Little Dorrit

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Miss Rugg heaved a sigh.

'My daughter, sir,' said Mr Rugg. 'Anastatia, you are no stranger
to the state of this young man's affections. My daughter has had
her trials, sir'--Mr Rugg might have used the word more pointedly
in the singular number--'and she can feel for you.'

Young John, almost overwhelmed by the touching nature of this
greeting, professed himself to that effect.

'What I envy you, sir, is,' said Mr Rugg, 'allow me to take your
hat--we are rather short of pegs--I'll put it in the corner, nobody
will tread on it there--What I envy you, sir, is the luxury of your
own feelings. I belong to a profession in which that luxury is
sometimes denied us.'

Young John replied, with acknowledgments, that he only hoped he did
what was right, and what showed how entirely he was devoted to Miss
Dorrit. He wished to be unselfish; and he hoped he was. He wished
to do anything as laid in his power to serve Miss Dorrit,
altogether putting himself out of sight; and he hoped he did. It
was but little that he could do, but he hoped he did it.

'Sir,' said Mr Rugg, taking him by the hand, 'you are a young man
that it does one good to come across. You are a young man that I
should like to put in the witness-box, to humanise the minds of the
legal profession. I hope you have brought your appetite with you,
and intend to play a good knife and fork?'

'Thank you, sir,' returned Young John, 'I don't eat much at
present.'

Mr Rugg drew him a little apart. 'My daughter's case, sir,' said
he, 'at the time when, in vindication of her outraged feelings and
her sex, she became the plaintiff in Rugg and Bawkins. I suppose
I could have put it in evidence, Mr Chivery, if I had thought it
worth my while, that the amount of solid sustenance my daughter
consumed at that period did not exceed ten ounces per week.'
'I think I go a little beyond that, sir,' returned the other,
hesitating, as if he confessed it with some shame.

'But in your case there's no fiend in human form,' said Mr Rugg,
with argumentative smile and action of hand. 'Observe, Mr Chivery!

No fiend in human form!'
'No, sir, certainly,' Young John added with simplicity, 'I should
be very sorry if there was.'

'The sentiment,' said Mr Rugg, 'is what I should have expected from
your known principles. It would affect my daughter greatly, sir,
if she heard it. As I perceive the mutton, I am glad she didn't
hear it. Mr Pancks, on this occasion, pray face me. My dear, face
Mr Chivery. For what we are going to receive, may we (and Miss
Dorrit) be truly thankful!'

But for a grave waggishness in Mr Rugg's manner of delivering this
introduction to the feast, it might have appeared that Miss Dorrit
was expected to be one of the company. Pancks recognised the sally
in his usual way, and took in his provender in his usual way. Miss
Rugg, perhaps making up some of her arrears, likewise took very
kindly to the mutton, and it rapidly diminished to the bone. A
bread-and-butter pudding entirely disappeared, and a considerable
amount of cheese and radishes vanished by the same means. Then
came the dessert.

Then also, and before the broaching of the rum and water, came Mr
Pancks's note-book. The ensuing business proceedings were brief
but curious, and rather in the nature of a conspiracy. Mr Pancks
looked over his note-book, which was now getting full, studiously;
and picked out little extracts, which he wrote on separate slips of
paper on the table; Mr Rugg, in the meanwhile, looking at him with
close attention, and Young John losing his uncollected eye in mists
of meditation. When Mr Pancks, who supported the character of
chief conspirator, had completed his extracts, he looked them over,
corrected them, put up his note-book, and held them like a hand at
cards.

'Now, there's a churchyard in Bedfordshire,' said Pancks. 'Who
takes it?'

'I'll take it, sir,' returned Mr Rugg, 'if no one bids.'

Mr Pancks dealt him his card, and looked at his hand again.

'Now, there's an Enquiry in York,' said Pancks. 'Who takes it?'

'I'm not good for York,' said Mr Rugg.

'Then perhaps,' pursued Pancks, 'you'll be so obliging, John
Chivery?' Young John assenting, Pancks dealt him his card, and
consulted his hand again.

'There's a Church in London; I may as well take that. And a Family
Bible; I may as well take that, too. That's two to me. Two to
me,' repeated Pancks, breathing hard over his cards. 'Here's a
Clerk at Durham for you, John, and an old seafaring gentleman at
Dunstable for you, Mr Rugg. Two to me, was it? Yes, two to me.
Here's a Stone; three to me. And a Still-born Baby; four to me.
And all, for the present, told.'
When he had thus disposed of his cards, all being done very quietly
and in a suppressed tone, Mr Pancks puffed his way into his own
breast-pocket and tugged out a canvas bag; from which, with a
sparing hand, he told forth money for travelling expenses in two
little portions. 'Cash goes out fast,' he said anxiously, as he
pushed a portion to each of his male companions, 'very fast.'

