam, 'you have no way of
      accounting to yourself for this mystery?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why do you suppose so?' rejoined Mrs Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      Disconcerted by the cold and hard inquiry, Mr Dorrit was unable to assign
      any reason for his supposing so.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I account for it, sir,' she pursued after an awkward silence on Mr
      Dorrit's part, 'by having no doubt that he is travelling somewhere, or
      hiding somewhere.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know&mdash;ha&mdash;why he should hide anywhere?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was exactly the same No as before, and put another barrier up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You asked me if I accounted for the disappearance to myself,' Mrs Clennam
      sternly reminded him, 'not if I accounted for it to you. I do not pretend
      to account for it to you, sir. I understand it to be no more my business
      to do that, than it is yours to require that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit answered with an apologetic bend of his head. As he stepped
      back, preparatory to saying he had no more to ask, he could not but
      observe how gloomily and fixedly she sat with her eyes fastened on the
      ground, and a certain air upon her of resolute waiting; also, how exactly
      the self-same expression was reflected in Mr Flintwinch, standing at a
      little distance from her chair, with his eyes also on the ground, and his
      right hand softly rubbing his chin.
    </p>
    <p>
      At that moment, Mistress Affery (of course, the woman with the apron)
      dropped the candlestick she held, and cried out, 'There! O good Lord!
      there it is again. Hark, Jeremiah! Now!'
    </p>
    <p>
      If there were any sound at all, it was so slight that she must have fallen
      into a confirmed habit of listening for sounds; but Mr Dorrit believed he
      did hear a something, like the falling of dry leaves. The woman's terror,
      for a very short space, seemed to touch the three; and they all listened.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch was the first to stir. 'Affery, my woman,' said he, sidling
      at her with his fists clenched, and his elbows quivering with impatience
      to shake her, 'you are at your old tricks. You'll be walking in your sleep
      next, my woman, and playing the whole round of your distempered antics.
      You must have some physic. When I have shown this gentleman out, I'll make
      you up such a comfortable dose, my woman; such a comfortable dose!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It did not appear altogether comfortable in expectation to Mistress
      Affery; but Jeremiah, without further reference to his healing medicine,
      took another candle from Mrs Clennam's table, and said, 'Now, sir; shall I
      light you down?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit professed himself obliged, and went down. Mr Flintwinch shut him
      out, and chained him out, without a moment's loss of time. He was again
      passed by the two men, one going out and the other coming in; got into the
      vehicle he had left waiting, and was driven away.
    </p>
    <p>
      Before he had gone far, the driver stopped to let him know that he had
      given his name, number, and address to the two men, on their joint
      requisition; and also the address at which he had taken Mr Dorrit up, the
      hour at which he had been called from his stand and the way by which he
      had come. This did not make the night's adventure run any less hotly in Mr
      Dorrit's mind, either when he sat down by his fire again, or when he went
      to bed. All night he haunted the dismal house, saw the two people
      resolutely waiting, heard the woman with her apron over her face cry out
      about the noise, and found the body of the missing Blandois, now buried in
      the cellar, and now bricked up in a wall.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0558m.jpg" alt="0558m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0558.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0054" id="link2HCH0054"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 18. A Castle in the Air
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>anifold are the cares of wealth and state. Mr Dorrit's satisfaction in
      remembering that it had not been necessary for him to announce himself to
      Clennam and Co., or to make an allusion to his having had any knowledge of
      the intrusive person of that name, had been damped over-night, while it
      was still fresh, by a debate that arose within him whether or no he should
      take the Marshalsea in his way back, and look at the old gate. He had
      decided not to do so; and had astonished the coachman by being very fierce
      with him for proposing to go over London Bridge and recross the river by
      Waterloo Bridge&mdash;a course which would have taken him almost within
      sight of his old quarters. Still, for all that, the question had raised a
      conflict in his breast; and, for some odd reason or no reason, he was
      vaguely dissatisfied. Even at the Merdle dinner-table next day, he was so
      out of sorts about it that he continued at intervals to turn it over and
      over, in a manner frightfully inconsistent with the good society
      surrounding him. It made him hot to think what the Chief Butler's opinion
      of him would have been, if that illustrious personage could have plumbed
      with that heavy eye of his the stream of his meditations.
    </p>
    <p>
      The farewell banquet was of a gorgeous nature, and wound up his visit in a
      most brilliant manner. Fanny combined with the attractions of her youth
      and beauty, a certain weight of self-sustainment as if she had been
      married twenty years. He felt that he could leave her with a quiet mind to
      tread the paths of distinction, and wished&mdash;but without abatement of
      patronage, and without prejudice to the retiring virtues of his favourite
      child&mdash;that he had such another daughter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' he told her at parting, 'our family looks to you to&mdash;ha&mdash;assert
      its dignity and&mdash;hum&mdash;maintain its importance. I know you will
      never disappoint it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, papa,' said Fanny, 'you may rely upon that, I think. My best love to
      dearest Amy, and I will write to her very soon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I convey any message to&mdash;ha&mdash;anybody else?' asked Mr
      Dorrit, in an insinuating manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa,' said Fanny, before whom Mrs General instantly loomed, 'no, I thank
      you. You are very kind, Pa, but I must beg to be excused. There is no
      other message to send, I thank you, dear papa, that it would be at all
      agreeable to you to take.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They parted in an outer drawing-room, where only Mr Sparkler waited on his
      lady, and dutifully bided his time for shaking hands. When Mr Sparkler was
      admitted to this closing audience, Mr Merdle came creeping in with not
      much more appearance of arms in his sleeves than if he had been the twin
      brother of Miss Biffin, and insisted on escorting Mr Dorrit down-stairs.
      All Mr Dorrit's protestations being in vain, he enjoyed the honour of
      being accompanied to the hall-door by this distinguished man, who (as Mr
      Dorrit told him in shaking hands on the step) had really overwhelmed him
      with attentions and services during this memorable visit. Thus they
      parted; Mr Dorrit entering his carriage with a swelling breast, not at all
      sorry that his Courier, who had come to take leave in the lower regions,
      should have an opportunity of beholding the grandeur of his departure.
    </p>
    <p>
      The aforesaid grandeur was yet full upon Mr Dorrit when he alighted at his
      hotel. Helped out by the Courier and some half-dozen of the hotel
      servants, he was passing through the hall with a serene magnificence, when
      lo! a sight presented itself that struck him dumb and motionless. John
      Chivery, in his best clothes, with his tall hat under his arm, his
      ivory-handled cane genteelly embarrassing his deportment, and a bundle of
      cigars in his hand!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, young man,' said the porter. 'This is the gentleman. This young man
      has persisted in waiting, sir, saying you would be glad to see him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit glared on the young man, choked, and said, in the mildest of
      tones, 'Ah! Young John! It is Young John, I think; is it not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir,' returned Young John.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;ha&mdash;thought it was Young John!' said Mr Dorrit. 'The young
      man may come up,' turning to the attendants, as he passed on: 'oh yes, he
      may come up. Let Young John follow. I will speak to him above.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John followed, smiling and much gratified. Mr Dorrit's rooms were
      reached. Candles were lighted. The attendants withdrew.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, turning round upon him and seizing him by the
      collar when they were safely alone. 'What do you mean by this?'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0562m.jpg" alt="0562m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0562.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      The amazement and horror depicted in the unfortunate John's face&mdash;for
      he had rather expected to be embraced next&mdash;were of that powerfully
      expressive nature that Mr Dorrit withdrew his hand and merely glared at
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How dare you do this?' said Mr Dorrit. 'How do you presume to come here?
      How dare you insult me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I insult you, sir?' cried Young John. 'Oh!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir,' returned Mr Dorrit. 'Insult me. Your coming here is an
      affront, an impertinence, an audacity. You are not wanted here. Who sent
      you here? What&mdash;ha&mdash;the Devil do you do here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought, sir,' said Young John, with as pale and shocked a face as ever
      had been turned to Mr Dorrit's in his life&mdash;even in his College life:
      'I thought, sir, you mightn't object to have the goodness to accept a
      bundle&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Damn your bundle, sir!' cried Mr Dorrit, in irrepressible rage. 'I&mdash;hum&mdash;don't
      smoke.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I humbly beg your pardon, sir. You used to.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tell me that again,' cried Mr Dorrit, quite beside himself, 'and I'll
      take the poker to you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Chivery backed to the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stop, sir!' cried Mr Dorrit. 'Stop! Sit down. Confound you sit down!'
    </p>
    <p>
      John Chivery dropped into the chair nearest the door, and Mr Dorrit walked
      up and down the room; rapidly at first; then, more slowly. Once, he went
      to the window, and stood there with his forehead against the glass. All of
      a sudden, he turned and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'What else did you come for, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing else in the world, sir. Oh dear me! Only to say, Sir, that I
      hoped you was well, and only to ask if Miss Amy was Well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's that to you, sir?' retorted Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's nothing to me, sir, by rights. I never thought of lessening the
      distance betwixt us, I am sure. I know it's a liberty, sir, but I never
      thought you'd have taken it ill. Upon my word and honour, sir,' said Young
      John, with emotion, 'in my poor way, I am too proud to have come, I assure
      you, if I had thought so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit was ashamed. He went back to the window, and leaned his forehead
      against the glass for some time. When he turned, he had his handkerchief
      in his hand, and he had been wiping his eyes with it, and he looked tired
      and ill.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Young John, I am very sorry to have been hasty with you, but&mdash;ha&mdash;some
      remembrances are not happy remembrances, and&mdash;hum&mdash;you shouldn't
      have come.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I feel that now, sir,' returned John Chivery; 'but I didn't before, and
      Heaven knows I meant no harm, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. No,' said Mr Dorrit. 'I am&mdash;hum&mdash;sure of that. Ha. Give me
      your hand, Young John, give me your hand.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John gave it; but Mr Dorrit had driven his heart out of it, and
      nothing could change his face now, from its white, shocked look.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There!' said Mr Dorrit, slowly shaking hands with him. 'Sit down again,
      Young John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir&mdash;but I'd rather stand.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit sat down instead. After painfully holding his head a little
      while, he turned it to his visitor, and said, with an effort to be easy:
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how is your father, Young John? How&mdash;ha&mdash;how are they all,
      Young John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir, They're all pretty well, sir. They're not any ways
      complaining.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hum. You are in your&mdash;ha&mdash;old business I see, John?' said Mr
      Dorrit, with a glance at the offending bundle he had anathematised.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Partly, sir. I am in my'&mdash;John hesitated a little&mdash;'father's
      business likewise.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh indeed!' said Mr Dorrit. 'Do you&mdash;ha hum&mdash;go upon the ha&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lock, sir? Yes, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Much to do, John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir; we're pretty heavy at present. I don't know how it is, but we
      generally <i>are</i> pretty heavy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At this time of the year, Young John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mostly at all times of the year, sir. I don't know the time that makes
      much difference to us. I wish you good night, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay a moment, John&mdash;ha&mdash;stay a moment. Hum. Leave me the
      cigars, John, I&mdash;ha&mdash;beg.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly, sir.' John put them, with a trembling hand, on the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay a moment, Young John; stay another moment. It would be a&mdash;ha&mdash;a
      gratification to me to send a little&mdash;hum&mdash;Testimonial, by such
      a trusty messenger, to be divided among&mdash;ha hum&mdash;them&mdash;<i>them</i>&mdash;according
      to their wants. Would you object to take it, John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not in any ways, sir. There's many of them, I'm sure, that would be the
      better for it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, John. I&mdash;ha&mdash;I'll write it, John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His hand shook so that he was a long time writing it, and wrote it in a
      tremulous scrawl at last. It was a cheque for one hundred pounds. He
      folded it up, put it in Young John's hand, and pressed the hand in his.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope you'll&mdash;ha&mdash;overlook&mdash;hum&mdash;what has passed,
      John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't speak of it, sir, on any accounts. I don't in any ways bear malice,
      I'm sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      But nothing while John was there could change John's face to its natural
      colour and expression, or restore John's natural manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And, John,' said Mr Dorrit, giving his hand a final pressure, and
      releasing it, 'I hope we&mdash;ha&mdash;agree that we have spoken together
      in confidence; and that you will abstain, in going out, from saying
      anything to any one that might&mdash;hum&mdash;suggest that&mdash;ha&mdash;once
      I&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I assure you, sir,' returned John Chivery, 'in my poor humble way,
      sir, I'm too proud and honourable to do it, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit was not too proud and honourable to listen at the door that he
      might ascertain for himself whether John really went straight out, or
      lingered to have any talk with any one. There was no doubt that he went
      direct out at the door, and away down the street with a quick step. After
      remaining alone for an hour, Mr Dorrit rang for the Courier, who found him
      with his chair on the hearth-rug, sitting with his back towards him and
      his face to the fire. 'You can take that bundle of cigars to smoke on the
      journey, if you like,' said Mr Dorrit, with a careless wave of his hand.
      'Ha&mdash;brought by&mdash;hum&mdash;little offering from&mdash;ha&mdash;son
      of old tenant of mine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Next morning's sun saw Mr Dorrit's equipage upon the Dover road, where
      every red-jacketed postilion was the sign of a cruel house, established
      for the unmerciful plundering of travellers. The whole business of the
      human race, between London and Dover, being spoliation, Mr Dorrit was
      waylaid at Dartford, pillaged at Gravesend, rifled at Rochester, fleeced
      at Sittingbourne, and sacked at Canterbury. However, it being the
      Courier's business to get him out of the hands of the banditti, the
      Courier brought him off at every stage; and so the red-jackets went
      gleaming merrily along the spring landscape, rising and falling to a
      regular measure, between Mr Dorrit in his snug corner and the next chalky
      rise in the dusty highway.
    </p>
    <p>
      Another day's sun saw him at Calais. And having now got the Channel
      between himself and John Chivery, he began to feel safe, and to find that
      the foreign air was lighter to breathe than the air of England.
    </p>
    <p>
      On again by the heavy French roads for Paris. Having now quite recovered
      his equanimity, Mr Dorrit, in his snug corner, fell to castle-building as
      he rode along. It was evident that he had a very large castle in hand. All
      day long he was running towers up, taking towers down, adding a wing here,
      putting on a battlement there, looking to the walls, strengthening the
      defences, giving ornamental touches to the interior, making in all
      respects a superb castle of it. His preoccupied face so clearly denoted
      the pursuit in which he was engaged, that every cripple at the
      post-houses, not blind, who shoved his little battered tin-box in at the
      carriage window for Charity in the name of Heaven, Charity in the name of
      our Lady, Charity in the name of all the Saints, knew as well what work he
      was at, as their countryman Le Brun could have known it himself, though he
      had made that English traveller the subject of a special physiognomical
      treatise.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arrived at Paris, and resting there three days, Mr Dorrit strolled much
      about the streets alone, looking in at the shop-windows, and particularly
      the jewellers' windows. Ultimately, he went into the most famous
      jeweller's, and said he wanted to buy a little gift for a lady.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a charming little woman to whom he said it&mdash;a sprightly little
      woman, dressed in perfect taste, who came out of a green velvet bower to
      attend upon him, from posting up some dainty little books of account which
      one could hardly suppose to be ruled for the entry of any articles more
      commercial than kisses, at a dainty little shining desk which looked in
      itself like a sweetmeat.
    </p>
    <p>
      For example, then, said the little woman, what species of gift did
      Monsieur desire? A love-gift?
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit smiled, and said, Eh, well! Perhaps. What did he know? It was
      always possible; the sex being so charming. Would she show him some?
    </p>
    <p>
      Most willingly, said the little woman. Flattered and enchanted to show him
      many. But pardon! To begin with, he would have the great goodness to
      observe that there were love-gifts, and there were nuptial gifts. For
      example, these ravishing ear-rings and this necklace so superb to
      correspond, were what one called a love-gift. These brooches and these
      rings, of a beauty so gracious and celestial, were what one called, with
      the permission of Monsieur, nuptial gifts.
    </p>
    <p>
      Perhaps it would be a good arrangement, Mr Dorrit hinted, smiling, to
      purchase both, and to present the love-gift first, and to finish with the
      nuptial offering?
    </p>
    <p>
      Ah Heaven! said the little woman, laying the tips of the fingers of her
      two little hands against each other, that would be generous indeed, that
      would be a special gallantry! And without doubt the lady so crushed with
      gifts would find them irresistible.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit was not sure of that. But, for example, the sprightly little
      woman was very sure of it, she said. So Mr Dorrit bought a gift of each
      sort, and paid handsomely for it. As he strolled back to his hotel
      afterwards, he carried his head high: having plainly got up his castle now
      to a much loftier altitude than the two square towers of Notre Dame.
    </p>
    <p>
      Building away with all his might, but reserving the plans of his castle
      exclusively for his own eye, Mr Dorrit posted away for Marseilles.
      Building on, building on, busily, busily, from morning to night. Falling
      asleep, and leaving great blocks of building materials dangling in the
      air; waking again, to resume work and get them into their places. What
      time the Courier in the rumble, smoking Young John's best cigars, left a
      little thread of thin light smoke behind&mdash;perhaps as <i>he</i> built
      a castle or two with stray pieces of Mr Dorrit's money.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not a fortified town that they passed in all their journey was as strong,
      not a Cathedral summit was as high, as Mr Dorrit's castle. Neither the
      Saone nor the Rhone sped with the swiftness of that peerless building; nor
      was the Mediterranean deeper than its foundations; nor were the distant
      landscapes on the Cornice road, nor the hills and bay of Genoa the Superb,
      more beautiful. Mr Dorrit and his matchless castle were disembarked among
      the dirty white houses and dirtier felons of Civita Vecchia, and thence
      scrambled on to Rome as they could, through the filth that festered on the
      way.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0055" id="link2HCH0055"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 19. The Storming of the Castle in the Air
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he sun had gone down full four hours, and it was later than most
      travellers would like it to be for finding themselves outside the walls of
      Rome, when Mr Dorrit's carriage, still on its last wearisome stage,
      rattled over the solitary Campagna. The savage herdsmen and the
      fierce-looking peasants who had chequered the way while the light lasted,
      had all gone down with the sun, and left the wilderness blank. At some
      turns of the road, a pale flare on the horizon, like an exhalation from
      the ruin-sown land, showed that the city was yet far off; but this poor
      relief was rare and short-lived. The carriage dipped down again into a
      hollow of the black dry sea, and for a long time there was nothing visible
      save its petrified swell and the gloomy sky.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, though he had his castle-building to engage his mind, could not
      be quite easy in that desolate place. He was far more curious, in every
      swerve of the carriage, and every cry of the postilions, than he had been
      since he quitted London. The valet on the box evidently quaked. The
      Courier in the rumble was not altogether comfortable in his mind. As often
      as Mr Dorrit let down the glass and looked back at him (which was very
      often), he saw him smoking John Chivery out, it is true, but still
      generally standing up the while and looking about him, like a man who had
      his suspicions, and kept upon his guard. Then would Mr Dorrit, pulling up
      the glass again, reflect that those postilions were cut-throat looking
      fellows, and that he would have done better to have slept at Civita
      Vecchia, and have started betimes in the morning. But, for all this, he
      worked at his castle in the intervals.
    </p>
    <p>
      And now, fragments of ruinous enclosure, yawning window-gap and crazy
      wall, deserted houses, leaking wells, broken water-tanks, spectral
      cypress-trees, patches of tangled vine, and the changing of the track to a
      long, irregular, disordered lane where everything was crumbling away, from
      the unsightly buildings to the jolting road&mdash;now, these objects
      showed that they were nearing Rome. And now, a sudden twist and stoppage
      of the carriage inspired Mr Dorrit with the mistrust that the brigand
      moment was come for twisting him into a ditch and robbing him; until,
      letting down the glass again and looking out, he perceived himself
      assailed by nothing worse than a funeral procession, which came
      mechanically chaunting by, with an indistinct show of dirty vestments,
      lurid torches, swinging censers, and a great cross borne before a priest.
      He was an ugly priest by torchlight; of a lowering aspect, with an
      overhanging brow; and as his eyes met those of Mr Dorrit, looking
      bareheaded out of the carriage, his lips, moving as they chaunted, seemed
      to threaten that important traveller; likewise the action of his hand,
      which was in fact his manner of returning the traveller's salutation,
      seemed to come in aid of that menace. So thought Mr Dorrit, made fanciful
      by the weariness of building and travelling, as the priest drifted past
      him, and the procession straggled away, taking its dead along with it.
      Upon their so-different way went Mr Dorrit's company too; and soon, with
      their coach load of luxuries from the two great capitals of Europe, they
      were (like the Goths reversed) beating at the gates of Rome.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit was not expected by his own people that night. He had been; but
      they had given him up until to-morrow, not doubting that it was later than
      he would care, in those parts, to be out. Thus, when his equipage stopped
      at his own gate, no one but the porter appeared to receive him. Was Miss
      Dorrit from home? he asked. No. She was within. Good, said Mr Dorrit to
      the assembling servants; let them keep where they were; let them help to
      unload the carriage; he would find Miss Dorrit for himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      So he went up his grand staircase, slowly, and tired, and looked into
      various chambers which were empty, until he saw a light in a small
      ante-room. It was a curtained nook, like a tent, within two other rooms;
      and it looked warm and bright in colour, as he approached it through the
      dark avenue they made.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a draped doorway, but no door; and as he stopped here, looking
      in unseen, he felt a pang. Surely not like jealousy? For why like
      jealousy? There was only his daughter and his brother there: he, with his
      chair drawn to the hearth, enjoying the warmth of the evening wood fire;
      she seated at a little table, busied with some embroidery work. Allowing
      for the great difference in the still-life of the picture, the figures
      were much the same as of old; his brother being sufficiently like himself
      to represent himself, for a moment, in the composition. So had he sat many
      a night, over a coal fire far away; so had she sat, devoted to him. Yet
      surely there was nothing to be jealous of in the old miserable poverty.
      Whence, then, the pang in his heart?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know, uncle, I think you are growing young again?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her uncle shook his head and said, 'Since when, my dear; since when?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think,' returned Little Dorrit, plying her needle, 'that you have been
      growing younger for weeks past. So cheerful, uncle, and so ready, and so
      interested.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear child&mdash;all you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All me, uncle!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes. You have done me a world of good. You have been so considerate
      of me, and so tender with me, and so delicate in trying to hide your
      attentions from me, that I&mdash;well, well, well! It's treasured up, my
      darling, treasured up.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is nothing in it but your own fresh fancy, uncle,' said Little
      Dorrit, cheerfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, well, well!' murmured the old man. 'Thank God!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She paused for an instant in her work to look at him, and her look revived
      that former pain in her father's breast; in his poor weak breast, so full
      of contradictions, vacillations, inconsistencies, the little peevish
      perplexities of this ignorant life, mists which the morning without a
      night only can clear away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been freer with you, you see, my dove,' said the old man, 'since
      we have been alone. I say, alone, for I don't count Mrs General; I don't
      care for her; she has nothing to do with me. But I know Fanny was
      impatient of me. And I don't wonder at it, or complain of it, for I am
      sensible that I must be in the way, though I try to keep out of it as well
      as I can. I know I am not fit company for our company. My brother
      William,' said the old man admiringly, 'is fit company for monarchs; but
      not so your uncle, my dear. Frederick Dorrit is no credit to William
      Dorrit, and he knows it quite well. Ah! Why, here's your father, Amy! My
      dear William, welcome back! My beloved brother, I am rejoiced to see you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      (Turning his head in speaking, he had caught sight of him as he stood in
      the doorway.)
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit with a cry of pleasure put her arms about her father's neck,
      and kissed him again and again. Her father was a little impatient, and a
      little querulous. 'I am glad to find you at last, Amy,' he said. 'Ha.
      Really I am glad to find&mdash;hum&mdash;any one to receive me at last. I
      appear to have been&mdash;ha&mdash;so little expected, that upon my word I
      began&mdash;ha hum&mdash;to think it might be right to offer an apology
      for&mdash;ha&mdash;taking the liberty of coming back at all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was so late, my dear William,' said his brother, 'that we had given
      you up for to-night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am stronger than you, dear Frederick,' returned his brother with an
      elaboration of fraternity in which there was severity; 'and I hope I can
      travel without detriment at&mdash;ha&mdash;any hour I choose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Surely, surely,' returned the other, with a misgiving that he had given
      offence. 'Surely, William.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Amy,' pursued Mr Dorrit, as she helped him to put off his
      wrappers. 'I can do it without assistance. I&mdash;ha&mdash;need not
      trouble you, Amy. Could I have a morsel of bread and a glass of wine, or&mdash;hum&mdash;would
      it cause too much inconvenience?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear father, you shall have supper in a very few minutes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, my love,' said Mr Dorrit, with a reproachful frost upon him;
      'I&mdash;ha&mdash;am afraid I am causing inconvenience. Hum. Mrs General
      pretty well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs General complained of a headache, and of being fatigued; and so, when
      we gave you up, she went to bed, dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Perhaps Mr Dorrit thought that Mrs General had done well in being overcome
      by the disappointment of his not arriving. At any rate, his face relaxed,
      and he said with obvious satisfaction, 'Extremely sorry to hear that Mrs
      General is not well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      During this short dialogue, his daughter had been observant of him, with
      something more than her usual interest. It would seem as though he had a
      changed or worn appearance in her eyes, and he perceived and resented it;
      for he said with renewed peevishness, when he had divested himself of his
      travelling-cloak, and had come to the fire:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, what are you looking at? What do you see in me that causes you to&mdash;ha&mdash;concentrate
      your solicitude on me in that&mdash;hum&mdash;very particular manner?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I did not know it, father; I beg your pardon. It gladdens my eyes to see
      you again; that's all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't say that's all, because&mdash;ha&mdash;that's not all. You&mdash;hum&mdash;you
      think,' said Mr Dorrit, with an accusatory emphasis, 'that I am not
      looking well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought you looked a little tired, love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you are mistaken,' said Mr Dorrit. 'Ha, I am <i>not</i> tired. Ha,
      hum. I am very much fresher than I was when I went away.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was so inclined to be angry that she said nothing more in her
      justification, but remained quietly beside him embracing his arm. As he
      stood thus, with his brother on the other side, he fell into a heavy doze,
      of not a minute's duration, and awoke with a start.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Frederick,' he said, turning to his brother: 'I recommend you to go to
      bed immediately.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, William. I'll wait and see you sup.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Frederick,' he retorted, 'I beg you to go to bed. I&mdash;ha&mdash;make
      it a personal request that you go to bed. You ought to have been in bed
      long ago. You are very feeble.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hah!' said the old man, who had no wish but to please him. 'Well, well,
      well! I dare say I am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Frederick,' returned Mr Dorrit, with an astonishing superiority
      to his brother's failing powers, 'there can be no doubt of it. It is
      painful to me to see you so weak. Ha. It distresses me. Hum. I don't find
      you looking at all well. You are not fit for this sort of thing. You
      should be more careful, you should be very careful.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I go to bed?' asked Frederick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Frederick,' said Mr Dorrit, 'do, I adjure you! Good night, brother.
      I hope you will be stronger to-morrow. I am not at all pleased with your
      looks. Good night, dear fellow.' After dismissing his brother in this
      gracious way, he fell into a doze again before the old man was well out of
      the room: and he would have stumbled forward upon the logs, but for his
      daughter's restraining hold.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your uncle wanders very much, Amy,' he said, when he was thus roused. 'He
      is less&mdash;ha&mdash;coherent, and his conversation is more&mdash;hum&mdash;broken,
      than I have&mdash;ha, hum&mdash;ever known. Has he had any illness since I
      have been gone?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You&mdash;ha&mdash;see a great change in him, Amy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have not observed it, dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Greatly broken,' said Mr Dorrit. 'Greatly broken. My poor, affectionate,
      failing Frederick! Ha. Even taking into account what he was before, he is&mdash;hum&mdash;sadly
      broken!'
    </p>
    <p>
      His supper, which was brought to him there, and spread upon the little
      table where he had seen her working, diverted his attention. She sat at
      his side as in the days that were gone, for the first time since those
      days ended. They were alone, and she helped him to his meat and poured out
      his drink for him, as she had been used to do in the prison. All this
      happened now, for the first time since their accession to wealth. She was
      afraid to look at him much, after the offence he had taken; but she
      noticed two occasions in the course of his meal, when he all of a sudden
      looked at her, and looked about him, as if the association were so strong
      that he needed assurance from his sense of sight that they were not in the
      old prison-room. Both times, he put his hand to his head as if he missed
      his old black cap&mdash;though it had been ignominiously given away in the
      Marshalsea, and had never got free to that hour, but still hovered about
      the yards on the head of his successor.
    </p>
    <p>
      He took very little supper, but was a long time over it, and often
      reverted to his brother's declining state. Though he expressed the
      greatest pity for him, he was almost bitter upon him. He said that poor
      Frederick&mdash;ha hum&mdash;drivelled. There was no other word to express
      it; drivelled. Poor fellow! It was melancholy to reflect what Amy must
      have undergone from the excessive tediousness of his Society&mdash;wandering
      and babbling on, poor dear estimable creature, wandering and babbling on&mdash;if
      it had not been for the relief she had had in Mrs General. Extremely
      sorry, he then repeated with his former satisfaction, that that&mdash;ha&mdash;superior
      woman was poorly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit, in her watchful love, would have remembered the lightest
      thing he said or did that night, though she had had no subsequent reason
      to recall that night. She always remembered that, when he looked about him
      under the strong influence of the old association, he tried to keep it out
      of her mind, and perhaps out of his own too, by immediately expatiating on
      the great riches and great company that had encompassed him in his
      absence, and on the lofty position he and his family had to sustain. Nor
      did she fail to recall that there were two under-currents, side by side,
      pervading all his discourse and all his manner; one showing her how well
      he had got on without her, and how independent he was of her; the other,
      in a fitful and unintelligible way almost complaining of her, as if it had
      been possible that she had neglected him while he was away.
    </p>
    <p>
      His telling her of the glorious state that Mr Merdle kept, and of the
      court that bowed before him, naturally brought him to Mrs Merdle. So
      naturally indeed, that although there was an unusual want of sequence in
      the greater part of his remarks, he passed to her at once, and asked how
      she was.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is very well. She is going away next week.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Home?' asked Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'After a few weeks' stay upon the road.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She will be a vast loss here,' said Mr Dorrit. 'A vast&mdash;ha&mdash;acquisition
      at home. To Fanny, and to&mdash;hum&mdash;the rest of the&mdash;ha&mdash;great
      world.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit thought of the competition that was to be entered upon, and
      assented very softly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Merdle is going to have a great farewell Assembly, dear, and a dinner
      before it. She has been expressing her anxiety that you should return in
      time. She has invited both you and me to her dinner.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is&mdash;ha&mdash;very kind. When is the day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The day after to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Write round in the morning, and say that I have returned, and shall&mdash;hum&mdash;be
      delighted.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I walk with you up the stairs to your room, dear?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No!' he answered, looking angrily round; for he was moving away, as if
      forgetful of leave-taking. 'You may not, Amy. I want no help. I am your
      father, not your infirm uncle!' He checked himself, as abruptly as he had
      broken into this reply, and said, 'You have not kissed me, Amy. Good
      night, my dear! We must marry&mdash;ha&mdash;we must marry <i>you</i>,
      now.' With that he went, more slowly and more tired, up the staircase to
      his rooms, and, almost as soon as he got there, dismissed his valet. His
      next care was to look about him for his Paris purchases, and, after
      opening their cases and carefully surveying them, to put them away under
      lock and key. After that, what with dozing and what with castle-building,
      he lost himself for a long time, so that there was a touch of morning on
      the eastward rim of the desolate Campagna when he crept to bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General sent up her compliments in good time next day, and hoped he
      had rested well after this fatiguing journey. He sent down his
      compliments, and begged to inform Mrs General that he had rested very well
      indeed, and was in high condition. Nevertheless, he did not come forth
      from his own rooms until late in the afternoon; and, although he then
      caused himself to be magnificently arrayed for a drive with Mrs General
      and his daughter, his appearance was scarcely up to his description of
      himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      As the family had no visitors that day, its four members dined alone
      together. He conducted Mrs General to the seat at his right hand with
      immense ceremony; and Little Dorrit could not but notice as she followed
      with her uncle, both that he was again elaborately dressed, and that his
      manner towards Mrs General was very particular. The perfect formation of
      that accomplished lady's surface rendered it difficult to displace an atom
      of its genteel glaze, but Little Dorrit thought she descried a slight thaw
      of triumph in a corner of her frosty eye.
    </p>
    <p>
      Notwithstanding what may be called in these pages the Pruney and Prismatic
      nature of the family banquet, Mr Dorrit several times fell asleep while it
      was in progress. His fits of dozing were as sudden as they had been
      overnight, and were as short and profound. When the first of these
      slumberings seized him, Mrs General looked almost amazed: but, on each
      recurrence of the symptoms, she told her polite beads, Papa, Potatoes,
      Poultry, Prunes, and Prism; and, by dint of going through that infallible
      performance very slowly, appeared to finish her rosary at about the same
      time as Mr Dorrit started from his sleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was again painfully aware of a somnolent tendency in Frederick (which
      had no existence out of his own imagination), and after dinner, when
      Frederick had withdrawn, privately apologised to Mrs General for the poor
      man. 'The most estimable and affectionate of brothers,' he said, 'but&mdash;ha,
      hum&mdash;broken up altogether. Unhappily, declining fast.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Frederick, sir,' quoth Mrs General, 'is habitually absent and
      drooping, but let us hope it is not so bad as that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dorrit, however, was determined not to let him off. 'Fast declining,
      madam. A wreck. A ruin. Mouldering away before our eyes. Hum. Good
      Frederick!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You left Mrs Sparkler quite well and happy, I trust?' said Mrs General,
      after heaving a cool sigh for Frederick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Surrounded,' replied Mr Dorrit, 'by&mdash;ha&mdash;all that can charm the
      taste, and&mdash;hum&mdash;elevate the mind. Happy, my dear madam, in a&mdash;hum&mdash;husband.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General was a little fluttered; seeming delicately to put the word
      away with her gloves, as if there were no knowing what it might lead to.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny,' Mr Dorrit continued. 'Fanny, Mrs General, has high qualities. Ha.
      Ambition&mdash;hum&mdash;purpose, consciousness of&mdash;ha&mdash;position,
      determination to support that position&mdash;ha, hum&mdash;grace, beauty,
      and native nobility.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No doubt,' said Mrs General (with a little extra stiffness).
    </p>
    <p>
      'Combined with these qualities, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'Fanny has&mdash;ha&mdash;manifested
      one blemish which has made me&mdash;hum&mdash;made me uneasy, and&mdash;ha&mdash;I
      must add, angry; but which I trust may now be considered at an end, even
      as to herself, and which is undoubtedly at an end as to&mdash;ha&mdash;others.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To what, Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, with her gloves again somewhat
      excited, 'can you allude? I am at a loss to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do not say that, my dear madam,' interrupted Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General's voice, as it died away, pronounced the words, 'at a loss to
      imagine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      After which Mr Dorrit was seized with a doze for about a minute, out of
      which he sprang with spasmodic nimbleness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I refer, Mrs General, to that&mdash;ha&mdash;strong spirit of opposition,
      or&mdash;hum&mdash;I might say&mdash;ha&mdash;jealousy in Fanny, which has
      occasionally risen against the&mdash;ha&mdash;sense I entertain of&mdash;hum&mdash;the
      claims of&mdash;ha&mdash;the lady with whom I have now the honour of
      communing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, 'is ever but too obliging, ever but too
      appreciative. If there have been moments when I have imagined that Miss
      Dorrit has indeed resented the favourable opinion Mr Dorrit has formed of
      my services, I have found, in that only too high opinion, my consolation
      and recompense.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Opinion of your services, madam?' said Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of,' Mrs General repeated, in an elegantly impressive manner, 'my
      services.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of your services alone, dear madam?' said Mr Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I presume,' retorted Mrs General, in her former impressive manner, 'of my
      services alone. For, to what else,' said Mrs General, with a slightly
      interrogative action of her gloves, 'could I impute&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To&mdash;ha&mdash;yourself, Mrs General. Ha, hum. To yourself and your
      merits,' was Mr Dorrit's rejoinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dorrit will pardon me,' said Mrs General, 'if I remark that this is
      not a time or place for the pursuit of the present conversation. Mr Dorrit
      will excuse me if I remind him that Miss Dorrit is in the adjoining room,
      and is visible to myself while I utter her name. Mr Dorrit will forgive me
      if I observe that I am agitated, and that I find there are moments when
      weaknesses I supposed myself to have subdued, return with redoubled power.
      Mr Dorrit will allow me to withdraw.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hum. Perhaps we may resume this&mdash;ha&mdash;interesting conversation,'
      said Mr Dorrit, 'at another time; unless it should be, what I hope it is
      not&mdash;hum&mdash;in any way disagreeable to&mdash;ah&mdash;Mrs
      General.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dorrit,' said Mrs General, casting down her eyes as she rose with a
      bend, 'must ever claim my homage and obedience.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs General then took herself off in a stately way, and not with that
      amount of trepidation upon her which might have been expected in a less
      remarkable woman. Mr Dorrit, who had conducted his part of the dialogue
      with a certain majestic and admiring condescension&mdash;much as some
      people may be seen to conduct themselves in Church, and to perform their
      part in the service&mdash;appeared, on the whole, very well satisfied with
      himself and with Mrs General too. On the return of that lady to tea, she
      had touched herself up with a little powder and pomatum, and was not
      without moral enchantment likewise: the latter showing itself in much
      sweet patronage of manner towards Miss Dorrit, and in an air of as tender
      interest in Mr Dorrit as was consistent with rigid propriety. At the close
      of the evening, when she rose to retire, Mr Dorrit took her by the hand as
      if he were going to lead her out into the Piazza of the people to walk a
      minuet by moonlight, and with great solemnity conducted her to the room
      door, where he raised her knuckles to his lips. Having parted from her
      with what may be conjectured to have been a rather bony kiss of a cosmetic
      flavour, he gave his daughter his blessing, graciously. And having thus
      hinted that there was something remarkable in the wind, he again went to
      bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      He remained in the seclusion of his own chamber next morning; but, early
      in the afternoon, sent down his best compliments to Mrs General, by Mr
      Tinkler, and begged she would accompany Miss Dorrit on an airing without
      him. His daughter was dressed for Mrs Merdle's dinner before he appeared.
