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Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens
CONTENTS
Preface to the 1857 Edition
BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY
1. Sun and Shadow
2. Fellow Travellers
3. Home
4. Mrs Flintwinch has a Dream
5. Family Affairs
6. The Father of the Marshalsea
7. The Child of the Marshalsea
8. The Lock
9. little Mother
10. Containing the whole Science of Government
11. Let Loose
12. Bleeding Heart Yard
13. Patriarchal
14. Little Dorrit's Party
15. Mrs Flintwinch has another Dream
16. Nobody's Weakness
17. Nobody's Rival
18. Little Dorrit's Lover
19. The Father of the Marshalsea in two or three Relations
20. Moving in Society
21. Mr Merdle's Complaint
22. A Puzzle
23. Machinery in Motion
24. Fortune-Telling
25. Conspirators and Others
26. Nobody's State of Mind
27. Five-and-Twenty
28. Nobody's Disappearance
29. Mrs Flintwinch goes on Dreaming
30. The Word of a Gentleman
31. Spirit
32. More Fortune-Telling
33. Mrs Merdle's Complaint
34. A Shoal of Barnacles
35. What was behind Mr Pancks on Little Dorrit's Hand
36. The Marshalsea becomes an Orphan
BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES
1. Fellow Travellers
2. Mrs General
3. On the Road
4. A Letter from Little Dorrit
5. Something Wrong Somewhere
6. Something Right Somewhere
7. Mostly, Prunes and Prism
8. The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that 'It Never Does'
9. Appearance and Disappearance
10. The Dreams of Mrs Flintwinch thicken
11. A Letter from Little Dorrit
12. In which a Great Patriotic Conference is holden
13. The Progress of an Epidemic
14. Taking Advice
15. No just Cause or Impediment why these Two Persons should
not be joined together
16. Getting on
17. Missing
18. A Castle in the Air
19. The Storming of the Castle in the Air
20. Introduces the next
21. The History of a Self-Tormentor
22. Who Passes by this Road so late?
23. Mistress Affery makes a Conditional Promise, respecting her Dreams
24. The Evening of a Long Day
25. The Chief Butler Resigns the Seals of Office
26. Reaping the Whirlwind
27. The Pupil of the Marshalsea
28. An Appearance in the Marshalsea
29. A Plea in the Marshalsea
30. Closing in
31. Closed
32. Going
33. Going!
34. Gone
PREFACE TO THE 1857 EDITION
I 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.
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.
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.'
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.
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!
London
May 1857
BOOK THE FIRST
POVERTY
CHAPTER 1
Sun and Shadow
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
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.
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--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.
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.
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--dreamily dotted
with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously
dozing, spitting, and begging--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.
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.
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.
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.
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!'
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--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.
The other man was lying on the stone floor, covered with a coarse
brown coat.
'Get up, pig!' growled the first. 'Don't sleep when I am hungry.'
'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.'
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.
'Say what the hour is,' grumbled the first man.
'The mid-day bells will ring--in forty minutes.' When he made the
little pause, he had looked round the prison-room, as if for
certain information.
'You are a clock. How is it that you always know?'
'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 there.
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--
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!'
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.
'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--the guillotine locked
up.'
The other man spat suddenly on the pavement, and gurgled in his
throat.
Some lock below gurgled in its 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.
'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.'
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--'
'You don't recommend the master!' said John Baptist, showing his
teeth as he smiled.
'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!'
'Poor birds!' said the child.
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.
'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--this veal in
savoury jelly is for Monsieur Rigaud. Again--these three white
little loaves are for Monsieur Rigaud. Again, this cheese--again,
this wine--again, this tobacco--all for Monsieur Rigaud. Lucky
bird!'
The child put all these things between the bars into the soft,
Smooth, well-shaped hand, with evident dread--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.
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.
'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 that's 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.'
'To try me, eh?' said Rigaud, pausing, knife in hand and morsel in
mouth.
'You have said it. To try you.'
'There is no news for me?' asked John Baptist, who had begun,
contentedly, to munch his bread.
The jailer shrugged his shoulders.
'Lady of mine! Am I to lie here all my life, my father?'
'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.'
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.
'Adieu, my birds!' said the keeper of the prison, taking his pretty
child in his arms, and dictating the words with a kiss.
'Adieu, my birds!' the pretty child repeated.
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:
'Who passes by this road so late?
Compagnon de la Majolaine!
Who passes by this road so late?
Always gay!'
that John Baptist felt it a point of honour to reply at the grate,
and in good time and tune, though a little hoarsely:
'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
Compagnon de la Majolaine!
Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
Always gay!'
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.
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.
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.
'How do you find the bread?'
'A little dry, but I have my old sauce here,' returned John
Baptist, holding up his knife.
'How sauce?'
'I can cut my bread so--like a melon. Or so--like an omelette. Or
so--like a fried fish. Or so--like Lyons sausage,' said John
Baptist, demonstrating the various cuts on the bread he held, and
soberly chewing what he had in his mouth.
'Here!' cried Monsieur Rigaud. 'You may drink. You may finish
this.'
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.
'Put the bottle by with the rest,' said Rigaud.
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.
'Here! You may have one.'
'A thousand thanks, my master!' John Baptist said in his own
language, and with the quick conciliatory manner of his own
countrymen.
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.
'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!'
It came languishing down a square funnel that blinded a window in
the staircase wall, through which the sky was never seen--nor
anything else.
'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?'
'Surely, surely!'
'How long have we been here?'
'I, eleven weeks, to-morrow night at midnight. You, nine weeks and
three days, at five this afternoon.'
'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?'
'Never!'
'Have you ever thought of looking to me to do any kind of work?'
John Baptist answered with that peculiar back-handed shake of the
right forefinger which is the most expressive negative in the
Italian language.
'No! You knew from the first moment when you saw me here, that I
was a gentleman?'
'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!'
'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!'
He changed his posture to a sitting one, crying with a triumphant
air:
'Here I am! See me! Shaken out of destiny's dice-box into the
company of a mere smuggler;--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.'
Again his moustache went up, and his nose came down.
'What's the hour now?' he asked, with a dry hot pallor upon him,
rather difficult of association with merriment.
'A little half-hour after mid-day.'
'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.'
Signor Cavalletto took his cigarette from between his parted lips,
and showed more momentary discomfiture than might have been
expected.
'I am a'--Monsieur Rigaud stood up to say it--'I am a cosmopolitan
gentleman. I own no particular country. My father was Swiss--
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.'
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.
'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--how do your lawyers live--your politicians--your
intriguers--your men of the Exchange?'
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.
'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, they become poor. I put up at the Cross of Gold,--
kept then by Monsieur Henri Barronneau--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;--
at any rate, not a rare misfortune, that. It happens without any
aid of mine, pretty often.'
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.
'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.'
He had a certain air of being a handsome man--which he was not; and
a certain air of being a well-bred man--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.
'Be it as it may, Madame Barronneau approved of me. That is not to
prejudice me, I hope?'
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--an infinite number of times.
' 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--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.'
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.
'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--and I, too, a man whose
character it is to govern! One night, Madame Rigaud and myself
were walking amicably--I may say like lovers--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--assassinating her!'
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.
'Well,' he demanded after a silence, 'have you nothing to say to
all that?'
'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.
'What do you mean?'
John Baptist polished his knife in silence.
'Do you mean that I have not represented the case correctly?'
'Al-tro!' returned John Baptist. The word was an apology now, and
stood for 'Oh, by no means!'
'What then?'
'Presidents and tribunals are so prejudiced.'
'Well,' cried the other, uneasily flinging the end of his cloak
over his shoulder with an oath, 'let them do their worst!'
'Truly I think they will,' murmured John Baptist to himself, as he
bent his head to put his knife in his sash.
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.
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.
'Now, Monsieur Rigaud,' said he, pausing for a moment at the grate,
with his keys in his hands, 'have the goodness to come out.'
'I am to depart in state, I see?'
'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.'
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.'
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.
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.
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--the key
turned--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.
Still, in his captivity, like a lower animal--like some impatient
ape, or roused bear of the smaller species--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.
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!
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.
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--and so deep
a hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered of the time when
it shall give up its dead.
CHAPTER 2
Fellow Travellers
'No more of yesterday's howling over yonder to-day, Sir; is there?'
'I have heard none.'
'Then you may be sure there is none. When these people howl, they
howl to be heard.'
'Most people do, I suppose.'
'Ah! but these people are always howling. Never happy otherwise.'
'Do you mean the Marseilles people?'
'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--victory or death, or blazes, or something.'
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.
'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!'
'Tiresome enough,' said the other. 'But we shall be out to-day.'
'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?'
'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--'
'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--and I have got it.'
'You bear it very well, Mr Meagles,' said the second speaker,
smiling.
'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, NOW I have got it, NOW it has developed
itself, NOW I am in for it, NOW 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.'
'Well, Mr Meagles, say no more about it now it's over,' urged a
cheerful feminine voice.
'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?'
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.
'There! Never mind, Father, never mind!' said Mrs Meagles. 'For
goodness sake content yourself with Pet.'
'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.
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.
'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?'
'It has had the result of making even quarantine enjoyable.'
'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.'
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.
'I beg your pardon,' said he, starting.
'Not at all,' said Mr Meagles.
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.
'May I ask you,' he said, 'what is the name of--'
'Tattycoram?' Mr Meagles struck in. 'I have not the least idea.'
'I thought,' said the other, 'that--'
'Tattycoram?' suggested Mr Meagles again.
'Thank you--that Tattycoram was a name; and I have several times
wondered at the oddity of it.'
'Why, the fact is,' said Mr Meagles, 'Mrs Meagles and myself are,
you see, practical people.'
'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.
'Practical people. So one day, five or six years ago now, when we
took Pet to church at the Foundling--you have heard of the
Foundling Hospital in London? Similar to the Institution for the
Found Children in Paris?'