'I can only assure you, Mr Pancks,' said Young John, 'that I deeply
regret my circumstances being such that I can't afford to pay my
own charges, or that it's not advisable to allow me the time
necessary for my doing the distances on foot; because nothing would
give me greater satisfaction than to walk myself off my legs
without fee or reward.'

This young man's disinterestedness appeared so very ludicrous in
the eyes of Miss Rugg, that she was obliged to effect a precipitate
retirement from the company, and to sit upon the stairs until she
had had her laugh out. Meanwhile Mr Pancks, looking, not without
some pity, at Young John, slowly and thoughtfully twisted up his
canvas bag as if he were wringing its neck. The lady, returning as
he restored it to his pocket, mixed rum and water for the party,
not forgetting her fair self, and handed to every one his glass.
When all were supplied, Mr Rugg rose, and silently holding out his
glass at arm's length above the centre of the table, by that
gesture invited the other three to add theirs, and to unite in a
general conspiratorial clink. The ceremony was effective up to a
certain point, and would have been wholly so throughout, if Miss
Rugg, as she raised her glass to her lips in completion of it, had
not happened to look at Young John; when she was again so overcome
by the contemptible comicality of his disinterestedness as to
splutter some ambrosial drops of rum and water around, and withdraw
in confusion.

Such was the dinner without precedent, given by Pancks at
Pentonville; and such was the busy and strange life Pancks led.
The only waking moments at which he appeared to relax from his
cares, and to recreate himself by going anywhere or saying anything
without a pervading object, were when he showed a dawning interest
in the lame foreigner with the stick, down Bleeding Heart Yard.

The foreigner, by name John Baptist Cavalletto--they called him Mr
Baptist in the Yard--was such a chirping, easy, hopeful little
fellow, that his attraction for Pancks was probably in the force of
contrast. Solitary, weak, and scantily acquainted with the most
necessary words of the only language in which he could communicate
with the people about him, he went with the stream of his fortunes,
in a brisk way that was new in those parts. With little to eat,
and less to drink, and nothing to wear but what he wore upon him,
or had brought tied up in one of the smallest bundles that ever
were seen, he put as bright a face upon it as if he were in the
most flourishing circumstances when he first hobbled up and down
the Yard, humbly propitiating the general good-will with his white
teeth.

It was uphill work for a foreigner, lame or sound, to make his way
with the Bleeding Hearts. In the first place, they were vaguely
persuaded that every foreigner had a knife about him; in the
second, they held it to be a sound constitutional national axiom
that he ought to go home to his own country. They never thought of
inquiring how many of their own countrymen would be returned upon
their hands from divers parts of the world, if the principle were
generally recognised; they considered it particularly and
peculiarly British. In the third place, they had a notion that it
was a sort of Divine visitation upon a foreigner that he was not an
Englishman, and that all kinds of calamities happened to his
country because it did things that England did not, and did not do
things that England did. In this belief, to be sure, they had long
been carefully trained by the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings, who
were always proclaiming to them, officially, that no country which
failed to submit itself to those two large families could possibly
hope to be under the protection of Providence; and who, when they
believed it, disparaged them in private as the most prejudiced
people under the sun.

This, therefore, might be called a political position of the
Bleeding Hearts; but they entertained other objections to having
foreigners in the Yard. They believed that foreigners were always
badly off; and though they were as ill off themselves as they could
desire to be, that did not diminish the force of the objection.
They believed that foreigners were dragooned and bayoneted; and
though they certainly got their own skulls promptly fractured if
they showed any ill-humour, still it was with a blunt instrument,
and that didn't count. They believed that foreigners were always
immoral; and though they had an occasional assize at home, and now
and then a divorce case or so, that had nothing to do with it.
They believed that foreigners had no independent spirit, as never
being escorted to the poll in droves by Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle,
with colours flying and the tune of Rule Britannia playing. Not to
be tedious, they had many other beliefs of a similar kind.

