Little Dorrit

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With these words, and with a hasty gesture fraught with timid
caution--such a gesture had Clennam's eyes been familiar with in
the old time--poor Flora left herself at eighteen years of age, a
long long way behind again; and came to a full stop at last.

Or rather, she left about half of herself at eighteen years of age
behind, and grafted the rest on to the relict of the late Mr F.;
thus making a moral mermaid of herself, which her once boy-lover
contemplated with feelings wherein his sense of the sorrowful and
his sense of the comical were curiously blended.

For example. As if there were a secret understanding between
herself and Clennam of the most thrilling nature; as if the first
of a train of post-chaises and four, extending all the way to
Scotland, were at that moment round the corner; and as if she
couldn't (and wouldn't) have walked into the Parish Church with
him, under the shade of the family umbrella, with the Patriarchal
blessing on her head, and the perfect concurrence of all mankind;
Flora comforted her soul with agonies of mysterious signalling,
expressing dread of discovery. With the sensation of becoming more
and more light-headed every minute, Clennam saw the relict of the
late Mr F. enjoying herself in the most wonderful manner, by
putting herself and him in their old places, and going through all
the old performances--now, when the stage was dusty, when the
scenery was faded, when the youthful actors were dead, when the
orchestra was empty, when the lights were out. And still, through
all this grotesque revival of what he remembered as having once
been prettily natural to her, he could not but feel that it revived
at sight of him, and that there was a tender memory in it.

The Patriarch insisted on his staying to dinner, and Flora
signalled 'Yes!' Clennam so wished he could have done more than
stay to dinner--so heartily wished he could have found the Flora
that had been, or that never had been--that he thought the least
atonement he could make for the disappointment he almost felt
ashamed of, was to give himself up to the family desire.
Therefore, he stayed to dinner.

Pancks dined with them. Pancks steamed out of his little dock at
a quarter before six, and bore straight down for the Patriarch, who
happened to be then driving, in an inane manner, through a stagnant
account of Bleeding Heart Yard. Pancks instantly made fast to him
and hauled him out.

'Bleeding Heart Yard?' said Pancks, with a puff and a snort. 'It's
a troublesome property. Don't pay you badly, but rents are very
hard to get there. You have more trouble with that one place than
with all the places belonging to you.'

just as the big ship in tow gets the credit, with most spectators,
of being the powerful object, so the Patriarch usually seemed to
have said himself whatever Pancks said for him.

'Indeed?' returned Clennam, upon whom this impression was so
efficiently made by a mere gleam of the polished head that he spoke
the ship instead of the Tug. 'The people are so poor there?'

'You can't say, you know,' snorted Pancks, taking one of his dirty
hands out of his rusty iron-grey pockets to bite his nails, if he
could find any, and turning his beads of eyes upon his employer,
'whether they're poor or not. They say they are, but they all say
that. When a man says he's rich, you're generally sure he isn't.
Besides, if they ARE poor, you can't help it. You'd be poor
yourself if you didn't get your rents.'

'True enough,' said Arthur.

'You're not going to keep open house for all the poor of London,'
pursued Pancks. 'You're not going to lodge 'em for nothing.
You're not going to open your gates wide and let 'em come free.
Not if you know it, you ain't.'

Mr Casby shook his head, in Placid and benignant generality.

'If a man takes a room of you at half-a-crown a week, and when the
week comes round hasn't got the half-crown, you say to that man,
Why have you got the room, then? If you haven't got the one thing,
why have you got the other? What have you been and done with your
money? What do you mean by it? What are you up to? That's what
YOU say to a man of that sort; and if you didn't say it, more shame
for you!' Mr Pancks here made a singular and startling noise,
produced by a strong blowing effort in the region of the nose,
unattended by any result but that acoustic one.

'You have some extent of such property about the east and north-
east here, I believe?' said Clennam, doubtful which of the two to
address.

'Oh, pretty well,' said Pancks. 'You're not particular to east or
north-east, any point of the compass will do for you. What you
want is a good investment and a quick return. You take it where
you can find it. You ain't nice as to situation--not you.'

There was a fourth and most original figure in the Patriarchal
tent, who also appeared before dinner. This was an amazing little
old woman, with a face like a staring wooden doll too cheap for
expression, and a stiff yellow wig perched unevenly on the top of
her head, as if the child who owned the doll had driven a tack
through it anywhere, so that it only got fastened on. Another
remarkable thing in this little old woman was, that the same child
seemed to have damaged her face in two or three places with some
blunt instrument in the nature of a spoon; her countenance, and
particularly the tip of her nose, presenting the phenomena of
several dints, generally answering to the bowl of that article. A
further remarkable thing in this little old woman was, that she had
no name but Mr F.'s Aunt.