      He then presented himself in a refulgent condition as to his attire, but
      looking indefinably shrunken and old. However, as he was plainly
      determined to be angry with her if she so much as asked him how he was,
      she only ventured to kiss his cheek, before accompanying him to Mrs
      Merdle's with an anxious heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      The distance that they had to go was very short, but he was at his
      building work again before the carriage had half traversed it. Mrs Merdle
      received him with great distinction; the bosom was in admirable
      preservation, and on the best terms with itself; the dinner was very
      choice; and the company was very select.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was principally English; saving that it comprised the usual French
      Count and the usual Italian Marchese&mdash;decorative social milestones,
      always to be found in certain places, and varying very little in
      appearance. The table was long, and the dinner was long; and Little
      Dorrit, overshadowed by a large pair of black whiskers and a large white
      cravat, lost sight of her father altogether, until a servant put a scrap
      of paper in her hand, with a whispered request from Mrs Merdle that she
      would read it directly. Mrs Merdle had written on it in pencil, 'Pray come
      and speak to Mr Dorrit, I doubt if he is well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was hurrying to him, unobserved, when he got up out of his chair, and
      leaning over the table called to her, supposing her to be still in her
      place:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, Amy, my child!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The action was so unusual, to say nothing of his strange eager appearance
      and strange eager voice, that it instantaneously caused a profound
      silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amy, my dear,' he repeated. 'Will you go and see if Bob is on the lock?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was at his side, and touching him, but he still perversely supposed
      her to be in her seat, and called out, still leaning over the table, 'Amy,
      Amy. I don't feel quite myself. Ha. I don't know what's the matter with
      me. I particularly wish to see Bob. Ha. Of all the turnkeys, he's as much
      my friend as yours. See if Bob is in the lodge, and beg him to come to
      me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      All the guests were now in consternation, and everybody rose.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear father, I am not there; I am here, by you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! You are here, Amy! Good. Hum. Good. Ha. Call Bob. If he has been
      relieved, and is not on the lock, tell Mrs Bangham to go and fetch him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was gently trying to get him away; but he resisted, and would not go.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you, child,' he said petulantly, 'I can't be got up the narrow
      stairs without Bob. Ha. Send for Bob. Hum. Send for Bob&mdash;best of all
      the turnkeys&mdash;send for Bob!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked confusedly about him, and, becoming conscious of the number of
      faces by which he was surrounded, addressed them:
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0577m.jpg" alt="0577m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0577.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Ladies and gentlemen, the duty&mdash;ha&mdash;devolves upon me of&mdash;hum&mdash;welcoming
      you to the Marshalsea! Welcome to the Marshalsea! The space is&mdash;ha&mdash;limited&mdash;limited&mdash;the
      parade might be wider; but you will find it apparently grow larger after a
      time&mdash;a time, ladies and gentlemen&mdash;and the air is, all things
      considered, very good. It blows over the&mdash;ha&mdash;Surrey hills.
      Blows over the Surrey hills. This is the Snuggery. Hum. Supported by a
      small subscription of the&mdash;ha&mdash;Collegiate body. In return for
      which&mdash;hot water&mdash;general kitchen&mdash;and little domestic
      advantages. Those who are habituated to the&mdash;ha&mdash;Marshalsea, are
      pleased to call me its father. I am accustomed to be complimented by
      strangers as the&mdash;ha&mdash;Father of the Marshalsea. Certainly, if
      years of residence may establish a claim to so&mdash;ha&mdash;honourable a
      title, I may accept the&mdash;hum&mdash;conferred distinction. My child,
      ladies and gentlemen. My daughter. Born here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was not ashamed of it, or ashamed of him. She was pale and frightened;
      but she had no other care than to soothe him and get him away, for his own
      dear sake. She was between him and the wondering faces, turned round upon
      his breast with her own face raised to his. He held her clasped in his
      left arm, and between whiles her low voice was heard tenderly imploring
      him to go away with her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Born here,' he repeated, shedding tears. 'Bred here. Ladies and
      gentlemen, my daughter. Child of an unfortunate father, but&mdash;ha&mdash;always
      a gentleman. Poor, no doubt, but&mdash;hum&mdash;proud. Always proud. It
      has become a&mdash;hum&mdash;not infrequent custom for my&mdash;ha&mdash;personal
      admirers&mdash;personal admirers solely&mdash;to be pleased to express
      their desire to acknowledge my semi-official position here, by offering&mdash;ha&mdash;little
      tributes, which usually take the form of&mdash;ha&mdash;voluntary
      recognitions of my humble endeavours to&mdash;hum&mdash;to uphold a Tone
      here&mdash;a Tone&mdash;I beg it to be understood that I do not consider
      myself compromised. Ha. Not compromised. Ha. Not a beggar. No; I repudiate
      the title! At the same time far be it from me to&mdash;hum&mdash;to put
      upon the fine feelings by which my partial friends are actuated, the
      slight of scrupling to admit that those offerings are&mdash;hum&mdash;highly
      acceptable. On the contrary, they are most acceptable. In my child's name,
      if not in my own, I make the admission in the fullest manner, at the same
      time reserving&mdash;ha&mdash;shall I say my personal dignity? Ladies and
      gentlemen, God bless you all!'
    </p>
    <p>
      By this time, the exceeding mortification undergone by the Bosom had
      occasioned the withdrawal of the greater part of the company into other
      rooms. The few who had lingered thus long followed the rest, and Little
      Dorrit and her father were left to the servants and themselves. Dearest
      and most precious to her, he would come with her now, would he not? He
      replied to her fervid entreaties, that he would never be able to get up
      the narrow stairs without Bob; where was Bob, would nobody fetch Bob?
      Under pretence of looking for Bob, she got him out against the stream of
      gay company now pouring in for the evening assembly, and got him into a
      coach that had just set down its load, and got him home.
    </p>
    <p>
      The broad stairs of his Roman palace were contracted in his failing sight
      to the narrow stairs of his London prison; and he would suffer no one but
      her to touch him, his brother excepted. They got him up to his room
      without help, and laid him down on his bed. And from that hour his poor
      maimed spirit, only remembering the place where it had broken its wings,
      cancelled the dream through which it had since groped, and knew of nothing
      beyond the Marshalsea. When he heard footsteps in the street, he took them
      for the old weary tread in the yards. When the hour came for locking up,
      he supposed all strangers to be excluded for the night. When the time for
      opening came again, he was so anxious to see Bob, that they were fain to
      patch up a narrative how that Bob&mdash;many a year dead then, gentle
      turnkey&mdash;had taken cold, but hoped to be out to-morrow, or the next
      day, or the next at furthest.
    </p>
    <p>
      He fell away into a weakness so extreme that he could not raise his hand.
      But he still protected his brother according to his long usage; and would
      say with some complacency, fifty times a day, when he saw him standing by
      his bed, 'My good Frederick, sit down. You are very feeble indeed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They tried him with Mrs General, but he had not the faintest knowledge of
      her. Some injurious suspicion lodged itself in his brain, that she wanted
      to supplant Mrs Bangham, and that she was given to drinking. He charged
      her with it in no measured terms; and was so urgent with his daughter to
      go round to the Marshal and entreat him to turn her out, that she was
      never reproduced after the first failure.
    </p>
    <p>
      Saving that he once asked 'if Tip had gone outside?' the remembrance of
      his two children not present seemed to have departed from him. But the
      child who had done so much for him and had been so poorly repaid, was
      never out of his mind. Not that he spared her, or was fearful of her being
      spent by watching and fatigue; he was not more troubled on that score than
      he had usually been. No; he loved her in his old way. They were in the
      jail again, and she tended him, and he had constant need of her, and could
      not turn without her; and he even told her, sometimes, that he was content
      to have undergone a great deal for her sake. As to her, she bent over his
      bed with her quiet face against his, and would have laid down her own life
      to restore him.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he had been sinking in this painless way for two or three days, she
      observed him to be troubled by the ticking of his watch&mdash;a pompous
      gold watch that made as great a to-do about its going as if nothing else
      went but itself and Time. She suffered it to run down; but he was still
      uneasy, and showed that was not what he wanted. At length he roused
      himself to explain that he wanted money to be raised on this watch. He was
      quite pleased when she pretended to take it away for the purpose, and
      afterwards had a relish for his little tastes of wine and jelly, that he
      had not had before.
    </p>
    <p>
      He soon made it plain that this was so; for, in another day or two he sent
      off his sleeve-buttons and finger-rings. He had an amazing satisfaction in
      entrusting her with these errands, and appeared to consider it equivalent
      to making the most methodical and provident arrangements. After his
      trinkets, or such of them as he had been able to see about him, were gone,
      his clothes engaged his attention; and it is as likely as not that he was
      kept alive for some days by the satisfaction of sending them, piece by
      piece, to an imaginary pawnbroker's.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus for ten days Little Dorrit bent over his pillow, laying her cheek
      against his. Sometimes she was so worn out that for a few minutes they
      would slumber together. Then she would awake; to recollect with
      fast-flowing silent tears what it was that touched her face, and to see,
      stealing over the cherished face upon the pillow, a deeper shadow than the
      shadow of the Marshalsea Wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      Quietly, quietly, all the lines of the plan of the great Castle melted one
      after another. Quietly, quietly, the ruled and cross-ruled countenance on
      which they were traced, became fair and blank. Quietly, quietly, the
      reflected marks of the prison bars and of the zig-zag iron on the
      wall-top, faded away. Quietly, quietly, the face subsided into a far
      younger likeness of her own than she had ever seen under the grey hair,
      and sank to rest.
    </p>
    <p>
      At first her uncle was stark distracted. 'O my brother! O William,
      William! You to go before me; you to go alone; you to go, and I to remain!
      You, so far superior, so distinguished, so noble; I, a poor useless
      creature fit for nothing, and whom no one would have missed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It did her, for the time, the good of having him to think of and to
      succour.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Uncle, dear uncle, spare yourself, spare me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old man was not deaf to the last words. When he did begin to restrain
      himself, it was that he might spare her. He had no care for himself; but,
      with all the remaining power of the honest heart, stunned so long and now
      awaking to be broken, he honoured and blessed her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'O God,' he cried, before they left the room, with his wrinkled hands
      clasped over her. 'Thou seest this daughter of my dear dead brother! All
      that I have looked upon, with my half-blind and sinful eyes, Thou hast
      discerned clearly, brightly. Not a hair of her head shall be harmed before
      Thee. Thou wilt uphold her here to her last hour. And I know Thou wilt
      reward her hereafter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      They remained in a dim room near, until it was almost midnight, quiet and
      sad together. At times his grief would seek relief in a burst like that in
      which it had found its earliest expression; but, besides that his little
      strength would soon have been unequal to such strains, he never failed to
      recall her words, and to reproach himself and calm himself. The only
      utterance with which he indulged his sorrow, was the frequent exclamation
      that his brother was gone, alone; that they had been together in the
      outset of their lives, that they had fallen into misfortune together, that
      they had kept together through their many years of poverty, that they had
      remained together to that day; and that his brother was gone alone, alone!
    </p>
    <p>
      They parted, heavy and sorrowful. She would not consent to leave him
      anywhere but in his own room, and she saw him lie down in his clothes upon
      his bed, and covered him with her own hands. Then she sank upon her own
      bed, and fell into a deep sleep: the sleep of exhaustion and rest, though
      not of complete release from a pervading consciousness of affliction.
      Sleep, good Little Dorrit. Sleep through the night!
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a moonlight night; but the moon rose late, being long past the
      full. When it was high in the peaceful firmament, it shone through
      half-closed lattice blinds into the solemn room where the stumblings and
      wanderings of a life had so lately ended. Two quiet figures were within
      the room; two figures, equally still and impassive, equally removed by an
      untraversable distance from the teeming earth and all that it contains,
      though soon to lie in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      One figure reposed upon the bed. The other, kneeling on the floor, drooped
      over it; the arms easily and peacefully resting on the coverlet; the face
      bowed down, so that the lips touched the hand over which with its last
      breath it had bent. The two brothers were before their Father; far beyond
      the twilight judgment of this world; high above its mists and obscurities.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0582m.jpg" alt="0582m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0582.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0056" id="link2HCH0056"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 20. Introduces the next
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he passengers were landing from the packet on the pier at Calais. A
      low-lying place and a low-spirited place Calais was, with the tide ebbing
      out towards low water-mark. There had been no more water on the bar than
      had sufficed to float the packet in; and now the bar itself, with a
      shallow break of sea over it, looked like a lazy marine monster just risen
      to the surface, whose form was indistinctly shown as it lay asleep. The
      meagre lighthouse all in white, haunting the seaboard as if it were the
      ghost of an edifice that had once had colour and rotundity, dropped
      melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves. The long rows of
      gaunt black piles, slimy and wet and weather-worn, with funeral garlands
      of seaweed twisted about them by the late tide, might have represented an
      unsightly marine cemetery. Every wave-dashed, storm-beaten object, was so
      low and so little, under the broad grey sky, in the noise of the wind and
      sea, and before the curling lines of surf, making at it ferociously, that
      the wonder was there was any Calais left, and that its low gates and low
      wall and low roofs and low ditches and low sand-hills and low ramparts and
      flat streets, had not yielded long ago to the undermining and besieging
      sea, like the fortifications children make on the sea-shore.
    </p>
    <p>
      After slipping among oozy piles and planks, stumbling up wet steps and
      encountering many salt difficulties, the passengers entered on their
      comfortless peregrination along the pier; where all the French vagabonds
      and English outlaws in the town (half the population) attended to prevent
      their recovery from bewilderment. After being minutely inspected by all
      the English, and claimed and reclaimed and counter-claimed as prizes by
      all the French in a hand-to-hand scuffle three quarters of a mile long,
      they were at last free to enter the streets, and to make off in their
      various directions, hotly pursued.
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam, harassed by more anxieties than one, was among this devoted band.
      Having rescued the most defenceless of his compatriots from situations of
      great extremity, he now went his way alone, or as nearly alone as he could
      be, with a native gentleman in a suit of grease and a cap of the same
      material, giving chase at a distance of some fifty yards, and continually
      calling after him, 'Hi! Ice-say! You! Seer! Ice-say! Nice Oatel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Even this hospitable person, however, was left behind at last, and Clennam
      pursued his way, unmolested. There was a tranquil air in the town after
      the turbulence of the Channel and the beach, and its dulness in that
      comparison was agreeable. He met new groups of his countrymen, who had all
      a straggling air of having at one time overblown themselves, like certain
      uncomfortable kinds of flowers, and of being now mere weeds. They had all
      an air, too, of lounging out a limited round, day after day, which
      strongly reminded him of the Marshalsea. But, taking no further note of
      them than was sufficient to give birth to the reflection, he sought out a
      certain street and number which he kept in his mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So Pancks said,' he murmured to himself, as he stopped before a dull
      house answering to the address. 'I suppose his information to be correct
      and his discovery, among Mr Casby's loose papers, indisputable; but,
      without it, I should hardly have supposed this to be a likely place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      A dead sort of house, with a dead wall over the way and a dead gateway at
      the side, where a pendant bell-handle produced two dead tinkles, and a
      knocker produced a dead, flat, surface-tapping, that seemed not to have
      depth enough in it to penetrate even the cracked door. However, the door
      jarred open on a dead sort of spring; and he closed it behind him as he
      entered a dull yard, soon brought to a close by another dead wall, where
      an attempt had been made to train some creeping shrubs, which were dead;
      and to make a little fountain in a grotto, which was dry; and to decorate
      that with a little statue, which was gone.
    </p>
    <p>
      The entry to the house was on the left, and it was garnished as the outer
      gateway was, with two printed bills in French and English, announcing
      Furnished Apartments to let, with immediate possession. A strong cheerful
      peasant woman, all stocking, petticoat, white cap, and ear-ring, stood
      here in a dark doorway, and said with a pleasant show of teeth, 'Ice-say!
      Seer! Who?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam, replying in French, said the English lady; he wished to see the
      English lady. 'Enter then and ascend, if you please,' returned the peasant
      woman, in French likewise. He did both, and followed her up a dark bare
      staircase to a back room on the first-floor. Hence, there was a gloomy
      view of the yard that was dull, and of the shrubs that were dead, and of
      the fountain that was dry, and of the pedestal of the statue that was
      gone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Monsieur Blandois,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'With pleasure, Monsieur.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thereupon the woman withdrew and left him to look at the room. It was the
      pattern of room always to be found in such a house. Cool, dull, and dark.
      Waxed floor very slippery. A room not large enough to skate in; nor
      adapted to the easy pursuit of any other occupation. Red and white
      curtained windows, little straw mat, little round table with a tumultuous
      assemblage of legs underneath, clumsy rush-bottomed chairs, two great red
      velvet arm-chairs affording plenty of space to be uncomfortable in,
      bureau, chimney-glass in several pieces pretending to be in one piece,
      pair of gaudy vases of very artificial flowers; between them a Greek
      warrior with his helmet off, sacrificing a clock to the Genius of France.
    </p>
    <p>
      After some pause, a door of communication with another room was opened,
      and a lady entered. She manifested great surprise on seeing Clennam, and
      her glance went round the room in search of some one else.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me, Miss Wade. I am alone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was not your name that was brought to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No; I know that. Excuse me. I have already had experience that my name
      does not predispose you to an interview; and I ventured to mention the
      name of one I am in search of.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray,' she returned, motioning him to a chair so coldly that he remained
      standing, 'what name was it that you gave?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mentioned the name of Blandois.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Blandois?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A name you are acquainted with.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is strange,' she said, frowning, 'that you should still press an
      undesired interest in me and my acquaintances, in me and my affairs, Mr
      Clennam. I don't know what you mean.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me. You know the name?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What can you have to do with the name? What can I have to do with the
      name? What can you have to do with my knowing or not knowing any name? I
      know many names and I have forgotten many more. This may be in the one
      class, or it may be in the other, or I may never have heard it. I am
      acquainted with no reason for examining myself, or for being examined,
      about it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you will allow me,' said Clennam, 'I will tell you my reason for
      pressing the subject. I admit that I do press it, and I must beg you to
      forgive me if I do so, very earnestly. The reason is all mine, I do not
      insinuate that it is in any way yours.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, sir,' she returned, repeating a little less haughtily than before
      her former invitation to him to be seated: to which he now deferred, as
      she seated herself. 'I am at least glad to know that this is not another
      bondswoman of some friend of yours, who is bereft of free choice, and whom
      I have spirited away. I will hear your reason, if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'First, to identify the person of whom we speak,' said Clennam, 'let me
      observe that it is the person you met in London some time back. You will
      remember meeting him near the river&mdash;in the Adelphi!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You mix yourself most unaccountably with my business,' she replied,
      looking full at him with stern displeasure. 'How do you know that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I entreat you not to take it ill. By mere accident.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What accident?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Solely the accident of coming upon you in the street and seeing the
      meeting.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you speak of yourself, or of some one else?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of myself. I saw it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be sure it was in the open street,' she observed, after a few moments
      of less and less angry reflection. 'Fifty people might have seen it. It
      would have signified nothing if they had.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor do I make my having seen it of any moment, nor (otherwise than as an
      explanation of my coming here) do I connect my visit with it or the favour
      that I have to ask.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! You have to ask a favour! It occurred to me,' and the handsome face
      looked bitterly at him, 'that your manner was softened, Mr Clennam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was content to protest against this by a slight action without
      contesting it in words. He then referred to Blandois' disappearance, of
      which it was probable she had heard? However probable it was to him, she
      had heard of no such thing. Let him look round him (she said) and judge
      for himself what general intelligence was likely to reach the ears of a
      woman who had been shut up there while it was rife, devouring her own
      heart. When she had uttered this denial, which he believed to be true, she
      asked him what he meant by disappearance? That led to his narrating the
      circumstances in detail, and expressing something of his anxiety to
      discover what had really become of the man, and to repel the dark
      suspicions that clouded about his mother's house. She heard him with
      evident surprise, and with more marks of suppressed interest than he had
      seen in her; still they did not overcome her distant, proud, and
      self-secluded manner. When he had finished, she said nothing but these
      words:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have not yet told me, sir, what I have to do with it, or what the
      favour is? Will you be so good as come to that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I assume,' said Arthur, persevering, in his endeavour to soften her
      scornful demeanour, 'that being in communication&mdash;may I say,
      confidential communication?&mdash;with this person&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may say, of course, whatever you like,' she remarked; 'but I do not
      subscribe to your assumptions, Mr Clennam, or to any one's.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;that being, at least in personal communication with him,' said
      Clennam, changing the form of his position in the hope of making it
      unobjectionable, 'you can tell me something of his antecedents, pursuits,
      habits, usual place of residence. Can give me some little clue by which to
      seek him out in the likeliest manner, and either produce him, or establish
      what has become of him. This is the favour I ask, and I ask it in a
      distress of mind for which I hope you will feel some consideration. If you
      should have any reason for imposing conditions upon me, I will respect it
      without asking what it is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You chanced to see me in the street with the man,' she observed, after
      being, to his mortification, evidently more occupied with her own
      reflections on the matter than with his appeal. 'Then you knew the man
      before?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not before; afterwards. I never saw him before, but I saw him again on
      this very night of his disappearance. In my mother's room, in fact. I left
      him there. You will read in this paper all that is known of him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He handed her one of the printed bills, which she read with a steady and
      attentive face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is more than <i>I</i> knew of him,' she said, giving it back.
      Clennam's looks expressed his heavy disappointment, perhaps his
      incredulity; for she added in the same unsympathetic tone: 'You don't
      believe it. Still, it is so. As to personal communication: it seems that
      there was personal communication between him and your mother. And yet you
      say you believe <i>her</i> declaration that she knows no more of him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      A sufficiently expressive hint of suspicion was conveyed in these words,
      and in the smile by which they were accompanied, to bring the blood into
      Clennam's cheeks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, sir,' she said, with a cruel pleasure in repeating the stab, 'I
      will be as open with you as you can desire. I will confess that if I cared
      for my credit (which I do not), or had a good name to preserve (which I
      have not, for I am utterly indifferent to its being considered good or
      bad), I should regard myself as heavily compromised by having had anything
      to do with this fellow. Yet he never passed in at <i>my</i> door&mdash;never
      sat in colloquy with <i>me</i> until midnight.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She took her revenge for her old grudge in thus turning his subject
      against him. Hers was not the nature to spare him, and she had no
      compunction.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That he is a low, mercenary wretch; that I first saw him prowling about
      Italy (where I was, not long ago), and that I hired him there, as the
      suitable instrument of a purpose I happened to have; I have no objection
      to tell you. In short, it was worth my while, for my own pleasure&mdash;the
      gratification of a strong feeling&mdash;to pay a spy who would fetch and
      carry for money. I paid this creature. And I dare say that if I had wanted
      to make such a bargain, and if I could have paid him enough, and if he
      could have done it in the dark, free from all risk, he would have taken
      any life with as little scruple as he took my money. That, at least, is my
      opinion of him; and I see it is not very far removed from yours. Your
      mother's opinion of him, I am to assume (following your example of
      assuming this and that), was vastly different.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My mother, let me remind you,' said Clennam, 'was first brought into
      communication with him in the unlucky course of business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It appears to have been an unlucky course of business that last brought
      her into communication with him,' returned Miss Wade; 'and business hours
      on that occasion were late.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You imply,' said Arthur, smarting under these cool-handed thrusts, of
      which he had deeply felt the force already, 'that there was something&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam,' she composedly interrupted, 'recollect that I do not speak
      by implication about the man. He is, I say again without disguise, a low
      mercenary wretch. I suppose such a creature goes where there is occasion
      for him. If I had not had occasion for him, you would not have seen him
      and me together.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Wrung by her persistence in keeping that dark side of the case before him,
      of which there was a half-hidden shadow in his own breast, Clennam was
      silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have spoken of him as still living,' she added, 'but he may have been
      put out of the way for anything I know. For anything I care, also. I have
      no further occasion for him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With a heavy sigh and a despondent air, Arthur Clennam slowly rose. She
      did not rise also, but said, having looked at him in the meanwhile with a
      fixed look of suspicion, and lips angrily compressed:
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was the chosen associate of your dear friend, Mr Gowan, was he not?
      Why don't you ask your dear friend to help you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The denial that he was a dear friend rose to Arthur's lips; but he
      repressed it, remembering his old struggles and resolutions, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Further than that he has never seen Blandois since Blandois set out for
      England, Mr Gowan knows nothing additional about him. He was a chance
      acquaintance, made abroad.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A chance acquaintance made abroad!' she repeated. 'Yes. Your dear friend
      has need to divert himself with all the acquaintances he can make, seeing
      what a wife he has. I hate his wife, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The anger with which she said it, the more remarkable for being so much
      under her restraint, fixed Clennam's attention, and kept him on the spot.
      It flashed out of her dark eyes as they regarded him, quivered in her
      nostrils, and fired the very breath she exhaled; but her face was
      otherwise composed into a disdainful serenity; and her attitude was as
      calmly and haughtily graceful as if she had been in a mood of complete
      indifference.
    </p>
    <p>
      'All I will say is, Miss Wade,' he remarked, 'that you can have received
      no provocation to a feeling in which I believe you have no sharer.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may ask your dear friend, if you choose,' she returned, 'for his
      opinion upon that subject.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am scarcely on those intimate terms with my dear friend,' said Arthur,
      in spite of his resolutions, 'that would render my approaching the subject
      very probable, Miss Wade.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hate him,' she returned. 'Worse than his wife, because I was once dupe
      enough, and false enough to myself, almost to love him. You have seen me,
      sir, only on common-place occasions, when I dare say you have thought me a
      common-place woman, a little more self-willed than the generality. You
      don't know what I mean by hating, if you know me no better than that; you
      can't know, without knowing with what care I have studied myself and
      people about me. For this reason I have for some time inclined to tell you
      what my life has been&mdash;not to propitiate your opinion, for I set no
      value on it; but that you may comprehend, when you think of your dear
      friend and his dear wife, what I mean by hating. Shall I give you
      something I have written and put by for your perusal, or shall I hold my
      hand?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur begged her to give it to him. She went to the bureau, unlocked it,
      and took from an inner drawer a few folded sheets of paper. Without any
      conciliation of him, scarcely addressing him, rather speaking as if she
      were speaking to her own looking-glass for the justification of her own
      stubbornness, she said, as she gave them to him:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now you may know what I mean by hating! No more of that. Sir, whether you
      find me temporarily and cheaply lodging in an empty London house, or in a
      Calais apartment, you find Harriet with me. You may like to see her before
      you leave. Harriet, come in!' She called Harriet again. The second call
      produced Harriet, once Tattycoram.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here is Mr Clennam,' said Miss Wade; 'not come for you; he has given you
      up,&mdash;I suppose you have, by this time?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Having no authority, or influence&mdash;yes,' assented Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not come in search of you, you see; but still seeking some one. He wants
      that Blandois man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'With whom I saw you in the Strand in London,' hinted Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you know anything of him, Harriet, except that he came from Venice&mdash;which
      we all know&mdash;tell it to Mr Clennam freely.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know nothing more about him,' said the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you satisfied?' Miss Wade inquired of Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had no reason to disbelieve them; the girl's manner being so natural as
      to be almost convincing, if he had had any previous doubts. He replied, 'I
      must seek for intelligence elsewhere.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was not going in the same breath; but he had risen before the girl
      entered, and she evidently thought he was. She looked quickly at him, and
      said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are they well, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She stopped herself in saying what would have been 'all of them;' glanced
      at Miss Wade; and said 'Mr and Mrs Meagles.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They were, when I last heard of them. They are not at home. By the way,
      let me ask you. Is it true that you were seen there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where? Where does any one say I was seen?' returned the girl, sullenly
      casting down her eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Looking in at the garden gate of the cottage.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Miss Wade. 'She has never been near it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are wrong, then,' said the girl. 'I went down there the last time we
      were in London. I went one afternoon when you left me alone. And I did
      look in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You poor-spirited girl,' returned Miss Wade with infinite contempt; 'does
      all our companionship, do all our conversations, do all your old
      complainings, tell for so little as that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There was no harm in looking in at the gate for an instant,' said the
      girl. 'I saw by the windows that the family were not there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why should you go near the place?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because I wanted to see it. Because I felt that I should like to look at
      it again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As each of the two handsome faces looked at the other, Clennam felt how
      each of the two natures must be constantly tearing the other to pieces.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' said Miss Wade, coldly subduing and removing her glance; 'if you had
      any desire to see the place where you led the life from which I rescued
      you because you had found out what it was, that is another thing. But is
      that your truth to me? Is that your fidelity to me? Is that the common
      cause I make with you? You are not worth the confidence I have placed in
      you. You are not worth the favour I have shown you. You are no higher than
      a spaniel, and had better go back to the people who did worse than whip
      you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you speak so of them with any one else by to hear, you'll provoke me
      to take their part,' said the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go back to them,' Miss Wade retorted. 'Go back to them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know very well,' retorted Harriet in her turn, 'that I won't go back
      to them. You know very well that I have thrown them off, and never can,
      never shall, never will, go back to them. Let them alone, then, Miss
      Wade.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You prefer their plenty to your less fat living here,' she rejoined. 'You
      exalt them, and slight me. What else should I have expected? I ought to
      have known it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's not so,' said the girl, flushing high, 'and you don't say what you
      mean. I know what you mean. You are reproaching me, underhanded, with
      having nobody but you to look to. And because I have nobody but you to
      look to, you think you are to make me do, or not do, everything you
      please, and are to put any affront upon me. You are as bad as they were,
      every bit. But I will not be quite tamed, and made submissive. I will say
      again that I went to look at the house, because I had often thought that I
      should like to see it once more. I will ask again how they are, because I
      once liked them and at times thought they were kind to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Hereupon Clennam said that he was sure they would still receive her
      kindly, if she should ever desire to return.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never!' said the girl passionately. 'I shall never do that. Nobody knows
      that better than Miss Wade, though she taunts me because she has made me
      her dependent. And I know I am so; and I know she is overjoyed when she
      can bring it to my mind.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A good pretence!' said Miss Wade, with no less anger, haughtiness, and
      bitterness; 'but too threadbare to cover what I plainly see in this. My
      poverty will not bear competition with their money. Better go back at
      once, better go back at once, and have done with it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur Clennam looked at them, standing a little distance asunder in the
      dull confined room, each proudly cherishing her own anger; each, with a
      fixed determination, torturing her own breast, and torturing the other's.
      He said a word or two of leave-taking; but Miss Wade barely inclined her
      head, and Harriet, with the assumed humiliation of an abject dependent and
      serf (but not without defiance for all that), made as if she were too low
      to notice or to be noticed.
    </p>
    <p>
      He came down the dark winding stairs into the yard with an increased sense
      upon him of the gloom of the wall that was dead, and of the shrubs that
      were dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the statue that was
      gone. Pondering much on what he had seen and heard in that house, as well
      as on the failure of all his efforts to trace the suspicious character who
      was lost, he returned to London and to England by the packet that had
      taken him over. On the way he unfolded the sheets of paper, and read in
      them what is reproduced in the next chapter.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0057" id="link2HCH0057"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 21. The History of a Self-Tormentor
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age I have
      detected what those about me thought they hid from me. If I could have
      been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually discerning the truth,
      I might have lived as smoothly as most fools do.
    </p>
    <p>
      My childhood was passed with a grandmother; that is to say, with a lady
      who represented that relative to me, and who took that title on herself.
      She had no claim to it, but I&mdash;being to that extent a little fool&mdash;had
      no suspicion of her. She had some children of her own family in her house,
      and some children of other people. All girls; ten in number, including me.
      We all lived together and were educated together.
    </p>
    <p>
      I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see how
      determinedly those girls patronised me. I was told I was an orphan. There
      was no other orphan among us; and I perceived (here was the first
      disadvantage of not being a fool) that they conciliated me in an insolent
      pity, and in a sense of superiority. I did not set this down as a
      discovery, rashly. I tried them often. I could hardly make them quarrel
      with me. When I succeeded with any of them, they were sure to come after
      an hour or two, and begin a reconciliation. I tried them over and over
      again, and I never knew them wait for me to begin. They were always
      forgiving me, in their vanity and condescension. Little images of grown
      people!
    </p>
    <p>
      One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a passionate
      way that she could no more deserve than I can remember without feeling
      ashamed of, though I was but a child. She had what they called an amiable
      temper, an affectionate temper. She could distribute, and did distribute
      pretty looks and smiles to every one among them. I believe there was not a
      soul in the place, except myself, who knew that she did it purposely to
      wound and gall me!
    </p>
    <p>
      Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was made stormy
      by my fondness for her. I was constantly lectured and disgraced for what
      was called 'trying her;' in other words charging her with her little
      perfidy and throwing her into tears by showing her that I read her heart.
      However, I loved her faithfully; and one time I went home with her for the
      holidays.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a crowd of
      cousins and acquaintances, and we had dances at her house, and went out to
      dances at other houses, and, both at home and out, she tormented my love
      beyond endurance. Her plan was, to make them all fond of her&mdash;and so
      drive me wild with jealousy. To be familiar and endearing with them all&mdash;and
      so make me mad with envying them. When we were left alone in our bedroom
      at night, I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of her baseness;
      and then she would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and then I would hold
      her in my arms till morning: loving her as much as ever, and often feeling
      as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold her in my arms and plunge to
      the bottom of a river&mdash;where I would still hold her after we were
      both dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an aunt who
      was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked me much; but I
      never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up in the one girl.
      The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious way with her eyes of
      watching me. She was an audacious woman, and openly looked compassionately
      at me. After one of the nights that I have spoken of, I came down into a
      greenhouse before breakfast. Charlotte (the name of my false young friend)
      had gone down before me, and I heard this aunt speaking to her about me as
      I entered. I stopped where I was, among the leaves, and listened.
    </p>
    <p>
      The aunt said, 'Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and this
      must not continue.' I repeat the very words I heard.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, what did she answer? Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her to
      death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner, yet she
      tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what I
      make her undergo?' No; my first memorable experience was true to what I
      knew her to be, and to all my experience. She began sobbing and weeping
      (to secure the aunt's sympathy to herself), and said, 'Dear aunt, she has
      an unhappy temper; other girls at school, besides I, try hard to make it
      better; we all try hard.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something noble instead
      of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous pretence by replying,
      'But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to everything, and I see
      that this poor miserable girl causes you more constant and useless
      distress than even so good an effort justifies.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may be
      prepared to hear, and said, 'Send me home.' I never said another word to
      either of them, or to any of them, but 'Send me home, or I will walk home
      alone, night and day!' When I got home, I told my supposed grandmother
      that, unless I was sent away to finish my education somewhere else before
      that girl came back, or before any one of them came back, I would burn my
      sight away by throwing myself into the fire, rather than I would endure to
      look at their plotting faces.
    </p>
    <p>
      I went among young women next, and I found them no better. Fair words and
      fair pretences; but I penetrated below those assertions of themselves and
      depreciations of me, and they were no better. Before I left them, I
      learned that I had no grandmother and no recognised relation. I carried
      the light of that information both into my past and into my future. It
      showed me many new occasions on which people triumphed over me, when they
      made a pretence of treating me with consideration, or doing me a service.
    </p>
    <p>
      A man of business had a small property in trust for me. I was to be a
      governess; I became a governess; and went into the family of a poor
      nobleman, where there were two daughters&mdash;little children, but the
      parents wished them to grow up, if possible, under one instructress. The
      mother was young and pretty. From the first, she made a show of behaving
      to me with great delicacy. I kept my resentment to myself; but I knew very
      well that it was her way of petting the knowledge that she was my
      Mistress, and might have behaved differently to her servant if it had been
      her fancy.
    </p>
    <p>
      I say I did not resent it, nor did I; but I showed her, by not gratifying
      her, that I understood her. When she pressed me to take wine, I took
      water. If there happened to be anything choice at table, she always sent
      it to me: but I always declined it, and ate of the rejected dishes. These
      disappointments of her patronage were a sharp retort, and made me feel
      independent.
    </p>
    <p>
      I liked the children. They were timid, but on the whole disposed to attach
      themselves to me. There was a nurse, however, in the house, a rosy-faced
      woman always making an obtrusive pretence of being gay and good-humoured,
      who had nursed them both, and who had secured their affections before I
      saw them. I could almost have settled down to my fate but for this woman.
      Her artful devices for keeping herself before the children in constant
      competition with me, might have blinded many in my place; but I saw
      through them from the first. On the pretext of arranging my rooms and
      waiting on me and taking care of my wardrobe (all of which she did
      busily), she was never absent. The most crafty of her many subtleties was
      her feint of seeking to make the children fonder of me. She would lead
      them to me and coax them to me. 'Come to good Miss Wade, come to dear Miss
      Wade, come to pretty Miss Wade. She loves you very much. Miss Wade is a
      clever lady, who has read heaps of books, and can tell you far better and
      more interesting stories than I know. Come and hear Miss Wade!' How could
      I engage their attentions, when my heart was burning against these
      ignorant designs? How could I wonder, when I saw their innocent faces
      shrinking away, and their arms twining round her neck, instead of mine?
      Then she would look up at me, shaking their curls from her face, and say,
      'They'll come round soon, Miss Wade; they're very simple and loving,
      ma'am; don't be at all cast down about it, ma'am'&mdash;exulting over me!
    </p>
    <p>
      There was another thing the woman did. At times, when she saw that she had
      safely plunged me into a black despondent brooding by these means, she
      would call the attention of the children to it, and would show them the
      difference between herself and me. 'Hush! Poor Miss Wade is not well.
      Don't make a noise, my dears, her head aches. Come and comfort her. Come
      and ask her if she is better; come and ask her to lie down. I hope you
      have nothing on your mind, ma'am. Don't take on, ma'am, and be sorry!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It became intolerable. Her ladyship, my Mistress, coming in one day when I
      was alone, and at the height of feeling that I could support it no longer,
      I told her I must go. I could not bear the presence of that woman Dawes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Wade! Poor Dawes is devoted to you; would do anything for you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      I knew beforehand she would say so; I was quite prepared for it; I only
      answered, it was not for me to contradict my Mistress; I must go.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope, Miss Wade,' she returned, instantly assuming the tone of
      superiority she had always so thinly concealed, 'that nothing I have ever
      said or done since we have been together, has justified your use of that
      disagreeable word, "Mistress." It must have been wholly inadvertent on my
      part. Pray tell me what it is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      I replied that I had no complaint to make, either of my Mistress or to my
      Mistress; but I must go.
    </p>
    <p>
      She hesitated a moment, and then sat down beside me, and laid her hand on
      mine. As if that honour would obliterate any remembrance!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Wade, I fear you are unhappy, through causes over which I have no
      influence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      I smiled, thinking of the experience the word awakened, and said, 'I have
      an unhappy temper, I suppose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I did not say that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is an easy way of accounting for anything,' said I.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It may be; but I did not say so. What I wish to approach is something
      very different. My husband and I have exchanged some remarks upon the
      subject, when we have observed with pain that you have not been easy with
      us.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Easy? Oh! You are such great people, my lady,' said I.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am unfortunate in using a word which may convey a meaning&mdash;and
      evidently does&mdash;quite opposite to my intention.' (She had not
      expected my reply, and it shamed her.) 'I only mean, not happy with us. It
      is a difficult topic to enter on; but, from one young woman to another,
      perhaps&mdash;in short, we have been apprehensive that you may allow some
      family circumstances of which no one can be more innocent than yourself,
      to prey upon your spirits. If so, let us entreat you not to make them a
      cause of grief. My husband himself, as is well known, formerly had a very
      dear sister who was not in law his sister, but who was universally beloved
      and respected&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      I saw directly that they had taken me in for the sake of the dead woman,
      whoever she was, and to have that boast of me and advantage of me; I saw,
      in the nurse's knowledge of it, an encouragement to goad me as she had
      done; and I saw, in the children's shrinking away, a vague impression,
      that I was not like other people. I left that house that night.
