When Mr and Mrs Flintwinch panted up to the door of the old
house in the twilight, Jeremiah within a second of Affery, the stranger started
back. 'Death of my soul!' he exclaimed. 'Why, how did you get here?'
Mr Flintwinch, to whom these words were spoken, repaid the stranger's wonder
in full. He gazed at him with blank astonishment; he looked over his own
shoulder, as expecting to see some one he had not been aware of standing behind
him; he gazed at the stranger again, speechlessly, at a loss to know what he
meant; he looked to his wife for explanation; receiving none, he pounced upon
her, and shook her with such heartiness that he shook her cap off her head,
saying between his teeth, with grim raillery, as he did it, 'Affery, my woman,
you must have a dose, my woman! This is some of your tricks! You have been
dreaming again, mistress. What's it about? Who is it? What does it mean! Speak
out or be choked! It's the only choice I'll give you.'
Supposing Mistress Affery to have any power of election at the moment, her
choice was decidedly to be choked; for she answered not a syllable to this
adjuration, but, with her bare head wagging violently backwards and forwards,
resigned herself to her punishment. The stranger, however, picking up her cap
with an air of gallantry, interposed.
'Permit me,' said he, laying his hand on the shoulder of Jeremiah, who
stopped and released his victim. 'Thank you. Excuse me. Husband and wife I know,
from this playfulness. Haha! Always agreeable to see that relation playfully
maintained. Listen! May I suggest that somebody up-stairs, in the dark, is
becoming energetically curious to know what is going on here?'
This reference to Mrs Clennam's voice reminded Mr Flintwinch to step into the
hall and call up the staircase. 'It's all right, I am here, Affery is coming
with your light.' Then he said to the latter flustered woman, who was putting
her cap on, 'Get out with you, and get up-stairs!' and then turned to the
stranger and said to him, 'Now, sir, what might you please to want?'
'I am afraid,' said the stranger, 'I must be so troublesome as to propose a
candle.'
'True,' assented Jeremiah. 'I was going to do so. Please to stand where you
are while I get one.'
The visitor was standing in the doorway, but turned a little into the gloom
of the house as Mr Flintwinch turned, and pursued him with his eyes into the
little room, where he groped about for a phosphorus box. When he found it, it
was damp, or otherwise out of order; and match after match that he struck into
it lighted sufficiently to throw a dull glare about his groping face, and to
sprinkle his hands with pale little spots of fire, but not sufficiently to light
the candle. The stranger, taking advantage of this fitful illumination of his
visage, looked intently and wonderingly at him. Jeremiah, when he at last
lighted the candle, knew he had been doing this, by seeing the last shade of a
lowering watchfulness clear away from his face, as it broke into the doubtful
smile that was a large ingredient in its expression.
'Be so good,' said Jeremiah, closing the house door, and taking a pretty
sharp survey of the smiling visitor in his turn, 'as to step into my
counting-house.-- It's all right, I tell you!' petulantly breaking off to answer
the voice up-stairs, still unsatisfied, though Affery was there, speaking in
persuasive tones. 'Don't I tell you it's all right? Preserve the woman, has she
no reason at all in her!'
'Timorous,' remarked the stranger.
'Timorous?' said Mr Flintwinch, turning his head to retort, as he went before
with the candle. 'More courageous than ninety men in a hundred, sir, let me tell
you.'
'Though an invalid?'
'Many years an invalid. Mrs Clennam. The only one of that name left in the
House now. My partner.' Saying something apologetically as he crossed the hall,
to the effect that at that time of night they were not in the habit of receiving
any one, and were always shut up, Mr Flintwinch led the way into his own office,
which presented a sufficiently business- like appearance. Here he put the light
on his desk, and said to the stranger, with his wryest twist upon him, 'Your
commands.'
'MY name is Blandois.'
'Blandois. I don't know it,' said Jeremiah.
'I thought it possible,' resumed the other, 'that you might have been advised
from Paris--'
'We have had no advice from Paris respecting anybody of the name of
Blandois,' said Jeremiah.