She broke upon the visitor's view under the following
circumstances: Flora said when the first dish was being put on the
table, perhaps Mr Clennam might not have heard that Mr F. had left
her a legacy? Clennam in return implied his hope that Mr F. had
endowed the wife whom he adored, with the greater part of his
worldly substance, if not with all. Flora said, oh yes, she didn't
mean that, Mr F. had made a beautiful will, but he had left her as
a separate legacy, his Aunt. She then went out of the room to
fetch the legacy, and, on her return, rather triumphantly presented
'Mr F.'s Aunt.'

The major characteristics discoverable by the stranger in Mr F.'s
Aunt, were extreme severity and grim taciturnity; sometimes
interrupted by a propensity to offer remarks in a deep warning
voice, which, being totally uncalled for by anything said by
anybody, and traceable to no association of ideas, confounded and
terrified the Mind. Mr F.'s Aunt may have thrown in these
observations on some system of her own, and it may have been
ingenious, or even subtle: but the key to it was wanted.
The neatly-served and well-cooked dinner (for everything about the
Patriarchal household promoted quiet digestion) began with some
soup, some fried soles, a butter-boat of shrimp sauce, and a dish
of potatoes. The conversation still turned on the receipt of
rents. Mr F.'s Aunt, after regarding the company for ten minutes
with a malevolent gaze, delivered the following fearful remark:

'When we lived at Henley, Barnes's gander was stole by tinkers.'
Mr Pancks courageously nodded his head and said, 'All right,
ma'am.' But the effect of this mysterious communication upon
Clennam was absolutely to frighten him. And another circumstance
invested this old lady with peculiar terrors. Though she was
always staring, she never acknowledged that she saw any individual.

The polite and attentive stranger would desire, say, to consult her
inclinations on the subject of potatoes. His expressive action
would be hopelessly lost upon her, and what could he do? No man
could say, 'Mr F.'s Aunt, will you permit me?' Every man retired
from the spoon, as Clennam did, cowed and baffled.

There was mutton, a steak, and an apple-pie--nothing in the
remotest way connected with ganders--and the dinner went on like a
disenchanted feast, as it truly was. Once upon a time Clennam had
sat at that table taking no heed of anything but Flora; now the
principal heed he took of Flora was to observe, against his will,
that she was very fond of porter, that she combined a great deal of
sherry with sentiment, and that if she were a little overgrown, it
was upon substantial grounds. The last of the Patriarchs had
always been a mighty eater, and he disposed of an immense quantity
of solid food with the benignity of a good soul who was feeding
some one else. Mr Pancks, who was always in a hurry, and who
referred at intervals to a little dirty notebook which he kept
beside him (perhaps containing the names of the defaulters he meant
to look up by way of dessert), took in his victuals much as if he
were coaling; with a good deal of noise, a good deal of dropping
about, and a puff and a snort occasionally, as if he were nearly
ready to steam away.

All through dinner, Flora combined her present appetite for eating
and drinking with her past appetite for romantic love, in a way
that made Clennam afraid to lift his eyes from his plate; since he
could not look towards her without receiving some glance of
mysterious meaning or warning, as if they were engaged in a plot.
Mr F.'s Aunt sat silently defying him with an aspect of the
greatest bitterness, until the removal of the cloth and the
appearance of the decanters, when she originated another
observation--struck into the conversation like a clock, without
consulting anybody.

Flora had just said, 'Mr Clennam, will you give me a glass of port
for Mr F.'s Aunt?'

'The Monument near London Bridge,' that lady instantly proclaimed,
'was put up arter the Great Fire of London; and the Great Fire of
London was not the fire in which your uncle George's workshops was
burned down.'

Mr Pancks, with his former courage, said, 'Indeed, ma'am? All
right!' But appearing to be incensed by imaginary contradiction,
or other ill-usage, Mr F.'s Aunt, instead of relapsing into
silence, made the following additional proclamation:

'I hate a fool!'

She imparted to this sentiment, in itself almost Solomonic, so
extremely injurious and personal a character by levelling it
straight at the visitor's head, that it became necessary to lead Mr
F.'s Aunt from the room. This was quietly done by Flora; Mr F.'s
Aunt offering no resistance, but inquiring on her way out, 'What he
come there for, then?' with implacable animosity.