    </p>
    <p>
      After one or two short and very similar experiences, which are not to the
      present purpose, I entered another family where I had but one pupil: a
      girl of fifteen, who was the only daughter. The parents here were elderly
      people: people of station, and rich. A nephew whom they had brought up was
      a frequent visitor at the house, among many other visitors; and he began
      to pay me attention. I was resolute in repulsing him; for I had determined
      when I went there, that no one should pity me or condescend to me. But he
      wrote me a letter. It led to our being engaged to be married.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was a year younger than I, and young-looking even when that allowance
      was made. He was on absence from India, where he had a post that was soon
      to grow into a very good one. In six months we were to be married, and
      were to go to India. I was to stay in the house, and was to be married
      from the house. Nobody objected to any part of the plan.
    </p>
    <p>
      I cannot avoid saying he admired me; but, if I could, I would. Vanity has
      nothing to do with the declaration, for his admiration worried me. He took
      no pains to hide it; and caused me to feel among the rich people as if he
      had bought me for my looks, and made a show of his purchase to justify
      himself. They appraised me in their own minds, I saw, and were curious to
      ascertain what my full value was. I resolved that they should not know. I
      was immovable and silent before them; and would have suffered any one of
      them to kill me sooner than I would have laid myself out to bespeak their
      approval.
    </p>
    <p>
      He told me I did not do myself justice. I told him I did, and it was
      because I did and meant to do so to the last, that I would not stoop to
      propitiate any of them. He was concerned and even shocked, when I added
      that I wished he would not parade his attachment before them; but he said
      he would sacrifice even the honest impulses of his affection to my peace.
    </p>
    <p>
      Under that pretence he began to retort upon me. By the hour together, he
      would keep at a distance from me, talking to any one rather than to me. I
      have sat alone and unnoticed, half an evening, while he conversed with his
      young cousin, my pupil. I have seen all the while, in people's eyes, that
      they thought the two looked nearer on an equality than he and I. I have
      sat, divining their thoughts, until I have felt that his young appearance
      made me ridiculous, and have raged against myself for ever loving him.
    </p>
    <p>
      For I did love him once. Undeserving as he was, and little as he thought
      of all these agonies that it cost me&mdash;agonies which should have made
      him wholly and gratefully mine to his life's end&mdash;I loved him. I bore
      with his cousin's praising him to my face, and with her pretending to
      think that it pleased me, but full well knowing that it rankled in my
      breast; for his sake. While I have sat in his presence recalling all my
      slights and wrongs, and deliberating whether I should not fly from the
      house at once and never see him again&mdash;I have loved him.
    </p>
    <p>
      His aunt (my Mistress you will please to remember) deliberately, wilfully,
      added to my trials and vexations. It was her delight to expatiate on the
      style in which we were to live in India, and on the establishment we
      should keep, and the company we should entertain when he got his
      advancement. My pride rose against this barefaced way of pointing out the
      contrast my married life was to present to my then dependent and inferior
      position. I suppressed my indignation; but I showed her that her intention
      was not lost upon me, and I repaid her annoyance by affecting humility.
      What she described would surely be a great deal too much honour for me, I
      would tell her. I was afraid I might not be able to support so great a
      change. Think of a mere governess, her daughter's governess, coming to
      that high distinction! It made her uneasy, and made them all uneasy, when
      I answered in this way. They knew that I fully understood her.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was at the time when my troubles were at their highest, and when I was
      most incensed against my lover for his ingratitude in caring as little as
      he did for the innumerable distresses and mortifications I underwent on
      his account, that your dear friend, Mr Gowan, appeared at the house. He
      had been intimate there for a long time, but had been abroad. He
      understood the state of things at a glance, and he understood me.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was the first person I had ever seen in my life who had understood me.
      He was not in the house three times before I knew that he accompanied
      every movement of my mind. In his coldly easy way with all of them, and
      with me, and with the whole subject, I saw it clearly. In his light
      protestations of admiration of my future husband, in his enthusiasm
      regarding our engagement and our prospects, in his hopeful congratulations
      on our future wealth and his despondent references to his own poverty&mdash;all
      equally hollow, and jesting, and full of mockery&mdash;I saw it clearly.
      He made me feel more and more resentful, and more and more contemptible,
      by always presenting to me everything that surrounded me with some new
      hateful light upon it, while he pretended to exhibit it in its best aspect
      for my admiration and his own. He was like the dressed-up Death in the
      Dutch series; whatever figure he took upon his arm, whether it was youth
      or age, beauty or ugliness, whether he danced with it, sang with it,
      played with it, or prayed with it, he made it ghastly.
    </p>
    <p>
      You will understand, then, that when your dear friend complimented me, he
      really condoled with me; that when he soothed me under my vexations, he
      laid bare every smarting wound I had; that when he declared my 'faithful
      swain' to be 'the most loving young fellow in the world, with the
      tenderest heart that ever beat,' he touched my old misgiving that I was
      made ridiculous. These were not great services, you may say. They were
      acceptable to me, because they echoed my own mind, and confirmed my own
      knowledge. I soon began to like the society of your dear friend better
      than any other.
    </p>
    <p>
      When I perceived (which I did, almost as soon) that jealousy was growing
      out of this, I liked this society still better. Had I not been subject to
      jealousy, and were the endurances to be all mine? No. Let him know what it
      was! I was delighted that he should know it; I was delighted that he
      should feel keenly, and I hoped he did. More than that. He was tame in
      comparison with Mr Gowan, who knew how to address me on equal terms, and
      how to anatomise the wretched people around us.
    </p>
    <p>
      This went on, until the aunt, my Mistress, took it upon herself to speak
      to me. It was scarcely worth alluding to; she knew I meant nothing; but
      she suggested from herself, knowing it was only necessary to suggest, that
      it might be better if I were a little less companionable with Mr Gowan.
    </p>
    <p>
      I asked her how she could answer for what I meant? She could always
      answer, she replied, for my meaning nothing wrong. I thanked her, but said
      I would prefer to answer for myself and to myself. Her other servants
      would probably be grateful for good characters, but I wanted none.
    </p>
    <p>
      Other conversation followed, and induced me to ask her how she knew that
      it was only necessary for her to make a suggestion to me, to have it
      obeyed? Did she presume on my birth, or on my hire? I was not bought, body
      and soul. She seemed to think that her distinguished nephew had gone into
      a slave-market and purchased a wife.
    </p>
    <p>
      It would probably have come, sooner or later, to the end to which it did
      come, but she brought it to its issue at once. She told me, with assumed
      commiseration, that I had an unhappy temper. On this repetition of the old
      wicked injury, I withheld no longer, but exposed to her all I had known of
      her and seen in her, and all I had undergone within myself since I had
      occupied the despicable position of being engaged to her nephew. I told
      her that Mr Gowan was the only relief I had had in my degradation; that I
      had borne it too long, and that I shook it off too late; but that I would
      see none of them more. And I never did.
    </p>
    <p>
      Your dear friend followed me to my retreat, and was very droll on the
      severance of the connection; though he was sorry, too, for the excellent
      people (in their way the best he had ever met), and deplored the necessity
      of breaking mere house-flies on the wheel. He protested before long, and
      far more truly than I then supposed, that he was not worth acceptance by a
      woman of such endowments, and such power of character; but&mdash;well,
      well&mdash;!
    </p>
    <p>
      Your dear friend amused me and amused himself as long as it suited his
      inclinations; and then reminded me that we were both people of the world,
      that we both understood mankind, that we both knew there was no such thing
      as romance, that we were both prepared for going different ways to seek
      our fortunes like people of sense, and that we both foresaw that whenever
      we encountered one another again we should meet as the best friends on
      earth. So he said, and I did not contradict him.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not very long before I found that he was courting his present wife,
      and that she had been taken away to be out of his reach. I hated her then,
      quite as much as I hate her now; and naturally, therefore, could desire
      nothing better than that she should marry him. But I was restlessly
      curious to look at her&mdash;so curious that I felt it to be one of the
      few sources of entertainment left to me. I travelled a little: travelled
      until I found myself in her society, and in yours. Your dear friend, I
      think, was not known to you then, and had not given you any of those
      signal marks of his friendship which he has bestowed upon you.
    </p>
    <p>
      In that company I found a girl, in various circumstances of whose position
      there was a singular likeness to my own, and in whose character I was
      interested and pleased to see much of the rising against swollen patronage
      and selfishness, calling themselves kindness, protection, benevolence, and
      other fine names, which I have described as inherent in my nature. I often
      heard it said, too, that she had 'an unhappy temper.' Well understanding
      what was meant by the convenient phrase, and wanting a companion with a
      knowledge of what I knew, I thought I would try to release the girl from
      her bondage and sense of injustice. I have no occasion to relate that I
      succeeded.
    </p>
    <p>
      We have been together ever since, sharing my small means.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0058" id="link2HCH0058"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 22. Who passes by this Road so late?
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>rthur Clennam had made his unavailing expedition to Calais in the midst
      of a great pressure of business. A certain barbaric Power with valuable
      possessions on the map of the world, had occasion for the services of one
      or two engineers, quick in invention and determined in execution:
      practical men, who could make the men and means their ingenuity perceived
      to be wanted out of the best materials they could find at hand; and who
      were as bold and fertile in the adaptation of such materials to their
      purpose, as in the conception of their purpose itself. This Power, being a
      barbaric one, had no idea of stowing away a great national object in a
      Circumlocution Office, as strong wine is hidden from the light in a cellar
      until its fire and youth are gone, and the labourers who worked in the
      vineyard and pressed the grapes are dust. With characteristic ignorance,
      it acted on the most decided and energetic notions of How to do it; and
      never showed the least respect for, or gave any quarter to, the great
      political science, How not to do it. Indeed it had a barbarous way of
      striking the latter art and mystery dead, in the person of any enlightened
      subject who practised it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Accordingly, the men who were wanted were sought out and found; which was
      in itself a most uncivilised and irregular way of proceeding. Being found,
      they were treated with great confidence and honour (which again showed
      dense political ignorance), and were invited to come at once and do what
      they had to do. In short, they were regarded as men who meant to do it,
      engaging with other men who meant it to be done.
    </p>
    <p>
      Daniel Doyce was one of the chosen. There was no foreseeing at that time
      whether he would be absent months or years. The preparations for his
      departure, and the conscientious arrangement for him of all the details
      and results of their joint business, had necessitated labour within a
      short compass of time, which had occupied Clennam day and night. He had
      slipped across the water in his first leisure, and had slipped as quickly
      back again for his farewell interview with Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      Him Arthur now showed, with pains and care, the state of their gains and
      losses, responsibilities and prospects. Daniel went through it all in his
      patient manner, and admired it all exceedingly. He audited the accounts,
      as if they were a far more ingenious piece of mechanism than he had ever
      constructed, and afterwards stood looking at them, weighing his hat over
      his head by the brims, as if he were absorbed in the contemplation of some
      wonderful engine.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's all beautiful, Clennam, in its regularity and order. Nothing can be
      plainer. Nothing can be better.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad you approve, Doyce. Now, as to the management of your capital
      while you are away, and as to the conversion of so much of it as the
      business may need from time to time&mdash;' His partner stopped him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to that, and as to everything else of that kind, all rests with you.
      You will continue in all such matters to act for both of us, as you have
      done hitherto, and to lighten my mind of a load it is much relieved from.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Though, as I often tell you,' returned Clennam, 'you unreasonably
      depreciate your business qualities.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps so,' said Doyce, smiling. 'And perhaps not. Anyhow, I have a
      calling that I have studied more than such matters, and that I am better
      fitted for. I have perfect confidence in my partner, and I am satisfied
      that he will do what is best. If I have a prejudice connected with money
      and money figures,' continued Doyce, laying that plastic workman's thumb
      of his on the lapel of his partner's coat, 'it is against speculating. I
      don't think I have any other. I dare say I entertain that prejudice, only
      because I have never given my mind fully to the subject.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you shouldn't call it a prejudice,' said Clennam. 'My dear Doyce, it
      is the soundest sense.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad you think so,' returned Doyce, with his grey eye looking kind
      and bright.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It so happens,' said Clennam, 'that just now, not half an hour before you
      came down, I was saying the same thing to Pancks, who looked in here. We
      both agreed that to travel out of safe investments is one of the most
      dangerous, as it is one of the most common, of those follies which often
      deserve the name of vices.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pancks?' said Doyce, tilting up his hat at the back, and nodding with an
      air of confidence. 'Aye, aye, aye! That's a cautious fellow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is a very cautious fellow indeed,' returned Arthur. 'Quite a specimen
      of caution.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They both appeared to derive a larger amount of satisfaction from the
      cautious character of Mr Pancks, than was quite intelligible, judged by
      the surface of their conversation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And now,' said Daniel, looking at his watch, 'as time and tide wait for
      no man, my trusty partner, and as I am ready for starting, bag and
      baggage, at the gate below, let me say a last word. I want you to grant a
      request of mine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Any request you can make&mdash;Except,' Clennam was quick with his
      exception, for his partner's face was quick in suggesting it, 'except that
      I will abandon your invention.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's the request, and you know it is,' said Doyce.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say, No, then. I say positively, No. Now that I have begun, I will have
      some definite reason, some responsible statement, something in the nature
      of a real answer, from those people.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You will not,' returned Doyce, shaking his head. 'Take my word for it,
      you never will.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At least, I'll try,' said Clennam. 'It will do me no harm to try.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not certain of that,' rejoined Doyce, laying his hand persuasively
      on his shoulder. 'It has done me harm, my friend. It has aged me, tired
      me, vexed me, disappointed me. It does no man any good to have his
      patience worn out, and to think himself ill-used. I fancy, even already,
      that unavailing attendance on delays and evasions has made you something
      less elastic than you used to be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Private anxieties may have done that for the moment,' said Clennam, 'but
      not official harrying. Not yet. I am not hurt yet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you won't grant my request?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Decidedly, No,' said Clennam. 'I should be ashamed if I submitted to be
      so soon driven out of the field, where a much older and a much more
      sensitively interested man contended with fortitude so long.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As there was no moving him, Daniel Doyce returned the grasp of his hand,
      and, casting a farewell look round the counting-house, went down-stairs
      with him. Doyce was to go to Southampton to join the small staff of his
      fellow-travellers; and a coach was at the gate, well furnished and packed,
      and ready to take him there. The workmen were at the gate to see him off,
      and were mightily proud of him. 'Good luck to you, Mr Doyce!' said one of
      the number. 'Wherever you go, they'll find as they've got a man among 'em,
      a man as knows his tools and as his tools knows, a man as is willing and a
      man as is able, and if that's not a man, where is a man!' This oration
      from a gruff volunteer in the back-ground, not previously suspected of any
      powers in that way, was received with three loud cheers; and the speaker
      became a distinguished character for ever afterwards. In the midst of the
      three loud cheers, Daniel gave them all a hearty 'Good Bye, Men!' and the
      coach disappeared from sight, as if the concussion of the air had blown it
      out of Bleeding Heart Yard.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Baptist, as a grateful little fellow in a position of trust, was among
      the workmen, and had done as much towards the cheering as a mere foreigner
      could. In truth, no men on earth can cheer like Englishmen, who do so
      rally one another's blood and spirit when they cheer in earnest, that the
      stir is like the rush of their whole history, with all its standards
      waving at once, from Saxon Alfred's downwards. Mr Baptist had been in a
      manner whirled away before the onset, and was taking his breath in quite a
      scared condition when Clennam beckoned him to follow up-stairs, and return
      the books and papers to their places.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the lull consequent on the departure&mdash;in that first vacuity which
      ensues on every separation, foreshadowing the great separation that is
      always overhanging all mankind&mdash;Arthur stood at his desk, looking
      dreamily out at a gleam of sun. But his liberated attention soon reverted
      to the theme that was foremost in his thoughts, and began, for the
      hundredth time, to dwell upon every circumstance that had impressed itself
      upon his mind on the mysterious night when he had seen the man at his
      mother's. Again the man jostled him in the crooked street, again he
      followed the man and lost him, again he came upon the man in the
      court-yard looking at the house, again he followed the man and stood
      beside him on the door-steps.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      'Who passes by this road so late?
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Compagnon de la Majolaine;
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Who passes by this road so late?
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Always gay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not the first time, by many, that he had recalled the song of the
      child's game, of which the fellow had hummed this verse while they stood
      side by side; but he was so unconscious of having repeated it audibly,
      that he started to hear the next verse.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Compagnon de la Majolaine;
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Always gay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      Cavalletto had deferentially suggested the words and tune, supposing him
      to have stopped short for want of more.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! You know the song, Cavalletto?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By Bacchus, yes, sir! They all know it in France. I have heard it many
      times, sung by the little children. The last time when it I have heard,'
      said Mr Baptist, formerly Cavalletto, who usually went back to his native
      construction of sentences when his memory went near home, 'is from a sweet
      little voice. A little voice, very pretty, very innocent. Altro!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The last time I heard it,' returned Arthur, 'was in a voice quite the
      reverse of pretty, and quite the reverse of innocent.' He said it more to
      himself than to his companion, and added to himself, repeating the man's
      next words. 'Death of my life, sir, it's my character to be impatient!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'EH!' cried Cavalletto, astounded, and with all his colour gone in a
      moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir! You know where I have heard that song the last time?'
    </p>
    <p>
      With his rapid native action, his hands made the outline of a high hook
      nose, pushed his eyes near together, dishevelled his hair, puffed out his
      upper lip to represent a thick moustache, and threw the heavy end of an
      ideal cloak over his shoulder. While doing this, with a swiftness
      incredible to one who has not watched an Italian peasant, he indicated a
      very remarkable and sinister smile. The whole change passed over him like
      a flash of light, and he stood in the same instant, pale and astonished,
      before his patron.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In the name of Fate and wonder,' said Clennam, 'what do you mean? Do you
      know a man of the name of Blandois?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No!' said Mr Baptist, shaking his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have just now described a man who was by when you heard that song;
      have you not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes!' said Mr Baptist, nodding fifty times.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And was he not called Blandois?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No!' said Mr Baptist. 'Altro, Altro, Altro, Altro!' He could not reject
      the name sufficiently, with his head and his right forefinger going at
      once.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay!' cried Clennam, spreading out the handbill on his desk. 'Was this
      the man? You can understand what I read aloud?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Altogether. Perfectly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But look at it, too. Come here and look over me, while I read.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Baptist approached, followed every word with his quick eyes, saw and
      heard it all out with the greatest impatience, then clapped his two hands
      flat upon the bill as if he had fiercely caught some noxious creature, and
      cried, looking eagerly at Clennam, 'It is the man! Behold him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is of far greater moment to me' said Clennam, in great agitation,
      'than you can imagine. Tell me where you knew the man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Baptist, releasing the paper very slowly and with much discomfiture,
      and drawing himself back two or three paces, and making as though he
      dusted his hands, returned, very much against his will:
    </p>
    <p>
      'At Marsiglia&mdash;Marseilles.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What was he?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A prisoner, and&mdash;Altro! I believe yes!&mdash;an,' Mr Baptist crept
      closer again to whisper it, 'Assassin!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam fell back as if the word had struck him a blow: so terrible did it
      make his mother's communication with the man appear. Cavalletto dropped on
      one knee, and implored him, with a redundancy of gesticulation, to hear
      what had brought himself into such foul company.
    </p>
    <p>
      He told with perfect truth how it had come of a little contraband trading,
      and how he had in time been released from prison, and how he had gone away
      from those antecedents. How, at the house of entertainment called the
      Break of Day at Chalons on the Saone, he had been awakened in his bed at
      night by the same assassin, then assuming the name of Lagnier, though his
      name had formerly been Rigaud; how the assassin had proposed that they
      should join their fortunes together; how he held the assassin in such
      dread and aversion that he had fled from him at daylight, and how he had
      ever since been haunted by the fear of seeing the assassin again and being
      claimed by him as an acquaintance. When he had related this, with an
      emphasis and poise on the word, 'assassin,' peculiarly belonging to his
      own language, and which did not serve to render it less terrible to
      Clennam, he suddenly sprang to his feet, pounced upon the bill again, and
      with a vehemence that would have been absolute madness in any man of
      Northern origin, cried 'Behold the same assassin! Here he is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In his passionate raptures, he at first forgot the fact that he had lately
      seen the assassin in London. On his remembering it, it suggested hope to
      Clennam that the recognition might be of later date than the night of the
      visit at his mother's; but Cavalletto was too exact and clear about time
      and place, to leave any opening for doubt that it had preceded that
      occasion.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Listen,' said Arthur, very seriously. 'This man, as we have read here,
      has wholly disappeared.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of it I am well content!' said Cavalletto, raising his eyes piously. 'A
      thousand thanks to Heaven! Accursed assassin!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not so,' returned Clennam; 'for until something more is heard of him, I
      can never know an hour's peace.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Enough, Benefactor; that is quite another thing. A million of excuses!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Cavalletto,' said Clennam, gently turning him by the arm, so that
      they looked into each other's eyes. 'I am certain that for the little I
      have been able to do for you, you are the most sincerely grateful of men.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I swear it!' cried the other.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know it. If you could find this man, or discover what has become of
      him, or gain any later intelligence whatever of him, you would render me a
      service above any other service I could receive in the world, and would
      make me (with far greater reason) as grateful to you as you are to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know not where to look,' cried the little man, kissing Arthur's hand in
      a transport. 'I know not where to begin. I know not where to go. But,
      courage! Enough! It matters not! I go, in this instant of time!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not a word to any one but me, Cavalletto.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Al-tro!' cried Cavalletto. And was gone with great speed.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0059" id="link2HCH0059"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 23. Mistress Affery makes a Conditional Promise,
    </h2>
    <p>
      respecting her Dreams
    </p>
    <p>
      Left alone, with the expressive looks and gestures of Mr Baptist,
      otherwise Giovanni Baptista Cavalletto, vividly before him, Clennam
      entered on a weary day. It was in vain that he tried to control his
      attention by directing it to any business occupation or train of thought;
      it rode at anchor by the haunting topic, and would hold to no other idea.
      As though a criminal should be chained in a stationary boat on a deep
      clear river, condemned, whatever countless leagues of water flowed past
      him, always to see the body of the fellow-creature he had drowned lying at
      the bottom, immovable, and unchangeable, except as the eddies made it
      broad or long, now expanding, now contracting its terrible lineaments; so
      Arthur, below the shifting current of transparent thoughts and fancies
      which were gone and succeeded by others as soon as come, saw, steady and
      dark, and not to be stirred from its place, the one subject that he
      endeavoured with all his might to rid himself of, and that he could not
      fly from.
    </p>
    <p>
      The assurance he now had, that Blandois, whatever his right name, was one
      of the worst of characters, greatly augmented the burden of his anxieties.
      Though the disappearance should be accounted for to-morrow, the fact that
      his mother had been in communication with such a man, would remain
      unalterable. That the communication had been of a secret kind, and that
      she had been submissive to him and afraid of him, he hoped might be known
      to no one beyond himself; yet, knowing it, how could he separate it from
      his old vague fears, and how believe that there was nothing evil in such
      relations?
    </p>
    <p>
      Her resolution not to enter on the question with him, and his knowledge of
      her indomitable character, enhanced his sense of helplessness. It was like
      the oppression of a dream to believe that shame and exposure were
      impending over her and his father's memory, and to be shut out, as by a
      brazen wall, from the possibility of coming to their aid. The purpose he
      had brought home to his native country, and had ever since kept in view,
      was, with her greatest determination, defeated by his mother herself, at
      the time of all others when he feared that it pressed most. His advice,
      energy, activity, money, credit, all his resources whatsoever, were all
      made useless. If she had been possessed of the old fabled influence, and
      had turned those who looked upon her into stone, she could not have
      rendered him more completely powerless (so it seemed to him in his
      distress of mind) than she did, when she turned her unyielding face to his
      in her gloomy room.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the light of that day's discovery, shining on these considerations,
      roused him to take a more decided course of action. Confident in the
      rectitude of his purpose, and impelled by a sense of overhanging danger
      closing in around, he resolved, if his mother would still admit of no
      approach, to make a desperate appeal to Affery. If she could be brought to
      become communicative, and to do what lay in her to break the spell of
      secrecy that enshrouded the house, he might shake off the paralysis of
      which every hour that passed over his head made him more acutely sensible.
      This was the result of his day's anxiety, and this was the decision he put
      in practice when the day closed in.
    </p>
    <p>
      His first disappointment, on arriving at the house, was to find the door
      open, and Mr Flintwinch smoking a pipe on the steps. If circumstances had
      been commonly favourable, Mistress Affery would have opened the door to
      his knock. Circumstances being uncommonly unfavourable, the door stood
      open, and Mr Flintwinch was smoking his pipe on the steps.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good evening,' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good evening,' said Mr Flintwinch.
    </p>
    <p>
      The smoke came crookedly out of Mr Flintwinch's mouth, as if it circulated
      through the whole of his wry figure and came back by his wry throat,
      before coming forth to mingle with the smoke from the crooked chimneys and
      the mists from the crooked river.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you any news?' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We have no news,' said Jeremiah.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean of the foreign man,' Arthur explained.
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>I</i> mean of the foreign man,' said Jeremiah.
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked so grim, as he stood askew, with the knot of his cravat under
      his ear, that the thought passed into Clennam's mind, and not for the
      first time by many, could Flintwinch for a purpose of his own have got rid
      of Blandois? Could it have been his secret, and his safety, that were at
      issue? He was small and bent, and perhaps not actively strong; yet he was
      as tough as an old yew-tree, and as crusty as an old jackdaw. Such a man,
      coming behind a much younger and more vigorous man, and having the will to
      put an end to him and no relenting, might do it pretty surely in that
      solitary place at a late hour.
    </p>
    <p>
      While, in the morbid condition of his thoughts, these thoughts drifted
      over the main one that was always in Clennam's mind, Mr Flintwinch,
      regarding the opposite house over the gateway with his neck twisted and
      one eye shut up, stood smoking with a vicious expression upon him; more as
      if he were trying to bite off the stem of his pipe, than as if he were
      enjoying it. Yet he was enjoying it in his own way.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'll be able to take my likeness, the next time you call, Arthur, I
      should think,' said Mr Flintwinch, drily, as he stooped to knock the ashes
      out.
    </p>
    <p>
      Rather conscious and confused, Arthur asked his pardon, if he had stared
      at him unpolitely. 'But my mind runs so much upon this matter,' he said,
      'that I lose myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hah! Yet I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, quite at his leisure, 'why
      it should trouble <i>you</i>, Arthur.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Mr Flintwinch, very shortly and decidedly: much as if he were
      of the canine race, and snapped at Arthur's hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it nothing to see those placards about? Is it nothing to me to see my
      mother's name and residence hawked up and down in such an association?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, scraping his horny cheek, 'that it
      need signify much to you. But I'll tell you what I do see, Arthur,'
      glancing up at the windows; 'I see the light of fire and candle in your
      mother's room!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what has that to do with it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, sir, I read by it,' said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself at him,
      'that if it's advisable (as the proverb says it is) to let sleeping dogs
      lie, it's just as advisable, perhaps, to let missing dogs lie. Let 'em be.
      They generally turn up soon enough.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch turned short round when he had made this remark, and went
      into the dark hall. Clennam stood there, following him with his eyes, as
      he dipped for a light in the phosphorus-box in the little room at the
      side, got one after three or four dips, and lighted the dim lamp against
      the wall. All the while, Clennam was pursuing the probabilities&mdash;rather
      as if they were being shown to him by an invisible hand than as if he
      himself were conjuring them up&mdash;of Mr Flintwinch's ways and means of
      doing that darker deed, and removing its traces by any of the black
      avenues of shadow that lay around them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, sir,' said the testy Jeremiah; 'will it be agreeable to walk
      up-stairs?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My mother is alone, I suppose?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not alone,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Mr Casby and his daughter are with her.
      They came in while I was smoking, and I stayed behind to have my smoke
      out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was the second disappointment. Arthur made no remark upon it, and
      repaired to his mother's room, where Mr Casby and Flora had been taking
      tea, anchovy paste, and hot buttered toast. The relics of those delicacies
      were not yet removed, either from the table or from the scorched
      countenance of Affery, who, with the kitchen toasting-fork still in her
      hand, looked like a sort of allegorical personage; except that she had a
      considerable advantage over the general run of such personages in point of
      significant emblematical purpose.
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora had spread her bonnet and shawl upon the bed, with a care indicative
      of an intention to stay some time. Mr Casby, too, was beaming near the
      hob, with his benevolent knobs shining as if the warm butter of the toast
      were exuding through the patriarchal skull, and with his face as ruddy as
      if the colouring matter of the anchovy paste were mantling in the
      patriarchal visage. Seeing this, as he exchanged the usual salutations,
      Clennam decided to speak to his mother without postponement.
    </p>
    <p>
      It had long been customary, as she never changed her room, for those who
      had anything to say to her apart, to wheel her to her desk; where she sat,
      usually with the back of her chair turned towards the rest of the room,
      and the person who talked with her seated in a corner, on a stool which
      was always set in that place for that purpose. Except that it was long
      since the mother and son had spoken together without the intervention of a
      third person, it was an ordinary matter of course within the experience of
      visitors for Mrs Clennam to be asked, with a word of apology for the
      interruption, if she could be spoken with on a matter of business, and, on
      her replying in the affirmative, to be wheeled into the position
      described.
    </p>
    <p>
      Therefore, when Arthur now made such an apology, and such a request, and
      moved her to her desk and seated himself on the stool, Mrs Finching merely
      began to talk louder and faster, as a delicate hint that she could
      overhear nothing, and Mr Casby stroked his long white locks with sleepy
      calmness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, I have heard something to-day which I feel persuaded you don't
      know, and which I think you should know, of the antecedents of that man I
      saw here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know nothing of the antecedents of the man you saw here, Arthur.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She spoke aloud. He had lowered his own voice; but she rejected that
      advance towards confidence as she rejected every other, and spoke in her
      usual key and in her usual stern voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have received it on no circuitous information; it has come to me
      direct.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She asked him, exactly as before, if he were there to tell her what it
      was?
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought it right that you should know it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what is it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has been a prisoner in a French gaol.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She answered with composure, 'I should think that very likely.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But in a gaol for criminals, mother. On an accusation of murder.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She started at the word, and her looks expressed her natural horror. Yet
      she still spoke aloud, when she demanded:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who told you so?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A man who was his fellow-prisoner.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That man's antecedents, I suppose, were not known to you, before he told
      you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Though the man himself was?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My case and Flintwinch's, in respect of this other man! I dare say the
      resemblance is not so exact, though, as that your informant became known
      to you through a letter from a correspondent with whom he had deposited
      money? How does that part of the parallel stand?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur had no choice but to say that his informant had not become known to
      him through the agency of any such credentials, or indeed of any
      credentials at all. Mrs Clennam's attentive frown expanded by degrees into
      a severe look of triumph, and she retorted with emphasis, 'Take care how
      you judge others, then. I say to you, Arthur, for your good, take care how
      you judge!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her emphasis had been derived from her eyes quite as much as from the
      stress she laid upon her words. She continued to look at him; and if, when
      he entered the house, he had had any latent hope of prevailing in the
      least with her, she now looked it out of his heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, shall I do nothing to assist you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you entrust me with no confidence, no charge, no explanation? Will
      you take no counsel with me? Will you not let me come near you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How can you ask me? You separated yourself from my affairs. It was not my
      act; it was yours. How can you consistently ask me such a question? You
      know that you left me to Flintwinch, and that he occupies your place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Glancing at Jeremiah, Clennam saw in his very gaiters that his attention
      was closely directed to them, though he stood leaning against the wall
      scraping his jaw, and pretended to listen to Flora as she held forth in a
      most distracting manner on a chaos of subjects, in which mackerel, and Mr
      F.'s Aunt in a swing, had become entangled with cockchafers and the wine
      trade.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A prisoner, in a French gaol, on an accusation of murder,' repeated Mrs
      Clennam, steadily going over what her son had said. 'That is all you know
      of him from the fellow-prisoner?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In substance, all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And was the fellow-prisoner his accomplice and a murderer, too? But, of
      course, he gives a better account of himself than of his friend; it is
      needless to ask. This will supply the rest of them here with something new
      to talk about. Casby, Arthur tells me&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stay, mother! Stay, stay!' He interrupted her hastily, for it had not
      entered his imagination that she would openly proclaim what he had told
      her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What now?' she said with displeasure. 'What more?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg you to excuse me, Mr Casby&mdash;and you, too, Mrs Finching&mdash;for
      one other moment with my mother&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had laid his hand upon her chair, or she would otherwise have wheeled
      it round with the touch of her foot upon the ground. They were still face
      to face. She looked at him, as he ran over the possibilities of some
      result he had not intended, and could not foresee, being influenced by
      Cavalletto's disclosure becoming a matter of notoriety, and hurriedly
      arrived at the conclusion that it had best not be talked about; though
      perhaps he was guided by no more distinct reason than that he had taken it
      for granted that his mother would reserve it to herself and her partner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What now?' she said again, impatiently. 'What is it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I did not mean, mother, that you should repeat what I have communicated.
      I think you had better not repeat it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you make that a condition with me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well! Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Observe, then! It is you who make this a secret,' said she, holding up
      her hand, 'and not I. It is you, Arthur, who bring here doubts and
      suspicions and entreaties for explanations, and it is you, Arthur, who
      bring secrets here. What is it to me, do you think, where the man has
      been, or what he has been? What can it be to me? The whole world may know
      it, if they care to know it; it is nothing to me. Now, let me go.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He yielded to her imperious but elated look, and turned her chair back to
      the place from which he had wheeled it. In doing so he saw elation in the
      face of Mr Flintwinch, which most assuredly was not inspired by Flora.
      This turning of his intelligence and of his whole attempt and design
      against himself, did even more than his mother's fixedness and firmness to
      convince him that his efforts with her were idle. Nothing remained but the
      appeal to his old friend Affery.
    </p>
    <p>
      But even to get the very doubtful and preliminary stage of making the
      appeal, seemed one of the least promising of human undertakings. She was
      so completely under the thrall of the two clever ones, was so
      systematically kept in sight by one or other of them, and was so afraid to
      go about the house besides, that every opportunity of speaking to her
      alone appeared to be forestalled. Over and above that, Mistress Affery, by
      some means (it was not very difficult to guess, through the sharp
      arguments of her liege lord), had acquired such a lively conviction of the
      hazard of saying anything under any circumstances, that she had remained
      all this time in a corner guarding herself from approach with that
      symbolical instrument of hers; so that, when a word or two had been
      addressed to her by Flora, or even by the bottle-green patriarch himself,
      she had warded off conversation with the toasting-fork like a dumb woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      After several abortive attempts to get Affery to look at him while she
      cleared the table and washed the tea-service, Arthur thought of an
      expedient which Flora might originate. To whom he therefore whispered,
      'Could you say you would like to go through the house?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, poor Flora, being always in fluctuating expectation of the time when
      Clennam would renew his boyhood and be madly in love with her again,
      received the whisper with the utmost delight; not only as rendered
      precious by its mysterious character, but as preparing the way for a
      tender interview in which he would declare the state of his affections.
      She immediately began to work out the hint.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah dear me the poor old room,' said Flora, glancing round, 'looks just as
      ever Mrs Clennam I am touched to see except for being smokier which was to
      be expected with time and which we must all expect and reconcile ourselves
      to being whether we like it or not as I am sure I have had to do myself if
      not exactly smokier dreadfully stouter which is the same or worse, to
      think of the days when papa used to bring me here the least of girls a
      perfect mass of chilblains to be stuck upon a chair with my feet on the
      rails and stare at Arthur&mdash;pray excuse me&mdash;Mr Clennam&mdash;the
      least of boys in the frightfullest of frills and jackets ere yet Mr F.
      appeared a misty shadow on the horizon paying attentions like the
      well-known spectre of some place in Germany beginning with a B is a moral
      lesson inculcating that all the paths in life are similar to the paths
      down in the North of England where they get the coals and make the iron
      and things gravelled with ashes!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Having paid the tribute of a sigh to the instability of human existence,
      Flora hurried on with her purpose.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not that at any time,' she proceeded, 'its worst enemy could have said it
      was a cheerful house for that it was never made to be but always highly
      impressive, fond memory recalls an occasion in youth ere yet the judgment
      was mature when Arthur&mdash;confirmed habit&mdash;Mr Clennam&mdash;took
      me down into an unused kitchen eminent for mouldiness and proposed to
      secrete me there for life and feed me on what he could hide from his meals
      when he was not at home for the holidays and on dry bread in disgrace
      which at that halcyon period too frequently occurred, would it be
      inconvenient or asking too much to beg to be permitted to revive those
      scenes and walk through the house?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam, who responded with a constrained grace to Mrs Finching's good
      nature in being there at all, though her visit (before Arthur's unexpected
      arrival) was undoubtedly an act of pure good nature and no
      self-gratification, intimated that all the house was open to her. Flora
      rose and looked to Arthur for his escort. 'Certainly,' said he, aloud;
      'and Affery will light us, I dare say.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Affery was excusing herself with 'Don't ask nothing of me, Arthur!' when
      Mr Flintwinch stopped her with 'Why not? Affery, what's the matter with
      you, woman? Why not, jade!' Thus expostulated with, she came unwillingly
      out of her corner, resigned the toasting-fork into one of her husband's
      hands, and took the candlestick he offered from the other.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go before, you fool!' said Jeremiah. 'Are you going up, or down, Mrs
      Finching?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora answered, 'Down.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then go before, and down, you Affery,' said Jeremiah. 'And do it
      properly, or I'll come rolling down the banisters, and tumbling over you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Affery headed the exploring party; Jeremiah closed it. He had no intention
      of leaving them. Clennam looking back, and seeing him following three
      stairs behind, in the coolest and most methodical manner exclaimed in a
      low voice, 'Is there no getting rid of him!' Flora reassured his mind by
      replying promptly, 'Why though not exactly proper Arthur and a thing I
      couldn't think of before a younger man or a stranger still I don't mind
      him if you so particularly wish it and provided you'll have the goodness
      not to take me too tight.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0611m.jpg" alt="0611m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0611.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      Wanting the heart to explain that this was not at all what he meant,
      Arthur extended his supporting arm round Flora's figure. 'Oh my goodness
      me,' said she. 'You are very obedient indeed really and it's extremely
      honourable and gentlemanly in you I am sure but still at the same time if
      you would like to be a little tighter than that I shouldn't consider it
      intruding.'