'No?'
'No.'
Jeremiah stood in his favourite attitude. The smiling Mr Blandois, opening
his cloak to get his hand to a breast-pocket, paused to say, with a laugh in his
glittering eyes, which it occurred to Mr Flintwinch were too near together:
'You are so like a friend of mine! Not so identically the same as I supposed
when I really did for the moment take you to be the same in the dusk--for which
I ought to apologise; permit me to do so; a readiness to confess my errors is, I
hope, a part of the frankness of my character--still, however, uncommonly like.'
'Indeed?' said Jeremiah, perversely. 'But I have not received any letter of
advice from anywhere respecting anybody of the name of Blandois.'
'Just so,' said the stranger.
'JUST so,' said Jeremiah.
Mr Blandois, not at all put out by this omission on the part of the
correspondents of the house of Clennam and Co., took his pocket- book from his
breast-pocket, selected a letter from that receptacle, and handed it to Mr
Flintwinch. 'No doubt you are well acquainted with the writing. Perhaps the
letter speaks for itself, and requires no advice. You are a far more competent
judge of such affairs than I am. It is my misfortune to be, not so much a man of
business, as what the world calls (arbitrarily) a gentleman.'
Mr Flintwinch took the letter, and read, under date of Paris, 'We have to
present to you, on behalf of a highly esteemed correspondent of our Firm, M.
Blandois, of this city,' &c. &c. 'Such facilities as he may require and such
attentions as may lie in your power,' &c. &c. 'Also have to add that if you will
honour M. Blandois' drafts at sight to the extent of, say Fifty Pounds sterling
(l50),' &c. &c.
'Very good, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Take a chair. To the extent of
anything that our House can do--we are in a retired, old- fashioned, steady way
of business, sir--we shall be happy to render you our best assistance. I
observe, from the date of this, that we could not yet be advised of it. Probably
you came over with the delayed mail that brings the advice.'
'That I came over with the delayed mail, sir,' returned Mr Blandois, passing
his white hand down his high-hooked nose, 'I know to the cost of my head and
stomach: the detestable and intolerable weather having racked them both. You see
me in the plight in which I came out of the packet within this half-hour. I
ought to have been here hours ago, and then I should not have to apologise--
permit me to apologise--for presenting myself so unreasonably, and
frightening--no, by-the-bye, you said not frightening; permit me to apologise
again--the esteemed lady, Mrs Clennam, in her invalid chamber above stairs.'
Swagger and an air of authorised condescension do so much, that Mr Flintwinch
had already begun to think this a highly gentlemanly personage. Not the less
unyielding with him on that account, he scraped his chin and said, what could he
have the honour of doing for Mr Blandois to-night, out of business hours?
'Faith!' returned that gentleman, shrugging his cloaked shoulders, 'I must
change, and eat and drink, and be lodged somewhere. Have the kindness to advise
me, a total stranger, where, and money is a matter of perfect indifference until
to-morrow. The nearer the place, the better. Next door, if that's all.'
Mr Flintwinch was slowly beginning, 'For a gentleman of your habits, there is
not in this immediate neighbourhood any hotel--' when Mr Blandois took him up.
'So much for my habits! my dear sir,' snapping his fingers. 'A citizen of the
world has no habits. That I am, in my poor way, a gentleman, by Heaven! I will
not deny, but I have no unaccommodating prejudiced habits. A clean room, a hot
dish for dinner, and a bottle of not absolutely poisonous wine, are all I want
tonight. But I want that much without the trouble of going one unnecessary inch
to get it.'
'There is,' said Mr Flintwinch, with more than his usual deliberation, as he
met, for a moment, Mr Blandois' shining eyes, which were restless; 'there is a
coffee-house and tavern close here, which, so far, I can recommend; but there's
no style about it.'
