Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

'Your father can be free within this week. He does not know it; we
must go to him from here, to tell him of it. Your father will be
free within a few days. Your father will be free within a few
hours. Remember we must go to him from here, to tell him of it!'

That brought her back. Her eyes were closing, but they opened
again.

'This is not all the good-fortune. This is not all the wonderful
good-fortune, my dear Little Dorrit. Shall I tell you more?'

Her lips shaped 'Yes.'

'Your father will be no beggar when he is free. He will want for
nothing. Shall I tell you more? Remember! He knows nothing of
it; we must go to him, from here, to tell him of it!'

She seemed to entreat him for a little time. He held her in his
arm, and, after a pause, bent down his ear to listen.

'Did you ask me to go on?'

'Yes.'

'He will be a rich man. He is a rich man. A great sum of money is
waiting to be paid over to him as his inheritance; you are all
henceforth very wealthy. Bravest and best of children, I thank
Heaven that you are rewarded!'

As he kissed her, she turned her head towards his shoulder, and
raised her arm towards his neck; cried out 'Father! Father!
Father!' and swooned away.

Upon which Flora returned to take care of her, and hovered about
her on a sofa, intermingling kind offices and incoherent scraps of
conversation in a manner so confounding, that whether she pressed
the Marshalsea to take a spoonful of unclaimed dividends, for it
would do her good; or whether she congratulated Little Dorrit's
father on coming into possession of a hundred thousand smelling-
bottles; or whether she explained that she put seventy-five
thousand drops of spirits of lavender on fifty thousand pounds of
lump sugar, and that she entreated Little Dorrit to take that
gentle restorative; or whether she bathed the foreheads of Doyce
and Clennam in vinegar, and gave the late Mr F. more air; no one
with any sense of responsibility could have undertaken to decide.
A tributary stream of confusion, moreover, poured in from an
adjoining bedroom, where Mr F.'s Aunt appeared, from the sound of
her voice, to be in a horizontal posture, awaiting her breakfast;
and from which bower that inexorable lady snapped off short taunts,
whenever she could get a hearing, as, 'Don't believe it's his
doing!' and 'He needn't take no credit to himself for it!' and
'It'll be long enough, I expect, afore he'll give up any of his own
money!' all designed to disparage Clennam's share in the discovery,
and to relieve those inveterate feelings with which Mr F.'s Aunt
regarded him.

But Little Dorrit's solicitude to get to her father, and to carry
the joyful tidings to him, and not to leave him in his jail a
moment with this happiness in store for him and still unknown to
him, did more for her speedy restoration than all the skill and
attention on earth could have done. 'Come with me to my dear
father. Pray come and tell my dear father!' were the first words
she said. Her father, her father. She spoke of nothing but him,
thought of nothing but him. Kneeling down and pouring out her
thankfulness with uplifted hands, her thanks were for her father.

Flora's tenderness was quite overcome by this, and she launched out
among the cups and saucers into a wonderful flow of tears and
speech.

'I declare,' she sobbed, 'I never was so cut up since your mama and
my papa not Doyce and Clennam for this once but give the precious
little thing a cup of tea and make her put it to her lips at least
pray Arthur do, not even Mr F.'s last illness for that was of
another kind and gout is not a child's affection though very
painful for all parties and Mr F. a martyr with his leg upon a rest
and the wine trade in itself inflammatory for they will do it more
or less among themselves and who can wonder, it seems like a dream
I am sure to think of nothing at all this morning and now Mines of
money is it really, but you must know my darling love because you
never will be strong enough to tell him all about it upon
teaspoons, mightn't it be even best to try the directions of my own
medical man for though the flavour is anything but agreeable still
I force myself to do it as a prescription and find the benefit,
you'd rather not why no my dear I'd rather not but still I do it as
a duty, everybody will congratulate you some in earnest and some
not and many will congratulate you with all their hearts but none
more so I do assure you from the bottom of my own I do myself
though sensible of blundering and being stupid, and will be judged
by Arthur not Doyce and Clennam for this once so good-bye darling
and God bless you and may you be very happy and excuse the liberty,
vowing that the dress shall never be finished by anybody else but
shall be laid by for a keepsake just as it is and called Little
Dorrit though why that strangest of denominations at any time I
never did myself and now I never shall!'

Thus Flora, in taking leave of her favourite. Little Dorrit
thanked her, and embraced her, over and over again; and finally
came out of the house with Clennam, and took coach for the
Marshalsea.

It was a strangely unreal ride through the old squalid streets,
with a sensation of being raised out of them into an airy world of
wealth and grandeur. When Arthur told her that she would soon ride
in her own carriage through very different scenes, when all the
familiar experiences would have vanished away, she looked
frightened. But when he substituted her father for herself, and
told her how he would ride in his carriage, and how great and grand
he would be, her tears of joy and innocent pride fell fast. Seeing
that the happiness her mind could realise was all shining upon him,
Arthur kept that single figure before her; and so they rode
brightly through the poor streets in the prison neighbourhood to
carry him the great news.

When Mr Chivery, who was on duty, admitted them into the Lodge, he
saw something in their faces which filled him with astonishment.
He stood looking after them, when they hurried into the prison, as
though he perceived that they had come back accompanied by a ghost
a-piece. Two or three Collegians whom they passed, looked after
them too, and presently joining Mr Chivery, formed a little group
on the Lodge steps, in the midst of which there spontaneously
originated a whisper that the Father was going to get his
discharge. Within a few minutes, it was heard in the remotest room
in the College.

Little Dorrit opened the door from without, and they both entered.
He was sitting in his old grey gown and his old black cap, in the
sunlight by the window, reading his newspaper. His glasses were in
his hand, and he had just looked round; surprised at first, no
doubt, by her step upon the stairs, not expecting her until night;
surprised again, by seeing Arthur Clennam in her company. As they
came in, the same unwonted look in both of them which had already
caught attention in the yard below, struck him. He did not rise or
speak, but laid down his glasses and his newspaper on the table
beside him, and looked at them with his mouth a little open and his
lips trembling. When Arthur put out his hand, he touched it, but
not with his usual state; and then he turned to his daughter, who
had sat down close beside him with her hands upon his shoulder, and
looked attentively in her face.

'Father! I have been made so happy this morning!'

'You have been made so happy, my dear?'

'By Mr Clennam, father. He brought me such joyful and wonderful
intelligence about you! If he had not with his great kindness and
gentleness, prepared me for it, father--prepared me for it,
father--I think I could not have borne it.'

Her agitation was exceedingly great, and the tears rolled down her
face. He put his hand suddenly to his heart, and looked at
Clennam.

'Compose yourself, sir,' said Clennam, 'and take a little time to
think. To think of the brightest and most fortunate accidents of
life. We have all heard of great surprises of joy. They are not
at an end, sir. They are rare, but not at an end.'

'Mr Clennam? Not at an end? Not at an end for--' He touched
himself upon the breast, instead of saying 'me.'

'No,' returned Clennam.

'What surprise,' he asked, keeping his left hand over his heart,
and there stopping in his speech, while with his right hand he put
his glasses exactly level on the table: 'what such surprise can be
in store for me?'

'Let me answer with another question. Tell me, Mr Dorrit, what
surprise would be the most unlooked for and the most acceptable to
you. Do not be afraid to imagine it, or to say what it would be.'

He looked steadfastly at Clennam, and, so looking at him, seemed to
change into a very old haggard man. The sun was bright upon the
wall beyond the window, and on the spikes at top. He slowly
stretched out the hand that had been upon his heart, and pointed at
the wall.

'It is down,' said Clennam. 'Gone!'

He remained in the same attitude, looking steadfastly at him.

'And in its place,' said Clennam, slowly and distinctly, 'are the
means to possess and enjoy the utmost that they have so long shut
out. Mr Dorrit, there is not the smallest doubt that within a few
days you will be free, and highly prosperous. I congratulate you
with all my soul on this change of fortune, and on the happy future
into which you are soon to carry the treasure you have been blest
with here--the best of all the riches you can have elsewhere--the
treasure at your side.'

With those words, he pressed his hand and released it; and his
daughter, laying her face against his, encircled him in the hour of
his prosperity with her arms, as she had in the long years of his
adversity encircled him with her love and toil and truth; and
poured out her full heart in gratitude, hope, joy, blissful
ecstasy, and all for him.

'I shall see him as I never saw him yet. I shall see my dear love,
with the dark cloud cleared away. I shall see him, as my poor
mother saw him long ago. O my dear, my dear! O father, father!
O thank God, thank God!'

He yielded himself to her kisses and caresses, but did not return
them, except that he put an arm about her. Neither did he say one
word. His steadfast look was now divided between her and Clennam,
and he began to shake as if he were very cold. Explaining to
Little Dorrit that he would run to the coffee-house for a bottle of
wine, Arthur fetched it with all the haste he could use. While it
was being brought from the cellar to the bar, a number of excited
people asked him what had happened; when he hurriedly informed them
that Mr Dorrit had succeeded to a fortune.

On coming back with the wine in his hand, he found that she had
placed her father in his easy chair, and had loosened his shirt and
neckcloth. They filled a tumbler with wine, and held it to his
lips. When he had swallowed a little, he took the glass himself
and emptied it. Soon after that, he leaned back in his chair and
cried, with his handkerchief before his face.

After this had lasted a while Clennam thought it a good season for
diverting his attention from the main surprise, by relating its
details. Slowly, therefore, and in a quiet tone of voice, he
explained them as best he could, and enlarged on the nature of
Pancks's service.

'He shall be--ha--he shall be handsomely recompensed, sir,' said
the Father, starting up and moving hurriedly about the room.
'Assure yourself, Mr Clennam, that everybody concerned shall be--
ha--shall be nobly rewarded. No one, my dear sir, shall say that
he has an unsatisfied claim against me. I shall repay the--hum--
the advances I have had from you, sir, with peculiar pleasure. I
beg to be informed at your earliest convenience, what advances you
have made my son.'

He had no purpose in going about the room, but he was not still a
moment.

'Everybody,' he said, 'shall be remembered. I will not go away
from here in anybody's debt. All the people who have been--ha--
well behaved towards myself and my family, shall be rewarded.
Chivery shall be rewarded. Young John shall be rewarded. I
particularly wish, and intend, to act munificently, Mr Clennam.'

'Will you allow me,' said Arthur, laying his purse on the table,
'to supply any present contingencies, Mr Dorrit? I thought it best
to bring a sum of money for the purpose.'

'Thank you, sir, thank you. I accept with readiness, at the
present moment, what I could not an hour ago have conscientiously
taken. I am obliged to you for the temporary accommodation.
Exceedingly temporary, but well timed--well timed.' His hand had
closed upon the money, and he carried it about with him. 'Be so
kind, sir, as to add the amount to those former advances to which
I have already referred; being careful, if you please, not to omit
advances made to my son. A mere verbal statement of the gross
amount is all I shall--ha--all I shall require.'

His eye fell upon his daughter at this point, and he stopped for a
moment to kiss her, and to pat her head.

'It will be necessary to find a milliner, my love, and to make a
speedy and complete change in your very plain dress. Something
must be done with Maggy too, who at present is--ha--barely
respectable, barely respectable. And your sister, Amy, and your
brother. And my brother, your uncle--poor soul, I trust this will
rouse him--messengers must be despatched to fetch them. They must
be informed of this. We must break it to them cautiously, but they
must be informed directly. We owe it as a duty to them and to
ourselves, from this moment, not to let them--hum--not to let them
do anything.'

This was the first intimation he had ever given, that he was privy
to the fact that they did something for a livelihood.

He was still jogging about the room, with the purse clutched in his
hand, when a great cheering arose in the yard. 'The news has
spread already,' said Clennam, looking down from the window. 'Will
you show yourself to them, Mr Dorrit? They are very earnest, and
they evidently wish it.'

'I--hum--ha--I confess I could have desired, Amy my dear,' he said,
jogging about in a more feverish flutter than before, 'to have made
some change in my dress first, and to have bought a--
hum--a watch and chain. But if it must be done as it is, it--ha--
it must be done. Fasten the collar of my shirt, my dear. Mr
Clennam, would you oblige me--hum--with a blue neckcloth you will
find in that drawer at your elbow. Button my coat across at the
chest, my love. It looks--ha--it looks broader, buttoned.'

With his trembling hand he pushed his grey hair up, and then,
taking Clennam and his daughter for supporters, appeared at the
window leaning on an arm of each. The Collegians cheered him very
heartily, and he kissed his hand to them with great urbanity and
protection. When he withdrew into the room again, he said 'Poor
creatures!' in a tone of much pity for their miserable condition.

Little Dorrit was deeply anxious that he should lie down to compose
himself. On Arthur's speaking to her of his going to inform Pancks
that he might now appear as soon as he would, and pursue the joyful
business to its close, she entreated him in a whisper to stay with
her until her father should be quite calm and at rest. He needed
no second entreaty; and she prepared her father's bed, and begged
him to lie down. For another half-hour or more he would be
persuaded to do nothing but go about the room, discussing with
himself the probabilities for and against the Marshal's allowing
the whole of the prisoners to go to the windows of the official
residence which commanded the street, to see himself and family
depart for ever in a carriage--which, he said, he thought would be
a Sight for them. But gradually he began to droop and tire, and at
last stretched himself upon the bed.

She took her faithful place beside him, fanning him and cooling his
forehead; and he seemed to be falling asleep (always with the money
in his hand), when he unexpectedly sat up and said:

'Mr Clennam, I beg your pardon. Am I to understand, my dear sir,
that I could--ha--could pass through the Lodge at this moment,
and--hum--take a walk?'

'I think not, Mr Dorrit,' was the unwilling reply. 'There are
certain forms to be completed; and although your detention here is
now in itself a form, I fear it is one that for a little longer has
to be observed too.'

At this he shed tears again.

'It is but a few hours, sir,' Clennam cheerfully urged upon him.

'A few hours, sir,' he returned in a sudden passion. 'You talk
very easily of hours, sir! How long do you suppose, sir, that an
hour is to a man who is choking for want of air?'

It was his last demonstration for that time; as, after shedding
some more tears and querulously complaining that he couldn't
breathe, he slowly fell into a slumber. Clennam had abundant
occupation for his thoughts, as he sat in the quiet room watching
the father on his bed, and the daughter fanning his face.
Little Dorrit had been thinking too. After softly putting his grey
hair aside, and touching his forehead with her lips, she looked
towards Arthur, who came nearer to her, and pursued in a low
whisper the subject of her thoughts.

'Mr Clennam, will he pay all his debts before he leaves here?'

'No doubt. All.'

'All the debts for which he had been imprisoned here, all my life
and longer?'

'No doubt.'

There was something of uncertainty and remonstrance in her look;
something that was not all satisfaction. He wondered to detect it,
and said:

'You are glad that he should do so?'

'Are you?' asked Little Dorrit, wistfully.

'Am I? Most heartily glad!'

'Then I know I ought to be.'

'And are you not?'

'It seems to me hard,' said Little Dorrit, 'that he should have
lost so many years and suffered so much, and at last pay all the
debts as well. It seems to me hard that he should pay in life and
money both.'

'My dear child--' Clennam was beginning.

'Yes, I know I am wrong,' she pleaded timidly, 'don't think any
worse of me; it has grown up with me here.'

The prison, which could spoil so many things, had tainted Little
Dorrit's mind no more than this. Engendered as the confusion was,
in compassion for the poor prisoner, her father, it was the first
speck Clennam had ever seen, it was the last speck Clennam ever
saw, of the prison atmosphere upon her.

He thought this, and forebore to say another word. With the
thought, her purity and goodness came before him in their brightest
light. The little spot made them the more beautiful.

Worn out with her own emotions, and yielding to the silence of the
room, her hand slowly slackened and failed in its fanning movement,
and her head dropped down on the pillow at her father's side.
Clennam rose softly, opened and closed the door without a sound,
and passed from the prison, carrying the quiet with him into the
turbulent streets.

CHAPTER 36

The Marshalsea becomes an Orphan

And now the day arrived when Mr Dorrit and his family were to leave
the prison for ever, and the stones of its much-trodden pavement
were to know them no more.

The interval had been short, but he had greatly complained of its
length, and had been imperious with Mr Rugg touching the delay. He
had been high with Mr Rugg, and had threatened to employ some one
else. He had requested Mr Rugg not to presume upon the place in
which he found him, but to do his duty, sir, and to do it with
promptitude. He had told Mr Rugg that he knew what lawyers and
agents were, and that he would not submit to imposition. On that
gentleman's humbly representing that he exerted himself to the
utmost, Miss Fanny was very short with him; desiring to know what
less he could do, when he had been told a dozen times that money
was no object, and expressing her suspicion that he forgot whom he
talked to.

Towards the Marshal, who was a Marshal of many years' standing, and
with whom he had never had any previous difference, Mr Dorrit
comported himself with severity. That officer, on personally
tendering his congratulations, offered the free use of two rooms in
his house for Mr Dorrit's occupation until his departure. Mr
Dorrit thanked him at the moment, and replied that he would think
of it; but the Marshal was no sooner gone than he sat down and
wrote him a cutting note, in which he remarked that he had never on
any former occasion had the honour of receiving his congratulations
(which was true, though indeed there had not been anything
particular to congratulate him upon), and that he begged, on behalf
of himself and family, to repudiate the Marshal's offer, with all
those thanks which its disinterested character and its perfect
independence of all worldly considerations demanded.

Although his brother showed so dim a glimmering of interest in
their altered fortunes that it was very doubtful whether he
understood them, Mr Dorrit caused him to be measured for new
raiment by the hosiers, tailors, hatters, and bootmakers whom he
called in for himself; and ordered that his old clothes should be
taken from him and burned. Miss Fanny and Mr Tip required no
direction in making an appearance of great fashion and elegance;
and the three passed this interval together at the best hotel in
the neighbourhood--though truly, as Miss Fanny said, the best was
very indifferent. In connection with that establishment, Mr Tip
hired a cabriolet, horse, and groom, a very neat turn out, which
was usually to be observed for two or three hours at a time gracing
the Borough High Street, outside the Marshalsea court-yard. A
modest little hired chariot and pair was also frequently to be seen
there; in alighting from and entering which vehicle, Miss Fanny
fluttered the Marshal's daughters by the display of inaccessible
bonnets.

A great deal of business was transacted in this short period.
Among other items, Messrs Peddle and Pool, solicitors, of Monument
Yard, were instructed by their client Edward Dorrit, Esquire, to
address a letter to Mr Arthur Clennam, enclosing the sum of twenty-
four pounds nine shillings and eightpence, being the amount of
principal and interest computed at the rate of five per cent. per
annum, in which their client believed himself to be indebted to Mr
Clennam. In making this communication and remittance, Messrs
Peddle and Pool were further instructed by their client to remind
Mr Clennam that the favour of the advance now repaid (including
gate-fees) had not been asked of him, and to inform him that it
would not have been accepted if it had been openly proffered in his
name. With which they requested a stamped receipt, and remained
his obedient servants. A great deal of business had likewise to be
done, within the so-soon-to-be-orphaned Marshalsea, by Mr Dorrit so
long its Father, chiefly arising out of applications made to him by
Collegians for small sums of money. To these he responded with the
greatest liberality, and with no lack of formality; always first
writing to appoint a time at which the applicant might wait upon
him in his room, and then receiving him in the midst of a vast
accumulation of documents, and accompanying his donation (for he
said in every such case, 'it is a donation, not a loan') with a
great deal of good counsel: to the effect that he, the expiring
Father of the Marshalsea, hoped to be long remembered, as an
example that a man might preserve his own and the general respect
even there.

The Collegians were not envious. Besides that they had a personal
and traditional regard for a Collegian of so many years' standing,
the event was creditable to the College, and made it famous in the
newspapers. Perhaps more of them thought, too, than were quite
aware of it, that the thing might in the lottery of chances have
happened to themselves, or that something of the sort might yet
happen to themselves some day or other. They took it very well.
A few were low at the thought of being left behind, and being left
poor; but even these did not grudge the family their brilliant
reverse. There might have been much more envy in politer places.
It seems probable that mediocrity of fortune would have been
disposed to be less magnanimous than the Collegians, who lived from
hand to mouth--from the pawnbroker's hand to the day's dinner.

They got up an address to him, which they presented in a neat frame
and glass (though it was not afterwards displayed in the family
mansion or preserved among the family papers); and to which he
returned a gracious answer. In that document he assured them, in
a Royal manner, that he received the profession of their attachment
with a full conviction of its sincerity; and again generally
exhorted them to follow his example--which, at least in so far as
coming into a great property was concerned, there is no doubt they
would have gladly imitated. He took the same occasion of inviting
them to a comprehensive entertainment, to be given to the whole
College in the yard, and at which he signified he would have the
honour of taking a parting glass to the health and happiness of all
those whom he was about to leave behind.

He did not in person dine at this public repast (it took place at
two in the afternoon, and his dinners now came in from the hotel at
six), but his son was so good as to take the head of the principal
table, and to be very free and engaging. He himself went about
among the company, and took notice of individuals, and saw that the
viands were of the quality he had ordered, and that all were
served. On the whole, he was like a baron of the olden time in a
rare good humour. At the conclusion of the repast, he pledged his
guests in a bumper of old Madeira; and told them that he hoped they
had enjoyed themselves, and what was more, that they would enjoy
themselves for the rest of the evening; that he wished them well;
and that he bade them welcome.

His health being drunk with acclamations, he was not so baronial
after all but that in trying to return thanks he broke down, in the
manner of a mere serf with a heart in his breast, and wept before
them all. After this great success, which he supposed to be a
failure, he gave them 'Mr Chivery and his brother officers;' whom
he had beforehand presented with ten pounds each, and who were all
in attendance. Mr Chivery spoke to the toast, saying, What you
undertake to lock up, lock up; but remember that you are, in the
words of the fettered African, a man and a brother ever. The list
of toasts disposed of, Mr Dorrit urbanely went through the motions
of playing a game of skittles with the Collegian who was the next
oldest inhabitant to himself; and left the tenantry to their
diversions.

But all these occurrences preceded the final day. And now the day
arrived when he and his family were to leave the prison for ever,
and when the stones of its much-trodden pavement were to know them
no more.

Noon was the hour appointed for the departure. As it approached,
there was not a Collegian within doors, nor a turnkey absent. The
latter class of gentlemen appeared in their Sunday clothes, and the
greater part of the Collegians were brightened up as much as
circumstances allowed. Two or three flags were even displayed, and
the children put on odds and ends of ribbon. Mr Dorrit himself, at
this trying time, preserved a serious but graceful dignity. Much
of his great attention was given to his brother, as to whose
bearing on the great occasion he felt anxious.

'My dear Frederick,' said he, 'if you will give me your arm we will
pass among our friends together. I think it is right that we
should go out arm in arm, my dear Frederick.'

'Hah!' said Frederick. 'Yes, yes, yes, yes.'

'And if, my dear Frederick--if you could, without putting any great
constraint upon yourself, throw a little (pray excuse me,
Frederick), a little Polish into your usual demeanour--'

'William, William,' said the other, shaking his head, 'it's for you
to do all that. I don't know how. All forgotten, forgotten!'

'But, my dear fellow,' returned William, 'for that very reason, if
for no other, you must positively try to rouse yourself. What you
have forgotten you must now begin to recall, my dear Frederick.
Your position--'

'Eh?' said Frederick.

'Your position, my dear Frederick.'

'Mine?' He looked first at his own figure, and then at his
brother's, and then, drawing a long breath, cried, 'Hah, to be
sure! Yes, yes, yes.'
'Your position, my dear Frederick, is now a fine one. Your
position, as my brother, is a very fine one. And I know that it
belongs to your conscientious nature to try to become worthy of it,
my dear Frederick, and to try to adorn it. To be no discredit to
it, but to adorn it.'

'William,' said the other weakly, and with a sigh, 'I will do
anything you wish, my brother, provided it lies in my power. Pray
be so kind as to recollect what a limited power mine is. What
would you wish me to do to-day, brother? Say what it is, only say
what it is.'

'My dearest Frederick, nothing. It is not worth troubling so good
a heart as yours with.'

'Pray trouble it,' returned the other. 'It finds it no trouble,
William, to do anything it can for you.'

William passed his hand across his eyes, and murmured with august
satisfaction, 'Blessings on your attachment, my poor dear fellow!'
Then he said aloud, 'Well, my dear Frederick, if you will only try,
as we walk out, to show that you are alive to the occasion --that
you think about it--'

'What would you advise me to think about it?' returned his
submissive brother.

'Oh! my dear Frederick, how can I answer you? I can only say
what, in leaving these good people, I think myself.'

'That's it!' cried his brother. 'That will help me.'

'I find that I think, my dear Frederick, and with mixed emotions in
which a softened compassion predominates, What will they do without
me!'

'True,' returned his brother. 'Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'll think
that as we go, What will they do without my brother! Poor things!
What will they do without him!'

Twelve o'clock having just struck, and the carriage being reported
ready in the outer court-yard, the brothers proceeded down-stairs
arm-in-arm. Edward Dorrit, Esquire (once Tip), and his sister
Fanny followed, also arm-in-arm; Mr Plornish and Maggy, to whom had
been entrusted the removal of such of the family effects as were
considered worth removing, followed, bearing bundles and burdens to
be packed in a cart.

In the yard, were the Collegians and turnkeys. In the yard, were
Mr Pancks and Mr Rugg, come to see the last touch given to their
work. In the yard, was Young John making a new epitaph for
himself, on the occasion of his dying of a broken heart. In the
yard, was the Patriarchal Casby, looking so tremendously benevolent
that many enthusiastic Collegians grasped him fervently by the
hand, and the wives and female relatives of many more Collegians
kissed his hand, nothing doubting that he had done it all. In the
yard, was the man with the shadowy grievance respecting the Fund
which the Marshal embezzled, who had got up at five in the morning
to complete the copying of a perfectly unintelligible history of
that transaction, which he had committed to Mr Dorrit's care, as a
document of the last importance, calculated to stun the Government
and effect the Marshal's downfall. In the yard, was the insolvent
whose utmost energies were always set on getting into debt, who
broke into prison with as much pains as other men have broken out
of it, and who was always being cleared and complimented; while the
insolvent at his elbow--a mere little, snivelling, striving
tradesman, half dead of anxious efforts to keep out of debt--found
it a hard matter, indeed, to get a Commissioner to release him with
much reproof and reproach. In the yard, was the man of many
children and many burdens, whose failure astonished everybody; in
the yard, was the man of no children and large resources, whose
failure astonished nobody. There, were the people who were always
going out to-morrow, and always putting it off; there, were the
people who had come in yesterday, and who were much more jealous
and resentful of this freak of fortune than the seasoned birds.
There, were some who, in pure meanness of spirit, cringed and bowed
before the enriched Collegian and his family; there, were others
who did so really because their eyes, accustomed to the gloom of
their imprisonment and poverty, could not support the light of such
bright sunshine. There, were many whose shillings had gone into
his pocket to buy him meat and drink; but none who were now
obtrusively Hail fellow well met! with him, on the strength of
that assistance. It was rather to be remarked of the caged birds,
that they were a little shy of the bird about to be so grandly
free, and that they had a tendency to withdraw themselves towards
the bars, and seem a little fluttered as he passed.

Through these spectators the little procession, headed by the two
brothers, moved slowly to the gate. Mr Dorrit, yielding to the
vast speculation how the poor creatures were to get on without him,
was great, and sad, but not absorbed. He patted children on the
head like Sir Roger de Coverley
going to church, he spoke to people in the background by their
Christian names, he condescended to all present, and seemed for
their consolation to walk encircled by the legend in golden
characters, 'Be comforted, my people! Bear it!'

At last three honest cheers announced that he had passed the gate,
and that the Marshalsea was an orphan. Before they had ceased to
ring in the echoes of the prison walls, the family had got into
their carriage, and the attendant had the steps in his hand.

Then, and not before, 'Good Gracious!' cried Miss Fanny all at
once, 'Where's Amy!'

Her father had thought she was with her sister. Her sister had
thought she was 'somewhere or other.' They had all trusted to
finding her, as they had always done, quietly in the right place at
the right moment. This going away was perhaps the very first
action of their joint lives that they had got through without her.

A minute might have been consumed in the ascertaining of these
points, when Miss Fanny, who, from her seat in the carriage,
commanded the long narrow passage leading to the Lodge, flushed
indignantly.

'Now I do say, Pa,' cried she, 'that this is disgraceful!'

'What is disgraceful, Fanny?'

'I do say,' she repeated, 'this is perfectly infamous! Really
almost enough, even at such a time as this, to make one wish one
was dead! Here is that child Amy, in her ugly old shabby dress,
which she was so obstinate about, Pa, which I over and over again
begged and prayed her to change, and which she over and over again
objected to, and promised to change to-day, saying she wished to
wear it as long as ever she remained in there with you--which was
absolutely romantic nonsense of the lowest kind--here is that child
Amy disgracing us to the last moment and at the last moment, by
being carried out in that dress after all. And by that Mr Clennam
too!'

The offence was proved, as she delivered the indictment. Clennam
appeared at the carriage-door, bearing the little insensible figure
in his arms.

'She has been forgotten,' he said, in a tone of pity not free from
reproach. 'I ran up to her room (which Mr Chivery showed me) and
found the door open, and that she had fainted on the floor, dear
child. She appeared to have gone to change her dress, and to have
sunk down overpowered. It may have been the cheering, or it may
have happened sooner. Take care of this poor cold hand, Miss
Dorrit. Don't let it fall.'

'Thank you, sir,' returned Miss Dorrit, bursting into tears. 'I
believe I know what to do, if you will give me leave. Dear Amy,
open your eyes, that's a love! Oh, Amy, Amy, I really am so vexed
and ashamed! Do rouse yourself, darling! Oh, why are they not
driving on! Pray, Pa, do drive on!'

The attendant, getting between Clennam and the carriage-door, with
a sharp 'By your leave, sir!' bundled up the steps, and they drove
away.

BOOK THE SECOND
RICHES

CHAPTER 1

Fellow Travellers

In the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to
the highest ridges of the Alps.

It was vintage time in the valleys on the Swiss side of the Pass of
the Great Saint Bernard, and along the banks of the Lake of Geneva.

The air there was charged with the scent of gathered grapes.
Baskets, troughs, and tubs of grapes stood in the dim village
doorways, stopped the steep and narrow village streets, and had
been carrying all day along the roads and lanes. Grapes, split and
crushed under foot, lay about everywhere. The child carried in a
sling by the laden peasant woman toiling home, was quieted with
picked-up grapes; the idiot sunning his big goitre under the leaves
of the wooden chalet by the way to the Waterfall, sat Munching
grapes; the breath of the cows and goats was redolent of leaves and
stalks of grapes; the company in every little cabaret were eating,
drinking, talking grapes. A pity that no ripe touch of this
generous abundance could be given to the thin, hard, stony wine,
which after all was made from the grapes!

The air had been warm and transparent through the whole of the
bright day. Shining metal spires and church-roofs, distant and
rarely seen, had sparkled in the view; and the snowy mountain-tops
had been so clear that unaccustomed eyes, cancelling the
intervening country, and slighting their rugged heights for
something fabulous, would have measured them as within a few hours
easy reach. Mountain-peaks of great celebrity in the valleys,
whence no trace of their existence was visible sometimes for months
together, had been since morning plain and near in the blue sky.
And now, when it was dark below, though they seemed solemnly to
recede, like spectres who were going to vanish, as the red dye of
the sunset faded out of them and left them coldly white, they were
yet distinctly defined in their loneliness above the mists and
shadows.
Seen from these solitudes, and from the Pass of the Great Saint
Bernard, which was one of them, the ascending Night came up the
mountain like a rising water. When it at last rose to the walls of
the convent of the Great Saint Bernard, it was as if that weather-
beaten structure were another Ark, and floated on the shadowy
waves.

Darkness, outstripping some visitors on mules, had risen thus to
the rough convent walls, when those travellers were yet climbing
the mountain. As the heat of the glowing day when they had stopped
to drink at the streams of melted ice and snow, was changed to the
searching cold of the frosty rarefied night air at a great height,
so the fresh beauty of the lower journey had yielded to barrenness
and desolation. A craggy track, up which the mules in single file
scrambled and turned from block to block, as though they were
ascending the broken staircase of a gigantic ruin, was their way
now. No trees were to be seen, nor any vegetable growth save a
poor brown scrubby moss, freezing in the chinks of rock. Blackened
skeleton arms of wood by the wayside pointed upward to the convent
as if the ghosts of former travellers overwhelmed by the snow
haunted the scene of their distress. Icicle-hung caves and cellars
built for refuges from sudden storms, were like so many whispers of
the perils of the place; never-resting wreaths and mazes of mist
wandered about, hunted by a moaning wind; and snow, the besetting
danger of the mountain, against which all its defences were taken,
drifted sharply down.

The file of mules, jaded by their day's work, turned and wound
slowly up the deep ascent; the foremost led by a guide on foot, in
his broad-brimmed hat and round jacket, carrying a mountain staff
or two upon his shoulder, with whom another guide conversed. There
was no speaking among the string of riders. The sharp cold, the
fatigue of the journey, and a new sensation of a catching in the
breath, partly as if they had just emerged from very clear crisp
water, and partly as if they had been sobbing, kept them silent.

At length, a light on the summit of the rocky staircase gleamed
through the snow and mist. The guides called to the mules, the
mules pricked up their drooping heads, the travellers' tongues were
loosened, and in a sudden burst of slipping, climbing, jingling,
clinking, and talking, they arrived at the convent door.

Other mules had arrived not long before, some with peasant riders
and some with goods, and had trodden the snow about the door into
a pool of mud. Riding-saddles and bridles, pack-saddles and
strings of bells, mules and men, lanterns, torches, sacks,
provender, barrels, cheeses, kegs of honey and butter, straw
bundles and packages of many shapes, were crowded confusedly
together in this thawed quagmire and about the steps. Up here in
the clouds, everything was seen through cloud, and seemed
dissolving into cloud. The breath of the men was cloud, the breath
of the mules was cloud, the lights were encircled by cloud,
speakers close at hand were not seen for cloud, though their voices
and all other sounds were surprisingly clear. Of the cloudy line
of mules hastily tied to rings in the wall, one would bite another,
or kick another, and then the whole mist would be disturbed: with
men diving into it, and cries of men and beasts coming out of it,
and no bystander discerning what was wrong. In the midst of this,
the great stable of the convent, occupying the basement story and
entered by the basement door, outside which all the disorder was,
poured forth its contribution of cloud, as if the whole rugged
edifice were filled with nothing else, and would collapse as soon
as it had emptied itself, leaving the snow to fall upon the bare
mountain summit.

While all this noise and hurry were rife among the living
travellers, there, too, silently assembled in a grated house half-
a-dozen paces removed, with the same cloud enfolding them and the
same snow flakes drifting in upon them, were the dead travellers
found upon the mountain. The mother, storm-belated many winters
ago, still standing in the corner with her baby at her breast; the
man who had frozen with his arm raised to his mouth in fear or
hunger, still pressing it with his dry lips after years and years.
An awful company, mysteriously come together! A wild destiny for
that mother to have foreseen! 'Surrounded by so many and such
companions upon whom I never looked, and never shall look, I and my
child will dwell together inseparable, on the Great Saint Bernard,
outlasting generations who will come to see us, and will never know
our name, or one word of our story but the end.'

The living travellers thought little or nothing of the dead just
then. They thought much more of alighting at the convent door, and
warming themselves at the convent fire. Disengaged from the
turmoil, which was already calming down as the crowd of mules began
to be bestowed in the stable, they hurried shivering up the steps
and into the building. There was a smell within, coming up from
the floor, of tethered beasts, like the smell of a menagerie of
wild animals. There were strong arched galleries within, huge
stone piers, great staircases, and thick walls pierced with small
sunken windows--fortifications against the mountain storms, as if
they had been human enemies. There were gloomy vaulted sleeping-
rooms within, intensely cold, but clean and hospitably prepared for
guests. Finally, there was a parlour for guests to sit in and sup
in, where a table was already laid, and where a blazing fire shone
red and high.