When Flora returned, she explained that her legacy was a clever old
lady, but was sometimes a little singular, and 'took dislikes'--
peculiarities of which Flora seemed to be proud rather than
otherwise. As Flora's good nature shone in the case, Clennam had
no fault to find with the old lady for eliciting it, now that he
was relieved from the terrors of her presence; and they took a
glass or two of wine in peace. Foreseeing then that the Pancks
would shortly get under weigh, and that the Patriarch would go to
sleep, he pleaded the necessity of visiting his mother, and asked
Mr Pancks in which direction he was going?

'Citywards, sir,' said Pancks.
'Shall we walk together?' said Arthur.

'Quite agreeable,' said Pancks.

Meanwhile Flora was murmuring in rapid snatches for his ear, that
there was a time and that the past was a yawning gulf however and
that a golden chain no longer bound him and that she revered the
memory of the late Mr F. and that she should be at home to-morrow
at half-past one and that the decrees of Fate were beyond recall
and that she considered nothing so improbable as that he ever
walked on the north-west side of Gray's-Inn Gardens at exactly four
o'clock in the afternoon. He tried at parting to give his hand in
frankness to the existing Flora--not the vanished Flora, or the
mermaid--but Flora wouldn't have it, couldn't have it, was wholly
destitute of the power of separating herself and him from their
bygone characters. He left the house miserably enough; and so much
more light-headed than ever, that if it had not been his good
fortune to be towed away, he might, for the first quarter of an
hour, have drifted anywhere.

When he began to come to himself, in the cooler air and the absence
of Flora, he found Pancks at full speed, cropping such scanty
pasturage of nails as he could find, and snorting at intervals.
These, in conjunction with one hand in his pocket and his roughened
hat hind side before, were evidently the conditions under which he
reflected.

'A fresh night!' said Arthur.

'Yes, it's pretty fresh,' assented Pancks. 'As a stranger you feel
the climate more than I do, I dare say. Indeed I haven't got time
to feel it.'

'You lead such a busy life?'

'Yes, I have always some of 'em to look up, or something to look
after. But I like business,' said Pancks, getting on a little
faster. 'What's a man made for?'

'For nothing else?' said Clennam.

Pancks put the counter question, 'What else?' It packed up, in the
smallest compass, a weight that had rested on Clennam's life; and
he made no answer.

'That's what I ask our weekly tenants,' said Pancks. 'Some of 'em
will pull long faces to me, and say, Poor as you see us, master,
we're always grinding, drudging, toiling, every minute we're awake.

I say to them, What else are you made for? It shuts them up. They
haven't a word to answer. What else are you made for? That
clinches it.'

'Ah dear, dear, dear!' sighed Clennam.

'Here am I,' said Pancks, pursuing his argument with the weekly
tenant. 'What else do you suppose I think I am made for? Nothing.

Rattle me out of bed early, set me going, give me as short a time
as you like to bolt my meals in, and keep me at it. Keep me always
at it, and I'll keep you always at it, you keep somebody else
always at it. There you are with the Whole Duty of Man in a
commercial country.'

When they had walked a little further in silence, Clennam said:
'Have you no taste for anything, Mr Pancks?'

'What's taste?' drily retorted Pancks.

'Let us say inclination.'

'I have an inclination to get money, sir,' said Pancks, 'if you
will show me how.' He blew off that sound again, and it occurred
to his companion for the first time that it was his way of
laughing. He was a singular man in all respects; he might not have
been quite in earnest, but that the short, hard, rapid manner in
which he shot out these cinders of principles, as if it were done
by mechanical revolvency, seemed irreconcilable with banter.

'You are no great reader, I suppose?' said Clennam.

'Never read anything but letters and accounts. Never collect
anything but advertisements relative to next of kin. If that's a
taste, I have got that. You're not of the Clennams of Cornwall, Mr
Clennam?'

'Not that I ever heard of.'
'I know you're not. I asked your mother, sir. She has too much
character to let a chance escape her.'

'Supposing I had been of the Clennams of Cornwall?'
'You'd have heard of something to your advantage.'

'Indeed! I have heard of little enough to my advantage for some
time.'

'There's a Cornish property going a begging, sir, and not a Cornish
Clennam to have it for the asking,' said Pancks, taking his note-
book from his breast pocket and putting it in again. 'I turn off
here. I wish you good night.'

'Good night!' said Clennam. But the Tug, suddenly lightened, and
untrammelled by having any weight in tow, was already puffing away
into the distance.