'I dispense with style!' said Mr Blandois, waving his hand. 'Do me the honour
to show me the house, and introduce me there (if I am not too troublesome), and
I shall be infinitely obliged.' Mr Flintwinch, upon this, looked up his hat, and
lighted Mr Blandois across the hall again. As he put the candle on a bracket,
where the dark old panelling almost served as an extinguisher for it, he
bethought himself of going up to tell the invalid that he would not be absent
five minutes. 'Oblige me,' said the visitor, on his saying so, 'by presenting my
card of visit. Do me the favour to add that I shall be happy to wait on Mrs
Clennam, to offer my personal compliments, and to apologise for having
occasioned any agitation in this tranquil corner, if it should suit her
convenience to endure the presence of a stranger for a few minutes, after he
shall have changed his wet clothes and fortified himself with something to eat
and drink.'
Jeremiah made all despatch, and said, on his return, 'She'll be glad to see
you, sir; but, being conscious that her sick room has no attractions, wishes me
to say that she won't hold you to your offer, in case you should think better of
it.'
'To think better of it,' returned the gallant Blandois, 'would be to slight a
lady; to slight a lady would be to be deficient in chivalry towards the sex; and
chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character!' Thus expressing himself, he
threw the draggled skirt of his cloak over his shoulder, and accompanied Mr
Flintwinch to the tavern; taking up on the road a porter who was waiting with
his portmanteau on the outer side of the gateway.
The house was kept in a homely manner, and the condescension of Mr Blandois
was infinite. It seemed to fill to inconvenience the little bar in which the
widow landlady and her two daughters received him; it was much too big for the
narrow wainscoted room with a bagatelle-board in it, that was first proposed for
his reception; it perfectly swamped the little private holiday sitting- room of
the family, which was finally given up to him. Here, in dry clothes and scented
linen, with sleeked hair, a great ring on each forefinger and a massive show of
watch-chain, Mr Blandois waiting for his dinner, lolling on a window-seat with
his knees drawn up, looked (for all the difference in the setting of the jewel)
fearfully and wonderfully like a certain Monsieur Rigaud who had once so waited
for his breakfast, lying on the stone ledge of the iron grating of a cell in a
villainous dungeon at Marseilles.
His greed at dinner, too, was closely in keeping with the greed of Monsieur
Rigaud at breakfast. His avaricious manner of collecting all the eatables about
him, and devouring some with his eyes while devouring others with his jaws, was
the same manner. His utter disregard of other people, as shown in his way of
tossing the little womanly toys of furniture about, flinging favourite cushions
under his boots for a softer rest, and crushing delicate coverings with his big
body and his great black head, had the same brute selfishness at the bottom of
it. The softly moving hands that were so busy among the dishes had the old
wicked facility of the hands that had clung to the bars. And when he could eat
no more, and sat sucking his delicate fingers one by one and wiping them on a
cloth, there wanted nothing but the substitution of vine-leaves to finish the
picture.
On this man, with his moustache going up and his nose coming down in that
most evil of smiles, and with his surface eyes looking as if they belonged to
his dyed hair, and had had their natural power of reflecting light stopped by
some similar process, Nature, always true, and never working in vain, had set
the mark, Beware! It was not her fault, if the warning were fruitless. She is
never to blame in any such instance.
Mr Blandois, having finished his repast and cleaned his fingers, took a cigar
from his pocket, and, lying on the window-seat again, smoked it out at his
leisure, occasionally apostrophising the smoke as it parted from his thin lips
in a thin stream:
'Blandois, you shall turn the tables on society, my little child. Haha! Holy
blue, you have begun well, Blandois! At a pinch, an excellent master in English
or French; a man for the bosom of families! You have a quick perception, you
have humour, you have ease, you have insinuating manners, you have a good
appearance; in effect, you are a gentleman! A gentleman you shall live, my small
boy, and a gentleman you shall die. You shall win, however the game goes. They
shall all confess your merit, Blandois. You shall subdue the society which has
grievously wronged you, to your own high spirit. Death of my soul! You are high
spirited by right and by nature, my Blandois!'