In this room, after having had their quarters for the night
allotted to them by two young Fathers, the travellers presently
drew round the hearth. They were in three parties; of whom the
first, as the most numerous and important, was the slowest, and had
been overtaken by one of the others on the way up. It consisted of
an elderly lady, two grey-haired gentlemen, two young ladies, and
their brother. These were attended (not to mention four guides),
by a courier, two footmen, and two waiting-maids: which strong body
of inconvenience was accommodated elsewhere under the same roof.
The party that had overtaken them, and followed in their train,
consisted of only three members: one lady and two gentlemen. The
third party, which had ascended from the valley on the Italian side
of the Pass, and had arrived first, were four in number: a
plethoric, hungry, and silent German tutor in spectacles, on a tour
with three young men, his pupils, all plethoric, hungry, and
silent, and all in spectacles.

These three groups sat round the fire eyeing each other drily, and
waiting for supper. Only one among them, one of the gentlemen
belonging to the party of three, made advances towards
conversation. Throwing out his lines for the Chief of the
important tribe, while addressing himself to his own companions, he
remarked, in a tone of voice which included all the company if they
chose to be included, that it had been a long day, and that he felt
for the ladies. That he feared one of the young ladies was not a
strong or accustomed traveller, and had been over-fatigued two or
three hours ago. That he had observed, from his station in the
rear, that she sat her mule as if she were exhausted. That he had,
twice or thrice afterwards, done himself the honour of inquiring of
one of the guides, when he fell behind, how the lady did. That he
had been enchanted to learn that she had recovered her spirits, and
that it had been but a passing discomfort. That he trusted (by
this time he had secured the eyes of the Chief, and addressed him)
he might be permitted to express his hope that she was now none the
worse, and that she would not regret having made the journey.

'My daughter, I am obliged to you, sir,' returned the Chief, 'is
quite restored, and has been greatly interested.'

'New to mountains, perhaps?' said the insinuating traveller.

'New to--ha--to mountains,' said the Chief.

'But you are familiar with them, sir?' the insinuating traveller
assumed.

'I am--hum--tolerably familiar. Not of late years. Not of late
years,' replied the Chief, with a flourish of his hand.

The insinuating traveller, acknowledging the flourish with an
inclination of his head, passed from the Chief to the second young
lady, who had not yet been referred to otherwise than as one of the
ladies in whose behalf he felt so sensitive an interest.

He hoped she was not incommoded by the fatigues of the day.

'Incommoded, certainly,' returned the young lady, 'but not tired.'

The insinuating traveller complimented her on the justice of the
distinction. It was what he had meant to say. Every lady must
doubtless be incommoded by having to do with that proverbially
unaccommodating animal, the mule.

'We have had, of course,' said the young lady, who was rather
reserved and haughty, 'to leave the carriages and fourgon at
Martigny. And the impossibility of bringing anything that one
wants to this inaccessible place, and the necessity of leaving
every comfort behind, is not convenient.'

'A savage place indeed,' said the insinuating traveller.

The elderly lady, who was a model of accurate dressing, and whose
manner was perfect, considered as a piece of machinery, here
interposed a remark in a low soft voice.

'But, like other inconvenient places,' she observed, 'it must be
seen. As a place much spoken of, it is necessary to see it.'

'O! I have not the least objection to seeing it, I assure you, Mrs
General,' returned the other, carelessly.

'You, madam,' said the insinuating traveller, 'have visited this
spot before?'
'Yes,' returned Mrs General. 'I have been here before. Let me
commend you, my dear,' to the former young lady, 'to shade your
face from the hot wood, after exposure to the mountain air and
snow. You, too, my dear,' to the other and younger lady, who
immediately did so; while the former merely said, 'Thank you, Mrs
General, I am Perfectly comfortable, and prefer remaining as I am.'

The brother, who had left his chair to open a piano that stood in
the room, and who had whistled into it and shut it up again, now
came strolling back to the fire with his glass in his eye. He was
dressed in the very fullest and completest travelling trim. The
world seemed hardly large enough to yield him an amount of travel
proportionate to his equipment.

'These fellows are an immense time with supper,' he drawled. 'I
wonder what they'll give us! Has anybody any idea?'

'Not roast man, I believe,' replied the voice of the second
gentleman of the party of three.

'I suppose not. What d'ye mean?' he inquired.

'That, as you are not to be served for the general supper, perhaps
you will do us the favour of not cooking yourself at the general
fire,' returned the other.

The young gentleman who was standing in an easy attitude on the
hearth, cocking his glass at the company, with his back to the
blaze and his coat tucked under his arms, something as if he were
Of the Poultry species and were trussed for roasting, lost
countenance at this reply; he seemed about to demand further
explanation, when it was discovered--through all eyes turning on
the speaker--that the lady with him, who was young and beautiful,
had not heard what had passed through having fainted with her head
upon his shoulder.

'I think,' said the gentleman in a subdued tone, 'I had best carry
her straight to her room. Will you call to some one to bring a
light?' addressing his companion, 'and to show the way? In this
strange rambling place I don't know that I could find it.'

'Pray, let me call my maid,' cried the taller of the young ladies.

'Pray, let me put this water to her lips,' said the shorter, who
had not spoken yet.

Each doing what she suggested, there was no want of assistance.
Indeed, when the two maids came in (escorted by the courier, lest
any one should strike them dumb by addressing a foreign language to
them on the road), there was a prospect of too much assistance.
Seeing this, and saying as much in a few words to the slighter and
younger of the two ladies, the gentleman put his wife's arm over
his shoulder, lifted her up, and carried her away.

His friend, being left alone with the other visitors, walked slowly
up and down the room without coming to the fire again, pulling his
black moustache in a contemplative manner, as if he felt himself
committed to the late retort. While the subject of it was
breathing injury in a corner, the Chief loftily addressed this
gentleman.

'Your friend, sir,' said he, 'is--ha--is a little impatient; and,
in his impatience, is not perhaps fully sensible of what he owes
to--hum--to--but we will waive that, we will waive that. Your
friend is a little impatient, sir.'

'It may be so, sir,' returned the other. 'But having had the
honour of making that gentleman's acquaintance at the hotel at
Geneva, where we and much good company met some time ago, and
having had the honour of exchanging company and conversation with
that gentleman on several subsequent excursions, I can hear
nothing--no, not even from one of your appearance and station,
sir--detrimental to that gentleman.'

'You are in no danger, sir, of hearing any such thing from me. In
remarking that your friend has shown impatience, I say no such
thing. I make that remark, because it is not to be doubted that my
son, being by birth and by--ha--by education a--hum--a gentleman,
would have readily adapted himself to any obligingly expressed wish
on the subject of the fire being equally accessible to the whole of
the present circle. Which, in principle, I--ha--for all are--hum--
equal on these occasions--I consider right.'

'Good,' was the reply. 'And there it ends! I am your son's
obedient servant. I beg your son to receive the assurance of my
profound consideration. And now, sir, I may admit, freely admit,
that my friend is sometimes of a sarcastic temper.'

'The lady is your friend's wife, sir?'

'The lady is my friend's wife, sir.'
'She is very handsome.'

'Sir, she is peerless. They are still in the first year of their
marriage. They are still partly on a marriage, and partly on an
artistic, tour.'

'Your friend is an artist, sir?'

The gentleman replied by kissing the fingers of his right hand, and
wafting the kiss the length of his arm towards Heaven. As who
should say, I devote him to the celestial Powers as an immortal
artist!

'But he is a man of family,' he added. 'His connections are of the
best. He is more than an artist: he is highly connected. He may,
in effect, have repudiated his connections, proudly, impatiently,
sarcastically (I make the concession of both words); but he has
them. Sparks that have been struck out during our intercourse have
shown me this.'

'Well! I hope,' said the lofty gentleman, with the air of finally
disposing of the subject, 'that the lady's indisposition may be
only temporary.'

'Sir, I hope so.'

'Mere fatigue, I dare say.'

'Not altogether mere fatigue, sir, for her mule stumbled to-day,
and she fell from the saddle. She fell lightly, and was up again
without assistance, and rode from us laughing; but she complained
towards evening of a slight bruise in the side. She spoke of it
more than once, as we followed your party up the mountain.'

The head of the large retinue, who was gracious but not familiar,
appeared by this time to think that he had condescended more than
enough. He said no more, and there was silence for some quarter of
an hour until supper appeared.

With the supper came one of the young Fathers (there seemed to be
no old Fathers) to take the head of the table. It was like the
supper of an ordinary Swiss hotel, and good red wine grown by the
convent in more genial air was not wanting. The artist traveller
calmly came and took his place at table when the rest sat down,
with no apparent sense upon him of his late skirmish with the
completely dressed traveller.

'Pray,' he inquired of the host, over his soup, 'has your convent
many of its famous dogs now?'

'Monsieur, it has three.'

'I saw three in the gallery below. Doubtless the three in
question.'
The host, a slender, bright-eyed, dark young man of polite manners,
whose garment was a black gown with strips of white crossed over it
like braces, and who no more resembled the conventional breed of
Saint Bernard monks than he resembled the conventional breed of
Saint Bernard dogs, replied, doubtless those were the three in
question.

'And I think,' said the artist traveller, 'I have seen one of them
before.'

It was possible. He was a dog sufficiently well known. Monsieur
might have easily seen him in the valley or somewhere on the lake,
when he (the dog) had gone down with one of the order to solicit
aid for the convent.

'Which is done in its regular season of the year, I think?'

Monsieur was right.

'And never without a dog. The dog is very important.'
Again Monsieur was right. The dog was very important. People were
justly interested in the dog. As one of the dogs celebrated
everywhere, Ma'amselle would observe.

Ma'amselle was a little slow to observe it, as though she were not
yet well accustomed to the French tongue. Mrs General, however,
observed it for her.

'Ask him if he has saved many lives?' said, in his native English,
the young man who had been put out of countenance.

The host needed no translation of the question. He promptly
replied in French, 'No. Not this one.'

'Why not?' the same gentleman asked.

'Pardon,' returned the host composedly, 'give him the opportunity
and he will do it without doubt. For example, I am well
convinced,' smiling sedately, as he cut up the dish of veal to be
handed round, on the young man who had been put out of countenance,
'that if you, Monsieur, would give him the opportunity, he would
hasten with great ardour to fulfil his duty.'

The artist traveller laughed. The insinuating traveller (who
evinced a provident anxiety to get his full share of the supper),
wiping some drops of wine from his moustache with a piece of bread,
joined the conversation.

'It is becoming late in the year, my Father,' said he, 'for
tourist-travellers, is it not?'

'Yes, it is late. Yet two or three weeks, at most, and we shall be
left to the winter snows.'
'And then,' said the insinuating traveller, 'for the scratching
dogs and the buried children, according to the pictures!'

'Pardon,' said the host, not quite understanding the allusion.
'How, then the scratching dogs and the buried children according to
the pictures?'

The artist traveller struck in again before an answer could be
given.

'Don't you know,' he coldly inquired across the table of his
companion, 'that none but smugglers come this way in the winter or
can have any possible business this way?'

'Holy blue! No; never heard of it.'

'So it is, I believe. And as they know the signs of the weather
tolerably well, they don't give much employment to the dogs--who
have consequently died out rather--though this house of
entertainment is conveniently situated for themselves. Their young
families, I am told, they usually leave at home. But it's a grand
idea!' cried the artist traveller, unexpectedly rising into a tone
of enthusiasm. 'It's a sublime idea. It's the finest idea in the
world, and brings tears into a man's eyes, by Jupiter!' He then
went on eating his veal with great composure.

There was enough of mocking inconsistency at the bottom of this
speech to make it rather discordant, though the manner was refined
and the person well-favoured, and though the depreciatory part of
it was so skilfully thrown off as to be very difficult for one not
perfectly acquainted with the English language to understand, or ,
even understanding, to take offence at: so simple and dispassionate
was its tone. After finishing his veal in the midst of silence,
the speaker again addressed his friend.

'Look,' said he, in his former tone, 'at this gentleman our host,
not yet in the prime of life, who in so graceful a way and with
such courtly urbanity and modesty presides over us! Manners fit
for a crown! Dine with the Lord Mayor of London (if you can get an
invitation) and observe the contrast. This dear fellow, with the
finest cut face I ever saw, a face in perfect drawing, leaves some
laborious life and comes up here I don't know how many feet above
the level of the sea, for no other purpose on earth (except
enjoying himself, I hope, in a capital refectory) than to keep an
hotel for idle poor devils like you and me, and leave the bill to
our consciences! Why, isn't it a beautiful sacrifice? What do we
want more to touch us? Because rescued people of interesting
appearance are not, for eight or nine months out of every twelve,
holding on here round the necks of the most sagacious of dogs
carrying wooden bottles, shall we disparage the place? No! Bless
the place. It's a great place, a glorious place!'

The chest of the grey-haired gentleman who was the Chief of the
important party, had swelled as if with a protest against his being
numbered among poor devils. No sooner had the artist traveller
ceased speaking than he himself spoke with great dignity, as having
it incumbent on him to take the lead in most places, and having
deserted that duty for a little while.

He weightily communicated his opinion to their host, that his life
must be a very dreary life here in the winter.

The host allowed to Monsieur that it was a little monotonous. The
air was difficult to breathe for a length of time consecutively.
The cold was very severe. One needed youth and strength to bear
it. However, having them and the blessing of Heaven--

Yes, that was very good. 'But the confinement,' said the grey-
haired gentleman.

There were many days, even in bad weather, when it was possible to
walk about outside. It was the custom to beat a little track, and
take exercise there.

'But the space,' urged the grey-haired gentleman. 'So small. So--
ha--very limited.'

Monsieur would recall to himself that there were the refuges to
visit, and that tracks had to be made to them also.

Monsieur still urged, on the other hand, that the space was so--
ha--hum--so very contracted. More than that, it was always the
same, always the same.

With a deprecating smile, the host gently raised and gently lowered
his shoulders. That was true, he remarked, but permit him to say
that almost all objects had their various points of view. Monsieur
and he did not see this poor life of his from the same point of
view. Monsieur was not used to confinement.

'I--ha--yes, very true,' said the grey-haired gentleman. He seemed
to receive quite a shock from the force of the argument.

Monsieur, as an English traveller, surrounded by all means of
travelling pleasantly; doubtless possessing fortune, carriages, and
servants--

'Perfectly, perfectly. Without doubt,' said the gentleman.

Monsieur could not easily place himself in the position of a person
who had not the power to choose, I will go here to-morrow, or there
next day; I will pass these barriers, I will enlarge those bounds.
Monsieur could not realise, perhaps, how the mind accommodated
itself in such things to the force of necessity.

'It is true,' said Monsieur. 'We will--ha--not pursue the subject.

You are--hum--quite accurate, I have no doubt. We will say no
more.'

The supper having come to a close, he drew his chair away as he
spoke, and moved back to his former place by the fire. As it was
very cold at the greater part of the table, the other guests also
resumed their former seats by the fire, designing to toast
themselves well before going to bed. The host, when they rose from
the table, bowed to all present, wished them good night, and
withdrew. But first the insinuating traveller had asked him if
they could have some wine made hot; and as he had answered Yes, and
had presently afterwards sent it in, that traveller, seated in the
centre of the group, and in the full heat of the fire, was soon
engaged in serving it out to the rest.

At this time, the younger of the two young ladies, who had been
silently attentive in her dark corner (the fire-light was the chief
light in the sombre room, the lamp being smoky and dull) to what
had been said of the absent lady, glided out. She was at a loss
which way to turn when she had softly closed the door; but, after
a little hesitation among the sounding passages and the many ways,
came to a room in a corner of the main gallery, where the servants
were at their supper. From these she obtained a lamp, and a
direction to the lady's room.

It was up the great staircase on the story above. Here and there,
the bare white walls were broken by an iron grate, and she thought
as she went along that the place was something like a prison. The
arched door of the lady's room, or cell, was not quite shut. After
knocking at it two or three times without receiving an answer, she
pushed it gently open, and looked in.

The lady lay with closed eyes on the outside of the bed, protected
from the cold by the blankets and wrappers with which she had been
covered when she revived from her fainting fit. A dull light
placed in the deep recess of the window, made little impression on
the arched room. The visitor timidly stepped to the bed, and said,
in a soft whisper, 'Are you better?'

The lady had fallen into a slumber, and the whisper was too low to
awake her. Her visitor, standing quite still, looked at her
attentively.

'She is very pretty,' she said to herself. 'I never saw so
beautiful a face. O how unlike me!'

It was a curious thing to say, but it had some hidden meaning, for
it filled her eyes with tears.

'I know I must be right. I know he spoke of her that evening. I
could very easily be wrong on any other subject, but not on this,
not on this!'

With a quiet and tender hand she put aside a straying fold of the
sleeper's hair, and then touched the hand that lay outside the
covering.

'I like to look at her,' she breathed to herself. 'I like to see
what has affected him so much.'

She had not withdrawn her hand, when the sleeper opened her eyes
and started.

'Pray don't be alarmed. I am only one of the travellers from down-
stairs. I came to ask if you were better, and if I could do
anything for you.'

'I think you have already been so kind as to send your servants to
my assistance?'

'No, not I; that was my sister. Are you better?'

'Much better. It is only a slight bruise, and has been well looked
to, and is almost easy now. It made me giddy and faint in a
moment. It had hurt me before; but at last it overpowered me all
at once.'
'May I stay with you until some one comes? Would you like it?'

'I should like it, for it is lonely here; but I am afraid you will
feel the cold too much.'

'I don't mind cold. I am not delicate, if I look so.' She quickly
moved one of the two rough chairs to the bedside, and sat down.
The other as quickly moved a part of some travelling wrapper from
herself, and drew it over her, so that her arm, in keeping it about
her, rested on her shoulder.

'You have so much the air of a kind nurse,' said the lady, smiling
on her, 'that you seem as if you had come to me from home.'

'I am very glad of it.'

'I was dreaming of home when I woke just now. Of my old home, I
mean, before I was married.'

'And before you were so far away from it.'

'I have been much farther away from it than this; but then I took
the best part of it with me, and missed nothing. I felt solitary
as I dropped asleep here, and, missing it a little, wandered back
to it.' There was a sorrowfully affectionate and regretful sound
in her voice, which made her visitor refrain from looking at her
for the moment.

'It is a curious chance which at last brings us together, under
this covering in which you have wrapped me,' said the visitor after
a pause;'for do you know, I think I have been looking for you some
time.'
'Looking for me?'

'I believe I have a little note here, which I was to give to you
whenever I found you. This is it. Unless I greatly mistake, it is
addressed to you? Is it not?'

The lady took it, and said yes, and read it. Her visitor watched
her as she did so. It was very short. She flushed a little as she
put her lips to her visitor's cheek, and pressed her hand.

'The dear young friend to whom he presents me, may be a comfort to
me at some time, he says. She is truly a comfort to me the first
time I see her.'

'Perhaps you don't,' said the visitor, hesitating--'perhaps you
don't know my story? Perhaps he never told you my story ?'

'No.'

'Oh no, why should he! I have scarcely the right to tell it myself
at present, because I have been entreated not to do so. There is
not much in it, but it might account to you for my asking you not
to say anything about the letter here. You saw my family with me,
perhaps? Some of them--I only say this to you--are a little proud,
a little prejudiced.'

'You shall take it back again,' said the other; 'and then my
husband is sure not to see it. He might see it and speak of it,
otherwise, by some accident. Will you put it in your bosom again,
to be certain?'

She did so with great care. Her small, slight hand was still upon
the letter, when they heard some one in the gallery outside.

'I promised,' said the visitor, rising, 'that I would write to him
after seeing you (I could hardly fail to see you sooner or later),
and tell him if you were well and happy. I had better say you were
well and happy.'

'Yes, yes, yes! Say I was very well and very happy. And that I
thanked him affectionately, and would never forget him.'

'I shall see you in the morning. After that we are sure to meet
again before very long. Good night!'

'Good night. Thank you, thank you. Good night, my dear!'

Both of them were hurried and fluttered as they exchanged this
parting, and as the visitor came out of the door. She had expected
to meet the lady's husband approaching it; but the person in the
gallery was not he: it was the traveller who had wiped the wine-
drops from his moustache with the piece of bread. When he heard
the step behind him, he turned round--for he was walking away in
the dark.
His politeness, which was extreme, would not allow of the young
lady's lighting herself down-stairs, or going down alone. He took
her lamp, held it so as to throw the best light on the stone steps,
and followed her all the way to the supper-room. She went down,
not easily hiding how much she was inclined to shrink and tremble;
for the appearance of this traveller was particularly disagreeable
to her. She had sat in her quiet corner before supper imagining
what he would have been in the scenes and places within her
experience, until he inspired her with an aversion that made him
little less than terrific.

He followed her down with his smiling politeness, followed her in,
and resumed his seat in the best place in the hearth. There with
the wood-fire, which was beginning to burn low, rising and falling
upon him in the dark room, he sat with his legs thrust out to warm,
drinking the hot wine down to the lees, with a monstrous shadow
imitating him on the wall and ceiling.

The tired company had broken up, and all the rest were gone to bed
except the young lady's father, who dozed in his chair by the fire.

The traveller had been at the pains of going a long way up-stairs
to his sleeping-room to fetch his pocket-flask of brandy. He told
them so, as he poured its contents into what was left of the wine,
and drank with a new relish.

'May I ask, sir, if you are on your way to Italy?'

The grey-haired gentleman had roused himself, and was preparing to
withdraw. He answered in the affirmative.

'I also!' said the traveller. 'I shall hope to have the honour of
offering my compliments in fairer scenes, and under softer
circumstances, than on this dismal mountain.'

The gentleman bowed, distantly enough, and said he was obliged to
him.

'We poor gentlemen, sir,' said the traveller, pulling his moustache
dry with his hand, for he had dipped it in the wine and brandy; 'we
poor gentlemen do not travel like princes, but the courtesies and
graces of life are precious to us. To your health, sir!'

'Sir, I thank you.'

'To the health of your distinguished family--of the fair ladies,
your daughters!'

'Sir, I thank you again, I wish you good night. My dear, are our--
ha--our people in attendance?'

'They are close by, father.'

'Permit me!' said the traveller, rising and holding the door open,
as the gentleman crossed the room towards it with his arm drawn
through his daughter's. 'Good repose! To the pleasure of seeing
you once more! To to-morrow!'

As he kissed his hand, with his best manner and his daintiest
smile, the young lady drew a little nearer to her father, and
passed him with a dread of touching him.

'Humph!' said the insinuating traveller, whose manner shrunk, and
whose voice dropped when he was left alone. 'If they all go to
bed, why I must go. They are in a devil of a hurry. One would
think the night would be long enough, in this freezing silence and
solitude, if one went to bed two hours hence.'

Throwing back his head in emptying his glass, he cast his eyes upon
the travellers' book, which lay on the piano, open, with pens and
ink beside it, as if the night's names had been registered when he
was absent. Taking it in his hand, he read these entries.

     William Dorrit, Esquire
     Frederick Dorrit, Esquire
     Edward Dorrit, Esquire
     Miss Dorrit
     Miss Amy Dorrit
     Mrs General
     and Suite.
     From France to Italy.

Mr and Mrs Henry Gowan.
From France to Italy.

To which he added, in a small complicated hand, ending with a long
lean flourish, not unlike a lasso thrown at all the rest of the
names:

Blandois. Paris.
From France to Italy.

And then, with his nose coming down over his moustache and his
moustache going up and under his nose, repaired to his allotted
cell.

CHAPTER 2

Mrs General

It is indispensable to present the accomplished lady who was of
sufficient importance in the suite of the Dorrit Family to have a
line to herself in the Travellers' Book.

Mrs General was the daughter of a clerical dignitary in a cathedral
town, where she had led the fashion until she was as near forty-
five as a single lady can be. A stiff commissariat officer of
sixty, famous as a martinet, had then become enamoured of the
gravity with which she drove the proprieties four-in-hand through
the cathedral town society, and had solicited to be taken beside
her on the box of the cool coach of ceremony to which that team was
harnessed. His proposal of marriage being accepted by the lady,
the commissary took his seat behind the proprieties with great
decorum, and Mrs General drove until the commissary died. In the
course of their united journey, they ran over several people who
came in the way of the proprieties; but always in a high style and
with composure.

The commissary having been buried with all the decorations suitable
to the service (the whole team of proprieties were harnessed to his
hearse, and they all had feathers and black velvet housings with
his coat of arms in the corner), Mrs General began to inquire what
quantity of dust and ashes was deposited at the bankers'. It then
transpired that the commissary had so far stolen a march on Mrs
General as to have bought himself an annuity some years before his
marriage, and to have reserved that circumstance in mentioning, at
the period of his proposal, that his income was derived from the
interest of his money. Mrs General consequently found her means so
much diminished, that, but for the perfect regulation of her mind,
she might have felt disposed to question the accuracy of that
portion of the late service which had declared that the commissary
could take nothing away with him.

In this state of affairs it occurred to Mrs General, that she might
'form the mind,' and eke the manners of some young lady of
distinction. Or, that she might harness the proprieties to the
carriage of some rich young heiress or widow, and become at once
the driver and guard of such vehicle through the social mazes. Mrs
General's communication of this idea to her clerical and
commissariat connection was so warmly applauded that, but for the
lady's undoubted merit, it might have appeared as though they
wanted to get rid of her. Testimonials representing Mrs General as
a prodigy of piety, learning, virtue, and gentility, were lavishly
contributed from influential quarters; and one venerable archdeacon
even shed tears in recording his testimony to her perfections
(described to him by persons on whom he could rely), though he had
never had the honour and moral gratification of setting eyes on Mrs
General in all his life.

Thus delegated on her mission, as it were by Church and State, Mrs
General, who had always occupied high ground, felt in a condition
to keep it, and began by putting herself up at a very high figure.
An interval of some duration elapsed, in which there was no bid for
Mrs General. At length a county-widower, with a daughter of
fourteen, opened negotiations with the lady; and as it was a part
either of the native dignity or of the artificial policy of Mrs
General (but certainly one or the other) to comport herself as if
she were much more sought than seeking, the widower pursued Mrs
General until he prevailed upon her to form his daughter's mind and
manners.

The execution of this trust occupied Mrs General about seven years,
in the course of which time she made the tour of Europe, and saw
most of that extensive miscellany of objects which it is essential
that all persons of polite cultivation should see with other
people's eyes, and never with their own. When her charge was at
length formed, the marriage, not only of the young lady, but
likewise of her father, the widower, was resolved on. The widower
then finding Mrs General both inconvenient and expensive, became of
a sudden almost as much affected by her merits as the archdeacon
had been, and circulated such praises of her surpassing worth, in
all quarters where he thought an opportunity might arise of
transferring the blessing to somebody else, that Mrs General was a
name more honourable than ever.

The phoenix was to let, on this elevated perch, when Mr Dorrit, who
had lately succeeded to his property, mentioned to his bankers that
he wished to discover a lady, well-bred, accomplished, well
connected, well accustomed to good society, who was qualified at
once to complete the education of his daughters, and to be their
matron or chaperon. Mr Dorrit's bankers, as bankers of the county-
widower, instantly said, 'Mrs General.'

Pursuing the light so fortunately hit upon, and finding the
concurrent testimony of the whole of Mrs General's acquaintance to
be of the pathetic nature already recorded, Mr Dorrit took the
trouble of going down to the county of the county-widower to see
Mrs General, in whom he found a lady of a quality superior to his
highest expectations.

'Might I be excused,' said Mr Dorrit, 'if I inquired--ha--what
remune--'

'Why, indeed,' returned Mrs General, stopping the word, 'it is a
subject on which I prefer to avoid entering. I have never entered
on it with my friends here; and I cannot overcome the delicacy, Mr
Dorrit, with which I have always regarded it. I am not, as I hope
you are aware, a governess--'

'O dear no!' said Mr Dorrit. 'Pray, madam, do not imagine for a
moment that I think so.' He really blushed to be suspected of it.

Mrs General gravely inclined her head. 'I cannot, therefore, put
a price upon services which it is a pleasure to me to render if I
can render them spontaneously, but which I could not render in mere
return for any consideration. Neither do I know how, or where, to
find a case parallel to my own. It is peculiar.'

No doubt. But how then (Mr Dorrit not unnaturally hinted) could
the subject be approached.
'I cannot object,' said Mrs General--'though even that is
disagreeable to me--to Mr Dorrit's inquiring, in confidence of my
friends here, what amount they have been accustomed, at quarterly
intervals, to pay to my credit at my bankers'.'

Mr Dorrit bowed his acknowledgements.

'Permit me to add,' said Mrs General, 'that beyond this, I can
never resume the topic. Also that I can accept no second or
inferior position. If the honour were proposed to me of becoming
known to Mr Dorrit's family--I think two daughters were
mentioned?--'

'Two daughters.'

'I could only accept it on terms of perfect equality, as a
companion, protector, Mentor, and friend.'

Mr Dorrit, in spite of his sense of his importance, felt as if it
would be quite a kindness in her to accept it on any conditions.
He almost said as much.

'I think,' repeated Mrs General, 'two daughters were mentioned?'

'Two daughters,' said Mr Dorrit again.

'It would therefore,' said Mrs General, 'be necessary to add a
third more to the payment (whatever its amount may prove to be),
which my friends here have been accustomed to make to my bankers'.'

Mr Dorrit lost no time in referring the delicate question to the
county-widower, and finding that he had been accustomed to pay
three hundred pounds a-year to the credit of Mrs General, arrived,
without any severe strain on his arithmetic, at the conclusion that
he himself must pay four. Mrs General being an article of that
lustrous surface which suggests that it is worth any money, he made
a formal proposal to be allowed to have the honour and pleasure of
regarding her as a member of his family. Mrs General conceded that
high privilege, and here she was.

In person, Mrs General, including her skirts which had much to do
with it, was of a dignified and imposing appearance; ample,
rustling, gravely voluminous; always upright behind the
proprieties. She might have been taken--had been taken--to the top
of the Alps and the bottom of Herculaneum, without disarranging a
fold in her dress, or displacing a pin. If her countenance and
hair had rather a floury appearance, as though from living in some
transcendently genteel Mill, it was rather because she was a chalky
creation altogether, than because she mended her complexion with
violet powder, or had turned grey. If her eyes had no expression,
it was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had
few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or
any other inscription on her face. A cool, waxy, blown-out woman,
who had never lighted well.
Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to
prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of
mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains of other
people's opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got
anywhere. Even her propriety could not dispute that there was
impropriety in the world; but Mrs General's way of getting rid of
it was to put it out of sight, and make believe that there was no
such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a mind--to
cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and
say they had no existence. It was the easiest way, and, beyond all
comparison, the properest.

Mrs General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents,
miseries, and offences, were never to be mentioned before her.
Passion was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs General, and
blood was to change to milk and water. The little that was left in
the world, when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs
General's province to varnish. In that formation process of hers,
she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of pots, and
varnished the surface of every object that came under
consideration. The more cracked it was, the more Mrs General
varnished it.
There was varnish in Mrs General's voice, varnish in Mrs General's
touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs General's figure. Mrs
General's dreams ought to have been varnished--if she had any--
lying asleep in the arms of the good Saint Bernard, with the
feathery snow falling on his house-top.

CHAPTER 3

On the Road

The bright morning sun dazzled the eyes, the snow had ceased, the
mists had vanished, the mountain air was so clear and light that
the new sensation of breathing it was like the having entered on a
new existence. To help the delusion, the solid ground itself
seemed gone, and the mountain, a shining waste of immense white
heaps and masses, to be a region of cloud floating between the blue
sky above and the earth far below.

Some dark specks in the snow, like knots upon a little thread,
beginning at the convent door and winding away down the descent in
broken lengths which were not yet pieced together, showed where the
Brethren were at work in several places clearing the track.
Already the snow had begun to be foot-thawed again about the door.
Mules were busily brought out, tied to the rings in the wall, and
laden; strings of bells were buckled on, burdens were adjusted, the
voices of drivers and riders sounded musically. Some of the
earliest had even already resumed their journey; and, both on the
level summit by the dark water near the convent, and on the
downward way of yesterday's ascent, little moving figures of men
and mules, reduced to miniatures by the immensity around, went with
a clear tinkling of bells and a pleasant harmony of tongues.

In the supper-room of last night, a new fire, piled upon the
feathery ashes of the old one, shone upon a homely breakfast of
loaves, butter, and milk. It also shone on the courier of the
Dorrit family, making tea for his party from a supply he had
brought up with him, together with several other small stores which
were chiefly laid in for the use of the strong body of
inconvenience. Mr Gowan and Blandois of Paris had already
breakfasted, and were walking up and down by the lake, smoking
their cigars.
'Gowan, eh?' muttered Tip, otherwise Edward Dorrit, Esquire,
turning over the leaves of the book, when the courier had left them
to breakfast. 'Then Gowan is the name of a puppy, that's all I
have got to say! If it was worth my while, I'd pull his nose. But
it isn't worth my while--fortunately for him. How's his wife, Amy?

I suppose you know. You generally know things of that sort.'

'She is better, Edward. But they are not going to-day.'

'Oh! They are not going to-day! Fortunately for that fellow too,'
said Tip, 'or he and I might have come into collision.'

'It is thought better here that she should lie quiet to-day, and
not be fatigued and shaken by the ride down until to-morrow.'

'With all my heart. But you talk as if you had been nursing her.
You haven't been relapsing into (Mrs General is not here) into old
habits, have you, Amy?'

He asked her the question with a sly glance of observation at Miss
Fanny, and at his father too.

'I have only been in to ask her if I could do anything for her,
Tip,' said Little Dorrit.

'You needn't call me Tip, Amy child,' returned that young gentleman
with a frown; 'because that's an old habit, and one you may as well
lay aside.'

'I didn't mean to say so, Edward dear. I forgot. It was so
natural once, that it seemed at the moment the right word.'

'Oh yes!' Miss Fanny struck in. 'Natural, and right word, and
once, and all the rest of it! Nonsense, you little thing! I know
perfectly well why you have been taking such an interest in this
Mrs Gowan. You can't blind me.'

'I will not try to, Fanny. Don't be angry.'

'Oh! angry!' returned that young lady with a flounce. 'I have no
patience' (which indeed was the truth).
'Pray, Fanny,' said Mr Dorrit, raising his eyebrows, 'what do you
mean? Explain yourself.'

'Oh! Never mind, Pa,' replied Miss Fanny, 'it's no great matter.
Amy will understand me. She knew, or knew of, this Mrs Gowan
before yesterday, and she may as well admit that she did.'

'My child,' said Mr Dorrit, turning to his younger daughter, 'has
your sister--any--ha--authority for this curious statement?'

'However meek we are,' Miss Fanny struck in before she could
answer, 'we don't go creeping into people's rooms on the tops of
cold mountains, and sitting perishing in the frost with people,
unless we know something about them beforehand. It's not very hard
to divine whose friend Mrs Gowan is.'

'Whose friend?' inquired her father.

'Pa, I am sorry to say,' returned Miss Fanny, who had by this time
succeeded in goading herself into a state of much ill-usage and
grievance, which she was often at great pains to do: 'that I
believe her to be a friend of that very objectionable and
unpleasant person, who, with a total absence of all delicacy, which
our experience might have led us to expect from him, insulted us
and outraged our feelings in so public and wilful a manner on an
occasion to which it is understood among us that we will not more
pointedly allude.'

'Amy, my child,' said Mr Dorrit, tempering a bland severity with a
dignified affection, 'is this the case?'

