Little Dorrit

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With a comfortable impression upon him, and quite an honest one in
its way, that he was still patronising Little Dorrit in doing what
had no reference to her, he found himself one afternoon at the
corner of Mr Casby's street. Mr Casby lived in a street in the
Gray's Inn Road, which had set off from that thoroughfare with the
intention of running at one heat down into the valley, and up again
to the top of Pentonville Hill; but which had run itself out of
breath in twenty yards, and had stood still ever since. There is
no such place in that part now; but it remained there for many
years, looking with a baulked countenance at the wilderness patched
with unfruitful gardens and pimpled with eruptive summerhouses,
that it had meant to run over in no time.

'The house,' thought Clennam, as he crossed to the door, 'is as
little changed as my mother's, and looks almost as gloomy. But the
likeness ends outside. I know its staid repose within. The smell
of its jars of old rose-leaves and lavender seems to come upon me
even here.'

When his knock at the bright brass knocker of obsolete shape
brought a woman-servant to the door, those faded scents in truth
saluted him like wintry breath that had a faint remembrance in it
of the bygone spring. He stepped into the sober, silent, air-tight
house--one might have fancied it to have been stifled by Mutes in
the Eastern manner--and the door, closing again, seemed to shut out
sound and motion. The furniture was formal, grave, and quaker-
like, but well-kept; and had as prepossessing an aspect as
anything, from a human creature to a wooden stool, that is meant
for much use and is preserved for little, can ever wear. There was
a grave clock, ticking somewhere up the staircase; and there was a
songless bird in the same direction, pecking at his cage, as if he
were ticking too. The parlour-fire ticked in the grate. There was
only one person on the parlour-hearth, and the loud watch in his
pocket ticked audibly.

The servant-maid had ticked the two words 'Mr Clennam' so softly
that she had not been heard; and he consequently stood, within the
door she had closed, unnoticed. The figure of a man advanced in
life, whose smooth grey eyebrows seemed to move to the ticking as
the fire-light flickered on them, sat in an arm-chair, with his
list shoes on the rug, and his thumbs slowly revolving over one
another. This was old Christopher Casby--recognisable at a
glance--as unchanged in twenty years and upward as his own solid
furniture--as little touched by the influence of the varying
seasons as the old rose-leaves and old lavender in his porcelain
jars.

Perhaps there never was a man, in this troublesome world, so
troublesome for the imagination to picture as a boy. And yet he
had changed very little in his progress through life. Confronting
him, in the room in which he sat, was a boy's portrait, which
anybody seeing him would have identified as Master Christopher
Casby, aged ten: though disguised with a haymaking rake, for which
he had had, at any time, as much taste or use as for a diving-bell;
and sitting (on one of his own legs) upon a bank of violets, moved
to precocious contemplation by the spire of a village church.
There was the same smooth face and forehead, the same calm blue
eye, the same placid air. The shining bald head, which looked so
very large because it shone so much; and the long grey hair at its
sides and back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very
benevolent because it was never cut; were not, of course, to be
seen in the boy as in the old man. Nevertheless, in the Seraphic
creature with the haymaking rake, were clearly to be discerned the
rudiments of the Patriarch with the list shoes.

Patriarch was the name which many people delighted to give him.
Various old ladies in the neighbourhood spoke of him as The Last of
the Patriarchs. So grey, so slow, so quiet, so impassionate, so
very bumpy in the head, Patriarch was the word for him. He had
been accosted in the streets, and respectfully solicited to become
a Patriarch for painters and for sculptors; with so much
importunity, in sooth, that it would appear to be beyond the Fine
Arts to remember the points of a Patriarch, or to invent one.
Philanthropists of both sexes had asked who he was, and on being
informed, 'Old Christopher Casby, formerly Town-agent to Lord
Decimus Tite Barnacle,' had cried in a rapture of disappointment,
'Oh! why, with that head, is he not a benefactor to his species!
Oh! why, with that head, is he not a father to the orphan and a
friend to the friendless!' With that head, however, he remained
old Christopher Casby, proclaimed by common report rich in house
property; and with that head, he now sat in his silent parlour.
Indeed it would be the height of unreason to expect him to be
sitting there without that head.

Arthur Clennam moved to attract his attention, and the grey
eyebrows turned towards him.

'I beg your pardon,' said Clennam, 'I fear you did not hear me
announced?'