To such soothing murmurs did this gentleman smoke out his cigar and drink out
his bottle of wine. Both being finished, he shook himself into a sitting
attitude; and with the concluding serious apostrophe, 'Hold, then! Blandois, you
ingenious one, have all your wits about you!' arose and went back to the house
of Clennam and Co.
He was received at the door by Mistress Affery, who, under instructions from
her lord, had lighted up two candles in the hall and a third on the staircase,
and who conducted him to Mrs Clennam's room. Tea was prepared there, and such
little company arrangements had been made as usually attended the reception of
expected visitors. They were slight on the greatest occasion, never extending
beyond the production of the China tea-service, and the covering of the bed with
a sober and sad drapery. For the rest, there was the bier-like sofa with the
block upon it, and the figure in the widow's dress, as if attired for execution;
the fire topped by the mound of damped ashes; the grate with its second little
mound of ashes; the kettle and the smell of black dye; all as they had been for
fifteen years.
Mr Flintwinch presented the gentleman commended to the consideration of
Clennam and Co. Mrs Clennam, who had the letter lying before her, bent her head
and requested him to sit. They looked very closely at one another. That was but
natural curiosity. 'I thank you, sir, for thinking of a disabled woman like me.
Few who come here on business have any remembrance to bestow on one so removed
from observation. It would be idle to expect that they should have. Out of
sight, out of mind. While I am grateful for the exception, I don't complain of
the rule. '
Mr Blandois, in his most gentlemanly manner, was afraid he had disturbed her
by unhappily presenting himself at such an unconscionable time. For which he had
already offered his best apologies to Mr--he begged pardon--but by name had not
the distinguished honour--
'Mr Flintwinch has been connected with the House many years.'
Mr Blandois was Mr Flintwinch's most obedient humble servant. He entreated Mr
Flintwinch to receive the assurance of his profoundest consideration.
'My husband being dead,' said Mrs Clennam, 'and my son preferring another
pursuit, our old House has no other representative in these days than Mr
Flintwinch. '
'What do you call yourself?' was the surly demand of that gentleman. 'You
have the head of two men.'
'My sex disqualifies me,' she proceeded with merely a slight turn of her eyes
in jeremiah's direction, 'from taking a responsible part in the business, even
if I had the ability; and therefore Mr Flintwinch combines my interest with his
own, and conducts it. It is not what it used to be; but some of our old friends
(principally the writers of this letter) have the kindness not to forget us, and
we retain the power of doing what they entrust to us as efficiently as we ever
did. This however is not interesting to you. You are English, sir?'
'Faith, madam, no; I am neither born nor bred in England. In effect, I am of
no country,' said Mr Blandois, stretching out his leg and smiting it: 'I descend
from half-a-dozen countries.'
'You have been much about the world?'
'It is true. By Heaven, madam, I have been here and there and everywhere!'
'You have no ties, probably. Are not married?'
'Madam,' said Mr Blandois, with an ugly fall of his eyebrows, 'I adore your
sex, but I am not married--never was.'
Mistress Affery, who stood at the table near him, pouring out the tea,
happened in her dreamy state to look at him as he said these words, and to fancy
that she caught an expression in his eyes which attracted her own eyes so that
she could not get them away. The effect of this fancy was to keep her staring at
him with the tea- pot in her hand, not only to her own great uneasiness, but
manifestly to his, too; and, through them both, to Mrs Clennam's and Mr
Flintwinch's. Thus a few ghostly moments supervened, when they were all
confusedly staring without knowing why.
'Affery,' her mistress was the first to say, 'what is the matter with you?'
'I don't know,' said Mistress Affery, with her disengaged left hand extended
towards the visitor. 'It ain't me. It's him!'
'What does this good woman mean?' cried Mr Blandois, turning white, hot, and
slowly rising with a look of such deadly wrath that it contrasted surprisingly
with the slight force of his words. 'How is it possible to understand this good
creature?'
'It's NOT possible,' said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself rapidly in that
direction. 'She don't know what she means. She's an idiot, a wanderer in her
mind. She shall have a dose, she shall have such a dose! Get along with you, my
woman,' he added in her ear, 'get along with you, while you know you're Affery,
and before you're shaken to yeast.'