Little Dorrit mildly answered, yes it was.

'Yes it is!' cried Miss Fanny. 'Of course! I said so! And now,
Pa, I do declare once for all'--this young lady was in the habit of
declaring the same thing once for all every day of her life, and
even several times in a day--'that this is shameful! I do declare
once for all that it ought to be put a stop to. Is it not enough
that we have gone through what is only known to ourselves, but are
we to have it thrown in our faces, perseveringly and
systematically, by the very person who should spare our feelings
most? Are we to be exposed to this unnatural conduct every moment
of our lives? Are we never to be permitted to forget? I say
again, it is absolutely infamous!'

'Well, Amy,' observed her brother, shaking his head, 'you know I
stand by you whenever I can, and on most occasions. But I must
say, that, upon my soul, I do consider it rather an unaccountable
mode of showing your sisterly affection, that you should back up a
man who treated me in the most ungentlemanly way in which one man
can treat another. And who,' he added convincingly, must be a low-
minded thief, you know, or he never could have conducted himself as
he did.'

'And see,' said Miss Fanny, 'see what is involved in this! Can we
ever hope to be respected by our servants? Never. Here are our
two women, and Pa's valet, and a footman, and a courier, and all
sorts of dependents, and yet in the midst of these, we are to have
one of ourselves rushing about with tumblers of cold water, like a
menial! Why, a policeman,' said Miss Fanny, 'if a beggar had a fit
in the street, could but go plunging about with tumblers, as this
very Amy did in this very room before our very eyes last night!'

'I don't so much mind that, once in a way,' remarked Mr Edward;
'but your Clennam, as he thinks proper to call himself, is another
thing.'
'He is part of the same thing,' returned Miss Fanny, 'and of a
piece with all the rest. He obtruded himself upon us in the first
instance. We never wanted him. I always showed him, for one, that
I could have dispensed with his company with the greatest pleasure.

He then commits that gross outrage upon our feelings, which he
never could or would have committed but for the delight he took in
exposing us; and then we are to be demeaned for the service of his
friends! Why, I don't wonder at this Mr Gowan's conduct towards
you. What else was to be expected when he was enjoying our past
misfortunes--gloating over them at the moment!'
'Father--Edward--no indeed!' pleaded Little Dorrit. 'Neither Mr
nor Mrs Gowan had ever heard our name. They were, and they are,
quite ignorant of our history.'

'So much the worse,' retorted Fanny, determined not to admit
anything in extenuation, 'for then you have no excuse. If they had
known about us, you might have felt yourself called upon to
conciliate them. That would have been a weak and ridiculous
mistake, but I can respect a mistake, whereas I can't respect a
wilful and deliberate abasing of those who should be nearest and
dearest to us. No. I can't respect that. I can do nothing but
denounce that.'

'I never offend you wilfully, Fanny,' said Little Dorrit, 'though
you are so hard with me.'

'Then you should be more careful, Amy,' returned her sister. 'If
you do such things by accident, you should be more careful. If I
happened to have been born in a peculiar place, and under peculiar
circumstances that blunted my knowledge of propriety, I fancy I
should think myself bound to consider at every step, "Am I going,
ignorantly, to compromise any near and dear relations?" That is
what I fancy I should do, if it was my case.'

Mr Dorrit now interposed, at once to stop these painful subjects by
his authority, and to point their moral by his wisdom.

'My dear,' said he to his younger daughter, 'I beg you to--ha--to
say no more. Your sister Fanny expresses herself strongly, but not
without considerable reason. You have now a--hum--a great position
to support. That great position is not occupied by yourself alone,
but by--ha--by me, and--ha hum--by us. Us. Now, it is incumbent
upon all people in an exalted position, but it is particularly so
on this family, for reasons which I--ha--will not dwell upon, to
make themselves respected. To be vigilant in making themselves
respected. Dependants, to respect us, must be--ha--kept at a
distance and--hum--kept down. Down. Therefore, your not exposing
yourself to the remarks of our attendants by appearing to have at
any time dispensed with their services and performed them for
yourself, is--ha--highly important.'

'Why, who can doubt it?' cried Miss Fanny. 'It's the essence of
everything.'
'Fanny,' returned her father, grandiloquently, 'give me leave, my
dear. We then come to--ha--to Mr Clennam. I am free to say that
I do not, Amy, share your sister's sentiments--that is to say
altogether--hum--altogether--in reference to Mr Clennam. I am
content to regard that individual in the light of--ha--generally--
a well-behaved person. Hum. A well-behaved person. Nor will I
inquire whether Mr Clennam did, at any time, obtrude himself on--
ha--my society. He knew my society to be--hum--sought, and his
plea might be that he regarded me in the light of a public
character. But there were circumstances attending my--ha--slight
knowledge of Mr Clennam (it was very slight), which,' here Mr
Dorrit became extremely grave and impressive, 'would render it
highly indelicate in Mr Clennam to--ha--to seek to renew
communication with me or with any member of my family under
existing circumstances. If Mr Clennam has sufficient delicacy to
perceive the impropriety of any such attempt, I am bound as a
responsible gentleman to--ha--defer to that delicacy on his part.
If, on the other hand, Mr Clennam has not that delicacy, I cannot
for a moment--ha--hold any correspondence with so--hum--coarse a
mind. In either case, it would appear that Mr Clennam is put
altogether out of the question, and that we have nothing to do with
him or he with us. Ha--Mrs General!'

The entrance of the lady whom he announced, to take her place at
the breakfast-table, terminated the discussion. Shortly
afterwards, the courier announced that the valet, and the footman,
and the two maids, and the four guides, and the fourteen mules,
were in readiness; so the breakfast party went out to the convent
door to join the cavalcade.

Mr Gowan stood aloof with his cigar and pencil, but Mr Blandois was
on the spot to pay his respects to the ladies. When he gallantly
pulled off his slouched hat to Little Dorrit, she thought he had
even a more sinister look, standing swart and cloaked in the snow,
than he had in the fire-light over-night. But, as both her father
and her sister received his homage with some favour, she refrained
from expressing any distrust of him, lest it should prove to be a
new blemish derived from her prison birth.

Nevertheless, as they wound down the rugged way while the convent
was yet in sight, she more than once looked round, and descried Mr
Blandois, backed by the convent smoke which rose straight and high
from the chimneys in a golden film, always standing on one jutting
point looking down after them. Long after he was a mere black
stick in the snow, she felt as though she could yet see that smile
of his, that high nose, and those eyes that were too near it. And
even after that, when the convent was gone and some light morning
clouds veiled the pass below it, the ghastly skeleton arms by the
wayside seemed to be all pointing up at him.

More treacherous than snow, perhaps, colder at heart, and harder to
melt, Blandois of Paris by degrees passed out of her mind, as they
came down into the softer regions. Again the sun was warm, again
the streams descending from glaciers and snowy caverns were
refreshing to drink at, again they came among the pine-trees, the
rocky rivulets, the verdant heights and dales, the wooden chalets
and rough zigzag fences of Swiss country. Sometimes the way so
widened that she and her father could ride abreast. And then to
look at him, handsomely clothed in his fur and broadcloths, rich,
free, numerously served and attended, his eyes roving far away
among the glories of the landscape, no miserable screen before them
to darken his sight and cast its shadow on him, was enough.

Her uncle was so far rescued from that shadow of old, that he wore
the clothes they gave him, and performed some ablutions as a
sacrifice to the family credit, and went where he was taken, with
a certain patient animal enjoyment, which seemed to express that
the air and change did him good. In all other respects, save one,
he shone with no light but such as was reflected from his brother.
His brother's greatness, wealth, freedom, and grandeur, pleased him
without any reference to himself. Silent and retiring, he had no
use for speech when he could hear his brother speak; no desire to
be waited on, so that the servants devoted themselves to his
brother. The only noticeable change he originated in himself, was
an alteration in his manner to his younger niece. Every day it
refined more and more into a marked respect, very rarely shown by
age to youth, and still more rarely susceptible, one would have
said, of the fitness with which he invested it. On those occasions
when Miss Fanny did declare once for all, he would take the next
opportunity of baring his grey head before his younger niece, and
of helping her to alight, or handing her to the carriage, or
showing her any other attention, with the profoundest deference.
Yet it never appeared misplaced or forced, being always heartily
simple, spontaneous, and genuine. Neither would he ever consent,
even at his brother's request, to be helped to any place before
her, or to take precedence of her in anything. So jealous was he
of her being respected, that, on this very journey down from the
Great Saint Bernard, he took sudden and violent umbrage at the
footman's being remiss to hold her stirrup, though standing near
when she dismounted; and unspeakably astonished the whole retinue
by charging at him on a hard-headed mule, riding him into a corner,
and threatening to trample him to death.

They were a goodly company, and the Innkeepers all but worshipped
them. Wherever they went, their importance preceded them in the
person of the courier riding before, to see that the rooms of state
were ready. He was the herald of the family procession. The great
travelling-carriage came next: containing, inside, Mr Dorrit, Miss
Dorrit, Miss Amy Dorrit, and Mrs General; outside, some of the
retainers, and (in fine weather) Edward Dorrit, Esquire, for whom
the box was reserved. Then came the chariot containing Frederick
Dorrit, Esquire, and an empty place occupied by Edward Dorrit,
Esquire, in wet weather. Then came the fourgon with the rest of
the retainers, the heavy baggage, and as much as it could carry of
the mud and dust which the other vehicles left behind.

These equipages adorned the yard of the hotel at Martigny, on the
return of the family from their mountain excursion. Other vehicles
were there, much company being on the road, from the patched
Italian Vettura--like the body of a swing from an English fair put
upon a wooden tray on wheels, and having another wooden tray
without wheels put atop of it--to the trim English carriage. But
there was another adornment of the hotel which Mr Dorrit had not
bargained for. Two strange travellers embellished one of his
rooms.

The Innkeeper, hat in hand in the yard, swore to the courier that
he was blighted, that he was desolated, that he was profoundly
afflicted, that he was the most miserable and unfortunate of
beasts, that he had the head of a wooden pig. He ought never to
have made the concession, he said, but the very genteel lady had so
passionately prayed him for the accommodation of that room to dine
in, only for a little half-hour, that he had been vanquished. The
little half-hour was expired, the lady and gentleman were taking
their little dessert and half-cup of coffee, the note was paid, the
horses were ordered, they would depart immediately; but, owing to
an unhappy destiny and the curse of Heaven, they were not yet gone.

Nothing could exceed Mr Dorrit's indignation, as he turned at the
foot of the staircase on hearing these apologies. He felt that the
family dignity was struck at by an assassin's hand. He had a sense
of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could
detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the
fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels
that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting his dignity.

'Is it possible, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, reddening excessively, 'that
you have--ha--had the audacity to place one of my rooms at the
disposition of any other person?'

Thousands of pardons! It was the host's profound misfortune to
have been overcome by that too genteel lady. He besought
Monseigneur not to enrage himself. He threw himself on Monseigneur
for clemency. If Monseigneur would have the distinguished goodness
to occupy the other salon especially reserved for him, for but five
minutes, all would go well.

'No, sir,' said Mr Dorrit. 'I will not occupy any salon. I will
leave your house without eating or drinking, or setting foot in it.

How do you dare to act like this? Who am I that you--ha--separate
me from other gentlemen?'

Alas! The host called all the universe to witness that Monseigneur
was the most amiable of the whole body of nobility, the most
important, the most estimable, the most honoured. If he separated
Monseigneur from others, it was only because he was more
distinguished, more cherished, more generous, more renowned.

'Don't tell me so, sir,' returned Mr Dorrit, in a mighty heat.
'You have affronted me. You have heaped insults upon me. How dare
you? Explain yourself.'

Ah, just Heaven, then, how could the host explain himself when he
had nothing more to explain; when he had only to apologise, and
confide himself to the so well-known magnanimity of Monseigneur!

'I tell you, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, panting with anger, 'that you
separate me--ha--from other gentlemen; that you make distinctions
between me and other gentlemen of fortune and station. I demand of
you, why? I wish to know on--ha--what authority, on whose
authority. Reply sir. Explain. Answer why.'

Permit the landlord humbly to submit to Monsieur the Courier then,
that Monseigneur, ordinarily so gracious, enraged himself without
cause. There was no why. Monsieur the Courier would represent to
Monseigneur, that he deceived himself in suspecting that there was
any why, but the why his devoted servant had already had the honour
to present to him. The very genteel lady--

'Silence!' cried Mr Dorrit. 'Hold your tongue! I will hear no
more of the very genteel lady; I will hear no more of you. Look at
this family--my family--a family more genteel than any lady. You
have treated this family with disrespect; you have been insolent to
this family. I'll ruin you. Ha--send for the horses, pack the
carriages, I'll not set foot in this man's house again!'

No one had interfered in the dispute, which was beyond the French
colloquial powers of Edward Dorrit, Esquire, and scarcely within
the province of the ladies. Miss Fanny, however, now supported her
father with great bitterness; declaring, in her native tongue, that
it was quite clear there was something special in this man's
impertinence; and that she considered it important that he should
be, by some means, forced to give up his authority for making
distinctions between that family and other wealthy families. What
the reasons of his presumption could be, she was at a loss to
imagine; but reasons he must have, and they ought to be torn from
him.

All the guides, mule-drivers, and idlers in the yard, had made
themselves parties to the angry conference, and were much impressed
by the courier's now bestirring himself to get the carriages out.
With the aid of some dozen people to each wheel, this was done at
a great cost of noise; and then the loading was proceeded with,
pending the arrival of the horses from the post-house.

But the very genteel lady's English chariot being already horsed
and at the inn-door, the landlord had slipped up-stairs to
represent his hard case. This was notified to the yard by his now
coming down the staircase in attendance on the gentleman and the
lady, and by his pointing out the offended majesty of Mr Dorrit to
them with a significant motion of his hand.

'Beg your pardon,' said the gentleman, detaching himself from the
lady, and coming forward. 'I am a man of few words and a bad hand
at an explanation--but lady here is extremely anxious that there
should be no Row. Lady--a mother of mine, in point of fact--wishes
me to say that she hopes no Row.'

Mr Dorrit, still panting under his injury, saluted the gentleman,
and saluted the lady, in a distant, final, and invincible manner.

'No, but really--here, old feller; you!' This was the gentleman's
way of appealing to Edward Dorrit, Esquire, on whom he pounced as
a great and providential relief. 'Let you and I try to make this
all right. Lady so very much wishes no Row.'

Edward Dorrit, Esquire, led a little apart by the button, assumed
a diplomatic expression of countenance in replying, 'Why you must
confess, that when you bespeak a lot of rooms beforehand, and they
belong to you, it's not pleasant to find other people in 'em.'

'No,' said the other, 'I know it isn't. I admit it. Still, let
you and I try to make it all right, and avoid Row. The fault is
not this chap's at all, but my mother's. Being a remarkably fine
woman with no bigodd nonsense about her--well educated, too--she
was too many for this chap. Regularly pocketed him.'

'If that's the case--' Edward Dorrit, Esquire, began.

'Assure you 'pon my soul 'tis the case. Consequently,' said the
other gentleman, retiring on his main position, 'why Row?'

'Edmund,' said the lady from the doorway, 'I hope you have
explained, or are explaining, to the satisfaction of this gentleman
and his family that the civil landlord is not to blame?'

'Assure you, ma'am,' returned Edmund, 'perfectly paralysing myself
with trying it on.' He then looked steadfastly at Edward Dorrit,
Esquire, for some seconds, and suddenly added, in a burst of
confidence, 'Old feller! Is it all right?'

'I don't know, after all,' said the lady, gracefully advancing a
step or two towards Mr Dorrit, 'but that I had better say myself,
at once, that I assured this good man I took all the consequences
on myself of occupying one of a stranger's suite of rooms during
his absence, for just as much (or as little) time as I could dine
in. I had no idea the rightful owner would come back so soon, nor
had I any idea that he had come back, or I should have hastened to
make restoration of my ill-gotten chamber, and to have offered my
explanation and apology. I trust in saying this--'

For a moment the lady, with a glass at her eye, stood transfixed
and speechless before the two Miss Dorrits. At the same moment,
Miss Fanny, in the foreground of a grand pictorial composition,
formed by the family, the family equipages, and the family
servants, held her sister tight under one arm to detain her on the
spot, and with the other arm fanned herself with a distinguished
air, and negligently surveyed the lady from head to foot.

The lady, recovering herself quickly--for it was Mrs Merdle and she
was not easily dashed--went on to add that she trusted in saying
this, she apologised for her boldness, and restored this well-
behaved landlord to the favour that was so very valuable to him.
Mr Dorrit, on the altar of whose dignity all this was incense, made
a gracious reply; and said that his people should--ha--countermand
his horses, and he would--hum--overlook what he had at first
supposed to be an affront, but now regarded as an honour. Upon
this the bosom bent to him; and its owner, with a wonderful command
of feature, addressed a winning smile of adieu to the two sisters,
as young ladies of fortune in whose favour she was much
prepossessed, and whom she had never had the gratification of
seeing before.

Not so, however, Mr Sparkler. This gentleman, becoming transfixed
at the same moment as his lady-mother, could not by any means unfix
himself again, but stood stiffly staring at the whole composition
with Miss Fanny in the Foreground. On his mother saying, 'Edmund,
we are quite ready; will you give me your arm?' he seemed, by the
motion of his lips, to reply with some remark comprehending the
form of words in which his shining talents found the most frequent
utterance, but he relaxed no muscle. So fixed was his figure, that
it would have been matter of some difficulty to bend him
sufficiently to get him in the carriage-door, if he had not
received the timely assistance of a maternal pull from within. He
was no sooner within than the pad of the little window in the back
of the chariot disappeared, and his eye usurped its place. There
it remained as long as so small an object was discernible, and
probably much longer, staring (as though something inexpressibly
surprising should happen to a codfish) like an ill-executed eye in
a large locket.

This encounter was so highly agreeable to Miss Fanny, and gave her
so much to think of with triumph afterwards, that it softened her
asperities exceedingly. When the procession was again in motion
next day, she occupied her place in it with a new gaiety; and
showed such a flow of spirits indeed, that Mrs General looked
rather surprised.

Little Dorrit was glad to be found no fault with, and to see that
Fanny was pleased; but her part in the procession was a musing
part, and a quiet one. Sitting opposite her father in the
travelling-carriage, and recalling the old Marshalsea room, her
present existence was a dream. All that she saw was new and
wonderful, but it was not real; it seemed to her as if those
visions of mountains and picturesque countries might melt away at
any moment, and the carriage, turning some abrupt corner, bring up
with a jolt at the old Marshalsea gate.

To have no work to do was strange, but not half so strange as
having glided into a corner where she had no one to think for,
nothing to plan and contrive, no cares of others to load herself
with. Strange as that was, it was far stranger yet to find a space
between herself and her father, where others occupied themselves in
taking care of him, and where she was never expected to be. At
first, this was so much more unlike her old experience than even
the mountains themselves, that she had been unable to resign
herself to it, and had tried to retain her old place about him.
But he had spoken to her alone, and had said that people--ha--
people in an exalted position, my dear, must scrupulously exact
respect from their dependents; and that for her, his daughter, Miss
Amy Dorrit, of the sole remaining branch of the Dorrits of
Dorsetshire, to be known to--hum--to occupy herself in fulfilling
the functions of--ha hum--a valet, would be incompatible with that
respect. Therefore, my dear, he--ha--he laid his parental
injunctions upon her, to remember that she was a lady, who had now
to conduct herself with--hum--a proper pride, and to preserve the
rank of a lady; and consequently he requested her to abstain from
doing what would occasion--ha--unpleasant and derogatory remarks.
She had obeyed without a murmur. Thus it had been brought about
that she now sat in her corner of the luxurious carriage with her
little patient hands folded before her, quite displaced even from
the last point of the old standing ground in life on which her feet
had lingered.

It was from this position that all she saw appeared unreal; the
more surprising the scenes, the more they resembled the unreality
of her own inner life as she went through its vacant places all day
long. The gorges of the Simplon, its enormous depths and
thundering waterfalls, the wonderful road, the points of danger
where a loose wheel or a faltering horse would have been
destruction, the descent into Italy, the opening of that beautiful
land as the rugged mountain-chasm widened and let them out from a
gloomy and dark imprisonment--all a dream--only the old mean
Marshalsea a reality. Nay, even the old mean Marshalsea was shaken
to its foundations when she pictured it without her father. She
could scarcely believe that the prisoners were still lingering in
the close yard, that the mean rooms were still every one tenanted,
and that the turnkey still stood in the Lodge letting people in and
out, all just as she well knew it to be.

With a remembrance of her father's old life in prison hanging about
her like the burden of a sorrowful tune, Little Dorrit would wake
from a dream of her birth-place into a whole day's dream. The
painted room in which she awoke, often a humbled state-chamber in
a dilapidated palace, would begin it; with its wild red autumnal
vine-leaves overhanging the glass, its orange-trees on the cracked
white terrace outside the window, a group of monks and peasants in
the little street below, misery and magnificence wrestling with
each other upon every rood of ground in the prospect, no matter how
widely diversified, and misery throwing magnificence with the
strength of fate. To this would succeed a labyrinth of bare
passages and pillared galleries, with the family procession already
preparing in the quadrangle below, through the carriages and
luggage being brought together by the servants for the day's
journey. Then breakfast in another painted chamber, damp-stained
and of desolate proportions; and then the departure, which, to her
timidity and sense of not being grand enough for her place in the
ceremonies, was always an uneasy thing. For then the courier (who
himself would have been a foreign gentleman of high mark in the
Marshalsea) would present himself to report that all was ready; and
then her father's valet would pompously induct him into his
travelling-cloak; and then Fanny's maid, and her own maid (who was
a weight on Little Dorrit's mind--absolutely made her cry at first,
she knew so little what to do with her), would be in attendance;
and then her brother's man would complete his master's equipment;
and then her father would give his arm to Mrs General, and her
uncle would give his to her, and, escorted by the landlord and Inn
servants, they would swoop down-stairs. There, a crowd would be
collected to see them enter their carriages, which, amidst much
bowing, and begging, and prancing, and lashing, and clattering,
they would do; and so they would be driven madly through narrow
unsavoury streets, and jerked out at the town gate.

Among the day's unrealities would be roads where the bright red
vines were looped and garlanded together on trees for many miles;
woods of olives; white villages and towns on hill-sides, lovely
without, but frightful in their dirt and poverty within; crosses by
the way; deep blue lakes with fairy islands, and clustering boats
with awnings of bright colours and sails of beautiful forms; vast
piles of building mouldering to dust; hanging-gardens where the
weeds had grown so strong that their stems, like wedges driven
home, had split the arch and rent the wall; stone-terraced lanes,
with the lizards running into and out of every chink; beggars of
all sorts everywhere: pitiful, picturesque, hungry, merry; children
beggars and aged beggars. Often at posting-houses and other
halting places, these miserable creatures would appear to her the
only realities of the day; and many a time, when the money she had
brought to give them was all given away, she would sit with her
folded hands, thoughtfully looking after some diminutive girl
leading her grey father, as if the sight reminded her of something
in the days that were gone.

Again, there would be places where they stayed the week together in
splendid rooms, had banquets every day, rode out among heaps of
wonders, walked through miles of palaces, and rested in dark
corners of great churches; where there were winking lamps of gold
and silver among pillars and arches, kneeling figures dotted about
at confessionals and on the pavements; where there was the mist and
scent of incense; where there were pictures, fantastic images,
gaudy altars, great heights and distances, all softly lighted
through stained glass, and the massive curtains that hung in the
doorways. From these cities they would go on again, by the roads
of vines and olives, through squalid villages, where there was not
a hovel without a gap in its filthy walls, not a window with a
whole inch of glass or paper; where there seemed to be nothing to
support life, nothing to eat, nothing to make, nothing to grow,
nothing to hope, nothing to do but die.

Again they would come to whole towns of palaces, whose proper
inmates were all banished, and which were all changed into
barracks: troops of idle soldiers leaning out of the state windows,
where their accoutrements hung drying on the marble architecture,
and showing to the mind like hosts of rats who were (happily)
eating away the props of the edifices that supported them, and must
soon, with them, be smashed on the heads of the other swarms of
soldiers and the swarms of priests, and the swarms of spies, who
were all the ill-looking population left to be ruined, in the
streets below.

Through such scenes, the family procession moved on to Venice. And
here it dispersed for a time, as they were to live in Venice some
few months in a palace (itself six times as big as the whole
Marshalsea) on the Grand Canal.

In this crowning unreality, where all the streets were paved with
water, and where the deathlike stillness of the days and nights was
broken by no sound but the softened ringing of church-bells, the
rippling of the current, and the cry of the gondoliers turning the
corners of the flowing streets, Little Dorrit, quite lost by her
task being done, sat down to muse. The family began a gay life,
went here and there, and turned night into day; but she was timid
of joining in their gaieties, and only asked leave to be left
alone.

Sometimes she would step into one of the gondolas that were always
kept in waiting, moored to painted posts at the door--when she
could escape from the attendance of that oppressive maid, who was
her mistress, and a very hard one--and would be taken all over the
strange city. Social people in other gondolas began to ask each
other who the little solitary girl was whom they passed, sitting in
her boat with folded hands, looking so pensively and wonderingly
about her. Never thinking that it would be worth anybody's while
to notice her or her doings, Little Dorrit, in her quiet, scared,
lost manner, went about the city none the less.

But her favourite station was the balcony of her own room,
overhanging the canal, with other balconies below, and none above.
It was of massive stone darkened by ages, built in a wild fancy
which came from the East to that collection of wild fancies; and
Little Dorrit was little indeed, leaning on the broad-cushioned
ledge, and looking over. As she liked no place of an evening half
so well, she soon began to be watched for, and many eyes in passing
gondolas were raised, and many people said, There was the little
figure of the English girl who was always alone.

Such people were not realities to the little figure of the English
girl; such people were all unknown to her. She would watch the
sunset, in its long low lines of purple and red, and its burning
flush high up into the sky: so glowing on the buildings, and so
lightening their structure, that it made them look as if their
strong walls were transparent, and they shone from within. She
would watch those glories expire; and then, after looking at the
black gondolas underneath, taking guests to music and dancing,
would raise her eyes to the shining stars. Was there no party of
her own, in other times, on which the stars had shone? To think of
that old gate now! She would think of that old gate, and of
herself sitting at it in the dead of the night, pillowing Maggy's
head; and of other places and of other scenes associated with those
different times. And then she would lean upon her balcony, and
look over at the water, as though they all lay underneath it. When
she got to that, she would musingly watch its running, as if, in
the general vision, it might run dry, and show her the prison
again, and herself, and the old room , and the old inmates, and the
old visitors: all lasting realities that had never changed.

CHAPTER 4

A Letter from Little Dorrit

Dear Mr Clennam,

I write to you from my own room at Venice, thinking you will be
glad to hear from me. But I know you cannot be so glad to hear
from me as I am to write to you; for everything about you is as you
have been accustomed to see it, and you miss nothing--unless it
should be me, which can only be for a very little while together
and very seldom--while everything in my life is so strange, and I
miss so much.

When we were in Switzerland, which appears to have been years ago,
though it was only weeks, I met young Mrs Gowan, who was on a
mountain excursion like ourselves. She told me she was very well
and very happy. She sent you the message, by me, that she thanked
you affectionately and would never forget you. She was quite
confiding with me, and I loved her almost as soon as I spoke to
her. But there is nothing singular in that; who could help loving
so beautiful and winning a creature! I could not wonder at any one
loving her. No indeed.

It will not make you uneasy on Mrs Gowan's account, I hope--for I
remember that you said you had the interest of a true friend in
her--if I tell you that I wish she could have married some one
better suited to her. Mr Gowan seems fond of her, and of course
she is very fond of him, but I thought he was not earnest enough--I
don't mean in that respect--I mean in anything. I could not keep
it out of my mind that if I was Mrs Gowan (what a change that would
be, and how I must alter to become like her!) I should feel that I
was rather lonely and lost, for the want of some one who was
steadfast and firm in purpose. I even thought she felt this want
a little, almost without knowing it. But mind you are not made
uneasy by this, for she was 'very well and very happy.' And she
looked most beautiful.

I expect to meet her again before long, and indeed have been
expecting for some days past to see her here. I will ever be as
good a friend to her as I can for your sake. Dear Mr Clennam, I
dare say you think little of having been a friend to me when I had
no other (not that I have any other now, for I have made no new
friends), but I think much of it, and I never can forget it.

I wish I knew--but it is best for no one to write to me--how Mr and
Mrs Plornish prosper in the business which my dear father bought
for them, and that old Mr Nandy lives happily with them and his two
grandchildren, and sings all his songs over and over again. I
cannot quite keep back the tears from my eyes when I think of my
poor Maggy, and of the blank she must have felt at first, however
kind they all are to her, without her Little Mother. Will you go
and tell her, as a strict secret, with my love, that she never can
have regretted our separation more than I have regretted it? And
will you tell them all that I have thought of them every day, and
that my heart is faithful to them everywhere? O, if you could know
how faithful, you would almost pity me for being so far away and
being so grand!

You will be glad, I am sure, to know that my dear father is very
well in health, and that all these changes are highly beneficial to
him, and that he is very different indeed from what he used to be
when you used to see him. There is an improvement in my uncle too,
I think, though he never complained of old, and never exults now.
Fanny is very graceful, quick, and clever. It is natural to her to
be a lady; she has adapted herself to our new fortunes with
wonderful ease.

This reminds me that I have not been able to do so, and that I
sometimes almost despair of ever being able to do so. I find that
I cannot learn. Mrs General is always with us, and we speak French
and speak Italian, and she takes pains to form us in many ways.
When I say we speak French and Italian, I mean they do. As for me,
I am so slow that I scarcely get on at all. As soon as I begin to
plan, and think, and try, all my planning, thinking, and trying go
in old directions, and I begin to feel careful again about the
expenses of the day, and about my dear father, and about my work,
and then I remember with a start that there are no such cares left,
and that in itself is so new and improbable that it sets me
wandering again. I should not have the courage to mention this to
any one but you.

It is the same with all these new countries and wonderful sights.
They are very beautiful, and they astonish me, but I am not
collected enough--not familiar enough with myself, if you can quite
understand what I mean--to have all the pleasure in them that I
might have. What I knew before them, blends with them, too, so
curiously. For instance, when we were among the mountains, I often
felt (I hesitate to tell such an idle thing, dear Mr Clennam, even
to you) as if the Marshalsea must be behind that great rock; or as
if Mrs Clennam's room where I have worked so many days, and where
I first saw you, must be just beyond that snow. Do you remember
one night when I came with Maggy to your lodging in Covent Garden?
That room I have often and often fancied I have seen before me,
travelling along for miles by the side of our carriage, when I have
looked out of the carriage-window after dark. We were shut out
that night, and sat at the iron gate, and walked about till
morning. I often look up at the stars, even from the balcony of
this room, and believe that I am in the street again, shut out with
Maggy. It is the same with people that I left in England.

When I go about here in a gondola, I surprise myself looking into
other gondolas as if I hoped to see them. It would overcome me
with joy to see them, but I don't think it would surprise me much,
at first. In my fanciful times, I fancy that they might be
anywhere; and I almost expect to see their dear faces on the
bridges or the quays.

Another difficulty that I have will seem very strange to you. It
must seem very strange to any one but me, and does even to me: I
often feel the old sad pity for--I need not write the word--for
him. Changed as he is, and inexpressibly blest and thankful as I
always am to know it, the old sorrowful feeling of compassion comes
upon me sometimes with such strength that I want to put my arms
round his neck, tell him how I love him, and cry a little on his
breast. I should be glad after that, and proud and happy. But I
know that I must not do this; that he would not like it, that Fanny
would be angry, that Mrs General would be amazed; and so I quiet
myself. Yet in doing so, I struggle with the feeling that I have
come to be at a distance from him; and that even in the midst of
all the servants and attendants, he is deserted, and in want of me.

Dear Mr Clennam, I have written a great deal about myself, but I
must write a little more still, or what I wanted most of all to say
in this weak letter would be left out of it. In all these foolish
thoughts of mine, which I have been so hardy as to confess to you
because I know you will understand me if anybody can, and will make
more allowance for me than anybody else would if you cannot--in all
these thoughts, there is one thought scarcely ever--never--out of
my memory, and that is that I hope you sometimes, in a quiet
moment, have a thought for me. I must tell you that as to this, I
have felt, ever since I have been away, an anxiety which I am very
anxious to relieve. I have been afraid that you may think of me in
a new light, or a new character. Don't do that, I could not bear
that--it would make me more unhappy than you can suppose. It would
break my heart to believe that you thought of me in any way that
would make me stranger to you than I was when you were so good to
me. What I have to pray and entreat of you is, that you will never
think of me as the daughter of a rich person; that you will never
think of me as dressing any better, or living any better, than when
you first knew me. That you will remember me only as the little
shabby girl you protected with so much tenderness, from whose
threadbare dress you have kept away the rain, and whose wet feet
you have dried at your fire. That you will think of me (when you
think of me at all), and of my true affection and devoted
gratitude, always without change, as of your poor child,
LITTLE DORRIT.

P.S.--Particularly remember that you are not to be uneasy about Mrs
Gowan. Her words were, 'Very well and very happy.' And she looked
most beautiful.

CHAPTER 5

Something Wrong Somewhere

The family had been a month or two at Venice, when Mr Dorrit, who
was much among Counts and Marquises, and had but scant leisure, set
an hour of one day apart, beforehand, for the purpose of holding
some conference with Mrs General.

The time he had reserved in his mind arriving, he sent Mr Tinkler,
his valet, to Mrs General's apartment (which would have absorbed
about a third of the area of the Marshalsea), to present his
compliments to that lady, and represent him as desiring the favour
of an interview. It being that period of the forenoon when the
various members of the family had coffee in their own chambers,
some couple of hours before assembling at breakfast in a faded hall
which had once been sumptuous, but was now the prey of watery
vapours and a settled melancholy, Mrs General was accessible to the
valet. That envoy found her on a little square of carpet, so
extremely diminutive in reference to the size of her stone and
marble floor that she looked as if she might have had it spread for
the trying on of a ready-made pair of shoes; or as if she had come
into possession of the enchanted piece of carpet, bought for forty
purses by one of the three princes in the Arabian Nights, and had
that moment been transported on it, at a wish, into a palatial
saloon with which it had no connection.

Mrs General, replying to the envoy, as she set down her empty
coffee-cup, that she was willing at once to proceed to Mr Dorrit's
apartment, and spare him the trouble of coming to her (which, in
his gallantry, he had proposed), the envoy threw open the door, and
escorted Mrs General to the presence. It was quite a walk, by
mysterious staircases and corridors, from Mrs General's apartment,
--hoodwinked by a narrow side street with a low gloomy bridge in
it, and dungeon-like opposite tenements, their walls besmeared with
a thousand downward stains and streaks, as if every crazy aperture
in them had been weeping tears of rust into the Adriatic for
centuries--to Mr Dorrit's apartment: with a whole English house-
front of window, a prospect of beautiful church-domes rising into
the blue sky sheer out of the water which reflected them, and a
hushed murmur of the Grand Canal laving the doorways below, where
his gondolas and gondoliers attended his pleasure, drowsily
swinging in a little forest of piles.

Mr Dorrit, in a resplendent dressing-gown and cap--the dormant grub
that had so long bided its time among the Collegians had burst into
a rare butterfly--rose to receive Mrs General. A chair to Mrs
General. An easier chair, sir; what are you doing, what are you
about, what do you mean? Now, leave us!

'Mrs General,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I took the liberty--'

'By no means,' Mrs General interposed. 'I was quite at your
disposition. I had had my coffee.'