Against these obstacles, the lame foreigner with the stick had to
make head as well as he could; not absolutely single-handed,
because Mr Arthur Clennam had recommended him to the Plornishes (he
lived at the top of the same house), but still at heavy odds.
However, the Bleeding Hearts were kind hearts; and when they saw
the little fellow cheerily limping about with a good-humoured face,
doing no harm, drawing no knives, committing no outrageous
immoralities, living chiefly on farinaceous and milk diet, and
playing with Mrs Plornish's children of an evening, they began to
think that although he could never hope to be an Englishman, still
it would be hard to visit that affliction on his head. They began
to accommodate themselves to his level, calling him 'Mr Baptist,'
but treating him like a baby, and laughing immoderately at his
lively gestures and his childish English--more, because he didn't
mind it, and laughed too. They spoke to him in very loud voices as
if he were stone deaf. They constructed sentences, by way of
teaching him the language in its purity, such as were addressed by
the savages to Captain Cook, or by Friday to Robinson Crusoe. Mrs
Plornish was particularly ingenious in this art; and attained so
much celebrity for saying 'Me ope you leg well soon,' that it was
considered in the Yard but a very short remove indeed from speaking
Italian. Even Mrs Plornish herself began to think that she had a
natural call towards that language. As he became more popular,
household objects were brought into requisition for his instruction
in a copious vocabulary; and whenever he appeared in the Yard
ladies would fly out at their doors crying 'Mr Baptist--tea-pot!'
'Mr Baptist--dust-pan!' 'Mr Baptist--flour-dredger!' 'Mr
Baptist--coffee-biggin!' At the same time exhibiting those
articles, and penetrating him with a sense of the appalling
difficulties of the Anglo-Saxon tongue.

It was in this stage of his progress, and in about the third week
of his occupation, that Mr Pancks's fancy became attracted by the
little man. Mounting to his attic, attended by Mrs Plornish as
interpreter, he found Mr Baptist with no furniture but his bed on
the ground, a table, and a chair, carving with the aid of a few
simple tools, in the blithest way possible.

'Now, old chap,' said Mr Pancks, 'pay up!'

He had his money ready, folded in a scrap of paper, and laughingly
handed it in; then with a free action, threw out as many fingers of
his right hand as there were shillings, and made a cut crosswise in
the air for an odd sixpence.

'Oh!' said Mr Pancks, watching him, wonderingly. 'That's it, is
it? You're a quick customer. It's all right. I didn't expect to
receive it, though.'

Mrs Plornish here interposed with great condescension, and
explained to Mr Baptist. 'E please. E glad get money.'

The little man smiled and nodded. His bright face seemed
uncommonly attractive to Mr Pancks. 'How's he getting on in his
limb?' he asked Mrs Plornish.

'Oh, he's a deal better, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'We expect next
week he'll be able to leave off his stick entirely.' (The
opportunity being too favourable to be lost, Mrs Plornish displayed
her great accomplishment by explaining with pardonable pride to Mr
Baptist, 'E ope you leg well soon.')

'He's a merry fellow, too,' said Mr Pancks, admiring him as if he
were a mechanical toy. 'How does he live?'

'Why, sir,' rejoined Mrs Plornish, 'he turns out to have quite a
power of carving them flowers that you see him at now.' (Mr
Baptist, watching their faces as they spoke, held up his work. Mrs
Plornish interpreted in her Italian manner, on behalf of Mr Pancks,
'E please. Double good!')

'Can he live by that?' asked Mr Pancks.
'He can live on very little, sir, and it is expected as he will be
able, in time, to make a very good living. Mr Clennam got it him
to do, and gives him odd jobs besides in at the Works next door--
makes 'em for him, in short, when he knows he wants 'em.'

'And what does he do with himself, now, when he ain't hard at it?'
said Mr Pancks.

'Why, not much as yet, sir, on accounts I suppose of not being able
to walk much; but he goes about the Yard, and he chats without
particular understanding or being understood, and he plays with the
children, and he sits in the sun--he'll sit down anywhere, as if it
was an arm-chair--and he'll sing, and he'll laugh!'

'Laugh!' echoed Mr Pancks. 'He looks to me as if every tooth in
his head was always laughing.'

'But whenever he gets to the top of the steps at t'other end of the
Yard,' said Mrs Plornish, 'he'll peep out in the curiousest way!
So that some of us thinks he's peeping out towards where his own
country is, and some of us thinks he's looking for somebody he
don't want to see, and some of us don't know what to think.'

Mr Baptist seemed to have a general understanding of what she said;
or perhaps his quickness caught and applied her slight action of
peeping. In any case he closed his eyes and tossed his head with
the air of a man who had sufficient reasons for what he did, and
said in his own tongue, it didn't matter. Altro!

'What's Altro?' said Pancks.