'No, sir, I did not. Did you wish to see me, sir?'

'I wished to pay my respects.'

Mr Casby seemed a feather's weight disappointed by the last words,
having perhaps prepared himself for the visitor's wishing to pay
something else. 'Have I the pleasure, sir,' he proceeded--'take a
chair, if you please--have I the pleasure of knowing--? Ah!
truly, yes, I think I have! I believe I am not mistaken in
supposing that I am acquainted with those features? I think I
address a gentleman of whose return to this country I was informed
by Mr Flintwinch?'

'That is your present visitor.'

'Really! Mr Clennam?'

'No other, Mr Casby.'

'Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. How have you been since we
met?'

Without thinking it worth while to explain that in the course of
some quarter of a century he had experienced occasional slight
fluctuations in his health and spirits, Clennam answered generally
that he had never been better, or something equally to the purpose;
and shook hands with the possessor of 'that head' as it shed its
patriarchal light upon him.

'We are older, Mr Clennam,' said Christopher Casby.

'We are--not younger,' said Clennam. After this wise remark he
felt that he was scarcely shining with brilliancy, and became aware
that he was nervous.

'And your respected father,' said Mr Casby, 'is no more! I was
grieved to hear it, Mr Clennam, I was grieved.'

Arthur replied in the usual way that he felt infinitely obliged to
him.

'There was a time,' said Mr Casby, 'when your parents and myself
were not on friendly terms. There was a little family
misunderstanding among us. Your respected mother was rather
jealous of her son, maybe; when I say her son, I mean your worthy
self, your worthy self.'

His smooth face had a bloom upon it like ripe wall-fruit. What
with his blooming face, and that head, and his blue eyes, he seemed
to be delivering sentiments of rare wisdom and virtue. In like
manner, his physiognomical expression seemed to teem with
benignity. Nobody could have said where the wisdom was, or where
the virtue was, or where the benignity was; but they all seemed to
be somewhere about him.
'Those times, however,' pursued Mr Casby, 'are past and gone, past
and gone. I do myself the pleasure of making a visit to your
respected mother occasionally, and of admiring the fortitude and
strength of mind with which she bears her trials, bears her
trials.' When he made one of these little repetitions, sitting
with his hands crossed before him, he did it with his head on one
side, and a gentle smile, as if he had something in his thoughts
too sweetly profound to be put into words. As if he denied himself
the pleasure of uttering it, lest he should soar too high; and his
meekness therefore preferred to be unmeaning.

'I have heard that you were kind enough on one of those occasions,'
said Arthur, catching at the opportunity as it drifted past him,
'to mention Little Dorrit to my mother.'

'Little--Dorrit? That's the seamstress who was mentioned to me by
a small tenant of mine? Yes, yes. Dorrit? That's the name. Ah,
yes, yes! You call her Little Dorrit?'

No road in that direction. Nothing came of the cross-cut. It led
no further.

'My daughter Flora,' said Mr Casby, 'as you may have heard
probably, Mr Clennam, was married and established in life, several
years ago. She had the misfortune to lose her husband when she had
been married a few months. She resides with me again. She will be
glad to see you, if you will permit me to let her know that you are
here.'

'By all means,' returned Clennam. 'I should have preferred the
request, if your kindness had not anticipated me.'

Upon this Mr Casby rose up in his list shoes, and with a slow,
heavy step (he was of an elephantine build), made for the door. He
had a long wide-skirted bottle-green coat on, and a bottle-green
pair of trousers, and a bottle-green waistcoat. The Patriarchs
were not dressed in bottle-green broadcloth, and yet his clothes
looked patriarchal.

He had scarcely left the room, and allowed the ticking to become
audible again, when a quick hand turned a latchkey in the house-
door, opened it, and shut it. Immediately afterwards, a quick and
eager short dark man came into the room with so much way upon him
that he was within a foot of Clennam before he could stop.

'Halloa!' he said.

Clennam saw no reason why he should not say 'Halloa!' too.

'What's the matter?' said the short dark man.

'I have not heard that anything is the matter,' returned Clennam.

'Where's Mr Casby?' asked the short dark man, looking about.
'He will be here directly, if you want him.'