They had crossed Smithfield together, and Clennam was left alone at
the corner of Barbican. He had no intention of presenting himself
in his mother's dismal room that night, and could not have felt
more depressed and cast away if he had been in a wilderness. He
turned slowly down Aldersgate Street, and was pondering his way
along towards Saint Paul's, purposing to come into one of the great
thoroughfares for the sake of their light and life, when a crowd of
people flocked towards him on the same pavement, and he stood aside
against a shop to let them pass. As they came up, he made out that
they were gathered around a something that was carried on men's
shoulders. He soon saw that it was a litter, hastily made of a
shutter or some such thing; and a recumbent figure upon it, and the
scraps of conversation in the crowd, and a muddy bundle carried by
one man, and a muddy hat carried by another, informed him that an
accident had occurred. The litter stopped under a lamp before it
had passed him half-a-dozen paces, for some readjustment of the
burden; and, the crowd stopping too, he found himself in the midst
of the array.

'An accident going to the Hospital?' he asked an old man beside
him, who stood shaking his head, inviting conversation.

'Yes,' said the man, 'along of them Mails. They ought to be
prosecuted and fined, them Mails. They come a racing out of Lad
Lane and Wood Street at twelve or fourteen mile a hour, them Mails
do. The only wonder is, that people ain't killed oftener by them
Mails.'

'This person is not killed, I hope?'

'I don't know!' said the man, 'it an't for the want of a will in
them Mails, if he an't.' The speaker having folded his arms, and
set in comfortably to address his depreciation of them Mails to any
of the bystanders who would listen, several voices, out of pure
sympathy with the sufferer, confirmed him; one voice saying to
Clennam, 'They're a public nuisance, them Mails, sir;' another, 'I
see one on 'em pull up within half a inch of a boy, last night;'
another, 'I see one on 'em go over a cat, sir--and it might have
been your own mother;' and all representing, by implication, that
if he happened to possess any public influence, he could not use it
better than against them Mails.

'Why, a native Englishman is put to it every night of his life, to
save his life from them Mails,' argued the first old man; 'and he
knows when they're a coming round the corner, to tear him limb from
limb. What can you expect from a poor foreigner who don't know
nothing about 'em!'

'Is this a foreigner?' said Clennam, leaning forward to look.

In the midst of such replies as 'Frenchman, sir,' 'Porteghee, sir,'
'Dutchman, sir,' 'Prooshan, sir,' and other conflicting testimony,
he now heard a feeble voice asking, both in Italian and in French,
for water. A general remark going round, in reply, of 'Ah, poor
fellow, he says he'll never get over it; and no wonder!' Clennam
begged to be allowed to pass, as he understood the poor creature.
He was immediately handed to the front, to speak to him.

'First, he wants some water,' said he, looking round. (A dozen
good fellows dispersed to get it.) 'Are you badly hurt, my friend?'
he asked the man on the litter, in Italian.

'Yes, sir; yes, yes, yes. It's my leg, it's my leg. But it
pleases me to hear the old music, though I am very bad.'

'You are a traveller! Stay! See, the water! Let me give you
some.' They had rested the litter on a pile of paving stones. It
was at a convenient height from the ground, and by stooping he
could lightly raise the head with one hand and hold the glass to
his lips with the other. A little, muscular, brown man, with black
hair and white teeth. A lively face, apparently. Earrings in his
ears.

'That's well. You are a traveller?'

'Surely, sir.'

'A stranger in this city?'

'Surely, surely, altogether. I am arrived this unhappy evening.'

'From what country?'
'Marseilles.'

'Why, see there! I also! Almost as much a stranger here as you,
though born here, I came from Marseilles a little while ago. Don't
be cast down.' The face looked up at him imploringly, as he rose
from wiping it, and gently replaced the coat that covered the
writhing figure. 'I won't leave you till you shall be well taken
care of. Courage! You will be very much better half an hour
hence.'

'Ah! Altro, Altro!' cried the poor little man, in a faintly
incredulous tone; and as they took him up, hung out his right hand
to give the forefinger a back-handed shake in the air.

Arthur Clennam turned; and walking beside the litter, and saying an
encouraging word now and then, accompanied it to the neighbouring
hospital of Saint Bartholomew. None of the crowd but the bearers
and he being admitted, the disabled man was soon laid on a table in
a cool, methodical way, and carefully examined by a surgeon who was
as near at hand, and as ready to appear as Calamity herself. 'He
hardly knows an English word,' said Clennam; 'is he badly hurt?'