Mistress Affery, sensible of the danger in which her identity stood,
relinquished the tea-pot as her husband seized it, put her apron over her head,
and in a twinkling vanished. The visitor gradually broke into a smile, and sat
down again.
'You'll excuse her, Mr Blandois,' said Jeremiah, pouring out the tea himself,
'she's failing and breaking up; that's what she's about. Do you take sugar, sir?
'
'Thank you, no tea for me.--Pardon my observing it, but that's a very
remarkable watch!'
The tea-table was drawn up near the sofa, with a small interval between it
and Mrs Clennam's own particular table. Mr Blandois in his gallantry had risen
to hand that lady her tea (her dish of toast was already there), and it was in
placing the cup conveniently within her reach that the watch, lying before her
as it always did, attracted his attention. Mrs Clennam looked suddenly up at
him.
'May I be permitted? Thank you. A fine old-fashioned watch,' he said, taking
it in his hand. 'Heavy for use, but massive and genuine. I have a partiality for
everything genuine. Such as I am, I am genuine myself. Hah! A gentleman's watch
with two cases in the old fashion. May I remove it from the outer case? Thank
you. Aye? An old silk watch-lining, worked with beads! I have often seen these
among old Dutch people and Belgians. Quaint things!'
'They are old-fashioned, too,' said Mrs Clennam. 'Very. But this is not so
old as the watch, I think?'
'I think not.'
'Extraordinary how they used to complicate these cyphers!' remarked Mr
Blandois, glancing up with his own smile again. 'Now is this D. N. F.? It might
be almost anything.'
'Those are the letters.'
Mr Flintwinch, who had been observantly pausing all this time with a cup of
tea in his hand, and his mouth open ready to swallow the contents, began to do
so: always entirely filling his mouth before he emptied it at a gulp; and always
deliberating again before he refilled it.
'D. N. F. was some tender, lovely, fascinating fair-creature, I make no
doubt,' observed Mr Blandois, as he snapped on the case again. 'I adore her
memory on the assumption. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I adore but too
readily. It may be a vice, it may be a virtue, but adoration of female beauty
and merit constitutes three parts of my character, madam.'
Mr Flintwinch had by this time poured himself out another cup of tea, which
he was swallowing in gulps as before, with his eyes directed to the invalid.
'You may be heart-free here, sir,' she returned to Mr Blandois. 'Those
letters are not intended, I believe, for the initials of any name.'
'Of a motto, perhaps,' said Mr Blandois, casually.
'Of a sentence. They have always stood, I believe, for Do Not Forget!'
'And naturally,' said Mr Blandois, replacing the watch and stepping backward
to his former chair, 'you do not forget.'
Mr Flintwinch, finishing his tea, not only took a longer gulp than he had
taken yet, but made his succeeding pause under new circumstances: that is to
say, with his head thrown back and his cup held still at his lips, while his
eyes were still directed at the invalid. She had that force of face, and that
concentrated air of collecting her firmness or obstinacy, which represented in
her case what would have been gesture and action in another, as she replied with
her deliberate strength of speech: 'No, sir, I do not forget. To lead a life as
monotonous as mine has been during many years, is not the way to forget. To lead
a life of self-correction is not the way to forget. To be sensible of having (as
we all have, every one of us, all the children of Adam!) offences to expiate and
peace to make, does not justify the desire to forget. Therefore I have long
dismissed it, and I neither forget nor wish to forget.'
Mr Flintwinch, who had latterly been shaking the sediment at the bottom of
his tea-cup, round and round, here gulped it down, and putting the cup in the
tea-tray, as done with, turned his eyes upon Mr Blandois as if to ask him what
he thought of that?
'All expressed, madam,' said Mr Blandois, with his smoothest bow and his
white hand on his breast, 'by the word "naturally," which I am proud to have had
sufficient apprehension and appreciation (but without appreciation I could not
be Blandois) to employ.'