'--I took the liberty,' said Mr Dorrit again, with the magnificent
placidity of one who was above correction, 'to solicit the favour
of a little private conversation with you, because I feel rather
worried respecting my--ha--my younger daughter. You will have
observed a great difference of temperament, madam, between my two
daughters?'

Said Mrs General in response, crossing her gloved hands (she was
never without gloves, and they never creased and always fitted),
'There is a great difference.'

'May I ask to be favoured with your view of it?' said Mr Dorrit,
with a deference not incompatible with majestic serenity.

'Fanny,' returned Mrs General, 'has force of character and self-
reliance. Amy, none.'

None? O Mrs General, ask the Marshalsea stones and bars. O Mrs
General, ask the milliner who taught her to work, and the dancing-
master who taught her sister to dance. O Mrs General, Mrs General,
ask me, her father, what I owe her; and hear my testimony touching
the life of this slighted little creature from her childhood up!

No such adjuration entered Mr. Dorrit's head. He looked at Mrs
General, seated in her usual erect attitude on her coach-box behind
the proprieties, and he said in a thoughtful manner, 'True, madam.'

'I would not,' said Mrs General, 'be understood to say, observe,
that there is nothing to improve in Fanny. But there is material
there--perhaps, indeed, a little too much.'

'Will you be kind enough, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'to be--ha--more
explicit? I do not quite understand my elder daughter's having--
hum--too much material. What material?'

'Fanny,' returned Mrs General, 'at present forms too many opinions.

Perfect breeding forms none, and is never demonstrative.'

Lest he himself should be found deficient in perfect breeding, Mr
Dorrit hastened to reply, 'Unquestionably, madam, you are right.'
Mrs General returned, in her emotionless and expressionless manner,
'I believe so.'

'But you are aware, my dear madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'that my
daughters had the misfortune to lose their lamented mother when
they were very young; and that, in consequence of my not having
been until lately the recognised heir to my property, they have
lived with me as a comparatively poor, though always proud,
gentleman, in--ha hum--retirement!'

'I do not,' said Mrs General, 'lose sight of the circumstance.'
'Madam,'pursued Mr Dorrit, 'of my daughter Fanny, under her present
guidance and with such an example constantly before her--'

(Mrs General shut her eyes.)

--'I have no misgivings. There is adaptability of character in
Fanny. But my younger daughter, Mrs General, rather worries and
vexes my thoughts. I must inform you that she has always been my
favourite.'

'There is no accounting,' said Mrs General, 'for these
partialities.'

'Ha--no,' assented Mr Dorrit. 'No. Now, madam, I am troubled by
noticing that Amy is not, so to speak, one of ourselves. She does
not Care to go about with us; she is lost in the society we have
here; our tastes are evidently not her tastes. Which,' said Mr
Dorrit, summing up with judicial gravity, 'is to say, in other
words, that there is something wrong in--ha--Amy.'

'May we incline to the supposition,' said Mrs General, with a
little touch of varnish, 'that something is referable to the
novelty of the position?'

'Excuse me, madam,' observed Mr Dorrit, rather quickly. 'The
daughter of a gentleman, though--ha--himself at one time
comparatively far from affluent--comparatively--and herself reared
in--hum--retirement, need not of necessity find this position so
very novel.'

'True,' said Mrs General, 'true.'

'Therefore, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I took the liberty' (he laid
an emphasis on the phrase and repeated it, as though he stipulated,
with urbane firmness, that he must not be contradicted again), 'I
took the liberty of requesting this interview, in order that I
might mention the topic to you, and inquire how you would advise
me?'

'Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, 'I have conversed with Amy
several times since we have been residing here, on the general
subject of the formation of a demeanour. She has expressed herself
to me as wondering exceedingly at Venice. I have mentioned to her
that it is better not to wonder. I have pointed out to her that
the celebrated Mr Eustace, the classical tourist, did not think
much of it; and that he compared the Rialto, greatly to its
disadvantage, with Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges. I need not
add, after what you have said, that I have not yet found my
arguments successful. You do me the honour to ask me what to
advise. It always appears to me (if this should prove to be a
baseless assumption, I shall be pardoned), that Mr Dorrit has been
accustomed to exercise influence over the minds of others.'

'Hum--madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I have been at the head of--ha of a
considerable community. You are right in supposing that I am not
unaccustomed to--an influential position.'

'I am happy,' returned Mrs General, 'to be so corroborated. I
would therefore the more confidently recommend that Mr Dorrit
should speak to Amy himself, and make his observations and wishes
known to her. Being his favourite, besides, and no doubt attached
to him, she is all the more likely to yield to his influence.'

'I had anticipated your suggestion, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'but--
ha--was not sure that I might--hum--not encroach on--'

'On my province, Mr Dorrit?' said Mrs General, graciously. 'Do not
mention it.'

'Then, with your leave, madam,' resumed Mr Dorrit, ringing his
little bell to summon his valet, 'I will send for her at once.'

'Does Mr Dorrit wish me to remain?'

'Perhaps, if you have no other engagement, you would not object for
a minute or two--'

'Not at all.'

So, Tinkler the valet was instructed to find Miss Amy's maid, and
to request that subordinate to inform Miss Amy that Mr Dorrit
wished to see her in his own room. In delivering this charge to
Tinkler, Mr Dorrit looked severely at him, and also kept a jealous
eye upon him until he went out at the door, mistrusting that he
might have something in his mind prejudicial to the family dignity;
that he might have even got wind of some Collegiate joke before he
came into the service, and might be derisively reviving its
remembrance at the present moment. If Tinkler had happened to
smile, however faintly and innocently, nothing would have persuaded
Mr Dorrit, to the hour of his death, but that this was the case.
As Tinkler happened, however, very fortunately for himself, to be
of a serious and composed countenance, he escaped the secret danger
that threatened him. And as on his return--when Mr Dorrit eyed him
again--he announced Miss Amy as if she had come to a funeral, he
left a vague impression on Mr Dorrit's mind that he was a well-
conducted young fellow, who had been brought up in the study of his
Catechism by a widowed mother.

'Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, 'you have just now been the subject of some
conversation between myself and Mrs General. We agree that you
scarcely seem at home here. Ha--how is this?'

A pause.

'I think, father, I require a little time.'

'Papa is a preferable mode of address,' observed Mrs General.
'Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives
a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and
prism are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and
prism. You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a
demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in company--on entering
a room, for instance--Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism,
prunes and prism.'

'Pray, my child,' said Mr Dorrit, 'attend to the--hum--precepts of
Mrs General.'

Poor Little Dorrit, with a rather forlorn glance at that eminent
varnisher, promised to try.

'You say, Amy,' pursued Mr Dorrit, 'that you think you require
time. Time for what?'

Another pause.

'To become accustomed to the novelty of my life, was all I meant,'
said Little Dorrit, with her loving eyes upon her father; whom she
had very nearly addressed as poultry, if not prunes and prism too,
in her desire to submit herself to Mrs General and please him.

Mr Dorrit frowned, and looked anything but pleased. 'Amy,' he
returned, 'it appears to me, I must say, that you have had
abundance of time for that. Ha--you surprise me. You disappoint
me. Fanny has conquered any such little difficulties, and--hum--
why not you?'

'I hope I shall do better soon,' said Little Dorrit.

'I hope so,' returned her father. 'I--ha--I most devoutly hope so,
Amy. I sent for you, in order that I might say--hum--impressively
say, in the presence of Mrs General, to whom we are all so much
indebted for obligingly being present among us, on--ha--on this or
any other occasion,' Mrs General shut her eyes, 'that I--ha hum--am
not pleased with you. You make Mrs General's a thankless task.
You--ha--embarrass me very much. You have always (as I have
informed Mrs General) been my favourite child; I have always made
you a--hum--a friend and companion; in return, I beg--I--ha--I do
beg, that you accommodate yourself better to --hum--circumstances,
and dutifully do what becomes your--your station.'

Mr Dorrit was even a little more fragmentary than usual, being
excited on the subject and anxious to make himself particularly
emphatic.

'I do beg,' he repeated, 'that this may be attended to, and that
you will seriously take pains and try to conduct yourself in a
manner both becoming your position as--ha--Miss Amy Dorrit, and
satisfactory to myself and Mrs General.'

That lady shut her eyes again, on being again referred to; then,
slowly opening them and rising, added these words:
'If Miss Amy Dorrit will direct her own attention to, and will
accept of my poor assistance in, the formation of a surface, Mr.
Dorrit will have no further cause of anxiety. May I take this
opportunity of remarking, as an instance in point, that it is
scarcely delicate to look at vagrants with the attention which I
have seen bestowed upon them by a very dear young friend of mine?
They should not be looked at. Nothing disagreeable should ever be
looked at. Apart from such a habit standing in the way of that
graceful equanimity of surface which is so expressive of good
breeding, it hardly seems compatible with refinement of mind. A
truly refined mind will seem to be ignorant of the existence of
anything that is not perfectly proper, placid, and pleasant.'
Having delivered this exalted sentiment, Mrs General made a
sweeping obeisance, and retired with an expression of mouth
indicative of Prunes and Prism.

Little Dorrit, whether speaking or silent, had preserved her quiet
earnestness and her loving look. It had not been clouded, except
for a passing moment, until now. But now that she was left alone
with him the fingers of her lightly folded hands were agitated, and
there was repressed emotion in her face.

Not for herself. She might feel a little wounded, but her care was
not for herself. Her thoughts still turned, as they always had
turned, to him. A faint misgiving, which had hung about her since
their accession to fortune, that even now she could never see him
as he used to be before the prison days, had gradually begun to
assume form in her mind. She felt that, in what he had just now
said to her and in his whole bearing towards her, there was the
well-known shadow of the Marshalsea wall. It took a new shape, but
it was the old sad shadow. She began with sorrowful unwillingness
to acknowledge to herself that she was not strong enough to keep
off the fear that no space in the life of man could overcome that
quarter of a century behind the prison bars. She had no blame to
bestow upon him, therefore: nothing to reproach him with, no
emotions in her faithful heart but great compassion and unbounded
tenderness.

This is why it was, that, even as he sat before her on his sofa, in
the brilliant light of a bright Italian day, the wonderful city
without and the splendours of an old palace within, she saw him at
the moment in the long-familiar gloom of his Marshalsea lodging,
and wished to take her seat beside him, and comfort him, and be
again full of confidence with him, and of usefulness to him. If he
divined what was in her thoughts, his own were not in tune with it.

After some uneasy moving in his seat, he got up and walked about,
looking very much dissatisfied.

'Is there anything else you wish to say to me, dear father?'

'No, no. Nothing else.'

'I am sorry you have not been pleased with me, dear. I hope you
will not think of me with displeasure now. I am going to try, more
than ever, to adapt myself as you wish to what surrounds me --for
indeed I have tried all along, though I have failed, I know.'

'Amy,' he returned, turning short upon her. 'You--ha--habitually
hurt me.'

'Hurt you, father! I!'

'There is a--hum--a topic,' said Mr Dorrit, looking all about the
ceiling of the room, and never at the attentive, uncomplainingly
shocked face, 'a painful topic, a series of events which I wish --
ha--altogether to obliterate. This is understood by your sister,
who has already remonstrated with you in my presence; it is
understood by your brother; it is understood by--ha hum--by every
one of delicacy and sensitiveness except yourself--ha--I am sorry
to say, except yourself. You, Amy--hum--you alone and only you --
constantly revive the topic, though not in words.'

She laid her hand on his arm. She did nothing more. She gently
touched him. The trembling hand may have said, with some
expression, 'Think of me, think how I have worked, think of my many
cares!' But she said not a syllable herself.

There was a reproach in the touch so addressed to him that she had
not foreseen, or she would have withheld her hand. He began to
justify himself in a heated, stumbling, angry manner, which made
nothing of it.

'I was there all those years. I was--ha--universally acknowledged
as the head of the place. I--hum--I caused you to be respected
there, Amy. I--ha hum--I gave my family a position there. I
deserve a return. I claim a return. I say, sweep it off the face
of the earth and begin afresh. Is that much? I ask, is that
much?' He did not once look at her, as he rambled on in this way;
but gesticulated at, and appealed to, the empty air.

'I have suffered. Probably I know how much I have suffered better
than any one--ha--I say than any one! If I can put that aside, if
I can eradicate the marks of what I have endured, and can emerge
before the world--a--ha--gentleman unspoiled, unspotted --is it a
great deal to expect--I say again, is it a great deal to expect--
that my children should--hum--do the same and sweep that accursed
experience off the face of the earth?'

In spite of his flustered state, he made all these exclamations in
a carefully suppressed voice, lest the valet should overhear
anything.

'Accordingly, they do it. Your sister does it. Your brother does
it. You alone, my favourite child, whom I made the friend and
companion of my life when you were a mere--hum--Baby, do not do it.

You alone say you can't do it. I provide you with valuable
assistance to do it. I attach an accomplished and highly bred lady
--ha--Mrs General, to you, for the purpose of doing it. Is it
surprising that I should be displeased? Is it necessary that I
should defend myself for expressing my displeasure? No!'

Notwithstanding which, he continued to defend himself, without any
abatement of his flushed mood.

'I am careful to appeal to that lady for confirmation, before I
express any displeasure at all. I--hum--I necessarily make that
appeal within limited bounds, or I--ha--should render legible, by
that lady, what I desire to be blotted out. Am I selfish? Do I
complain for my own sake? No. No. Principally for--ha hum--your
sake, Amy.'

This last consideration plainly appeared, from his manner of
pursuing it, to have just that instant come into his head.

'I said I was hurt. So I am. So I--ha--am determined to be,
whatever is advanced to the contrary. I am hurt that my daughter,
seated in the--hum--lap of fortune, should mope and retire and
proclaim herself unequal to her destiny. I am hurt that she should
--ha--systematically reproduce what the rest of us blot out; and
seem--hum--I had almost said positively anxious--to announce to
wealthy and distinguished society that she was born and bred in--ha
hum--a place that I myself decline to name. But there is no
inconsistency--ha--not the least, in my feeling hurt, and yet
complaining principally for your sake, Amy. I do; I say again, I
do. It is for your sake that I wish you, under the auspices of Mrs
General, to form a--hum--a surface. It is for your sake that I
wish you to have a--ha--truly refined mind, and (in the striking
words of Mrs General) to be ignorant of everything that is not
perfectly proper, placid, and pleasant.'

He had been running down by jerks, during his last speech, like a
sort of ill-adjusted alarum. The touch was still upon his arm. He
fell silent; and after looking about the ceiling again for a little
while, looked down at her. Her head drooped, and he could not see
her face; but her touch was tender and quiet, and in the expression
of her dejected figure there was no blame--nothing but love. He
began to whimper, just as he had done that night in the prison when
she afterwards sat at his bedside till morning; exclaimed that he
was a poor ruin and a poor wretch in the midst of his wealth; and
clasped her in his arms. 'Hush, hush, my own dear! Kiss me!' was
all she said to him. His tears were soon dried, much sooner than
on the former occasion; and he was presently afterwards very high
with his valet, as a way of righting himself for having shed any.

With one remarkable exception, to be recorded in its place, this
was the only time, in his life of freedom and fortune, when he
spoke to his daughter Amy of the old days.

But, now, the breakfast hour arrived; and with it Miss Fanny from
her apartment, and Mr Edward from his apartment. Both these young
persons of distinction were something the worse for late hours. As
to Miss Fanny, she had become the victim of an insatiate mania for
what she called 'going into society;'and would have gone into it
head-foremost fifty times between sunset and sunrise, if so many
opportunities had been at her disposal. As to Mr Edward, he, too,
had a large acquaintance, and was generally engaged (for the most
part, in diceing circles, or others of a kindred nature), during
the greater part of every night. For this gentleman, when his
fortunes changed, had stood at the great advantage of being already
prepared for the highest associates, and having little to learn: so
much was he indebted to the happy accidents which had made him
acquainted with horse-dealing and billiard-marking.

At breakfast, Mr Frederick Dorrit likewise appeared. As the old
gentleman inhabited the highest story of the palace, where he might
have practised pistol-shooting without much chance of discovery by
the other inmates, his younger niece had taken courage to propose
the restoration to him of his clarionet, which Mr Dorrit had
ordered to be confiscated, but which she had ventured to preserve.
Notwithstanding some objections from Miss Fanny, that it was a low
instrument, and that she detested the sound of it, the concession
had been made. But it was then discovered that he had had enough
of it, and never played it, now that it was no longer his means of
getting bread. He had insensibly acquired a new habit of shuffling
into the picture-galleries, always with his twisted paper of snuff
in his hand (much to the indignation of Miss Fanny, who had
proposed the purchase of a gold box for him that the family might
not be discredited, which he had absolutely refused to carry when
it was bought); and of passing hours and hours before the portraits
of renowned Venetians. It was never made out what his dazed eyes
saw in them; whether he had an interest in them merely as pictures,
or whether he confusedly identified them with a glory that was
departed, like the strength of his own mind. But he paid his court
to them with great exactness, and clearly derived pleasure from the
pursuit. After the first few days, Little Dorrit happened one
morning to assist at these attentions. It so evidently heightened
his gratification that she often accompanied him afterwards, and
the greatest delight of which the old man had shown himself
susceptible since his ruin, arose out of these excursions, when he
would carry a chair about for her from picture to picture, and
stand behind it, in spite of all her remonstrances, silently
presenting her to the noble Venetians.

It fell out that, at this family breakfast, he referred to their
having seen in a gallery, on the previous day, the lady and
gentleman whom they had encountered on the Great Saint Bernard, 'I
forget the name,' said he. 'I dare say you remember them, William?

I dare say you do, Edward?'

'_I_ remember 'em well enough,' said the latter.

'I should think so,' observed Miss Fanny, with a toss of her head
and a glance at her sister. 'But they would not have been recalled
to our remembrance, I suspect, if Uncle hadn't tumbled over the
subject.'

'My dear, what a curious phrase,' said Mrs General. 'Would not
inadvertently lighted upon, or accidentally referred to, be
better?'

'Thank you very much, Mrs General,' returned the young lady, no )
I think not. On the whole I prefer my own expression.' This was
always Miss Fanny's way of receiving a suggestion from Mrs General.
But she always stored it up in her mind, and adopted it at another
time.

'I should have mentioned our having met Mr and Mrs Gowan, Fanny,'
said Little Dorrit, 'even if Uncle had not. I have scarcely seen
you since, you know. I meant to have spoken of it at breakfast;
because I should like to pay a visit to Mrs Gowan, and to become
better acquainted with her, if Papa and Mrs General do not object.'

'Well, Amy,' said Fanny, 'I am sure I am glad to find you at last
expressing a wish to become better acquainted with anybody in
Venice. Though whether Mr and Mrs Gowan are desirable
acquaintances, remains to be determined.'

'Mrs Gowan I spoke of, dear.'

'No doubt,' said Fanny. 'But you can't separate her from her
husband, I believe, without an Act of Parliament.'

'Do you think, Papa,' inquired Little Dorrit, with diffidence and
hesitation, 'there is any objection to my making this visit?'

'Really,' he replied, 'I--ha--what is Mrs General's view?'

Mrs General's view was, that not having the honour of any
acquaintance with the lady and gentleman referred to, she was not
in a position to varnish the present article. She could only
remark, as a general principle observed in the varnishing trade,
that much depended on the quarter from which the lady under
consideration was accredited to a family so conspicuously niched in
the social temple as the family of Dorrit.

At this remark the face of Mr Dorrit gloomed considerably. He was
about (connecting the accrediting with an obtrusive person of the
name of Clennam, whom he imperfectly remembered in some former
state of existence) to black-ball the name of Gowan finally, when
Edward Dorrit, Esquire, came into the conversation, with his glass
in his eye, and the preliminary remark of 'I say--you there! Go
out, will you!'--which was addressed to a couple of men who were
handing the dishes round, as a courteous intimation that their
services could be temporarily dispensed with.

Those menials having obeyed the mandate, Edward Dorrit, Esquire,
proceeded.

'Perhaps it's a matter of policy to let you all know that these
Gowans--in whose favour, or at least the gentleman's, I can't be
supposed to be much prepossessed myself--are known to people
of importance, if that makes any difference.'

'That, I would say,' observed the fair varnisher, 'Makes the
greatest difference. The connection in question, being really
people of importance and consideration--'

'As to that,' said Edward Dorrit, Esquire, 'I'll give you the means
of judging for yourself. You are acquainted, perhaps, with the
famous name of Merdle?'

'The great Merdle!' exclaimed Mrs General.

'THE Merdle,' said Edward Dorrit, Esquire. 'They are known to him.

Mrs Gowan--I mean the dowager, my polite friend's mother --is
intimate with Mrs Merdle, and I know these two to be on their
visiting list.'

'If so, a more undeniable guarantee could not be given,' said Mrs
General to Mr Dorrit, raising her gloves and bowing her head, as if
she were doing homage to some visible graven image.

'I beg to ask my son, from motives of--ah--curiosity,' Mr Dorrit
observed, with a decided change in his manner, 'how he becomes
possessed of this--hum--timely information?'

'It's not a long story, sir,' returned Edward Dorrit, Esquire, 'and
you shall have it out of hand. To begin with, Mrs Merdle is the
lady you had the parley with at what's-his-name place.'

'Martigny,' interposed Miss Fanny with an air of infinite languor.

'Martigny,' assented her brother, with a slight nod and a slight
wink; in acknowledgment of which, Miss Fanny looked surprised, and
laughed and reddened.

'How can that be, Edward?' said Mr Dorrit. 'You informed me that
the name of the gentleman with whom you conferred was--ha--
Sparkler. Indeed, you showed me his card. Hum. Sparkler.'

'No doubt of it, father; but it doesn't follow that his mother's
name must be the same. Mrs Merdle was married before, and he is
her son. She is in Rome now; where probably we shall know more of
her, as you decide to winter there. Sparkler is just come here.
I passed last evening in company with Sparkler. Sparkler is a very
good fellow on the whole, though rather a bore on one subject, in
consequence of being tremendously smitten with a certain young
lady.' Here Edward Dorrit, Esquire, eyed Miss Fanny through his
glass across the table. 'We happened last night to compare notes
about our travels, and I had the information I have given you from
Sparkler himself.' Here he ceased; continuing to eye Miss Fanny
through his glass, with a face much twisted, and not ornamentally
so, in part by the action of keeping his glass in his eye, and in
part by the great subtlety of his smile.
'Under these circumstances,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I believe I express
the sentiments of--ha--Mrs General, no less than my own, when I say
that there is no objection, but--ha hum--quite the contrary--to
your gratifying your desire, Amy. I trust I may--ha--hail--this
desire,' said Mr Dorrit, in an encouraging and forgiving manner,
'as an auspicious omen. It is quite right to know these people.
It is a very proper thing. Mr Merdle's is a name of--ha--world-
wide repute. Mr Merdle's undertakings are immense. They bring him
in such vast sums of money that they are regarded as--hum--national
benefits. Mr Merdle is the man of this time. The name of Merdle
is the name of the age. Pray do everything on my behalf that is
civil to Mr and Mrs Gowan, for we will--ha--we will certainly
notice them.'

This magnificent accordance of Mr Dorrit's recognition settled the
matter. It was not observed that Uncle had pushed away his plate,
and forgotten his breakfast; but he was not much observed at any
time, except by Little Dorrit. The servants were recalled, and the
meal proceeded to its conclusion. Mrs General rose and left the
table. Little Dorrit rose and left the table. When Edward and
Fanny remained whispering together across it, and when Mr Dorrit
remained eating figs and reading a French newspaper, Uncle suddenly
fixed the attention of all three by rising out of his chair,
striking his hand upon the table, and saying, 'Brother! I protest
against it!'

If he had made a proclamation in an unknown tongue, and given up
the ghost immediately afterwards, he could not have astounded his
audience more. The paper fell from Mr Dorrit's hand, and he sat
petrified, with a fig half way to his mouth.

'Brother!' said the old man, conveying a surprising energy into his
trembling voice, 'I protest against it! I love you; you know I
love you dearly. In these many years I have never been untrue to
you in a single thought. Weak as I am, I would at any time have
struck any man who spoke ill of you. But, brother, brother,
brother, I protest against it!'

It was extraordinary to see of what a burst of earnestness such a
decrepit man was capable. His eyes became bright, his grey hair
rose on his head, markings of purpose on his brow and face which
had faded from them for five-and-twenty years, started out again,
and there was an energy in his hand that made its action nervous
once more.

'My dear Frederick!' exclaimed Mr Dorrit faintly. 'What is wrong?
What is the matter?'

'How dare you,' said the old man, turning round on Fanny, 'how dare
you do it? Have you no memory? Have you no heart?'

'Uncle?' cried Fanny, affrighted and bursting into tears, 'why do
you attack me in this cruel manner? What have I done?'

'Done?' returned the old man, pointing to her sister's place,
'where's your affectionate invaluable friend? Where's your devoted
guardian? Where's your more than mother? How dare you set up
superiorities against all these characters combined in your sister?

For shame, you false girl, for shame!'
'I love Amy,' cried Miss Fanny, sobbing and weeping, 'as well as I
love my life--better than I love my life. I don't deserve to be so
treated. I am as grateful to Amy, and as fond of Amy, as it's
possible for any human being to be. I wish I was dead. I never
was so wickedly wronged. And only because I am anxious for the
family credit.'

'To the winds with the family credit!' cried the old man, with
great scorn and indignation. 'Brother, I protest against pride.
I protest against ingratitude. I protest against any one of us
here who have known what we have known, and have seen what we have
seen, setting up any pretension that puts Amy at a moment's
disadvantage, or to the cost of a moment's pain. We may know that
it's a base pretension by its having that effect. It ought to
bring a judgment on us. Brother, I protest against it in the sight
of God!'

As his hand went up above his head and came down on the table, it
might have been a blacksmith's. After a few moments' silence, it
had relaxed into its usual weak condition. He went round to his
brother with his ordinary shuffling step, put the hand on his
shoulder, and said, in a softened voice, 'William, my dear, I felt
obliged to say it; forgive me, for I felt obliged to say it!' and
then went, in his bowed way, out of the palace hall, just as he
might have gone out of the Marshalsea room.

All this time Fanny had been sobbing and crying, and still
continued to do so. Edward, beyond opening his mouth in amazement,
had not opened his lips, and had done nothing but stare. Mr Dorrit
also had been utterly discomfited, and quite unable to assert
himself in any way. Fanny was now the first to speak.

'I never, never, never was so used!' she sobbed. 'There never was
anything so harsh and unjustifiable, so disgracefully violent and
cruel! Dear, kind, quiet little Amy, too, what would she feel if
she could know that she had been innocently the means of exposing
me to such treatment! But I'll never tell her! No, good darling,
I'll never tell her!'

This helped Mr Dorrit to break his silence.

'My dear,' said he, 'I--ha--approve of your resolution. It will
be--ha hum--much better not to speak of this to Amy. It might--
hum--it might distress her. Ha. No doubt it would distress her
greatly. It is considerate and right to avoid doing so. We will--
ha--keep this to ourselves.'

'But the cruelty of Uncle!' cried Miss Fanny. 'O, I never can
forgive the wanton cruelty of Uncle!'

'My dear,' said Mr Dorrit, recovering his tone, though he remained
unusually pale, 'I must request you not to say so. You must
remember that your uncle is--ha--not what he formerly was. You
must remember that your uncle's state requires--hum--great
forbearance from us, great forbearance.'

'I am sure,' cried Fanny, piteously, 'it is only charitable to
suppose that there Must be something wrong in him somewhere, or he
never could have so attacked Me, of all the people in the world.'

'Fanny,' returned Mr Dorrit in a deeply fraternal tone, 'you know,
with his innumerable good points, what a--hum--wreck your uncle is;
an(] I entreat you by the fondness that I have for him, and by the
fidelity that you know I have always shown him, to--ha--to draw
your own conclusions, and to spare my brotherly feelings.'

This ended the scene; Edward Dorrit, Esquire, saying nothing
throughout, but looking, to the last, perplexed and doubtful. Miss
Fanny awakened much affectionate uneasiness in her sister's mind
that day by passing the greater part of it in violent fits of
embracing her, and in alternately giving her brooches, and wishing
herself dead.

CHAPTER 6

Something Right Somewhere

To be in the halting state of Mr Henry Gowan; to have left one of
two powers in disgust; to want the necessary qualifications for
finding promotion with another, and to be loitering moodily about
on neutral ground, cursing both; is to be in a situation
unwholesome for the mind, which time is not likely to improve. The
worst class of sum worked in the every-day world is cyphered by the
diseased arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction
as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as
to their own.

The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recompense in the
discontented boast of being disappointed, is a habit fraught with
degeneracy. A certain idle carelessness and recklessness of
consistency soon comes of it. To bring deserving things down by
setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and
there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game,
without growing the worse for it.

In his expressed opinions of all performances in the Art of
painting that were completely destitute of merit, Gowan was the
most liberal fellow on earth. He would declare such a man to have
more power in his little finger (provided he had none), than such
another had (provided he had much) in his whole mind and body. If
the objection were taken that the thing commended was trash, he
would reply, on behalf of his art, 'My good fellow, what do we all
turn out but trash? I turn out nothing else, and I make you a
present of the confession.'

To make a vaunt of being poor was another of the incidents of his
splenetic state, though this may have had the design in it of
showing that he ought to be rich; just as he would publicly laud
and decry the Barnacles, lest it should be forgotten that he
belonged to the family. Howbeit, these two subjects were very
often on his lips; and he managed them so well that he might have
praised himself by the month together, and not have made himself
out half so important a man as he did by his light disparagement of
his claims on anybody's consideration.

Out of this same airy talk of his, it always soon came to be
understood, wherever he and his wife went, that he had married
against the wishes of his exalted relations, and had had much ado
to prevail on them to countenance her. He never made the
representation, on the contrary seemed to laugh the idea to scorn;
but it did happen that, with all his pains to depreciate himself,
he was always in the superior position. From the days of their
honeymoon, Minnie Gowan felt sensible of being usually regarded as
the wife of a man who had made a descent in marrying her, but whose
chivalrous love for her had cancelled that inequality.

To Venice they had been accompanied by Monsieur Blandois of Paris,
and at Venice Monsieur Blandois of Paris was very much in the
society of Gowan. When they had first met this gallant gentleman
at Geneva, Gowan had been undecided whether to kick him or
encourage him; and had remained for about four-and-twenty hours, so
troubled to settle the point to his satisfaction, that he had
thought of tossing up a five-franc piece on the terms, 'Tails,
kick; heads, encourage,' and abiding by the voice of the oracle.
It chanced, however, that his wife expressed a dislike to the
engaging Blandois, and that the balance of feeling in the hotel was
against him. Upon it, Gowan resolved to encourage him.

Why this perversity, if it were not in a generous fit?--which it
was not. Why should Gowan, very much the superior of Blandois of
Paris, and very well able to pull that prepossessing gentleman to
pieces and find out the stuff he was made of, take up with such a
man? In the first place, he opposed the first separate wish he
observed in his wife, because her father had paid his debts and it
was desirable to take an early opportunity of asserting his
independence. In the second place, he opposed the prevalent
feeling, because with many capacities of being otherwise, he was an
ill-conditioned man. He found a pleasure in declaring that a
courtier with the refined manners of Blandois ought to rise to the
greatest distinction in any polished country. He found a pleasure
in setting up Blandois as the type of elegance, and making him a
satire upon others who piqued themselves on personal graces. He
seriously protested that the bow of Blandois was perfect, that the
address of Blandois was irresistible, and that the picturesque ease
of Blandois would be cheaply purchased (if it were not a gift, and
unpurchasable) for a hundred thousand francs. That exaggeration in
the manner of the man which has been noticed as appertaining to him
and to every such man, whatever his original breeding, as certainly
as the sun belongs to this system, was acceptable to Gowan as a
caricature, which he found it a humorous resource to have at hand
for the ridiculing of numbers of people who necessarily did more or
less of what Blandois overdid. Thus he had taken up with him; and
thus, negligently strengthening these inclinations with habit, and
idly deriving some amusement from his talk, he had glided into a
way of having him for a companion. This, though he supposed him to
live by his wits at play-tables and the like; though he suspected
him to be a coward, while he himself was daring and courageous;
though he thoroughly knew him to be disliked by Minnie; and though
he cared so little for him, after all, that if he had given her any
tangible personal cause to regard him with aversion, he would have
had no compunction whatever in flinging him out of the highest
window in Venice into the deepest water of the city.

Little Dorrit would have been glad to make her visit to Mrs Gowan,
alone; but as Fanny, who had not yet recovered from her Uncle's
protest, though it was four-and-twenty hours of age, pressingly
offered her company, the two sisters stepped together into one of
the gondolas under Mr Dorrit's window, and, with the courier in
attendance, were taken in high state to Mrs Gowan's lodging. In
truth, their state was rather too high for the lodging, which was,
as Fanny complained, 'fearfully out of the way,' and which took
them through a complexity of narrow streets of water, which the
same lady disparaged as 'mere ditches.'

The house, on a little desert island, looked as if it had broken
away from somewhere else, and had floated by chance into its
present anchorage in company with a vine almost as much in want of
training as the poor wretches who were lying under its leaves. The
features of the surrounding picture were, a church with hoarding
and scaffolding about it, which had been under suppositious repair
so long that the means of repair looked a hundred years old, and
had themselves fallen into decay; a quantity of washed linen,
spread to dry in the sun; a number of houses at odds with one
another and grotesquely out of the perpendicular, like rotten pre-
Adamite cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of mites; and a
feverish bewilderment of windows, with their lattice-blinds all
hanging askew, and something draggled and dirty dangling out of
most of them.

On the first-floor of the house was a Bank--a surprising experience
for any gentleman of commercial pursuits bringing laws for all
mankind from a British city--where two spare clerks, like dried
dragoons, in green velvet caps adorned with golden tassels, stood,
bearded, behind a small counter in a small room, containing no
other visible objects than an empty iron-safe with the door open,
a jug of water, and a papering of garland of roses; but who, on
lawful requisition, by merely dipping their hands out of sight,
could produce exhaustless mounds of five-franc pieces. Below the
Bank was a suite of three or four rooms with barred windows, which
had the appearance of a jail for criminal rats. Above the Bank was
Mrs Gowan's residence.

Notwithstanding that its walls were blotched, as if missionary maps
were bursting out of them to impart geographical knowledge;
notwithstanding that its weird furniture was forlornly faded and
musty, and that the prevailing Venetian odour of bilge water and an
ebb tide on a weedy shore was very strong; the place was better
within, than it promised. The door was opened by a smiling man
like a reformed assassin--a temporary servant--who ushered them
into the room where Mrs Gowan sat, with the announcement that two
beautiful English ladies were come to see the mistress.

Mrs Gowan, who was engaged in needlework, put her work aside in a
covered basket, and rose, a little hurriedly. Miss Fanny was
excessively courteous to her, and said the usual nothings with the
skill of a veteran.

'Papa was extremely sorry,' proceeded Fanny, 'to be engaged to-day
(he is so much engaged here, our acquaintance being so wretchedly
large!); and particularly requested me to bring his card for Mr
Gowan. That I may be sure to acquit myself of a commission which
he impressed upon me at least a dozen times, allow me to relieve my
conscience by placing it on the table at once.'

Which she did with veteran ease.

'We have been,' said Fanny, 'charmed to understand that you know
the Merdles. We hope it may be another means of bringing us
together.'

'They are friends,' said Mrs Gowan, 'of Mr Gowan's family. I have
not yet had the pleasure of a personal introduction to Mrs Merdle,
but I suppose I shall be presented to her at Rome.'

'Indeed?' returned Fanny, with an appearance of amiably quenching
her own superiority. 'I think you'll like her.'

'You know her very well?'

