Little Dorrit

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'Go before, you fool!' said Jeremiah. 'Are you going up, or down,
Mrs Finching?'

Flora answered, 'Down.'

'Then go before, and down, you Affery,' said Jeremiah. 'And do it
properly, or I'll come rolling down the banisters, and tumbling
over you!'

Affery headed the exploring party; Jeremiah closed it. He had no
intention of leaving them. Clennam looking back, and seeing him
following three stairs behind, in the coolest and most methodical
manner exclaimed in a low voice, 'Is there no getting rid of him!'
Flora reassured his mind by replying promptly, 'Why though not
exactly proper Arthur and a thing I couldn't think of before a
younger man or a stranger still I don't mind him if you so
particularly wish it and provided you'll have the goodness not to
take me too tight.'

Wanting the heart to explain that this was not at all what he
meant, Arthur extended his supporting arm round Flora's figure.
'Oh my goodness me,' said she. 'You are very obedient indeed
really and it's extremely honourable and gentlemanly in you I am
sure but still at the same time if you would like to be a little
tighter than that I shouldn't consider it intruding.'

In this preposterous attitude, unspeakably at variance with his
anxious mind, Clennam descended to the basement of the house;
finding that wherever it became darker than elsewhere, Flora became
heavier, and that when the house was lightest she was too.
Returning from the dismal kitchen regions, which were as dreary as
they could be, Mistress Affery passed with the light into his
father's old room, and then into the old dining-room; always
passing on before like a phantom that was not to be overtaken, and
neither turning nor answering when he whispered, 'Affery! I want
to speak to you!'

In the dining-room, a sentimental desire came over Flora to look
into the dragon closet which had so often swallowed Arthur in the
days of his boyhood--not improbably because, as a very dark closet,
it was a likely place to be heavy in. Arthur, fast subsiding into
despair, had opened it, when a knock was heard at the outer door.

Mistress Affery, with a suppressed cry, threw her apron over her
head.

'What? You want another dose!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'You shall
have it, my woman, you shall have a good one! Oh! You shall have
a sneezer, you shall have a teaser!'

'In the meantime is anybody going to the door?' said Arthur.

'In the meantime, I am going to the door, sir,' returned the old
man so savagely, as to render it clear that in a choice of
difficulties he felt he must go, though he would have preferred not
to go. 'Stay here the while, all! Affery, my woman, move an inch,
or speak a word in your foolishness, and I'll treble your dose!'

The moment he was gone, Arthur released Mrs Finching: with some
difficulty, by reason of that lady misunderstanding his intentions,
and making arrangements with a view to tightening instead of
slackening.

'Affery, speak to me now!'

'Don't touch me, Arthur!' she cried, shrinking from him. 'Don't
come near me. He'll see you. Jeremiah will. Don't.'

'He can't see me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the word,
'if I blow the candle out.'

'He'll hear you,' cried Affery.

'He can't hear me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the
words again, 'if I draw you into this black closet, and speak here.

Why do you hide your face?'

'Because I am afraid of seeing something.'

'You can't be afraid of seeing anything in this darkness, Affery.'

'Yes I am. Much more than if it was light.'

'Why are you afraid?'

'Because the house is full of mysteries and secrets; because it's
full of whisperings and counsellings; because it's full of noises.
There never was such a house for noises. I shall die of 'em, if
Jeremiah don't strangle me first. As I expect he will.'

'I have never heard any noises here, worth speaking of.'

'Ah! But you would, though, if you lived in the house, and was
obliged to go about it as I am,' said Affery; 'and you'd feel that
they was so well worth speaking of, that you'd feel you was nigh
bursting through not being allowed to speak of 'em. Here's
Jeremiah! You'll get me killed.'

'My good Affery, I solemnly declare to you that I can see the light
of the open door on the pavement of the hall, and so could you if
you would uncover your face and look.'

'I durstn't do it,' said Affery, 'I durstn't never, Arthur. I'm
always blind-folded when Jeremiah an't a looking, and sometimes
even when he is.'

'He cannot shut the door without my seeing him,' said Arthur. 'You
are as safe with me as if he was fifty miles away.'

('I wish he was!' cried Affery.)

'Affery, I want to know what is amiss here; I want some light
thrown on the secrets of this house.'
'I tell you, Arthur,' she interrupted, 'noises is the secrets,
rustlings and stealings about, tremblings, treads overhead and
treads underneath.'

'But those are not all the secrets.'