'I have seen it.'
'Well! One day when we took Pet to church there to hear the
music--because, as practical people, it is the business of our
lives to show her everything that we think can please her--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."'
The other, not unmoved, assented.
'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--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.'
'And the name itself--'
'By George!' said Mr Meagles, 'I was forgetting the name itself.
Why, she was called in the Institution, Harriet Beadle--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?'
'As an Englishman who has been more than twenty years in China,
no.'
'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.'
'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--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--may I ask you, if I have not gathered from your good wife
that you have had other children?'
'No. No,' said Mr Meagles. 'Not exactly other children. One
other child.'
'I am afraid I have inadvertently touched upon a tender theme.'
'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--exactly like Pet's--above the table, as she stood on tiptoe
holding by it.'
'Ah! indeed, indeed!'
'Yes, and being practical people, a result has gradually sprung up
in the minds of Mrs Meagles and myself which perhaps you may--or
perhaps you may not--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.'
'I understand you,' said the other, gently.
'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--especially at about
this time of her life--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.'
'I thank you,' said the other, 'very heartily for your confidence.'
'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?'
'Indeed, no. I am such a waif and stray everywhere, that I am
liable to be drifted where any current may set.'
'It's extraordinary to me--if you'll excuse my freedom in saying
so--that you don't go straight to London,' said Mr Meagles, in the
tone of a confidential adviser.
'Perhaps I shall.'
'Ay! But I mean with a will.'
'I have no will. That is to say,'--he coloured a little,--'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.'
'Light 'em up again!' said Mr Meagles.
'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--nothing graceful or gentle anywhere,
and the void in my cowed heart everywhere--this was my childhood,
if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of
life.'
'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.'
'If the people who are usually called practical, were practical in
your direction--'
'Why, so they are!' said Mr Meagles.
'Are they indeed?'
'Well, I suppose so,' returned Mr Meagles, thinking about it. 'Eh?
One can but be practical, and Mrs Meagles and myself are nothing
else.'
'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.'
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.
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.
'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.'
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--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.
The reserved Englishwoman took up Mr Meagles in his last remark.
'Do you mean that a prisoner forgives his prison?' said she, slowly
and with emphasis.
'That was my speculation, Miss Wade. I don't pretend to know
positively how a prisoner might feel. I never was one before.'
'Mademoiselle doubts,' said the French gentleman in his own
language, 'it's being so easy to forgive?'
'I do.'
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?'
'That I am not credulous?' said Miss Wade.
'Not exactly that. Put it another way. That you can't believe it
easy to forgive.'
'My experience,' she quietly returned, 'has been correcting my
belief in many respects, for some years. It is our natural
progress, I have heard.'
'Well, well! But it's not natural to bear malice, I hope?' said Mr
Meagles, cheerily.
'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.'
'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?'
The French gentleman courteously replied, 'Plait-il?' To which Mr
Meagles returned with much satisfaction, 'You are right. My
opinion.'
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.
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.
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'--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.
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.
'Are you'--she turned her eyes, and Pet faltered--'expecting any
one to meet you here, Miss Wade?'
'I? No.'
'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?'
'I thank him, but I know there can be none.'
'We are afraid,' said Pet, sitting down beside her, shyly and half
tenderly, 'that you will feel quite deserted when we are all gone.'
'Indeed!'
'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.'
'I have not intended to make it understood that I did wish it.'
'No. Of course. But--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.'
'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.'
'I am obliged to you,' she returned, 'but my arrangements are made,
and I prefer to go my own way in my own manner.'
'Do you?' said Mr Meagles to himself, as he surveyed her with a
puzzled look. 'Well! There's character in that, too.'
'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!'
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.
'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.'
'In our course through life we shall meet the people who are coming
to meet us, 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.'
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.
'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
YOU, 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.'
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.
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.
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.
'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!'
'My poor girl, what is the matter?'
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.'
'O yes it does; I am sorry to see you so.'
'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.'
'Afraid of me?'
'Yes. You seem to come like my own anger, my own malice, my own--
whatever it is--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.
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.
'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.
'You must have patience.'
'I WON'T have patience!'
'If they take much care of themselves, and little or none of you,
you must not mind it.'
I WILL mind it.'
'Hush! Be more prudent. You forget your dependent position.'
'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!'
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.
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.
'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!'
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.
CHAPTER 3
Home
It 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--all TABOO 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--or the worst, according to the probabilities.
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--what
secular want could they possibly have upon their seventh day?
Clearly they could want nothing but a stringent policeman.
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 WON'T come,
they WON'T come, they WON'T 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.
'Thank Heaven!' said Clennam, when the hour struck, and the bell
stopped.
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!'
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?--a piece of curiosity that he
really, in a frock and drawers, was not in a condition to satisfy--
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 & 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--
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--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.
'Beg pardon, sir,' said a brisk waiter, rubbing the table. 'Wish
see bed-room?'
'Yes. I have just made up my mind to do it.'
'Chaymaid!' cried the waiter. 'Gelen box num seven wish see room!'
'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.'
'Deed, sir? Chaymaid! Gelen box num seven, not go sleep here,
gome.'
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.
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.
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.
'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!'
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.
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.'
Mr Arthur stepped in and shut the door.
'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.'
'How is my mother?'
'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.
'I doubt if your mother will approve of your coming home on the
Sabbath, Arthur,' he said, shaking his head warily.
'You wouldn't have me go away again?'
'Oh! I? I? I am not the master. It's not what _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.'
'Will you tell her that I have come home?'
'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.
'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.' 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.'
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.
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.
'Mother, this is a change from your old active habits.'
'The world has narrowed to these dimensions, Arthur,' she rep lied,
glancing round the room. 'It is well for me that I never set my
heart upon its hollow vanities.'
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.
'Do you never leave your room, mother?'
'What with my rheumatic affection, and what with its attendant
debility or nervous weakness--names are of no matter now--I have
lost the use of my limbs. I never leave my room. I have not been
outside this door for--tell him for how long,' she said, speaking
over her shoulder.
'A dozen year next Christmas,' returned a cracked voice out of the
dimness behind.
'Is that Affery?' said Arthur, looking towards it.
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.
'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?'
'Yes, mother.'
'Does it snow?'
'Snow, mother? And we only yet in September?'
'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,--her being beyond the
reach of the seasons seemed but a fit sequence to her being beyond
the reach of all changing emotions.
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.
'I see that you received the packet I sent you on my father's
death, safely, mother.'
'You see.'
'I never knew my father to show so much anxiety on any subject, as
that his watch should be sent straight to you.'
'I keep it here as a remembrance of your father.'
'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--I think he had no
consciousness of pain in his short illness--when I saw him turn
himself in his bed and try to open it.'
'Was your father, then, not wandering in his mind when he tried to
open it?'
'No. He was quite sensible at that time.'
Mrs Clennam shook her head; whether in dismissal of the deceased or
opposing herself to her son's opinion, was not clearly expressed.
'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.'
Mrs Clennam signified assent; then added, 'No more of business on
this day,' and then added, 'Affery, it is nine o'clock.'
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--sternly,
fiercely, wrathfully--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.
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.
'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--that was nothing; if his mother had been sheathed in
brass there would have been no new barrier between them--and
followed the old man and woman down-stairs.
The latter asked him, when they were alone together among the heavy
shadows of the dining-room, would he have some supper?
'No, Affery, no supper.'
'You shall if you like,' said Affery. 'There's her tomorrow's
partridge in the larder--her first this year; say the word and I'll
cook it.'
No, he had not long dined, and could eat nothing.
'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.'
No; nor would he have that, either.
'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?'
'Yes, yes.'
'Well then, don't you be cowed. You're clever, Arthur, an't you?
'
He nodded, as she seemed to expect an answer in the affirmative.
'Then stand up against them! She's awful clever, and none but a
clever one durst say a word to her. HE'S a clever one--oh, he's a
clever one!--and he gives it her when he has a mind to't, he does!'
'Your husband does?'
'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!'
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.
'Now, Affery,' said he, 'now, woman, what are you doing? Can't you
find Master Arthur something or another to pick at?'
Master Arthur repeated his recent refusal to pick at anything.
'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.
'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--which she suspects, though we have left it to you
to tell her--won't go off smoothly.'
'I have given up everything in life for the business, and the time
came for me to give up that.'
'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.'
'You will never be asked to begin it again for me, Jeremiah.'
' Good. I'm glad to hear it; because I should have had to decline
it, if I had been. That's enough--as your mother says--and more
than enough of such matters on a Sabbath night. Affery, woman,
have you found what you want yet?'
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.
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.
He drew in his head again, sat down at the bedside, and looked on
at Affery Flintwinch making the bed.
'Affery, you were not married when I went away.'
She screwed her mouth into the form of saying 'No,' shook her head,
and proceeded to get a pillow into its case.
'How did it happen?'
'Why, Jeremiah, o' course,' said Affery, with an end of the pillow-
case between her teeth.
'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.'
'No more should I,' said Mrs Flintwinch, tying the pillow tightly
in its case.
'That's what I mean. When did you begin to think otherwise?'
'Never begun to think otherwise at all,' said Mrs Flintwinch.
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?'
'How could you help yourself from being married!'
'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.'
'Well?'
'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 me to do? Nothing.'
'Was it my mother's project, then?'
'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-MI-ah?" Oh!
he's a clever one!'
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.
'Well?' said Arthur again.
'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.
'Well?'
'Well?' repeated Mrs Flintwinch, 'I think so! I sits me down and
says it. Well!--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--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.'
'In good faith, I believe so.'
'And so you may, Arthur.'
'Affery, what girl was that in my mother's room just now?'
'Girl?' said Mrs Flintwinch in a rather sharp key.