'Why, you see,' said Fanny, with a frank action of her pretty
shoulders, 'in London one knows every one. We met her on our way
here, and, to say the truth, papa was at first rather cross with
her for taking one of the rooms that our people had ordered for us.

However, of course, that soon blew over, and we were all good
friends again.'

Although the visit had as yet given Little Dorrit no opportunity of
conversing with Mrs Gowan, there was a silent understanding between
them, which did as well. She looked at Mrs Gowan with keen and
unabated interest; the sound of her voice was thrilling to her;
nothing that was near her, or about her, or at all concerned her,
escaped Little Dorrit. She was quicker to perceive the slightest
matter here, than in any other case--but one.

'You have been quite well,' she now said, 'since that night?'

'Quite, my dear. And you?'
'Oh! I am always well,' said Little Dorrit, timidly. 'I--yes,
thank you.'

There was no reason for her faltering and breaking off, other than
that Mrs Gowan had touched her hand in speaking to her, and their
looks had met. Something thoughtfully apprehensive in the large,
soft eyes, had checked Little Dorrit in an instant.

'You don't know that you are a favourite of my husband's, and that
I am almost bound to be jealous of you?' said Mrs Gowan.

Little Dorrit, blushing, shook her head.

'He will tell you, if he tells you what he tells me, that you are
quieter and quicker of resource than any one he ever saw.'

'He speaks far too well of me,' said Little Dorrit.

'I doubt that; but I don't at all doubt that I must tell him you
are here. I should never be forgiven, if I were to let you--and
Miss Dorrit--go, without doing so. May I? You can excuse the
disorder and discomfort of a painter's studio?'

The inquiries were addressed to Miss Fanny, who graciously replied
that she would be beyond anything interested and enchanted. Mrs
Gowan went to a door, looked in beyond it, and came back. 'Do
Henry the favour to come in,' said she, 'I knew he would be
pleased!'

The first object that confronted Little Dorrit, entering first, was
Blandois of Paris in a great cloak and a furtive slouched hat,
standing on a throne platform in a corner, as he had stood on the
Great Saint Bernard, when the warning arms seemed to be all
pointing up at him. She recoiled from this figure, as it smiled at
her.

'Don't be alarmed,' said Gowan, coming from his easel behind the
door. 'It's only Blandois. He is doing duty as a model to-day.
I am making a study of him. It saves me money to turn him to some
use. We poor painters have none to spare.'

Blandois of Paris pulled off his slouched hat, and saluted the
ladies without coming out of his corner.

'A thousand pardons!' said he. 'But the Professore here is so
inexorable with me, that I am afraid to stir.'

'Don't stir, then,' said Gowan coolly, as the sisters approached
the easel. 'Let the ladies at least see the original of the daub,
that they may know what it's meant for. There he stands, you see.
A bravo waiting for his prey, a distinguished noble waiting to save
his country, the common enemy waiting to do somebody a bad turn, an
angelic messenger waiting to do somebody a good turn--whatever you
think he looks most like!'
'Say, Professore Mio, a poor gentleman waiting to do homage to
elegance and beauty,' remarked Blandois.

'Or say, Cattivo Soggetto Mio,' returned Gowan, touching the
painted face with his brush in the part where the real face had
moved, 'a murderer after the fact. Show that white hand of yours,
Blandois. Put it outside the cloak. Keep it still.'

Blandois' hand was unsteady; but he laughed, and that would
naturally shake it.

'He was formerly in some scuffle with another murderer, or with a
victim, you observe,' said Gowan, putting in the markings of the
hand with a quick, impatient, unskilful touch, 'and these are the
tokens of it. Outside the cloak, man!--Corpo di San Marco, what
are you thinking of?'

Blandois of Paris shook with a laugh again, so that his hand shook
more; now he raised it to twist his moustache, which had a damp
appearance; and now he stood in the required position, with a
little new swagger.

His face was so directed in reference to the spot where Little
Dorrit stood by the easel, that throughout he looked at her. Once
attracted by his peculiar eyes, she could not remove her own, and
they had looked at each other all the time. She trembled now;
Gowan, feeling it, and supposing her to be alarmed by the large dog
beside him, whose head she caressed in her hand, and who had just
uttered a low growl, glanced at her to say, 'He won't hurt you,
Miss Dorrit.'

'I am not afraid of him,' she returned in the same breath; 'but
will you look at him?'

In a moment Gowan had thrown down his brush, and seized the dog
with both hands by the collar.

'Blandois! How can you be such a fool as to provoke him! By
Heaven, and the other place too, he'll tear you to bits! Lie down!

Lion! Do you hear my voice, you rebel!

'The great dog, regardless of being half-choked by his collar, was
obdurately pulling with his dead weight against his master,
resolved to get across the room. He had been crouching for a
spring at the moment when his master caught him.

'Lion! Lion!' He was up on his hind legs, and it was a wrestle
between master and dog. 'Get back! Down, Lion! Get out of his
sight, Blandois! What devil have you conjured into the dog?'

'I have done nothing to him.'

'Get out of his sight or I can't hold the wild beast! Get out of
the room! By my soul, he'll kill you!'

The dog, with a ferocious bark, made one other struggle as Blandois
vanished; then, in the moment of the dog's submission, the master,
little less angry than the dog, felled him with a blow on the head,
and standing over him, struck him many times severely with the heel
of his boot, so that his mouth was presently bloody.

'Now get you into that corner and lie down,' said Gowan, 'or I'll
take you out and shoot you.'

Lion did as he was ordered, and lay down licking his mouth and
chest. Lion's master stopped for a moment to take breath, and
then, recovering his usual coolness of manner, turned to speak to
his frightened wife and her visitors. Probably the whole
occurrence had not occupied two minutes.

'Come, come, Minnie! You know he is always good-humoured and
tractable. Blandois must have irritated him,--made faces at him.
The dog has his likings and dislikings, and Blandois is no great
favourite of his; but I am sure you will give him a character,
Minnie, for never having been like this before.'

Minnie was too much disturbed to say anything connected in reply;
Little Dorrit was already occupied in soothing her; Fanny, who had
cried out twice or thrice, held Gowan's arm for protection; Lion,
deeply ashamed of having caused them this alarm, came trailing
himself along the ground to the feet of his mistress.

'You furious brute,' said Gowan, striking him with his foot again.
'You shall do penance for this.' And he struck him again, and yet
again.

'O, pray don't punish him any more,' cried Little Dorrit. 'Don't
hurt him. See how gentle he is!' At her entreaty, Gowan spared
him; and he deserved her intercession, for truly he was as
submissive, and as sorry, and as wretched as a dog could be.

It was not easy to recover this shock and make the visit
unrestrained, even though Fanny had not been, under the best of
circumstances, the least trifle in the way. In such further
communication as passed among them before the sisters took their
departure, Little Dorrit fancied it was revealed to her that Mr
Gowan treated his wife, even in his very fondness, too much like a
beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of the depths of
feeling which she knew must lie below that surface, that she
doubted if there could be any such depths in himself. She wondered
whether his want of earnestness might be the natural result of his
want of such qualities, and whether it was with people as with
ships, that, in too shallow and rocky waters, their anchors had no
hold, and they drifted anywhere.

He attended them down the staircase, jocosely apologising for the
poor quarters to which such poor fellows as himself were limited,
and remarking that when the high and mighty Barnacles, his
relatives, who would be dreadfully ashamed of them, presented him
with better, he would live in better to oblige them. At the
water's edge they were saluted by Blandois, who looked white enough
after his late adventure, but who made very light of it
notwithstanding,--laughing at the mention of Lion.

Leaving the two together under the scrap of vine upon the causeway,
Gowan idly scattering the leaves from it into the water, and
Blandois lighting a cigarette, the sisters were paddled away in
state as they had come. They had not glided on for many minutes,
when Little Dorrit became aware that Fanny was more showy in manner
than the occasion appeared to require, and, looking about for the
cause through the window and through the open door, saw another
gondola evidently in waiting on them.

As this gondola attended their progress in various artful ways;
sometimes shooting on a-head, and stopping to let them pass;
sometimes, when the way was broad enough, skimming along side by
side with them; and sometimes following close astern; and as Fanny
gradually made no disguise that she was playing off graces upon
somebody within it, of whom she at the same time feigned to be
unconscious; Little Dorrit at length asked who it was?

To which Fanny made the short answer, 'That gaby.'

'Who?' said Little Dorrit.

'My dear child,' returned Fanny (in a tone suggesting that before
her Uncle's protest she might have said, You little fool, instead),
'how slow you are! Young Sparkler.'

She lowered the window on her side, and, leaning back and resting
her elbow on it negligently, fanned herself with a rich Spanish fan
of black and gold. The attendant gondola, having skimmed forward
again, with some swift trace of an eye in the

window, Fanny laughed coquettishly and said, 'Did you ever see such
a fool, my love?'

'Do you think he means to follow you all the way?' asked Little
Dorrit.

'My precious child,' returned Fanny, 'I can't possibly answer for
what an idiot in a state of desperation may do, but I should think
it highly probable. It's not such an enormous distance. All
Venice would scarcely be that, I imagine, if he's dying for a
glimpse of me.'

'And is he?' asked Little Dorrit in perfect simplicity.

'Well, my love, that really is an awkward question for me to
answer,' said her sister. 'I believe he is. You had better ask
Edward. He tells Edward he is, I believe. I understand he makes
a perfect spectacle of himself at the Casino, and that sort of
places, by going on about me. But you had better ask Edward if you
want to know.'

'I wonder he doesn't call,' said Little Dorrit after thinking a
moment.

'My dear Amy, your wonder will soon cease, if I am rightly
informed. I should not be at all surprised if he called to-day.
The creature has only been waiting to get his courage up, I
suspect.'

'Will you see him?'

'Indeed, my darling,' said Fanny, 'that's just as it may happen.
Here he is again. Look at him. O, you simpleton!'

Mr Sparkler had, undeniably, a weak appearance; with his eye in the
window like a knot in the glass, and no reason on earth for
stopping his bark suddenly, except the real reason.

'When you asked me if I will see him, my dear,' said Fanny, almost
as well composed in the graceful indifference of her attitude as
Mrs Merdle herself, 'what do you mean?'
'I mean,' said Little Dorrit--'I think I rather mean what do you
mean, dear Fanny?'

Fanny laughed again, in a manner at once condescending, arch, and
affable; and said, putting her arm round her sister in a playfully
affectionate way:

'Now tell me, my little pet. When we saw that woman at Martigny,
how did you think she carried it off? Did you see what she decided
on in a moment?'

'No, Fanny.'

'Then I'll tell you, Amy. She settled with herself, now I'll never
refer to that meeting under such different circumstances, and I'll
never pretend to have any idea that these are the same girls.
That's her way out of a difficulty. What did I tell you when we
came away from Harley Street that time? She is as insolent and
false as any woman in the world. But in the first capacity, my
love, she may find people who can match her.'

A significant turn of the Spanish fan towards Fanny's bosom,
indicated with great expression where one of these people was to be
found.

'Not only that,' pursued Fanny, 'but she gives the same charge to
Young Sparkler; and doesn't let him come after me until she has got
it thoroughly into his most ridiculous of all ridiculous noddles
(for one really can't call it a head), that he is to pretend to
have been first struck with me in that Inn Yard.'

'Why?' asked Little Dorrit.

'Why? Good gracious, my love!' (again very much in the tone of You
stupid little creature) 'how can you ask? Don't you see that I may
have become a rather desirable match for a noddle? And don't you
see that she puts the deception upon us, and makes a pretence,
while she shifts it from her own shoulders (very good shoulders
they are too, I must say),' observed Miss Fanny, glancing
complacently at herself, 'of considering our feelings?'

'But we can always go back to the plain truth.'

'Yes, but if you please we won't,' retorted Fanny. 'No; I am not
going to have that done, Amy. The pretext is none of mine; it's
hers, and she shall have enough of it.'

In the triumphant exaltation of her feelings, Miss Fanny, using her
Spanish fan with one hand, squeezed her sister's waist with the
other, as if she were crushing Mrs Merdle.

'No,' repeated Fanny. 'She shall find me go her way. She took it,
and I'll follow it. And, with the blessing of fate and fortune,
I'll go on improving that woman's acquaintance until I have given
her maid, before her eyes, things from my dressmaker's ten times as
handsome and expensive as she once gave me from hers!'

Little Dorrit was silent; sensible that she was not to be heard on
any question affecting the family dignity, and unwilling to lose to
no purpose her sister's newly and unexpectedly restored favour.
She could not concur, but she was silent. Fanny well knew what she
was thinking of; so well, that she soon asked her.

Her reply was, 'Do you mean to encourage Mr Sparkler, Fanny?'

'Encourage him, my dear?' said her sister, smiling contemptuously,
'that depends upon what you call encourage. No, I don't mean to
encourage him. But I'll make a slave of him.'

Little Dorrit glanced seriously and doubtfully in her face, but
Fanny was not to be so brought to a check. She furled her fan of
black and gold, and used it to tap her sister's nose; with the air
of a proud beauty and a great spirit, who toyed with and playfully
instructed a homely companion.

'I shall make him fetch and carry, my dear, and I shall make him
subject to me. And if I don't make his mother subject to me, too,
it shall not be my fault.'

'Do you think--dear Fanny, don't be offended, we are so comfortable
together now--that you can quite see the end of that course?'

'I can't say I have so much as looked for it yet, my dear,'
answered Fanny, with supreme indifference; 'all in good time. Such
are my intentions. And really they have taken me so long to
develop, that here we are at home. And Young Sparkler at the door,
inquiring who is within. By the merest accident, of course!'

In effect, the swain was standing up in his gondola, card-case in
hand, affecting to put the question to a servant. This conjunction
of circumstances led to his immediately afterwards presenting
himself before the young ladies in a posture, which in ancient
times would not have been considered one of favourable augury for
his suit; since the gondoliers of the young ladies, having been put
to some inconvenience by the chase, so neatly brought their own
boat in the gentlest collision with the bark of Mr Sparkler, as to
tip that gentleman over like a larger species of ninepin, and cause
him to exhibit the soles of his shoes to the object of his dearest
wishes: while the nobler portions of his anatomy struggled at the
bottom of his boat in the arms of one of his men.

However, as Miss Fanny called out with much concern, Was the
gentleman hurt, Mr Sparkler rose more restored than might have been
expected, and stammered for himself with blushes, 'Not at all so.'
Miss Fanny had no recollection of having ever seen him before, and
was passing on, with a distant inclination of her head, when he
announced himself by name. Even then she was in a difficulty from
being unable to call it to mind, until he explained that he had had
the honour of seeing her at Martigny. Then she remembered him, and
hoped his lady-mother was well.

'Thank you,' stammered Mr Sparkler, 'she's uncommonly well--at
least, poorly.'

'In Venice?' said Miss Fanny.

'In Rome,' Mr Sparkler answered. 'I am here by myself, myself. I
came to call upon Mr Edward Dorrit myself. Indeed, upon Mr Dorrit
likewise. In fact, upon the family.'

Turning graciously to the attendants, Miss Fanny inquired whether
her papa or brother was within? The reply being that they were
both within, Mr Sparkler humbly offered his arm. Miss Fanny
accepting it, was squired up the great staircase by Mr Sparkler,
who, if he still believed (which there is not any reason to doubt)
that she had no nonsense about her, rather deceived himself.

Arrived in a mouldering reception-room, where the faded hangings,
of a sad sea-green, had worn and withered until they looked as if
they might have claimed kindred with the waifs of seaweed drifting
under the windows, or clinging to the walls and weeping for their
imprisoned relations, Miss Fanny despatched emissaries for her
father and brother. Pending whose appearance, she showed to great
advantage on a sofa, completing Mr Sparkler's conquest with some
remarks upon Dante--known to that gentleman as an eccentric man in
the nature of an Old File, who used to put leaves round his head,
and sit upon a stool for some unaccountable purpose, outside the
cathedral at Florence.

Mr Dorrit welcomed the visitor with the highest urbanity, and most
courtly manners. He inquired particularly after Mrs Merdle. He
inquired particularly after Mr Merdle. Mr Sparkler said, or rather
twitched out of himself in small pieces by the shirt-collar, that
Mrs Merdle having completely used up her place in the country, and
also her house at Brighton, and being, of course, unable, don't you
see, to remain in London when there wasn't a soul there, and not
feeling herself this year quite up to visiting about at people's
places, had resolved to have a touch at Rome, where a woman like
herself, with a proverbially fine appearance, and with no nonsense
about her, couldn't fail to be a great acquisition. As to Mr
Merdle, he was so much wanted by the men in the City and the rest
of those places, and was such a doosed extraordinary phenomenon in
Buying and Banking and that, that Mr Sparkler doubted if the
monetary system of the country would be able to spare him; though
that his work was occasionally one too many for him, and that he
would be all the better for a temporary shy at an entirely new
scene and climate, Mr Sparkler did not conceal. As to himself, Mr
Sparkler conveyed to the Dorrit family that he was going, on rather
particular business, wherever they were going.

This immense conversational achievement required time, but was
effected. Being effected, Mr Dorrit expressed his hope that Mr
Sparkler would shortly dine with them. Mr Sparkler received the
idea so kindly that Mr Dorrit asked what he was going to do that
day, for instance? As he was going to do nothing that day (his
usual occupation, and one for which he was particularly qualified),
he was secured without postponement; being further bound over to
accompany the ladies to the Opera in the evening.

At dinner-time Mr Sparkler rose out of the sea, like Venus's son
taking after his mother, and made a splendid appearance ascending
the great staircase. If Fanny had been charming in the morning,
she was now thrice charming, very becomingly dressed in her most
suitable colours, and with an air of negligence upon her that
doubled Mr Sparkler's fetters, and riveted them.

'I hear you are acquainted, Mr Sparkler,' said his host at dinner,
'with--ha--Mr Gowan. Mr Henry Gowan?'

'Perfectly, sir,' returned Mr Sparkler. 'His mother and my mother
are cronies in fact.'

'If I had thought of it, Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, with a patronage as
magnificent as that of Lord Decimus himself, 'you should have
despatched a note to them, asking them to dine to-day. Some of our
people could have--ha--fetched them, and taken them home. We could
have spared a--hum--gondola for that purpose. I am sorry to have
forgotten this. Pray remind me of them to-morrow.'

Little Dorrit was not without doubts how Mr Henry Gowan might take
their patronage; but she promised not to fail in the reminder.

'Pray, does Mr Henry Gowan paint--ha--Portraits?' inquired Mr
Dorrit.

Mr Sparkler opined that he painted anything, if he could get the
job.

'He has no particular walk?' said Mr Dorrit.

Mr Sparkler, stimulated by Love to brilliancy, replied that for a
particular walk a man ought to have a particular pair of shoes; as,
for example, shooting, shooting-shoes; cricket, cricket-shoes.
Whereas, he believed that Henry Gowan had no particular pair of
shoes.

'No speciality?' said Mr Dorrit.

This being a very long word for Mr Sparkler, and his mind being
exhausted by his late effort, he replied, 'No, thank you. I seldom
take it.'

'Well!' said Mr Dorrit. 'It would be very agreeable to me to
present a gentleman so connected, with some--ha--Testimonial of my
desire to further his interests, and develop the--hum--germs of his
genius. I think I must engage Mr Gowan to paint my picture. If
the result should be--ha--mutually satisfactory, I might afterwards
engage him to try his hand upon my family.'

The exquisitely bold and original thought presented itself to Mr
Sparkler, that there was an opening here for saying there were some
of the family (emphasising 'some' in a marked manner) to whom no
painter could render justice. But, for want of a form of words in
which to express the idea, it returned to the skies.

This was the more to be regretted as Miss Fanny greatly applauded
the notion of the portrait, and urged her papa to act upon it. She
surmised, she said, that Mr Gowan had lost better and higher
opportunities by marrying his pretty wife; and Love in a cottage,
painting pictures for dinner, was so delightfully interesting, that
she begged her papa to give him the commission whether he could
paint a likeness or not: though indeed both she and Amy knew he
could, from having seen a speaking likeness on his easel that day,
and having had the opportunity of comparing it with the original.
These remarks made Mr Sparkler (as perhaps they were intended to
do) nearly distracted; for while on the one hand they expressed
Miss Fanny's susceptibility of the tender passion, she herself
showed such an innocent unconsciousness of his admiration that his
eyes goggled in his head with jealousy of an unknown rival.

Descending into the sea again after dinner, and ascending out of it
at the Opera staircase, preceded by one of their gondoliers, like
an attendant Merman, with a great linen lantern, they entered their
box, and Mr Sparkler entered on an evening of agony. The theatre
being dark, and the box light, several visitors lounged in during
the representation; in whom Fanny was so interested, and in
conversation with whom she fell into such charming attitudes, as
she had little confidences with them, and little disputes
concerning the identity of people in distant boxes, that the
wretched Sparkler hated all mankind. But he had two consolations
at the close of the performance. She gave him her fan to hold
while she adjusted her cloak, and it was his blessed privilege to
give her his arm down-stairs again. These crumbs of encouragement,
Mr Sparkler thought, would just keep him going; and it is not
impossible that Miss Dorrit thought so too.

The Merman with his light was ready at the box-door, and other
Mermen with other lights were ready at many of the doors. The
Dorrit Merman held his lantern low, to show the steps, and Mr
Sparkler put on another heavy set of fetters over his former set,
as he watched her radiant feet twinkling down the stairs beside
him. Among the loiterers here, was Blandois of Paris. He spoke,
and moved forward beside Fanny.

Little Dorrit was in front with her brother and Mrs General (Mr
Dorrit had remained at home), but on the brink of the quay they all
came together. She started again to find Blandois close to her,
handing Fanny into the boat.

'Gowan has had a loss,' he said, 'since he was made happy to-day by
a visit from fair ladies.'

'A loss?' repeated Fanny, relinquished by the bereaved Sparkler,
and taking her seat.

'A loss,' said Blandois. 'His dog Lion.'

Little Dorrit's hand was in his, as he spoke.

'He is dead,' said Blandois.

'Dead?' echoed Little Dorrit. 'That noble dog?'

'Faith, dear ladies!' said Blandois, smiling and shrugging his
shoulders, 'somebody has poisoned that noble dog. He is as dead as
the Doges!'

CHAPTER 7

Mostly, Prunes and Prism

Mrs General, always on her coach-box keeping the proprieties well
together, took pains to form a surface on her very dear young
friend, and Mrs General's very dear young friend tried hard to
receive it. Hard as she had tried in her laborious life to attain
many ends, she had never tried harder than she did now, to be
varnished by Mrs General. It made her anxious and ill at ease to
be operated upon by that smoothing hand, it is true; but she
submitted herself to the family want in its greatness as she had
submitted herself to the family want in its littleness, and yielded
to her own inclinations in this thing no more than she had yielded
to her hunger itself, in the days when she had saved her dinner
that her father might have his supper.

One comfort that she had under the Ordeal by General was more
sustaining to her, and made her more grateful than to a less
devoted and affectionate spirit, not habituated to her struggles
and sacrifices, might appear quite reasonable; and, indeed, it may
often be observed in life, that spirits like Little Dorrit do not
appear to reason half as carefully as the folks who get the better
of them. The continued kindness of her sister was this comfort to
Little Dorrit. It was nothing to her that the kindness took the
form of tolerant patronage; she was used to that. It was nothing
to her that it kept her in a tributary position, and showed her in
attendance on the flaming car in which Miss Fanny sat on an
elevated seat, exacting homage; she sought no better place. Always
admiring Fanny's beauty, and grace, and readiness, and not now
asking herself how much of her disposition to be strongly attached
to Fanny was due to her own heart, and how much to Fanny's, she
gave her all the sisterly fondness her great heart contained.

The wholesale amount of Prunes and Prism which Mrs General infused
into the family life, combined with the perpetual plunges made by
Fanny into society, left but a very small residue of any natural
deposit at the bottom of the mixture. This rendered confidences
with Fanny doubly precious to Little Dorrit, and heightened the
relief they afforded her.

'Amy,' said Fanny to her one night when they were alone, after a
day so tiring that Little Dorrit was quite worn out, though Fanny
would have taken another dip into society with the greatest
pleasure in life, 'I am going to put something into your little
head. You won't guess what it is, I suspect.'

'I don't think that's likely, dear,' said Little Dorrit.

'Come, I'll give you a clue, child,' said Fanny. 'Mrs General.'

Prunes and Prism, in a thousand combinations, having been wearily
in the ascendant all day--everything having been surface and
varnish and show without substance--Little Dorrit looked as if she
had hoped that Mrs General was safely tucked up in bed for some
hours.

'Now, can you guess, Amy?' said Fanny.

'No, dear. Unless I have done anything,' said Little Dorrit,
rather alarmed, and meaning anything calculated to crack varnish
and ruffle surface.

Fanny was so very much amused by the misgiving, that she took up
her favourite fan (being then seated at her dressing-table with her
armoury of cruel instruments about her, most of them reeking from
the heart of Sparkler), and tapped her sister frequently on the
nose with it, laughing all the time.

'Oh, our Amy, our Amy!' said Fanny. 'What a timid little goose our
Amy is! But this is nothing to laugh at. On the contrary, I am
very cross, my dear.'

'As it is not with me, Fanny, I don't mind,' returned her sister,
smiling.

'Ah! But I do mind,' said Fanny, 'and so will you, Pet, when I
enlighten you. Amy, has it never struck you that somebody is
monstrously polite to Mrs General?'

'Everybody is polite to Mrs General,' said Little Dorrit.
'Because--'

'Because she freezes them into it?' interrupted Fanny. 'I don't
mean that; quite different from that. Come! Has it never struck
you, Amy, that Pa is monstrously polite to Mrs General.'

Amy, murmuring 'No,' looked quite confounded.
'No; I dare say not. But he is,' said Fanny. 'He is, Amy. And
remember my words. Mrs General has designs on Pa!'

'Dear Fanny, do you think it possible that Mrs General has designs
on any one?'

'Do I think it possible?' retorted Fanny. 'My love, I know it. I
tell you she has designs on Pa. And more than that, I tell you Pa
considers her such a wonder, such a paragon of accomplishment, and
such an acquisition to our family, that he is ready to get himself
into a state of perfect infatuation with her at any moment. And
that opens a pretty picture of things, I hope? Think of me with
Mrs General for a Mama!'

Little Dorrit did not reply, 'Think of me with Mrs General for a
Mama;' but she looked anxious, and seriously inquired what had led
Fanny to these conclusions.

'Lord, my darling,' said Fanny, tartly. 'You might as well ask me
how I know when a man is struck with myself! But, of course I do
know. It happens pretty often: but I always know it. I know this
in much the same way, I suppose. At all events, I know it.'

'You never heard Papa say anything?'

'Say anything?' repeated Fanny. 'My dearest, darling child, what
necessity has he had, yet awhile, to say anything?'

'And you have never heard Mrs General say anything?'
'My goodness me, Amy,' returned Fanny, 'is she the sort of woman to
say anything? Isn't it perfectly plain and clear that she has
nothing to do at present but to hold herself upright, keep her
aggravating gloves on, and go sweeping about? Say anything! If
she had the ace of trumps in her hand at whist, she wouldn't say
anything, child. It would come out when she played it.'

'At least, you may be mistaken, Fanny. Now, may you not?'

'O yes, I MAY be,' said Fanny, 'but I am not. However, I am glad
you can contemplate such an escape, my dear, and I am glad that you
can take this for the present with sufficient coolness to think of
such a chance. It makes me hope that you may be able to bear the
connection. I should not be able to bear it, and I should not try.

I'd marry young Sparkler first.'

'O, you would never marry him, Fanny, under any circumstances.'

'Upon my word, my dear,' rejoined that young lady with exceeding
indifference, 'I wouldn't positively answer even for that. There's
no knowing what might happen. Especially as I should have many
opportunities, afterwards, of treating that woman, his mother, in
her own style. Which I most decidedly should not be slow to avail
myself of, Amy.'

No more passed between the sisters then; but what had passed gave
the two subjects of Mrs General and Mr Sparkler great prominence in
Little Dorrit's mind, and thenceforth she thought very much of
both.

Mrs General, having long ago formed her own surface to such
perfection that it hid whatever was below it (if anything), no
observation was to be made in that quarter. Mr Dorrit was
undeniably very polite to her and had a high opinion of her; but
Fanny, impetuous at most times, might easily be wrong for all that.

Whereas, the Sparkler question was on the different footing that
any one could see what was going on there, and Little Dorrit saw it
and pondered on it with many doubts and wonderings.

The devotion of Mr Sparkler was only to be equalled by the caprice
and cruelty of his enslaver. Sometimes she would prefer him to
such distinction of notice, that he would chuckle aloud with joy;
next day, or next hour, she would overlook him so completely, and
drop him into such an abyss of obscurity, that he would groan under
a weak pretence of coughing. The constancy of his attendance never
touched Fanny: though he was so inseparable from Edward, that, when
that gentleman wished for a change of society, he was under the
irksome necessity of gliding out like a conspirator in disguised
boats and by secret doors and back ways; though he was so
solicitous to know how Mr Dorrit was, that he called every other
day to inquire, as if Mr Dorrit were the prey of an intermittent
fever; though he was so constantly being paddled up and down before
the principal windows, that he might have been supposed to have
made a wager for a large stake to be paddled a thousand miles in a
thousand hours; though whenever the gondola of his mistress left
the gate, the gondola of Mr Sparkler shot out from some watery
ambush and gave chase, as if she were a fair smuggler and he a
custom-house officer. It was probably owing to this fortification
of the natural strength of his constitution with so much exposure
to the air, and the salt sea, that Mr Sparkler did not pine
outwardly; but, whatever the cause, he was so far from having any
prospect of moving his mistress by a languishing state of health,
that he grew bluffer every day, and that peculiarity in his
appearance of seeming rather a swelled boy than a young man, became
developed to an extraordinary degree of ruddy puffiness.

Blandois calling to pay his respects, Mr Dorrit received him with
affability as the friend of Mr Gowan, and mentioned to him his idea
of commissioning Mr Gowan to transmit him to posterity. Blandois
highly extolling it, it occurred to Mr Dorrit that it might be
agreeable to Blandois to communicate to his friend the great
opportunity reserved for him. Blandois accepted the commission
with his own free elegance of manner, and swore he would discharge
it before he was an hour older. On his imparting the news to
Gowan, that Master gave Mr Dorrit to the Devil with great
liberality some round dozen of times (for he resented patronage
almost as much as he resented the want of it), and was inclined to
quarrel with his friend for bringing him the message.

'It may be a defect in my mental vision, Blandois,' said he, 'but
may I die if I see what you have to do with this.'

'Death of my life,' replied Blandois, 'nor I neither, except that
I thought I was serving my friend.'

'By putting an upstart's hire in his pocket?' said Gowan, frowning.

'Do you mean that? Tell your other friend to get his head painted
for the sign of some public-house, and to get it done by a sign-
painter. Who am I, and who is he?'

'Professore,' returned the ambassador, 'and who is Blandois?'

Without appearing at all interested in the latter question, Gowan
angrily whistled Mr Dorrit away. But, next day, he resumed the
subject by saying in his off-hand manner and with a slighting
laugh, 'Well, Blandois, when shall we go to this Maecenas of yours?

We journeymen must take jobs when we can get them. When shall we
go and look after this job?'
'When you will,' said the injured Blandois, 'as you please. What
have I to do with it? What is it to me?'

'I can tell you what it is to me,' said Gowan. 'Bread and cheese.
One must eat! So come along, my Blandois.'

Mr Dorrit received them in the presence of his daughters and of Mr
Sparkler, who happened, by some surprising accident, to be calling
there. 'How are you, Sparkler?' said Gowan carelessly. 'When you
have to live by your mother wit, old boy, I hope you may get on
better than I do.'

Mr Dorrit then mentioned his proposal. 'Sir,' said Gowan,
laughing, after receiving it gracefully enough, 'I am new to the
trade, and not expert at its mysteries. I believe I ought to look
at you in various lights, tell you you are a capital subject, and
consider when I shall be sufficiently disengaged to devote myself
with the necessary enthusiasm to the fine picture I mean to make of
you. I assure you,' and he laughed again, 'I feel quite a traitor
in the camp of those dear, gifted, good, noble fellows, my brother
artists, by not doing the hocus-pocus better. But I have not been
brought up to it, and it's too late to learn it. Now, the fact is,
I am a very bad painter, but not much worse than the generality.
If you are going to throw away a hundred guineas or so, I am as
poor as a poor relation of great people usually is, and I shall be
very much obliged to you, if you'll throw them away upon me. I'll
do the best I can for the money; and if the best should be bad, why
even then, you may probably have a bad picture with a small name to
it, instead of a bad picture with a large name to it.'

This tone, though not what he had expected, on the whole suited Mr
Dorrit remarkably well. It showed that the gentleman, highly
connected, and not a mere workman, would be under an obligation to
him. He expressed his satisfaction in placing himself in Mr
Gowan's hands, and trusted that he would have the pleasure, in
their characters of private gentlemen, of improving his
acquaintance.

'You are very good,' said Gowan. 'I have not forsworn society
since I joined the brotherhood of the brush (the most delightful
fellows on the face of the earth), and am glad enough to smell the
old fine gunpowder now and then, though it did blow me into mid-air
and my present calling. You'll not think, Mr Dorrit,' and here he
laughed again in the easiest way, 'that I am lapsing into the
freemasonry of the craft--for it's not so; upon my life I can't
help betraying it wherever I go, though, by Jupiter, I love and
honour the craft with all my might--if I propose a stipulation as
to time and place?'

Ha! Mr Dorrit could erect no--hum--suspicion of that kind on Mr
Gowan's frankness.

'Again you are very good,' said Gowan. 'Mr Dorrit, I hear you are
going to Rome. I am going to Rome, having friends there. Let me
begin to do you the injustice I have conspired to do you, there--
not here. We shall all be hurried during the rest of our stay
here; and though there's not a poorer man with whole elbows in
Venice, than myself, I have not quite got all the Amateur out of me
yet--comprising the trade again, you see!--and can't fall on to
order, in a hurry, for the mere sake of the sixpences.'
These remarks were not less favourably received by Mr Dorrit than
their predecessors. They were the prelude to the first reception
of Mr and Mrs Gowan at dinner, and they skilfully placed Gowan on
his usual ground in the new family.

His wife, too, they placed on her usual ground. Miss Fanny
understood, with particular distinctness, that Mrs Gowan's good
looks had cost her husband very dear; that there had been a great
disturbance about her in the Barnacle family; and that the Dowager
Mrs Gowan, nearly heart-broken, had resolutely set her face against
the marriage until overpowered by her maternal feelings. Mrs
General likewise clearly understood that the attachment had
occasioned much family grief and dissension. Of honest Mr Meagles
no mention was made; except that it was natural enough that a
person of that sort should wish to raise his daughter out of his
own obscurity, and that no one could blame him for trying his best
to do so.

Little Dorrit's interest in the fair subject of this easily
accepted belief was too earnest and watchful to fail in accurate
observation. She could see that it had its part in throwing upon
Mrs Gowan the touch of a shadow under which she lived, and she even
had an instinctive knowledge that there was not the least truth in
it. But it had an influence in placing obstacles in the way of her
association with Mrs Gowan by making the Prunes and Prism school
excessively polite to her, but not very intimate with her; and
Little Dorrit, as an enforced sizar of that college, was obliged to
submit herself humbly to its ordinances.

Nevertheless, there was a sympathetic understanding already
established between the two, which would have carried them over
greater difficulties, and made a friendship out of a more
restricted intercourse. As though accidents were determined to be
favourable to it, they had a new assurance of congeniality in the
aversion which each perceived that the other felt towards Blandois
of Paris; an aversion amounting to the repugnance and horror of a
natural antipathy towards an odious creature of the reptile kind.