'_I_ want him?' said the short dark man. 'Don't you?'
This elicited a word or two of explanation from Clennam, during the
delivery of which the short dark man held his breath and looked at
him. He was dressed in black and rusty iron grey; had jet black
beads of eyes; a scrubby little black chin; wiry black hair
striking out from his head in prongs, like forks or hair-pins; and
a complexion that was very dingy by nature, or very dirty by art,
or a compound of nature and art. He had dirty hands and dirty
broken nails, and looked as if he had been in the coals; he was in
a perspiration, and snorted and sniffed and puffed and blew, like
a little labouring steam-engine.

'Oh!' said he, when Arthur told him how he came to be there. 'Very
well. That's right. If he should ask for Pancks, will you be so
good as to say that Pancks is come in?' And so, with a snort and
a puff, he worked out by another door.

Now, in the old days at home, certain audacious doubts respecting
the last of the Patriarchs, which were afloat in the air, had, by
some forgotten means, come in contact with Arthur's sensorium. He
was aware of motes and specks of suspicion in the atmosphere of
that time; seen through which medium, Christopher Casby was a mere
Inn signpost, without any Inn--an invitation to rest and be
thankful, when there was no place to put up at, and nothing
whatever to be thankful for. He knew that some of these specks
even represented Christopher as capable of harbouring designs in
'that head,' and as being a crafty impostor. Other motes there
were which showed him as a heavy, selfish, drifting Booby, who,
having stumbled, in the course of his unwieldy jostlings against
other men, on the discovery that to get through life with ease and
credit, he had but to hold his tongue, keep the bald part of his
head well polished, and leave his hair alone, had had just cunning
enough to seize the idea and stick to it. It was said that his
being town-agent to Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle was referable, not
to his having the least business capacity, but to his looking so
supremely benignant that nobody could suppose the property screwed
or jobbed under such a man; also, that for similar reasons he now
got more money out of his own wretched lettings, unquestioned, than
anybody with a less nobby and less shining crown could possibly
have done. In a word, it was represented (Clennam called to mind,
alone in the ticking parlour) that many people select their models,
much as the painters, just now mentioned, select theirs; and that,
whereas in the Royal Academy some evil old ruffian of a Dog-stealer
will annually be found embodying all the cardinal virtues, on
account of his eyelashes, or his chin, or his legs (thereby
planting thorns of confusion in the breasts of the more observant
students of nature), so, in the great social Exhibition,
accessories are often accepted in lieu of the internal character.

Calling these things to mind, and ranging Mr Pancks in a row with
them, Arthur Clennam leaned this day to the opinion, without quite
deciding on it, that the last of the Patriarchs was the drifting
Booby aforesaid, with the one idea of keeping the bald part of his
head highly polished: and that, much as an unwieldy ship in the
Thames river may sometimes be seen heavily driving with the tide,
broadside on, stern first, in its own way and in the way of
everything else, though making a great show of navigation, when all
of a sudden, a little coaly steam-tug will bear down upon it, take
it in tow, and bustle off with it; similarly the cumbrous Patriarch
had been taken in tow by the snorting Pancks, and was now following
in the wake of that dingy little craft.

The return of Mr Casby with his daughter Flora, put an end to these
meditations. Clennam's eyes no sooner fell upon the subject of his
old passion than it shivered and broke to pieces.

Most men will be found sufficiently true to themselves to be true
to an old idea. It is no proof of an inconstant mind, but exactly
the opposite, when the idea will not bear close comparison with the
reality, and the contrast is a fatal shock to it. Such was
Clennam's case. In his youth he had ardently loved this woman, and
had heaped upon her all the locked-up wealth of his affection and
imagination. That wealth had been, in his desert home, like
Robinson Crusoe's money; exchangeable with no one, lying idle in
the dark to rust, until he poured it out for her. Ever since that
memorable time, though he had, until the night of his arrival, as
completely dismissed her from any association with his Present or
Future as if she had been dead (which she might easily have been
for anything he knew), he had kept the old fancy of the Past
unchanged, in its old sacred place. And now, after all, the last
of the Patriarchs coolly walked into the parlour, saying in effect,
'Be good enough to throw it down and dance upon it. This is
Flora.'

Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad too, and short of
breath; but that was not much. Flora, whom he had left a lily, had
become a peony; but that was not much. Flora, who had seemed
enchanting in all she said and thought, was diffuse and silly.
That was much. Flora, who had been spoiled and artless long ago,
was determined to be spoiled and artless now. That was a fatal
blow.

This is Flora!