'It was a girl, surely, whom I saw near you--almost hidden in the
dark corner?'
'Oh! She? Little Dorrit? She's nothing; she's a whim of--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.'
'I suffered enough from my mother's separating us, to remember her.
I recollect her very well.'
'Have you got another?'
'No.'
'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.'
'And how do you know that, Affery?'
'Them two clever ones have been speaking about it.--There's
Jeremiah on the stairs!' She was gone in a moment.
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--so much
was wanting in it to think about, so much that might have been
better directed and happier to speculate upon--to make him a
dreamer, after all.
CHAPTER 4
Mrs Flintwinch has a Dream
When 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.
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.
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--
unlike the last theme in the mind, according to the observation of
most philosophers--the subject of Mrs Flintwinch's dream.
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.
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.
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--hey?--Lord forgive us!--Mrs
Flintwinch muttered some ejaculation to this effect, and turned
giddy.
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.
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.
'Who's that? What's the matter?' cried the sleeper, starting.
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.'
'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.'
'I have had a short nap,' said Double.
'Half-past two o'clock in the morning,' muttered Jeremiah.
'Where's your hat? Where's your coat? Where's the box?'
'All here,' said Double, tying up his throat with sleepy
carefulness in a shawl. 'Stop a minute. Now give me the sleeve--
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.'
'Drink it!' returned Jeremiah, 'and--choke yourself, I was going to
say--but go, I mean.'At the same time he produced the identical
port-wine bottle, and filled a wine-glass.
'Her port-wine, I believe?' said Double, tasting it as if he were
in the Docks, with hours to spare. 'Her health.'
He took a sip.
'Your health!'
He took another sip.
'His health!'
He took another sip.
'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.
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.
'Why, Affery, woman--Affery!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'What have you
been dreaming of? Wake up, wake up! What's the matter?'
'The--the matter, Jeremiah?' gasped Mrs Flintwinch, rolling her
eyes.
'Why, Affery, woman--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--such a dose!'
Mrs Flintwinch thanked him and crept into bed.
CHAPTER 5
Family Affairs
As 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--as it might be, to hang
himself more effectually--and her son appeared.
'Are you any better this morning, mother?'
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.'
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.
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.
'Shall I speak of our affairs, mother? Are you inclined to enter
upon business?'
'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.'
'There was much to arrange before I could leave; and when I did
leave, I travelled a little for rest and relief.'
She turned her face towards him, as not having heard or understood
his last words.
'For rest and relief.'
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.
'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.'
'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.'
'It is quite enough, mother, to know that the business is
completed. Shall I proceed then?'
'Why not?' she said, in her frozen way.
'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.'
'I know what you mean,' she answered, in a qualified tone.
'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--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?'
'Do you consider,' she returned, without answering his question,
'that a house serves no purpose, Arthur, in sheltering your infirm
and afflicted--justly infirm and righteously afflicted--mother?'
'I was speaking only of business purposes.'
'With what object?'
'I am coming to it.'
'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.'
'Mother, I grieve to hear you speak like this, though I have had my
apprehensions that you would--'
'You knew I would. You knew ME,' she interrupted.
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.'
'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.'
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.
'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!'
'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.'
'Us all! Who are us all?'
'Yourself, myself, my dead father.'
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.
'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?'
'I am waiting to hear why you recall it.'
He lowered his voice, and said, with manifest reluctance, and
against his will:
'I want to ask you, mother, whether it ever occurred to you to
suspect--'
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.
'--that he had any secret remembrance which caused him trouble of
mind--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?'
'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.'
'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?'
Looking at him wrathfully, she bent herself back in her chair to
keep him further off, but gave him no reply.
'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. '
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.
'In grasping at money and in driving hard bargains--I have begun,
and I must speak of such things now, mother--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?'
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.
'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 ME 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.'
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--still holding her arm up in its shield-like posture, as
if he were striking at her, and she warding off the blow.
A girl came hurrying in, frightened.
'Send Flintwinch here!'
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.'
'Flintwinch!' said the mother, 'look at my son. Look at him!'
'Well, I AM looking at him,' said Flintwinch.
She stretched out the arm with which she had shielded herself, and
as she went on, pointed at the object of her anger.
'In the very hour of his return almost--before the shoe upon his
foot is dry--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!'
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.
'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?'
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.
'Flintwinch, give me that book!'
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.
' 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.'
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.
'Now,' said Jeremiah; 'premising that I'm not going to stand
between you two, will you let me ask (as I have been called in, and
made a third) what is all this about?'
'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.'
'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?'
'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.'
'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?'
'I tell him so now.'
'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.'
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?'
'He has relinquished it.'
'In favour of nobody, I suppose?'
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.'
'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.'
Jeremiah, whose eyes glistened as if they saw money, darted a
sudden look at the son, which seemed to say, 'I owe YOU no thanks
for this; YOU 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.
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--placing the
act to her credit, no doubt, in her Eternal Day-Book.
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.
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.
Little Dorrit let herself out to do needlework. At so much a day--
or at so little--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.
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--not very
cunningly, it would seem, for she deceived no one--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.
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--it must needs have been very shabby to look at all so, being
so neat--were Little Dorrit as she sat at work.
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'--Mrs Affery's perpetual reference, in
whom her personality was swallowed up--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.
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.
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--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. 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.
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.'
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.
'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.'
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.
But Little Dorrit?
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.
CHAPTER 6
The Father of the Marshalsea
Thirty 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.
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.
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--neatly epitomising
the administration of most of the public affairs in our right
little, tight little, island.
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.
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--like all the rest of them, the turnkey on the lock
said--that he was going out again directly.
He was a shy, retiring man; well-looking, though in an effeminate
style; with a mild voice, curling hair, and irresolute hands--rings
upon the fingers in those days--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.
'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?'
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.'
'She is very delicate and inexperienced indeed.'
'That,' said the turnkey, 'is agen her.'
'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'raps,' quoth the turnkey, 'she'll take a ackney coach.'
'Perhaps.' The irresolute fingers went to the trembling lip. 'I
hope she will. She may not think of it.'
'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.'
'She has no brother or sister.'
'Niece, nevy, cousin, serwant, young 'ooman, greengrocer.--Dash it!
One or another on 'em,' said the turnkey, repudiating beforehand
the refusal of all his suggestions.
'I fear--I hope it is not against the rules--that she will bring
the children.'
'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?'
'Two,' said the debtor, lifting his irresolute hand to his lip
again, and turning into the prison.
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!'
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.
'Got a room now; haven't you?' the turnkey asked the debtor after
a week or two.
'Yes, I have got a very good room.'
'Any little sticks a coming to furnish it?' said the turnkey.
'I expect a few necessary articles of furniture to be delivered by
the carrier, this afternoon.'
'Missis and little 'uns a coming to keep you company?' asked the
turnkey.
'Why, yes, we think it better that we should not be scattered, even
for a few weeks.'
'Even for a few weeks, OF course,' replied the turnkey. And he
followed him again with his eyes, and nodded his head seven times
when he was gone.
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.
'Out?' said the turnkey, 'he'll never get out, unless his creditors
take him by the shoulders and shove him out.'
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.
'As anybody might a known she would be,' said the turnkey.
'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!'
'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.'
The turnkey conducted him--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--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.
'Come in!' cried a voice inside.
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.
'Doctor,' said the turnkey, 'here's a gentleman's wife in want of
you without a minute's loss of time!'
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--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--which appeared to be his way of washing himself--
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.
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.
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.
'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 THAT 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 ARE complete, I THINK!'
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:
'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.'
'Thank you, sir. But none on my accounts,' said Mrs Bangham.
'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.'
'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.'
'Mrs Bangham,' returned the doctor, 'I am not your business, thank
you, but you are mine. Never you mind ME, 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.'
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.
'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.'
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.
'Thank you,' said the doctor, 'thank you. Your good lady is quite
composed. Doing charmingly.'
'I am very happy and very thankful to know it,' said the debtor,
'though I little thought once, that--'
'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--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.
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.
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.
'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.'
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?'
New-comer would probably answer Yes.
'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--
beautiful! As to languages--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 him 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.'
When his youngest child was eight years old, his wife, who had long
been languishing away--of her own inherent weakness, not that she
retained any greater sensitiveness as to her place of abode than he
did--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.
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.
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.
'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.'
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--a Marshalsea generation might be
calculated as about three months--that the shabby old debtor with
the soft manner and the white hair, was the Father of the
Marshalsea.
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.
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--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--among a
mixture--necessarily a mixture--and very good air.
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.
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!'
He would look round surprised.'Me?' he would say, with a smile.
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?'
'I forgot to leave this,' the collegian would usually return, 'for
the Father of the Marshalsea.'
'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.
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.
'God bless you, sir,' he said in passing.
'And you,' benignantly returned the Father of the Marshalsea.
They were pretty far divided, going their several ways, when the
Plasterer called out, 'I say!--sir!' and came back to him.
'It ain't much,' said the Plasterer, putting a little pile of
halfpence in his hand, 'but it's well meant.'
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.
'How dare you!' he said to the man, and feebly burst into tears.
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.'
'Bless your soul, sir,' urged the Plasterer, 'I did indeed. I'd do
more by you than the rest of 'em do, I fancy.'
'What would you do?' he asked.
'I'd come back to see you, after I was let out.'
'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?'
'If I live a week you shall.'
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.
CHAPTER 7
The Child of the Marshalsea
The 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.
'By rights,' remarked the turnkey when she was first shown to him,
'I ought to be her godfather.'
The debtor irresolutely thought of it for a minute, and said,
'Perhaps you wouldn't object to really being her godfather?'
'Oh! _I_ don't object,' replied the turnkey, 'if you don't.'
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.'
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--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.'
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.
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.'
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.
'Thinking of the fields,' the turnkey said once, after watching
her, 'ain't you?'