'Let us know all about it first,' said the surgeon, continuing his
examination with a businesslike delight in it, 'before we
pronounce.'

After trying the leg with a finger, and two fingers, and one hand
and two hands, and over and under, and up and down, and in this
direction and in that, and approvingly remarking on the points of
interest to another gentleman who joined him, the surgeon at last
clapped the patient on the shoulder, and said, 'He won't hurt.
He'll do very well. It's difficult enough, but we shall not want
him to part with his leg this time.' Which Clennam interpreted to
the patient, who was full of gratitude, and, in his demonstrative
way, kissed both the interpreter's hand and the surgeon's several
times.

'It's a serious injury, I suppose?' said Clennam.

'Ye-es,' replied the surgeon, with the thoughtful pleasure of an
artist contemplating the work upon his easel. 'Yes, it's enough.
There's a compound fracture above the knee, and a dislocation
below. They are both of a beautiful kind.' He gave the patient a
friendly clap on the shoulder again, as if he really felt that he
was a very good fellow indeed, and worthy of all commendation for
having broken his leg in a manner interesting to science.

'He speaks French?' said the surgeon.

'Oh yes, he speaks French.'

'He'll be at no loss here, then.--You have only to bear a little
pain like a brave fellow, my friend, and to be thankful that all
goes as well as it does,' he added, in that tongue, 'and you'll
walk again to a marvel. Now, let us see whether there's anything
else the matter, and how our ribs are?'

There was nothing else the matter, and our ribs were sound.
Clennam remained until everything possible to be done had been
skilfully and promptly done--the poor belated wanderer in a strange
land movingly besought that favour of him--and lingered by the bed
to which he was in due time removed, until he had fallen into a
doze. Even then he wrote a few words for him on his card, with a
promise to return to-morrow, and left it to be given to him when he
should awake.
All these proceedings occupied so long that it struck eleven
o'clock at night as he came out at the Hospital Gate. He had hired
a lodging for the present in Covent Garden, and he took the nearest
way to that quarter, by Snow Hill and Holborn.

Left to himself again, after the solicitude and compassion of his
last adventure, he was naturally in a thoughtful mood. As
naturally, he could not walk on thinking for ten minutes without
recalling Flora. She necessarily recalled to him his life, with
all its misdirection and little happiness.

When he got to his lodging, he sat down before the dying fire, as
he had stood at the window of his old room looking out upon the
blackened forest of chimneys, and turned his gaze back upon the
gloomy vista by which he had come to that stage in his existence.
So long, so bare, so blank. No childhood; no youth, except for one
remembrance; that one remembrance proved, only that day, to be a
piece of folly.

It was a misfortune to him, trifle as it might have been to
another. For, while all that was hard and stern in his
recollection, remained Reality on being proved--was obdurate to the
sight and touch, and relaxed nothing of its old indomitable
grimness--the one tender recollection of his experience would not
bear the same test, and melted away. He had foreseen this, on the
former night, when he had dreamed with waking eyes. but he had not
felt it then; and he had now.

He was a dreamer in such wise, because he was a man who had, deep-
rooted in his nature, a belief in all the gentle and good things
his life had been without. Bred in meanness and hard dealing, this
had rescued him to be a man of honourable mind and open hand. Bred
in coldness and severity, this had rescued him to have a warm and
sympathetic heart. Bred in a creed too darkly audacious to pursue,
through its process of reserving the making of man in the image of
his Creator to the making of his Creator in the image of an erring
man, this had rescued him to judge not, and in humility to be
merciful, and have hope and charity.

And this saved him still from the whimpering weakness and cruel
selfishness of holding that because such a happiness or such a
virtue had not come into his little path, or worked well for him,
therefore it was not in the great scheme, but was reducible, when
found in appearance, to the basest elements. A disappointed mind
he had, but a mind too firm and healthy for such unwholesome air.
Leaving himself in the dark, it could rise into the light, seeing
it shine on others and hailing it.

Therefore, he sat before his dying fire, sorrowful to think upon
the way by which he had come to that night, yet not strewing poison
on the way by which other men had come to it. That he should have
missed so much, and at his time of life should look so far about
him for any staff to bear him company upon his downward journey and
cheer it, was a just regret. He looked at the fire from which the
blaze departed, from which the afterglow subsided, in which the
ashes turned grey, from which they dropped to dust, and thought,
'How soon I too shall pass through such changes, and be gone!'