'I don't know,' said Affery. 'Don't ask me no more. Your old
sweetheart an't far off, and she's a blabber.'

His old sweetheart, being in fact so near at hand that she was then
reclining against him in a flutter, a very substantial angle of
forty-five degrees, here interposed to assure Mistress Affery with
greater earnestness than directness of asseveration, that what she
heard should go no further, but should be kept inviolate, 'if on no
other account on Arthur's--sensible of intruding in being too
familiar Doyce and Clennam's.'

'I make an imploring appeal to you, Affery, to you, one of the few
agreeable early remembrances I have, for my mother's sake, for your
husband's sake, for my own, for all our sakes. I am sure you can
tell me something connected with the coming here of this man, if
you will.'

'Why, then I'll tell you, Arthur,' returned Affery--'Jeremiah's
coming!'

'No, indeed he is not. The door is open, and he is standing
outside, talking.'

'I'll tell you then,' said Affery, after listening, 'that the first
time he ever come he heard the noises his own self. "What's that?"
he said to me. "I don't know what it is," I says to him, catching
hold of him, "but I have heard it over and over again." While I
says it, he stands a looking at me, all of a shake, he do.'

'Has he been here often?'

'Only that night, and the last night.'

'What did you see of him on the last night, after I was gone?'

'Them two clever ones had him all alone to themselves. Jeremiah
come a dancing at me sideways, after I had let you out (he always
comes a dancing at me sideways when he's going to hurt me), and he
said to me, "Now, Affery," he said, "I am a coming behind you, my
woman, and a going to run you up." So he took and squeezed the
back of my neck in his hand, till it made me open MY mouth, and
then he pushed me before him to bed, squeezing all the way. That's
what he calls running me up, he do. Oh, he's a wicked one!'

'And did you hear or see no more, Affery?'

'Don't I tell you I was sent to bed, Arthur! Here he is!'

'I assure you he is still at the door. Those whisperings and
counsellings, Affery, that you have spoken of. What are they?'

'How should I know? Don't ask me nothing about 'em, Arthur. Get
away!'

'But my dear Affery; unless I can gain some insight into these
hidden things, in spite of your husband and in spite of my mother,
ruin will come of it.'

'Don't ask me nothing,' repeated Affery. 'I have been in a dream
for ever so long. Go away, go away!'

'You said that before,' returned Arthur. 'You used the same
expression that night, at the door, when I asked you what was going
on here. What do you mean by being in a dream?'

'I an't a going to tell you. Get away! I shouldn't tell you, if
you was by yourself; much less with your old sweetheart here.'

It was equally vain for Arthur to entreat, and for Flora to
protest. Affery, who had been trembling and struggling the whole
time, turned a deaf ear to all adjuration, and was bent on forcing
herself out of the closet.

'I'd sooner scream to Jeremiah than say another word! I'll call
out to him, Arthur, if you don't give over speaking to me. Now
here's the very last word I'll say afore I call to him--If ever you
begin to get the better of them two clever ones your own self (you
ought to it, as I told you when you first come home, for you
haven't been a living here long years, to be made afeared of your
life as I have), then do you get the better of 'em afore my face;
and then do you say to me, Affery tell your dreams! Maybe, then
I'll tell 'em!'

The shutting of the door stopped Arthur from replying. They glided
into the places where Jeremiah had left them; and Clennam, stepping
forward as that old gentleman returned, informed him that he had
accidentally extinguished the candle. Mr Flintwinch looked on as
he re-lighted it at the lamp in the hall, and preserved a profound
taciturnity respecting the person who had been holding him in
conversation. Perhaps his irascibility demanded compensation for
some tediousness that the visitor had expended on him; however that
was, he took such umbrage at seeing his wife with her apron over
her head, that he charged at her, and taking her veiled nose
between his thumb and finger, appeared to throw the whole screw-
power of his person into the wring he gave it.

Flora, now permanently heavy, did not release Arthur from the
survey of the house, until it had extended even to his old garret
bedchamber. His thoughts were otherwise occupied than with the
tour of inspection; yet he took particular notice at the time, as
he afterwards had occasion to remember, of the airlessness and
closeness of the house; that they left the track of their footsteps
in the dust on the upper floors; and that there was a resistance to
the opening of one room door, which occasioned Affery to cry out
that somebody was hiding inside, and to continue to believe so,
though somebody was sought and not discovered. When they at last
returned to his mother's room, they found her shading her face with
her muffled hand, and talking in a low voice to the Patriarch as he
stood before the fire, whose blue eyes, polished head, and silken
locks, turning towards them as they came in, imparted an
inestimable value and inexhaustible love of his species to his
remark:

'So you have been seeing the premises, seeing the premises--
premises--seeing the premises!'

it was not in itself a jewel of benevolence or wisdom, yet he made
it an exemplar of both that one would have liked to have a copy of.