'Where are they?' she inquired.
'Why, they're--over there, my dear,' said the turnkey, with a vague
flourish of his key. 'Just about there.'
'Does anybody open them, and shut them? Are they locked?'
The turnkey was discomfited. 'Well,' he said. 'Not in general.'
'Are they very pretty, Bob?' She called him Bob, by his own
particular request and instruction.
'Lovely. Full of flowers. There's buttercups, and there's
daisies, and there's'--the turnkey hesitated, being short of floral
nomenclature--'there's dandelions, and all manner of games.'
'Is it very pleasant to be there, Bob?'
'Prime,' said the turnkey.
'Was father ever there?'
'Hem!' coughed the turnkey. 'O yes, he was there, sometimes.'
'Is he sorry not to be there now?'
'N-not particular,' said the turnkey.
'Nor any of the people?' she asked, glancing at the listless crowd
within. 'O are you quite sure and certain, Bob?'
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.
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.
'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?'
'Settle it strictly on herself,' the professional gentleman would
complacently answer.
'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--how about that?'
'It would be settled on herself, and they would have no more legal
claim on it than you,' would be the professional answer.
'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?'
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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--no one
better--that a man so broken as to be the Father of the Marshalsea,
could be no father to his own children.
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.
'If you please, I was born here, sir.'
'Oh! You are the young lady, are you?' said the dancing-master,
surveying the small figure and uplifted face.
'Yes, sir.'
'And what can I do for you?' said the dancing-master.
'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--'
'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--the college-
rooms being of too confined proportions for the purpose--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.
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.
'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.'
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:
'Oh! You are the child, are you?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'I am sorry I haven't got anything for you,' said the milliner,
shaking her head.
'It's not that, ma'am. If you please I want to learn needle-work.'
'Why should you do that,' returned the milliner, 'with me before
you? It has not done me much good.'
'Nothing--whatever it is--seems to have done anybody much good who
comes here,' she returned in all simplicity; 'but I want to learn
just the same.'
'I am afraid you are so weak, you see,' the milliner objected.
'I don't think I am weak, ma'am.'
'And you are so very, very little, you see,' the milliner objected.
'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--who was not
morose or hard-hearted, only newly insolvent--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.
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.
The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family
group--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--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--
anything but soap.
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.
'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.'
'You surprise me. Why?'
'I think uncle wants a companion, father. He should be attended
to, and looked after.'
'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.'
This was to keep up the ceremony and pretence of his having no idea
that Amy herself went out by the day to work.
'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.'
'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.'
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.
'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.
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.
'Well, my dear,' said the turnkey, 'something ought to be done with
him. Suppose I try and get him into the law?'
'That would be so good of you, Bob!'
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.
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.
'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.
'I am so tired of it,' said Tip, 'that I have cut it.'
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.
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.
'God bless you, dear Tip. Don't be too proud to come and see us,
when you have made your fortune.'
'All right!' said Tip, and went.
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.
At length, after another interval of successorship to Mrs Bangham,
he found a pursuit for himself, and announced it.
'Amy, I have got a situation.'
'Have you really and truly, Tip?'
'All right. I shall do now. You needn't look anxious about me any
more, old girl.'
'What is it, Tip?'
'Why, you know Slingo by sight?'
'Not the man they call the dealer?'
'That's the chap. He'll be out on Monday, and he's going to give
me a berth.'
'What is he a dealer in, Tip?'
'Horses. All right! I shall do now, Amy.'
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--standing up at the window, to save
the twilight lingering above the wall--when he opened the door and
walked in.
She kissed and welcomed him; but was afraid to ask him any
questions. He saw how anxious and timid she was, and appeared
sorry.
'I am afraid, Amy, you'll be vexed this time. Upon my life I am!'
'I am very sorry to hear you say so, Tip. Have you come back?'
'Why--yes.'
'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.'
'Ah! But that's not the worst of it.'
'Not the worst of it?'
'Don't look so startled. No, Amy, not the worst of it. I have
come back, you see; but--DON'T look so startled--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.'
'Oh! Don't say you are a prisoner, Tip! Don't, don't!'
'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.'
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.
It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses than for her to
bring him 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.
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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER 8
The Lock
Arthur 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.
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.
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.
'Pray, sir,' said Arthur, repeating his question, 'what is this
place?'
'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.'
'The debtors' prison?'
'Sir,' said the old man, with the air of deeming it not quite
necessary to insist upon that designation, 'the debtors' prison.'
He turned himself about, and went on.
'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?'
'Any one can go IN,' replied the old man; plainly adding by the
significance of his emphasis, 'but it is not every one who can go
out.'
'Pardon me once more. Are you familiar with the place?'
'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.'
'I beg you to excuse me. I am not impertinently curious, but have
a good object. Do you know the name of Dorrit here?'
'My name, sir,' replied the old man most unexpectedly, 'is Dorrit.'
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--Mrs Clennam in
the city--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.'
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?'
'I do assure you that I am, and do entreat you to believe that I
am, in plain earnest.'
'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--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.'
He went on again, and Arthur accompanied him.
'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.'
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
'I found this gentleman,' said the uncle--'Mr Clennam, William, son
of Amy's friend--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.'
'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.'
'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.'
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.
'You are welcome to the Marshalsea, sir. I have welcomed many
gentlemen to these walls. Perhaps you are aware--my daughter Amy
may have mentioned that I am the Father of this place.'
'I--so I have understood,' said Arthur, dashing at the assertion.
'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--'
'Thank you,' returned Arthur. 'Not a morsel.'
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.
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.
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?'
'She is walking with Tip.'
'Tip--as you may know--is my son, Mr Clennam. He has been a little
wild, and difficult to settle, but his introduction to the world
was rather'--he shrugged his shoulders with a faint sigh, and
looked round the room--'a little adverse. Your first visit here,
sir?'
'my first.'
'You could hardly have been here since your boyhood without my
knowledge. It very seldom happens that anybody--of any
pretensions-any pretensions--comes here without being presented to
me.'
'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.
'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--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.'
'I don't remember his name, father.'
'Frederick, do you remember his name?'
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.
'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.'
'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.
'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--well--a--it's of no use to disguise the
fact--you must know, Mr Clennam, that it does sometimes occur that
people who come here desire to offer some little--Testimonial--to
the Father of the place.'
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.
'Sometimes,' he went on in a low, soft voice, agitated, and
clearing his throat every now and then; 'sometimes--hem--it takes
one shape and sometimes another; but it is generally--ha--Money.
And it is, I cannot but confess it, it is too often--hem--
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--ahem--
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--hem--are not accessible to
me. But it came out, through my admiring a very fine cluster of
geranium--beautiful cluster of geranium to be sure--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--hem--not all. He made a particular request, on
taking leave, that I would remove the paper in half an hour. I--
ha--I did so; and I found that it contained--ahem--two guineas. I
assure you, Mr Clennam, I have received--hem--Testimonials in many
ways, and of many degrees of value, and they have always been--ha--
unfortunately acceptable; but I never was more pleased than with
this--ahem--this particular Testimonial.'
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.
'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.'
'I only want my clean dress from Amy, father,' said the second
girl.
'And I my clothes,' said Tip.
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.
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!'
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.'
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.
'Allow me,' said the Father, 'to see you down-stairs.'
She had slipped out after the rest, and they were alone. 'Not on
any account,' said the visitor, hurriedly. 'Pray allow me to--'
chink, chink, chink.
'Mr Clennam,' said the Father, 'I am deeply, deeply--' But his
visitor had shut up his hand to stop the clinking, and had gone
down-stairs with great speed.
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.
'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.'
She was scared at first, but seemed to take courage while he spoke
to her.
'You are very good, sir. You speak very earnestly to me. But I--
but I wish you had not watched me.'
He understood the emotion with which she said it, to arise in her
father's behalf; and he respected it, and was silent.
'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.'
'Let me ask you one question before I leave. Have you known my
mother long?'
'I think two years, sir,--The bell has stopped.'
'How did you know her first? Did she send here for you?'
'No. She does not even know that I live here. We have a friend,
father and I--a poor labouring man, but the best of friends--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!'
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.
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.
'Caught, eh?' said the voice. 'You won't go home till morning.
Oh! It's you, is it, Mr Clennam?'
The voice was Tip's; and they stood looking at one another in the
prison-yard, as it began to rain.
'You've done it,' observed Tip; 'you must be sharper than that next
time.'
'But you are locked in too,' said Arthur.
'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.'
'Can I get any shelter?' asked Arthur. 'What had I better do?'
'We had better get hold of Amy first of all,' said Tip, referring
any difficulty to her as a matter of course.
'I would rather walk about all night--it's not much to do--than
give that trouble.'
'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.'
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.'
'I don't understand you.'
'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.'
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.
The unaccustomed visitor from outside, naturally assumed everybody
here to be prisoners--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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
What if his mother had an old reason she well knew for softening to
this poor girl! What if the prisoner now sleeping quietly--Heaven
grant it!--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!
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.'
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!'
CHAPTER 9
Little Mother
The 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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--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.
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.
'Do you know Miss Dorrit?' asked the new client.
The nondescript knew two Miss Dorrits; one who was born inside--
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.
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.
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.
'Dorrit?' said the little white-faced boy (Master Cripples in
fact). 'Mr Dorrit? Third bell and one knock.'
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.
'Ha!' said he, very slowly remembering Arthur, 'you were shut in
last night?'
'Yes, Mr Dorrit. I hope to meet your niece here presently.'
'Oh!' said he, pondering. 'Out of my brother's way? True. Would
you come up-stairs and wait for her?'
'Thank you.'
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--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--a half-finished
breakfast of coffee and toast for two persons was jumbled down
anyhow on a rickety table.
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.
'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.
'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.'
'Ha!' muttered the old man, 'yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!'