'Hem! It's a sort of a general kind of expression, sir,' said Mrs
Plornish.

'Is it?' said Pancks. 'Why, then Altro to you, old chap. Good
afternoon. Altro!'

Mr Baptist in his vivacious way repeating the word several times,
Mr Pancks in his duller way gave it him back once. From that time
it became a frequent custom with Pancks the gipsy, as he went home
jaded at night, to pass round by Bleeding Heart Yard, go quietly up
the stairs, look in at Mr Baptist's door, and, finding him in his
room, to say, 'Hallo, old chap! Altro!' To which Mr Baptist would
reply with innumerable bright nods and smiles, 'Altro, signore,
altro, altro, altro!' After this highly condensed conversation, Mr
Pancks would go his way with an appearance of being lightened and
refreshed.

CHAPTER 26

Nobody's State of Mind

If Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to
restrain himself from loving Pet, he would have lived on in a state
of much perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own
heart. Not the least of these would have been a contention, always
waging within it, between a tendency to dislike Mr Henry Gowan, if
not to regard him with positive repugnance, and a whisper that the
inclination was unworthy. A generous nature is not prone to strong
aversions, and is slow to admit them even dispassionately; but when
it finds ill-will gaining upon it, and can discern between-whiles
that its origin is not dispassionate, such a nature becomes
distressed.

Therefore Mr Henry Gowan would have clouded Clennam's mind, and
would have been far oftener present to it than more agreeable
persons and subjects but for the great prudence of his decision
aforesaid. As it was, Mr Gowan seemed transferred to Daniel
Doyce's mind; at all events, it so happened that it usually fell to
Mr Doyce's turn, rather than to Clennam's, to speak of him in the
friendly conversations they held together. These were of frequent
occurrence now; as the two partners shared a portion of a roomy
house in one of the grave old-fashioned City streets, lying not far
from the Bank of England, by London Wall.

Mr Doyce had been to Twickenham to pass the day. Clennam had
excused himself. Mr Doyce was just come home. He put in his head
at the door of Clennam's sitting-room to say Good night.

'Come in, come in!' said Clennam.

'I saw you were reading,' returned Doyce, as he entered, 'and
thought you might not care to be disturbed.'

But for the notable resolution he had made, Clennam really might
not have known what he had been reading; really might not have had
his eyes upon the book for an hour past, though it lay open before
him. He shut it up, rather quickly.

'Are they well?' he asked.

'Yes,' said Doyce; 'they are well. They are all well.'

Daniel had an old workmanlike habit of carrying his pocket-
handkerchief in his hat. He took it out and wiped his forehead
with it, slowly repeating, 'They are all well. Miss Minnie looking
particularly well, I thought.'

'Any company at the cottage?'

'No, no company.'
'And how did you get on, you four?' asked Clennam gaily.

'There were five of us,' returned his partner. 'There was What's-
his-name. He was there.'
'Who is he?' said Clennam.

'Mr Henry Gowan.'

'Ah, to be sure!' cried Clennam with unusual vivacity, 'Yes!--I
forgot him.'

'As I mentioned, you may remember,' said Daniel Doyce, 'he is
always there on Sunday.'

'Yes, yes,' returned Clennam; 'I remember now.'

Daniel Doyce, still wiping his forehead, ploddingly repeated.
'Yes. He was there, he was there. Oh yes, he was there. And his
dog. He was there too.'

'Miss Meagles is quite attached to--the--dog,' observed Clennam.

'Quite so,' assented his partner. 'More attached to the dog than
I am to the man.'

'You mean Mr--?'

'I mean Mr Gowan, most decidedly,' said Daniel Doyce.

There was a gap in the conversation, which Clennam devoted to
winding up his watch.

'Perhaps you are a little hasty in your judgment,' he said. 'Our
judgments--I am supposing a general case--'

'Of course,' said Doyce.

'Are so liable to be influenced by many considerations, which,
almost without our knowing it, are unfair, that it is necessary to
keep a guard upon them. For instance, Mr--'

'Gowan,' quietly said Doyce, upon whom the utterance of the name
almost always devolved.

'Is young and handsome, easy and quick, has talent, and has seen a
good deal of various kinds of life. It might be difficult to give
an unselfish reason for being prepossessed against him.'

'Not difficult for me, I think, Clennam,' returned his partner. 'I
see him bringing present anxiety, and, I fear, future sorrow, into
my old friend's house. I see him wearing deeper lines into my old
friend's face, the nearer he draws to, and the oftener he looks at,
the face of his daughter. In short, I see him with a net about the
pretty and affectionate creature whom he will never make happy.'
'We don't know,' said Clennam, almost in the tone of a man in pain,
'that he will not make her happy.'