    </p>
    <p>
      In this preposterous attitude, unspeakably at variance with his anxious
      mind, Clennam descended to the basement of the house; finding that
      wherever it became darker than elsewhere, Flora became heavier, and that
      when the house was lightest she was too. Returning from the dismal kitchen
      regions, which were as dreary as they could be, Mistress Affery passed
      with the light into his father's old room, and then into the old
      dining-room; always passing on before like a phantom that was not to be
      overtaken, and neither turning nor answering when he whispered, 'Affery! I
      want to speak to you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In the dining-room, a sentimental desire came over Flora to look into the
      dragon closet which had so often swallowed Arthur in the days of his
      boyhood&mdash;not improbably because, as a very dark closet, it was a
      likely place to be heavy in. Arthur, fast subsiding into despair, had
      opened it, when a knock was heard at the outer door.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Affery, with a suppressed cry, threw her apron over her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What? You want another dose!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'You shall have it, my
      woman, you shall have a good one! Oh! You shall have a sneezer, you shall
      have a teaser!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In the meantime is anybody going to the door?' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In the meantime, <i>I</i> am going to the door, sir,' returned the old
      man so savagely, as to render it clear that in a choice of difficulties he
      felt he must go, though he would have preferred not to go. 'Stay here the
      while, all! Affery, my woman, move an inch, or speak a word in your
      foolishness, and I'll treble your dose!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The moment he was gone, Arthur released Mrs Finching: with some
      difficulty, by reason of that lady misunderstanding his intentions, and
      making arrangements with a view to tightening instead of slackening.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Affery, speak to me now!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't touch me, Arthur!' she cried, shrinking from him. 'Don't come near
      me. He'll see you. Jeremiah will. Don't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He can't see me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the word, 'if I
      blow the candle out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He'll hear you,' cried Affery.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He can't hear me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the words
      again, 'if I draw you into this black closet, and speak here. Why do you
      hide your face?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because I am afraid of seeing something.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You can't be afraid of seeing anything in this darkness, Affery.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes I am. Much more than if it was light.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why are you afraid?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because the house is full of mysteries and secrets; because it's full of
      whisperings and counsellings; because it's full of noises. There never was
      such a house for noises. I shall die of 'em, if Jeremiah don't strangle me
      first. As I expect he will.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have never heard any noises here, worth speaking of.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! But you would, though, if you lived in the house, and was obliged to
      go about it as I am,' said Affery; 'and you'd feel that they was so well
      worth speaking of, that you'd feel you was nigh bursting through not being
      allowed to speak of 'em. Here's Jeremiah! You'll get me killed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My good Affery, I solemnly declare to you that I can see the light of the
      open door on the pavement of the hall, and so could you if you would
      uncover your face and look.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I durstn't do it,' said Affery, 'I durstn't never, Arthur. I'm always
      blind-folded when Jeremiah an't a looking, and sometimes even when he is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He cannot shut the door without my seeing him,' said Arthur. 'You are as
      safe with me as if he was fifty miles away.'
    </p>
    <p>
      ('I wish he was!' cried Affery.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'Affery, I want to know what is amiss here; I want some light thrown on
      the secrets of this house.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you, Arthur,' she interrupted, 'noises is the secrets, rustlings
      and stealings about, tremblings, treads overhead and treads underneath.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But those are not all the secrets.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know,' said Affery. 'Don't ask me no more. Your old sweetheart
      an't far off, and she's a blabber.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His old sweetheart, being in fact so near at hand that she was then
      reclining against him in a flutter, a very substantial angle of forty-five
      degrees, here interposed to assure Mistress Affery with greater
      earnestness than directness of asseveration, that what she heard should go
      no further, but should be kept inviolate, 'if on no other account on
      Arthur's&mdash;sensible of intruding in being too familiar Doyce and
      Clennam's.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I make an imploring appeal to you, Affery, to you, one of the few
      agreeable early remembrances I have, for my mother's sake, for your
      husband's sake, for my own, for all our sakes. I am sure you can tell me
      something connected with the coming here of this man, if you will.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, then I'll tell you, Arthur,' returned Affery&mdash;'Jeremiah's
      coming!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, indeed he is not. The door is open, and he is standing outside,
      talking.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll tell you then,' said Affery, after listening, 'that the first time
      he ever come he heard the noises his own self. "What's that?" he said to
      me. "I don't know what it is," I says to him, catching hold of him, "but I
      have heard it over and over again." While I says it, he stands a looking
      at me, all of a shake, he do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has he been here often?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only that night, and the last night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What did you see of him on the last night, after I was gone?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Them two clever ones had him all alone to themselves. Jeremiah come a
      dancing at me sideways, after I had let you out (he always comes a dancing
      at me sideways when he's going to hurt me), and he said to me, "Now,
      Affery," he said, "I am a coming behind you, my woman, and a going to run
      you up." So he took and squeezed the back of my neck in his hand, till it
      made me open my mouth, and then he pushed me before him to bed, squeezing
      all the way. That's what he calls running me up, he do. Oh, he's a wicked
      one!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And did you hear or see no more, Affery?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't I tell you I was sent to bed, Arthur! Here he is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I assure you he is still at the door. Those whisperings and counsellings,
      Affery, that you have spoken of. What are they?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How should I know? Don't ask me nothing about 'em, Arthur. Get away!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But my dear Affery; unless I can gain some insight into these hidden
      things, in spite of your husband and in spite of my mother, ruin will come
      of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't ask me nothing,' repeated Affery. 'I have been in a dream for ever
      so long. Go away, go away!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You said that before,' returned Arthur. 'You used the same expression
      that night, at the door, when I asked you what was going on here. What do
      you mean by being in a dream?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I an't a going to tell you. Get away! I shouldn't tell you, if you was by
      yourself; much less with your old sweetheart here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was equally vain for Arthur to entreat, and for Flora to protest.
      Affery, who had been trembling and struggling the whole time, turned a
      deaf ear to all adjuration, and was bent on forcing herself out of the
      closet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'd sooner scream to Jeremiah than say another word! I'll call out to
      him, Arthur, if you don't give over speaking to me. Now here's the very
      last word I'll say afore I call to him&mdash;If ever you begin to get the
      better of them two clever ones your own self (you ought to it, as I told
      you when you first come home, for you haven't been a living here long
      years, to be made afeared of your life as I have), then do you get the
      better of 'em afore my face; and then do you say to me, Affery tell your
      dreams! Maybe, then I'll tell 'em!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The shutting of the door stopped Arthur from replying. They glided into
      the places where Jeremiah had left them; and Clennam, stepping forward as
      that old gentleman returned, informed him that he had accidentally
      extinguished the candle. Mr Flintwinch looked on as he re-lighted it at
      the lamp in the hall, and preserved a profound taciturnity respecting the
      person who had been holding him in conversation. Perhaps his irascibility
      demanded compensation for some tediousness that the visitor had expended
      on him; however that was, he took such umbrage at seeing his wife with her
      apron over her head, that he charged at her, and taking her veiled nose
      between his thumb and finger, appeared to throw the whole screw-power of
      his person into the wring he gave it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora, now permanently heavy, did not release Arthur from the survey of
      the house, until it had extended even to his old garret bedchamber. His
      thoughts were otherwise occupied than with the tour of inspection; yet he
      took particular notice at the time, as he afterwards had occasion to
      remember, of the airlessness and closeness of the house; that they left
      the track of their footsteps in the dust on the upper floors; and that
      there was a resistance to the opening of one room door, which occasioned
      Affery to cry out that somebody was hiding inside, and to continue to
      believe so, though somebody was sought and not discovered. When they at
      last returned to his mother's room, they found her shading her face with
      her muffled hand, and talking in a low voice to the Patriarch as he stood
      before the fire, whose blue eyes, polished head, and silken locks, turning
      towards them as they came in, imparted an inestimable value and
      inexhaustible love of his species to his remark:
    </p>
    <p>
      'So you have been seeing the premises, seeing the premises&mdash;premises&mdash;
      seeing the premises!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not in itself a jewel of benevolence or wisdom, yet he made it an
      exemplar of both that one would have liked to have a copy of.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0060" id="link2HCH0060"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 24. The Evening of a Long Day
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hat illustrious man and great national ornament, Mr Merdle, continued his
      shining course. It began to be widely understood that one who had done
      society the admirable service of making so much money out of it, could not
      be suffered to remain a commoner. A baronetcy was spoken of with
      confidence; a peerage was frequently mentioned. Rumour had it that Mr
      Merdle had set his golden face against a baronetcy; that he had plainly
      intimated to Lord Decimus that a baronetcy was not enough for him; that he
      had said, 'No&mdash;a Peerage, or plain Merdle.' This was reported to have
      plunged Lord Decimus as nigh to his noble chin in a slough of doubts as so
      lofty a person could be sunk. For the Barnacles, as a group of themselves
      in creation, had an idea that such distinctions belonged to them; and that
      when a soldier, sailor, or lawyer became ennobled, they let him in, as it
      were, by an act of condescension, at the family door, and immediately shut
      it again. Not only (said Rumour) had the troubled Decimus his own
      hereditary part in this impression, but he also knew of several Barnacle
      claims already on the file, which came into collision with that of the
      master spirit. Right or wrong, Rumour was very busy; and Lord Decimus,
      while he was, or was supposed to be, in stately excogitation of the
      difficulty, lent her some countenance by taking, on several public
      occasions, one of those elephantine trots of his through a jungle of
      overgrown sentences, waving Mr Merdle about on his trunk as Gigantic
      Enterprise, The Wealth of England, Elasticity, Credit, Capital,
      Prosperity, and all manner of blessings.
    </p>
    <p>
      So quietly did the mowing of the old scythe go on, that fully three months
      had passed unnoticed since the two English brothers had been laid in one
      tomb in the strangers' cemetery at Rome. Mr and Mrs Sparkler were
      established in their own house: a little mansion, rather of the Tite
      Barnacle class, quite a triumph of inconvenience, with a perpetual smell
      in it of the day before yesterday's soup and coach-horses, but extremely
      dear, as being exactly in the centre of the habitable globe. In this
      enviable abode (and envied it really was by many people), Mrs Sparkler had
      intended to proceed at once to the demolition of the Bosom, when active
      hostilities had been suspended by the arrival of the Courier with his
      tidings of death. Mrs Sparkler, who was not unfeeling, had received them
      with a violent burst of grief, which had lasted twelve hours; after which,
      she had arisen to see about her mourning, and to take every precaution
      that could ensure its being as becoming as Mrs Merdle's. A gloom was then
      cast over more than one distinguished family (according to the politest
      sources of intelligence), and the Courier went back again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr and Mrs Sparkler had been dining alone, with their gloom cast over
      them, and Mrs Sparkler reclined on a drawing-room sofa. It was a hot
      summer Sunday evening. The residence in the centre of the habitable globe,
      at all times stuffed and close as if it had an incurable cold in its head,
      was that evening particularly stifling. The bells of the churches had done
      their worst in the way of clanging among the unmelodious echoes of the
      streets, and the lighted windows of the churches had ceased to be yellow
      in the grey dusk, and had died out opaque black. Mrs Sparkler, lying on
      her sofa, looking through an open window at the opposite side of a narrow
      street over boxes of mignonette and flowers, was tired of the view. Mrs
      Sparkler, looking at another window where her husband stood in the
      balcony, was tired of that view. Mrs Sparkler, looking at herself in her
      mourning, was even tired of that view: though, naturally, not so tired of
      that as of the other two.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's like lying in a well,' said Mrs Sparkler, changing her position
      fretfully. 'Dear me, Edmund, if you have anything to say, why don't you
      say it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler might have replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have
      nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented
      himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side of his
      wife's couch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good gracious, Edmund!' said Mrs Sparkler more fretfully still, 'you are
      absolutely putting mignonette up your nose! Pray don't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler, in absence of mind&mdash;perhaps in a more literal absence of
      mind than is usually understood by the phrase&mdash;had smelt so hard at a
      sprig in his hand as to be on the verge of the offence in question. He
      smiled, said, 'I ask your pardon, my dear,' and threw it out of window.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You make my head ache by remaining in that position, Edmund,' said Mrs
      Sparkler, raising her eyes to him after another minute; 'you look so
      aggravatingly large by this light. Do sit down.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly, my dear,' said Mr Sparkler, and took a chair on the same spot.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I didn't know that the longest day was past,' said Fanny, yawning in a
      dreary manner, 'I should have felt certain this was the longest day. I
      never did experience such a day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that your fan, my love?' asked Mr Sparkler, picking up one and
      presenting it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edmund,' returned his wife, more wearily yet, 'don't ask weak questions,
      I entreat you not. Whose can it be but mine?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I thought it was yours,' said Mr Sparkler.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you shouldn't ask,' retorted Fanny. After a little while she turned
      on her sofa and exclaimed, 'Dear me, dear me, there never was such a long
      day as this!' After another little while, she got up slowly, walked about,
      and came back again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said Mr Sparkler, flashing with an original conception, 'I
      think you must have got the fidgets.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Fidgets!' repeated Mrs Sparkler. 'Don't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My adorable girl,' urged Mr Sparkler, 'try your aromatic vinegar. I have
      often seen my mother try it, and it seemingly refreshed her.
    </p>
    <p>
      And she is, as I believe you are aware, a remarkably fine woman, with no
      non&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good Gracious!' exclaimed Fanny, starting up again. 'It's beyond all
      patience! This is the most wearisome day that ever did dawn upon the
      world, I am certain.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler looked meekly after her as she lounged about the room, and he
      appeared to be a little frightened. When she had tossed a few trifles
      about, and had looked down into the darkening street out of all the three
      windows, she returned to her sofa, and threw herself among its pillows.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now Edmund, come here! Come a little nearer, because I want to be able to
      touch you with my fan, that I may impress you very much with what I am
      going to say. That will do. Quite close enough. Oh, you <i>do</i> look so
      big!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler apologised for the circumstance, pleaded that he couldn't help
      it, and said that 'our fellows,' without more particularly indicating
      whose fellows, used to call him by the name of Quinbus Flestrin, Junior,
      or the Young Man Mountain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You ought to have told me so before,' Fanny complained.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' returned Mr Sparkler, rather gratified, 'I didn't know It would
      interest you, or I would have made a point of telling you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There! For goodness sake, don't talk,' said Fanny; 'I want to talk,
      myself. Edmund, we must not be alone any more. I must take such
      precautions as will prevent my being ever again reduced to the state of
      dreadful depression in which I am this evening.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' answered Mr Sparkler; 'being as you are well known to be, a
      remarkably fine woman with no&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, good GRACIOUS!' cried Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler was so discomposed by the energy of this exclamation,
      accompanied with a flouncing up from the sofa and a flouncing down again,
      that a minute or two elapsed before he felt himself equal to saying in
      explanation:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean, my dear, that everybody knows you are calculated to shine in
      society.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Calculated to shine in society,' retorted Fanny with great irritability;
      'yes, indeed! And then what happens? I no sooner recover, in a visiting
      point of view, the shock of poor dear papa's death, and my poor uncle's&mdash;though
      I do not disguise from myself that the last was a happy release, for, if
      you are not presentable you had much better die&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are not referring to me, my love, I hope?' Mr Sparkler humbly
      interrupted.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edmund, Edmund, you would wear out a Saint. Am I not expressly speaking
      of my poor uncle?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You looked with so much expression at myself, my dear girl,' said Mr
      Sparkler, 'that I felt a little uncomfortable. Thank you, my love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now you have put me out,' observed Fanny with a resigned toss of her fan,
      'and I had better go to bed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't do that, my love,' urged Mr Sparkler. 'Take time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny took a good deal of time: lying back with her eyes shut, and her
      eyebrows raised with a hopeless expression as if she had utterly given up
      all terrestrial affairs. At length, without the slightest notice, she
      opened her eyes again, and recommenced in a short, sharp manner:
    </p>
    <p>
      'What happens then, I ask! What happens? Why, I find myself at the very
      period when I might shine most in society, and should most like for very
      momentous reasons to shine in society&mdash;I find myself in a situation
      which to a certain extent disqualifies me for going into society. It's too
      bad, really!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said Mr Sparkler. 'I don't think it need keep you at home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edmund, you ridiculous creature,' returned Fanny, with great indignation;
      'do you suppose that a woman in the bloom of youth and not wholly devoid
      of personal attractions, can put herself, at such a time, in competition
      as to figure with a woman in every other way her inferior? If you do
      suppose such a thing, your folly is boundless.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler submitted that he had thought 'it might be got over.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Got over!' repeated Fanny, with immeasurable scorn.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For a time,' Mr Sparkler submitted.
    </p>
    <p>
      Honouring the last feeble suggestion with no notice, Mrs Sparkler declared
      with bitterness that it really was too bad, and that positively it was
      enough to make one wish one was dead!
    </p>
    <p>
      'However,' she said, when she had in some measure recovered from her sense
      of personal ill-usage; 'provoking as it is, and cruel as it seems, I
      suppose it must be submitted to.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Especially as it was to be expected,' said Mr Sparkler.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edmund,' returned his wife, 'if you have nothing more becoming to do than
      to attempt to insult the woman who has honoured you with her hand, when
      she finds herself in adversity, I think <i>you</i> had better go to bed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler was much afflicted by the charge, and offered a most tender
      and earnest apology. His apology was accepted; but Mrs Sparkler requested
      him to go round to the other side of the sofa and sit in the
      window-curtain, to tone himself down.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Edmund,' she said, stretching out her fan, and touching him with it
      at arm's length, 'what I was going to say to you when you began as usual
      to prose and worry, is, that I shall guard against our being alone any
      more, and that when circumstances prevent my going out to my own
      satisfaction, I must arrange to have some people or other always here; for
      I really cannot, and will not, have another such day as this has been.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler's sentiments as to the plan were, in brief, that it had no
      nonsense about it. He added, 'And besides, you know it's likely that
      you'll soon have your sister&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dearest Amy, yes!' cried Mrs Sparkler with a sigh of affection. 'Darling
      little thing! Not, however, that Amy would do here alone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler was going to say 'No?' interrogatively, but he saw his danger
      and said it assentingly, 'No, Oh dear no; she wouldn't do here alone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Edmund. For not only are the virtues of the precious child of that
      still character that they require a contrast&mdash;require life and
      movement around them to bring them out in their right colours and make one
      love them of all things; but she will require to be roused, on more
      accounts than one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's it,' said Mr Sparkler. 'Roused.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray don't, Edmund! Your habit of interrupting without having the least
      thing in the world to say, distracts one. You must be broken of it.
      Speaking of Amy;&mdash;my poor little pet was devotedly attached to poor
      papa, and no doubt will have lamented his loss exceedingly, and grieved
      very much. I have done so myself. I have felt it dreadfully. But Amy will
      no doubt have felt it even more, from having been on the spot the whole
      time, and having been with poor dear papa at the last; which I unhappily
      was not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here Fanny stopped to weep, and to say, 'Dear, dear, beloved papa! How
      truly gentlemanly he was! What a contrast to poor uncle!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'From the effects of that trying time,' she pursued, 'my good little Mouse
      will have to be roused. Also, from the effects of this long attendance
      upon Edward in his illness; an attendance which is not yet over, which may
      even go on for some time longer, and which in the meanwhile unsettles us
      all by keeping poor dear papa's affairs from being wound up. Fortunately,
      however, the papers with his agents here being all sealed up and locked
      up, as he left them when he providentially came to England, the affairs
      are in that state of order that they can wait until my brother Edward
      recovers his health in Sicily, sufficiently to come over, and administer,
      or execute, or whatever it may be that will have to be done.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He couldn't have a better nurse to bring him round,' Mr Sparkler made
      bold to opine.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For a wonder, I can agree with you,' returned his wife, languidly turning
      her eyelids a little in his direction (she held forth, in general, as if
      to the drawing-room furniture), 'and can adopt your words. He couldn't
      have a better nurse to bring him round. There are times when my dear child
      is a little wearing to an active mind; but, as a nurse, she is Perfection.
      Best of Amys!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler, growing rash on his late success, observed that Edward had
      had, biggodd, a long bout of it, my dear girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If Bout, Edmund,' returned Mrs Sparkler, 'is the slang term for
      indisposition, he has. If it is not, I am unable to give an opinion on the
      barbarous language you address to Edward's sister. That he contracted
      Malaria Fever somewhere, either by travelling day and night to Rome,
      where, after all, he arrived too late to see poor dear papa before his
      death&mdash;or under some other unwholesome circumstances&mdash;is
      indubitable, if that is what you mean. Likewise that his extremely
      careless life has made him a very bad subject for it indeed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler considered it a parallel case to that of some of our fellows
      in the West Indies with Yellow Jack. Mrs Sparkler closed her eyes again,
      and refused to have any consciousness of our fellows of the West Indies,
      or of Yellow Jack.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So, Amy,' she pursued, when she reopened her eyelids, 'will require to be
      roused from the effects of many tedious and anxious weeks. And lastly, she
      will require to be roused from a low tendency which I know very well to be
      at the bottom of her heart. Don't ask me what it is, Edmund, because I
      must decline to tell you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not going to, my dear,' said Mr Sparkler.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall thus have much improvement to effect in my sweet child,' Mrs
      Sparkler continued, 'and cannot have her near me too soon. Amiable and
      dear little Twoshoes! As to the settlement of poor papa's affairs, my
      interest in that is not very selfish. Papa behaved very generously to me
      when I was married, and I have little or nothing to expect. Provided he
      had made no will that can come into force, leaving a legacy to Mrs
      General, I am contented. Dear papa, dear papa.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She wept again, but Mrs General was the best of restoratives. The name
      soon stimulated her to dry her eyes and say:
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is a highly encouraging circumstance in Edward's illness, I am
      thankful to think, and gives one the greatest confidence in his sense not
      being impaired, or his proper spirit weakened&mdash;down to the time of
      poor dear papa's death at all events&mdash;that he paid off Mrs General
      instantly, and sent her out of the house. I applaud him for it. I could
      forgive him a great deal for doing, with such promptitude, so exactly what
      I would have done myself!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Sparkler was in the full glow of her gratification, when a double
      knock was heard at the door. A very odd knock. Low, as if to avoid making
      a noise and attracting attention. Long, as if the person knocking were
      preoccupied in mind, and forgot to leave off.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Halloa!' said Mr Sparkler. 'Who's this?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not Amy and Edward without notice and without a carriage!' said Mrs
      Sparkler. 'Look out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The room was dark, but the street was lighter, because of its lamps. Mr
      Sparkler's head peeping over the balcony looked so very bulky and heavy
      that it seemed on the point of overbalancing him and flattening the
      unknown below.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's one fellow,' said Mr Sparkler. 'I can't see who&mdash;stop though!'
    </p>
    <p>
      On this second thought he went out into the balcony again and had another
      look. He came back as the door was opened, and announced that he believed
      he had identified 'his governor's tile.' He was not mistaken, for his
      governor, with his tile in his hand, was introduced immediately
      afterwards.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Candles!' said Mrs Sparkler, with a word of excuse for the darkness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's light enough for me,' said Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the candles were brought in, Mr Merdle was discovered standing behind
      the door, picking his lips. 'I thought I'd give you a call,' he said. 'I
      am rather particularly occupied just now; and, as I happened to be out for
      a stroll, I thought I'd give you a call.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As he was in dinner dress, Fanny asked him where he had been dining?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well,' said Mr Merdle, 'I haven't been dining anywhere, particularly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course you have dined?' said Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why&mdash;no, I haven't exactly dined,' said Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had passed his hand over his yellow forehead and considered, as if he
      were not sure about it. Something to eat was proposed. 'No, thank you,'
      said Mr Merdle, 'I don't feel inclined for it. I was to have dined out
      along with Mrs Merdle. But as I didn't feel inclined for dinner, I let Mrs
      Merdle go by herself just as we were getting into the carriage, and
      thought I'd take a stroll instead.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Would he have tea or coffee? 'No, thank you,' said Mr Merdle. 'I looked in
      at the Club, and got a bottle of wine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At this period of his visit, Mr Merdle took the chair which Edmund
      Sparkler had offered him, and which he had hitherto been pushing slowly
      about before him, like a dull man with a pair of skates on for the first
      time, who could not make up his mind to start. He now put his hat upon
      another chair beside him, and, looking down into it as if it were some
      twenty feet deep, said again: 'You see I thought I'd give you a call.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flattering to us,' said Fanny, 'for you are not a calling man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No&mdash;no,' returned Mr Merdle, who was by this time taking himself
      into custody under both coat-sleeves. 'No, I am not a calling man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have too much to do for that,' said Fanny. 'Having so much to do, Mr
      Merdle, loss of appetite is a serious thing with you, and you must have it
      seen to. You must not be ill.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I am very well,' replied Mr Merdle, after deliberating about it. 'I
      am as well as I usually am. I am well enough. I am as well as I want to
      be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The master-mind of the age, true to its characteristic of being at all
      times a mind that had as little as possible to say for itself and great
      difficulty in saying it, became mute again. Mrs Sparkler began to wonder
      how long the master-mind meant to stay.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was speaking of poor papa when you came in, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Aye! Quite a coincidence,' said Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny did not see that; but felt it incumbent on her to continue talking.
      'I was saying,' she pursued, 'that my brother's illness has occasioned a
      delay in examining and arranging papa's property.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said Mr Merdle; 'yes. There has been a delay.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not that it is of consequence,' said Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not,' assented Mr Merdle, after having examined the cornice of all that
      part of the room which was within his range: 'not that it is of any
      consequence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My only anxiety is,' said Fanny, 'that Mrs General should not get
      anything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>She</i> won't get anything,' said Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Fanny was delighted to hear him express the opinion. Mr Merdle, after
      taking another gaze into the depths of his hat as if he thought he saw
      something at the bottom, rubbed his hair and slowly appended to his last
      remark the confirmatory words, 'Oh dear no. No. Not she. Not likely.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As the topic seemed exhausted, and Mr Merdle too, Fanny inquired if he
      were going to take up Mrs Merdle and the carriage in his way home?
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' he answered; 'I shall go by the shortest way, and leave Mrs Merdle
      to&mdash;' here he looked all over the palms of both his hands as if he
      were telling his own fortune&mdash;'to take care of herself. I dare say
      she'll manage to do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Probably,' said Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was then a long silence; during which, Mrs Sparkler, lying back on
      her sofa again, shut her eyes and raised her eyebrows in her former
      retirement from mundane affairs.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, however,' said Mr Merdle, 'I am equally detaining you and myself. I
      thought I'd give you a call, you know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Charmed, I am sure,' said Fanny.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So I am off,' added Mr Merdle, getting up. 'Could you lend me a
      penknife?'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0624m.jpg" alt="0624m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0624.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      It was an odd thing, Fanny smilingly observed, for her who could seldom
      prevail upon herself even to write a letter, to lend to a man of such vast
      business as Mr Merdle. 'Isn't it?' Mr Merdle acquiesced; 'but I want one;
      and I know you have got several little wedding keepsakes about, with
      scissors and tweezers and such things in them. You shall have it back
      to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edmund,' said Mrs Sparkler, 'open (now, very carefully, I beg and
      beseech, for you are so very awkward) the mother of pearl box on my little
      table there, and give Mr Merdle the mother of pearl penknife.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you,' said Mr Merdle; 'but if you have got one with a darker
      handle, I think I should prefer one with a darker handle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tortoise-shell?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you,' said Mr Merdle; 'yes. I think I should prefer
      tortoise-shell.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edmund accordingly received instructions to open the tortoise-shell box,
      and give Mr Merdle the tortoise-shell knife. On his doing so, his wife
      said to the master-spirit graciously:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will forgive you, if you ink it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll undertake not to ink it,' said Mr Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      The illustrious visitor then put out his coat-cuff, and for a moment
      entombed Mrs Sparkler's hand: wrist, bracelet, and all. Where his own hand
      had shrunk to, was not made manifest, but it was as remote from Mrs
      Sparkler's sense of touch as if he had been a highly meritorious Chelsea
      Veteran or Greenwich Pensioner.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thoroughly convinced, as he went out of the room, that it was the longest
      day that ever did come to an end at last, and that there never was a
      woman, not wholly devoid of personal attractions, so worn out by idiotic
      and lumpish people, Fanny passed into the balcony for a breath of air.
      Waters of vexation filled her eyes; and they had the effect of making the
      famous Mr Merdle, in going down the street, appear to leap, and waltz, and
      gyrate, as if he were possessed of several Devils.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0061" id="link2HCH0061"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 25. The Chief Butler Resigns the Seals of Office
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he dinner-party was at the great Physician's. Bar was there, and in full
      force. Ferdinand Barnacle was there, and in his most engaging state. Few
      ways of life were hidden from Physician, and he was oftener in its darkest
      places than even Bishop. There were brilliant ladies about London who
      perfectly doted on him, my dear, as the most charming creature and the
      most delightful person, who would have been shocked to find themselves so
      close to him if they could have known on what sights those thoughtful eyes
      of his had rested within an hour or two, and near to whose beds, and under
      what roofs, his composed figure had stood. But Physician was a composed
      man, who performed neither on his own trumpet, nor on the trumpets of
      other people. Many wonderful things did he see and hear, and much
      irreconcilable moral contradiction did he pass his life among; yet his
      equality of compassion was no more disturbed than the Divine Master's of
      all healing was. He went, like the rain, among the just and unjust, doing
      all the good he could, and neither proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at
      the corner of streets.
    </p>
    <p>
      As no man of large experience of humanity, however quietly carried it may
      be, can fail to be invested with an interest peculiar to the possession of
      such knowledge, Physician was an attractive man. Even the daintier
      gentlemen and ladies who had no idea of his secret, and who would have
      been startled out of more wits than they had, by the monstrous impropriety
      of his proposing to them 'Come and see what I see!' confessed his
      attraction. Where he was, something real was. And half a grain of reality,
      like the smallest portion of some other scarce natural productions, will
      flavour an enormous quantity of diluent.
    </p>
    <p>
      It came to pass, therefore, that Physician's little dinners always
      presented people in their least conventional lights. The guests said to
      themselves, whether they were conscious of it or no, 'Here is a man who
      really has an acquaintance with us as we are, who is admitted to some of
      us every day with our wigs and paint off, who hears the wanderings of our
      minds, and sees the undisguised expression of our faces, when both are
      past our control; we may as well make an approach to reality with him, for
      the man has got the better of us and is too strong for us.' Therefore,
      Physician's guests came out so surprisingly at his round table that they
      were almost natural.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar's knowledge of that agglomeration of jurymen which is called humanity
      was as sharp as a razor; yet a razor is not a generally convenient
      instrument, and Physician's plain bright scalpel, though far less keen,
      was adaptable to far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the gullibility
      and knavery of people; but Physician could have given him a better insight
      into their tendernesses and affections, in one week of his rounds, than
      Westminster Hall and all the circuits put together, in threescore years
      and ten. Bar always had a suspicion of this, and perhaps was glad to
      encourage it (for, if the world were really a great Law Court, one would
      think that the last day of Term could not too soon arrive); and so he
      liked and respected Physician quite as much as any other kind of man did.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Merdle's default left a Banquo's chair at the table; but, if he had
      been there, he would have merely made the difference of Banquo in it, and
      consequently he was no loss. Bar, who picked up all sorts of odds and ends
      about Westminster Hall, much as a raven would have done if he had passed
      as much of his time there, had been picking up a great many straws lately
      and tossing them about, to try which way the Merdle wind blew. He now had
      a little talk on the subject with Mrs Merdle herself; sidling up to that
      lady, of course, with his double eye-glass and his jury droop.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A certain bird,' said Bar; and he looked as if it could have been no
      other bird than a magpie; 'has been whispering among us lawyers lately,
      that there is to be an addition to the titled personages of this realm.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really?' said Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said Bar. 'Has not the bird been whispering in very different ears
      from ours&mdash;in lovely ears?' He looked expressively at Mrs Merdle's
      nearest ear-ring.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean mine?' asked Mrs Merdle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When I say lovely,' said Bar, 'I always mean you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You never mean anything, I think,' returned Mrs Merdle (not displeased).
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, cruelly unjust!' said Bar. 'But, the bird.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am the last person in the world to hear news,' observed Mrs Merdle,
      carelessly arranging her stronghold. 'Who is it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What an admirable witness you would make!' said Bar. 'No jury (unless we
      could empanel one of blind men) could resist you, if you were ever so bad
      a one; but you would be such a good one!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, you ridiculous man?' asked Mrs Merdle, laughing.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar waved his double eye-glass three or four times between himself and the
      Bosom, as a rallying answer, and inquired in his most insinuating accents:
    </p>
    <p>
      'What am I to call the most elegant, accomplished and charming of women, a
      few weeks, or it may be a few days, hence?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Didn't your bird tell you what to call her?' answered Mrs Merdle. 'Do ask
      it to-morrow, and tell me the next time you see me what it says.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This led to further passages of similar pleasantry between the two; but
      Bar, with all his sharpness, got nothing out of them. Physician, on the
      other hand, taking Mrs Merdle down to her carriage and attending on her as
      she put on her cloak, inquired into the symptoms with his usual calm
      directness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I ask,' he said, 'is this true about Merdle?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear doctor,' she returned, 'you ask me the very question that I was
      half disposed to ask you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To ask me! Why me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Upon my honour, I think Mr Merdle reposes greater confidence in you than
      in any one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'On the contrary, he tells me absolutely nothing, even professionally. You
      have heard the talk, of course?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course I have. But you know what Mr Merdle is; you know how taciturn
      and reserved he is. I assure you I have no idea what foundation for it
      there may be. I should like it to be true; why should I deny that to you?
      You would know better, if I did!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Just so,' said Physician.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But whether it is all true, or partly true, or entirely false, I am
      wholly unable to say. It is a most provoking situation, a most absurd
      situation; but you know Mr Merdle, and are not surprised.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Physician was not surprised, handed her into her carriage, and bade her
      Good Night. He stood for a moment at his own hall door, looking sedately
      at the elegant equipage as it rattled away. On his return up-stairs, the
      rest of the guests soon dispersed, and he was left alone. Being a great
      reader of all kinds of literature (and never at all apologetic for that
      weakness), he sat down comfortably to read.
    </p>
    <p>
      The clock upon his study table pointed to a few minutes short of twelve,
      when his attention was called to it by a ringing at the door bell. A man
      of plain habits, he had sent his servants to bed and must needs go down to
      open the door. He went down, and there found a man without hat or coat,
      whose shirt sleeves were rolled up tight to his shoulders. For a moment,
      he thought the man had been fighting: the rather, as he was much agitated
      and out of breath. A second look, however, showed him that the man was
      particularly clean, and not otherwise discomposed as to his dress than as
      it answered this description.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I come from the warm-baths, sir, round in the neighbouring street.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what is the matter at the warm-baths?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Would you please to come directly, sir. We found that, lying on the
      table.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He put into the physician's hand a scrap of paper. Physician looked at it,
      and read his own name and address written in pencil; nothing more. He
      looked closer at the writing, looked at the man, took his hat from its
      peg, put the key of his door in his pocket, and they hurried away
      together.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they came to the warm-baths, all the other people belonging to that
      establishment were looking out for them at the door, and running up and
      down the passages. 'Request everybody else to keep back, if you please,'
      said the physician aloud to the master; 'and do you take me straight to
      the place, my friend,' to the messenger.
    </p>
    <p>
      The messenger hurried before him, along a grove of little rooms, and
      turning into one at the end of the grove, looked round the door. Physician
      was close upon him, and looked round the door too.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a bath in that corner, from which the water had been hastily
      drained off. Lying in it, as in a grave or sarcophagus, with a hurried
      drapery of sheet and blanket thrown across it, was the body of a
      heavily-made man, with an obtuse head, and coarse, mean, common features.
      A sky-light had been opened to release the steam with which the room had
      been filled; but it hung, condensed into water-drops, heavily upon the
      walls, and heavily upon the face and figure in the bath. The room was
      still hot, and the marble of the bath still warm; but the face and figure
      were clammy to the touch. The white marble at the bottom of the bath was
      veined with a dreadful red. On the ledge at the side, were an empty
      laudanum-bottle and a tortoise-shell handled penknife&mdash;soiled, but
      not with ink.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Separation of jugular vein&mdash;death rapid&mdash;been dead at least
      half an hour.' This echo of the physician's words ran through the passages
      and little rooms, and through the house while he was yet straightening
      himself from having bent down to reach to the bottom of the bath, and
      while he was yet dabbling his hands in water; redly veining it as the
      marble was veined, before it mingled into one tint.
    </p>
    <p>
      He turned his eyes to the dress upon the sofa, and to the watch, money,
      and pocket-book on the table. A folded note half buckled up in the
      pocket-book, and half protruding from it, caught his observant glance. He
      looked at it, touched it, pulled it a little further out from among the
      leaves, said quietly, 'This is addressed to me,' and opened and read it.
    </p>
    <p>
      There were no directions for him to give. The people of the house knew
      what to do; the proper authorities were soon brought; and they took an
      equable business-like possession of the deceased, and of what had been his
      property, with no greater disturbance of manner or countenance than
      usually attends the winding-up of a clock. Physician was glad to walk out
      into the night air&mdash;was even glad, in spite of his great experience,
      to sit down upon a door-step for a little while: feeling sick and faint.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bar was a near neighbour of his, and, when he came to the house, he saw a
      light in the room where he knew his friend often sat late getting up his
      work. As the light was never there when Bar was not, it gave him assurance
      that Bar was not yet in bed. In fact, this busy bee had a verdict to get
      to-morrow, against evidence, and was improving the shining hours in
      setting snares for the gentlemen of the jury.
    </p>
    <p>
      Physician's knock astonished Bar; but, as he immediately suspected that
      somebody had come to tell him that somebody else was robbing him, or
      otherwise trying to get the better of him, he came down promptly and
      softly. He had been clearing his head with a lotion of cold water, as a
      good preparative to providing hot water for the heads of the jury, and had
      been reading with the neck of his shirt thrown wide open that he might the
      more freely choke the opposite witnesses. In consequence, he came down,
      looking rather wild. Seeing Physician, the least expected of men, he
      looked wilder and said, 'What's the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You asked me once what Merdle's complaint was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Extraordinary answer! I know I did.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I told you I had not found out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. I know you did.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have found it out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My God!' said Bar, starting back, and clapping his hand upon the other's
      breast. 'And so have I! I see it in your face.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They went into the nearest room, where Physician gave him the letter to
      read. He read it through half-a-dozen times. There was not much in it as
      to quantity; but it made a great demand on his close and continuous
      attention. He could not sufficiently give utterance to his regret that he
      had not himself found a clue to this. The smallest clue, he said, would
      have made him master of the case, and what a case it would have been to
      have got to the bottom of!