'Pardon me, sir,' she returned, 'if I doubt the likelihood of a gentleman of
pleasure, and change, and politeness, accustomed to court and to be courted--'
'Oh madam! By Heaven!'
'--If I doubt the likelihood of such a character quite comprehending what
belongs to mine in my circumstances. Not to obtrude doctrine upon you,' she
looked at the rigid pile of hard pale books before her, '(for you go your own
way, and the consequences are on your own head), I will say this much: that I
shape my course by pilots, strictly by proved and tried pilots, under whom I
cannot be shipwrecked--can not be--and that if I were unmindful of the
admonition conveyed in those three letters, I should not be half as chastened as
I am.'
It was curious how she seized the occasion to argue with some invisible
opponent. Perhaps with her own better sense, always turning upon herself and her
own deception.
'If I forgot my ignorances in my life of health and freedom, I might complain
of the life to which I am now condemned. I never do; I never have done. If I
forgot that this scene, the Earth, is expressly meant to be a scene of gloom,
and hardship, and dark trial, for the creatures who are made out of its dust, I
might have some tenderness for its vanities. But I have no such tenderness. If I
did not know that we are, every one, the subject (most justly the subject) of a
wrath that must be satisfied, and against which mere actions are nothing, I
might repine at the difference between me, imprisoned here, and the people who
pass that gateway yonder. But I take it as a grace and favour to be elected to
make the satisfaction I am making here, to know what I know for certain here,
and to work out what I have worked out here. My affliction might otherwise have
had no meaning to me. Hence I would forget, and I do forget, nothing. Hence I am
contented, and say it is better with me than with millions.' As she spoke these
words, she put her hand upon the watch, and restored it to the precise spot on
her little table which it always occupied. With her touch lingering upon it, she
sat for some moments afterwards, looking at it steadily and half-defiantly.
Mr Blandois, during this exposition, had been strictly attentive, keeping his
eyes fastened on the lady, and thoughtfully stroking his moustache with his two
hands. Mr Flintwinch had been a little fidgety, and now struck in.
'There, there, there!' said he. 'That is quite understood, Mrs Clennam, and
you have spoken piously and well. Mr Blandois, I suspect, is not of a pious
cast.' 'On the contrary, sir!' that gentleman protested, snapping his fingers.
'Your pardon! It's a part of my character. I am sensitive, ardent,
conscientious, and imaginative. A sensitive, ardent, conscientious, and
imaginative man, Mr Flintwinch, must be that, or nothing!'
There was an inkling of suspicion in Mr Flintwinch's face that he might be
nothing, as he swaggered out of his chair (it was characteristic of this man, as
it is of all men similarly marked, that whatever he did, he overdid, though it
were sometimes by only a hairsbreadth), and approached to take his leave of Mrs
Clennam.
'With what will appear to you the egotism of a sick old woman, sir,' she then
said, 'though really through your accidental allusion, I have been led away into
the subject of myself and my infirmities. Being so considerate as to visit me, I
hope you will be likewise so considerate as to overlook that. Don't compliment
me, if you please.' For he was evidently going to do it. 'Mr Flintwinch will be
happy to render you any service, and I hope your stay in this city may prove
agreeable.'
Mr Blandois thanked her, and kissed his hand several times. 'This is an old
room,' he remarked, with a sudden sprightliness of manner, looking round when he
got near the door, 'I have been so interested that I have not observed it. But
it's a genuine old room.'
'It is a genuine old house,' said Mrs Clennam, with her frozen smile. 'A
place of no pretensions, but a piece of antiquity.'
'Faith!' cried the visitor. 'If Mr Flintwinch would do me the favour to take
me through the rooms on my way out, he could hardly oblige me more. An old house
is a weakness with me. I have many weaknesses, but none greater. I love and
study the picturesque in all its varieties. I have been called picturesque
myself. It is no merit to be picturesque--I have greater merits, perhaps--but I
may be, by an accident. Sympathy, sympathy!'
