Little Dorrit

C >> Charles Dickens >> Little Dorrit

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75

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!'