And there was a passive congeniality between them, besides this
active one. To both of them, Blandois behaved in exactly the same
manner; and to both of them his manner had uniformly something in
it, which they both knew to be different from his bearing towards
others. The difference was too minute in its expression to be
perceived by others, but they knew it to be there. A mere trick of
his evil eyes, a mere turn of his smooth white hand, a mere hair's-
breadth of addition to the fall of his nose and the rise of the
moustache in the most frequent movement of his face, conveyed to
both of them, equally, a swagger personal to themselves. It was as
if he had said, 'I have a secret power in this quarter. I know
what I know.'

This had never been felt by them both in so great a degree, and
never by each so perfectly to the knowledge of the other, as on a
day when he came to Mr Dorrit's to take his leave before quitting
Venice. Mrs Gowan was herself there for the same purpose, and he
came upon the two together; the rest of the family being out. The
two had not been together five minutes, and the peculiar manner
seemed to convey to them, 'You were going to talk about me. Ha!
Behold me here to prevent it!'

'Gowan is coming here?' said Blandois, with a smile.

Mrs Gowan replied he was not coming.

'Not coming!' said Blandois. 'Permit your devoted servant, when
you leave here, to escort you home.'

'Thank you: I am not going home.'

'Not going home!' said Blandois. 'Then I am forlorn.'

That he might be; but he was not so forlorn as to roam away and
leave them together. He sat entertaining them with his finest
compliments, and his choicest conversation; but he conveyed to
them, all the time, 'No, no, no, dear ladies. Behold me here
expressly to prevent it!'

He conveyed it to them with so much meaning, and he had such a
diabolical persistency in him, that at length, Mrs Gowan rose to
depart. On his offering his hand to Mrs Gowan to lead her down the
staircase, she retained Little Dorrit's hand in hers, with a
cautious pressure, and said, 'No, thank you. But, if you will
please to see if my boatman is there, I shall be obliged to you.'

It left him no choice but to go down before them. As he did so,
hat in hand, Mrs Gowan whispered:

'He killed the dog.'

'Does Mr Gowan know it?' Little Dorrit whispered.

'No one knows it. Don't look towards me; look towards him. He
will turn his face in a moment. No one knows it, but I am sure he
did. You are?'

'I--I think so,' Little Dorrit answered.

'Henry likes him, and he will not think ill of him; he is so
generous and open himself. But you and I feel sure that we think
of him as he deserves. He argued with Henry that the dog had been
already poisoned when he changed so, and sprang at him. Henry
believes it, but we do not. I see he is listening, but can't hear.

Good-bye, my love! Good-bye!'

The last words were spoken aloud, as the vigilant Blandois stopped,
turned his head, and looked at them from the bottom of the
staircase. Assuredly he did look then, though he looked his
politest, as if any real philanthropist could have desired no
better employment than to lash a great stone to his neck, and drop
him into the water flowing beyond the dark arched gateway in which
he stood. No such benefactor to mankind being on the spot, he
handed Mrs Gowan to her boat, and stood there until it had shot out
of the narrow view; when he handed himself into his own boat and
followed.

Little Dorrit had sometimes thought, and now thought again as she
retraced her steps up the staircase, that he had made his way too
easily into her father's house. But so many and such varieties of
people did the same, through Mr Dorrit's participation in his elder
daughter's society mania, that it was hardly an exceptional case.
A perfect fury for making acquaintances on whom to impress their
riches and importance, had seized the House of Dorrit.

It appeared on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this same
society in which they lived, greatly resembled a superior sort of
Marshalsea. Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much
as people had come into the prison; through debt, through idleness,
relationship, curiosity, and general unfitness for getting on at
home. They were brought into these foreign towns in the custody of
couriers and local followers, just as the debtors had been brought
into the prison. They prowled about the churches and picture-
galleries, much in the old, dreary, prison-yard manner. They were
usually going away again to-morrow or next week, and rarely knew
their own minds, and seldom did what they said they would do, or
went where they said they would go: in all this again, very like
the prison debtors. They paid high for poor accommodation, and
disparaged a place while they pretended to like it: which was
exactly the Marshalsea custom. They were envied when they went
away by people left behind, feigning not to want to go: and that
again was the Marshalsea habit invariably. A certain set of words
and phrases, as much belonging to tourists as the College and the
Snuggery belonged to the jail, was always in their mouths. They
had precisely the same incapacity for settling down to anything, as
the prisoners used to have; they rather deteriorated one another,
as the prisoners used to do; and they wore untidy dresses, and fell
into a slouching way of life: still, always like the people in the
Marshalsea.

The period of the family's stay at Venice came, in its course, to
an end, and they moved, with their retinue, to Rome. Through a
repetition of the former Italian scenes, growing more dirty and
more haggard as they went on, and bringing them at length to where
the very air was diseased, they passed to their destination. A
fine residence had been taken for them on the Corso, and there they
took up their abode, in a city where everything seemed to be trying
to stand still for ever on the ruins of something else--except the
water, which, following eternal laws, tumbled and rolled from its
glorious multitude of fountains.

Here it seemed to Little Dorrit that a change came over the
Marshalsea spirit of their society, and that Prunes and Prism got
the upper hand. Everybody was walking about St Peter's and the
Vatican on somebody else's cork legs, and straining every visible
object through somebody else's sieve. Nobody said what anything
was, but everybody said what the Mrs Generals, Mr Eustace, or
somebody else said it was. The whole body of travellers seemed to
be a collection of voluntary human sacrifices, bound hand and foot,
and delivered over to Mr Eustace and his attendants, to have the
entrails of their intellects arranged according to the taste of
that sacred priesthood. Through the rugged remains of temples and
tombs and palaces and senate halls and theatres and amphitheatres
of ancient days, hosts of tongue-tied and blindfolded moderns were
carefully feeling their way, incessantly repeating Prunes and Prism
in the endeavour to set their lips according to the received form.
Mrs General was in her pure element. Nobody had an opinion. There
was a formation of surface going on around her on an amazing scale,
and it had not a flaw of courage or honest free speech in it.

Another modification of Prunes and Prism insinuated itself on
Little Dorrit's notice very shortly after their arrival. They
received an early visit from Mrs Merdle, who led that extensive
department of life in the Eternal City that winter; and the skilful
manner in which she and Fanny fenced with one another on the
occasion, almost made her quiet sister wink, like the glittering of
small-swords.

'So delighted,' said Mrs Merdle, 'to resume an acquaintance so
inauspiciously begun at Martigny.'

'At Martigny, of course,' said Fanny. 'Charmed, I am sure!'

'I understand,' said Mrs Merdle, 'from my son Edmund Sparkler, that
he has already improved that chance occasion. He has returned
quite transported with Venice.'

'Indeed?' returned the careless Fanny. 'Was he there long?'

'I might refer that question to Mr Dorrit,' said Mrs Merdle,
turning the bosom towards that gentleman; 'Edmund having been so
much indebted to him for rendering his stay agreeable.'

'Oh, pray don't speak of it,' returned Fanny. 'I believe Papa had
the pleasure of inviting Mr Sparkler twice or thrice,--but it was
nothing. We had so many people about us, and kept such open house,
that if he had that pleasure, it was less than nothing.'

'Except, my dear,' said Mr Dorrit, 'except--ha--as it afforded me
unusual gratification to--hum--show by any means, however slight
and worthless, the--ha, hum--high estimation in which, in--ha--
common with the rest of the world, I hold so distinguished and
princely a character as Mr Merdle's.'

The bosom received this tribute in its most engaging manner. 'Mr
Merdle,' observed Fanny, as a means of dismissing Mr Sparkler into
the background, 'is quite a theme of Papa's, you must know, Mrs
Merdle.'

'I have been--ha--disappointed, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'to
understand from Mr Sparkler that there is no great--hum--
probability of Mr Merdle's coming abroad.'

'Why, indeed,' said Mrs Merdle, 'he is so much engaged and in such
request, that I fear not. He has not been able to get abroad for
years. You, Miss Dorrit, I believe have been almost continually
abroad for a long time.'

'Oh dear yes,' drawled Fanny, with the greatest hardihood. 'An
immense number of years.'

'So I should have inferred,' said Mrs Merdle.

'Exactly,' said Fanny.

'I trust, however,' resumed Mr Dorrit, 'that if I have not the--
hum--great advantage of becoming known to Mr Merdle on this side of
the Alps or Mediterranean, I shall have that honour on returning to
England. It is an honour I particularly desire and shall
particularly esteem.'
'Mr Merdle,' said Mrs Merdle, who had been looking admiringly at
Fanny through her eye-glass, 'will esteem it, I am sure, no less.'

Little Dorrit, still habitually thoughtful and solitary though no
longer alone, at first supposed this to be mere Prunes and Prism.
But as her father when they had been to a brilliant reception at
Mrs Merdle's, harped at their own family breakfast-table on his
wish to know Mr Merdle, with the contingent view of benefiting by
the advice of that wonderful man in the disposal of his fortune,
she began to think it had a real meaning, and to entertain a
curiosity on her own part to see the shining light of the time.

CHAPTER 8

The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that
'It Never Does'

While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning
themselves for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily
being sketched out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and
likeness, by travelling pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and
Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous
clink of iron upon iron was heard there through the working hours.

The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into
sound trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious
devices, had done much to enhance the character of the factory. As
an ingenious man, he had necessarily to encounter every
discouragement that the ruling powers for a length of time had been
able by any means to put in the way of this class of culprits; but
that was only reasonable self-defence in the powers, since How to
do it must obviously be regarded as the natural and mortal enemy of
How not to do it. In this was to be found the basis of the wise
system, by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution Office, of
warning every ingenious British subject to be ingenious at his
peril: of harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by
making his remedy uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at
the best of confiscating his property after a short term of
enjoyment, as though invention were on a par with felony. The
system had uniformly found great favour with the Barnacles, and
that was only reasonable, too; for one who worthily invents must be
in earnest, and the Barnacles abhorred and dreaded nothing half so
much. That again was very reasonable; since in a country suffering
under the affliction of a great amount of earnestness, there might,
in an exceeding short space of time, be not a single Barnacle left
sticking to a post.

Daniel Doyce faced his condition with its pains and penalties
attached to it, and soberly worked on for the work's sake. Clennam
cheering him with a hearty co-operation, was a moral support to
him, besides doing good service in his business relation. The
concern prospered, and the partners were fast friends.
But Daniel could not forget the old design of so many years. It
was not in reason to be expected that he should; if he could have
lightly forgotten it, he could never have conceived it, or had the
patience and perseverance to work it out. So Clennam thought, when
he sometimes observed him of an evening looking over the models and
drawings, and consoling himself by muttering with a sigh as he put
them away again, that the thing was as true as it ever was.

To show no sympathy with so much endeavour, and so much
disappointment, would have been to fail in what Clennam regarded as
among the implied obligations of his partnership. A revival of the
passing interest in the subject which had been by chance awakened
at the door of the Circumlocution Office, originated in this
feeling. He asked his partner to explain the invention to him;
'having a lenient consideration,' he stipulated, 'for my being no
workman, Doyce.'

'No workman?' said Doyce. 'You would have been a thorough workman
if you had given yourself to it. You have as good a head for
understanding such things as I have met with.'

'A totally uneducated one, I am sorry to add,' said Clennam.

'I don't know that,' returned Doyce, 'and I wouldn't have you say
that. No man of sense who has been generally improved, and has
improved himself, can be called quite uneducated as to anything.
I don't particularly favour mysteries. I would as soon, on a fair
and clear explanation, be judged by one class of man as another,
provided he had the qualification I have named.'

'At all events,' said Clennam--'this sounds as if we were
exchanging compliments, but we know we are not--I shall have the
advantage of as plain an explanation as can be given.'

'Well!' said Daniel, in his steady even way,'I'll try to make it
so.'

He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character,
of explaining what he himself perceived, and meant, with the direct
force and distinctness with which it struck his own mind. His
manner of demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that it
was not easy to mistake him. There was something almost ludicrous
in the complete irreconcilability of a vague conventional notion
that he must be a visionary man, with the precise, sagacious
travelling of his eye and thumb over the plans, their patient
stoppages at particular points, their careful returns to other
points whence little channels of explanation had to be traced up,
and his steady manner of making everything good and everything
sound at each important stage, before taking his hearer on a
line's-breadth further. His dismissal of himself from his
description, was hardly less remarkable. He never said, I
discovered this adaptation or invented that combination; but showed
the whole thing as if the Divine artificer had made it, and he had
happened to find it; so modest he was about it, such a pleasant
touch of respect was mingled with his quiet admiration of it, and
so calmly convinced he was that it was established on irrefragable
laws.

Not only that evening, but for several succeeding evenings, Clennam
was quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued it,
and the oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and
the shrewd eye kindling with pleasure in it and love of it--
instrument for probing his heart though it had been made for twelve
long years--the less he could reconcile it to his younger energy to
let it go without one effort more. At length he said:

'Doyce, it came to this at last--that the business was to be sunk
with Heaven knows how many more wrecks, or begun all over again?'

'Yes,' returned Doyce, 'that's what the noblemen and gentlemen made
of it after a dozen years.'

'And pretty fellows too!' said Clennam, bitterly.

'The usual thing!' observed Doyce. 'I must not make a martyr of
myself, when I am one of so large a company.'

'Relinquish it, or begin it all over again?' mused Clennam.

'That was exactly the long and the short of it,' said Doyce.

'Then, my friend,' cried Clennam, starting up and taking his work-
roughened hand, 'it shall be begun all over again!'

Doyce looked alarmed, and replied in a hurry--for him, 'No, no.
Better put it by. Far better put it by. It will be heard of, one
day. I can put it by. You forget, my good Clennam; I HAVE put it
by. It's all at an end.'

'Yes, Doyce,' returned Clennam, 'at an end as far as your efforts
and rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as far as mine are. I
am younger than you: I have only once set foot in that precious
office, and I am fresh game for them. Come! I'll try them. You
shall do exactly as you have been doing since we have been
together. I will add (as I easily can) to what I have been doing,
the attempt to get public justice done to you; and, unless I have
some success to report, you shall hear no more of it.'

Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to consent, and again and again
urged that they had better put it by. But it was natural that he
should gradually allow himself to be over-persuaded by Clennam, and
should yield. Yield he did. So Arthur resumed the long and
hopeless labour of striving to make way with the Circumlocution
Office.

The waiting-rooms of that Department soon began to be familiar with
his presence, and he was generally ushered into them by its
janitors much as a pickpocket might be shown into a police-office;
the principal difference being that the object of the latter class
of public business is to keep the pickpocket, while the
Circumlocution object was to get rid of Clennam. However, he was
resolved to stick to the Great Department; and so the work of form-
filling, corresponding, minuting, memorandum-making, signing,
counter-signing, counter-counter-signing, referring backwards and
forwards, and referring sideways, crosswise, and zig-zag,
recommenced.

Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution Office, not previously
mentioned in the present record. When that admirable Department
got into trouble, and was, by some infuriated members of Parliament
whom the smaller Barnacles almost suspected of labouring under
diabolic possession, attacked on the merits of no individual case,
but as an Institution wholly abominable and Bedlamite; then the
noble or right honourable Barnacle who represented it in the House,
would smite that member and cleave him asunder, with a statement of
the quantity of business (for the prevention of business) done by
the Circumlocution Office. Then would that noble or right
honourable Barnacle hold in his hand a paper containing a few
figures, to which, with the permission of the House, he would
entreat its attention. Then would the inferior Barnacles exclaim,
obeying orders,'Hear, Hear, Hear!' and 'Read!' Then would the
noble or right honourable Barnacle perceive, sir, from this little
document, which he thought might carry conviction even to the
perversest mind (Derisive laughter and cheering from the Barnacle
fry), that within the short compass of the last financial half-
year, this much-maligned Department (Cheers) had written and
received fifteen thousand letters (Loud cheers), had written
twenty-four thousand minutes (Louder cheers), and thirty-two
thousand five hundred and seventeen memoranda (Vehement cheering).
Nay, an ingenious gentleman connected with the Department, and
himself a valuable public servant, had done him the favour to make
a curious calculation of the amount of stationery consumed in it
during the same period. It formed a part of this same short
document; and he derived from it the remarkable fact that the
sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted to the public service would
pave the footways on both sides of Oxford Street from end to end,
and leave nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Immense
cheering and laughter); while of tape--red tape--it had used enough
to stretch, in graceful festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to the
General Post Office. Then, amidst a burst of official exultation,
would the noble or right honourable Barnacle sit down, leaving the
mutilated fragments of the Member on the field. No one, after that
exemplary demolition of him, would have the hardihood to hint that
the more the Circumlocution Office did, the less was done, and that
the greatest blessing it could confer on an unhappy public would be
to do nothing.

With sufficient occupation on his hands, now that he had this
additional task--such a task had many and many a serviceable man
died of before his day--Arthur Clennam led a life of slight
variety. Regular visits to his mother's dull sick room, and visits
scarcely less regular to Mr Meagles at Twickenham, were its only
changes during many months.

He sadly and sorely missed Little Dorrit. He had been prepared to
miss her very much, but not so much. He knew to the full extent
only through experience, what a large place in his life was left
blank when her familiar little figure went out of it. He felt,
too, that he must relinquish the hope of its return, understanding
the family character sufficiently well to be assured that he and
she were divided by a broad ground of separation. The old interest
he had had in her, and her old trusting reliance on him, were
tinged with melancholy in his mind: so soon had change stolen over
them, and so soon had they glided into the past with other secret
tendernesses.

When he received her letter he was greatly moved, but did not the
less sensibly feel that she was far divided from him by more than
distance. It helped him to a clearer and keener perception of the
place assigned him by the family. He saw that he was cherished in
her grateful remembrance secretly, and that they resented him with
the jail and the rest of its belongings.

Through all these meditations which every day of his life crowded
about her, he thought of her otherwise in the old way. She was his
innocent friend, his delicate child, his dear Little Dorrit. This
very change of circumstances fitted curiously in with the habit,
begun on the night when the roses floated away, of considering
himself as a much older man than his years really made him. He
regarded her from a point of view which in its remoteness, tender
as it was, he little thought would have been unspeakable agony to
her. He speculated about her future destiny, and about the husband
she might have, with an affection for her which would have drained
her heart of its dearest drop of hope, and broken it.

Everything about him tended to confirm him in the custom of looking
on himself as an elderly man, from whom such aspirations as he had
combated in the case of Minnie Gowan (though that was not so long
ago either, reckoning by months and seasons), were finally
departed. His relations with her father and mother were like those
on which a widower son-in-law might have stood. If the twin sister
who was dead had lived to pass away in the bloom of womanhood, and
he had been her husband, the nature of his intercourse with Mr and
Mrs Meagles would probably have been just what it was. This
imperceptibly helped to render habitual the impression within him,
that he had done with, and dismissed that part of life.

He invariably heard of Minnie from them, as telling them in her
letters how happy she was, and how she loved her husband; but
inseparable from that subject, he invariably saw the old cloud on
Mr Meagles's face. Mr Meagles had never been quite so radiant
since the marriage as before. He had never quite recovered the
separation from Pet. He was the same good-humoured, open creature;
but as if his face, from being much turned towards the pictures of
his two children which could show him only one look, unconsciously
adopted a characteristic from them, it always had now, through all
its changes of expression, a look of loss in it.

One wintry Saturday when Clennam was at the cottage, the Dowager
Mrs Gowan drove up, in the Hampton Court equipage which pretended
to be the exclusive equipage of so many individual proprietors.
She descended, in her shady ambuscade of green fan, to favour Mr
and Mrs Meagles with a call.

'And how do you both do, Papa and Mama Meagles?' said she,
encouraging her humble connections. 'And when did you last hear
from or about my poor fellow?'

My poor fellow was her son; and this mode of speaking of him
politely kept alive, without any offence in the world, the pretence
that he had fallen a victim to the Meagles' wiles.

'And the dear pretty one?' said Mrs Gowan. 'Have you later news of
her than I have?'

Which also delicately implied that her son had been captured by
mere beauty, and under its fascination had forgone all sorts of
worldly advantages.

' I am sure,' said Mrs Gowan, without straining her attention on
the answers she received, 'it's an unspeakable comfort to know they
continue happy. My poor fellow is of such a restless disposition,
and has been so used to roving about, and to being inconstant and
popular among all manner of people, that it's the greatest comfort
in life. I suppose they're as poor as mice, Papa Meagles?'

Mr Meagles, fidgety under the question, replied, 'I hope not,
ma'am. I hope they will manage their little income.'

'Oh! my dearest Meagles!' returned the lady, tapping him on the
arm with the green fan and then adroitly interposing it between a
yawn and the company, 'how can you, as a man of the world and one
of the most business-like of human beings--for you know you are
business-like, and a great deal too much for us who are not--'

(Which went to the former purpose, by making Mr Meagles out to be
an artful schemer.)

'--How can you talk about their managing their little means? My
poor dear fellow! The idea of his managing hundreds! And the
sweet pretty creature too. The notion of her managing! Papa
Meagles! Don't!'

'Well, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, gravely, 'I am sorry to admit,
then, that Henry certainly does anticipate his means.'

'My dear good man--I use no ceremony with you, because we are a
kind of relations;--positively, Mama Meagles,' exclaimed Mrs Gowan
cheerfully, as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for
the first time, 'a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this
world none of us can have everything our own way.'

This again went to the former point, and showed Mr Meagles with all
good breeding that, so far, he had been brilliantly successful in
his deep designs. Mrs Gowan thought the hit so good a one, that
she dwelt upon it; repeating 'Not everything. No, no; in this
world we must not expect everything, Papa Meagles.'

'And may I ask, ma'am,' retorted Mr Meagles, a little heightened in
colour, 'who does expect everything?'

'Oh, nobody, nobody!' said Mrs Gowan. 'I was going to say--but you
put me out. You interrupting Papa, what was I going to say?'

Drooping her large green fan, she looked musingly at Mr Meagles
while she thought about it; a performance not tending to the
cooling of that gentleman's rather heated spirits.

'Ah! Yes, to be sure!' said Mrs Gowan. 'You must remember that my
poor fellow has always been accustomed to expectations. They may
have been realised, or they may not have been realised--'

'Let us say, then, may not have been realised,' observed Mr
Meagles.

The Dowager for a moment gave him an angry look; but tossed it off
with her head and her fan, and pursued the tenor of her way in her
former manner.

'It makes no difference. My poor fellow has been accustomed to
that sort of thing, and of course you knew it, and were prepared
for the consequences. I myself always clearly foresaw the
consequences, and am not surprised. And you must not be surprised.

In fact, can't be surprised. Must have been prepared for it.'

Mr Meagles looked at his wife and at Clennam; bit his lip; and
coughed.

'And now here's my poor fellow,' Mrs Gowan pursued, 'receiving
notice that he is to hold himself in expectation of a baby, and all
the expenses attendant on such an addition to his family! Poor
Henry! But it can't be helped now; it's too late to help it now.
Only don't talk of anticipating means, Papa Meagles, as a
discovery; because that would be too much.'

'Too much, ma'am?' said Mr Meagles, as seeking an explanation.

'There, there!' said Mrs Gowan, putting him in his inferior place
with an expressive action of her hand. 'Too much for my poor
fellow's mother to bear at this time of day. They are fast
married, and can't be unmarried. There, there! I know that! You
needn't tell me that, Papa Meagles. I know it very well. What was
it I said just now? That it was a great comfort they continued
happy. It is to be hoped they will still continue happy. It is to
be hoped Pretty One will do everything she can to make my poor
fellow happy, and keep him contented. Papa and Mama Meagles, we
had better say no more about it. We never did look at this subject
from the same side, and we never shall. There, there! Now I am
good.'

Truly, having by this time said everything she could say in
maintenance of her wonderfully mythical position, and in admonition
to Mr Meagles that he must not expect to bear his honours of
alliance too cheaply, Mrs Gowan was disposed to forgo the rest. If
Mr Meagles had submitted to a glance of entreaty from Mrs Meagles,
and an expressive gesture from Clennam, he would have left her in
the undisturbed enjoyment of this state of mind. But Pet was the
darling and pride of his heart; and if he could ever have
championed her more devotedly, or loved her better, than in the
days when she was the sunlight of his house, it would have been
now, when, as its daily grace and delight, she was lost to it.

'Mrs Gowan, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'I have been a plain man all
my life. If I was to try--no matter whether on myself, on somebody
else, or both--any genteel mystifications, I should probably not
succeed in them.'

'Papa Meagles,' returned the Dowager, with an affable smile, but
with the bloom on her cheeks standing out a little more vividly
than usual as the neighbouring surface became paler,'probably not.'

'Therefore, my good madam,' said Mr Meagles, at great pains to
restrain himself, 'I hope I may, without offence, ask to have no
such mystification played off upon me.'
'Mama Meagles,' observed Mrs Gowan, 'your good man is
incomprehensible.'

Her turning to that worthy lady was an artifice to bring her into
the discussion, quarrel with her, and vanquish her. Mr Meagles
interposed to prevent that consummation.

'Mother,' said he, 'you are inexpert, my dear, and it is not a fair
match. Let me beg of you to remain quiet. Come, Mrs Gowan, come!
Let us try to be sensible; let us try to be good-natured; let us
try to be fair. Don't you pity Henry, and I won't pity Pet. And
don't be one-sided, my dear madam; it's not considerate, it's not
kind. Don't let us say that we hope Pet will make Henry happy, or
even that we hope Henry will make Pet happy,' (Mr Meagles himself
did not look happy as he spoke the words,) 'but let us hope they
will make each other happy.'

'Yes, sure, and there leave it, father,' said Mrs Meagles the kind-
hearted and comfortable.

'Why, mother, no,' returned Mr Meagles, 'not exactly there. I
can't quite leave it there; I must say just half-a-dozen words
more. Mrs Gowan, I hope I am not over-sensitive. I believe I
don't look it.'

'Indeed you do not,' said Mrs Gowan, shaking her head and the great
green fan together, for emphasis.

'Thank you, ma'am; that's well. Notwithstanding which, I feel a
little--I don't want to use a strong word--now shall I say hurt?'
asked Mr Meagles at once with frankness and moderation, and with a
conciliatory appeal in his tone.

'Say what you like,' answered Mrs Gowan. 'It is perfectly
indifferent to me.'

'No, no, don't say that,' urged Mr Meagles, 'because that's not
responding amiably. I feel a little hurt when I hear references
made to consequences having been foreseen, and to its being too
late now, and so forth.'

'Do you, Papa Meagles?' said Mrs Gowan. 'I am not surprised.'

'Well, ma'am,' reasoned Mr Meagles, 'I was in hopes you would have
been at least surprised, because to hurt me wilfully on so tender
a subject is surely not generous.'
'I am not responsible,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for your conscience, you
know.'

Poor Mr Meagles looked aghast with astonishment.

'If I am unluckily obliged to carry a cap about with me, which is
yours and fits you,' pursued Mrs Gowan, 'don't blame me for its
pattern, Papa Meagles, I beg!'
'Why, good Lord, ma'am!' Mr Meagles broke out, 'that's as much as
to state--'

'Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Meagles,' said Mrs Gowan, who became
extremely deliberate and prepossessing in manner whenever that
gentleman became at all warm, 'perhaps to prevent confusion, I had
better speak for myself than trouble your kindness to speak for me.

It's as much as to state, you begin. If you please, I will finish
the sentence. It is as much as to state--not that I wish to press
it or even recall it, for it is of no use now, and my only wish is
to make the best of existing circumstances--that from the first to
the last I always objected to this match of yours, and at a very
late period yielded a most unwilling consent to it.'

'Mother!' cried Mr Meagles. 'Do you hear this! Arthur! Do you
hear this!'

'The room being of a convenient size,' said Mrs Gowan, looking
about as she fanned herself, 'and quite charmingly adapted in all
respects to conversation, I should imagine I am audible in any part
of it.'

Some moments passed in silence, before Mr Meagles could hold
himself in his chair with sufficient security to prevent his
breaking out of it at the next word he spoke. At last he said:
'Ma'am, I am very unwilling to revive them, but I must remind you
what my opinions and my course were, all along, on that unfortunate
subject.'

'O, my dear sir!' said Mrs Gowan, smiling and shaking her head with
accusatory intelligence, 'they were well understood by me, I assure
you.'

'I never, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'knew unhappiness before that
time, I never knew anxiety before that time. It was a time of such
distress to me that--' That Mr Meagles could really say no more
about it, in short, but passed his handkerchief before his Face.

'I understood the whole affair,' said Mrs Gowan, composedly looking
over her fan. 'As you have appealed to Mr Clennam, I may appeal to
Mr Clennam, too. He knows whether I did or not.'

'I am very unwilling,' said Clennam, looked to by all parties, 'to
take any share in this discussion, more especially because I wish
to preserve the best understanding and the clearest relations with
Mr Henry Gowan. I have very strong reasons indeed, for
entertaining that wish. Mrs Gowan attributed certain views of
furthering the marriage to my friend here, in conversation with me
before it took place; and I endeavoured to undeceive her. I
represented that I knew him (as I did and do) to be strenuously
opposed to it, both in opinion and action.'

'You see?' said Mrs Gowan, turning the palms of her hands towards
Mr Meagles, as if she were Justice herself, representing to him
that he had better confess, for he had not a leg to stand on. 'You
see? Very good! Now Papa and Mama Meagles both!' here she rose;
'allow me to take the liberty of putting an end to this rather
formidable controversy. I will not say another word upon its
merits. I will only say that it is an additional proof of what one
knows from all experience; that this kind of thing never answers--
as my poor fellow himself would say, that it never pays--in one
word, that it never does.'

Mr Meagles asked, What kind of thing?

'It is in vain,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for people to attempt to get on
together who have such extremely different antecedents; who are
jumbled against each other in this accidental, matrimonial sort of
way; and who cannot look at the untoward circumstance which has
shaken them together in the same light. It never does.'

Mr Meagles was beginning, 'Permit me to say, ma'am--'

'No, don't,' returned Mrs Gowan. 'Why should you! It is an
ascertained fact. It never does. I will therefore, if you please,
go my way, leaving you to yours. I shall at all times be happy to
receive my poor fellow's pretty wife, and I shall always make a
point of being on the most affectionate terms with her. But as to
these terms, semi-family and semi-stranger, semi-goring and semi-
boring, they form a state of things quite amusing in its
impracticability. I assure you it never does.'

The Dowager here made a smiling obeisance, rather to the room than
to any one in it, and therewith took a final farewell of Papa and
Mama Meagles. Clennam stepped forward to hand her to the Pill-Box
which was at the service of all the Pills in Hampton Court Palace;
and she got into that vehicle with distinguished serenity, and was
driven away.

Thenceforth the Dowager, with a light and careless humour, often
recounted to her particular acquaintance how, after a hard trial,
she had found it impossible to know those people who belonged to
Henry's wife, and who had made that desperate set to catch him.
Whether she had come to the conclusion beforehand, that to get rid
of them would give her favourite pretence a better air, might save
her some occasional inconvenience, and could risk no loss (the
pretty creature being fast married, and her father devoted to her),
was best known to herself. Though this history has its opinion on
that point too, and decidedly in the affirmative.

CHAPTER 9

Appearance and Disappearance

'Arthur, my dear boy,' said Mr Meagles, on the evening of the
following day, 'Mother and I have been talking this over, and we
don't feel comfortable in remaining as we are. That elegant
connection of ours--that dear lady who was here yesterday--'

'I understand,' said Arthur.

'Even that affable and condescending ornament of society,' pursued
Mr Meagles, 'may misrepresent us, we are afraid. We could bear a
great deal, Arthur, for her sake; but we think we would rather not
bear that, if it was all the same to her.'

'Good,' said Arthur. 'Go on.'

'You see,' proceeded Mr Meagles 'it might put us wrong with our
son-in-law, it might even put us wrong with our daughter, and it
might lead to a great deal of domestic trouble. You see, don't
you?'

'Yes, indeed,' returned Arthur, 'there is much reason in what you
say.' He had glanced at Mrs Meagles, who was always on the good
and sensible side; and a petition had shone out of her honest face
that he would support Mr Meagles in his present inclinings.

'So we are very much disposed, are Mother and I,' said Mr Meagles,
'to pack up bags and baggage and go among the Allongers and
Marshongers once more. I mean, we are very much disposed to be
off, strike right through France into Italy, and see our Pet.'

'And I don't think,' replied Arthur, touched by the motherly
anticipation in the bright face of Mrs Meagles (she must have been
very like her daughter, once), 'that you could do better. And if
you ask me for my advice, it is that you set off to-morrow.'

'Is it really, though?' said Mr Meagles. 'Mother, this is being
backed in an idea!'

Mother, with a look which thanked Clennam in a manner very
agreeable to him, answered that it was indeed.

'The fact is, besides, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, the old cloud
coming over his face, 'that my son-in-law is already in debt again,
and that I suppose I must clear him again. It may be as well, even
on this account, that I should step over there, and look him up in
a friendly way. Then again, here's Mother foolishly anxious (and
yet naturally too) about Pet's state of health, and that she should
not be left to feel lonesome at the present time. It's undeniably
a long way off, Arthur, and a strange place for the poor love under
all the circumstances. Let her be as well cared for as any lady in
that land, still it is a long way off. just as Home is Home though
it's never so Homely, why you see,' said Mr Meagles, adding a new
version to the proverb, 'Rome is Rome, though it's never so
Romely.'

'All perfectly true,' observed Arthur, 'and all sufficient reasons
for going.'

'I am glad you think so; it decides me. Mother, my dear, you may
get ready. We have lost our pleasant interpreter (she spoke three
foreign languages beautifully, Arthur; you have heard her many a
time), and you must pull me through it, Mother, as well as you can.

I require a deal of pulling through, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles,
shaking his head, 'a deal of pulling through. I stick at
everything beyond a noun-substantive--and I stick at him, if he's
at all a tight one.'

'Now I think of it,' returned Clennam, 'there's Cavalletto. He
shall go with you, if you like. I could not afford to lose him,
but you will bring him safe back.'

'Well! I am much obliged to you, my boy,' said Mr Meagles, turning
it over, 'but I think not. No, I think I'll be pulled through by
Mother. Cavallooro (I stick at his very name to start with, and it
sounds like the chorus to a comic song) is so necessary to you,
that I don't like the thought of taking him away. More than that,
there's no saying when we may come home again; and it would never
do to take him away for an indefinite time. The cottage is not
what it was. It only holds two little people less than it ever
did, Pet, and her poor unfortunate maid Tattycoram; but it seems
empty now. Once out of it, there's no knowing when we may come
back to it. No, Arthur, I'll be pulled through by Mother.'

They would do best by themselves perhaps, after all, Clennam
thought; therefore did not press his proposal.

'If you would come down and stay here for a change, when it
wouldn't trouble you,' Mr Meagles resumed, 'I should be glad to
think--and so would Mother too, I know--that you were brightening
up the old place with a bit of life it was used to when it was
full, and that the Babies on the wall there had a kind eye upon
them sometimes. You so belong to the spot, and to them, Arthur,
and we should every one of us have been so happy if it had fallen
out--but, let us see--how's the weather for travelling now?' Mr
Meagles broke off, cleared his throat, and got up to look out of
the window.

They agreed that the weather was of high promise; and Clennam kept
the talk in that safe direction until it had become easy again,
when he gently diverted it to Henry Gowan and his quick sense and
agreeable qualities when he was delicately dealt With; he likewise
dwelt on the indisputable affection he entertained for his wife.
Clennam did not fail of his effect upon good Mr Meagles, whom these
commendations greatly cheered; and who took Mother to witness that
the single and cordial desire of his heart in reference to their
daughter's husband, was harmoniously to exchange friendship for
friendship, and confidence for confidence. Within a few hours the
cottage furniture began to be wrapped up for preservation in the
family absence--or, as Mr Meagles expressed it, the house began to
put its hair in papers--and within a few days Father and Mother
were gone, Mrs Tickit and Dr Buchan were posted, as of yore, behind
the parlour blind, and Arthur's solitary feet were rustling among
the dry fallen leaves in the garden walks.