    </p>
    <p>
      Physician had engaged to break the intelligence in Harley Street. Bar
      could not at once return to his inveiglements of the most enlightened and
      remarkable jury he had ever seen in that box, with whom, he could tell his
      learned friend, no shallow sophistry would go down, and no unhappily
      abused professional tact and skill prevail (this was the way he meant to
      begin with them); so he said he would go too, and would loiter to and fro
      near the house while his friend was inside. They walked there, the better
      to recover self-possession in the air; and the wings of day were
      fluttering the night when Physician knocked at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      A footman of rainbow hues, in the public eye, was sitting up for his
      master&mdash;that is to say, was fast asleep in the kitchen over a couple
      of candles and a newspaper, demonstrating the great accumulation of
      mathematical odds against the probabilities of a house being set on fire
      by accident When this serving man was roused, Physician had still to await
      the rousing of the Chief Butler. At last that noble creature came into the
      dining-room in a flannel gown and list shoes; but with his cravat on, and
      a Chief Butler all over. It was morning now. Physician had opened the
      shutters of one window while waiting, that he might see the light.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Merdle's maid must be called, and told to get Mrs Merdle up, and
      prepare her as gently as she can to see me. I have dreadful news to break
      to her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus Physician to the Chief Butler. The latter, who had a candle in his
      hand, called his man to take it away. Then he approached the window with
      dignity; looking on at Physician's news exactly as he had looked on at the
      dinners in that very room.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Merdle is dead.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should wish,' said the Chief Butler, 'to give a month's notice.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Merdle has destroyed himself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir,' said the Chief Butler, 'that is very unpleasant to the feelings of
      one in my position, as calculated to awaken prejudice; and I should wish
      to leave immediately.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you are not shocked, are you not surprised, man?' demanded the
      Physician, warmly.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Chief Butler, erect and calm, replied in these memorable words. 'Sir,
      Mr Merdle never was the gentleman, and no ungentlemanly act on Mr Merdle's
      part would surprise me. Is there anybody else I can send to you, or any
      other directions I can give before I leave, respecting what you would wish
      to be done?'
    </p>
    <p>
      When Physician, after discharging himself of his trust up-stairs, rejoined
      Bar in the street, he said no more of his interview with Mrs Merdle than
      that he had not yet told her all, but that what he had told her she had
      borne pretty well. Bar had devoted his leisure in the street to the
      construction of a most ingenious man-trap for catching the whole of his
      jury at a blow; having got that matter settled in his mind, it was lucid
      on the late catastrophe, and they walked home slowly, discussing it in
      every bearing. Before parting at the Physician's door, they both looked up
      at the sunny morning sky, into which the smoke of a few early fires and
      the breath and voices of a few early stirrers were peacefully rising, and
      then looked round upon the immense city, and said, if all those hundreds
      and thousands of beggared people who were yet asleep could only know, as
      they two spoke, the ruin that impended over them, what a fearful cry
      against one miserable soul would go up to Heaven!
    </p>
    <p>
      The report that the great man was dead, got about with astonishing
      rapidity. At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were known,
      and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of Light to meet
      the demand of the occasion. He had concealed a dropsy from infancy, he had
      inherited a large estate of water on the chest from his grandfather, he
      had had an operation performed upon him every morning of his life for
      eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of important veins in
      his body after the manner of fireworks, he had had something the matter
      with his lungs, he had had something the matter with his heart, he had had
      something the matter with his brain. Five hundred people who sat down to
      breakfast entirely uninformed on the whole subject, believed before they
      had done breakfast, that they privately and personally knew Physician to
      have said to Mr Merdle, 'You must expect to go out, some day, like the
      snuff of a candle;' and that they knew Mr Merdle to have said to
      Physician, 'A man can die but once.' By about eleven o'clock in the
      forenoon, something the matter with the brain, became the favourite theory
      against the field; and by twelve the something had been distinctly
      ascertained to be 'Pressure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and seemed to
      make everybody so comfortable, that it might have lasted all day but for
      Bar's having taken the real state of the case into Court at half-past
      nine. This led to its beginning to be currently whispered all over London
      by about one, that Mr Merdle had killed himself. Pressure, however, so far
      from being overthrown by the discovery, became a greater favourite than
      ever. There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in every street. All
      the people who had tried to make money and had not been able to do it,
      said, There you were! You no sooner began to devote yourself to the
      pursuit of wealth than you got Pressure. The idle people improved the
      occasion in a similar manner. See, said they, what you brought yourself to
      by work, work, work! You persisted in working, you overdid it. Pressure
      came on, and you were done for! This consideration was very potent in many
      quarters, but nowhere more so than among the young clerks and partners who
      had never been in the slightest danger of overdoing it. These, one and
      all, declared, quite piously, that they hoped they would never forget the
      warning as long as they lived, and that their conduct might be so
      regulated as to keep off Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to their
      friends, for many years.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, at about the time of High 'Change, Pressure began to wane, and
      appalling whispers to circulate, east, west, north, and south. At first
      they were faint, and went no further than a doubt whether Mr Merdle's
      wealth would be found to be as vast as had been supposed; whether there
      might not be a temporary difficulty in 'realising' it; whether there might
      not even be a temporary suspension (say a month or so), on the part of the
      wonderful Bank. As the whispers became louder, which they did from that
      time every minute, they became more threatening. He had sprung from
      nothing, by no natural growth or process that any one could account for;
      he had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow; he had been a down-looking
      man, and no one had ever been able to catch his eye; he had been taken up
      by all sorts of people in quite an unaccountable manner; he had never had
      any money of his own, his ventures had been utterly reckless, and his
      expenditure had been most enormous. In steady progression, as the day
      declined, the talk rose in sound and purpose. He had left a letter at the
      Baths addressed to his physician, and his physician had got the letter,
      and the letter would be produced at the Inquest on the morrow, and it
      would fall like a thunderbolt upon the multitude he had deluded. Numbers
      of men in every profession and trade would be blighted by his insolvency;
      old people who had been in easy circumstances all their lives would have
      no place of repentance for their trust in him but the workhouse; legions
      of women and children would have their whole future desolated by the hand
      of this mighty scoundrel. Every partaker of his magnificent feasts would
      be seen to have been a sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes; every
      servile worshipper of riches who had helped to set him on his pedestal,
      would have done better to worship the Devil point-blank. So, the talk,
      lashed louder and higher by confirmation on confirmation, and by edition
      after edition of the evening papers, swelled into such a roar when night
      came, as might have brought one to believe that a solitary watcher on the
      gallery above the Dome of St Paul's would have perceived the night air to
      be laden with a heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled with every
      form of execration.
    </p>
    <p>
      For by that time it was known that the late Mr Merdle's complaint had been
      simply Forgery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of such wide-spread
      adulation, the sitter at great men's feasts, the roc's egg of great
      ladies' assemblies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller of pride,
      the patron of patrons, the bargain-driver with a Minister for Lordships of
      the Circumlocution Office, the recipient of more acknowledgment within
      some ten or fifteen years, at most, than had been bestowed in England upon
      all peaceful public benefactors, and upon all the leaders of all the Arts
      and Sciences, with all their works to testify for them, during two
      centuries at least&mdash;he, the shining wonder, the new constellation to
      be followed by the wise men bringing gifts, until it stopped over a
      certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and disappeared&mdash;was simply
      the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that ever cheated the gallows.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0062" id="link2HCH0062"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 26. Reaping the Whirlwind
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ith a precursory sound of hurried breath and hurried feet, Mr Pancks
      rushed into Arthur Clennam's Counting-house. The Inquest was over, the
      letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of
      straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical ship
      had blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates, and
      boats of all sizes; and on the deep was nothing but ruin; nothing but
      burning hulls, bursting magazines, great guns self-exploded tearing
      friends and neighbours to pieces, drowning men clinging to unseaworthy
      spars and going down every minute, spent swimmers, floating dead, and
      sharks.
    </p>
    <p>
      The usual diligence and order of the Counting-house at the Works were
      overthrown. Unopened letters and unsorted papers lay strewn about the
      desk. In the midst of these tokens of prostrated energy and dismissed
      hope, the master of the Counting-house stood idle in his usual place, with
      his arms crossed on the desk, and his head bowed down upon them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks rushed in and saw him, and stood still. In another minute, Mr
      Pancks's arms were on the desk, and Mr Pancks's head was bowed down upon
      them; and for some time they remained in these attitudes, idle and silent,
      with the width of the little room between them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks was the first to lift up his head and speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I persuaded you to it, Mr Clennam. I know it. Say what you will. You
      can't say more to me than I say to myself. You can't say more than I
      deserve.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O, Pancks, Pancks!' returned Clennam, 'don't speak of deserving. What do
      I myself deserve!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Better luck,' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I,' pursued Clennam, without attending to him, 'who have ruined my
      partner! Pancks, Pancks, I have ruined Doyce! The honest, self-helpful,
      indefatigable old man who has worked his way all through his life; the man
      who has contended against so much disappointment, and who has brought out
      of it such a good and hopeful nature; the man I have felt so much for, and
      meant to be so true and useful to; I have ruined him&mdash;brought him to
      shame and disgrace&mdash;ruined him, ruined him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The agony into which the reflection wrought his mind was so distressing to
      see, that Mr Pancks took hold of himself by the hair of his head, and tore
      it in desperation at the spectacle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Reproach me!' cried Pancks. 'Reproach me, sir, or I'll do myself an
      injury. Say,&mdash;You fool, you villain. Say,&mdash;Ass, how could you do
      it; Beast, what did you mean by it! Catch hold of me somewhere. Say
      something abusive to me!' All the time, Mr Pancks was tearing at his tough
      hair in a most pitiless and cruel manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you had never yielded to this fatal mania, Pancks,' said Clennam, more
      in commiseration than retaliation, 'it would have been how much better for
      you, and how much better for me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At me again, sir!' cried Pancks, grinding his teeth in remorse. 'At me
      again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you had never gone into those accursed calculations, and brought out
      your results with such abominable clearness,' groaned Clennam, 'it would
      have been how much better for you, Pancks, and how much better for me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At me again, sir!' exclaimed Pancks, loosening his hold of his hair; 'at
      me again, and again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam, however, finding him already beginning to be pacified, had said
      all he wanted to say, and more. He wrung his hand, only adding, 'Blind
      leaders of the blind, Pancks! Blind leaders of the blind! But Doyce,
      Doyce, Doyce; my injured partner!' That brought his head down on the desk
      once more.
    </p>
    <p>
      Their former attitudes and their former silence were once more first
      encroached upon by Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not been to bed, sir, since it began to get about. Been high and low, on
      the chance of finding some hope of saving any cinders from the fire. All
      in vain. All gone. All vanished.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know it,' returned Clennam, 'too well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks filled up a pause with a groan that came out of the very depths
      of his soul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only yesterday, Pancks,' said Arthur; 'only yesterday, Monday, I had the
      fixed intention of selling, realising, and making an end of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can't say as much for myself, sir,' returned Pancks. 'Though it's
      wonderful how many people I've heard of, who were going to realise
      yesterday, of all days in the three hundred and sixty-five, if it hadn't
      been too late!'
    </p>
    <p>
      His steam-like breathings, usually droll in their effect, were more tragic
      than so many groans: while from head to foot, he was in that begrimed,
      besmeared, neglected state, that he might have been an authentic portrait
      of Misfortune which could scarcely be discerned through its want of
      cleaning.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, had you laid out&mdash;everything?' He got over the break
      before the last word, and also brought out the last word itself with great
      difficulty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Everything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks took hold of his tough hair again, and gave it such a wrench
      that he pulled out several prongs of it. After looking at these with an
      eye of wild hatred, he put them in his pocket.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My course,' said Clennam, brushing away some tears that had been silently
      dropping down his face, 'must be taken at once. What wretched amends I can
      make must be made. I must clear my unfortunate partner's reputation. I
      must retain nothing for myself. I must resign to our creditors the power
      of management I have so much abused, and I must work out as much of my
      fault&mdash;or crime&mdash;as is susceptible of being worked out in the
      rest of my days.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it impossible, sir, to tide over the present?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Out of the question. Nothing can be tided over now, Pancks. The sooner
      the business can pass out of my hands, the better for it. There are
      engagements to be met, this week, which would bring the catastrophe before
      many days were over, even if I would postpone it for a single day by going
      on for that space, secretly knowing what I know. All last night I thought
      of what I would do; what remains is to do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not entirely of yourself?' said Pancks, whose face was as damp as if his
      steam were turning into water as fast as he dismally blew it off. 'Have
      some legal help.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps I had better.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have Rugg.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is not much to do. He will do it as well as another.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I fetch Rugg, Mr Clennam?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you could spare the time, I should be much obliged to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks put on his hat that moment, and steamed away to Pentonville.
      While he was gone Arthur never raised his head from the desk, but remained
      in that one position.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks brought his friend and professional adviser, Mr Rugg, back with
      him. Mr Rugg had had such ample experience, on the road, of Mr Pancks's
      being at that present in an irrational state of mind, that he opened his
      professional mediation by requesting that gentleman to take himself out of
      the way. Mr Pancks, crushed and submissive, obeyed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is not unlike what my daughter was, sir, when we began the Breach of
      Promise action of Rugg and Bawkins, in which she was Plaintiff,' said Mr
      Rugg. 'He takes too strong and direct an interest in the case. His
      feelings are worked upon. There is no getting on, in our profession, with
      feelings worked upon, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As he pulled off his gloves and put them in his hat, he saw, in a side
      glance or two, that a great change had come over his client.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry to perceive, sir,' said Mr Rugg, 'that you have been allowing
      your own feelings to be worked upon. Now, pray don't, pray don't. These
      losses are much to be deplored, sir, but we must look 'em in the face.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If the money I have sacrificed had been all my own, Mr Rugg,' sighed Mr
      Clennam, 'I should have cared far less.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, sir?' said Mr Rugg, rubbing his hands with a cheerful air. 'You
      surprise me. That's singular, sir. I have generally found, in my
      experience, that it's their own money people are most particular about. I
      have seen people get rid of a good deal of other people's money, and bear
      it very well: very well indeed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With these comforting remarks, Mr Rugg seated himself on an office-stool
      at the desk and proceeded to business.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Mr Clennam, by your leave, let us go into the matter. Let us see the
      state of the case. The question is simple. The question is the usual
      plain, straightforward, common-sense question. What can we do for ourself?
      What can we do for ourself?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is not the question with me, Mr Rugg,' said Arthur. 'You mistake it
      in the beginning. It is, what can I do for my partner, how can I best make
      reparation to him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid, sir, do you know,' argued Mr Rugg persuasively, 'that you
      are still allowing your feeling to be worked upon. I <i>don't</i> like the
      term "reparation," sir, except as a lever in the hands of counsel. Will
      you excuse my saying that I feel it my duty to offer you the caution, that
      you really must not allow your feelings to be worked upon?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Rugg,' said Clennam, nerving himself to go through with what he had
      resolved upon, and surprising that gentleman by appearing, in his
      despondency, to have a settled determination of purpose; 'you give me the
      impression that you will not be much disposed to adopt the course I have
      made up my mind to take. If your disapproval of it should render you
      unwilling to discharge such business as it necessitates, I am sorry for
      it, and must seek other aid. But I will represent to you at once, that to
      argue against it with me is useless.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good, sir,' answered Mr Rugg, shrugging his shoulders. 'Good, sir. Since
      the business is to be done by some hands, let it be done by mine. Such was
      my principle in the case of Rugg and Bawkins. Such is my principle in most
      cases.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam then proceeded to state to Mr Rugg his fixed resolution. He told
      Mr Rugg that his partner was a man of great simplicity and integrity, and
      that in all he meant to do, he was guided above all things by a knowledge
      of his partner's character, and a respect for his feelings. He explained
      that his partner was then absent on an enterprise of importance, and that
      it particularly behoved himself publicly to accept the blame of what he
      had rashly done, and publicly to exonerate his partner from all
      participation in the responsibility of it, lest the successful conduct of
      that enterprise should be endangered by the slightest suspicion wrongly
      attaching to his partner's honour and credit in another country. He told
      Mr Rugg that to clear his partner morally, to the fullest extent, and
      publicly and unreservedly to declare that he, Arthur Clennam, of that
      Firm, had of his own sole act, and even expressly against his partner's
      caution, embarked its resources in the swindles that had lately perished,
      was the only real atonement within his power; was a better atonement to
      the particular man than it would be to many men; and was therefore the
      atonement he had first to make. With this view, his intention was to print
      a declaration to the foregoing effect, which he had already drawn up; and,
      besides circulating it among all who had dealings with the House, to
      advertise it in the public papers. Concurrently with this measure (the
      description of which cost Mr Rugg innumerable wry faces and great
      uneasiness in his limbs), he would address a letter to all the creditors,
      exonerating his partner in a solemn manner, informing them of the stoppage
      of the House until their pleasure could be known and his partner
      communicated with, and humbly submitting himself to their direction. If,
      through their consideration for his partner's innocence, the affairs could
      ever be got into such train as that the business could be profitably
      resumed, and its present downfall overcome, then his own share in it
      should revert to his partner, as the only reparation he could make to him
      in money value for the distress and loss he had unhappily brought upon
      him, and he himself, at as small a salary as he could live upon, would ask
      to be allowed to serve the business as a faithful clerk.
    </p>
    <p>
      Though Mr Rugg saw plainly there was no preventing this from being done,
      still the wryness of his face and the uneasiness of his limbs so sorely
      required the propitiation of a Protest, that he made one. 'I offer no
      objection, sir,' said he, 'I argue no point with you. I will carry out
      your views, sir; but, under protest.' Mr Rugg then stated, not without
      prolixity, the heads of his protest. These were, in effect, because the
      whole town, or he might say the whole country, was in the first madness of
      the late discovery, and the resentment against the victims would be very
      strong: those who had not been deluded being certain to wax exceedingly
      wroth with them for not having been as wise as they were: and those who
      had been deluded being certain to find excuses and reasons for themselves,
      of which they were equally certain to see that other sufferers were wholly
      devoid: not to mention the great probability of every individual sufferer
      persuading himself, to his violent indignation, that but for the example
      of all the other sufferers he never would have put himself in the way of
      suffering. Because such a declaration as Clennam's, made at such a time,
      would certainly draw down upon him a storm of animosity, rendering it
      impossible to calculate on forbearance in the creditors, or on unanimity
      among them; and exposing him a solitary target to a straggling cross-fire,
      which might bring him down from half-a-dozen quarters at once.
    </p>
    <p>
      To all this Clennam merely replied that, granting the whole protest,
      nothing in it lessened the force, or could lessen the force, of the
      voluntary and public exoneration of his partner. He therefore, once and
      for all, requested Mr Rugg's immediate aid in getting the business
      despatched. Upon that, Mr Rugg fell to work; and Arthur, retaining no
      property to himself but his clothes and books, and a little loose money,
      placed his small private banker's-account with the papers of the business.
    </p>
    <p>
      The disclosure was made, and the storm raged fearfully. Thousands of
      people were wildly staring about for somebody alive to heap reproaches on;
      and this notable case, courting publicity, set the living somebody so much
      wanted, on a scaffold. When people who had nothing to do with the case
      were so sensible of its flagrancy, people who lost money by it could
      scarcely be expected to deal mildly with it. Letters of reproach and
      invective showered in from the creditors; and Mr Rugg, who sat upon the
      high stool every day and read them all, informed his client within a week
      that he feared there were writs out.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must take the consequences of what I have done,' said Clennam. 'The
      writs will find me here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      On the very next morning, as he was turning in Bleeding Heart Yard by Mrs
      Plornish's corner, Mrs Plornish stood at the door waiting for him, and
      mysteriously besought him to step into Happy Cottage. There he found Mr
      Rugg.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought I'd wait for you here. I wouldn't go on to the Counting-house
      this morning if I was you, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not, Mr Rugg?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There are as many as five out, to my knowledge.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It cannot be too soon over,' said Clennam. 'Let them take me at once.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, but,' said Mr Rugg, getting between him and the door, 'hear reason,
      hear reason. They'll take you soon enough, Mr Clennam, I don't doubt; but,
      hear reason. It almost always happens, in these cases, that some
      insignificant matter pushes itself in front and makes much of itself. Now,
      I find there's a little one out&mdash;a mere Palace Court jurisdiction&mdash;and
      I have reason to believe that a caption may be made upon that. I wouldn't
      be taken upon that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not?' asked Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'd be taken on a full-grown one, sir,' said Mr Rugg. 'It's as well to
      keep up appearances. As your professional adviser, I should prefer your
      being taken on a writ from one of the Superior Courts, if you have no
      objection to do me that favour. It looks better.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Rugg,' said Arthur, in his dejection, 'my only wish is, that it should
      be over. I will go on, and take my chance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Another word of reason, sir!' cried Mr Rugg. 'Now, this <i>is</i> reason.
      The other may be taste; but this is reason. If you should be taken on a
      little one, sir, you would go to the Marshalsea. Now, you know what the
      Marshalsea is. Very close. Excessively confined. Whereas in the King's
      Bench&mdash;' Mr Rugg waved his right hand freely, as expressing abundance
      of space.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I would rather,' said Clennam, 'be taken to the Marshalsea than to any
      other prison.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you say so indeed, sir?' returned Mr Rugg. 'Then this is taste, too,
      and we may be walking.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was a little offended at first, but he soon overlooked it. They walked
      through the Yard to the other end. The Bleeding Hearts were more
      interested in Arthur since his reverses than formerly; now regarding him
      as one who was true to the place and had taken up his freedom. Many of
      them came out to look after him, and to observe to one another, with great
      unctuousness, that he was 'pulled down by it.' Mrs Plornish and her father
      stood at the top of the steps at their own end, much depressed and shaking
      their heads.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was nobody visibly in waiting when Arthur and Mr Rugg arrived at the
      Counting-house. But an elderly member of the Jewish persuasion, preserved
      in rum, followed them close, and looked in at the glass before Mr Rugg had
      opened one of the day's letters. 'Oh!' said Mr Rugg, looking up. 'How do
      you do? Step in&mdash;Mr Clennam, I think this is the gentleman I was
      mentioning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This gentleman explained the object of his visit to be 'a tyfling madder
      ob bithznithz,' and executed his legal function.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I accompany you, Mr Clennam?' asked Mr Rugg politely, rubbing his
      hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I would rather go alone, thank you. Be so good as send me my clothes.' Mr
      Rugg in a light airy way replied in the affirmative, and shook hands with
      him. He and his attendant then went down-stairs, got into the first
      conveyance they found, and drove to the old gates.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where I little thought, Heaven forgive me,' said Clennam to himself,
      'that I should ever enter thus!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Chivery was on the Lock, and Young John was in the Lodge: either newly
      released from it, or waiting to take his own spell of duty. Both were more
      astonished on seeing who the prisoner was, than one might have thought
      turnkeys would have been. The elder Mr Chivery shook hands with him in a
      shame-faced kind of way, and said, 'I don't call to mind, sir, as I was
      ever less glad to see you.' The younger Mr Chivery, more distant, did not
      shake hands with him at all; he stood looking at him in a state of
      indecision so observable that it even came within the observation of
      Clennam with his heavy eyes and heavy heart. Presently afterwards, Young
      John disappeared into the jail.
    </p>
    <p>
      As Clennam knew enough of the place to know that he was required to remain
      in the Lodge a certain time, he took a seat in a corner, and feigned to be
      occupied with the perusal of letters from his pocket. They did not so
      engross his attention, but that he saw, with gratitude, how the elder Mr
      Chivery kept the Lodge clear of prisoners; how he signed to some, with his
      keys, not to come in, how he nudged others with his elbows to go out, and
      how he made his misery as easy to him as he could.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur was sitting with his eyes fixed on the floor, recalling the past,
      brooding over the present, and not attending to either, when he felt
      himself touched upon the shoulder. It was by Young John; and he said, 'You
      can come now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He got up and followed Young John. When they had gone a step or two within
      the inner iron-gate, Young John turned and said to him:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You want a room. I have got you one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thank you heartily.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John turned again, and took him in at the old doorway, up the old
      staircase, into the old room. Arthur stretched out his hand. Young John
      looked at it, looked at him&mdash;sternly&mdash;swelled, choked, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know as I can. No, I find I can't. But I thought you'd like the
      room, and here it is for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Surprise at this inconsistent behaviour yielded when he was gone (he went
      away directly) to the feelings which the empty room awakened in Clennam's
      wounded breast, and to the crowding associations with the one good and
      gentle creature who had sanctified it. Her absence in his altered fortunes
      made it, and him in it, so very desolate and so much in need of such a
      face of love and truth, that he turned against the wall to weep, sobbing
      out, as his heart relieved itself, 'O my Little Dorrit!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0063" id="link2HCH0063"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 27. The Pupil of the Marshalsea
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he day was sunny, and the Marshalsea, with the hot noon striking upon it,
      was unwontedly quiet. Arthur Clennam dropped into a solitary arm-chair,
      itself as faded as any debtor in the jail, and yielded himself to his
      thoughts.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the unnatural peace of having gone through the dreaded arrest, and got
      there,&mdash;the first change of feeling which the prison most commonly
      induced, and from which dangerous resting-place so many men had slipped
      down to the depths of degradation and disgrace by so many ways,&mdash;he
      could think of some passages in his life, almost as if he were removed
      from them into another state of existence. Taking into account where he
      was, the interest that had first brought him there when he had been free
      to keep away, and the gentle presence that was equally inseparable from
      the walls and bars about him and from the impalpable remembrances of his
      later life which no walls or bars could imprison, it was not remarkable
      that everything his memory turned upon should bring him round again to
      Little Dorrit. Yet it was remarkable to him; not because of the fact
      itself, but because of the reminder it brought with it, how much the dear
      little creature had influenced his better resolutions.
    </p>
    <p>
      None of us clearly know to whom or to what we are indebted in this wise,
      until some marked stop in the whirling wheel of life brings the right
      perception with it. It comes with sickness, it comes with sorrow, it comes
      with the loss of the dearly loved, it is one of the most frequent uses of
      adversity. It came to Clennam in his adversity, strongly and tenderly.
      'When I first gathered myself together,' he thought, 'and set something
      like purpose before my jaded eyes, whom had I before me, toiling on, for a
      good object's sake, without encouragement, without notice, against ignoble
      obstacles that would have turned an army of received heroes and heroines?
      One weak girl! When I tried to conquer my misplaced love, and to be
      generous to the man who was more fortunate than I, though he should never
      know it or repay me with a gracious word, in whom had I watched patience,
      self-denial, self-subdual, charitable construction, the noblest generosity
      of the affections? In the same poor girl! If I, a man, with a man's
      advantages and means and energies, had slighted the whisper in my heart,
      that if my father had erred, it was my first duty to conceal the fault and
      to repair it, what youthful figure with tender feet going almost bare on
      the damp ground, with spare hands ever working, with its slight shape but
      half protected from the sharp weather, would have stood before me to put
      me to shame? Little Dorrit's.' So always as he sat alone in the faded
      chair, thinking. Always, Little Dorrit. Until it seemed to him as if he
      met the reward of having wandered away from her, and suffered anything to
      pass between him and his remembrance of her virtues.
    </p>
    <p>
      His door was opened, and the head of the elder Chivery was put in a very
      little way, without being turned towards him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am off the Lock, Mr Clennam, and going out. Can I do anything for you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Many thanks. Nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'll excuse me opening the door,' said Mr Chivery; 'but I couldn't make
      you hear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did you knock?' 'Half-a-dozen times.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rousing himself, Clennam observed that the prison had awakened from its
      noontide doze, that the inmates were loitering about the shady yard, and
      that it was late in the afternoon. He had been thinking for hours.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your things is come,' said Mr Chivery, 'and my son is going to carry 'em
      up. I should have sent 'em up but for his wishing to carry 'em himself.
      Indeed he would have 'em himself, and so I couldn't send 'em up. Mr
      Clennam, could I say a word to you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray come in,' said Arthur; for Mr Chivery's head was still put in at the
      door a very little way, and Mr Chivery had but one ear upon him, instead
      of both eyes. This was native delicacy in Mr Chivery&mdash;true
      politeness; though his exterior had very much of a turnkey about it, and
      not the least of a gentleman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, sir,' said Mr Chivery, without advancing; 'it's no odds me
      coming in. Mr Clennam, don't you take no notice of my son (if you'll be so
      good) in case you find him cut up anyways difficult. My son has a 'art,
      and my son's 'art is in the right place. Me and his mother knows where to
      find it, and we find it sitiwated correct.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With this mysterious speech, Mr Chivery took his ear away and shut the
      door. He might have been gone ten minutes, when his son succeeded him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here's your portmanteau,' he said to Arthur, putting it carefully down.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's very kind of you. I am ashamed that you should have the trouble.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was gone before it came to that; but soon returned, saying exactly as
      before, 'Here's your black box:' which he also put down with care.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very sensible of this attention. I hope we may shake hands now, Mr
      John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John, however, drew back, turning his right wrist in a socket made
      of his left thumb and middle-finger and said as he had said at first, 'I
      don't know as I can. No; I find I can't!' He then stood regarding the
      prisoner sternly, though with a swelling humour in his eyes that looked
      like pity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why are you angry with me,' said Clennam, 'and yet so ready to do me
      these kind services? There must be some mistake between us. If I have done
      anything to occasion it I am sorry.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No mistake, sir,' returned John, turning the wrist backwards and forwards
      in the socket, for which it was rather tight. 'No mistake, sir, in the
      feelings with which my eyes behold you at the present moment! If I was at
      all fairly equal to your weight, Mr Clennam&mdash;which I am not; and if
      you weren't under a cloud&mdash;which you are; and if it wasn't against
      all rules of the Marshalsea&mdash;which it is; those feelings are such,
      that they would stimulate me, more to having it out with you in a Round on
      the present spot than to anything else I could name.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur looked at him for a moment in some wonder, and some little anger.
      'Well, well!' he said. 'A mistake, a mistake!' Turning away, he sat down
      with a heavy sigh in the faded chair again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John followed him with his eyes, and, after a short pause, cried
      out, 'I beg your pardon!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Freely granted,' said Clennam, waving his hand without raising his sunken
      head. 'Say no more. I am not worth it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This furniture, sir,' said Young John in a voice of mild and soft
      explanation, 'belongs to me. I am in the habit of letting it out to
      parties without furniture, that have the room. It an't much, but it's at
      your service. Free, I mean. I could not think of letting you have it on
      any other terms. You're welcome to it for nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur raised his head again to thank him, and to say he could not accept
      the favour. John was still turning his wrist, and still contending with
      himself in his former divided manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is the matter between us?' said Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I decline to name it, sir,' returned Young John, suddenly turning loud
      and sharp. 'Nothing's the matter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur looked at him again, in vain, for an explanation of his behaviour.
      After a while, Arthur turned away his head again. Young John said,
      presently afterwards, with the utmost mildness:
    </p>
    <p>
      'The little round table, sir, that's nigh your elbow, was&mdash;you know
      whose&mdash;I needn't mention him&mdash;he died a great gentleman. I
      bought it of an individual that he gave it to, and that lived here after
      him. But the individual wasn't any ways equal to him. Most individuals
      would find it hard to come up to his level.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur drew the little table nearer, rested his arm upon it, and kept it
      there.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps you may not be aware, sir,' said Young John, 'that I intruded
      upon him when he was over here in London. On the whole he was of opinion
      that it <i>was</i> an intrusion, though he was so good as to ask me to sit
      down and to inquire after father and all other old friends. Leastways
      humblest acquaintances. He looked, to me, a good deal changed, and I said
      so when I came back. I asked him if Miss Amy was well&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And she was?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should have thought you would have known without putting the question
      to such as me,' returned Young John, after appearing to take a large
      invisible pill. 'Since you do put me the question, I am sorry I can't
      answer it. But the truth is, he looked upon the inquiry as a liberty, and
      said, "What was that to me?" It was then I became quite aware I was
      intruding: of which I had been fearful before. However, he spoke very
      handsome afterwards; very handsome.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They were both silent for several minutes: except that Young John
      remarked, at about the middle of the pause, 'He both spoke and acted very
      handsome.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was again Young John who broke the silence by inquiring:
    </p>
    <p>
      'If it's not a liberty, how long may it be your intentions, sir, to go
      without eating and drinking?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have not felt the want of anything yet,' returned Clennam. 'I have no
      appetite just now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The more reason why you should take some support, sir,' urged Young John.
      'If you find yourself going on sitting here for hours and hours partaking
      of no refreshment because you have no appetite, why then you should and
      must partake of refreshment without an appetite. I'm going to have tea in
      my own apartment. If it's not a liberty, please to come and take a cup. Or
      I can bring a tray here in two minutes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Feeling that Young John would impose that trouble on himself if he
      refused, and also feeling anxious to show that he bore in mind both the
      elder Mr Chivery's entreaty, and the younger Mr Chivery's apology, Arthur
      rose and expressed his willingness to take a cup of tea in Mr John's
      apartment. Young John locked his door for him as they went out, slided the
      key into his pocket with great dexterity, and led the way to his own
      residence.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was at the top of the house nearest to the gateway. It was the room to
      which Clennam had hurried on the day when the enriched family had left the
      prison for ever, and where he had lifted her insensible from the floor. He
      foresaw where they were going as soon as their feet touched the staircase.
      The room was so far changed that it was papered now, and had been
      repainted, and was far more comfortably furnished; but he could recall it
      just as he had seen it in that single glance, when he raised her from the
      ground and carried her down to the carriage.
    </p>
    <p>
      Young John looked hard at him, biting his fingers.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I see you recollect the room, Mr Clennam?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I recollect it well, Heaven bless her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Oblivious of the tea, Young John continued to bite his fingers and to look
      at his visitor, as long as his visitor continued to glance about the room.
      Finally, he made a start at the teapot, gustily rattled a quantity of tea
      into it from a canister, and set off for the common kitchen to fill it
      with hot water.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0644m.jpg" alt="0644m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0644.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Try a little something green,' said Young John, handing him the basket.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Try a little more something green, sir,' said Young John; and again
      handed the basket.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Truly,' returned Arthur, with a sigh and a smile, 'I don't know for
      whose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I had got over it, sir,' said John. 'I had conquered it, knowing that it
      <i>must</i> 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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What can you mean?' cried Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;when he isn't a woman, which among female criminals he's
      expected to be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is just possible, sir,' returned John Chivery.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir,' returned John, shortly. 'Never heard of such a thing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I did. Can you imagine why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir,' returned John, shortly. 'I can't imagine why.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You speak, John,' he said, with cordial admiration, 'like a Man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, sir,' returned John, brushing his hand across his eyes, 'then I
      wish you'd do the same.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was quick with this unexpected retort, and it again made Arthur regard
      him with a wondering expression of face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I confess it to be a fault, and I ask your
      forgiveness.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! why not,' John repeated with returning scorn, 'why not speak free!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam, do you mean to say that you don't know?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What, John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord,' said Young John, appealing with a gasp to the spikes on the wall.
      'He says, What!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam looked at the spikes, and looked at John; and looked at the
      spikes, and looked at John.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course I see this window.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'See this room?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, of course I see this room.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Witnesses of what?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of Miss Dorrit's love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'For whom?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Me!' he at length said aloud.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!' groaned Young John. 'You!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He did what he could to muster a smile, and returned, 'Your fancy. You are
      completely mistaken.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mistaken, sir!' said Young John. '<i>I</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>I</i> mistaken on a point that has caused me more
      smart in my breast than a flight of savages' arrows could have done! <i>I</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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;here John interposed, and said, 'No impression!
      Certainty!'&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Consider the improbability.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      While speaking, Mrs Plornish shook her head, and wiped her eyes, and
      looked retrospectively about the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;it really do,' said Mrs Plornish,
      winding up in the Italian manner, 'as I say to him, Mooshattonisha
      padrona.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur thought she looked at him with particular expression.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'not to be doubted, that
      the sight of you&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Of a certainty Mrs Plornish did look at him now, with a sort of quivering
      defiance in her friendly emotion.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit, Little Dorrit. Again, for hours. Always Little Dorrit!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dear Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
                         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.
</pre>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0064" id="link2HCH0064"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 28. An Appearance in the Marshalsea
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are surprised to see me, Mr Clennam,' he said, taking the seat which
      Clennam offered him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must confess to being much surprised.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not disagreeably, I hope?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By no means.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your office?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Our Circumlocution place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I cannot charge any part of my reverses upon that remarkable
      establishment.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam again assured him that he absolved it of the responsibility.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;we
      can't help it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Without giving an unqualified assent to what you say,' returned Arthur,
      gloomily, 'I am much obliged to you for your interest in me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is your place there to be left alone?' asked Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look at it from the right point of view, and there you have us&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I hope
      you'll not object to my saying&mdash;some simplicity?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not likely to have the opportunity,' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And the invention?' said Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nobody in the Office, that is to say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I could believe that,' said Clennam, 'it would be a dismal prospect
      for all of us.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am one of the many he has ruined. Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He must have been an exceedingly clever fellow,' said Ferdinand Barnacle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur, not being in the mood to extol the memory of the deceased, was
      silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;got over them so completely&mdash;did so
      much with them!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In his easy way, he was really moved to genuine admiration.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope,' said Arthur, 'that he and his dupes may be a warning to people
      not to have so much done with them again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you do to-day, sir?' said Mr Rugg. 'Is there any little thing I
      can do for you to-day, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, I thank you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He remarked upon the circumstance as if it were matter of congratulation:
      rubbing his hands briskly, and rolling his head a little.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As seasonable a time as any other.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hum! Public opinion, sir,' said Mr Rugg, 'has been busy with you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't doubt it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I cannot set myself right with it, Mr Rugg, and have no business to
      expect that I ever shall.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;really&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought you had settled, Mr Rugg,' said Arthur, 'that my determination
      to remain here was a matter of taste.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;Come, sir,' said Rugg, 'I will put it on the lowest
      ground of argument, and say, Amiable?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur's thoughts had once more wandered away to Little Dorrit, and the
      question remained unanswered.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's well,' returned Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who is waiting to see me, did you say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suppose I have no resource but to see him,' sighed Clennam, wearily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then it <i>is</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Salve, fellow jail-bird!' said he. 'You want me, it seems. Here I am!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0660m.jpg" alt="0660m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0660.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Signore!' interposed Cavalletto, also addressing Arthur: 'for to
      commence, hear me! I received your instructions to find him, Rigaud; is it
      not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is the truth.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I go, consequentementally,'&mdash;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,&mdash;'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!&mdash;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!&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But!&mdash;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&mdash;hey?&mdash;not
      hair like this that he carries&mdash;white&mdash;who lives retired
      secrettementally, in a certain place. But!&mdash;' 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&mdash;But!&mdash;'
      a very decided rest indeed, and a very vigorous play from side to side of
      the back-handed forefinger&mdash;'he is also this man that you see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Philosopher!' said Rigaud. 'What do you want with me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to know,' returned Arthur, without disguising his abhorrence, 'how
      you dare direct a suspicion of murder against my mother's house?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dare!' cried Rigaud. 'Ho, ho! Hear him! Dare? Is it dare? By Heaven, my
      small boy, but you are a little imprudent!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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'&mdash;and seemed for a minute undecided how to act. His indecision
      was soon gone. He sat himself down with a threatening swagger, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fetch him what he wants, Cavalletto,' said Arthur, scornfully, producing
      the money.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Contraband beast,' added Rigaud, 'bring Port wine! I'll drink nothing but
      Porto-Porto.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madman! A large glass,' said Rigaud.