'I tell you beforehand, Mr Blandois, that you'll find it very dingy and very
bare,' said Jeremiah, taking up the candle. 'It's not worth your looking at.'But
Mr Blandois, smiting him in a friendly manner on the back, only laughed; so the
said Blandois kissed his hand again to Mrs Clennam, and they went out of the
room together.
'You don't care to go up-stairs?' said Jeremiah, on the landing. 'On the
contrary, Mr Flintwinch; if not tiresome to you, I shall be ravished!'
Mr Flintwinch, therefore, wormed himself up the staircase, and Mr Blandois
followed close. They ascended to the great garret bed- room which Arthur had
occupied on the night of his return. 'There, Mr Blandois!' said Jeremiah,
showing it, 'I hope you may think that worth coming so high to see. I confess I
don't.'
Mr Blandois being enraptured, they walked through other garrets and passages,
and came down the staircase again. By this time Mr Flintwinch had remarked that
he never found the visitor looking at any room, after throwing one quick glance
around, but always found the visitor looking at him, Mr Flintwinch. With this
discovery in his thoughts, he turned about on the staircase for another
experiment. He met his eyes directly; and on the instant of their fixing one
another, the visitor, with that ugly play of nose and moustache, laughed (as he
had done at every similar moment since they left Mrs Clennam's chamber) a
diabolically silent laugh.
As a much shorter man than the visitor, Mr Flintwinch was at the physical
disadvantage of being thus disagreeably leered at from a height; and as he went
first down the staircase, and was usually a step or two lower than the other,
this disadvantage was at the time increased. He postponed looking at Mr Blandois
again until this accidental inequality was removed by their having entered the
late Mr Clennam's room. But, then twisting himself suddenly round upon him, he
found his look unchanged.
'A most admirable old house,' smiled Mr Blandois. 'So mysterious. Do you
never hear any haunted noises here?'
'Noises,' returned Mr Flintwinch. 'No.'
'Nor see any devils?'
'Not,' said Mr Flintwinch, grimly screwing himself at his questioner, 'not
any that introduce themselves under that name and in that capacity.'
'Haha! A portrait here, I see.'
(Still looking at Mr Flintwinch, as if he were the portrait.)
'It's a portrait, sir, as you observe.'
'May I ask the subject, Mr Flintwinch?'
'Mr Clennam, deceased. Her husband.' 'Former owner of the remarkable watch,
perhaps?' said the visitor.
Mr Flintwinch, who had cast his eyes towards the portrait, twisted himself
about again, and again found himself the subject of the same look and smile.
'Yes, Mr Blandois,' he replied tartly. 'It was his, and his uncle's before him,
and Lord knows who before him; and that's all I can tell you of its pedigree.'
'That's a strongly marked character, Mr Flintwinch, our friend up- stairs.'
'Yes, sir,' said Jeremiah, twisting himself at the visitor again, as he did
during the whole of this dialogue, like some screw- machine that fell short of
its grip; for the other never changed, and he always felt obliged to retreat a
little. 'She is a remarkable woman. Great fortitude--great strength of mind.'
'They must have been very happy,' said Blandois.
'Who?' demanded Mr Flintwinch, with another screw at him.
Mr Blandois shook his right forefinger towards the sick room, and his left
forefinger towards the portrait, and then, putting his arms akimbo and striding
his legs wide apart, stood smiling down at Mr Flintwinch with the advancing nose
and the retreating moustache.
'As happy as most other married people, I suppose,' returned Mr Flintwinch.
'I can't say. I don't know. There are secrets in all families.'
'Secrets!' cried Mr Blandois, quickly. 'Say it again, my son.'
'I say,' replied Mr Flintwinch, upon whom he had swelled himself so suddenly
that Mr Flintwinch found his face almost brushed by the dilated chest. 'I say
there are secrets in all families.'
'So there are,' cried the other, clapping him on both shoulders, and rolling
him backwards and forwards. 'Haha! you are right. So there are! Secrets! Holy
Blue! There are the devil's own secrets in some families, Mr Flintwinch!' With
that, after clapping Mr Flintwinch on both shoulders several times, as if in a
friendly and humorous way he were rallying him on a joke he had made, he threw
up his arms, threw back his head, hooked his hands together behind it, and burst
into a roar of laughter. It was in vain for Mr Flintwinch to try another screw
at him. He had his laugh out.