As he had a liking for the spot, he seldom let a week pass without
paying a visit. Sometimes, he went down alone from Saturday to
Monday; sometimes his partner accompanied him; sometimes, he merely
strolled for an hour or two about the house and garden, saw that
all was right, and returned to London again. At all times, and
under all circumstances, Mrs Tickit, with her dark row of curls,
and Dr Buchan, sat in the parlour window, looking out for the
family return.

On one of his visits Mrs Tickit received him with the words, 'I
have something to tell you, Mr Clennam, that will surprise you.'
So surprising was the something in question, that it actually
brought Mrs Tickit out of the parlour window and produced her in
the garden walk, when Clennam went in at the gate on its being
opened for him.

'What is it, Mrs Tickit?' said he.

'Sir,' returned that faithful housekeeper, having taken him into
the parlour and closed the door; 'if ever I saw the led away and
deluded child in my life, I saw her identically in the dusk of
yesterday evening.'

'You don't mean Tatty--'

'Coram yes I do!' quoth Mrs Tickit, clearing the disclosure at a
leap.

'Where?'

'Mr Clennam,' returned Mrs Tickit, 'I was a little heavy in my
eyes, being that I was waiting longer than customary for my cup of
tea which was then preparing by Mary Jane. I was not sleeping, nor
what a person would term correctly, dozing. I was more what a
person would strictly call watching with my eyes closed.'

Without entering upon an inquiry into this curious abnormal
condition, Clennam said, 'Exactly. Well?'

'Well, sir,' proceeded Mrs Tickit, 'I was thinking of one thing and
thinking of another. just as you yourself might. just as anybody
might.'
'Precisely so,' said Clennam. 'Well?'

'And when I do think of one thing and do think of another,' pursued
Mrs Tickit, 'I hardly need to tell you, Mr Clennam, that I think of
the family. Because, dear me! a person's thoughts,' Mrs Tickit
said this with an argumentative and philosophic air, 'however they
may stray, will go more or less on what is uppermost in their
minds. They will do it, sir, and a person can't prevent them.'

Arthur subscribed to this discovery with a nod.

'You find it so yourself, sir, I'll be bold to say,' said Mrs
Tickit, 'and we all find it so. It an't our stations in life that
changes us, Mr Clennam; thoughts is free!--As I was saying, I was
thinking of one thing and thinking of another, and thinking very
much of the family. Not of the family in the present times only,
but in the past times too. For when a person does begin thinking
of one thing and thinking of another in that manner, as it's
getting dark, what I say is, that all times seem to be present, and
a person must get out of that state and consider before they can
say which is which.'

He nodded again; afraid to utter a word, lest it should present any
new opening to Mrs Tickit's conversational powers.

'In consequence of which,' said Mrs Tickit, 'when I quivered my
eyes and saw her actual form and figure looking in at the gate, I
let them close again without so much as starting, for that actual
form and figure came so pat to the time when it belonged to the
house as much as mine or your own, that I never thought at the
moment of its having gone away. But, sir, when I quivered my eyes
again, and saw that it wasn't there, then it all flooded upon me
with a fright, and I jumped up.'

'You ran out directly?' said Clennam.

'I ran out,' assented Mrs Tickit, 'as fast as ever my feet would
carry me; and if you'll credit it, Mr Clennam, there wasn't in the
whole shining Heavens, no not so much as a finger of that young
woman.'

Passing over the absence from the firmament of this novel
constellation, Arthur inquired of Mrs Tickit if she herself went
beyond the gate?

'Went to and fro, and high and low,' said Mrs Tickit, 'and saw no
sign of her!'

He then asked Mrs Tickit how long a space of time she supposed
there might have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she
had experienced? Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her
reply, had no settled opinion between five seconds and ten minutes.

She was so plainly at sea on this part of the case, and had so
clearly been startled out of slumber, that Clennam was much
disposed to regard the appearance as a dream. Without hurting Mrs
Tickit's feelings with that infidel solution of her mystery, he
took it away from the cottage with him; and probably would have
retained it ever afterwards if a circumstance had not soon happened
to change his opinion.
He was passing at nightfall along the Strand, and the lamp-lighter
was going on before him, under whose hand the street-lamps, blurred
by the foggy air, burst out one after another, like so many blazing
sunflowers coming into full-blow all at once,--when a stoppage on
the pavement, caused by a train of coal-waggons toiling up from the
wharves at the river-side, brought him to a stand-still. He had
been walking quickly, and going with some current of thought, and
the sudden check given to both operations caused him to look
freshly about him, as people under such circumstances usually do.

Immediately, he saw in advance--a few people intervening, but still
so near to him that he could have touched them by stretching out
his arm--Tattycoram and a strange man of a remarkable appearance:
a swaggering man, with a high nose, and a black moustache as false
in its colour as his eyes were false in their expression, who wore
his heavy cloak with the air of a foreigner. His dress and general
appearance were those of a man on travel, and he seemed to have
very recently joined the girl. In bending down (being much taller
than she was), listening to whatever she said to him, he looked
over his shoulder with the suspicious glance of one who was not
unused to be mistrustful that his footsteps might be dogged. It
was then that Clennam saw his face; as his eyes lowered on the
people behind him in the aggregate, without particularly resting
upon Clennam's face or any other.

He had scarcely turned his head about again, and it was still bent
down, listening to the girl, when the stoppage ceased, and the
obstructed stream of people flowed on. Still bending his head and
listening to the girl, he went on at her side, and Clennam followed
them, resolved to play this unexpected play out, and see where they
went.

He had hardly made the determination (though he was not long about
it), when he was again as suddenly brought up as he had been by the
stoppage. They turned short into the Adelphi,--the girl evidently
leading,--and went straight on, as if they were going to the
Terrace which overhangs the river.

There is always, to this day, a sudden pause in that place to the
roar of the great thoroughfare. The many sounds become so deadened
that the change is like putting cotton in the ears, or having the
head thickly muffled. At that time the contrast was far greater;
there being no small steam-boats on the river, no landing places
but slippery wooden stairs and foot-causeways, no railroad on the
opposite bank, no hanging bridge or fish-market near at hand, no
traffic on the nearest bridge of stone, nothing moving on the
stream but watermen's wherries and coal-lighters. Long and broad
black tiers of the latter, moored fast in the mud as if they were
never to move again, made the shore funereal and silent after dark;
and kept what little water-movement there was, far out towards mid-
stream. At any hour later than sunset, and not least at that hour
when most of the people who have anything to eat at home are going
home to eat it, and when most of those who have nothing have hardly
yet slunk out to beg or steal, it was a deserted place and looked
on a deserted scene.

Such was the hour when Clennam stopped at the corner, observing the
girl and the strange man as they went down the street. The man's
footsteps were so noisy on the echoing stones that he was unwilling
to add the sound of his own. But when they had passed the turning
and were in the darkness of the dark corner leading to the terrace,
he made after them with such indifferent appearance of being a
casual passenger on his way, as he could assume.

When he rounded the dark corner, they were walking along the
terrace towards a figure which was coming towards them. If he had
seen it by itself, under such conditions of gas-lamp, mist, and
distance, he might not have known it at first sight, but with the
figure of the girl to prompt him, he at once recognised Miss Wade.

He stopped at the corner, seeming to look back expectantly up the
street as if he had made an appointment with some one to meet him
there; but he kept a careful eye on the three. When they came
together, the man took off his hat, and made Miss Wade a bow. The
girl appeared to say a few words as though she presented him, or
accounted for his being late, or early, or what not; and then fell
a pace or so behind, by herself. Miss Wade and the man then began
to walk up and down; the man having the appearance of being
extremely courteous and complimentary in manner; Miss Wade having
the appearance of being extremely haughty.

When they came down to the corner and turned, she was saying,

'If I pinch myself for it, sir, that is my business. Confine
yourself to yours, and ask me no question.'

'By Heaven, ma'am!' he replied, making her another bow. 'It was my
profound respect for the strength of your character, and my
admiration of your beauty.'

'I want neither the one nor the other from any one,' said she, 'and
certainly not from you of all creatures. Go on with your report.'

'Am I pardoned?' he asked, with an air of half abashed gallantry.

'You are paid,' she said, 'and that is all you want.'

Whether the girl hung behind because she was not to hear the
business, or as already knowing enough about it, Clennam could not
determine. They turned and she turned. She looked away at the
river, as she walked with her hands folded before her; and that was
all he could make of her without showing his face. There happened,
by good fortune, to be a lounger really waiting for some one; and
he sometimes looked over the railing at the water, and sometimes
came to the dark corner and looked up the street, rendering Arthur
less conspicuous.

When Miss Wade and the man came back again, she was saying, 'You
must wait until to-morrow.'

'A thousand pardons?' he returned. 'My faith! Then it's not
convenient to-night?'

'No. I tell you I must get it before I can give it to you.'

She stopped in the roadway, as if to put an end to the conference.
He of course stopped too. And the girl stopped.

'It's a little inconvenient,' said the man. 'A little. But, Holy
Blue! that's nothing in such a service. I am without money to-
night, by chance. I have a good banker in this city, but I would
not wish to draw upon the house until the time when I shall draw
for a round sum.'

'Harriet,' said Miss Wade, 'arrange with him--this gentleman here--
for sending him some money to-morrow.' She said it with a slur of
the word gentleman which was more contemptuous than any emphasis,
and walked slowly on.
The man bent his head again, and the girl spoke to him as they both
followed her. Clennam ventured to look at the girl as they Moved
away. He could note that her rich black eyes were fastened upon
the man with a scrutinising expression, and that she kept at a
little distance from him, as they walked side by side to the
further end of the terrace.

A loud and altered clank upon the pavement warned him, before he
could discern what was passing there, that the man was coming back
alone. Clennam lounged into the road, towards the railing; and the
man passed at a quick swing, with the end of his cloak thrown over
his shoulder, singing a scrap of a French song.

The whole vista had no one in it now but himself. The lounger had
lounged out of view, and Miss Wade and Tattycoram were gone. More
than ever bent on seeing what became of them, and on having some
information to give his good friend, Mr Meagles, he went out at the
further end of the terrace, looking cautiously about him. He
rightly judged that, at first at all events, they would go in a
contrary direction from their late companion. He soon saw them in
a neighbouring bye-street, which was not a thoroughfare, evidently
allowing time for the man to get well out of their way. They
walked leisurely arm-in-arm down one side of the street, and
returned on the opposite side. When they came back to the street-
corner, they changed their pace for the pace of people with an
object and a distance before them, and walked steadily away.
Clennam, no less steadily, kept them in sight.

They crossed the Strand, and passed through Covent Garden (under
the windows of his old lodging where dear Little Dorrit had come
that night), and slanted away north-east, until they passed the
great building whence Tattycoram derived her name, and turned into
the Gray's Inn Road. Clennam was quite at home here, in right of
Flora, not to mention the Patriarch and Pancks, and kept them in
view with ease. He was beginning to wonder where they might be
going next, when that wonder was lost in the greater wonder with
which he saw them turn into the Patriarchal street. That wonder
was in its turn swallowed up on the greater wonder with which he
saw them stop at the Patriarchal door. A low double knock at the
bright brass knocker, a gleam of light into the road from the
opened door, a brief pause for inquiry and answer and the door was
shut, and they were housed.

After looking at the surrounding objects for assurance that he was
not in an odd dream, and after pacing a little while before the
house, Arthur knocked at the door. It was opened by the usual
maid-servant, and she showed him up at once, with her usual
alacrity, to Flora's sitting-room.

There was no one with Flora but Mr F.'s Aunt, which respectable
gentlewoman, basking in a balmy atmosphere of tea and toast, was
ensconced in an easy-chair by the fireside, with a little table at
her elbow, and a clean white handkerchief spread over her lap on
which two pieces of toast at that moment awaited consumption.
Bending over a steaming vessel of tea, and looking through the
steam, and breathing forth the steam, like a malignant Chinese
enchantress engaged in the performance of unholy rites, Mr F.'s
Aunt put down her great teacup and exclaimed, 'Drat him, if he an't
come back again!'

It would seem from the foregoing exclamation that this
uncompromising relative of the lamented Mr F., measuring time by
the acuteness of her sensations and not by the clock, supposed
Clennam to have lately gone away; whereas at least a quarter of a
year had elapsed since he had had the temerity to present himself
before her.

'My goodness Arthur!' cried Flora, rising to give him a cordial
reception, 'Doyce and Clennam what a start and a surprise for
though not far from the machinery and foundry business and surely
might be taken sometimes if at no other time about mid-day when a
glass of sherry and a humble sandwich of whatever cold meat in the
larder might not come amiss nor taste the worse for being friendly
for you know you buy it somewhere and wherever bought a profit must
be made or they would never keep the place it stands to reason
without a motive still never seen and learnt now not to be
expected, for as Mr F. himself said if seeing is believing not
seeing is believing too and when you don't see you may fully
believe you're not remembered not that I expect you Arthur Doyce
and Clennam to remember me why should I for the days are gone but
bring another teacup here directly and tell her fresh toast and
pray sit near the fire.'

Arthur was in the greatest anxiety to explain the object of his
visit; but was put off for the moment, in spite of himself, by what
he understood of the reproachful purport of these words, and by the
genuine pleasure she testified in seeing him.
'And now pray tell me something all you know,' said Flora, drawing
her chair near to his, 'about the good dear quiet little thing and
all the changes of her fortunes carriage people now no doubt and
horses without number most romantic, a coat of arms of course and
wild beasts on their hind legs showing it as if it was a copy they
had done with mouths from ear to ear good gracious, and has she her
health which is the first consideration after all for what is
wealth without it Mr F. himself so often saying when his twinges
came that sixpence a day and find yourself and no gout so much
preferable, not that he could have lived on anything like it being
the last man or that the previous little thing though far too
familiar an expression now had any tendency of that sort much too
slight and small but looked so fragile bless her?'

Mr F.'s Aunt, who had eaten a piece of toast down to the crust,
here solemnly handed the crust to Flora, who ate it for her as a
matter of business. Mr F.'s Aunt then moistened her ten fingers in
slow succession at her lips, and wiped them in exactly the same
order on the white handkerchief; then took the other piece of
toast, and fell to work upon it. While pursuing this routine, she
looked at Clennam with an expression of such intense severity that
he felt obliged to look at her in return, against his personal
inclinations.

'She is in Italy, with all her family, Flora,' he said, when the
dreaded lady was occupied again.

'In Italy is she really?' said Flora, 'with the grapes growing
everywhere and lava necklaces and bracelets too that land of poetry
with burning mountains picturesque beyond belief though if the
organ-boys come away from the neighbourhood not to be scorched
nobody can wonder being so young and bringing their white mice with
them most humane, and is she really in that favoured land with
nothing but blue about her and dying gladiators and Belvederes
though Mr F. himself did not believe for his objection when in
spirits was that the images could not be true there being no medium
between expensive quantities of linen badly got up and all in
creases and none whatever, which certainly does not seem probable
though perhaps in consequence of the extremes of rich and poor
which may account for it.'

Arthur tried to edge a word in, but Flora hurried on again.

'Venice Preserved too,' said she, 'I think you have been there is
it well or ill preserved for people differ so and Maccaroni if they
really eat it like the conjurors why not cut it shorter, you are
acquainted Arthur--dear Doyce and Clennam at least not dear and
most assuredly not Doyce for I have not the pleasure but pray
excuse me--acquainted I believe with Mantua what has it got to do
with Mantua-making for I never have been able to conceive?'

'I believe there is no connection, Flora, between the two,' Arthur
was beginning, when she caught him up again.

'Upon your word no isn't there I never did but that's like me I run
away with an idea and having none to spare I keep it, alas there
was a time dear Arthur that is to say decidedly not dear nor Arthur
neither but you understand me when one bright idea gilded the
what's-his-name horizon of et cetera but it is darkly clouded now
and all is over.'

Arthur's increasing wish to speak of something very different was
by this time so plainly written on his face, that Flora stopped in
a tender look, and asked him what it was?

'I have the greatest desire, Flora, to speak to some one who is now
in this house--with Mr Casby no doubt. Some one whom I saw come
in, and who, in a misguided and deplorable way, has deserted the
house of a friend of mine.'

'Papa sees so many and such odd people,' said Flora, rising, 'that
I shouldn't venture to go down for any one but you Arthur but for
you I would willingly go down in a diving-bell much more a dining-
room and will come back directly if you'll mind and at the same
time not mind Mr F.'s Aunt while I'm gone.'

With those words and a parting glance, Flora bustled out, leaving
Clennam under dreadful apprehension of this terrible charge.

The first variation which manifested itself in Mr F.'s Aunt's
demeanour when she had finished her piece of toast, was a loud and
prolonged sniff. Finding it impossible to avoid construing this
demonstration into a defiance of himself, its gloomy significance
being unmistakable, Clennam looked plaintively at the excellent
though prejudiced lady from whom it emanated, in the hope that she
might be disarmed by a meek submission.

'None of your eyes at me,' said Mr F.'s Aunt, shivering with
hostility. 'Take that.'

'That' was the crust of the piece of toast. Clennam accepted the
boon with a look of gratitude, and held it in his hand under the
pressure of a little embarrassment, which was not relieved when Mr
F.'s Aunt, elevating her voice into a cry of considerable power,
exclaimed, 'He has a proud stomach, this chap! He's too proud a
chap to eat it!' and, coming out of her chair, shook her venerable
fist so very close to his nose as to tickle the surface. But for
the timely return of Flora, to find him in this difficult
situation, further consequences might have ensued. Flora, without
the least discomposure or surprise, but congratulating the old lady
in an approving manner on being 'very lively to-night', handed her
back to her chair.

'He has a proud stomach, this chap,' said Mr F.'s relation, on
being reseated. 'Give him a meal of chaff!'

'Oh! I don't think he would like that, aunt,' returned Flora.

'Give him a meal of chaff, I tell you,' said Mr F.'s Aunt, glaring
round Flora on her enemy. 'It's the only thing for a proud
stomach. Let him eat up every morsel. Drat him, give him a meal
of chaff!'

Under a general pretence of helping him to this refreshment, Flora
got him out on the staircase; Mr F.'s Aunt even then constantly
reiterating, with inexpressible bitterness, that he was 'a chap,'
and had a 'proud stomach,' and over and over again insisting on
that equine provision being made for him which she had already so
strongly prescribed.

'Such an inconvenient staircase and so many corner-stairs Arthur,'
whispered Flora, 'would you object to putting your arm round me
under my pelerine?'

With a sense of going down-stairs in a highly-ridiculous manner,
Clennam descended in the required attitude, and only released his
fair burden at the dining-room door; indeed, even there she was
rather difficult to be got rid of, remaining in his embrace to
murmur, 'Arthur, for mercy's sake, don't breathe it to papa!'

She accompanied Arthur into the room, where the Patriarch sat
alone, with his list shoes on the fender, twirling his thumbs as if
he had never left off. The youthful Patriarch, aged ten, looked
out of his picture-frame above him with no calmer air than he.
Both smooth heads were alike beaming, blundering, and bumpy.

'Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well, sir, I
hope you are well. Please to sit down, please to sit down.'

'I had hoped, sir,' said Clennam, doing so, and looking round with
a face of blank disappointment, 'not to find you alone.'

'Ah, indeed?' said the Patriarch, sweetly. 'Ah, indeed?'

'I told you so you know papa,' cried Flora.

'Ah, to be sure!' returned the Patriarch. 'Yes, just so. Ah, to
be sure!'

'Pray, sir,'demanded Clennam, anxiously, 'is Miss Wade gone?'

'Miss--? Oh, you call her Wade,' returned Mr Casby. 'Highly
proper.'
Arthur quickly returned, 'What do you call her?'

'Wade,' said Mr Casby. 'Oh, always Wade.'

After looking at the philanthropic visage and the long silky white
hair for a few seconds, during which Mr Casby twirled his thumbs,
and smiled at the fire as if he were benevolently wishing it to
burn him that he might forgive it, Arthur began:

'I beg your pardon, Mr Casby--'

'Not so, not so,' said the Patriarch, 'not so.'

'--But, Miss Wade had an attendant with her--a young woman brought
up by friends of mine, over whom her influence is not considered
very salutary, and to whom I should be glad to have the opportunity
of giving the assurance that she has not yet forfeited the interest
of those protectors.'

'Really, really?' returned the Patriarch.

'Will you therefore be so good as to give me the address of Miss
Wade?'

'Dear, dear, dear!' said the Patriarch, 'how very unfortunate! If
you had only sent in to me when they were here! I observed the
young woman, Mr Clennam. A fine full-coloured young woman, Mr
Clennam, with very dark hair and very dark eyes. If I mistake not,
if I mistake not?'

Arthur assented, and said once more with new expression, 'If you
would be so good as to give me the address.'

'Dear, dear, dear!' exclaimed the Patriarch in sweet regret. 'Tut,
tut, tut! what a pity, what a pity! I have no address, sir. Miss
Wade mostly lives abroad, Mr Clennam. She has done so for some
years, and she is (if I may say so of a fellow-creature and a lady)
fitful and uncertain to a fault, Mr Clennam. I may not see her
again for a long, long time. I may never see her again. What a
pity, what a pity!'

Clennam saw now, that he had as much hope of getting assistance out
of the Portrait as out of the Patriarch; but he said nevertheless:

'Mr Casby, could you, for the satisfaction of the friends I have
mentioned, and under any obligation of secrecy that you may
consider it your duty to impose, give me any information at all
touching Miss Wade? I have seen her abroad, and I have seen her at
home, but I know nothing of her. Could you give me any account of
her whatever?'

'None,' returned the Patriarch, shaking his big head with his
utmost benevolence. 'None at all. Dear, dear, dear! What a real
pity that she stayed so short a time, and you delayed! As
confidential agency business, agency business, I have occasionally
paid this lady money; but what satisfaction is it to you, sir, to
know that?'

'Truly, none at all,' said Clennam.

'Truly,' assented the Patriarch, with a shining face as he
philanthropically smiled at the fire, 'none at all, sir. You hit
the wise answer, Mr Clennam. Truly, none at all, sir.'
His turning of his smooth thumbs over one another as he sat there,
was so typical to Clennam of the way in which he would make the
subject revolve if it were pursued, never showing any new part of
it nor allowing it to make the smallest advance, that it did much
to help to convince him of his labour having been in vain. He
might have taken any time to think about it, for Mr Casby, well
accustomed to get on anywhere by leaving everything to his bumps
and his white hair, knew his strength to lie in silence. So there
Casby sat, twirling and twirling, and making his polished head and
forehead look largely benevolent in every knob.

With this spectacle before him, Arthur had risen to go, when from
the inner Dock where the good ship Pancks was hove down when out in
no cruising ground, the noise was heard of that steamer labouring
towards him. It struck Arthur that the noise began demonstratively
far off, as though Mr Pancks sought to impress on any one who might
happen to think about it, that he was working on from out of
hearing.
Mr Pancks and he shook hands, and the former brought his employer
a letter or two to sign. Mr Pancks in shaking hands merely
scratched his eyebrow with his left forefinger and snorted once,
but Clennam, who understood him better now than of old,
comprehended that he had almost done for the evening and wished to
say a word to him outside. Therefore, when he had taken his leave
of Mr Casby, and (which was a more difficult process) of Flora, he
sauntered in the neighbourhood on Mr Pancks's line of road.

He had waited but a short time when Mr Pancks appeared. Mr Pancks
shaking hands again with another expressive snort, and taking off
his hat to put his hair up, Arthur thought he received his cue to
speak to him as one who knew pretty well what had just now passed.
Therefore he said, without any preface:

'I suppose they were really gone, Pancks?'

'Yes,' replied Pancks. 'They were really gone.'

'Does he know where to find that lady?'

'Can't say. I should think so.'

Mr Pancks did not? No, Mr Pancks did not. Did Mr Pancks know
anything about her?
'I expect,' rejoined that worthy, 'I know as much about her as she
knows about herself. She is somebody's child--anybody's--nobody's.

Put her in a room in London here with any six people old enough to
be her parents, and her parents may be there for anything she
knows. They may be in any house she sees, they may be in any
churchyard she passes, she may run against 'em in any street, she
may make chance acquaintance of 'em at any time; and never know it.

She knows nothing about 'em. She knows nothing about any relative
whatever. Never did. Never will.'
'Mr Casby could enlighten her, perhaps?'

'May be,' said Pancks. 'I expect so, but don't know. He has long
had money (not overmuch as I make out) in trust to dole out to her
when she can't do without it. Sometimes she's proud and won't
touch it for a length of time; sometimes she's so poor that she
must have it. She writhes under her life. A woman more angry,
passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived. She came for
money to-night. Said she had peculiar occasion for it.'

'I think,' observed Clennam musing, 'I by chance know what
occasion--I mean into whose pocket the money is to go.'

'Indeed?' said Pancks. 'If it's a compact, I recommend that party
to be exact in it. I wouldn't trust myself to that woman, young
and handsome as she is, if I had wronged her; no, not for twice my
proprietor's money! Unless,' Pancks added as a saving clause, 'I
had a lingering illness on me, and wanted to get it over.'

Arthur, hurriedly reviewing his own observation of her, found it to
tally pretty nearly with Mr Pancks's view.

'The wonder is to me,' pursued Pancks, 'that she has never done for
my proprietor, as the only person connected with her story she can
lay hold of. Mentioning that, I may tell you, between ourselves,
that I am sometimes tempted to do for him myself.'

Arthur started and said, 'Dear me, Pancks, don't say that!'

'Understand me,' said Pancks, extending five cropped coaly finger-
nails on Arthur's arm; 'I don't mean, cut his throat. But by all
that's precious, if he goes too far, I'll cut his hair!'

Having exhibited himself in the new light of enunciating this
tremendous threat, Mr Pancks, with a countenance of grave import,
snorted several times and steamed away.

CHAPTER 10

The Dreams of Mrs Flintwinch thicken

The shady waiting-rooms of the Circumlocution Office, where he
passed a good deal of time in company with various troublesome
Convicts who were under sentence to be broken alive on that wheel,
had afforded Arthur Clennam ample leisure, in three or four
successive days, to exhaust the subject of his late glimpse of Miss
Wade and Tattycoram. He had been able to make no more of it and no
less of it, and in this unsatisfactory condition he was fain to
leave it.

During this space he had not been to his mother's dismal old house.

One of his customary evenings for repairing thither now coming
round, he left his dwelling and his partner at nearly nine o'clock,
and slowly walked in the direction of that grim home of his youth.

It always affected his imagination as wrathful, mysterious, and
sad; and his imagination was sufficiently impressible to see the
whole neighbourhood under some tinge of its dark shadow. As he
went along, upon a dreary night, the dim streets by which he went,
seemed all depositories of oppressive secrets. The deserted
counting-houses, with their secrets of books and papers locked up
in chests and safes; the banking-houses, with their secrets of
strong rooms and wells, the keys of which were in a very few secret
pockets and a very few secret breasts; the secrets of all the
dispersed grinders in the vast mill, among whom there were
doubtless plunderers, forgers, and trust-betrayers of many sorts,
whom the light of any day that dawned might reveal; he could have
fancied that these things, in hiding, imparted a heaviness to the
air. The shadow thickening and thickening as he approached its
source, he thought of the secrets of the lonely church-vaults,
where the people who had hoarded and secreted in iron coffers were
in their turn similarly hoarded, not yet at rest from doing harm;
and then of the secrets of the river, as it rolled its turbid tide
between two frowning wildernesses of secrets, extending, thick and
dense, for many miles, and warding off the free air and the free
country swept by winds and wings of birds.

The shadow still darkening as he drew near the house, the
melancholy room which his father had once occupied, haunted by the
appealing face he had himself seen fade away with him when there
was no other watcher by the bed, arose before his mind. Its close
air was secret. The gloom, and must, and dust of the whole
tenement, were secret. At the heart of it his mother presided,
inflexible of face, indomitable of will, firmly holding all the
secrets of her own and his father's life, and austerely opposing
herself, front to front, to the great final secret of all life.

He had turned into the narrow and steep street from which the court
of enclosure wherein the house stood opened, when another footstep
turned into it behind him, and so close upon his own that he was
jostled to the wall. As his mind was teeming with these thoughts,
the encounter took him altogether unprepared, so that the other
passenger had had time to say, boisterously, 'Pardon! Not my
fault!' and to pass on before the instant had elapsed which was
requisite to his recovery of the realities about him.

When that moment had flashed away, he saw that the man striding on
before him was the man who had been so much in his mind during the
last few days. It was no casual resemblance, helped out by the
force of the impression the man made upon him. It was the man; the
man he had followed in company with the girl, and whom he had
overheard talking to Miss Wade.

The street was a sharp descent and was crooked too, and the man
(who although not drunk had the air of being flushed with some
strong drink) went down it so fast that Clennam lost him as he
looked at him. With no defined intention of following him, but
with an impulse to keep the figure in view a little longer, Clennam
quickened his pace to pass the twist in the street which hid him
from his sight. On turning it, he saw the man no more.

Standing now, close to the gateway of his mother's house, he looked
down the street: but it was empty. There was no projecting shadow
large enough to obscure the man; there was no turning near that he
could have taken; nor had there been any audible sound of the
opening and closing of a door. Nevertheless, he concluded that the
man must have had a key in his hand, and must have opened one of
the many house-doors and gone in.

Ruminating on this strange chance and strange glimpse, he turned
into the court-yard. As he looked, by mere habit, towards the
feebly lighted windows of his mother's room, his eyes encountered
the figure he had just lost, standing against the iron railings of
the little waste enclosure looking up at those windows and laughing
to himself. Some of the many vagrant cats who were always prowling
about there by night, and who had taken fright at him, appeared to
have stopped when he had stopped, and were looking at him with eyes
by no means unlike his own from tops of walls and porches, and
other safe points of pause. He had only halted for a moment to
entertain himself thus; he immediately went forward, throwing the
end of his cloak off his shoulder as he went, ascended the unevenly
sunken steps, and knocked a sounding knock at the door.

Clennam's surprise was not so absorbing but that he took his
resolution without any incertitude. He went up to the door too,
and ascended the steps too. His friend looked at him with a
braggart air, and sang to himself.

     'Who passes by this road so late?
          Compagnon de la Majolaine;
     Who passes by this road so late?
          Always gay!'

After which he knocked again.

'You are impatient, sir,' said Arthur.

'I am, sir. Death of my life, sir,' returned the stranger, 'it's
my character to be impatient!'
The sound of Mistress Affery cautiously chaining the door before
she opened it, caused them both to look that way. Affery opened it
a very little, with a flaring candle in her hands and asked who was
that, at that time of night, with that knock! 'Why, Arthur!' she
added with astonishment, seeing him first. 'Not you sure? Ah,
Lord save us! No,' she cried out, seeing the other. 'Him again!'

'It's true! Him again, dear Mrs Flintwinch,' cried the stranger.
'Open the door, and let me take my dear friend Jeremiah to my arms!
Open the door, and let me hasten myself to embrace my Flintwinch!'

'He's not at home,' cried Affery.

'Fetch him!' cried the stranger. 'Fetch my Flintwinch! Tell him
that it is his old Blandois, who comes from arriving in England;
tell him that it is his little boy who is here, his cabbage, his
well-beloved! Open the door, beautiful Mrs Flintwinch, and in the
meantime let me to pass upstairs, to present my compliments--
homage of Blandois--to my lady! My lady lives always? It is well.

Open then!'

To Arthur's increased surprise, Mistress Affery, stretching her
eyes wide at himself, as if in warning that this was not a
gentleman for him to interfere with, drew back the chain, and
opened the door. The stranger, without ceremony, walked into the
hall, leaving Arthur to follow him.

'Despatch then! Achieve then! Bring my Flintwinch! Announce me
to my lady!' cried the stranger, clanking about the stone floor.

'Pray tell me, Affery,' said Arthur aloud and sternly, as he
surveyed him from head to foot with indignation; 'who is this
gentleman?'

'Pray tell me, Affery,' the stranger repeated in his turn, 'who--
ha, ha, ha!--who is this gentleman?'

The voice of Mrs Clennam opportunely called from her chamber above,
'Affery, let them both come up. Arthur, come straight to me!'

'Arthur?' exclaimed Blandois, taking off his hat at arm's length,
and bringing his heels together from a great stride in making him
a flourishing bow. 'The son of my lady? I am the all-devoted of
the son of my lady!'

Arthur looked at him again in no more flattering manner than
before, and, turning on his heel without acknowledgment, went up-
stairs. The visitor followed him up-stairs. Mistress Affery took
the key from behind the door, and deftly slipped out to fetch her
lord.

A bystander, informed of the previous appearance of Monsieur
Blandois in that room, would have observed a difference in Mrs
Clennam's present reception of him. Her face was not one to betray
it; and her suppressed manner, and her set voice, were equally
under her control. It wholly consisted in her never taking her
eyes off his face from the moment of his entrance, and in her twice
or thrice, when he was becoming noisy, swaying herself a very
little forward in the chair in which she sat upright, with her
hands immovable upon its elbows; as if she gave him the assurance
that he should be presently heard at any length he would. Arthur
did not fail to observe this; though the difference between the
present occasion and the former was not within his power of
observation.

'Madame,' said Blandois, 'do me the honour to present me to
Monsieur, your son. It appears to me, madame, that Monsieur, your
son, is disposed to complain of me. He is not polite.'

'Sir,' said Arthur, striking in expeditiously, 'whoever you are,
and however you come to be here, if I were the master of this house
I would lose no time in placing you on the outside of it.'

'But you are not,' said his mother, without looking at him.
'Unfortunately for the gratification of your unreasonable temper,
you are not the master, Arthur.'

'I make no claim to be, mother. If I object to this person's
manner of conducting himself here, and object to it so much, that
if I had any authority here I certainly would not suffer him to
remain a minute, I object on your account.'

'In the case of objection being necessary,' she returned, 'I could
object for myself. And of course I should.'

The subject of their dispute, who had seated himself, laughed
aloud, and rapped his legs with his hand.

'You have no right,' said Mrs Clennam, always intent on Blandois,
however directly she addressed her son, 'to speak to the prejudice
of any gentleman (least of all a gentleman from another country),
because he does not conform to your standard, or square his
behaviour by your rules. It is possible that the gentleman may, on
similar grounds, object to you.'

'I hope so,' returned Arthur.

'The gentleman,' pursued Mrs Clennam, 'on a former occasion brought
a letter of recommendation to us from highly esteemed and
responsible correspondents. I am perfectly unacquainted with the
gentleman's object in coming here at present. I am entirely
ignorant of it, and cannot be supposed likely to be able to form
the remotest guess at its nature;' her habitual frown became
stronger, as she very slowly and weightily emphasised those words;
'but, when the gentleman proceeds to explain his object, as I shall
beg him to have the goodness to do to myself and Flintwinch, when
Flintwinch returns, it will prove, no doubt, to be one more or less
in the usual way of our business, which it will be both our
business and our pleasure to advance. It can be nothing else.'

'We shall see, madame!' said the man of business.

'We shall see,' she assented. 'The gentleman is acquainted with
Flintwinch; and when the gentleman was in London last, I remember
to have heard that he and Flintwinch had some entertainment or
good-fellowship together. I am not in the way of knowing much that
passes outside this room, and the jingle of little worldly things
beyond it does not much interest me; but I remember to have heard
that.'

'Right, madame. It is true.' He laughed again, and whistled the
burden of the tune he had sung at the door.