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.
'Amy, Mr Clennam. What do you think of her?'
'I am much impressed, Mr Dorrit, by all that I have seen of her and
thought of her.'
'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.'
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.
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.
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.
'Mr Clennam, Amy,' said her uncle, 'has been expecting you some
time.'
'I took the liberty of sending you a message.'
'I received the message, sir.'
'Are you going to my mother's this morning? I think not, for it is
past your usual hour.'
'Not to-day, sir. I am not wanted to-day.'
'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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
'I am sorry to hear you were so inconvenienced last night, sir, as
to be locked in. It was very unfortunate.'
It was nothing, he returned. He had had a very good bed.
'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.
'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.
'Were you ever there?'
'Oh no! Only into the kitchen to fetch hot water.'
To think of growing up with a kind of awe upon one as to the
luxuries of that superb establishment, the Marshalsea Hotel!
'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?'
'No, sir.'
'Do you think your father ever did?'
'No, sir.'
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:
'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?'
'No, sir.'
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.
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.
'Let me put you in a coach,' said Clennam, very nearly adding 'my
poor child.'
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.
'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--' she hesitated and trembled, and
tears rose in her eyes, but did not fall.
'To say to me--?'
'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.'
'My thoughts will never be unjust or harsh towards him, believe
me.'
'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.'
If ever pride were innocent, it was innocent in Little Dorrit when
she grew boastful of her father.
'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!'
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!
'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.'
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--indeed I don't wish it at all,
unless I should have spoken so confusedly, that--that you can
scarcely understand me, which I am afraid may be the case.'
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.
'I feel permitted now,' he said, 'to ask you a little more
concerning your father. Has he many creditors?'
'Oh! a great number.'
'I mean detaining creditors, who keep him where he is?'
'Oh yes! a great number.'
'Can you tell me--I can get the information, no doubt, elsewhere,
if you cannot--who is the most influential of them?'
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--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.
'It can do no harm,' thought Arthur, 'if I see this Mr Tite
Barnacle.'
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.'
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.
'Even if it could be done,' said she--'and it never can be done
now--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.'
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.
' 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!'
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.
'You would be glad to have your brother set at liberty?'
'Oh very, very glad, sir!'
'Well, we will hope for him at least. You told me last night of a
friend you had?'
His name was Plornish, Little Dorrit said.
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.
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.
'There is one friend!' he said, putting up his pocketbook. 'As I
take you back--you are going back?'
'Oh yes! going straight home.'
'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.'
'You are truly kind to me, sir. I am sure I need no more.'
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.
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.
'Oh, Maggy,' said Little Dorrit, 'what a clumsy child you are!'
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.
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.
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).
'This is Maggy, sir.'
'Maggy, sir,' echoed the personage presented. 'Little mother!'
'She is the grand-daughter--' said Little Dorrit.
'Grand-daughter,' echoed Maggy.
'Of my old nurse, who has been dead a long time. Maggy, how old
are you?'
'Ten, mother,' said Maggy.
'You can't think how good she is, sir,' said Little Dorrit, with
infinite tenderness.
'Good SHE is,' echoed Maggy, transferring the pronoun in a most
expressive way from herself to her little mother.
'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!'
'What is her history?' asked Clennam.
'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!'
'My history?' cried Maggy. 'Little mother.'
'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?'
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.'
'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.'
'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!'
'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.'
'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!'
'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--'
'However long she lived,' echoed Maggy.
'And because she was very weak; indeed was so weak that when she
began to laugh she couldn't stop herself--which was a great pity--'
(Maggy mighty grave of a sudden.)
'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!'
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!
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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER 10
Containing the whole Science of Government
The 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.
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--HOW NOT
TO DO IT.
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--what
it was.
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.
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.
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 its name was
Legion.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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?'
(Click! Eye-glass down. Barnacle Junior quite frightened and
feeling all round himself, but not able to find it.)
'You are very good,' said Arthur Clennam. 'I wish however to see
Mr Barnacle.'
'But I say. Look here! You haven't got any appointment, you
know,' said Barnacle Junior.
(By this time he had found the eye-glass, and put it up again.)
'No,' said Arthur Clennam. 'That is what I wish to have.'
'But I say. Look here! Is this public business?' asked Barnacle
junior.
(Click! Eye-glass down again. Barnacle Junior in that state of
search after it that Mr Clennam felt it useless to reply at
present.)
'Is it,' said Barnacle junior, taking heed of his visitor's brown
face, 'anything about--Tonnage--or that sort of thing?'
(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.)
'No,' said Arthur, 'it is nothing about tonnage.'
'Then look here. Is it private business?'
'I really am not sure. It relates to a Mr Dorrit.'
'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.'
(The misguided young Barnacle evidently going blind on his eye-
glass side, but ashamed to make any further alteration in his
painful arrangements.)
'Thank you. I will call there now. Good morning.' Young Barnacle
seemed discomfited at this, as not having at all expected him to
go.
'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?'
'Quite sure.'
With such assurance, and rather wondering what might have taken
place if it HAD been anything about tonnage, Mr Clennam withdrew to
pursue his inquiries.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
'Mr Clennam?' said Mr Barnacle. 'Be seated.'
Mr Clennam became seated.
'You have called on me, I believe,' said Mr Barnacle, 'at the
Circumlocution--' giving it the air of a word of about five-and-
twenty syllables--'Office.'
'I have taken that liberty.'
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.'
'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.'
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.'
'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?'
It being one of the principles of the Circumlocution Office never,
on any account whatever, to give a straightforward answer, Mr
Barnacle said, 'Possibly.'
'On behalf of the Crown, may I ask, or as private individual?'
'The Circumlocution Department, sir,' Mr Barnacle replied, 'may
have possibly recommended--possibly--I cannot say--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.'
'I assume this to be the case, then.'
'The Circumlocution Department,' said Mr Barnacle, 'is not
responsible for any gentleman's assumptions.'
'May I inquire how I can obtain official information as to the real
state of the case?'
'It is competent,' said Mr Barnacle, 'to any member of the--
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.'
'Which is the proper branch?'
'I must refer you,' returned Mr Barnacle, ringing the bell, 'to the
Department itself for a formal answer to that inquiry.'
'Excuse my mentioning--'
'The Department is accessible to the--Public,' Mr Barnacle was
always checked a little by that word of impertinent signification,
'if the--Public approaches it according to the official forms; if
the--Public does not approach it according to the official forms,
the--Public has itself to blame.'
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.
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.
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.
'I say. Look here. You stick to us in a devil of a manner,' Said
Barnacle junior, looking over his shoulder.
'I want to know--'
'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.
'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.'
'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.
'I want to know,' said Arthur, and repeated his case.
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.'
'I have now ascertained that it is public business,' returned the
suitor, 'and I want to know'--and again repeated his monotonous
inquiry.
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.
'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!'
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.
'Mr Wobbler?' inquired the suitor.
Both gentlemen glanced at him, and seemed surprised at his
assurance.
'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.'
'Mr Wobbler?' inquired the suitor.
The gentleman who was spreading the marmalade returned, without
looking up from that occupation, 'What did he call the Dog?'
'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.'
'Mr Wobbler?' said the suitor.
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.
'Mr Wobbler?' said the suitor.
'What's the matter?' then said Mr Wobbler, with his mouth full.
'I want to know--' and Arthur Clennam again mechanically set forth
what he wanted to know.
'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.'
'Perhaps he will give me the same answer.'
'Very likely. Don't know anything about it,' said Mr Wobbler.
The suitor turned away and had left the room, when the gentleman
with the gun called out 'Mister! Hallo!'
He looked in again.
'Shut the door after you. You're letting in a devil of a draught
here!'
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.
'I want to know,' said Arthur Clennam,--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.
Number four was a vivacious, well-looking, well-dressed, agreeable
young fellow--he was a Barnacle, but on the more sprightly side of
the family--and he said in an easy way, 'Oh! you had better not
bother yourself about it, I think.'
'Not bother myself about it?'
'No! I recommend you not to bother yourself about it.'
This was such a new point of view that Arthur Clennam found himself
at a loss how to receive it.
'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.
'Would it be such hopeless work? Excuse me; I am a stranger in
England.'
'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 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?'
'I really don't know.'
'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.'
'I beg your pardon. How shall I find out?'
'Why, you'll--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.'
'But surely this is not the way to do the business,' Arthur Clennam
could not help saying.
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.
'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 US
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--keep on writing.'
Arthur Clennam looked very doubtful indeed. 'But I am obliged to
you at any rate,' said he, 'for your politeness.'
'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.
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--redder than travel could have made him--and collaring a short
man who was with him, said, 'come out, you rascal, come Out!'
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.
'How are you?' said Mr Meagles. 'How d'ye do? I have only just
come over from abroad. I am glad to see you.'
'And I am rejoiced to see you.'
'Thank'ee. Thank'ee!'
'Mrs Meagles and your daughter--?'
'Are as well as possible,' said Mr Meagles. 'I only wish you had
come upon me in a more prepossessing condition as to coolness.'
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.
'Whew!' said Mr Meagles, dressing again. 'That's comfortable. Now
I am cooler.'
'You have been ruffled, Mr Meagles. What is the matter?'
'Wait a bit, and I'll tell you. Have you leisure for a turn in the
Park?'
'As much as you please.'
'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.'
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.
'You keep with us,' said Mr Meagles, in a threatening kind of Way,
'and I'll introduce you presently. Now then!'
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.
At length they being among the trees, Mr Meagles stopped short, and
said:
'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?'
'I certainly should not.' It was really a disconcerting question,
with the man there.
'No. You would not. I know you would not. You wouldn't suppose
him to be a public offender; would you?'
'No.'
'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?'
'I should say,' returned Arthur Clennam, observing a faint smile in
Daniel Doyce's face, 'not one of them.'