    </p>
    <p>
      Signor Panco put a tumbler before him; not without a visible conflict of
      feeling on the question of throwing it at his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He half filled the tumbler as he said it, and drank off the contents when
      he had done saying it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hah!' smacking his lips. 'Not a very old prisoner <i>that</i>! I judge by
      your looks, brave sir, that imprisonment will subdue your blood much
      sooner than it softens this hot wine. You are mellowing&mdash;losing body
      and colour already. I salute you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He tossed off another half glass: holding it up both before and
      afterwards, so as to display his small, white hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To business,' he then continued. 'To conversation. You have shown
      yourself more free of speech than body, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Now that he was confronted with Cavalletto, and knew that his story was
      known&mdash;whatever thin disguise he had worn, he dropped; and faced it
      out, with a bare face, as the infamous wretch he was.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;do you understand
      me? have&mdash;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&mdash;what! a gentleman must be amused at
      somebody's expense!&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll not fill it. What! I am born to be served. Come then, you
      Cavalletto, and fill!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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 <i>me</i>! Is
      that what you want? I will produce myself, only too quickly.
      Contrabandist! Give me pen, ink, and paper.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'To MRS CLENNAM.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wait answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Prison of the Marshalsea. 'At the apartment of your son.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Reassure yourself, dear madam. I am well, I am strong and constant.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Receive, dear madam, the assurance of my highest and most distinguished
      consideration,
    </p>
    <h3>
      <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'RIGAUD
      BLANDOIS.=
    </h3>
    <p>
      'A thousand friendships to that dear Flintwinch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I kiss the hands of Madame F.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cavalletto,' said Arthur. 'Will you take this fellow's letter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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. <i>You</i> wanted me? You have got
      me! How do you like me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know,' returned Clennam, with a bitter sense of his helplessness,
      'that when I sought you, I was not a prisoner.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I neither know nor ask,' said Clennam, 'of whom you speak.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Della bella Gowana, sir, as they say in Italy. Of the Gowan, the fair
      Gowan.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of whose husband you were the&mdash;follower, I think?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir? Follower? You are insolent. The friend.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you sell all your friends?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam turned away from him towards the window, and sat looking out at
      the wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He received no answer, but could easily discern that he had hit the mark.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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 <i>not</i> 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&mdash;to do everything
      graciously is a part of my character&mdash;consent to accept them. O yes!
      So goes the world. It is the mode.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I earnestly hope,' cried Arthur aloud, 'that Pancks may not be long gone,
      for this man's presence pollutes the room.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      'Who passes by this road so late?
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Compagnon de la Majolaine!
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Who passes by this road so late?
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Always gay!
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Compagnon de la Majolaine!
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Always gay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was as imperturbable as ever, to all appearance, and nodded his head in
      a moralising way as he looked round the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And this is the Marshalsea prison for debt!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Hah!
      you have brought your pigs to a very indifferent market, Arthur.'
    </p>
    <p>
      If Arthur had patience, Rigaud had not. He took his little Flintwinch,
      with fierce playfulness, by the two lapels of his coat, and cried:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He did so. It was in his mother's maimed writing, on a slip of paper, and
      contained only these words:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Beau Flintwinch,' he said, when he had closely watched the note to
      its destruction, 'the answer to my letter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      'Of all the king's knights he's the flower,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      And he's always gay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0065" id="link2HCH0065"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 29. A Plea in the Marshalsea
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>aggard 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he could speak, he said, 'Is it possible that you have come to me?
      And in this dress?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have thought of you&mdash;' he hesitated what to call her. She
      perceived it in an instant.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have not spoken to me by my right name yet. You know what my right
      name always is with you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have thought of you, Little Dorrit, every day, every hour, every
      minute, since I have been here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you? Have you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;my poor old room, you
      know&mdash;and we waited there a little. I brought the flowers to the
      door, but you didn't hear me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      To see the modest head again bent down over its task, and the nimble
      fingers busy at their old work&mdash;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&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I too, dear Little Dorrit. I have put off what I must say.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She nervously moved her hand towards his lips as if to stop him; then it
      dropped, trembling, into its former place.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;so much too
      grateful, for it is only because I happened to be with him in his illness&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He would have spoken; but she put up her trembling hand again, and he
      stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;not for yours, for
      mine, for nobody's but mine!&mdash;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&mdash;my dear!&mdash;take
      all I have, and make it a Blessing to me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The star had shone on her face until now, when her face sank upon his hand
      and her own.
    </p>
    <p>
      It had grown darker when he raised her in his encircling arm, and softly
      answered her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And yet you will not let me be faithful to you in your affliction?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;as I wish I had, O I wish
      I had!&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She besought him, more pathetically and earnestly, with her little
      supplicatory hand, than she could have done in any words.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am disgraced enough, my Little Dorrit. I must not descend so low as
      that, and carry you&mdash;so dear, so generous, so good&mdash;down with
      me. GOD bless you, GOD reward you! It is past.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He took her in his arms, as if she had been his daughter.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;who might have been
      more near to me, who never could have been more dear&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The bell began to ring, warning visitors to depart. He took her mantle
      from the wall, and tenderly wrapped it round her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's against all rules, but I don't mind. I was determined to come
      through, and come to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, thank you! You took her home, John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know, John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam, much affected, stretched out his hand to this honest spirit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Before I take it,' said John, looking at it, without coming from the
      door, 'guess what message Miss Dorrit gave me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Clennam shook his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very, very!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you tell Miss Dorrit I've been honourable, sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will indeed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's my hand, sir,' said John, 'and I'll stand by you forever!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0066" id="link2HCH0066"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 30. Closing in
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You pair of madmen!' said Rigaud, facing about. 'Don't go yet!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We don't mean to,' said Mr Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;every one
      of its small variety of objects being in the fixed spot it had occupied
      for years&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who are these?' she said, wonderingly, as the two attendants entered.
      'What do these people want here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know you told us at the door, not to go yet,' said Pancks.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;madmen, but spies. If you wish them to remain here during
      our little conversation, say the word. It is nothing to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why should I wish them to remain here?' said Mrs Clennam. 'What have I to
      do with them?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your opinion is not asked,' answered Mrs Clennam. 'Go.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You mean his own,' she returned.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;regarded as a question of figures&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      At whom Mr Flintwinch had been looking, and to whom he then said:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is true,' Mr Baptist cheerfully admitted. 'And behold him, padrone! I
      have found him consequentementally.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shouldn't have objected,' returned Mr Flintwinch, 'to your having
      broken your neck consequentementally.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;ill
      and in prison, poor fellow&mdash;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!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.&mdash;So, Affery, my woman, take yourself away!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, I won't, Jeremiah&mdash;no, I won't&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The determined voice of Mrs Clennam echoed 'Stop!' Jeremiah had stopped
      already.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is closing in, Flintwinch. Let her alone. Affery, do you turn against
      me after these many years?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I, madame,' he replied, 'do I? That's a question for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not,' she said, gloomily. 'There is little left to choose now.
      Flintwinch, it is closing in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madame, I am a gentleman&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of whom,' she interrupted in her steady tones, 'I have heard
      disparagement, in connection with a French jail and an accusation of
      murder.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He kissed his hand to her with his exaggerated gallantry.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She kept her eyes fixed upon him with a frown. 'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Scarcely necessary to ask, one would say. Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;that is to say, when I enrage&mdash;the satisfaction of my
      animosity is as acceptable to me as money. You always do me the favour to
      follow, and to comprehend?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' she answered, somewhat louder than before.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is not necessary.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I think it was a thousand pounds.
      Will you correct me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus forced to speak, she replied with constraint, 'You demanded as much
      as a thousand pounds.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;who
      knows? only you and Flintwinch&mdash;when it is just ripe. Thus, madame, I
      am here for the last time. Listen! Definitely the last.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Take it from his hand and pay it, Flintwinch,' said Mrs Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Rigaud chinked the money, weighed it in his hand, threw it up a little way
      and caught it, chinked it again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The sound of it, to the bold Rigaud Blandois, is like the taste of fresh
      meat to the tiger. Say, then, madame. How much?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If!' cried Rigaud. 'Hear this lady with her If! Will you say that you
      have not the inclination?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will say what presents itself to me, and not what presents itself to
      you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say it then. As to the inclination. Quick! Come to the inclination, and I
      know what to do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was no quicker, and no slower, in her reply. 'It would seem that you
      have obtained possession of a paper&mdash;or of papers&mdash;which I
      assuredly have the inclination to recover.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rigaud, with a loud laugh, drummed his heels against the table, and
      chinked his money. 'I think so! I believe you there!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The paper might be worth, to me, a sum of money. I cannot say how much,
      or how little.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What the Devil!' he asked savagely. 'Not after a week's grace to
      consider?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No! I will not out of my scanty means&mdash;for I tell you again, we are
      poor here, and not rich&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are a bold woman!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am a resolved woman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You always were. What? She always was; is it not so, my little
      Flintwinch?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She suffered him to take her wrist in his hand. Holding it, he proceeded
      to say:
    </p>
    <p>
      'A history of a strange marriage, and a strange mother, and a revenge, and
      a suppression.&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have lived an adventurous life. I am an adventurous character. I have
      known many adventurers; interesting spirits&mdash;amiable society! To one
      of them I owe my knowledge and my proofs&mdash;I repeat it, estimable lady&mdash;proofs&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As Mr Flintwinch shook his fist at her, and as Mrs Clennam gazed upon her,
      Rigaud kissed his hand to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perfectly right, dear Madame Flintwinch. You have a genius for dreaming.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;perhaps Jeremiah's, which
      was chattering with threats as if he were grimly cold.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Soon the lady makes a singular and exciting discovery. Thereupon, full of
      anger, full of jealousy, full of vengeance, she forms&mdash;see you,
      madame!&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;there she sits and
      you looking at her&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Rigaud had not lost a word of this.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;? And you burst out and stopped him! What was it you were
      not? What is it you are not? Say then, madame!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come then, madame! Speak, then! Our old intriguer said that you were not&mdash;and
      you stopped him. He was going to say that you were not&mdash;what? I know
      already, but I want a little confidence from you. How, then? You are not
      what?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She tried again to repress herself, but broke out vehemently, 'Not
      Arthur's mother!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good,' said Rigaud. 'You are amenable.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With the set expression of her face all torn away by the explosion of her
      passion, and with a bursting, from every rent feature, of the smouldering
      fire so long pent up, she cried out: 'I will tell it myself! I will not
      hear it from your lips, and with the taint of your wickedness upon it.
      Since it must be seen, I will have it seen by the light I stood in. Not
      another word. Hear me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Unless you are a more obstinate and more persisting woman than even I
      know you to be,' Mr Flintwinch interposed, 'you had better leave Mr
      Rigaud, Mr Blandois, Mr Beelzebub, to tell it in his own way. What does it
      signify when he knows all about it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He does not know all about it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He knows all he cares about it,' Mr Flintwinch testily urged.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He does not know <i>me</i>.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you suppose he cares for you, you conceited woman?' said Mr
      Flintwinch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you, Flintwinch, I will speak. I tell you when it has come to
      this, I will tell it with my own lips, and will express myself throughout
      it. What! Have I suffered nothing in this room, no deprivation, no
      imprisonment, that I should condescend at last to contemplate myself in
      such a glass as <i>that</i>. Can you see him? Can you hear him? If your
      wife were a hundred times the ingrate that she is, and if I were a
      thousand times more hopeless than I am of inducing her to be silent if
      this man is silenced, I would tell it myself, before I would bear the
      torment of the hearing it from him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rigaud pushed his chair a little back; pushed his legs out straight before
      him; and sat with his arms folded over against her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You do not know what it is,' she went on addressing him, 'to be brought
      up strictly and straitly. I was so brought up. Mine was no light youth of
      sinful gaiety and pleasure. Mine were days of wholesome repression,
      punishment, and fear. The corruption of our hearts, the evil of our ways,
      the curse that is upon us, the terrors that surround us&mdash;these were
      the themes of my childhood. They formed my character, and filled me with
      an abhorrence of evil-doers. When old Mr Gilbert Clennam proposed his
      orphan nephew to my father for my husband, my father impressed upon me
      that his bringing-up had been, like mine, one of severe restraint. He told
      me, that besides the discipline his spirit had undergone, he had lived in
      a starved house, where rioting and gaiety were unknown, and where every
      day was a day of toil and trial like the last. He told me that he had been
      a man in years long before his uncle had acknowledged him as one; and that
      from his school-days to that hour, his uncle's roof has been a sanctuary
      to him from the contagion of the irreligious and dissolute. When, within a
      twelvemonth of our marriage, I found my husband, at that time when my
      father spoke of him, to have sinned against the Lord and outraged me by
      holding a guilty creature in my place, was I to doubt that it had been
      appointed to me to make the discovery, and that it was appointed to me to
      lay the hand of punishment upon that creature of perdition? Was I to
      dismiss in a moment&mdash;not my own wrongs&mdash;what was I! but all the
      rejection of sin, and all the war against it, in which I had been bred?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She laid her wrathful hand upon the watch on the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No! "Do not forget." The initials of those words are within here now, and
      were within here then. I was appointed to find the old letter that
      referred to them, and that told me what they meant, and whose work they
      were, and why they were worked, lying with this watch in his secret
      drawer. But for that appointment there would have been no discovery. "Do
      not forget." It spoke to me like a voice from an angry cloud. Do not
      forget the deadly sin, do not forget the appointed discovery, do not
      forget the appointed suffering. I did not forget. Was it my own wrong I
      remembered? Mine! I was but a servant and a minister. What power could I
      have over them, but that they were bound in the bonds of their sin, and
      delivered to me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      More than forty years had passed over the grey head of this determined
      woman, since the time she recalled. More than forty years of strife and
      struggle with the whisper that, by whatever name she called her vindictive
      pride and rage, nothing through all eternity could change their nature.
      Yet, gone those more than forty years, and come this Nemesis now looking
      her in the face, she still abided by her old impiety&mdash;still reversed
      the order of Creation, and breathed her own breath into a clay image of
      her Creator. Verily, verily, travellers have seen many monstrous idols in
      many countries; but no human eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and
      shocking images of the Divine nature than we creatures of the dust make in
      our own likenesses, of our own bad passions.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When I forced him to give her up to me, by her name and place of abode,'
      she went on in her torrent of indignation and defence; 'when I accused
      her, and she fell hiding her face at my feet, was it my injury that I
      asserted, were they my reproaches that I poured upon her? Those who were
      appointed of old to go to wicked kings and accuse them&mdash;were they not
      ministers and servants? And had not I, unworthy and far-removed from them,
      sin to denounce? When she pleaded to me her youth, and his wretched and
      hard life (that was her phrase for the virtuous training he had belied),
      and the desecrated ceremony of marriage there had secretly been between
      them, and the terrors of want and shame that had overwhelmed them both
      when I was first appointed to be the instrument of their punishment, and
      the love (for she said the word to me, down at my feet) in which she had
      abandoned him and left him to me, was it <i>my</i> enemy that became my
      footstool, were they the words of my wrath that made her shrink and
      quiver! Not unto me the strength be ascribed; not unto me the wringing of
      the expiation!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Many years had come and gone since she had had the free use even of her
      fingers; but it was noticeable that she had already more than once struck
      her clenched hand vigorously upon the table, and that when she said these
      words she raised her whole arm in the air, as though it had been a common
      action with her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what was the repentance that was extorted from the hardness of her
      heart and the blackness of her depravity? I, vindictive and implacable? It
      may be so, to such as you who know no righteousness, and no appointment
      except Satan's. Laugh; but I will be known as I know myself, and as
      Flintwinch knows me, though it is only to you and this half-witted woman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Add, to yourself, madame,' said Rigaud. 'I have my little suspicions that
      madame is rather solicitous to be justified to herself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is false. It is not so. I have no need to be,' she said, with great
      energy and anger.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Truly?' retorted Rigaud. 'Hah!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ask, what was the penitence, in works, that was demanded of her? "You
      have a child; I have none. You love that child. Give him to me. He shall
      believe himself to be my son, and he shall be believed by every one to be
      my son. To save you from exposure, his father shall swear never to see or
      communicate with you more; equally to save him from being stripped by his
      uncle, and to save your child from being a beggar, you shall swear never
      to see or communicate with either of them more. That done, and your
      present means, derived from my husband, renounced, I charge myself with
      your support. You may, with your place of retreat unknown, then leave, if
      you please, uncontradicted by me, the lie that when you passed out of all
      knowledge but mine, you merited a good name." That was all. She had to
      sacrifice her sinful and shameful affections; no more. She was then free
      to bear her load of guilt in secret, and to break her heart in secret; and
      through such present misery (light enough for her, I think!) to purchase
      her redemption from endless misery, if she could. If, in this, I punished
      her here, did I not open to her a way hereafter? If she knew herself to be
      surrounded by insatiable vengeance and unquenchable fires, were they mine?
      If I threatened her, then and afterwards, with the terrors that
      encompassed her, did I hold them in my right hand?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She turned the watch upon the table, and opened it, and, with an
      unsoftening face, looked at the worked letters within.
    </p>
    <p>
      'They did <i>not</i> forget. It is appointed against such offences that
      the offenders shall not be able to forget. If the presence of Arthur was a
      daily reproach to his father, and if the absence of Arthur was a daily
      agony to his mother, that was the just dispensation of Jehovah. As well
      might it be charged upon me, that the stings of an awakened conscience
      drove her mad, and that it was the will of the Disposer of all things that
      she should live so, many years. I devoted myself to reclaim the otherwise
      predestined and lost boy; to give him the reputation of an honest origin;
      to bring him up in fear and trembling, and in a life of practical
      contrition for the sins that were heavy on his head before his entrance
      into this condemned world. Was that a cruelty? Was I, too, not visited
      with consequences of the original offence in which I had no complicity?
      Arthur's father and I lived no further apart, with half the globe between
      us, than when we were together in this house. He died, and sent this watch
      back to me, with its Do not forget. I do NOT forget, though I do not read
      it as he did. I read in it, that I was appointed to do these things. I
      have so read these three letters since I have had them lying on this
      table, and I did so read them, with equal distinctness, when they were
      thousands of miles away.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she took the watch-case in her hand, with that new freedom in the use
      of her hand of which she showed no consciousness whatever, bending her
      eyes upon it as if she were defying it to move her, Rigaud cried with a
      loud and contemptuous snapping of his fingers. 'Come, madame! Time runs
      out. Come, lady of piety, it must be! You can tell nothing I don't know.
      Come to the money stolen, or I will! Death of my soul, I have had enough
      of your other jargon. Come straight to the stolen money!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wretch that you are,' she answered, and now her hands clasped her head:
      'through what fatal error of Flintwinch's, through what incompleteness on
      his part, who was the only other person helping in these things and
      trusted with them, through whose and what bringing together of the ashes
      of a burnt paper, you have become possessed of that codicil, I know no
      more than how you acquired the rest of your power here&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And yet,' interrupted Rigaud, 'it is my odd fortune to have by me, in a
      convenient place that I know of, that same short little addition to the
      will of Monsieur Gilbert Clennam, written by a lady and witnessed by the
      same lady and our old intriguer! Ah, bah, old intriguer, crooked little
      puppet! Madame, let us go on. Time presses. You or I to finish?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I!' she answered, with increased determination, if it were possible. 'I,
      because I will not endure to be shown myself, and have myself shown to any
      one, with your horrible distortion upon me. You, with your practices of
      infamous foreign prisons and galleys would make it the money that impelled
      me. It was not the money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bah, bah, bah! I repudiate, for the moment, my politeness, and say, Lies,
      lies, lies. You know you suppressed the deed and kept the money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not for the money's sake, wretch!' She made a struggle as if she were
      starting up; even as if, in her vehemence, she had almost risen on her
      disabled feet. 'If Gilbert Clennam, reduced to imbecility, at the point of
      death, and labouring under the delusion of some imaginary relenting
      towards a girl of whom he had heard that his nephew had once had a fancy
      for her which he had crushed out of him, and that she afterwards drooped
      away into melancholy and withdrawal from all who knew her&mdash;if, in
      that state of weakness, he dictated to me, whose life she had darkened
      with her sin, and who had been appointed to know her wickedness from her
      own hand and her own lips, a bequest meant as a recompense to her for
      supposed unmerited suffering; was there no difference between my spurning
      that injustice, and coveting mere money&mdash;a thing which you, and your
      comrades in the prisons, may steal from anyone?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Time presses, madame. Take care!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If this house was blazing from the roof to the ground,' she returned, 'I
      would stay in it to justify myself against my righteous motives being
      classed with those of stabbers and thieves.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rigaud snapped his fingers tauntingly in her face. 'One thousand guineas
      to the little beauty you slowly hunted to death. One thousand guineas to
      the youngest daughter her patron might have at fifty, or (if he had none)
      brother's youngest daughter, on her coming of age, "as the remembrance his
      disinterestedness may like best, of his protection of a friendless young
      orphan girl." Two thousand guineas. What! You will never come to the
      money?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That patron,' she was vehemently proceeding, when he checked her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Names! Call him Mr Frederick Dorrit. No more evasions.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That Frederick Dorrit was the beginning of it all. If he had not been a
      player of music, and had not kept, in those days of his youth and
      prosperity, an idle house where singers, and players, and such-like
      children of Evil turned their backs on the Light and their faces to the
      Darkness, she might have remained in her lowly station, and might not have
      been raised out of it to be cast down. But, no. Satan entered into that
      Frederick Dorrit, and counselled him that he was a man of innocent and
      laudable tastes who did kind actions, and that here was a poor girl with a
      voice for singing music with. Then he is to have her taught. Then Arthur's
      father, who has all along been secretly pining in the ways of virtuous
      ruggedness for those accursed snares which are called the Arts, becomes
      acquainted with her. And so, a graceless orphan, training to be a singing
      girl, carries it, by that Frederick Dorrit's agency, against me, and I am
      humbled and deceived!&mdash;Not I, that is to say,' she added quickly, as
      colour flushed into her face; 'a greater than I. What am I?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Jeremiah Flintwinch, who had been gradually screwing himself towards her,
      and who was now very near her elbow without her knowing it, made a
      specially wry face of objection when she said these words, and moreover
      twitched his gaiters, as if such pretensions were equivalent to little
      barbs in his legs.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lastly,' she continued, 'for I am at the end of these things, and I will
      say no more of them, and you shall say no more of them, and all that
      remains will be to determine whether the knowledge of them can be kept
      among us who are here present; lastly, when I suppressed that paper, with
      the knowledge of Arthur's father&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But not with his consent, you know,' said Mr Flintwinch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who said with his consent?' She started to find Jeremiah so near her, and
      drew back her head, looking at him with some rising distrust. 'You were
      often enough between us when he would have had me produce it and I would
      not, to have contradicted me if I had said, with his consent. I say, when
      I suppressed that paper, I made no effort to destroy it, but kept it by
      me, here in this house, many years. The rest of the Gilbert property being
      left to Arthur's father, I could at any time, without unsettling more than
      the two sums, have made a pretence of finding it. But, besides that I must
      have supported such pretence by a direct falsehood (a great
      responsibility), I have seen no new reason, in all the time I have been
      tried here, to bring it to light. It was a rewarding of sin; the wrong
      result of a delusion. I did what I was appointed to do, and I have
      undergone, within these four walls, what I was appointed to undergo. When
      the paper was at last destroyed&mdash;as I thought&mdash;in my presence,
      she had long been dead, and her patron, Frederick Dorrit, had long been
      deservedly ruined and imbecile. He had no daughter. I had found the niece
      before then; and what I did for her, was better for her far than the money
      of which she would have had no good.' She added, after a moment, as though
      she addressed the watch: 'She herself was innocent, and I might not have
      forgotten to relinquish it to her at my death:' and sat looking at it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I recall something to you, worthy madame?' said Rigaud. 'The little
      paper was in this house on the night when our friend the prisoner&mdash;jail-comrade
      of my soul&mdash;came home from foreign countries. Shall I recall yet
      something more to you? The little singing-bird that never was fledged, was
      long kept in a cage by a guardian of your appointing, well enough known to
      our old intriguer here. Shall we coax our old intriguer to tell us when he
      saw him last?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll tell you!' cried Affery, unstopping her mouth. 'I dreamed it, first
      of all my dreams. Jeremiah, if you come a-nigh me now, I'll scream to be
      heard at St Paul's! The person as this man has spoken of, was Jeremiah's
      own twin brother; and he was here in the dead of the night, on the night
      when Arthur come home, and Jeremiah with his own hands give him this
      paper, along with I don't know what more, and he took it away in an iron
      box&mdash;Help! Murder! Save me from Jere-<i>mi</i>-ah!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch had made a run at her, but Rigaud had caught him in his arms
      midway. After a moment's wrestle with him, Flintwinch gave up, and put his
      hands in his pockets.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What!' cried Rigaud, rallying him as he poked and jerked him back with
      his elbows, 'assault a lady with such a genius for dreaming! Ha, ha, ha!
      Why, she'll be a fortune to you as an exhibition. All that she dreams
      comes true. Ha, ha, ha! You're so like him, Little Flintwinch. So like
      him, as I knew him (when I first spoke English for him to the host) in the
      Cabaret of the Three Billiard Tables, in the little street of the high
      roofs, by the wharf at Antwerp! Ah, but he was a brave boy to drink. Ah,
      but he was a brave boy to smoke! Ah, but he lived in a sweet
      bachelor-apartment&mdash;furnished, on the fifth floor, above the wood and
      charcoal merchant's, and the dress-maker's, and the chair-maker's, and the
      maker of tubs&mdash;where I knew him too, and wherewith his cognac and
      tobacco, he had twelve sleeps a day and one fit, until he had a fit too
      much, and ascended to the skies. Ha, ha, ha! What does it matter how I
      took possession of the papers in his iron box? Perhaps he confided it to
      my hands for you, perhaps it was locked and my curiosity was piqued,
      perhaps I suppressed it. Ha, ha, ha! What does it matter, so that I have
      it safe? We are not particular here; hey, Flintwinch? We are not
      particular here; is it not so, madame?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Retiring before him with vicious counter-jerks of his own elbows, Mr
      Flintwinch had got back into his corner, where he now stood with his hands
      in his pockets, taking breath, and returning Mrs Clennam's stare. 'Ha, ha,
      ha! But what's this?' cried Rigaud. 'It appears as if you don't know, one
      the other. Permit me, Madame Clennam who suppresses, to present Monsieur
      Flintwinch who intrigues.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Flintwinch, unpocketing one of his hands to scrape his jaw, advanced a
      step or so in that attitude, still returning Mrs Clennam's look, and thus
      addressed her:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, I know what you mean by opening your eyes so wide at me, but you
      needn't take the trouble, because I don't care for it. I've been telling
      you for how many years that you're one of the most opinionated and
      obstinate of women. That's what <i>you</i> are. You call yourself humble
      and sinful, but you are the most Bumptious of your sex. That's what <i>you</i>
      are. I have told you, over and over again when we have had a tiff, that
      you wanted to make everything go down before you, but I wouldn't go down
      before you&mdash;that you wanted to swallow up everybody alive, but I
      wouldn't be swallowed up alive. Why didn't you destroy the paper when you
      first laid hands upon it? I advised you to; but no, it's not your way to
      take advice. You must keep it forsooth. Perhaps you may carry it out at
      some other time, forsooth. As if I didn't know better than that! I think I
      see your pride carrying it out, with a chance of being suspected of having
      kept it by you. But that's the way you cheat yourself. Just as you cheat
      yourself into making out that you didn't do all this business because you
      were a rigorous woman, all slight, and spite, and power, and
      unforgiveness, but because you were a servant and a minister, and were
      appointed to do it. Who are you, that you should be appointed to do it?
      That may be your religion, but it's my gammon. And to tell you all the
      truth while I am about it,' said Mr Flintwinch, crossing his arms, and
      becoming the express image of irascible doggedness, 'I have been rasped&mdash;rasped
      these forty years&mdash;by your taking such high ground even with me, who
      knows better; the effect of it being coolly to put me on low ground. I
      admire you very much; you are a woman of strong head and great talent; but
      the strongest head, and the greatest talent, can't rasp a man for forty
      years without making him sore. So I don't care for your present eyes. Now,
      I am coming to the paper, and mark what I say. You put it away somewhere,
      and you kept your own counsel where. You're an active woman at that time,
      and if you want to get that paper, you can get it. But, mark. There comes
      a time when you are struck into what you are now, and then if you want to
      get that paper, you can't get it. So it lies, long years, in its
      hiding-place. At last, when we are expecting Arthur home every day, and
      when any day may bring him home, and it's impossible to say what rummaging
      he may make about the house, I recommend you five thousand times, if you
      can't get at it, to let me get at it, that it may be put in the fire. But
      no&mdash;no one but you knows where it is, and that's power; and, call
      yourself whatever humble names you will, I call you a female Lucifer in
      appetite for power! On a Sunday night, Arthur comes home. He has not been
      in this room ten minutes, when he speaks of his father's watch. You know
      very well that the Do Not Forget, at the time when his father sent that
      watch to you, could only mean, the rest of the story being then all dead
      and over, Do Not Forget the suppression. Make restitution! Arthur's ways
      have frightened you a bit, and the paper shall be burnt after all. So,
      before that jumping jade and Jezebel,' Mr Flintwinch grinned at his wife,
      'has got you into bed, you at last tell me where you have put the paper,
      among the old ledgers in the cellars, where Arthur himself went prowling
      the very next morning. But it's not to be burnt on a Sunday night. No; you
      are strict, you are; we must wait over twelve o'clock, and get into
      Monday. Now, all this is a swallowing of me up alive that rasps me; so,
      feeling a little out of temper, and not being as strict as yourself, I
      take a look at the document before twelve o'clock to refresh my memory as
      to its appearance&mdash;fold up one of the many yellow old papers in the
      cellars like it&mdash;and afterwards, when we have got into Monday
      morning, and I have, by the light of your lamp, to walk from you, lying on
      that bed, to this grate, make a little exchange like the conjuror, and
      burn accordingly. My brother Ephraim, the lunatic-keeper (I wish he had
      had himself to keep in a strait-waistcoat), had had many jobs since the
      close of the long job he got from you, but had not done well. His wife
      died (not that that was much; mine might have died instead, and welcome),
      he speculated unsuccessfully in lunatics, he got into difficulty about
      over-roasting a patient to bring him to reason, and he got into debt. He
      was going out of the way, on what he had been able to scrape up, and a
      trifle from me. He was here that early Monday morning, waiting for the
      tide; in short, he was going to Antwerp, where (I am afraid you'll be
      shocked at my saying, And be damned to him!) he made the acquaintance of
      this gentleman. He had come a long way, and, I thought then, was only
      sleepy; but, I suppose now, was drunk. When Arthur's mother had been under
      the care of him and his wife, she had been always writing, incessantly
      writing,&mdash;mostly letters of confession to you, and Prayers for
      forgiveness. My brother had handed, from time to time, lots of these
      sheets to me. I thought I might as well keep them to myself as have them
      swallowed up alive too; so I kept them in a box, looking over them when I
      felt in the humour. Convinced that it was advisable to get the paper out
      of the place, with Arthur coming about it, I put it into this same box,
      and I locked the whole up with two locks, and I trusted it to my brother
      to take away and keep, till I should write about it. I did write about it,
      and never got an answer. I didn't know what to make of it, till this
      gentleman favoured us with his first visit. Of course, I began to suspect
      how it was, then; and I don't want his word for it now to understand how
      he gets his knowledge from my papers, and your paper, and my brother's
      cognac and tobacco talk (I wish he'd had to gag himself). Now, I have only
      one thing more to say, you hammer-headed woman, and that is, that I
      haven't altogether made up my mind whether I might, or might not, have
      ever given you any trouble about the codicil. I think not; and that I
      should have been quite satisfied with knowing I had got the better of you,
      and that I held the power over you. In the present state of circumstances,
      I have no more explanation to give you till this time to-morrow night. So
      you may as well,' said Mr Flintwinch, terminating his oration with a
      screw, 'keep your eyes open at somebody else, for it's no use keeping 'em
      open at me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She slowly withdrew them when he had ceased, and dropped her forehead on
      her hand. Her other hand pressed hard upon the table, and again the
      curious stir was observable in her, as if she were going to rise.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This box can never bring, elsewhere, the price it will bring here. This
      knowledge can never be of the same profit to you, sold to any other
      person, as sold to me. But I have not the present means of raising the sum
      you have demanded. I have not prospered. What will you take now, and what
      at another time, and how am I to be assured of your silence?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My angel,' said Rigaud, 'I have said what I will take, and time presses.
      Before coming here, I placed copies of the most important of these papers
      in another hand. Put off the time till the Marshalsea gate shall be shut
      for the night, and it will be too late to treat. The prisoner will have
      read them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She put her two hands to her head again, uttered a loud exclamation, and
      started to her feet. She staggered for a moment, as if she would have
      fallen; then stood firm.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say what you mean. Say what you mean, man!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Before her ghostly figure, so long unused to its erect attitude, and so
      stiffened in it, Rigaud fell back and dropped his voice. It was, to all
      the three, almost as if a dead woman had risen.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dorrit,' answered Rigaud, 'the little niece of Monsieur Frederick,
      whom I have known across the water, is attached to the prisoner. Miss
      Dorrit, little niece of Monsieur Frederick, watches at this moment over
      the prisoner, who is ill. For her I with my own hands left a packet at the
      prison, on my way here, with a letter of instructions, "<i>for his sake</i>"&mdash;she
      will do anything for his sake&mdash;to keep it without breaking the seal,
      in case of its being reclaimed before the hour of shutting up to-night&mdash;if
      it should not be reclaimed before the ringing of the prison bell, to give
      it to him; and it encloses a second copy for herself, which he must give
      to her. What! I don't trust myself among you, now we have got so far,
      without giving my secret a second life. And as to its not bringing me,
      elsewhere, the price it will bring here, say then, madame, have you
      limited and settled the price the little niece will give&mdash;for his
      sake&mdash;to hush it up? Once more I say, time presses. The packet not
      reclaimed before the ringing of the bell to-night, you cannot buy. I sell,
      then, to the little girl!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Once more the stir and struggle in her, and she ran to a closet, tore the
      door open, took down a hood or shawl, and wrapped it over her head.
      Affery, who had watched her in terror, darted to her in the middle of the
      room, caught hold of her dress, and went on her knees to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't, don't, don't! What are you doing? Where are you going? You're a
      fearful woman, but I don't bear you no ill-will. I can do poor Arthur no
      good now, that I see; and you needn't be afraid of me. I'll keep your
      secret. Don't go out, you'll fall dead in the street. Only promise me,
      that, if it's the poor thing that's kept here secretly, you'll let me take
      charge of her and be her nurse. Only promise me that, and never be afraid
      of me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Clennam stood still for an instant, at the height of her rapid haste,
      saying in stern amazement:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kept here? She has been dead a score of years or more. Ask Flintwinch&mdash;ask
      <i>him</i>. They can both tell you that she died when Arthur went abroad.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So much the worse,' said Affery, with a shiver, 'for she haunts the
      house, then. Who else rustles about it, making signals by dropping dust so
      softly? Who else comes and goes, and marks the walls with long crooked
      touches when we are all a-bed? Who else holds the door sometimes? But
      don't go out&mdash;don't go out! Mistress, you'll die in the street!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her mistress only disengaged her dress from the beseeching hands, said to
      Rigaud, 'Wait here till I come back!' and ran out of the room. They saw
      her, from the window, run wildly through the court-yard and out at the
      gateway.
    </p>
    <p>
      For a few moments they stood motionless. Affery was the first to move, and
      she, wringing her hands, pursued her mistress. Next, Jeremiah Flintwinch,
      slowly backing to the door, with one hand in a pocket, and the other
      rubbing his chin, twisted himself out in his reticent way, speechlessly.
      Rigaud, left alone, composed himself upon the window-seat of the open
      window, in the old Marseilles-jail attitude. He laid his cigarettes and
      fire-box ready to his hand, and fell to smoking.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whoof! Almost as dull as the infernal old jail. Warmer, but almost as
      dismal. Wait till she comes back? Yes, certainly; but where is she gone,
      and how long will she be gone? No matter! Rigaud Lagnier Blandois, my
      amiable subject, you will get your money. You will enrich yourself. You
      have lived a gentleman; you will die a gentleman. You triumph, my little
      boy; but it is your character to triumph. Whoof!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In the hour of his triumph, his moustache went up and his nose came down,
      as he ogled a great beam over his head with particular satisfaction.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0067" id="link2HCH0067"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 31. Closed
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he sun had set, and the streets were dim in the dusty twilight, when the
      figure so long unused to them hurried on its way. In the immediate
      neighbourhood of the old house it attracted little attention, for there
      were only a few straggling people to notice it; but, ascending from the
      river by the crooked ways that led to London Bridge, and passing into the
      great main road, it became surrounded by astonishment.
    </p>
    <p>
      Resolute and wild of look, rapid of foot and yet weak and uncertain,
      conspicuously dressed in its black garments and with its hurried
      head-covering, gaunt and of an unearthly paleness, it pressed forward,
      taking no more heed of the throng than a sleep-walker. More remarkable by
      being so removed from the crowd it was among than if it had been lifted on
      a pedestal to be seen, the figure attracted all eyes. Saunterers pricked
      up their attention to observe it; busy people, crossing it, slackened
      their pace and turned their heads; companions pausing and standing aside,
      whispered one another to look at this spectral woman who was coming by;
      and the sweep of the figure as it passed seemed to create a vortex,
      drawing the most idle and most curious after it.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0695m.jpg" alt="0695m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0695.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      Made giddy by the turbulent irruption of this multitude of staring faces
      into her cell of years, by the confusing sensation of being in the air,
      and the yet more confusing sensation of being afoot, by the unexpected
      changes in half-remembered objects, and the want of likeness between the
      controllable pictures her imagination had often drawn of the life from
      which she was secluded and the overwhelming rush of the reality, she held
      her way as if she were environed by distracting thoughts, rather than by
      external humanity and observation. But, having crossed the bridge and gone
      some distance straight onward, she remembered that she must ask for a
      direction; and it was only then, when she stopped and turned to look about
      her for a promising place of inquiry, that she found herself surrounded by
      an eager glare of faces.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why are you encircling me?' she asked, trembling.