CHAPTER 24

The Evening of a Long Day

That illustrious man and great national ornament, Mr Merdle,
continued his shining course. It began to be widely understood
that one who had done society the admirable service of making so
much money out of it, could not be suffered to remain a commoner.
A baronetcy was spoken of with confidence; a peerage was frequently
mentioned. Rumour had it that Mr Merdle had set his golden face
against a baronetcy; that he had plainly intimated to Lord Decimus
that a baronetcy was not enough for him; that he had said, 'No--a
Peerage, or plain Merdle.' This was reported to have plunged Lord
Decimus as nigh to his noble chin in a slough of doubts as so lofty
a person could be sunk. For the Barnacles, as a group of
themselves in creation, had an idea that such distinctions belonged
to them; and that when a soldier, sailor, or lawyer became
ennobled, they let him in, as it were, by an act of condescension,
at the family door, and immediately shut it again. Not only (said
Rumour) had the troubled Decimus his own hereditary part in this
impression, but he also knew of several Barnacle claims already on
the file, which came into collision with that of the master spirit.

Right or wrong, Rumour was very busy; and Lord Decimus, while he
was, or was supposed to be, in stately excogitation of the
difficulty, lent her some countenance by taking, on several public
occasions, one of those elephantine trots of his through a jungle
of overgrown sentences, waving Mr Merdle about on his trunk as
Gigantic Enterprise, The Wealth of England, Elasticity, Credit,
Capital, Prosperity, and all manner of blessings.

So quietly did the mowing of the old scythe go on, that fully three
months had passed unnoticed since the two English brothers had been
laid in one tomb in the strangers' cemetery at Rome. Mr and Mrs
Sparkler were established in their own house: a little manSion,
rather of the Tite Barnacle class, quite a triumph of
inconvenience, with a perpetual smell in it of the day before
yesterday's soup and coach-horses, but extremely dear, as being
exactly in the centre of the habitable globe. In this enviable
abode (and envied it really was by many people), Mrs Sparkler had
intended to proceed at once to the demolition of the Bosom, when
active hostilities had been suspended by the arrival of the Courier
with his tidings of death. Mrs Sparkler, who was not unfeeling,
had received them with a violent burst of grief, which had lasted
twelve hours; after which, she had arisen to see about her
mourning, and to take every precaution that could ensure its being
as becoming as Mrs Merdle's. A gloom was then cast over more than
one distinguished family (according to the politest sources of
intelligence), and the Courier went back again.

Mr and Mrs Sparkler had been dining alone, with their gloom cast
over them, and Mrs Sparkler reclined on a drawing-room sofa. It
was a hot summer Sunday evening. The residence in the centre of
the habitable globe, at all times stuffed and close as if it had an
incurable cold in its head, was that evening particularly stifling.

The bells of the churches had done their worst in the way of
clanging among the unmelodious echoes of the streets, and the
lighted windows of the churches had ceased to be yellow in the grey
dusk, and had died out opaque black. Mrs Sparkler, lying on her
sofa, looking through an open window at the opposite side of a
narrow street over boxes of mignonette and flowers, was tired of
the view. Mrs Sparkler, looking at another window where her
husband stood in the balcony, was tired of that view. Mrs
Sparkler, looking at herself in her mourning, was even tired of
that view: though, naturally, not so tired of that as of the other
two.

'It's like lying in a well,' said Mrs Sparkler, changing her
position fretfully. 'Dear me, Edmund, if you have anything to say,
why don't you say it?'

Mr Sparkler might have replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have
nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he
contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at
the side of his wife's couch.

'Good gracious, Edmund!' said Mrs Sparkler more fretfully still,
you are absolutely putting mignonette up your nose! Pray don't!'

Mr Sparkler, in absence of mind--perhaps in a more literal absence
of mind than is usually understood by the phrase--had smelt so hard
at a sprig in his hand as to be on the verge of the offence in
question. He smiled, said, 'I ask your pardon, my dear,' and threw
it out of window.

'You make my head ache by remaining in that position, Edmund,' said
Mrs Sparkler, raising her eyes to him after another minute; 'you
look so aggravatingly large by this light. Do sit down.'