'I am sure,' giggled Flora, tossing her head with a caricature of
her girlish manner, such as a mummer might have presented at her
own funeral, if she had lived and died in classical antiquity, 'I
am ashamed to see Mr Clennam, I am a mere fright, I know he'll find
me fearfully changed, I am actually an old woman, it's shocking to
be found out, it's really shocking!'

He assured her that she was just what he had expected and that time
had not stood still with himself.

'Oh! But with a gentleman it's so different and really you look so
amazingly well that you have no right to say anything of the kind,
while, as to me, you know--oh!' cried Flora with a little scream,
'I am dreadful!'

The Patriarch, apparently not yet understanding his own part in the
drama under representation, glowed with vacant serenity.

'But if we talk of not having changed,' said Flora, who, whatever
she said, never once came to a full stop, 'look at Papa, is not
Papa precisely what he was when you went away, isn't it cruel and
unnatural of Papa to be such a reproach to his own child, if we go
on in this way much longer people who don't know us will begin to
suppose that I am Papa's Mama!'

That must be a long time hence, Arthur considered.

'Oh Mr Clennam you insincerest of creatures,' said Flora, 'I
perceive already you have not lost your old way of paying
compliments, your old way when you used to pretend to be so
sentimentally struck you know--at least I don't mean that, I--oh I
don't know what I mean!' Here Flora tittered confusedly, and gave
him one of her old glances.

The Patriarch, as if he now began to perceive that his part in the
piece was to get off the stage as soon as might be, rose, and went
to the door by which Pancks had worked out, hailing that Tug by
name. He received an answer from some little Dock beyond, and was
towed out of sight directly.

'You mustn't think of going yet,' said Flora--Arthur had looked at
his hat, being in a ludicrous dismay, and not knowing what to do:
'you could never be so unkind as to think of going, Arthur--I mean
Mr Arthur--or I suppose Mr Clennam would be far more proper--but I
am sure I don't know what I am saying--without a word about the
dear old days gone for ever, when I come to think of it I dare say
it would be much better not to speak of them and it's highly
probable that you have some much more agreeable engagement and pray
let Me be the last person in the world to interfere with it though
there was a time, but I am running into nonsense again.'

Was it possible that Flora could have been such a chatterer in the
days she referred to? Could there have been anything like her
present disjointed volubility in the fascinations that had
captivated him?

'Indeed I have little doubt,' said Flora, running on with
astonishing speed, and pointing her conversation with nothing but
commas, and very few of them, 'that you are married to some Chinese
lady, being in China so long and being in business and naturally
desirous to settle and extend your connection nothing was more
likely than that you should propose to a Chinese lady and nothing
was more natural I am sure than that the Chinese lady should accept
you and think herself very well off too, I only hope she's not a
Pagodian dissenter.'

'I am not,' returned Arthur, smiling in spite of himself, 'married
to any lady, Flora.'

'Oh good gracious me I hope you never kept yourself a bachelor so
long on my account!' tittered Flora; 'but of course you never did
why should you, pray don't answer, I don't know where I'm running
to, oh do tell me something about the Chinese ladies whether their
eyes are really so long and narrow always putting me in mind of
mother-of-pearl fish at cards and do they really wear tails down
their back and plaited too or is it only the men, and when they
pull their hair so very tight off their foreheads don't they hurt
themselves, and why do they stick little bells all over their
bridges and temples and hats and things or don't they really do
it?' Flora gave him another of her old glances. Instantly she
went on again, as if he had spoken in reply for some time.

'Then it's all true and they really do! good gracious Arthur!--
pray excuse me--old habit--Mr Clennam far more proper--what a
country to live in for so long a time, and with so many lanterns
and umbrellas too how very dark and wet the climate ought to be and
no doubt actually is, and the sums of money that must be made by
those two trades where everybody carries them and hangs them
everywhere, the little shoes too and the feet screwed back in
infancy is quite surprising, what a traveller you are!'

In his ridiculous distress, Clennam received another of the old
glances without in the least knowing what to do with it.

'Dear dear,' said Flora, 'only to think of the changes at home
Arthur--cannot overcome it, and seems so natural, Mr Clennam far
more proper--since you became familiar with the Chinese customs and
language which I am persuaded you speak like a Native if not better
for you were always quick and clever though immensely difficult no
doubt, I am sure the tea chests alone would kill me if I tried,
such changes Arthur--I am doing it again, seems so natural, most
improper--as no one could have believed, who could have ever
imagined Mrs Finching when I can't imagine it myself!'