'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.'
Arthur looked at the man himself, who only shook his head.
'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!'
'Yes. Rather better than twelve years ago.'
'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.'
It was not so difficult to believe, after the morning's experience,
as Mr Meagles supposed.
'Don't stand there, Doyce, turning your spectacle-case over and
over,' cried Mr Meagles, 'but tell Mr Clennam what you confessed to
me.'
'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.'
'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.'
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.
'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!'
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.
'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.'
'You must have great patience,' said Arthur Clennam, looking at him
with some wonder, 'great forbearance.'
'No,' he returned, 'I don't know that I have more than another
man.'
'By the Lord, you have more than I have, though!' cried Mr Meagles.
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--than all the others, I
was going to say.'
'I don't know that I should find that a consolation, if it were my
case; but I am very glad that you do.'
'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.'
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.
'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--'
'In England,' said Mr Meagles.
'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.'
Mr Meagles very hot indeed again.
'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?'
'I cannot say that I ever have.'
'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?'
'I am a good deal older than my friend here,' said Mr Meagles, 'and
I'll answer that. Never.'
'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?'
They all agreed upon that.
'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.'
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.'
'Stuff and nonsense,' said Mr Meagles.
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.
Mr Meagles was hot and despondent for about five minutes, and then
began to cool and clear up.
'Come, come!' said he. 'We shall not make this the better by being
grim. Where do you think of going, Dan?'
'I shall go back to the factory,' said Dan.
'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.'
'Bleeding Heart Yard?' said Clennam. 'I want to go there.'
'So much the better,' cried Mr Meagles. 'Come along!'
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--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.
CHAPTER 11
Let Loose
A 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.
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.
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.
'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!'
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.
'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!'
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.
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.
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.
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.
'One can lodge here to-night, madame?'
'Perfectly!' said the landlady in a high, sing-song, cheery voice.
'Good. One can dine--sup--what you please to call it?'
'Ah, perfectly!' cried the landlady as before.
'Dispatch then, madame, if you please. Something to eat, as
quickly as you can; and some wine at once. I am exhausted.'
'It is very bad weather, monsieur,' said the landlady.
'Cursed weather.'
'And a very long road.'
'A cursed road.'
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.
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.
'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--especially as the devil was in
question.
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.
'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.'
'Madame, you are always right,' returned the tall Swiss.
'Doubtless you were enraged against that man, madame?'
'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.'
'He was a bad subject.'
'He was a wicked wretch,' said the landlady, 'and well merited what
he had the good fortune to escape. So much the worse.'
'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--'
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.
'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--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--whatever they call him, I forget his name--is one of
them.'
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.
'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.'
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.
'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.'
'How do they call him?' said the landlady. 'Biraud, is it not?'
'Rigaud, madame,' returned the tall Swiss.
'Rigaud! To be sure.'
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.
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.
'Pardon me, madame--that Biraud.'
'Rigaud, monsieur.'
'Rigaud. Pardon me again--has contracted your displeasure, how?'
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.
'Ay, ay? Death of my life, that's a criminal indeed. But how do
you know it?'
'All the world knows it.'
'Hah! And yet he escaped justice?'
'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.'
'Being all in perfect accord with their own wives?' said the guest.
'Haha!'
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.
'Did you mention, madame--or was it mentioned among the gentlemen--
what became of him?'
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.
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.
'May one ask to be shown to bed, madame?'
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.
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.
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!'
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.
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.
'Death of my soul!' he whispered, falling back, 'here's
Cavalletto!'
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.
'Hush! What's the matter? Keep quiet! It's I. You know me?'
cried the other, in a suppressed voice.
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.
'Cavalletto! Wake, boy! Rub your eyes and look at me. Not the
name you used to call me--don't use that--Lagnier, say Lagnier!'
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.
'Cavalletto! Give me your hand. You know Lagnier, the gentleman.
Touch the hand of a gentleman!'
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.
'Then you were--' faltered John Baptist.
'Not shaved? No. See here!' cried Lagnier, giving his head a
twirl; 'as tight on as your own.'
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.
'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!'
John Baptist, looking anything but reassured, sat down on the floor
at the bedside, keeping his eyes upon his patron all the time.
'That's well!' cried Lagnier. 'Now we might be in the old infernal
hole again, hey? How long have you been out?'
'Two days after you, my master.'
'How do you come here?'
'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.
'And where are you going?'
'Going, my master?'
'Ay!'
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.'
'Cavalletto. This is in confidence. I also am going to Paris and
perhaps to England. We'll go together.'
The little man nodded his head, and showed his teeth; and yet
seemed not quite convinced that it was a surpassingly desirable
arrangement.
'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?'
'Oh, surely, surely!' said the little man.
'Then you shall hear before I sleep--and in six words, for I want
sleep--how I appear before you, I, Lagnier. Remember that. Not
the other.'
'Altro, altro! Not Ri--' Before John Baptist could finish the
name, his comrade had got his hand under his chin and fiercely shut
up his mouth.
'Death! what are you doing? Do you want me to be trampled upon
and stoned? Do YOU 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!'
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.
'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--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.'
All this he said in his companion's ear, and with his hand before
his lips.
'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.'
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.
'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. Very well!'
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.
'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.'
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.
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--
wanted nothing but to get on his shoes and his knapsack, open the
door, and run away.
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.
CHAPTER 12
Bleeding Heart Yard
In 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--howbeit no sport is left
there now but for hunters of men--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.
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.
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--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--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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
'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.
'Do you think he will be back soon, if I wait for him?'
'I have been expecting him,' said Mrs Plornish, 'this half an hour,
at any minute of time. Walk in, sir.'
Arthur entered the rather dark and close parlour (though it was
lofty too), and sat down in the chair she placed for him.
'Not to deceive you, sir, I notice it,' said Mrs Plornish, 'and I
take it kind of you.'
He was at a loss to understand what she meant; and by expressing as
much in his looks, elicited her explanation.
'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.'
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?
'Four year just turned, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'He IS 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.
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.
'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.)
'Is it so difficult to get work?' asked Arthur Clennam.
'Plornish finds it so,' she returned. 'He is quite unfortunate.
Really he is.'
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.
'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.'
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--which certain people seemed to
take extraordinarily ill, as though they had an absolute right to
it on their own terms--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.
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.
'This is Plornish, sir.'
'I came,' said Clennam, rising, 'to beg the favour of a little
conversation with you on the subject of the Dorrit family.'
Plornish became suspicious. Seemed to scent a creditor. Said,
'Ah, yes. Well. He didn't know what satisfaction he could give
any gentleman, respecting that family. What might it be about,
now?'
'I know you better,' said Clennam, smiling, 'than you suppose.'
Plornish observed, not Smiling in return, And yet he hadn't the
pleasure of being acquainted with the gentleman, neither.
'No,' said Arthur, 'I know your kind offices at second hand, but on
the best authority; through Little Dorrit.--I mean,' he explained,
'Miss Dorrit.'
'Mr Clennam, is it? Oh! I've heard of you, Sir.'
'And I of you,' said Arthur.
'Please to sit down again, Sir, and consider yourself welcome.--
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.'
'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.
'It was her father that I got acquainted with first. And through
getting acquainted with him, you see--why--I got acquainted with
her,' said Plornish tautologically.
'I see.'
'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!'
'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.
'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.'
'True. Pray how did you introduce her at my mother's!'
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, you may as well mention how it
was, old woman.'
'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.
'The landlord of the Yard,' said Arthur Clennam, 'is--'
'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 they are, you may believe me or not, as you think
proper.'
'Ay?' returned Clennam, thoughtful in his turn. 'Mr Casby, too!
An old acquaintance of mine, long ago!'
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'--meaning, not a
singer of anthems, but a seller of horses--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 THAT 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 THAT 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
THAT wouldn't suit either, 'Hand over, then!'--And in consideration
of the first offer, gave a receipt in full and discharged the
prisoner.
'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.'
'The last reason, sir,' said Plornish, 'would be quite sufficient.
Your wishes shall be attended to.'
'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.'
'Your wishes, sir, shall be attended to.'
'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.'
'Don't name it, sir,' returned Plornish, 'it'll be ekally a
pleasure an a--it'l be ekally a pleasure and a--' Finding himself
unable to balance his sentence after two efforts, Mr Plornish
wisely dropped it. He took Clennam's card and appropriate
pecuniary compliment.
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 could 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--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--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--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 HIS 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.
CHAPTER 13
Patriarchal
The 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.
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--for anything he knew--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--that is to say, how
people in general, our profounder selves excepted, deceive
themselves--as to motives of action.
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.
'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.'
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--one might have fancied it to have been stifled by Mutes in
the Eastern manner--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.
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--recognisable at a
glance--as unchanged in twenty years and upward as his own solid
furniture--as little touched by the influence of the varying
seasons as the old rose-leaves and old lavender in his porcelain
jars.
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.
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.
Arthur Clennam moved to attract his attention, and the grey
eyebrows turned towards him.
'I beg your pardon,' said Clennam, 'I fear you did not hear me
announced?'
'No, sir, I did not. Did you wish to see me, sir?'
'I wished to pay my respects.'
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--'take a
chair, if you please--have I the pleasure of knowing--? 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?'
'That is your present visitor.'
'Really! Mr Clennam?'
'No other, Mr Casby.'
'Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. How have you been since we
met?'
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.
'We are older, Mr Clennam,' said Christopher Casby.
'We are--not younger,' said Clennam. After this wise remark he
felt that he was scarcely shining with brilliancy, and became aware
that he was nervous.
'And your respected father,' said Mr Casby, 'is no more! I was
grieved to hear it, Mr Clennam, I was grieved.'
Arthur replied in the usual way that he felt infinitely obliged to
him.
'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.'
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.
'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.' 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.
'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.'
'Little--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?'