'Certainly, my dear,' said Mr Sparkler, and took a chair on the
same spot.

'If I didn't know that the longest day was past,' said Fanny,
yawning in a dreary manner, 'I should have felt certain this was
the longest day. I never did experience such a day.'

'Is that your fan, my love?' asked Mr Sparkler, picking up one and
presenting it.

'Edmund,' returned his wife, more wearily yet, 'don't ask weak
questions, I entreat you not. Whose can it be but mine?'

'Yes, I thought it was yours,' said Mr Sparkler.

'Then you shouldn't ask,' retorted Fanny. After a little while she
turned on her sofa and exclaimed, 'Dear me, dear me, there never
was such a long day as this!' After another little while, she got
up slowly, walked about, and came back again.

'My dear,' said Mr Sparkler, flashing with an original conception,
'I think you must have got the fidgets.'

'Oh, Fidgets!' repeated Mrs Sparkler. 'Don't.'

'My adorable girl,' urged Mr Sparkler, 'try your aromatic vinegar.
I have often seen my mother try it, and it seemingly refreshed her.

And she is, as I believe you are aware, a remarkably fine woman,
with no non--'

'Good Gracious!' exclaimed Fanny, starting up again. 'It's beyond
all patience! This is the most wearisome day that ever did dawn
upon the world, I am certain.'

Mr Sparkler looked meekly after her as she lounged about the room,
and he appeared to be a little frightened. When she had tossed a
few trifles about, and had looked down into the darkening street
out of all the three windows, she returned to her sofa, and threw
herself among its pillows.

'Now Edmund, come here! Come a little nearer, because I want to be
able to touch you with my fan, that I may impress you very much
with what I am going to say. That will do. Quite close enough.
Oh, you do look so big!'

Mr Sparkler apologised for the circumstance, pleaded that he
couldn't help it, and said that 'our fellows,' without more
particularly indicating whose fellows, used to call him by the name
of Quinbus Flestrin, Junior, or the Young Man Mountain.

'You ought to have told me so before,' Fanny complained.

'My dear,' returned Mr Sparkler, rather gratified, 'I didn't know
It would interest you, or I would have made a point of telling
you.'
'There! For goodness sake, don't talk,' said Fanny; 'I want to
talk, myself. Edmund, we must not be alone any more. I must take
such precautions as will prevent my being ever again reduced to the
state of dreadful depression in which I am this evening.'

'My dear,' answered Mr Sparkler; 'being as you are well known to
be, a remarkably fine woman with no--'

'Oh, good GRACIOUS!' cried Fanny.

Mr Sparkler was so discomposed by the energy of this exclamation,
accompanied with a flouncing up from the sofa and a flouncing down
again, that a minute or two elapsed before he felt himself equal to
saying in explanation:

'I mean, my dear, that everybody knows you are calculated to shine
in society.'

'Calculated to shine in society,' retorted Fanny with great
irritability; 'yes, indeed! And then what happens? I no sooner
recover, in a visiting point of view, the shock of poor dear papa's
death, and my poor uncle's--though I do not disguise from myself
that the last was a happy release, for, if you are not presentable
you had much better die--'

'You are not referring to me, my love, I hope?' Mr Sparkler humbly
interrupted.

'Edmund, Edmund, you would wear out a Saint. Am I not expressly
speaking of my poor uncle?'

'You looked with so much expression at myself, my dear girl,' said
Mr Sparkler, 'that I felt a little uncomfortable. Thank you, my
love.'

'Now you have put me out,' observed Fanny with a resigned toss of
her fan, 'and I had better go to bed.'

'Don't do that, my love,' urged Mr Sparkler. 'Take time.'

Fanny took a good deal of time: lying back with her eyes shut, and
her eyebrows raised with a hopeless expression as if she had
utterly given up all terrestrial affairs. At length, without the
slightest notice, she opened her eyes again, and recommenced in a
short, sharp manner:

'What happens then, I ask! What happens? Why, I find myself at
the very period when I might shine most in society, and should most
like for very momentous reasons to shine in society--I find myself
in a situation which to a certain extent disqualifies me for going
into society. it's too bad, really!'

'My dear,' said Mr Sparkler. 'I don't think it need keep you at
home.'
'Edmund, you ridiculous creature,' returned Fanny, with great
indignation; 'do you suppose that a woman in the bloom of youth and
not wholly devoid of personal attractions, can put herself, at such
a time, in competition as to figure with a woman in every other way
her inferior? If you do suppose such a thing, your folly is
boundless.'