'Is that your married name?' asked Arthur, struck, in the midst of
all this, by a certain warmth of heart that expressed itself in her
tone when she referred, however oddly, to the youthful relation in
which they had stood to one another. 'Finching?'

'Finching oh yes isn't it a dreadful name, but as Mr F. said when
he proposed to me which he did seven times and handsomely consented
I must say to be what he used to call on liking twelve months,
after all, he wasn't answerable for it and couldn't help it could
he, Excellent man, not at all like you but excellent man!'

Flora had at last talked herself out of breath for one moment. One
moment; for she recovered breath in the act of raising a minute
corner of her pocket-handkerchief to her eye, as a tribute to the
ghost of the departed Mr F., and began again.

'No one could dispute, Arthur--Mr Clennam--that it's quite right
you should be formally friendly to me under the altered
circumstances and indeed you couldn't be anything else, at least I
suppose not you ought to know, but I can't help recalling that
there was a time when things were very different.'

'My dear Mrs Finching,' Arthur began, struck by the good tone
again.

'Oh not that nasty ugly name, say Flora!'

'Flora. I assure you, Flora, I am happy in seeing you once more,
and in finding that, like me, you have not forgotten the old
foolish dreams, when we saw all before us in the light of our youth
and hope.'

'You don't seem so,' pouted Flora, 'you take it very coolly, but
however I know you are disappointed in me, I suppose the Chinese
ladies--Mandarinesses if you call them so--are the cause or perhaps
I am the cause myself, it's just as likely.'

'No, no,' Clennam entreated, 'don't say that.'

'Oh I must you know,' said Flora, in a positive tone, 'what
nonsense not to, I know I am not what you expected, I know that
very well.'

In the midst of her rapidity, she had found that out with the quick
perception of a cleverer woman. The inconsistent and profoundly
unreasonable way in which she instantly went on, nevertheless, to
interweave their long-abandoned boy and girl relations with their
present interview, made Clennam feel as if he were light-headed.

'One remark,' said Flora, giving their conversation, without the
slightest notice and to the great terror of Clennam, the tone of a
love-quarrel, 'I wish to make, one explanation I wish to offer,
when your Mama came and made a scene of it with my Papa and when I
was called down into the little breakfast-room where they were
looking at one another with your Mama's parasol between them seated
on two chairs like mad bulls what was I to do?'

'My dear Mrs Finching,' urged Clennam--'all so long ago and so long
concluded, is it worth while seriously to--'

'I can't Arthur,' returned Flora, 'be denounced as heartless by the
whole society of China without setting myself right when I have the
opportunity of doing so, and you must be very well aware that there
was Paul and Virginia which had to be returned and which was
returned without note or comment, not that I mean to say you could
have written to me watched as I was but if it had only come back
with a red wafer on the cover I should have known that it meant
Come to Pekin Nankeen and What's the third place, barefoot.'

'My dear Mrs Finching, you were not to blame, and I never blamed
you. We were both too young, too dependent and helpless, to do
anything but accept our separation.--Pray think how long ago,'
gently remonstrated Arthur.
'One more remark,' proceeded Flora with unslackened volubility, 'I
wish to make, one more explanation I wish to offer, for five days
I had a cold in the head from crying which I passed entirely in the
back drawing-room--there is the back drawing-room still on the
first floor and still at the back of the house to confirm my
words--when that dreary period had passed a lull succeeded years
rolled on and Mr F. became acquainted with us at a mutual friend's,
he was all attention he called next day he soon began to call three
evenings a week and to send in little things for supper it was not
love on Mr F.'s part it was adoration, Mr F. proposed with the full
approval of Papa and what could I do?'

'Nothing whatever,' said Arthur, with the cheerfulest readiness,
'but what you did. Let an old friend assure you of his full
conviction that you did quite right.'

'One last remark,' proceeded Flora, rejecting commonplace life with
a wave of her hand, 'I wish to make, one last explanation I wish to
offer, there was a time ere Mr F. first paid attentions incapable
of being mistaken, but that is past and was not to be, dear Mr
Clennam you no longer wear a golden chain you are free I trust you
may be happy, here is Papa who is always tiresome and putting in
his nose everywhere where he is not wanted.'