'Therefore, Arthur,' said his mother, 'the gentleman comes here as
an acquaintance, and no stranger; and it is much to be regretted
that your unreasonable temper should have found offence in him. I
regret it. I say so to the gentleman. You will not say so, I
know; therefore I say it for myself and Flintwinch, since with us
two the gentleman's business lies.'

The key of the door below was now heard in the lock, and the door
was heard to open and close. In due sequence Mr Flintwinch
appeared; on whose entrance the visitor rose from his chair,
laughing loud, and folded him in a close embrace.

'How goes it, my cherished friend!' said he. 'How goes the world,
my Flintwinch? Rose-coloured? So much the better, so much the
better! Ah, but you look charming! Ah, but you look young and
fresh as the flowers of Spring! Ah, good little boy! Brave child,
brave child!'

While heaping these compliments on Mr Flintwinch, he rolled him
about with a hand on each of his shoulders, until the staggerings
of that gentleman, who under the circumstances was dryer and more
twisted than ever, were like those of a teetotum nearly spent.

'I had a presentiment, last time, that we should be better and more
intimately acquainted. Is it coming on you, Flintwinch? Is it yet
coming on?'

'Why, no, sir,' retorted Mr Flintwinch. 'Not unusually. Hadn't
you better be seated? You have been calling for some more of that
port, sir, I guess?'

'Ah, Little joker! Little pig!' cried the visitor. 'Ha ha ha ha!'
And throwing Mr Flintwinch away, as a closing piece of raillery, he
sat down again.

The amazement, suspicion, resentment, and shame, with which Arthur
looked on at all this, struck him dumb. Mr Flintwinch, who had
spun backward some two or three yards under the impetus last given
to him, brought himself up with a face completely unchanged in its
stolidity except as it was affected by shortness of breath, and
looked hard at Arthur. Not a whit less reticent and wooden was Mr
Flintwinch outwardly, than in the usual course of things: the only
perceptible difference in him being that the knot of cravat which
was generally under his ear, had worked round to the back of his
head: where it formed an ornamental appendage not unlike a bagwig,
and gave him something of a courtly appearance.
As Mrs Clennam never removed her eyes from Blandois (on whom they
had some effect, as a steady look has on a lower sort of dog), so
Jeremiah never removed his from Arthur. It was as if they had
tacitly agreed to take their different provinces. Thus, in the
ensuing silence, Jeremiah stood scraping his chin and looking at
Arthur as though he were trying to screw his thoughts out of him
with an instrument.

After a little, the visitor, as if he felt the silence irksome,
rose, and impatiently put himself with his back to the sacred fire
which had burned through so many years. Thereupon Mrs Clennam
said, moving one of her hands for the first time, and moving it
very slightly with an action of dismissal:

'Please to leave us to our business, Arthur.'
'Mother, I do so with reluctance.'

'Never mind with what,' she returned, 'or with what not. Please to
leave us. Come back at any other time when you may consider it a
duty to bury half an hour wearily here. Good night.'

She held up her muffled fingers that he might touch them with his,
according to their usual custom, and he stood over her wheeled
chair to touch her face with his lips. He thought, then, that her
cheek was more strained than usual, and that it was colder. As he
followed the direction of her eyes, in rising again, towards Mr
Flintwinch's good friend, Mr Blandois, Mr Blandois snapped his
finger and thumb with one loud contemptuous snap.

'I leave your--your business acquaintance in my mother's room, Mr
Flintwinch,' said Clennam, 'with a great deal of surprise and a
great deal of unwillingness.'

The person referred to snapped his finger and thumb again.

'Good night, mother.'

'Good night.'

'I had a friend once, my good comrade Flintwinch,' said Blandois,
standing astride before the fire, and so evidently saying it to
arrest Clennam's retreating steps, that he lingered near the door;
'I had a friend once, who had heard so much of the dark side of
this city and its ways, that he wouldn't have confided himself
alone by night with two people who had an interest in getting him
under the ground--my faith! not even in a respectable house like
this--unless he was bodily too strong for them. Bah! What a
poltroon, my Flintwinch! Eh?'

'A cur, sir.'

'Agreed! A cur. But he wouldn't have done it, my Flintwinch,
unless he had known them to have the will to silence him, without
the power. He wouldn't have drunk from a glass of water under such
circumstances--not even in a respectable house like this, my
Flintwinch--unless he had seen one of them drink first, and swallow
too!'

Disdaining to speak, and indeed not very well able, for he was
half-choking, Clennam only glanced at the visitor as he passed out.

The visitor saluted him with another parting snap, and his nose
came down over his moustache and his moustache went up under his
nose, in an ominous and ugly smile.

'For Heaven's sake, Affery,' whispered Clennam, as she opened the
door for him in the dark hall, and he groped his way to the sight
of the night-sky, 'what is going on here?'

Her own appearance was sufficiently ghastly, standing in the dark
with her apron thrown over her head, and speaking behind it in a
low, deadened voice.

'Don't ask me anything, Arthur. I've been in a dream for ever so
long. Go away!'

He went out, and she shut the door upon him. He looked up at the
windows of his mother's room, and the dim light, deadened by the
yellow blinds, seemed to say a response after Affery, and to
mutter, 'Don't ask me anything. Go away!'

CHAPTER 11

A Letter from Little Dorrit

Dear Mr Clennam,

As I said in my last that it was best for nobody to write to me,
and as my sending you another little letter can therefore give you
no other trouble than the trouble of reading it (perhaps you may
not find leisure for even that, though I hope you will some day),
I am now going to devote an hour to writing to you again. This
time, I write from Rome.

We left Venice before Mr and Mrs Gowan did, but they were not so
long upon the road as we were, and did not travel by the same way,
and so when we arrived we found them in a lodging here, in a place
called the Via Gregoriana. I dare say you know it.

Now I am going to tell you all I can about them, because I know
that is what you most want to hear. Theirs is not a very
comfortable lodging, but perhaps I thought it less so when I first
saw it than you would have done, because you have been in many
different countries and have seen many different customs. Of
course it is a far, far better place--millions of times--than any
I have ever been used to until lately; and I fancy I don't look at
it with my own eyes, but with hers. For it would be easy to see
that she has always been brought up in a tender and happy home,
even if she had not told me so with great love for it.

Well, it is a rather bare lodging up a rather dark common
staircase, and it is nearly all a large dull room, where Mr Gowan
paints. The windows are blocked up where any one could look out,
and the walls have been all drawn over with chalk and charcoal by
others who have lived there before--oh,--I should think, for years!

There is a curtain more dust-coloured than red, which divides it,
and the part behind the curtain makes the private sitting-room.

When I first saw her there she was alone, and her work had fallen
out of her hand, and she was looking up at the sky shining through
the tops of the windows. Pray do not be uneasy when I tell you,
but it was not quite so airy, nor so bright, nor so cheerful, nor
so happy and youthful altogether as I should have liked it to be.

On account of Mr Gowan's painting Papa's picture (which I am not
quite convinced I should have known from the likeness if I had not
seen him doing it), I have had more opportunities of being with her
since then than I might have had without this fortunate chance.
She is very much alone. Very much alone indeed.

Shall I tell you about the second time I saw her? I went one day,
when it happened that I could run round by myself, at four or five
o'clock in the afternoon. She was then dining alone, and her
solitary dinner had been brought in from somewhere, over a kind of
brazier with a fire in it, and she had no company or prospect of
company, that I could see, but the old man who had brought it. He
was telling her a long story (of robbers outside the walls being
taken up by a stone statue of a Saint), to entertain her--as he
said to me when I came out, 'because he had a daughter of his own,
though she was not so pretty.'

I ought now to mention Mr Gowan, before I say what little more I
have to say about her. He must admire her beauty, and he must be
proud of her, for everybody praises it, and he must be fond of her,
and I do not doubt that he is--but in his way. You know his way,
and if it appears as careless and discontented in your eyes as it
does in mine, I am not wrong in thinking that it might be better
suited to her. If it does not seem so to you, I am quite sure I am
wholly mistaken; for your unchanged poor child confides in your
knowledge and goodness more than she could ever tell you if she was
to try. But don't be frightened, I am not going to try.
Owing (as I think, if you think so too) to Mr Gowan's unsettled and
dissatisfied way, he applies himself to his profession very little.

He does nothing steadily or patiently; but equally takes things up
and throws them down, and does them, or leaves them undone, without
caring about them. When I have heard him talking to Papa during
the sittings for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could
be that he has no belief in anybody else, because he has no belief
in himself. Is it so? I wonder what you will say when you come to
this! I know how you will look, and I can almost hear the voice in
which you would tell me on the Iron Bridge.

Mr Gowan goes out a good deal among what is considered the best
company here--though he does not look as if he enjoyed it or liked
it when he is with it--and she sometimes accompanies him, but
lately she has gone out very little. I think I have noticed that
they have an inconsistent way of speaking about her, as if she had
made some great self-interested success in marrying Mr Gowan,
though, at the same time, the very same people, would not have
dreamed of taking him for themselves or their daughters. Then he
goes into the country besides, to think about making sketches; and
in all places where there are visitors, he has a large acquaintance
and is very well known. Besides all this, he has a friend who is
much in his society both at home and away from home, though he
treats this friend very coolly and is very uncertain in his
behaviour to him. I am quite sure (because she has told me so),
that she does not like this friend. He is so revolting to me, too,
that his being away from here, at present, is quite a relief to my
mind. How much more to hers!

But what I particularly want you to know, and why I have resolved
to tell you so much while I am afraid it may make you a little
uncomfortable without occasion, is this. She is so true and so
devoted, and knows so completely that all her love and duty are his
for ever, that you may be certain she will love him, admire him,
praise him, and conceal all his faults, until she dies. I believe
she conceals them, and always will conceal them, even from herself.

She has given him a heart that can never be taken back; and however
much he may try it, he will never wear out its affection. You know
the truth of this, as you know everything, far far better than I;
but I cannot help telling you what a nature she shows, and that you
can never think too well of her.

I have not yet called her by her name in this letter, but we are
such friends now that I do so when we are quietly together, and she
speaks to me by my name--I mean, not my Christian name, but the
name you gave me. When she began to call me Amy, I told her my
short story, and that you had always called me Little Dorrit. I
told her that the name was much dearer to me than any other, and so
she calls me Little Dorrit too.

Perhaps you have not heard from her father or mother yet, and may
not know that she has a baby son. He was born only two days ago,
and just a week after they came. It has made them very happy.
However, I must tell you, as I am to tell you all, that I fancy
they are under a constraint with Mr Gowan, and that they feel as if
his mocking way with them was sometimes a slight given to their
love for her. It was but yesterday, when I was there, that I saw
Mr Meagles change colour, and get up and go out, as if he was
afraid that he might say so, unless he prevented himself by that
means. Yet I am sure they are both so considerate, good-humoured,
and reasonable, that he might spare them. It is hard in him not to
think of them a little more.

I stopped at the last full stop to read all this over. It looked
at first as if I was taking on myself to understand and explain so
much, that I was half inclined not to send it. But when I thought
it over a little, I felt more hopeful for your knowing at once that
I had only been watchful for you, and had only noticed what I think
I have noticed, because I was quickened by your interest in it.
Indeed, you may be sure that is the truth.

And now I have done with the subject in the present letter, and
have little left to say.

We are all quite well, and Fanny improves every day. You can
hardly think how kind she is to me, and what pains she takes with
me. She has a lover, who has followed her, first all the way from
Switzerland, and then all the way from Venice, and who has just
confided to me that he means to follow her everywhere. I was much
confused by his speaking to me about it, but he would. I did not
know what to say, but at last I told him that I thought he had
better not. For Fanny (but I did not tell him this) is much too
spirited and clever to suit him. Still, he said he would, all the
same. I have no lover, of course.

If you should ever get so far as this in this long letter, you will
perhaps say, Surely Little Dorrit will not leave off without
telling me something about her travels, and surely it is time she
did. I think it is indeed, but I don't know what to tell you.
Since we left Venice we have been in a great many wonderful places,
Genoa and Florence among them, and have seen so many wonderful
sights, that I am almost giddy when I think what a crowd they make.

But you can tell me so much more about them than I can tell you,
that why should I tire you with my accounts and descriptions?

Dear Mr Clennam, as I had the courage to tell you what the familiar
difficulties in my travelling mind were before, I will not be a
coward now. One of my frequent thoughts is this:-- Old as these
cities are, their age itself is hardly so curious, to my
reflections, as that they should have been in their places all
through those days when I did not even know of the existence of
more than two or three of them, and when I scarcely knew of
anything outside our old walls. There is something melancholy in
it, and I don't know why. When we went to see the famous leaning
tower at Pisa, it was a bright sunny day, and it and the buildings
near it looked so old, and the earth and the sky looked so young,
and its shadow on the ground was so soft and retired! I could not
at first think how beautiful it was, or how curious, but I thought,
'O how many times when the shadow of the wall was falling on our
room, and when that weary tread of feet was going up and down the
yard--O how many times this place was just as quiet and lovely as
it is to-day!' It quite overpowered me. My heart was so full that
tears burst out of my eyes, though I did what I could to restrain
them. And I have the same feeling often--often.

Do you know that since the change in our fortunes, though I appear
to myself to have dreamed more than before, I have always dreamed
of myself as very young indeed! I am not very old, you may say.
No, but that is not what I mean. I have always dreamed of myself
as a child learning to do needlework. I have often dreamed of
myself as back there, seeing faces in the yard little known, and
which I should have thought I had quite forgotten; but, as often as
not, I have been abroad here--in Switzerland, or France, or Italy--
somewhere where we have been--yet always as that little child. I
have dreamed of going down to Mrs General, with the patches on my
clothes in which I can first remember myself. I have over and over
again dreamed of taking my place at dinner at Venice when we have
had a large company, in the mourning for my poor mother which I
wore when I was eight years old, and wore long after it was
threadbare and would mend no more. It has been a great distress to
me to think how irreconcilable the company would consider it with
my father's wealth, and how I should displease and disgrace him and
Fanny and Edward by so plainly disclosing what they wished to keep
secret. But I have not grown out of the little child in thinking
of it; and at the self-same moment I have dreamed that I have sat
with the heart-ache at table, calculating the expenses of the
dinner, and quite distracting myself with thinking how they were
ever to be made good. I have never dreamed of the change in our
fortunes itself; I have never dreamed of your coming back with me
that memorable morning to break it; I have never even dreamed of
you.

Dear Mr Clennam, it is possible that I have thought of you--and
others--so much by day, that I have no thoughts left to wander
round you by night. For I must now confess to you that I suffer
from home-sickness--that I long so ardently and earnestly for home,
as sometimes, when no one sees me, to pine for it. I cannot bear
to turn my face further away from it. My heart is a little
lightened when we turn towards it, even for a few miles, and with
the knowledge that we are soon to turn away again. So dearly do I
love the scene of my poverty and your kindness. O so dearly, O so
dearly!

Heaven knows when your poor child will see England again. We are
all fond of the life here (except me), and there are no plans for
our return. My dear father talks of a visit to London late in this
next spring, on some affairs connected with the property, but I
have no hope that he will bring me with him.

I have tried to get on a little better under Mrs General's
instruction, and I hope I am not quite so dull as I used to be. I
have begun to speak and understand, almost easily, the hard
languages I told you about. I did not remember, at the moment when
I wrote last, that you knew them both; but I remembered it
afterwards, and it helped me on. God bless you, dear Mr Clennam.
Do not forget your ever grateful and affectionate
LITTLE DORRIT.

P.S.--Particularly remember that Minnie Gowan deserves the best
remembrance in which you can hold her. You cannot think too
generously or too highly of her. I forgot Mr Pancks last time.
Please, if you should see him, give him your Little Dorrit's kind
regard. He was very good to Little D.

CHAPTER 12

In which a Great Patriotic Conference is holden

The famous name of Merdle became, every day, more famous in the
land. Nobody knew that the Merdle of such high renown had ever
done any good to any one, alive or dead, or to any earthly thing;
nobody knew that he had any capacity or utterance of any sort in
him, which had ever thrown, for any creature, the feeblest
farthing-candle ray of light on any path of duty or diversion, pain
or pleasure, toil or rest, fact or fancy, among the multiplicity of
paths in the labyrinth trodden by the sons of Adam; nobody had the
smallest reason for supposing the clay of which this object of
worship was made, to be other than the commonest clay, with as
clogged a wick smouldering inside of it as ever kept an image of
humanity from tumbling to pieces. All people knew (or thought they
knew) that he had made himself immensely rich; and, for that reason
alone, prostrated themselves before him, more degradedly and less
excusably than the darkest savage creeps out of his hole in the
ground to propitiate, in some log or reptile, the Deity of his
benighted soul.

Nay, the high priests of this worship had the man before them as a
protest against their meanness. The multitude worshipped on
trust--though always distinctly knowing why--but the officiators at
the altar had the man habitually in their view. They sat at his
feasts, and he sat at theirs. There was a spectre always attendant
on him, saying to these high priests, 'Are such the signs you
trust, and love to honour; this head, these eyes, this mode of
speech, the tone and manner of this man? You are the levers of the
Circumlocution Office, and the rulers of men. When half-a-dozen of
you fall out by the ears, it seems that mother earth can give birth
to no other rulers. Does your qualification lie in the superior
knowledge of men which accepts, courts, and puffs this man? Or, if
you are competent to judge aright the signs I never fail to show
you when he appears among you, is your superior honesty your
qualification?' Two rather ugly questions these, always going
about town with Mr Merdle; and there was a tacit agreement that
they must be stifled. In Mrs Merdle's absence abroad, Mr Merdle
still kept the great house open for the passage through it of a
stream Of visitors. A few of these took affable possession of the
establishment. Three or four ladies of distinction and liveliness
used to say to one another, 'Let us dine at our dear Merdle's next
Thursday. Whom shall we have?' Our dear Merdle would then receive
his instructions; and would sit heavily among the company at table
and wander lumpishly about his drawing-rooms afterwards, only
remarkable for appearing to have nothing to do with the
entertainment beyond being in its way.

The Chief Butler, the Avenging Spirit of this great man's life,
relaxed nothing of his severity. He looked on at these dinners
when the bosom was not there, as he looked on at other dinners when
the bosom was there; and his eye was a basilisk to Mr Merdle. He
was a hard man, and would never bate an ounce of plate or a bottle
of wine. He would not allow a dinner to be given, unless it was up
to his mark. He set forth the table for his own dignity. If the
guests chose to partake of what was served, he saw no objection;
but it was served for the maintenance of his rank. As he stood by
the sideboard he seemed to announce, 'I have accepted office to
look at this which is now before me, and to look at nothing less
than this.' If he missed the presiding bosom, it was as a part of
his own state of which he was, from unavoidable circumstances,
temporarily deprived. just as he might have missed a centre-piece,
or a choice wine-cooler, which had been sent to the Banker's.

Mr Merdle issued invitations for a Barnacle dinner. Lord Decimus
was to be there, Mr Tite Barnacle was to be there, the pleasant
young Barnacle was to be there; and the Chorus of Parliamentary
Barnacles who went about the provinces when the House was up,
warbling the praises of their Chief, were to be represented there.
It was understood to be a great occasion. Mr Merdle was going to
take up the Barnacles. Some delicate little negotiations had
occurred between him and the noble Decimus--the young Barnacle of
engaging manners acting as negotiator--and Mr Merdle had decided to
cast the weight of his great probity and great riches into the
Barnacle scale. jobbery was suspected by the malicious; perhaps
because it was indisputable that if the adherence of the immortal
Enemy of Mankind could have been secured by a job, the Barnacles
would have jobbed him--for the good of the country, for the good of
the country.

Mrs Merdle had written to this magnificent spouse of hers, whom it
was heresy to regard as anything less than all the British
Merchants since the days of Whittington rolled into one, and gilded
three feet deep all over--had written to this spouse of hers,
several letters from Rome, in quick succession, urging upon him
with importunity that now or never was the time to provide for
Edmund Sparkler. Mrs Merdle had shown him that the case of Edmund
was urgent, and that infinite advantages might result from his
having some good thing directly. In the grammar of Mrs Merdle's
verbs on this momentous subject, there was only one mood, the
Imperative; and that Mood had only one Tense, the Present. Mrs
Merdle's verbs were so pressingly presented to Mr Merdle to
conjugate, that his sluggish blood and his long coat-cuffs became
quite agitated.

In which state of agitation, Mr Merdle, evasively rolling his eyes
round the Chief Butler's shoes without raising them to the index of
that stupendous creature's thoughts, had signified to him his
intention of giving a special dinner: not a very large dinner, but
a very special dinner. The Chief Butler had signified, in return,
that he had no objection to look on at the most expensive thing in
that way that could be done; and the day of the dinner was now
come.

Mr Merdle stood in one of his drawing-rooms, with his back to the
fire, waiting for the arrival of his important guests. He seldom
or never took the liberty of standing with his back to the fire
unless he was quite alone. In the presence of the Chief Butler, he
could not have done such a deed. He would have clasped himself by
the wrists in that constabulary manner of his, and have paced up
and down the hearthrug, or gone creeping about among the rich
objects of furniture, if his oppressive retainer had appeared in
the room at that very moment. The sly shadows which seemed to dart
out of hiding when the fire rose, and to dart back into it when the
fire fell, were sufficient witnesses of his making himself so easy.

They were even more than sufficient, if his uncomfortable glances
at them might be taken to mean anything.

Mr Merdle's right hand was filled with the evening paper, and the
evening paper was full of Mr Merdle. His wonderful enterprise, his
wonderful wealth, his wonderful Bank, were the fattening food of
the evening paper that night. The wonderful Bank, of which he was
the chief projector, establisher, and manager, was the latest of
the many Merdle wonders. So modest was Mr Merdle withal, in the
midst of these splendid achievements, that he looked far more like
a man in possession of his house under a distraint, than a
commercial Colossus bestriding his own hearthrug, while the little
ships were sailing into dinner.

Behold the vessels coming into port! The engaging young Barnacle
was the first arrival; but Bar overtook him on the staircase. Bar,
strengthened as usual with his double eye-glass and his little jury
droop, was overjoyed to see the engaging young Barnacle; and opined
that we were going to sit in Banco, as we lawyers called it, to
take a special argument?

'Indeed,' said the sprightly young Barnacle, whose name was
Ferdinand; 'how so?'

'Nay,' smiled Bar. 'If you don't know, how can I know? You are in
the innermost sanctuary of the temple; I am one of the admiring
concourse on the plain without.'

Bar could be light in hand, or heavy in hand, according to the
customer he had to deal with. With Ferdinand Barnacle he was
gossamer. Bar was likewise always modest and self-depreciatory--in
his way. Bar was a man of great variety; but one leading thread
ran through the woof of all his patterns. Every man with whom he
had to do was in his eyes a jury-man; and he must get that jury-man
over, if he could.

'Our illustrious host and friend,' said Bar; 'our shining
mercantile star;--going into politics?'

'Going? He has been in Parliament some time, you know,' returned
the engaging young Barnacle.

'True,' said Bar, with his light-comedy laugh for special jury-men,
which was a very different thing from his low-comedy laugh for
comic tradesmen on common juries: 'he has been in Parliament for
some time. Yet hitherto our star has been a vacillating and
wavering star? Humph?'

An average witness would have been seduced by the Humph? into an
affirmative answer, But Ferdinand Barnacle looked knowingly at Bar
as he strolled up-stairs, and gave him no answer at all.

'Just so, just so,' said Bar, nodding his head, for he was not to
be put off in that way, 'and therefore I spoke of our sitting in
Banco to take a special argument--meaning this to be a high and
solemn occasion, when, as Captain Macheath says, "the judges are
met: a terrible show!" We lawyers are sufficiently liberal, you
see, to quote the Captain, though the Captain is severe upon us.
Nevertheless, I think I could put in evidence an admission of the
Captain's,' said Bar, with a little jocose roll of his head; for,
in his legal current of speech, he always assumed the air of
rallying himself with the best grace in the world; 'an admission of
the Captain's that Law, in the gross, is at least intended to be
impartial. For what says the Captain, if I quote him correctly--
and if not,' with a light-comedy touch of his double eye-glass on
his companion's shoulder, 'my learned friend will set me right:

     "Since laws were made for every degree,
     To curb vice in others as well as in me,
     I wonder we ha'n't better company
     Upon Tyburn Tree!"'

These words brought them to the drawing-room, where Mr Merdle stood
before the fire. So immensely astounded was Mr Merdle by the
entrance of Bar with such a reference in his mouth, that Bar
explained himself to have been quoting Gay. 'Assuredly not one of
our Westminster Hall authorities,' said he, 'but still no
despicable one to a man possessing the largely-practical Mr
Merdle's knowledge of the world.'

Mr Merdle looked as if he thought he would say something, but
subsequently looked as if he thought he wouldn't. The interval
afforded time for Bishop to be announced.
Bishop came in with meekness, and yet with a strong and rapid step
as if he wanted to get his seven-league dress-shoes on, and go
round the world to see that everybody was in a satisfactory state.
Bishop had no idea that there was anything significant in the
occasion. That was the most remarkable trait in his demeanour. He
was crisp, fresh, cheerful, affable, bland; but so surprisingly
innocent.

Bar sidled up to prefer his politest inquiries in reference to the
health of Mrs Bishop. Mrs Bishop had been a little unfortunate in
the article of taking cold at a Confirmation, but otherwise was
well. Young Mr Bishop was also well. He was down, with his young
wife and little family, at his Cure of Souls. The representatives
of the Barnacle Chorus dropped in next, and Mr Merdle's physician
dropped in next. Bar, who had a bit of one eye and a bit of his
double eye-glass for every one who came in at the door, no matter
with whom he was conversing or what he was talking about, got among
them all by some skilful means, without being seen to get at them,
and touched each individual gentleman of the jury on his own
individual favourite spot. With some of the Chorus, he laughed
about the sleepy member who had gone out into the lobby the other
night, and voted the wrong way: with others, he deplored that
innovating spirit in the time which could not even be prevented
from taking an unnatural interest in the public service and the
public money: with the physician he had a word to say about the
general health; he had also a little information to ask him for,
concerning a professional man of unquestioned erudition and
polished manners--but those credentials in their highest
development he believed were the possession of other professors of
the healing art (jury droop)--whom he had happened to have in the
witness-box the day before yesterday, and from whom he had elicited
in cross-examination that he claimed to be one of the exponents of
this new mode of treatment which appeared to Bar to--eh?--well, Bar
thought so; Bar had thought, and hoped, Physician would tell him
so. Without presuming to decide where doctors disagreed, it did
appear to Bar, viewing it as a question of common sense and not of
so-called legal penetration, that this new system was--might be, in
the presence of so great an authority--say, Humbug? Ah! Fortified
by such encouragement, he could venture to say Humbug; and now
Bar's mind was relieved.

Mr Tite Barnacle, who, like Dr johnson's celebrated acquaintance,
had only one idea in his head and that was a wrong one, had
appeared by this time. This eminent gentleman and Mr Merdle,
seated diverse ways and with ruminating aspects on a yellow ottoman
in the light of the fire, holding no verbal communication with each
other, bore a strong general resemblance to the two cows in the
Cuyp picture over against them.

But now, Lord Decimus arrived. The Chief Butler, who up to this
time had limited himself to a branch of his usual function by
looking at the company as they entered (and that, with more of
defiance than favour), put himself so far out of his way as to come
up-stairs with him and announce him. Lord Decimus being an
overpowering peer, a bashful young member of the Lower House who
was the last fish but one caught by the Barnacles, and who had been
invited on this occasion to commemorate his capture, shut his eyes
when his Lordship came in.

Lord Decimus, nevertheless, was glad to see the Member. He was
also glad to see Mr Merdle, glad to see Bishop, glad to see Bar,
glad to see Physician, glad to see Tite Barnacle, glad to see
Chorus, glad to see Ferdinand his private secretary. Lord Decimus,
though one of the greatest of the earth, was not remarkable for
ingratiatory manners, and Ferdinand had coached him up to the point
of noticing all the fellows he might find there, and saying he was
glad to see them. When he had achieved this rush of vivacity and
condescension, his Lordship composed himself into the picture after
Cuyp, and made a third cow in the group.

Bar, who felt that he had got all the rest of the jury and must now
lay hold of the Foreman, soon came sidling up, double eye-glass in
hand. Bar tendered the weather, as a subject neatly aloof from
official reserve, for the Foreman's consideration. Bar said that
he was told (as everybody always is told, though who tells them,
and why, will ever remain a mystery), that there was to be no wall-
fruit this year. Lord Decimus had not heard anything amiss of his
peaches, but rather believed, if his people were correct, he was to
have no apples. No apples? Bar was lost in astonishment and
concern. It would have been all one to him, in reality, if there
had not been a pippin on the surface of the earth, but his show of
interest in this apple question was positively painful. Now, to
what, Lord Decimus--for we troublesome lawyers loved to gather
information, and could never tell how useful it might prove to us--
to what, Lord Decimus, was this to be attributed? Lord Decimus
could not undertake to propound any theory about it. This might
have stopped another man; but Bar, sticking to him fresh as ever,
said, 'As to pears, now?'

Long after Bar got made Attorney-General, this was told of him as
a master-stroke. Lord Decimus had a reminiscence about a pear-tree
formerly growing in a garden near the back of his dame's house at
Eton, upon which pear-tree the only joke of his life perennially
bloomed. It was a joke of a compact and portable nature, turning
on the difference between Eton pears and Parliamentary pairs; but
it was a joke, a refined relish of which would seem to have
appeared to Lord Decimus impossible to be had without a thorough
and intimate acquaintance with the tree. Therefore, the story at
first had no idea of such a tree, sir, then gradually found it in
winter, carried it through the changing season, saw it bud, saw it
blossom, saw it bear fruit, saw the fruit ripen; in short,
cultivated the tree in that diligent and minute manner before it
got out of the bed-room window to steal the fruit, that many thanks
had been offered up by belated listeners for the trees having been
planted and grafted prior to Lord Decimus's time. Bar's interest
in apples was so overtopped by the wrapt suspense in which he
pursued the changes of these pears, from the moment when Lord
Decimus solemnly opened with 'Your mentioning pears recalls to my
remembrance a pear-tree,' down to the rich conclusion, 'And so we
pass, through the various changes of life, from Eton pears to
Parliamentary pairs,' that he had to go down-stairs with Lord
Decimus, and even then to be seated next to him at table in order
that he might hear the anecdote out. By that time, Bar felt that
he had secured the Foreman, and might go to dinner with a good
appetite.

It was a dinner to provoke an appetite, though he had not had one.
The rarest dishes, sumptuously cooked and sumptuously served; the
choicest fruits; the most exquisite wines; marvels of workmanship
in gold and silver, china and glass; innumerable things delicious
to the senses of taste, smell, and sight, were insinuated into its
composition. O, what a wonderful man this Merdle, what a great
man, what a master man, how blessedly and enviably endowed--in one
word, what a rich man!

He took his usual poor eighteenpennyworth of food in his usual
indigestive way, and had as little to say for himself as ever a
wonderful man had. Fortunately Lord Decimus was one of those
sublimities who have no occasion to be talked to, for they can be
at any time sufficiently occupied with the contemplation of their
own greatness. This enabled the bashful young Member to keep his
eyes open long enough at a time to see his dinner. But, whenever
Lord Decimus spoke, he shut them again.

The agreeable young Barnacle, and Bar, were the talkers of the
party. Bishop would have been exceedingly agreeable also, but that
his innocence stood in his way. He was so soon left behind. When
there was any little hint of anything being in the wind, he got
lost directly. Worldly affairs were too much for him; he couldn't
make them out at all.

This was observable when Bar said, incidentally, that he was happy
to have heard that we were soon to have the advantage of enlisting
on the good side, the sound and plain sagacity--not demonstrative
or ostentatious, but thoroughly sound and practical--of our friend
Mr Sparkler.

Ferdinand Barnacle laughed, and said oh yes, he believed so. A
vote was a vote, and always acceptable.

Bar was sorry to miss our good friend Mr Sparkler to-day, Mr
Merdle.

'He is away with Mrs Merdle,' returned that gentleman, slowly
coming out of a long abstraction, in the course of which he had
been fitting a tablespoon up his sleeve. 'It is not indispensable
for him to be on the spot.'

'The magic name of Merdle,' said Bar, with the jury droop, 'no
doubt will suffice for all.'

'Why--yes--I believe so,' assented Mr Merdle, putting the spoon
aside, and clumsily hiding each of his hands in the coat-cuff of
the other hand. 'I believe the people in my interest down there
will not make any difficulty.'

'Model people!' said Bar.
'I am glad you approve of them,' said Mr Merdle.

'And the people of those other two places, now,' pursued Bar, with
a bright twinkle in his keen eye, as it slightly turned in the
direction of his magnificent neighbour; 'we lawyers are always
curious, always inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for
our patchwork minds, since there is no knowing when and where they
may fit into some corner;--the people of those other two places
now? Do they yield so laudably to the vast and cumulative
influence of such enterprise and such renown; do those little rills
become absorbed so quietly and easily, and, as it were by the
influence of natural laws, so beautifully, in the swoop of the
majestic stream as it flows upon its wondrous way enriching the
surrounding lands; that their course is perfectly to be calculated,
and distinctly to be predicated?'

Mr Merdle, a little troubled by Bar's eloquence, looked fitfully
about the nearest salt-cellar for some moments, and then said
hesitating:

'They are perfectly aware, sir, of their duty to Society. They
will return anybody I send to them for that purpose.'

'Cheering to know,' said Bar. 'Cheering to know.'

The three places in question were three little rotten holes in this
Island, containing three little ignorant, drunken, guzzling, dirty,
out-of-the-way constituencies, that had reeled into Mr Merdle's
pocket. Ferdinand Barnacle laughed in his easy way, and airily
said they were a nice set of fellows. Bishop, mentally
perambulating among paths of peace, was altogether swallowed up in
absence of mind.

'Pray,' asked Lord Decimus, casting his eyes around the table,
'what is this story I have heard of a gentleman long confined in a
debtors' prison proving to be of a wealthy family, and having come
into the inheritance of a large sum of money? I have met with a
variety of allusions to it. Do you know anything of it,
Ferdinand?'

'I only know this much,' said Ferdinand, 'that he has given the
Department with which I have the honour to be associated;' this
sparkling young Barnacle threw off the phrase sportively, as who
should say, We know all about these forms of speech, but we must
keep it up, we must keep the game alive; 'no end of trouble, and
has put us into innumerable fixes.'

'Fixes?' repeated Lord Decimus, with a majestic pausing and
pondering on the word that made the bashful Member shut his eyes
quite tight. 'Fixes?'

'A very perplexing business indeed,' observed Mr Tite Barnacle,
with an air of grave resentment.

'What,' said Lord Decimus, 'was the character of his business; what
was the nature of these--a--Fixes, Ferdinand?'

'Oh, it's a good story, as a story,' returned that gentleman; 'as
good a thing of its kind as need be. This Mr Dorrit (his name is
Dorrit) had incurred a responsibility to us, ages before the fairy
came out of the Bank and gave him his fortune, under a bond he had
signed for the performance of a contract which was not at all
performed. He was a partner in a house in some large way--spirits,
or buttons, or wine, or blacking, or oatmeal, or woollen, or pork,
or hooks and eyes, or iron, or treacle, or shoes, or something or
other that was wanted for troops, or seamen, or somebody--and the
house burst, and we being among the creditors, detainees were
lodged on the part of the Crown in a scientific manner, and all the
rest Of it. When the fairy had appeared and he wanted to pay us
off, Egad we had got into such an exemplary state of checking and
counter-checking, signing and counter-signing, that it was six
months before we knew how to take the mone

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries from the Encyclopedia of the Self by Mark ZimmermanReturn to Part 2 of 4Go to Part 4 of 4

Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 2 of 4
Go to Part 4 of 4