    </p>
    <p>
      None of those who were nearest answered; but from the outer ring there
      arose a shrill cry of ''Cause you're mad!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure as sane as any one here. I want to find the Marshalsea prison.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The shrill outer circle again retorted, 'Then that 'ud show you was mad if
      nothing else did, 'cause it's right opposite!'
    </p>
    <p>
      A short, mild, quiet-looking young man made his way through to her, as a
      whooping ensued on this reply, and said: 'Was it the Marshalsea you
      wanted? I'm going on duty there. Come across with me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She laid her hand upon his arm, and he took her over the way; the crowd,
      rather injured by the near prospect of losing her, pressing before and
      behind and on either side, and recommending an adjournment to Bedlam.
      After a momentary whirl in the outer court-yard, the prison-door opened,
      and shut upon them. In the Lodge, which seemed by contrast with the outer
      noise a place of refuge and peace, a yellow lamp was already striving with
      the prison shadows.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, John!' said the turnkey who admitted them. 'What is it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing, father; only this lady not knowing her way, and being badgered
      by the boys. Who did you want, ma'am?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dorrit. Is she here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The young man became more interested. 'Yes, she is here. What might your
      name be?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Clennam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Clennam's mother?' asked the young man.
    </p>
    <p>
      She pressed her lips together, and hesitated. 'Yes. She had better be told
      it is his mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see,' said the young man,'the Marshal's family living in the country
      at present, the Marshal has given Miss Dorrit one of the rooms in his
      house to use when she likes. Don't you think you had better come up there,
      and let me bring Miss Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She signified her assent, and he unlocked a door and conducted her up a
      side staircase into a dwelling-house above. He showed her into a darkening
      room, and left her. The room looked down into the darkening prison-yard,
      with its inmates strolling here and there, leaning out of windows
      communing as much apart as they could with friends who were going away,
      and generally wearing out their imprisonment as they best might that
      summer evening. The air was heavy and hot; the closeness of the place,
      oppressive; and from without there arose a rush of free sounds, like the
      jarring memory of such things in a headache and heartache. She stood at
      the window, bewildered, looking down into this prison as it were out of
      her own different prison, when a soft word or two of surprise made her
      start, and Little Dorrit stood before her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it possible, Mrs Clennam, that you are so happily recovered as&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit stopped, for there was neither happiness nor health in the
      face that turned to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is not recovery; it is not strength; I don't know what it is.' With
      an agitated wave of her hand, she put all that aside. 'You have a packet
      left with you which you were to give to Arthur, if it was not reclaimed
      before this place closed to-night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I reclaim it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit took it from her bosom, and gave it into her hand, which
      remained stretched out after receiving it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you any idea of its contents?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Frightened by her being there with that new power Of Movement in her,
      which, as she said herself, was not strength, and which was unreal to look
      upon, as though a picture or statue had been animated, Little Dorrit
      answered 'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Read them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit took the packet from the still outstretched hand, and broke
      the seal. Mrs Clennam then gave her the inner packet that was addressed to
      herself, and held the other. The shadow of the wall and of the prison
      buildings, which made the room sombre at noon, made it too dark to read
      there, with the dusk deepening apace, save in the window. In the window,
      where a little of the bright summer evening sky could shine upon her,
      Little Dorrit stood, and read. After a broken exclamation or so of wonder
      and of terror, she read in silence. When she had finished, she looked
      round, and her old mistress bowed herself before her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know, now, what I have done.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think so. I am afraid so; though my mind is so hurried, and so sorry,
      and has so much to pity that it has not been able to follow all I have
      read,' said Little Dorrit tremulously.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will restore to you what I have withheld from you. Forgive me. Can you
      forgive me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can, and Heaven knows I do! Do not kiss my dress and kneel to me; you
      are too old to kneel to me; I forgive you freely without that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have more yet to ask.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not in that posture,' said Little Dorrit. 'It is unnatural to see your
      grey hair lower than mine. Pray rise; let me help you.' With that she
      raised her up, and stood rather shrinking from her, but looking at her
      earnestly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The great petition that I make to you (there is another which grows out
      of it), the great supplication that I address to your merciful and gentle
      heart, is, that you will not disclose this to Arthur until I am dead. If
      you think, when you have had time for consideration, that it can do him
      any good to know it while I am yet alive, then tell him. But you will not
      think that; and in such case, will you promise me to spare me until I am
      dead?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am so sorry, and what I have read has so confused my thoughts,'
      returned Little Dorrit, 'that I can scarcely give you a steady answer. If
      I should be quite sure that to be acquainted with it will do Mr Clennam no
      good&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know you are attached to him, and will make him the first
      consideration. It is right that he should be the first consideration. I
      ask that. But, having regarded him, and still finding that you may spare
      me for the little time I shall remain on earth, will you do it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'GOD bless you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She stood in the shadow so that she was only a veiled form to Little
      Dorrit in the light; but the sound of her voice, in saying those three
      grateful words, was at once fervent and broken&mdash;broken by emotion as
      unfamiliar to her frozen eyes as action to her frozen limbs.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You will wonder, perhaps,' she said in a stronger tone, 'that I can
      better bear to be known to you whom I have wronged, than to the son of my
      enemy who wronged me.&mdash;For she did wrong me! She not only sinned
      grievously against the Lord, but she wronged me. What Arthur's father was
      to me, she made him. From our marriage day I was his dread, and that she
      made me. I was the scourge of both, and that is referable to her. You love
      Arthur (I can see the blush upon your face; may it be the dawn of happier
      days to both of you!), and you will have thought already that he is as
      merciful and kind as you, and why do I not trust myself to him as soon as
      to you. Have you not thought so?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No thought,' said Little Dorrit, 'can be quite a stranger to my heart,
      that springs out of the knowledge that Mr Clennam is always to be relied
      upon for being kind and generous and good.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not doubt it. Yet Arthur is, of the whole world, the one person from
      whom I would conceal this, while I am in it. I kept over him as a child,
      in the days of his first remembrance, my restraining and correcting hand.
      I was stern with him, knowing that the transgressions of the parents are
      visited on their offspring, and that there was an angry mark upon him at
      his birth. I have sat with him and his father, seeing the weakness of his
      father yearning to unbend to him; and forcing it back, that the child
      might work out his release in bondage and hardship. I have seen him, with
      his mother's face, looking up at me in awe from his little books, and
      trying to soften me with his mother's ways that hardened me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The shrinking of her auditress stopped her for a moment in her flow of
      words, delivered in a retrospective gloomy voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For his good. Not for the satisfaction of my injury. What was I, and what
      was the worth of that, before the curse of Heaven! I have seen that child
      grow up; not to be pious in a chosen way (his mother's influence lay too
      heavy on him for that), but still to be just and upright, and to be
      submissive to me. He never loved me, as I once half-hoped he might&mdash;so
      frail we are, and so do the corrupt affections of the flesh war with our
      trusts and tasks; but he always respected me and ordered himself dutifully
      to me. He does to this hour. With an empty place in his heart that he has
      never known the meaning of, he has turned away from me and gone his
      separate road; but even that he has done considerately and with deference.
      These have been his relations towards me. Yours have been of a much
      slighter kind, spread over a much shorter time. When you have sat at your
      needle in my room, you have been in fear of me, but you have supposed me
      to have been doing you a kindness; you are better informed now, and know
      me to have done you an injury. Your misconstruction and misunderstanding
      of the cause in which, and the motives with which, I have worked out this
      work, is lighter to endure than his would be. I would not, for any worldly
      recompense I can imagine, have him in a moment, however blindly, throw me
      down from the station I have held before him all his life, and change me
      altogether into something he would cast out of his respect, and think
      detected and exposed. Let him do it, if it must be done, when I am not
      here to see it. Let me never feel, while I am still alive, that I die
      before his face, and utterly perish away from him, like one consumed by
      lightning and swallowed by an earthquake.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her pride was very strong in her, the pain of it and of her old passions
      was very sharp with her, when she thus expressed herself. Not less so,
      when she added:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Even now, I see <i>you</i> shrink from me, as if I had been cruel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit could not gainsay it. She tried not to show it, but she
      recoiled with dread from the state of mind that had burnt so fiercely and
      lasted so long. It presented itself to her, with no sophistry upon it, in
      its own plain nature.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have done,' said Mrs Clennam,'what it was given to me to do. I have set
      myself against evil; not against good. I have been an instrument of
      severity against sin. Have not mere sinners like myself been commissioned
      to lay it low in all time?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In all time?' repeated Little Dorrit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Even if my own wrong had prevailed with me, and my own vengeance had
      moved me, could I have found no justification? None in the old days when
      the innocent perished with the guilty, a thousand to one? When the wrath
      of the hater of the unrighteous was not slaked even in blood, and yet
      found favour?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O, Mrs Clennam, Mrs Clennam,' said Little Dorrit, 'angry feelings and
      unforgiving deeds are no comfort and no guide to you and me. My life has
      been passed in this poor prison, and my teaching has been very defective;
      but let me implore you to remember later and better days. Be guided only
      by the healer of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the friend of all who
      were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of
      compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if we put all the
      rest away, and do everything in remembrance of Him. There is no vengeance
      and no infliction of suffering in His life, I am sure. There can be no
      confusion in following Him, and seeking for no other footsteps, I am
      certain.'
    </p>
    <p>
      In the softened light of the window, looking from the scene of her early
      trials to the shining sky, she was not in stronger opposition to the black
      figure in the shade than the life and doctrine on which she rested were to
      that figure's history. It bent its head low again, and said not a word. It
      remained thus, until the first warning bell began to ring.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hark!' cried Mrs Clennam starting, 'I said I had another petition. It is
      one that does not admit of delay. The man who brought you this packet and
      possesses these proofs, is now waiting at my house to be bought off. I can
      keep this from Arthur, only by buying him off. He asks a large sum; more
      than I can get together to pay him without having time. He refuses to make
      any abatement, because his threat is, that if he fails with me, he will
      come to you. Will you return with me and show him that you already know
      it? Will you return with me and try to prevail with him? Will you come and
      help me with him? Do not refuse what I ask in Arthur's name, though I dare
      not ask it for Arthur's sake!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit yielded willingly. She glided away into the prison for a few
      moments, returned, and said she was ready to go. They went out by another
      staircase, avoiding the lodge; and coming into the front court-yard, now
      all quiet and deserted, gained the street.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was one of those summer evenings when there is no greater darkness than
      a long twilight. The vista of street and bridge was plain to see, and the
      sky was serene and beautiful. People stood and sat at their doors, playing
      with children and enjoying the evening; numbers were walking for air; the
      worry of the day had almost worried itself out, and few but themselves
      were hurried. As they crossed the bridge, the clear steeples of the many
      churches looked as if they had advanced out of the murk that usually
      enshrouded them, and come much nearer. The smoke that rose into the sky
      had lost its dingy hue and taken a brightness upon it. The beauties of the
      sunset had not faded from the long light films of cloud that lay at peace
      in the horizon. From a radiant centre, over the whole length and breadth
      of the tranquil firmament, great shoots of light streamed among the early
      stars, like signs of the blessed later covenant of peace and hope that
      changed the crown of thorns into a glory.
    </p>
    <p>
      Less remarkable, now that she was not alone and it was darker, Mrs Clennam
      hurried on at Little Dorrit's side, unmolested. They left the great
      thoroughfare at the turning by which she had entered it, and wound their
      way down among the silent, empty, cross-streets. Their feet were at the
      gateway, when there was a sudden noise like thunder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What was that! Let us make haste in,' cried Mrs Clennam.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were in the gateway. Little Dorrit, with a piercing cry, held her
      back.
    </p>
    <p>
      In one swift instant the old house was before them, with the man lying
      smoking in the window; another thundering sound, and it heaved, surged
      outward, opened asunder in fifty places, collapsed, and fell. Deafened by
      the noise, stifled, choked, and blinded by the dust, they hid their faces
      and stood rooted to the spot. The dust storm, driving between them and the
      placid sky, parted for a moment and showed them the stars. As they looked
      up, wildly crying for help, the great pile of chimneys, which was then
      alone left standing like a tower in a whirlwind, rocked, broke, and hailed
      itself down upon the heap of ruin, as if every tumbling fragment were
      intent on burying the crushed wretch deeper.
    </p>
    <p>
      So blackened by the flying particles of rubbish as to be unrecognisable,
      they ran back from the gateway into the street, crying and shrieking.
      There, Mrs Clennam dropped upon the stones; and she never from that hour
      moved so much as a finger again, or had the power to speak one word. For
      upwards of three years she reclined in a wheeled chair, looking
      attentively at those about her and appearing to understand what they said;
      but the rigid silence she had so long held was evermore enforced upon her,
      and except that she could move her eyes and faintly express a negative and
      affirmative with her head, she lived and died a statue.
    </p>
    <p>
      Affery had been looking for them at the prison, and had caught sight of
      them at a distance on the bridge. She came up to receive her old mistress
      in her arms, to help to carry her into a neighbouring house, and to be
      faithful to her. The mystery of the noises was out now; Affery, like
      greater people, had always been right in her facts, and always wrong in
      the theories she deduced from them.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the storm of dust had cleared away and the summer night was calm
      again, numbers of people choked up every avenue of access, and parties of
      diggers were formed to relieve one another in digging among the ruins.
      There had been a hundred people in the house at the time of its fall,
      there had been fifty, there had been fifteen, there had been two. Rumour
      finally settled the number at two; the foreigner and Mr Flintwinch.
    </p>
    <p>
      The diggers dug all through the short night by flaring pipes of gas, and
      on a level with the early sun, and deeper and deeper below it as it rose
      into its zenith, and aslant of it as it declined, and on a level with it
      again as it departed. Sturdy digging, and shovelling, and carrying away,
      in carts, barrows, and baskets, went on without intermission, by night and
      by day; but it was night for the second time when they found the dirty
      heap of rubbish that had been the foreigner before his head had been
      shivered to atoms, like so much glass, by the great beam that lay upon
      him, crushing him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Still, they had not come upon Flintwinch yet; so the sturdy digging and
      shovelling and carrying away went on without intermission by night and by
      day. It got about that the old house had had famous cellarage (which
      indeed was true), and that Flintwinch had been in a cellar at the moment,
      or had had time to escape into one, and that he was safe under its strong
      arch, and even that he had been heard to cry, in hollow, subterranean,
      suffocated notes, 'Here I am!' At the opposite extremity of the town it
      was even known that the excavators had been able to open a communication
      with him through a pipe, and that he had received both soup and brandy by
      that channel, and that he had said with admirable fortitude that he was
      All right, my lads, with the exception of his collar-bone. But the digging
      and shovelling and carrying away went on without intermission, until the
      ruins were all dug out, and the cellars opened to the light; and still no
      Flintwinch, living or dead, all right or all wrong, had been turned up by
      pick or spade.
    </p>
    <p>
      It began then to be perceived that Flintwinch had not been there at the
      time of the fall; and it began then to be perceived that he had been
      rather busy elsewhere, converting securities into as much money as could
      be got for them on the shortest notice, and turning to his own exclusive
      account his authority to act for the Firm. Affery, remembering that the
      clever one had said he would explain himself further in four-and-twenty
      hours' time, determined for her part that his taking himself off within
      that period with all he could get, was the final satisfactory sum and
      substance of his promised explanation; but she held her peace, devoutly
      thankful to be quit of him. As it seemed reasonable to conclude that a man
      who had never been buried could not be unburied, the diggers gave him up
      when their task was done, and did not dig down for him into the depths of
      the earth.
    </p>
    <p>
      This was taken in ill part by a great many people, who persisted in
      believing that Flintwinch was lying somewhere among the London geological
      formation. Nor was their belief much shaken by repeated intelligence which
      came over in course of time, that an old man who wore the tie of his
      neckcloth under one ear, and who was very well known to be an Englishman,
      consorted with the Dutchmen on the quaint banks of the canals of the Hague
      and in the drinking-shops of Amsterdam, under the style and designation of
      Mynheer von Flyntevynge.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0068" id="link2HCH0068"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 32. Going
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>rthur continuing to lie very ill in the Marshalsea, and Mr Rugg descrying
      no break in the legal sky affording a hope of his enlargement, Mr Pancks
      suffered desperately from self-reproaches. If it had not been for those
      infallible figures which proved that Arthur, instead of pining in
      imprisonment, ought to be promenading in a carriage and pair, and that Mr
      Pancks, instead of being restricted to his clerkly wages, ought to have
      from three to five thousand pounds of his own at his immediate disposal,
      that unhappy arithmetician would probably have taken to his bed, and there
      have made one of the many obscure persons who turned their faces to the
      wall and died, as a last sacrifice to the late Mr Merdle's greatness.
      Solely supported by his unimpugnable calculations, Mr Pancks led an
      unhappy and restless life; constantly carrying his figures about with him
      in his hat, and not only going over them himself on every possible
      occasion, but entreating every human being he could lay hold of to go over
      them with him, and observe what a clear case it was. Down in Bleeding
      Heart Yard there was scarcely an inhabitant of note to whom Mr Pancks had
      not imparted his demonstration, and, as figures are catching, a kind of
      cyphering measles broke out in that locality, under the influence of which
      the whole Yard was light-headed.
    </p>
    <p>
      The more restless Mr Pancks grew in his mind, the more impatient he became
      of the Patriarch. In their later conferences his snorting assumed an
      irritable sound which boded the Patriarch no good; likewise, Mr Pancks had
      on several occasions looked harder at the Patriarchal bumps than was quite
      reconcilable with the fact of his not being a painter, or a peruke-maker
      in search of the living model.
    </p>
    <p>
      However, he steamed in and out of his little back Dock according as he was
      wanted or not wanted in the Patriarchal presence, and business had gone on
      in its customary course. Bleeding Heart Yard had been harrowed by Mr
      Pancks, and cropped by Mr Casby, at the regular seasons; Mr Pancks had
      taken all the drudgery and all the dirt of the business as <i>his</i>
      share; Mr Casby had taken all the profits, all the ethereal vapour, and
      all the moonshine, as his share; and, in the form of words which that
      benevolent beamer generally employed on Saturday evenings, when he twirled
      his fat thumbs after striking the week's balance, 'everything had been
      satisfactory to all parties&mdash;all parties&mdash;satisfactory, sir, to
      all parties.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Dock of the Steam-Tug, Pancks, had a leaden roof, which, frying in the
      very hot sunshine, may have heated the vessel. Be that as it may, one
      glowing Saturday evening, on being hailed by the lumbering bottle-green
      ship, the Tug instantly came working out of the Dock in a highly heated
      condition.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Pancks,' was the Patriarchal remark, 'you have been remiss, you have
      been remiss, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean by that?' was the short rejoinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Patriarchal state, always a state of calmness and composure, was so
      particularly serene that evening as to be provoking. Everybody else within
      the bills of mortality was hot; but the Patriarch was perfectly cool.
      Everybody was thirsty, and the Patriarch was drinking. There was a
      fragrance of limes or lemons about him; and he made a drink of golden
      sherry, which shone in a large tumbler as if he were drinking the evening
      sunshine. This was bad, but not the worst. The worst was, that with his
      big blue eyes, and his polished head, and his long white hair, and his
      bottle-green legs stretched out before him, terminating in his easy shoes
      easily crossed at the instep, he had a radiant appearance of having in his
      extensive benevolence made the drink for the human species, while he
      himself wanted nothing but his own milk of human kindness.
    </p>
    <p>
      Wherefore, Mr Pancks said, 'What do you mean by that?' and put his hair up
      with both hands, in a highly portentous manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean, Mr Pancks, that you must be sharper with the people, sharper with
      the people, much sharper with the people, sir. You don't squeeze them. You
      don't squeeze them. Your receipts are not up to the mark. You must squeeze
      them, sir, or our connection will not continue to be as satisfactory as I
      could wish it to be to all parties. All parties.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>Don't</i> I squeeze 'em?' retorted Mr Pancks. 'What else am I made
      for?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are made for nothing else, Mr Pancks. You are made to do your duty,
      but you don't do your duty. You are paid to squeeze, and you must squeeze
      to pay.' The Patriarch so much surprised himself by this brilliant turn,
      after Dr Johnson, which he had not in the least expected or intended, that
      he laughed aloud; and repeated with great satisfaction, as he twirled his
      thumbs and nodded at his youthful portrait, 'Paid to squeeze, sir, and
      must squeeze to pay.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh,' said Pancks. 'Anything more?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir, yes, sir. Something more. You will please, Mr Pancks, to
      squeeze the Yard again, the first thing on Monday morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' said Pancks. 'Ain't that too soon? I squeezed it dry to-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nonsense, sir. Not near the mark, not near the mark.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' said Pancks, watching him as he benevolently gulped down a good
      draught of his mixture. 'Anything more?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir, yes, sir, something more. I am not at all pleased, Mr Pancks,
      with my daughter; not at all pleased. Besides calling much too often to
      inquire for Mrs Clennam, Mrs Clennam, who is not just now in circumstances
      that are by any means calculated to&mdash;to be satisfactory to all
      parties, she goes, Mr Pancks, unless I am much deceived, to inquire for Mr
      Clennam in jail. In jail.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's laid up, you know,' said Pancks. 'Perhaps it's kind.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pooh, pooh, Mr Pancks. She has nothing to do with that, nothing to do
      with that. I can't allow it. Let him pay his debts and come out, come out;
      pay his debts, and come out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Although Mr Pancks's hair was standing up like strong wire, he gave it
      another double-handed impulse in the perpendicular direction, and smiled
      at his proprietor in a most hideous manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You will please to mention to my daughter, Mr Pancks, that I can't allow
      it, can't allow it,' said the Patriarch blandly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' said Pancks. 'You couldn't mention it yourself?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir, no; you are paid to mention it,' the blundering old booby could
      not resist the temptation of trying it again, 'and you must mention it to
      pay, mention it to pay.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' said Pancks. 'Anything more?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir. It appears to me, Mr Pancks, that you yourself are too often
      and too much in that direction, that direction. I recommend you, Mr
      Pancks, to dismiss from your attention both your own losses and other
      people's losses, and to mind your business, mind your business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks acknowledged this recommendation with such an extraordinarily
      abrupt, short, and loud utterance of the monosyllable 'Oh!' that even the
      unwieldy Patriarch moved his blue eyes in something of a hurry, to look at
      him. Mr Pancks, with a sniff of corresponding intensity, then added,
      'Anything more?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at present, sir, not at present. I am going,' said the Patriarch,
      finishing his mixture, and rising with an amiable air, 'to take a little
      stroll, a little stroll. Perhaps I shall find you here when I come back.
      If not, sir, duty, duty; squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, on Monday; squeeze on
      Monday!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks, after another stiffening of his hair, looked on at the
      Patriarchal assumption of the broad-brimmed hat, with a momentary
      appearance of indecision contending with a sense of injury. He was also
      hotter than at first, and breathed harder. But he suffered Mr Casby to go
      out, without offering any further remark, and then took a peep at him over
      the little green window-blinds. 'I thought so,' he observed. 'I knew where
      you were bound to. Good!' He then steamed back to his Dock, put it
      carefully in order, took down his hat, looked round the Dock, said
      'Good-bye!' and puffed away on his own account. He steered straight for
      Mrs Plornish's end of Bleeding Heart Yard, and arrived there, at the top
      of the steps, hotter than ever.
    </p>
    <p>
      At the top of the steps, resisting Mrs Plornish's invitations to come and
      sit along with father in Happy Cottage&mdash;which to his relief were not
      so numerous as they would have been on any other night than Saturday, when
      the connection who so gallantly supported the business with everything but
      money gave their orders freely&mdash;at the top of the steps Mr Pancks
      remained until he beheld the Patriarch, who always entered the Yard at the
      other end, slowly advancing, beaming, and surrounded by suitors. Then Mr
      Pancks descended and bore down upon him, with his utmost pressure of steam
      on.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Patriarch, approaching with his usual benignity, was surprised to see
      Mr Pancks, but supposed him to have been stimulated to an immediate
      squeeze instead of postponing that operation until Monday. The population
      of the Yard were astonished at the meeting, for the two powers had never
      been seen there together, within the memory of the oldest Bleeding Heart.
      But they were overcome by unutterable amazement when Mr Pancks, going
      close up to the most venerable of men and halting in front of the
      bottle-green waistcoat, made a trigger of his right thumb and forefinger,
      applied the same to the brim of the broad-brimmed hat, and, with singular
      smartness and precision, shot it off the polished head as if it had been a
      large marble.
    </p>
    <p>
      Having taken this little liberty with the Patriarchal person, Mr Pancks
      further astounded and attracted the Bleeding Hearts by saying in an
      audible voice, 'Now, you sugary swindler, I mean to have it out with you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Pancks and the Patriarch were instantly the centre of a press, all eyes
      and ears; windows were thrown open, and door-steps were thronged.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you pretend to be?' said Mr Pancks. 'What's your moral game? What
      do you go in for? Benevolence, an't it? You benevolent!' Here Mr Pancks,
      apparently without the intention of hitting him, but merely to relieve his
      mind and expend his superfluous power in wholesome exercise, aimed a blow
      at the bumpy head, which the bumpy head ducked to avoid. This singular
      performance was repeated, to the ever-increasing admiration of the
      spectators, at the end of every succeeding article of Mr Pancks's oration.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have discharged myself from your service,' said Pancks, 'that I may
      tell you what you are. You're one of a lot of impostors that are the worst
      lot of all the lots to be met with. Speaking as a sufferer by both, I
      don't know that I wouldn't as soon have the Merdle lot as your lot. You're
      a driver in disguise, a screwer by deputy, a wringer, and squeezer, and
      shaver by substitute. You're a philanthropic sneak. You're a shabby
      deceiver!'
    </p>
    <p>
      (The repetition of the performance at this point was received with a burst
      of laughter.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ask these good people who's the hard man here. They'll tell you Pancks, I
      believe.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was confirmed with cries of 'Certainly,' and 'Hear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I tell you, good people&mdash;Casby! This mound of meekness, this
      lump of love, this bottle-green smiler, this is your driver!' said Pancks.
      'If you want to see the man who would flay you alive&mdash;here he is!
      Don't look for him in me, at thirty shillings a week, but look for him in
      Casby, at I don't know how much a year!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good!' cried several voices. 'Hear Mr Pancks!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hear Mr Pancks?' cried that gentleman (after repeating the popular
      performance). 'Yes, I should think so! It's almost time to hear Mr Pancks.
      Mr Pancks has come down into the Yard to-night on purpose that you should
      hear him. Pancks is only the Works; but here's the Winder!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The audience would have gone over to Mr Pancks, as one man, woman, and
      child, but for the long, grey, silken locks, and the broad-brimmed hat.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here's the Stop,' said Pancks, 'that sets the tune to be ground. And
      there is but one tune, and its name is Grind, Grind, Grind! Here's the
      Proprietor, and here's his Grubber. Why, good people, when he comes
      smoothly spinning through the Yard to-night, like a slow-going benevolent
      Humming-Top, and when you come about him with your complaints of the
      Grubber, you don't know what a cheat the Proprietor is! What do you think
      of his showing himself to-night, that I may have all the blame on Monday?
      What do you think of his having had me over the coals this very evening,
      because I don't squeeze you enough? What do you think of my being, at the
      present moment, under special orders to squeeze you dry on Monday?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The reply was given in a murmur of 'Shame!' and 'Shabby!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shabby?' snorted Pancks. 'Yes, I should think so! The lot that your Casby
      belongs to, is the shabbiest of all the lots. Setting their Grubbers on,
      at a wretched pittance, to do what they're ashamed and afraid to do and
      pretend not to do, but what they will have done, or give a man no rest!
      Imposing on you to give their Grubbers nothing but blame, and to give them
      nothing but credit! Why, the worst-looking cheat in all this town who gets
      the value of eighteenpence under false pretences, an't half such a cheat
      as this sign-post of The Casby's Head here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Cries of 'That's true!' and 'No more he an't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And see what you get of these fellows, besides,' said Pancks. 'See what
      more you get of these precious Humming-Tops, revolving among you with such
      smoothness that you've no idea of the pattern painted on 'em, or the
      little window in 'em. I wish to call your attention to myself for a
      moment. I an't an agreeable style of chap, I know that very well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The auditory were divided on this point; its more uncompromising members
      crying, 'No, you are not,' and its politer materials, 'Yes, you are.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am, in general,' said Mr Pancks, 'a dry, uncomfortable, dreary Plodder
      and Grubber. That's your humble servant. There's his full-length portrait,
      painted by himself and presented to you, warranted a likeness! But what's
      a man to be, with such a man as this for his Proprietor? What can be
      expected of him? Did anybody ever find boiled mutton and caper-sauce
      growing in a cocoa-nut?'
    </p>
    <p>
      None of the Bleeding Hearts ever had, it was clear from the alacrity of
      their response.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well,' said Mr Pancks, 'and neither will you find in Grubbers like
      myself, under Proprietors like this, pleasant qualities. I've been a
      Grubber from a boy. What has my life been? Fag and grind, fag and grind,
      turn the wheel, turn the wheel! I haven't been agreeable to myself, and I
      haven't been likely to be agreeable to anybody else. If I was a shilling a
      week less useful in ten years' time, this impostor would give me a
      shilling a week less; if as useful a man could be got at sixpence cheaper,
      he would be taken in my place at sixpence cheaper. Bargain and sale, bless
      you! Fixed principles! It's a mighty fine sign-post, is The Casby's Head,'
      said Mr Pancks, surveying it with anything rather than admiration; 'but
      the real name of the House is the Sham's Arms. Its motto is, Keep the
      Grubber always at it. Is any gentleman present,' said Mr Pancks, breaking
      off and looking round, 'acquainted with the English Grammar?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Bleeding Heart Yard was shy of claiming that acquaintance.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's no matter,' said Mr Pancks, 'I merely wish to remark that the task
      this Proprietor has set me, has been never to leave off conjugating the
      Imperative Mood Present Tense of the verb To keep always at it. Keep thou
      always at it. Let him keep always at it. Keep we or do we keep always at
      it. Keep ye or do ye or you keep always at it. Let them keep always at it.
      Here is your benevolent Patriarch of a Casby, and there is his golden
      rule. He is uncommonly improving to look at, and I am not at all so. He is
      as sweet as honey, and I am as dull as ditch-water. He provides the pitch,
      and I handle it, and it sticks to me. Now,' said Mr Pancks, closing upon
      his late Proprietor again, from whom he had withdrawn a little for the
      better display of him to the Yard; 'as I am not accustomed to speak in
      public, and as I have made a rather lengthy speech, all circumstances
      considered, I shall bring my observations to a close by requesting you to
      get out of this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Last of the Patriarchs had been so seized by assault, and required so
      much room to catch an idea in, an so much more room to turn it in, that he
      had not a word to offer in reply. He appeared to be meditating some
      Patriarchal way out of his delicate position, when Mr Pancks, once more
      suddenly applying the trigger to his hat, shot it off again with his
      former dexterity. On the preceding occasion, one or two of the Bleeding
      Heart Yarders had obsequiously picked it up and handed it to its owner;
      but Mr Pancks had now so far impressed his audience, that the Patriarch
      had to turn and stoop for it himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      Quick as lightning, Mr Pancks, who, for some moments, had had his right
      hand in his coat pocket, whipped out a pair of shears, swooped upon the
      Patriarch behind, and snipped off short the sacred locks that flowed upon
      his shoulders. In a paroxysm of animosity and rapidity, Mr Pancks then
      caught the broad-brimmed hat out of the astounded Patriarch's hand, cut it
      down into a mere stewpan, and fixed it on the Patriarch's head.
    </p>
    <p>
      Before the frightful results of this desperate action, Mr Pancks himself
      recoiled in consternation. A bare-polled, goggle-eyed, big-headed
      lumbering personage stood staring at him, not in the least impressive, not
      in the least venerable, who seemed to have started out of the earth to ask
      what was become of Casby. After staring at this phantom in return, in
      silent awe, Mr Pancks threw down his shears, and fled for a place of
      hiding, where he might lie sheltered from the consequences of his crime.
      Mr Pancks deemed it prudent to use all possible despatch in making off,
      though he was pursued by nothing but the sound of laughter in Bleeding
      Heart Yard, rippling through the air and making it ring again.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0069" id="link2HCH0069"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 33. Going!
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he changes of a fevered room are slow and fluctuating; but the changes of
      the fevered world are rapid and irrevocable.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was Little Dorrit's lot to wait upon both kinds of change. The
      Marshalsea walls, during a portion of every day, again embraced her in
      their shadows as their child, while she thought for Clennam, worked for
      him, watched him, and only left him, still to devote her utmost love and
      care to him. Her part in the life outside the gate urged its pressing
      claims upon her too, and her patience untiringly responded to them. Here
      was Fanny, proud, fitful, whimsical, further advanced in that disqualified
      state for going into society which had so much fretted her on the evening
      of the tortoise-shell knife, resolved always to want comfort, resolved not
      to be comforted, resolved to be deeply wronged, and resolved that nobody
      should have the audacity to think her so. Here was her brother, a weak,
      proud, tipsy, young old man, shaking from head to foot, talking as
      indistinctly as if some of the money he plumed himself upon had got into
      his mouth and couldn't be got out, unable to walk alone in any act of his
      life, and patronising the sister whom he selfishly loved (he always had
      that negative merit, ill-starred and ill-launched Tip!) because he
      suffered her to lead him. Here was Mrs Merdle in gauzy mourning&mdash;the
      original cap whereof had possibly been rent to pieces in a fit of grief,
      but had certainly yielded to a highly becoming article from the Parisian
      market&mdash;warring with Fanny foot to foot, and breasting her with her
      desolate bosom every hour in the day. Here was poor Mr Sparkler, not
      knowing how to keep the peace between them, but humbly inclining to the
      opinion that they could do no better than agree that they were both
      remarkably fine women, and that there was no nonsense about either of them&mdash;for
      which gentle recommendation they united in falling upon him frightfully.
      Then, too, here was Mrs General, got home from foreign parts, sending a
      Prune and a Prism by post every other day, demanding a new Testimonial by
      way of recommendation to some vacant appointment or other. Of which
      remarkable gentlewoman it may be finally observed, that there surely never
      was a gentlewoman of whose transcendent fitness for any vacant appointment
      on the face of this earth, so many people were (as the warmth of her
      Testimonials evinced) so perfectly satisfied&mdash;or who was so very
      unfortunate in having a large circle of ardent and distinguished admirers,
      who never themselves happened to want her in any capacity.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the first crash of the eminent Mr Merdle's decease, many important
      persons had been unable to determine whether they should cut Mrs Merdle,
      or comfort her. As it seemed, however, essential to the strength of their
      own case that they should admit her to have been cruelly deceived, they
      graciously made the admission, and continued to know her. It followed that
      Mrs Merdle, as a woman of fashion and good breeding who had been
      sacrificed to the wiles of a vulgar barbarian (for Mr Merdle was found out
      from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, the moment he was
      found out in his pocket), must be actively championed by her order for her
      order's sake. She returned this fealty by causing it to be understood that
      she was even more incensed against the felonious shade of the deceased
      than anybody else was; thus, on the whole, she came out of her furnace
      like a wise woman, and did exceedingly well.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sparkler's lordship was fortunately one of those shelves on which a
      gentleman is considered to be put away for life, unless there should be
      reasons for hoisting him up with the Barnacle crane to a more lucrative
      height. That patriotic servant accordingly stuck to his colours (the
      Standard of four Quarterings), and was a perfect Nelson in respect of
      nailing them to the mast. On the profits of his intrepidity, Mrs Sparkler
      and Mrs Merdle, inhabiting different floors of the genteel little temple
      of inconvenience to which the smell of the day before yesterday's soup and
      coach-horses was as constant as Death to man, arrayed themselves to fight
      it out in the lists of Society, sworn rivals. And Little Dorrit, seeing
      all these things as they developed themselves, could not but wonder,
      anxiously, into what back corner of the genteel establishment Fanny's
      children would be poked by-and-by, and who would take care of those unborn
      little victims.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur being far too ill to be spoken with on subjects of emotion or
      anxiety, and his recovery greatly depending on the repose into which his
      weakness could be hushed, Little Dorrit's sole reliance during this heavy
      period was on Mr Meagles. He was still abroad; but she had written to him
      through his daughter, immediately after first seeing Arthur in the
      Marshalsea and since, confiding her uneasiness to him on the points on
      which she was most anxious, but especially on one. To that one, the
      continued absence of Mr Meagles abroad, instead of his comforting presence
      in the Marshalsea, was referable.
    </p>
    <p>
      Without disclosing the precise nature of the documents that had fallen
      into Rigaud's hands, Little Dorrit had confided the general outline of
      that story to Mr Meagles, to whom she had also recounted his fate. The old
      cautious habits of the scales and scoop at once showed Mr Meagles the
      importance of recovering the original papers; wherefore he wrote back to
      Little Dorrit, strongly confirming her in the solicitude she expressed on
      that head, and adding that he would not come over to England 'without
      making some attempt to trace them out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      By this time Mr Henry Gowan had made up his mind that it would be
      agreeable to him not to know the Meagleses. He was so considerate as to
      lay no injunctions on his wife in that particular; but he mentioned to Mr
      Meagles that personally they did not appear to him to get on together, and
      that he thought it would be a good thing if&mdash;politely, and without
      any scene, or anything of that sort&mdash;they agreed that they were the
      best fellows in the world, but were best apart. Poor Mr Meagles, who was
      already sensible that he did not advance his daughter's happiness by being
      constantly slighted in her presence, said 'Good, Henry! You are my Pet's
      husband; you have displaced me, in the course of nature; if you wish it,
      good!' This arrangement involved the contingent advantage, which perhaps
      Henry Gowan had not foreseen, that both Mr and Mrs Meagles were more
      liberal than before to their daughter, when their communication was only
      with her and her young child: and that his high spirit found itself better
      provided with money, without being under the degrading necessity of
      knowing whence it came.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Meagles, at such a period, naturally seized an occupation with great
      ardour. He knew from his daughter the various towns which Rigaud had been
      haunting, and the various hotels at which he had been living for some time
      back. The occupation he set himself was to visit these with all discretion
      and speed, and, in the event of finding anywhere that he had left a bill
      unpaid, and a box or parcel behind, to pay such bill, and bring away such
      box or parcel.