'We don't know,' returned his partner, 'that the earth will last
another hundred years, but we think it highly probable.'

'Well, well!' said Clennam, 'we must be hopeful, and we must at
least try to be, if not generous (which, in this case, we have no
opportunity of being), just. We will not disparage this gentleman,
because he is successful in his addresses to the beautiful object
of his ambition; and we will not question her natural right to
bestow her love on one whom she finds worthy of it.'

'Maybe, my friend,' said Doyce. 'Maybe also, that she is too young
and petted, too confiding and inexperienced, to discriminate well.'

'That,' said Clennam, 'would be far beyond our power of
correction.'

Daniel Doyce shook his head gravely, and rejoined, 'I fear so.'

'Therefore, in a word,' said Clennam, 'we should make up our minds
that it is not worthy of us to say any ill of Mr Gowan. It would
be a poor thing to gratify a prejudice against him. And I resolve,
for my part, not to depreciate him.'

'I am not quite so sure of myself, and therefore I reserve my
privilege of objecting to him,' returned the other. 'But, if I am
not sure of myself, I am sure of you, Clennam, and I know what an
upright man you are, and how much to be respected. Good night, MY
friend and partner!' He shook his hand in saying this, as if there
had been something serious at the bottom of their conversation; and
they separated.

By this time they had visited the family on several occasions, and
had always observed that even a passing allusion to Mr Henry Gowan
when he was not among them, brought back the cloud which had
obscured Mr Meagles's sunshine on the morning of the chance
encounter at the Ferry. If Clennam had ever admitted the forbidden
passion into his breast, this period might have been a period of
real trial; under the actual circumstances, doubtless it was
nothing--nothing.

Equally, if his heart had given entertainment to that prohibited
guest, his silent fighting of his way through the mental condition
of this period might have been a little meritorious. In the
constant effort not to be betrayed into a new phase of the
besetting sin of his experience, the pursuit of selfish objects by
low and small means, and to hold instead to some high principle of
honour and generosity, there might have been a little merit. In
the resolution not even to avoid Mr Meagles's house, lest, in the
selfish sparing of himself, he should bring any slight distress
upon the daughter through making her the cause of an estrangement
which he believed the father would regret, there might have been a
little merit. In the modest truthfulness of always keeping in view
the greater equality of Mr Gowan's years and the greater
attractions of his person and manner, there might have been a
little merit. In doing all this and much more, in a perfectly
unaffected way and with a manful and composed constancy, while the
pain within him (peculiar as his life and history) was very sharp,
there might have been some quiet strength of character. But, after
the resolution he had made, of course he could have no such merits
as these; and such a state of mind was nobody's--nobody's.

Mr Gowan made it no concern of his whether it was nobody's or
somebody's. He preserved his perfect serenity of manner on all
occasions, as if the possibility of Clennam's presuming to have
debated the great question were too distant and ridiculous to be
imagined. He had always an affability to bestow on Clennam and an
ease to treat him with, which might of itself (in the
supposititious case of his not having taken that sagacious course)
have been a very uncomfortable element in his state of mind.

'I quite regret you were not with us yesterday,' said Mr Henry
Gowan, calling on Clennam the next morning. 'We had an agreeable
day up the river there.'

So he had heard, Arthur said.

'From your partner?' returned Henry Gowan. 'What a dear old fellow
he is!'

'I have a great regard for him.'

'By Jove, he is the finest creature!' said Gowan. 'So fresh, so
green, trusts in such wonderful things!'

Here was one of the many little rough points that had a tendency to
grate on Clennam's hearing. He put it aside by merely repeating
that he had a high regard for Mr Doyce.

'He is charming! To see him mooning along to that time of life,
laying down nothing by the way and picking up nothing by the way,
is delightful. It warms a man. So unspoilt, so simple, such a
good soul! Upon my life Mr Clennam, one feels desperately worldly
and wicked in comparison with such an innocent creature. I speak
for myself, let me add, without including you. You are genuine
also.'

'Thank you for the compliment,' said Clennam, ill at ease; 'you are
too, I hope?'

'So so,' rejoined the other. 'To be candid with you, tolerably.
I am not a great impostor. Buy one of my pictures, and I assure
you, in confidence, it will not be worth the money. Buy one of
another man's--any great professor who beats me hollow--and the
chances are that the more you give him, the more he'll impose upon
you. They all do it.'
'All painters?'