Mr Sparkler submitted that he had thought 'it might be got over.'
'Got over!' repeated Fanny, with immeasurable scorn.

'For a time,' Mr Sparkler submitted.

Honouring the last feeble suggestion with no notice, Mrs Sparkler
declared with bitterness that it really was too bad, and that
positively it was enough to make one wish one was dead!

'However,' she said, when she had in some measure recovered from
her sense of personal ill-usage; 'provoking as it is, and cruel as
it seems, I suppose it must be submitted to.'

'Especially as it was to be expected,' said Mr Sparkler.

'Edmund,' returned his wife, 'if you have nothing more becoming to
do than to attempt to insult the woman who has honoured you with
her hand, when she finds herself in adversity, I think YOU had
better go to bed!'

Mr Sparkler was much afflicted by the charge, and offered a most
tender and earnest apology. His apology was accepted; but Mrs
Sparkler requested him to go round to the other side of the sofa
and sit in the window-curtain, to tone himself down.

'Now, Edmund,' she said, stretching out her fan, and touching him
with it at arm's length, 'what I was going to say to you when you
began as usual to prose and worry, is, that I shall guard against
our being alone any more, and that when circumstances prevent my
going out to my own satisfaction, I must arrange to have some
people or other always here; for I really cannot, and will not,
have another such day as this has been.'

Mr Sparkler's sentiments as to the plan were, in brief, that it had
no nonsense about it. He added, 'And besides, you know it's likely
that you'll soon have your sister--'

'Dearest Amy, yes!' cried Mrs Sparkler with a sigh of affection.
'Darling little thing! Not, however, that Amy would do here
alone.'

Mr Sparkler was going to say 'No?' interrogatively, but he saw his
danger and said it assentingly, 'No, Oh dear no; she wouldn't do
here alone.'

'No, Edmund. For not only are the virtues of the precious child of
that still character that they require a contrast--require life and
movement around them to bring them out in their right colours and
make one love them of all things; but she will require to be
roused, on more accounts than one.'

'That's it,' said Mr Sparkler. 'Roused.'

'Pray don't, Edmund! Your habit of interrupting without having the
least thing in the world to say, distracts one. You must be broken
of it. Speaking of Amy;--my poor little pet was devotedly attached
to poor papa, and no doubt will have lamented his loss exceedingly,
and grieved very much. I have done so myself. I have felt it
dreadfully. But Amy will no doubt have felt it even more, from
having been on the spot the whole time, and having been with poor
dear papa at the last; which I unhappily was not.'

Here Fanny stopped to weep, and to say, 'Dear, dear, beloved papa!
How truly gentlemanly he was! What a contrast to poor uncle!'

'From the effects of that trying time,' she pursued, 'my good
little Mouse will have to be roused. Also, from the effects of
this long attendance upon Edward in his illness; an attendance
which is not yet over, which may even go on for some time longer,
and which in the meanwhile unsettles us all by keeping poor dear
papa's affairs from being wound up. Fortunately, however, the
papers with his agents here being all sealed up and locked up, as
he left them when he providentially came to England, the affairs
are in that state of order that they can wait until my brother
Edward recovers his health in Sicily, sufficiently to come over,
and administer, or execute, or whatever it may be that will have to
be done.'

'He couldn't have a better nurse to bring him round,' Mr Sparkler
made bold to opine.

'For a wonder, I can agree with you,' returned his wife, languidly
turning her eyelids a little in his direction (she held forth, in
general, as if to the drawing-room furniture), 'and can adopt your
words. He couldn't have a better nurse to bring him round. There
are times when my dear child is a little wearing to an active mind;
but, as a nurse, she is Perfection. Best of Amys!'

Mr Sparkler, growing rash on his late success, observed that Edward
had had, biggodd, a long bout of it, my dear girl.

'If Bout, Edmund,' returned Mrs Sparkler, 'is the slang term for
indisposition, he has. If it is not, I am unable to give an
opinion on the barbarous language you address to Edward's sister.
That he contracted Malaria Fever somewhere, either by travelling
day and night to Rome, where, after all, he arrived too late to see
poor dear papa before his death--or under some other unwholesome
circumstances--is indubitable, if that is what you mean. Likewise
that his extremely careless life has made him a very bad subject
for it indeed.'

Mr Sparkler considered it a parallel case to that of some of our
fellows in the West Indies with Yellow Jack. Mrs Sparkler closed
her eyes again, and refused to have any consciousness of our
fellows of the West Indies, or of Yellow Jack.