    </p>
    <p>
      With no other attendant than Mother, Mr Meagles went upon his pilgrimage,
      and encountered a number of adventures. Not the least of his difficulties
      was, that he never knew what was said to him, and that he pursued his
      inquiries among people who never knew what he said to them. Still, with an
      unshaken confidence that the English tongue was somehow the mother tongue
      of the whole world, only the people were too stupid to know it, Mr Meagles
      harangued innkeepers in the most voluble manner, entered into loud
      explanations of the most complicated sort, and utterly renounced replies
      in the native language of the respondents, on the ground that they were
      'all bosh.' Sometimes interpreters were called in; whom Mr Meagles
      addressed in such idiomatic terms of speech, as instantly to extinguish
      and shut up&mdash;which made the matter worse. On a balance of the
      account, however, it may be doubted whether he lost much; for, although he
      found no property, he found so many debts and various associations of
      discredit with the proper name, which was the only word he made
      intelligible, that he was almost everywhere overwhelmed with injurious
      accusations. On no fewer than four occasions the police were called in to
      receive denunciations of Mr Meagles as a Knight of Industry, a
      good-for-nothing, and a thief, all of which opprobrious language he bore
      with the best temper (having no idea what it meant), and was in the most
      ignominious manner escorted to steam-boats and public carriages, to be got
      rid of, talking all the while, like a cheerful and fluent Briton as he
      was, with Mother under his arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, in his own tongue, and in his own head, Mr Meagles was a clear,
      shrewd, persevering man. When he had 'worked round,' as he called it, to
      Paris in his pilgrimage, and had wholly failed in it so far, he was not
      disheartened. 'The nearer to England I follow him, you see, Mother,'
      argued Mr Meagles, 'the nearer I am likely to come to the papers, whether
      they turn up or no. Because it is only reasonable to conclude that he
      would deposit them somewhere where they would be safe from people over in
      England, and where they would yet be accessible to himself, don't you
      see?'
    </p>
    <p>
      At Paris Mr Meagles found a letter from Little Dorrit, lying waiting for
      him; in which she mentioned that she had been able to talk for a minute or
      two with Mr Clennam about this man who was no more; and that when she told
      Mr Clennam that his friend Mr Meagles, who was on his way to see him, had
      an interest in ascertaining something about the man if he could, he had
      asked her to tell Mr Meagles that he had been known to Miss Wade, then
      living in such a street at Calais. 'Oho!' said Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      As soon afterwards as might be in those Diligence days, Mr Meagles rang
      the cracked bell at the cracked gate, and it jarred open, and the
      peasant-woman stood in the dark doorway, saying, 'Ice-say! Seer! Who?' In
      acknowledgment of whose address, Mr Meagles murmured to himself that there
      was some sense about these Calais people, who really did know something of
      what you and themselves were up to; and returned, 'Miss Wade, my dear.' He
      was then shown into the presence of Miss Wade.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's some time since we met,' said Mr Meagles, clearing his throat; 'I
      hope you have been pretty well, Miss Wade?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Without hoping that he or anybody else had been pretty well, Miss Wade
      asked him to what she was indebted for the honour of seeing him again? Mr
      Meagles, in the meanwhile, glanced all round the room without observing
      anything in the shape of a box.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, the truth is, Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, in a comfortable,
      managing, not to say coaxing voice, 'it is possible that you may be able
      to throw a light upon a little something that is at present dark. Any
      unpleasant bygones between us are bygones, I hope. Can't be helped now.
      You recollect my daughter? Time changes so! A mother!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In his innocence, Mr Meagles could not have struck a worse key-note. He
      paused for any expression of interest, but paused in vain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That is not the subject you wished to enter on?' she said, after a cold
      silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no,' returned Mr Meagles. 'No. I thought your good nature might&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought you knew,' she interrupted, with a smile, 'that my good nature
      is not to be calculated upon?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't say so,' said Mr Meagles; 'you do yourself an injustice. However,
      to come to the point.' For he was sensible of having gained nothing by
      approaching it in a roundabout way. 'I have heard from my friend Clennam,
      who, you will be sorry to hear, has been and still is very ill&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      He paused again, and again she was silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;that you had some knowledge of one Blandois, lately killed in
      London by a violent accident. Now, don't mistake me! I know it was a
      slight knowledge,' said Mr Meagles, dexterously forestalling an angry
      interruption which he saw about to break. 'I am fully aware of that. It
      was a slight knowledge, I know. But the question is,' Mr Meagles's voice
      here became comfortable again, 'did he, on his way to England last time,
      leave a box of papers, or a bundle of papers, or some papers or other in
      some receptacle or other&mdash;any papers&mdash;with you: begging you to
      allow him to leave them here for a short time, until he wanted them?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The question is?' she repeated. 'Whose question is?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mine,' said Mr Meagles. 'And not only mine but Clennam's question, and
      other people's question. Now, I am sure,' continued Mr Meagles, whose
      heart was overflowing with Pet, 'that you can't have any unkind feeling
      towards my daughter; it's impossible. Well! It's her question, too; being
      one in which a particular friend of hers is nearly interested. So here I
      am, frankly to say that is the question, and to ask, Now, did he?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Upon my word,' she returned, 'I seem to be a mark for everybody who knew
      anything of a man I once in my life hired, and paid, and dismissed, to aim
      their questions at!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, don't,' remonstrated Mr Meagles, 'don't! Don't take offence, because
      it's the plainest question in the world, and might be asked of any one.
      The documents I refer to were not his own, were wrongfully obtained, might
      at some time or other be troublesome to an innocent person to have in
      keeping, and are sought by the people to whom they really belong. He
      passed through Calais going to London, and there were reasons why he
      should not take them with him then, why he should wish to be able to put
      his hand upon them readily, and why he should distrust leaving them with
      people of his own sort. Did he leave them here? I declare if I knew how to
      avoid giving you offence, I would take any pains to do it. I put the
      question personally, but there's nothing personal in it. I might put it to
      any one; I have put it already to many people. Did he leave them here? Did
      he leave anything here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then unfortunately, Miss Wade, you know nothing about them?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know nothing about them. I have now answered your unaccountable
      question. He did not leave them here, and I know nothing about them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There!' said Mr Meagles rising. 'I am sorry for it; that's over; and I
      hope there is not much harm done.&mdash;Tattycoram well, Miss Wade?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Harriet well? O yes!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have put my foot in it again,' said Mr Meagles, thus corrected. 'I
      can't keep my foot out of it here, it seems. Perhaps, if I had thought
      twice about it, I might never have given her the jingling name. But, when
      one means to be good-natured and sportive with young people, one doesn't
      think twice. Her old friend leaves a kind word for her, Miss Wade, if you
      should think proper to deliver it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She said nothing as to that; and Mr Meagles, taking his honest face out of
      the dull room, where it shone like a sun, took it to the Hotel where he
      had left Mrs Meagles, and where he made the Report: 'Beaten, Mother; no
      effects!' He took it next to the London Steam Packet, which sailed in the
      night; and next to the Marshalsea.
    </p>
    <p>
      The faithful John was on duty when Father and Mother Meagles presented
      themselves at the wicket towards nightfall. Miss Dorrit was not there
      then, he said; but she had been there in the morning, and invariably came
      in the evening. Mr Clennam was slowly mending; and Maggy and Mrs Plornish
      and Mr Baptist took care of him by turns. Miss Dorrit was sure to come
      back that evening before the bell rang. There was the room the Marshal had
      lent her, up-stairs, in which they could wait for her, if they pleased.
      Mistrustful that it might be hazardous to Arthur to see him without
      preparation, Mr Meagles accepted the offer; and they were left shut up in
      the room, looking down through its barred window into the jail.
    </p>
    <p>
      The cramped area of the prison had such an effect on Mrs Meagles that she
      began to weep, and such an effect on Mr Meagles that he began to gasp for
      air. He was walking up and down the room, panting, and making himself
      worse by laboriously fanning himself with her handkerchief, when he turned
      towards the opening door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh? Good gracious!' said Mr Meagles, 'this is not Miss Dorrit! Why,
      Mother, look! Tattycoram!'
    </p>
    <p>
      No other. And in Tattycoram's arms was an iron box some two feet square.
      Such a box had Affery Flintwinch seen, in the first of her dreams, going
      out of the old house in the dead of the night under Double's arm. This,
      Tattycoram put on the ground at her old master's feet: this, Tattycoram
      fell on her knees by, and beat her hands upon, crying half in exultation
      and half in despair, half in laughter and half in tears, 'Pardon, dear
      Master; take me back, dear Mistress; here it is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tatty!' exclaimed Mr Meagles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What you wanted!' said Tattycoram. 'Here it is! I was put in the next
      room not to see you. I heard you ask her about it, I heard her say she
      hadn't got it, I was there when he left it, and I took it at bedtime and
      brought it away. Here it is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, my girl,' cried Mr Meagles, more breathless than before, 'how did
      you come over?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I came in the boat with you. I was sitting wrapped up at the other end.
      When you took a coach at the wharf, I took another coach and followed you
      here. She never would have given it up after what you had said to her
      about its being wanted; she would sooner have sunk it in the sea, or burnt
      it. But, here it is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The glow and rapture that the girl was in, with her 'Here it is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She never wanted it to be left, I must say that for her; but he left it,
      and I knew well that after what you said, and after her denying it, she
      never would have given it up. But here it is! Dear Master, dear Mistress,
      take me back again, and give me back the dear old name! Let this intercede
      for me. Here it is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Father and Mother Meagles never deserved their names better than when they
      took the headstrong foundling-girl into their protection again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I have been so wretched,' cried Tattycoram, weeping much more,
      'always so unhappy, and so repentant! I was afraid of her from the first
      time I saw her. I knew she had got a power over me through understanding
      what was bad in me so well. It was a madness in me, and she could raise it
      whenever she liked. I used to think, when I got into that state, that
      people were all against me because of my first beginning; and the kinder
      they were to me, the worse fault I found in them. I made it out that they
      triumphed above me, and that they wanted to make me envy them, when I know&mdash;when
      I even knew then&mdash;that they never thought of such a thing. And my
      beautiful young mistress not so happy as she ought to have been, and I
      gone away from her! Such a brute and a wretch as she must think me! But
      you'll say a word to her for me, and ask her to be as forgiving as you two
      are? For I am not so bad as I was,' pleaded Tattycoram; 'I am bad enough,
      but not so bad as I was, indeed. I have had Miss Wade before me all this
      time, as if it was my own self grown ripe&mdash;turning everything the
      wrong way, and twisting all good into evil. I have had her before me all
      this time, finding no pleasure in anything but keeping me as miserable,
      suspicious, and tormenting as herself. Not that she had much to do, to do
      that,' cried Tattycoram, in a closing great burst of distress, 'for I was
      as bad as bad could be. I only mean to say, that, after what I have gone
      through, I hope I shall never be quite so bad again, and that I shall get
      better by very slow degrees. I'll try very hard. I won't stop at
      five-and-twenty, sir, I'll count five-and-twenty hundred, five-and-twenty
      thousand!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Another opening of the door, and Tattycoram subsided, and Little Dorrit
      came in, and Mr Meagles with pride and joy produced the box, and her
      gentle face was lighted up with grateful happiness and joy. The secret was
      safe now! She could keep her own part of it from him; he should never know
      of her loss; in time to come he should know all that was of import to
      himself; but he should never know what concerned her only. That was all
      passed, all forgiven, all forgotten.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, my dear Miss Dorrit,' said Mr Meagles; 'I am a man of business&mdash;or
      at least was&mdash;and I am going to take my measures promptly, in that
      character. Had I better see Arthur to-night?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think not to-night. I will go to his room and ascertain how he is. But
      I think it will be better not to see him to-night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am much of your opinion, my dear,' said Mr Meagles, 'and therefore I
      have not been any nearer to him than this dismal room. Then I shall
      probably not see him for some little time to come. But I'll explain what I
      mean when you come back.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She left the room. Mr Meagles, looking through the bars of the window, saw
      her pass out of the Lodge below him into the prison-yard. He said gently,
      'Tattycoram, come to me a moment, my good girl.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She went up to the window.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see that young lady who was here just now&mdash;that little, quiet,
      fragile figure passing along there, Tatty? Look. The people stand out of
      the way to let her go by. The men&mdash;see the poor, shabby fellows&mdash;pull
      off their hats to her quite politely, and now she glides in at that
      doorway. See her, Tattycoram?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have heard tell, Tatty, that she was once regularly called the child of
      this place. She was born here, and lived here many years. I can't breathe
      here. A doleful place to be born and bred in, Tattycoram?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes indeed, sir!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If she had constantly thought of herself, and settled with herself that
      everybody visited this place upon her, turned it against her, and cast it
      at her, she would have led an irritable and probably an useless existence.
      Yet I have heard tell, Tattycoram, that her young life has been one of
      active resignation, goodness, and noble service. Shall I tell you what I
      consider those eyes of hers, that were here just now, to have always
      looked at, to get that expression?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, if you please, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Duty, Tattycoram. Begin it early, and do it well; and there is no
      antecedent to it, in any origin or station, that will tell against us with
      the Almighty, or with ourselves.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They remained at the window, Mother joining them and pitying the
      prisoners, until she was seen coming back. She was soon in the room, and
      recommended that Arthur, whom she had left calm and composed, should not
      be visited that night.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good!' said Mr Meagles, cheerily. 'I have not a doubt that's best. I
      shall trust my remembrances then, my sweet nurse, in your hands, and I
      well know they couldn't be in better. I am off again to-morrow morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit, surprised, asked him where?
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said Mr Meagles, 'I can't live without breathing. This place
      has taken my breath away, and I shall never get it back again until Arthur
      is out of this place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How is that a reason for going off again to-morrow morning?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You shall understand,' said Mr Meagles. 'To-night we three will put up at
      a City Hotel. To-morrow morning, Mother and Tattycoram will go down to
      Twickenham, where Mrs Tickit, sitting attended by Dr Buchan in the
      parlour-window, will think them a couple of ghosts; and I shall go abroad
      again for Doyce. We must have Dan here. Now, I tell you, my love, it's of
      no use writing and planning and conditionally speculating upon this and
      that and the other, at uncertain intervals and distances; we must have
      Doyce here. I devote myself at daybreak to-morrow morning, to bringing
      Doyce here. It's nothing to me to go and find him. I'm an old traveller,
      and all foreign languages and customs are alike to me&mdash;I never
      understand anything about any of 'em. Therefore I can't be put to any
      inconvenience. Go at once I must, it stands to reason; because I can't
      live without breathing freely; and I can't breathe freely until Arthur is
      out of this Marshalsea. I am stifled at the present moment, and have
      scarcely breath enough to say this much, and to carry this precious box
      down-stairs for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They got into the street as the bell began to ring, Mr Meagles carrying
      the box. Little Dorrit had no conveyance there: which rather surprised
      him. He called a coach for her and she got into it, and he placed the box
      beside her when she was seated. In her joy and gratitude she kissed his
      hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't like that, my dear,' said Mr Meagles. 'It goes against my feeling
      of what's right, that <i>you</i> should do homage to <i>me</i>&mdash;at
      the Marshalsea Gate.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She bent forward, and kissed his cheek.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You remind me of the days,' said Mr Meagles, suddenly drooping&mdash;'but
      she's very fond of him, and hides his faults, and thinks that no one sees
      them&mdash;and he certainly is well connected and of a very good family!'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was the only comfort he had in the loss of his daughter, and if he made
      the most of it, who could blame him?
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0070" id="link2HCH0070"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 34. Gone
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n a healthy autumn day, the Marshalsea prisoner, weak but otherwise
      restored, sat listening to a voice that read to him. On a healthy autumn
      day; when the golden fields had been reaped and ploughed again, when the
      summer fruits had ripened and waned, when the green perspectives of hops
      had been laid low by the busy pickers, when the apples clustering in the
      orchards were russet, and the berries of the mountain ash were crimson
      among the yellowing foliage. Already in the woods, glimpses of the hardy
      winter that was coming were to be caught through unaccustomed openings
      among the boughs where the prospect shone defined and clear, free from the
      bloom of the drowsy summer weather, which had rested on it as the bloom
      lies on the plum. So, from the seashore the ocean was no longer to be seen
      lying asleep in the heat, but its thousand sparkling eyes were open, and
      its whole breadth was in joyful animation, from the cool sand on the beach
      to the little sails on the horizon, drifting away like autumn-tinted
      leaves that had drifted from the trees.
    </p>
    <p>
      Changeless and barren, looking ignorantly at all the seasons with its
      fixed, pinched face of poverty and care, the prison had not a touch of any
      of these beauties on it. Blossom what would, its bricks and bars bore
      uniformly the same dead crop. Yet Clennam, listening to the voice as it
      read to him, heard in it all that great Nature was doing, heard in it all
      the soothing songs she sings to man. At no Mother's knee but hers had he
      ever dwelt in his youth on hopeful promises, on playful fancies, on the
      harvests of tenderness and humility that lie hidden in the early-fostered
      seeds of the imagination; on the oaks of retreat from blighting winds,
      that have the germs of their strong roots in nursery acorns. But, in the
      tones of the voice that read to him, there were memories of an old feeling
      of such things, and echoes of every merciful and loving whisper that had
      ever stolen to him in his life.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the voice stopped, he put his hand over his eyes, murmuring that the
      light was strong upon them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit put the book by, and presently arose quietly to shade the
      window. Maggy sat at her needlework in her old place. The light softened,
      Little Dorrit brought her chair closer to his side.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This will soon be over now, dear Mr Clennam. Not only are Mr Doyce's
      letters to you so full of friendship and encouragement, but Mr Rugg says
      his letters to him are so full of help, and that everybody (now a little
      anger is past) is so considerate, and speaks so well of you, that it will
      soon be over now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear girl. Dear heart. Good angel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You praise me far too much. And yet it is such an exquisite pleasure to
      me to hear you speak so feelingly, and to&mdash;and to see,' said Little
      Dorrit, raising her eyes to his, 'how deeply you mean it, that I cannot
      say Don't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He lifted her hand to his lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been here many, many times, when I have not seen you, Little
      Dorrit?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I have been here sometimes when I have not come into the room.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very often?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Rather often,' said Little Dorrit, timidly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Every day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think,' said Little Dorrit, after hesitating, 'that I have been here at
      least twice every day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He might have released the little light hand after fervently kissing it
      again; but that, with a very gentle lingering where it was, it seemed to
      court being retained. He took it in both of his, and it lay softly on his
      breast.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Little Dorrit, it is not my imprisonment only that will soon be
      over. This sacrifice of you must be ended. We must learn to part again,
      and to take our different ways so wide asunder. You have not forgotten
      what we said together, when you came back?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'O no, I have not forgotten it. But something has been&mdash;You feel
      quite strong to-day, don't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite strong.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The hand he held crept up a little nearer his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you feel quite strong enough to know what a great fortune I have got?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall be very glad to be told. No fortune can be too great or good for
      Little Dorrit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been anxiously waiting to tell you. I have been longing and
      longing to tell you. You are sure you will not take it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are quite sure you will not take half of it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never, dear Little Dorrit!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she looked at him silently, there was something in her affectionate
      face that he did not quite comprehend: something that could have broken
      into tears in a moment, and yet that was happy and proud.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You will be sorry to hear what I have to tell you about Fanny. Poor Fanny
      has lost everything. She has nothing left but her husband's income. All
      that papa gave her when she married was lost as your money was lost. It
      was in the same hands, and it is all gone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Arthur was more shocked than surprised to hear it. 'I had hoped it might
      not be so bad,' he said: 'but I had feared a heavy loss there, knowing the
      connection between her husband and the defaulter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. It is all gone. I am very sorry for Fanny; very, very, very sorry
      for poor Fanny. My poor brother too!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Had <i>he</i> property in the same hands?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes! And it's all gone.&mdash;How much do you think my own great fortune
      is?'
    </p>
    <p>
      As Arthur looked at her inquiringly, with a new apprehension on him, she
      withdrew her hand, and laid her face down on the spot where it had rested.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have nothing in the world. I am as poor as when I lived here. When papa
      came over to England, he confided everything he had to the same hands, and
      it is all swept away. O my dearest and best, are you quite sure you will
      not share my fortune with me now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Locked in his arms, held to his heart, with his manly tears upon her own
      cheek, she drew the slight hand round his neck, and clasped it in its
      fellow-hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never to part, my dearest Arthur; never any more, until the last! I never
      was rich before, I never was proud before, I never was happy before, I am
      rich in being taken by you, I am proud in having been resigned by you, I
      am happy in being with you in this prison, as I should be happy in coming
      back to it with you, if it should be the will of GOD, and comforting and
      serving you with all my love and truth. I am yours anywhere, everywhere! I
      love you dearly! I would rather pass my life here with you, and go out
      daily, working for our bread, than I would have the greatest fortune that
      ever was told, and be the greatest lady that ever was honoured. O, if poor
      papa may only know how blest at last my heart is, in this room where he
      suffered for so many years!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Maggy had of course been staring from the first, and had of course been
      crying her eyes out long before this. Maggy was now so overjoyed that,
      after hugging her little mother with all her might, she went down-stairs
      like a clog-hornpipe to find somebody or other to whom to impart her
      gladness. Whom should Maggy meet but Flora and Mr F.'s Aunt opportunely
      coming in? And whom else, as a consequence of that meeting, should Little
      Dorrit find waiting for herself, when, a good two or three hours
      afterwards, she went out?
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora's eyes were a little red, and she seemed rather out of spirits. Mr
      F.'s Aunt was so stiffened that she had the appearance of being past
      bending by any means short of powerful mechanical pressure. Her bonnet was
      cocked up behind in a terrific manner; and her stony reticule was as rigid
      as if it had been petrified by the Gorgon's head, and had got it at that
      moment inside. With these imposing attributes, Mr F.'s Aunt, publicly
      seated on the steps of the Marshal's official residence, had been for the
      two or three hours in question a great boon to the younger inhabitants of
      the Borough, whose sallies of humour she had considerably flushed herself
      by resenting at the point of her umbrella, from time to time.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Painfully aware, Miss Dorrit, I am sure,' said Flora, 'that to propose an
      adjournment to any place to one so far removed by fortune and so courted
      and caressed by the best society must ever appear intruding even if not a
      pie-shop far below your present sphere and a back-parlour though a civil
      man but if for the sake of Arthur&mdash;cannot overcome it more improper
      now than ever late Doyce and Clennam&mdash;one last remark I might wish to
      make one last explanation I might wish to offer perhaps your good nature
      might excuse under pretence of three kidney ones the humble place of
      conversation.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rightly interpreting this rather obscure speech, Little Dorrit returned
      that she was quite at Flora's disposition. Flora accordingly led the way
      across the road to the pie-shop in question: Mr F.'s Aunt stalking across
      in the rear, and putting herself in the way of being run over, with a
      perseverance worthy of a better cause.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the 'three kidney ones,' which were to be a blind to the
      conversation, were set before them on three little tin platters, each
      kidney one ornamented with a hole at the top, into which the civil man
      poured hot gravy out of a spouted can as if he were feeding three lamps,
      Flora took out her pocket-handkerchief.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If Fancy's fair dreams,' she began, 'have ever pictured that when Arthur&mdash;cannot
      overcome it pray excuse me&mdash;was restored to freedom even a pie as far
      from flaky as the present and so deficient in kidney as to be in that
      respect like a minced nutmeg might not prove unacceptable if offered by
      the hand of true regard such visions have for ever fled and all is
      cancelled but being aware that tender relations are in contemplation beg
      to state that I heartily wish well to both and find no fault with either
      not the least, it may be withering to know that ere the hand of Time had
      made me much less slim than formerly and dreadfully red on the slightest
      exertion particularly after eating I well know when it takes the form of a
      rash, it might have been and was not through the interruption of parents
      and mental torpor succeeded until the mysterious clue was held by Mr F.
      still I would not be ungenerous to either and I heartily wish well to
      both.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit took her hand, and thanked her for all her old kindness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Call it not kindness,' returned Flora, giving her an honest kiss, 'for
      you always were the best and dearest little thing that ever was if I may
      take the liberty and even in a money point of view a saving being
      Conscience itself though I must add much more agreeable than mine ever was
      to me for though not I hope more burdened than other people's yet I have
      always found it far readier to make one uncomfortable than comfortable and
      evidently taking a greater pleasure in doing it but I am wandering, one
      hope I wish to express ere yet the closing scene draws in and it is that I
      do trust for the sake of old times and old sincerity that Arthur will know
      that I didn't desert him in his misfortunes but that I came backwards and
      forwards constantly to ask if I could do anything for him and that I sat
      in the pie-shop where they very civilly fetched something warm in a
      tumbler from the hotel and really very nice hours after hours to keep him
      company over the way without his knowing it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora really had tears in her eyes now, and they showed her to great
      advantage.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Over and above which,' said Flora, 'I earnestly beg you as the dearest
      thing that ever was if you'll still excuse the familiarity from one who
      moves in very different circles to let Arthur understand that I don't know
      after all whether it wasn't all nonsense between us though pleasant at the
      time and trying too and certainly Mr F. did work a change and the spell
      being broken nothing could be expected to take place without weaving it
      afresh which various circumstances have combined to prevent of which
      perhaps not the least powerful was that it was not to be, I am not
      prepared to say that if it had been agreeable to Arthur and had brought
      itself about naturally in the first instance I should not have been very
      glad being of a lively disposition and moped at home where papa
      undoubtedly is the most aggravating of his sex and not improved since
      having been cut down by the hand of the Incendiary into something of which
      I never saw the counterpart in all my life but jealousy is not my
      character nor ill-will though many faults.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Without having been able closely to follow Mrs Finching through this
      labyrinth, Little Dorrit understood its purpose, and cordially accepted
      the trust.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The withered chaplet my dear,' said Flora, with great enjoyment, 'is then
      perished the column is crumbled and the pyramid is standing upside down
      upon its what's-his-name call it not giddiness call it not weakness call
      it not folly I must now retire into privacy and look upon the ashes of
      departed joys no more but taking a further liberty of paying for the
      pastry which has formed the humble pretext of our interview will for ever
      say Adieu!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr F.'s Aunt, who had eaten her pie with great solemnity, and who had been
      elaborating some grievous scheme of injury in her mind since her first
      assumption of that public position on the Marshal's steps, took the
      present opportunity of addressing the following Sibyllic apostrophe to the
      relict of her late nephew.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bring him for'ard, and I'll chuck him out o' winder!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flora tried in vain to soothe the excellent woman by explaining that they
      were going home to dinner. Mr F.'s Aunt persisted in replying, 'Bring him
      for'ard and I'll chuck him out o' winder!' Having reiterated this demand
      an immense number of times, with a sustained glare of defiance at Little
      Dorrit, Mr F.'s Aunt folded her arms, and sat down in the corner of the
      pie-shop parlour; steadfastly refusing to budge until such time as 'he'
      should have been 'brought for'ard,' and the chucking portion of his
      destiny accomplished.
    </p>
    <p>
      In this condition of things, Flora confided to Little Dorrit that she had
      not seen Mr F.'s Aunt so full of life and character for weeks; that she
      would find it necessary to remain there 'hours perhaps,' until the
      inexorable old lady could be softened; and that she could manage her best
      alone. They parted, therefore, in the friendliest manner, and with the
      kindest feeling on both sides.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr F.'s Aunt holding out like a grim fortress, and Flora becoming in need
      of refreshment, a messenger was despatched to the hotel for the tumbler
      already glanced at, which was afterwards replenished. With the aid of its
      content, a newspaper, and some skimming of the cream of the pie-stock,
      Flora got through the remainder of the day in perfect good humour; though
      occasionally embarrassed by the consequences of an idle rumour which
      circulated among the credulous infants of the neighbourhood, to the effect
      that an old lady had sold herself to the pie-shop to be made up, and was
      then sitting in the pie-shop parlour, declining to complete her contract.
      This attracted so many young persons of both sexes, and, when the shades
      of evening began to fall, occasioned so much interruption to the business,
      that the merchant became very pressing in his proposals that Mr F.'s Aunt
      should be removed. A conveyance was accordingly brought to the door,
      which, by the joint efforts of the merchant and Flora, this remarkable
      woman was at last induced to enter; though not without even then putting
      her head out of the window, and demanding to have him 'brought for'ard'
      for the purpose originally mentioned. As she was observed at this time to
      direct baleful glances towards the Marshalsea, it has been supposed that
      this admirably consistent female intended by 'him,' Arthur Clennam. This,
      however, is mere speculation; who the person was, who, for the
      satisfaction of Mr F.'s Aunt's mind, ought to have been brought forward
      and never was brought forward, will never be positively known.
    </p>
    <p>
      The autumn days went on, and Little Dorrit never came to the Marshalsea
      now and went away without seeing him. No, no, no.
    </p>
    <p>
      One morning, as Arthur listened for the light feet that every morning
      ascended winged to his heart, bringing the heavenly brightness of a new
      love into the room where the old love had wrought so hard and been so
      true; one morning, as he listened, he heard her coming, not alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Arthur,' said her delighted voice outside the door, 'I have some one
      here. May I bring some one in?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had thought from the tread there were two with her. He answered 'Yes,'
      and she came in with Mr Meagles. Sun-browned and jolly Mr Meagles looked,
      and he opened his arms and folded Arthur in them, like a sun-browned and
      jolly father.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now I am all right,' said Mr Meagles, after a minute or so. 'Now it's
      over. Arthur, my dear fellow, confess at once that you expected me
      before.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I did,' said Arthur; 'but Amy told me&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Little Dorrit. Never any other name.' (It was she who whispered it.)
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;But my Little Dorrit told me that, without asking for any further
      explanation, I was not to expect you until I saw you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And now you see me, my boy,' said Mr Meagles, shaking him by the hand
      stoutly; 'and now you shall have any explanation and every explanation.
      The fact is, I <i>was</i> here&mdash;came straight to you from the
      Allongers and Marshongers, or I should be ashamed to look you in the face
      this day,&mdash;but you were not in company trim at the moment, and I had
      to start off again to catch Doyce.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Poor Doyce!' sighed Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't call him names that he don't deserve,' said Mr Meagles. '<i>He's</i>
      not poor; <i>he's</i> doing well enough. Doyce is a wonderful fellow over
      there. I assure you he is making out his case like a house a-fire. He has
      fallen on his legs, has Dan. Where they don't want things done and find a
      man to do 'em, that man's off his legs; but where they do want things done
      and find a man to do 'em, that man's on his legs. You won't have occasion
      to trouble the Circumlocution Office any more. Let me tell you, Dan has
      done without 'em!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What a load you take from my mind!' cried Arthur. 'What happiness you
      give me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Happiness?' retorted Mr Meagles. 'Don't talk about happiness till you see
      Dan. I assure you Dan is directing works and executing labours over
      yonder, that it would make your hair stand on end to look at. He's no
      public offender, bless you, now! He's medalled and ribboned, and starred
      and crossed, and I don't-know-what all'd, like a born nobleman. But we
      mustn't talk about that over here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, egad!' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head very seriously, 'he must
      hide all those things under lock and key when he comes over here. They
      won't do over here. In that particular, Britannia is a Britannia in the
      Manger&mdash;won't give her children such distinctions herself, and won't
      allow them to be seen when they are given by other countries. No, no,
      Dan!' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head again. 'That won't do here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you had brought me (except for Doyce's sake) twice what I have lost,'
      cried Arthur, 'you would not have given me the pleasure that you give me
      in this news.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, of course, of course,' assented Mr Meagles. 'Of course I know that,
      my good fellow, and therefore I come out with it in the first burst. Now,
      to go back, about catching Doyce. I caught Doyce. Ran against him among a
      lot of those dirty brown dogs in women's nightcaps a great deal too big
      for 'em, calling themselves Arabs and all sorts of incoherent races. <i>You</i>
      know 'em! Well! He was coming straight to me, and I was going to him, and
      so we came back together.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Doyce in England!' exclaimed Arthur.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There!' said Mr Meagles, throwing open his arms. 'I am the worst man in
      the world to manage a thing of this sort. I don't know what I should have
      done if I had been in the diplomatic line&mdash;right, perhaps! The long
      and short of it is, Arthur, we have both been in England this fortnight.
      And if you go on to ask where Doyce is at the present moment, why, my
      plain answer is&mdash;here he is! And now I can breathe again at last!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Doyce darted in from behind the door, caught Arthur by both hands, and
      said the rest for himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There are only three branches of my subject, my dear Clennam,' said
      Doyce, proceeding to mould them severally, with his plastic thumb, on the
      palm of his hand, 'and they're soon disposed of. First, not a word more
      from you about the past. There was an error in your calculations. I know
      what that is. It affects the whole machine, and failure is the
      consequence. You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another
      time. I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every
      failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too
      sensible a man not to learn from this failure. So much for firstly.
      Secondly. I was sorry you should have taken it so heavily to heart, and
      reproached yourself so severely; I was travelling home night and day to
      put matters right, with the assistance of our friend, when I fell in with
      our friend as he has informed you. Thirdly. We two agreed, that, after
      what you had undergone, after your distress of mind, and after your
      illness, it would be a pleasant surprise if we could so far keep quiet as
      to get things perfectly arranged without your knowledge, and then come and
      say that all the affairs were smooth, that everything was right, that the
      business stood in greater want of you than ever it did, and that a new and
      prosperous career was opened before you and me as partners. That's
      thirdly. But you know we always make an allowance for friction, and so I
      have reserved space to close in. My dear Clennam, I thoroughly confide in
      you; you have it in your power to be quite as useful to me as I have, or
      have had, it in my power to be useful to you; your old place awaits you,
      and wants you very much; there is nothing to detain you here one half-hour
      longer.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was silence, which was not broken until Arthur had stood for some
      time at the window with his back towards them, and until his little wife
      that was to be had gone to him and stayed by him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I made a remark a little while ago,' said Daniel Doyce then, 'which I am
      inclined to think was an incorrect one. I said there was nothing to detain
      you here, Clennam, half an hour longer. Am I mistaken in supposing that
      you would rather not leave here till to-morrow morning? Do I know, without
      being very wise, where you would like to go, direct from these walls and
      from this room?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You do,' returned Arthur. 'It has been our cherished purpose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very well!' said Doyce. 'Then, if this young lady will do me the honour
      of regarding me for four-and-twenty hours in the light of a father, and
      will take a ride with me now towards Saint Paul's Churchyard, I dare say I
      know what we want to get there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit and he went out together soon afterwards, and Mr Meagles
      lingered behind to say a word to his friend.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think, Arthur, you will not want Mother and me in the morning and we
      will keep away. It might set Mother thinking about Pet; she's a
      soft-hearted woman. She's best at the Cottage, and I'll stay there and
      keep her company.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With that they parted for the time. And the day ended, and the night
      ended, and the morning came, and Little Dorrit, simply dressed as usual
      and having no one with her but Maggy, came into the prison with the
      sunshine. The poor room was a happy room that morning. Where in the world
      was there a room so full of quiet joy!
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear love,' said Arthur. 'Why does Maggy light the fire? We shall be
      gone directly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I asked her to do it. I have taken such an odd fancy. I want you to burn
      something for me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only this folded paper. If you will put it in the fire with your own
      hand, just as it is, my fancy will be gratified.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Superstitious, darling Little Dorrit? Is it a charm?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is anything you like best, my own,' she answered, laughing with
      glistening eyes and standing on tiptoe to kiss him, 'if you will only
      humour me when the fire burns up.'
    </p>
    <p>
      So they stood before the fire, waiting: Clennam with his arm about her
      waist, and the fire shining, as fire in that same place had often shone,
      in Little Dorrit's eyes. 'Is it bright enough now?' said Arthur. 'Quite
      bright enough now,' said Little Dorrit. 'Does the charm want any words to
      be said?' asked Arthur, as he held the paper over the flame. 'You can say
      (if you don't mind) "I love you!"' answered Little Dorrit. So he said it,
      and the paper burned away.
    </p>
    <p>
      They passed very quietly along the yard; for no one was there, though many
      heads were stealthily peeping from the windows. Only one face, familiar of
      old, was in the Lodge. When they had both accosted it, and spoken many
      kind words, Little Dorrit turned back one last time with her hand
      stretched out, saying, 'Good-bye, good John! I hope you will live very
      happy, dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Then they went up the steps of the neighbouring Saint George's Church, and
      went up to the altar, where Daniel Doyce was waiting in his paternal
      character. And there was Little Dorrit's old friend who had given her the
      Burial Register for a pillow; full of admiration that she should come back
      to them to be married, after all.
    </p>
    <p>
      And they were married with the sun shining on them through the painted
      figure of Our Saviour on the window. And they went into the very room
      where Little Dorrit had slumbered after her party, to sign the Marriage
      Register. And there, Mr Pancks, (destined to be chief clerk to Doyce and
      Clennam, and afterwards partner in the house), sinking the Incendiary in
      the peaceful friend, looked in at the door to see it done, with Flora
      gallantly supported on one arm and Maggy on the other, and a back-ground
      of John Chivery and father and other turnkeys who had run round for the
      moment, deserting the parent Marshalsea for its happy child. Nor had Flora
      the least signs of seclusion upon her, notwithstanding her recent
      declaration; but, on the contrary, was wonderfully smart, and enjoyed the
      ceremonies mightily, though in a fluttered way.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little Dorrit's old friend held the inkstand as she signed her name, and
      the clerk paused in taking off the good clergyman's surplice, and all the
      witnesses looked on with special interest. 'For, you see,' said Little
      Dorrit's old friend, 'this young lady is one of our curiosities, and has
      come now to the third volume of our Registers. Her birth is in what I call
      the first volume; she lay asleep, on this very floor, with her pretty head
      on what I call the second volume; and she's now a-writing her little name
      as a bride in what I call the third volume.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
      <img src="images/0726m.jpg" alt="0726m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0726.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      They all gave place when the signing was done, and Little Dorrit and her
      husband walked out of the church alone. They paused for a moment on the
      steps of the portico, looking at the fresh perspective of the street in
      the autumn morning sun's bright rays, and then went down.
    </p>
    <p>
      Went down into a modest life of usefulness and happiness. Went down to
      give a mother's care, in the fulness of time, to Fanny's neglected
      children no less than to their own, and to leave that lady going into
      Society for ever and a day. Went down to give a tender nurse and friend to
      Tip for some few years, who was never vexed by the great exactions he made
      of her in return for the riches he might have given her if he had ever had
      them, and who lovingly closed his eyes upon the Marshalsea and all its
      blighted fruits. They went quietly down into the roaring streets,
      inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and shade,
      the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the froward and the vain,
      fretted and chafed, and made their usual uproar.
    </p>
    <div style="height: 6em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>

<pre>



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