No road in that direction. Nothing came of the cross-cut. It led
no further.
'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.'
'By all means,' returned Clennam. 'I should have preferred the
request, if your kindness had not anticipated me.'
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.
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.
'Halloa!' he said.
Clennam saw no reason why he should not say 'Halloa!' too.
'What's the matter?' said the short dark man.
'I have not heard that anything is the matter,' returned Clennam.
'Where's Mr Casby?' asked the short dark man, looking about.
'He will be here directly, if you want him.'
'_I_ want him?' said the short dark man. 'Don't you?'
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.
'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.
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--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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
This is Flora!
'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!'
He assured her that she was just what he had expected and that time
had not stood still with himself.
'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--oh!' cried Flora with a little scream,
'I am dreadful!'
The Patriarch, apparently not yet understanding his own part in the
drama under representation, glowed with vacant serenity.
'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!'
That must be a long time hence, Arthur considered.
'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--at least I don't mean that, I--oh I
don't know what I mean!' Here Flora tittered confusedly, and gave
him one of her old glances.
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.
'You mustn't think of going yet,' said Flora--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--I mean
Mr Arthur--or I suppose Mr Clennam would be far more proper--but I
am sure I don't know what I am saying--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 was a time, but I am running into nonsense again.'
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?
'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.'
'I am not,' returned Arthur, smiling in spite of himself, 'married
to any lady, Flora.'
'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.
'Then it's all true and they really do! good gracious Arthur!--
pray excuse me--old habit--Mr Clennam far more proper--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!'
In his ridiculous distress, Clennam received another of the old
glances without in the least knowing what to do with it.
'Dear dear,' said Flora, 'only to think of the changes at home
Arthur--cannot overcome it, and seems so natural, Mr Clennam far
more proper--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--I am doing it again, seems so natural, most
improper--as no one could have believed, who could have ever
imagined Mrs Finching when I can't imagine it myself!'
'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?'
'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!'
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.
'No one could dispute, Arthur--Mr Clennam--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 was a time when things were very different.'
'My dear Mrs Finching,' Arthur began, struck by the good tone
again.
'Oh not that nasty ugly name, say Flora!'
'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.'
'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--Mandarinesses if you call them so--are the cause or perhaps
I am the cause myself, it's just as likely.'
'No, no,' Clennam entreated, 'don't say that.'
'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.'
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.
'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?'
'My dear Mrs Finching,' urged Clennam--'all so long ago and so long
concluded, is it worth while seriously to--'
'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.'
'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.--Pray think how long ago,'
gently remonstrated Arthur.
'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--there is the back drawing-room still on the
first floor and still at the back of the house to confirm my
words--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?'
'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.'
'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 was 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.'
With these words, and with a hasty gesture fraught with timid
caution--such a gesture had Clennam's eyes been familiar with in
the old time--poor Flora left herself at eighteen years of age, a
long long way behind again; and came to a full stop at last.
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.
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--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.
The Patriarch insisted on his staying to dinner, and Flora
signalled 'Yes!' Clennam so wished he could have done more than
stay to dinner--so heartily wished he could have found the Flora
that had been, or that never had been--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.
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.
'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.'
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.
'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?'
'You 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 ARE poor, you can't help it. You'd be poor
yourself if you didn't get your rents.'
'True enough,' said Arthur.
'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.'
Mr Casby shook his head, in Placid and benignant generality.
'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
YOU 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.
'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.
'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--not you.'
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.
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.'
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.
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:
'When we lived at Henley, Barnes's gander was stole by tinkers.'
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.
There was mutton, a steak, and an apple-pie--nothing in the
remotest way connected with ganders--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.
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--struck into the conversation like a clock, without
consulting anybody.
Flora had just said, 'Mr Clennam, will you give me a glass of port
for Mr F.'s Aunt?'
'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.'
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:
'I hate a fool!'
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.
When Flora returned, she explained that her legacy was a clever old
lady, but was sometimes a little singular, and 'took dislikes'--
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?
'Citywards, sir,' said Pancks.
'Shall we walk together?' said Arthur.
'Quite agreeable,' said Pancks.
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--not the vanished Flora, or the
mermaid--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.
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.
'A fresh night!' said Arthur.
'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.'
'You lead such a busy life?'
'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?'
'For nothing else?' said Clennam.
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.
'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.'
'Ah dear, dear, dear!' sighed Clennam.
'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.'
When they had walked a little further in silence, Clennam said:
'Have you no taste for anything, Mr Pancks?'
'What's taste?' drily retorted Pancks.
'Let us say inclination.'
'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.
'You are no great reader, I suppose?' said Clennam.
'Never read anything but letters and accounts. Never collect
anything but advertisements relative to next of kin. If that's a
taste, I have got that. You're not of the Clennams of Cornwall, Mr
Clennam?'
'Not that I ever heard of.'
'I know you're not. I asked your mother, sir. She has too much
character to let a chance escape her.'
'Supposing I had been of the Clennams of Cornwall?'
'You'd have heard of something to your advantage.'
'Indeed! I have heard of little enough to my advantage for some
time.'
'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.'
'Good night!' said Clennam. But the Tug, suddenly lightened, and
untrammelled by having any weight in tow, was already puffing away
into the distance.
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.
'An accident going to the Hospital?' he asked an old man beside
him, who stood shaking his head, inviting conversation.
'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.'
'This person is not killed, I hope?'
'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
see one on 'em pull up within half a inch of a boy, last night;'
another, 'I see one on 'em go over a cat, sir--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.
'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 he
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!'
'Is this a foreigner?' said Clennam, leaning forward to look.
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.
'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.
'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.'
'You are a traveller! Stay! See, the water! Let me give you
some.' 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.
'That's well. You are a traveller?'
'Surely, sir.'
'A stranger in this city?'
'Surely, surely, altogether. I am arrived this unhappy evening.'
'From what country?'
'Marseilles.'
'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.'
'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.
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?'
'Let us know all about it first,' said the surgeon, continuing his
examination with a businesslike delight in it, 'before we
pronounce.'
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.
'It's a serious injury, I suppose?' said Clennam.
'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.
'He speaks French?' said the surgeon.
'Oh yes, he speaks French.'
'He'll be at no loss here, then.--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?'
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--the poor belated wanderer in a strange
land movingly besought that favour of him--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.
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.
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.
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.
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--was obdurate to the
sight and touch, and relaxed nothing of its old indomitable
grimness--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.
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.
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.
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!'
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.
'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!'
His door was softly opened, and these spoken words startled him,
and came as if they were an answer:
'Little Dorrit.'
CHAPTER 14
Little Dorrit's Party
Arthur 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.
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,--made the room dimmer than it was
in Little Dorrit's eyes, as they timidly saw it from the door.
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.
'My poor child! Here at midnight?'
'I said Little Dorrit, sir, on purpose to prepare you. I knew you
must be very much surprised.'
'Are you alone?'
'No sir, I have got Maggy with me.'
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.
'And I have no fire,' said Clennam. 'And you are--' 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.'
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.
'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.
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.
'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?'
'Yes, my child.'
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:
'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.'
'Thank you, sir, I should like it better than any name.'
'Little Dorrit.'
'Little mother,' Maggy (who had been falling asleep) put in, as a
correction.
'It's all the same, MaggY,' returned Little Dorrit, 'all the same.'
'Is it all the same, mother?'
'Just the same.'
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.
'What I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, 'is, that
MY brother is at large.'
Arthur was rejoiced to hear it, and hoped he would do well.
'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--am never to ask, and am
never to be told, and am never to thank that gentleman with all MY
grateful heart!'
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.
'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--but I don't know him and
I must not--I know that!--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--O to leave it for a moment--and let
my thankful tears fall on it; for I have no other thanks to give
him!'
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--who am nothing more than the friend who begged you to trust
him--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!'
'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.'
'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.'
Here she shook herself, and fell asleep again.
'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.'
As she made the confession, timidly hesitating, she raised her eyes
to the face, and read its expression so plainly that she answered
it. 'Oh no, certainly! I never was at a party in my life.' 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.'
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--indeed he might suppose that.
And she glanced for an instant at the shawl she wore.
'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.
'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--'
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.
'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--never shall--'
'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.
'I think,' said Little Dorrit--'this is the second thing, sir--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.'
'Indeed!' returned Clennam quickly. He asked her, after short
consideration, why she supposed so.
'I think,' replied Little Dorrit, 'that Mr Flintwinch must have
watched me.'
And why, Clennam asked, as he turned his eyes upon the fire, bent
his brows, and considered again; why did she suppose that?
'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.'
'Did he say anything?'
'No; he only nodded and put his head on one side.'
'The devil take his head!' mused Clennam, still looking at the
fire; 'it's always on one side.'
He roused himself to persuade her to put some wine to her lips, and
to touch something to eat--it was very difficult, she was so timid
and shy--and then said, musing again:
'Is my mother at all changed to you?'
'Oh, not at all. She is just the same. I wondered whether I had
better tell her my history. I wondered whether I might--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.'
'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--except refresh yourself with such means as
there are here. I entreat you to do that.'
'Thank you, I am not hungry. Nor,' said Little Dorrit, as he
softly put her glass towards her, 'nor thirsty.--I think Maggy
might like something, perhaps.'
'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.'
'Yes. You will not be offended, sir?'
'I promise that, unreservedly.'
'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.
'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.'
'Thank you. You are coming back to see my father again?'
'Yes.'
'You have been so good and thoughtful as to write him a note,
saying that you are coming to-morrow?'
'Oh, that was nothing! Yes.'
'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?'
'I think I can. But I may be wrong.'
'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.'
'I Will,--I Will.'
'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!'
Clennam said--not very plainly, seeing those tears glistening in
her anxious eyes--that her wish should be sacred with him.
'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.'
'Pray,' said Clennam, 'do not be so distressed. Pray, pray, Little
Dorrit! This is quite understood now.'
'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.'
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.
'But the gates will have been locked long ago,' said Clennam,
suddenly remembering it. 'Where are you going?'
'I am going to Maggy's lodging,' answered Little Dorrit. 'I shall
be quite safe, quite well taken care of.'
'I must accompany you there,' said Clennam, 'I cannot let you go
alone.'
'Yes, pray leave us to go there by ourselves. Pray do!' begged
Little Dorrit.
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?'
'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--who knows!--as a whole cathedral choir.
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.
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.
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.'
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.'
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.'
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.
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--which was the dance at Little
Dorrit's party.
'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--' 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.
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!'
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.
'What are you doing with the child?' she said to Maggy.
She was young--far too young to be there, Heaven knows!--and
neither ugly nor wicked-looking. She spoke coarsely, but with no
naturally coarse voice; there was even something musical in its
sound.
'What are you doing with yourself?' retorted Maggy, for want Of a
better answer.
'Can't you see, without my telling you?'
'I don't know as I can,' said Maggy.
'Killing myself! Now I have answered you, answer me. What are you
doing with the child?'
The supposed child kept her head drooped down, and kept her form
close at Maggy's side.
'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?'
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.'
Little Dorrit turned towards her.
'Why, my God!' she said, recoiling, 'you're a woman!'
'Don't mind that!' said Little Dorrit, clasping one of her hands
that had suddenly released hers. 'I am not afraid of you.'
'Then you had better be,' she answered. 'Have you no mother?'
'No.'
'No father?'
'Yes, a very dear one.'
'Go home to him, and be afraid of me. Let me go. Good night!'
'I must thank you first; let me speak to you as if I really were a
child.'
'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.
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.
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.
'Who's that?' cried a stout old man, who was putting on a nightcap
as if he were going to bed in a vault.
'It's no one particular, sir,' said Little Dorrit.
'Stop!' cried the man. 'Let's have a look at you!'
This caused her to turn back again in the act of going out, and to
present herself and her charge before him.
'I thought so!' said he. 'I know YOU.'
'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.'
'More than that, we've got your birth in our Register, you know;
you're one of our curiosities.'
'Indeed!' said Little Dorrit.
'To be sure. As the child of the--by-the-bye, how did you get out
so early?'
'We were shut out last night, and are waiting to get in.'
'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.'
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?'
'Quite true, till last night.'
'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'll call you.'
He soon brought in the cushions, and strewed them on the ground.
'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--
not who's in 'em, but who isn't--who's coming, you know, and when.
That's the interesting question.'
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.
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.
CHAPTER 15
Mrs Flintwinch has another Dream
The 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.
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.
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 MUST 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?
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--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.
On a wintry afternoon at twilight, Mrs Flintwinch, having been
heavy all day, dreamed this dream:
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--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.
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.
'None of your nonsense with me,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'I won't take
it from you.'
Mrs Flintwinch dreamed that she stood behind the door, which was
just ajar, and most distinctly heard her husband say these bold
words.
'Flintwinch,' returned Mrs Clennam, in her usual strong low voice,
'there is a demon of anger in you. Guard against it.'
'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--I'd make 'em say it,
whether they liked it or not.'
'What have I done, you wrathful man?' her strong voice asked.
'Done?' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Dropped down upon me.'
'If you mean, remonstrated with you--'
'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.'
'I remonstrated with you,' she began again, 'because--'
'I won't have it!' cried Jeremiah. 'You dropped down upon me.'
'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--'
'I won't have it!' interposed the contradictory Jeremiah, flinging
back the concession. 'I did mean it.'
'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.'
'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?'
'After all, you only restore me my own words,' she said, struggling
with her indignation. 'Yes.'
'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--'
'Hold there, Flintwinch!' she cried out in a changed voice: 'you
may go a word too far.'
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:
'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--was poorer as far as his
pocket went--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.'
'I do not--as you call it--lean against the dead.'
'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--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?'
'Nothing will turn me from it, Flintwinch, when I have justified it
to myself. Add that.'
'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.'
'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.
'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.'
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.
'Enough and more than enough of the subject,' said she gloomily.
'Unless you drop down upon me again,' returned the persistent
Flintwinch, 'and then you must expect to hear of it again.'
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.
'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.'
Mr Flintwinch lighted the candle briskly, and said as he put it
down upon the table:
'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?'
'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?'
'Ay, ay! But since you have been lying here--not near dead--
nothing like it--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.
'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.'
'Nothing more than that?' said Flintwinch, stroking his mouth and
chin.
'What should there be more than that! What could there be more
than that!' she ejaculated in her sternly wondering way.
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.
'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?'
'No.'
'Would you--now, would you like to know?' said Jeremiah with a
pounce as if he had sprung upon her.
'If I cared to know, I should know already. Could I not have asked
her any day?'
'Then you don't care to know?'
'I do not.'
Mr Flintwinch, having expelled a long significant breath said, with
his former emphasis, 'For I have accidentally--mind!--found out.'
'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.'
'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.
'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--not that I complain of being afflicted;
you know I never complain of that--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?'
'I don't grudge it to you,' returned Jeremiah.
'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?'
'I asked you a question. That's all.'
'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.
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.
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.
'Oh Jeremiah!' cried Affery, waking. 'What a start you gave me!'
'What have you been doing, woman?' inquired Jeremiah. 'You've been
rung for fifty times.'
'Oh Jeremiah,' said Mistress Affery, 'I have been a-dreaming!'
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.
'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.
'Jeremiah? Tea-time? I don't know what's come to me. But I got
such a dreadful turn, Jeremiah, before I went--off a-dreaming, that
I think it must be that.'
'Yoogh! Sleepy-Head!' said Mr Flintwinch, 'what are you talking
about?'
'Such a strange noise, Jeremiah, and such a curious movement. In
the kitchen here--just here.'
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.
'Rats, cats, water, drains,' said Jeremiah.
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--a rustle and a sort of trembling touch behind me.'
'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.'
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.
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.
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.
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!'--and immediately started away
from him, and came near him no more.
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.
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: 'There, jeremiah! Now!
What's that noise?'
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!'
CHAPTER 16
Nobody's Weakness
The 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.
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.
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--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--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.
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--for it was a man's figure--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.
'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.'
'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?'
'Readily. It's not a celebrated name. It's not Barnacle.'
'No, no,' said Daniel, laughing. 'And now I know what it is. It's
Clennam. How do you do, Mr Clennam?'
'I have some hope,' said Arthur, as they walked on together, 'that
we may be going to the same place, Mr Doyce.'
'Meaning Twickenham?' returned Daniel. 'I am glad to hear it.'
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--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.
'it is much to be regretted,' said Clennam, 'that you ever turned
your thoughts that way, Mr Doyce.'
'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.'
'Hadn't he better let it go?' said Clennam.
'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.'
'That is to say,' said Arthur, with a growing admiration of his
quiet companion, 'you are not finally discouraged even now?'
'I have no right to be, if I am,' returned the other. 'The thing
is as true as it ever was.'
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?
'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.'
'No?' said Clennam.
'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?'
Arthur Clennam could not help joining in the good-humoured laugh,
for he recognised the truth of the description.
'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--whoever he
is--not for me.'
'You have not chosen him yet, then?'
'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--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.'
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--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--which had a kind of greatness
in it, though not of the official quality.
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.
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.
'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--
that is, travel--again. Not like Marseilles, eh? No allonging and
marshonging here!'
'A different kind of beauty, indeed!' said Clennam, looking about
him.
'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.'
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.
'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.'
'I have not had so pleasant a greeting,' said Clennam--then he
recalled what Little Dorrit had said to him in his own room, and
faithfully added 'except once--since we last walked to and fro,
looking down at the Mediterranean.'
'Ah!' returned Mr Meagles. 'Something like a look out, that was,
wasn't it? I don't want a military government, but I shouldn't
mind a little allonging and marshonging--just a dash of it--in this
neighbourhood sometimes. It's Devilish still.'
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 had 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--perhaps he had only touched it. Daniel Doyce said
perhaps he hadn't touched it, but Mr Meagles rather declined to
overhear the remark.
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.
'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--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.'
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.'
'Their names?' said Arthur.
'Ah, to be sure! You have never heard any name but Pet. Pet's
name is Minnie; her sister's Lillie.'
'Should you have known, Mr Clennam, that one of them was meant for
me?' asked Pet herself, now standing in the doorway.
'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.'
'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.'
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.
'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 his boots off, unless we showed him a boot-
jack.'
'Why not?' asked Daniel, with a significant smile at Clennam.
'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.'
'In my calling,' said Daniel, amused, 'the greater usually includes
the less. But never mind, never mind! Whatever pleases you,
pleases me.'
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
'And Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, after they had recalled a number
of fellow-travellers. 'Has anybody seen Miss Wade?'
'I have,' said Tattycoram.
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.
'Tatty!' her young mistress exclaimed. 'You seen Miss Wade?--
where?'
'Here, miss,' said Tattycoram.
'How?'
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.'
'What was she doing there I wonder!' said Mr Meagles. 'Not going
to it, I should think.'
'She had written to me first,' said Tattycoram.
'Oh, Tatty!' murmured her mistress, 'take your hands away. I feel
as if some one else was touching me!'
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.
'Did you wish to know, sir,' she said, looking at Mr Meagles, 'what
Miss Wade wrote to me about?'
'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.'
'She knew, when we were travelling, where you lived,' said
Tattycoram, 'and she had seen me not quite--not quite--'
'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--count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'
She pressed her lips together again, and took a long deep breath.
'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.'
'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!'
Tatty stood for a moment, immovable.
'Hey?' cried Mr Meagles. 'Count another five-and-twenty,
Tattycoram.'
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.
'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.'
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?'
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
unpre |