'But, favour me with the candle a moment,' he said, when he had done. 'Let us
have a look at the husband of the remarkable lady. Hah!' holding up the light at
arm's length. 'A decided expression of face here too, though not of the same
character. Looks as if he were saying, what is it--Do Not Forget--does he not,
Mr Flintwinch?
By Heaven, sir, he does!'
As he returned the candle, he looked at him once more; and then, leisurely
strolling out with him into the hall, declared it to be a charming old house
indeed, and one which had so greatly pleased him that he would not have missed
inspecting it for a hundred pounds. Throughout these singular freedoms on the
part of Mr Blandois, which involved a general alteration in his demeanour,
making it much coarser and rougher, much more violent and audacious than before,
Mr Flintwinch, whose leathern face was not liable to many changes, preserved its
immobility intact. Beyond now appearing perhaps, to have been left hanging a
trifle too long before that friendly operation of cutting down, he outwardly
maintained an equable composure. They had brought their survey to a close in the
little room at the side of the hall, and he stood there, eyeing Mr Blandois.
'I am glad you are so well satisfied, sir,' was his calm remark. 'I didn't
expect it. You seem to be quite in good spirits.'
'In admirable spirits,' returned Blandois. 'Word of honour! never more
refreshed in spirits. Do you ever have presentiments, Mr Flintwinch?'
'I am not sure that I know what you mean by the term, sir,' replied that
gentleman.
'Say, in this case, Mr Flintwinch, undefined anticipations of pleasure to
come.'
'I can't say I'm sensible of such a sensation at present,' returned Mr
Flintwinch with the utmost gravity. 'If I should find it coming on, I'll mention
it.'
'Now I,' said Blandois, 'I, my son, have a presentiment to-night that we
shall be well acquainted. Do you find it coming on?'
'N-no,' returned Mr Flintwinch, deliberately inquiring of himself. 'I can't
say I do.'
'I have a strong presentiment that we shall become intimately
acquainted.--You have no feeling of that sort yet?'
'Not yet,' said Mr Flintwinch.
Mr Blandois, taking him by both shoulders again, rolled him about a little in
his former merry way, then drew his arm through his own, and invited him to come
off and drink a bottle of wine like a dear deep old dog as he was.
Without a moment's indecision, Mr Flintwinch accepted the invitation, and
they went out to the quarters where the traveller was lodged, through a heavy
rain which had rattled on the windows, roofs, and pavements, ever since
nightfall. The thunder and lightning had long ago passed over, but the rain was
furious. On their arrival at Mr Blandois' room, a bottle of port wine was
ordered by that gallant gentleman; who (crushing every pretty thing he could
collect, in the soft disposition of his dainty figure) coiled himself upon the
window-seat, while Mr Flintwinch took a chair opposite to him, with the table
between them. Mr Blandois proposed having the largest glasses in the house, to
which Mr Flintwinch assented. The bumpers filled, Mr Blandois, with a roystering
gaiety, clinked the top of his glass against the bottom of Mr Flintwinch's, and
the bottom of his glass against the top of Mr Flintwinch's, and drank to the
intimate acquaintance he foresaw.
Mr Flintwinch gravely pledged him, and drank all the wine he could get, and
said nothing. As often as Mr Blandois clinked glasses (which was at every
replenishment), Mr Flintwinch stolidly did his part of the clinking, and would
have stolidly done his companion's part of the wine as well as his own: being,
except in the article of palate, a mere cask.
In short, Mr Blandois found that to pour port wine into the reticent
Flintwinch was, not to open him but to shut him up. Moreover, he had the
appearance of a perfect ability to go on all night; or, if occasion were, all
next day and all next night; whereas Mr Blandois soon grew indistinctly
conscious of swaggering too fiercely and boastfully. He therefore terminated the
entertainment at the end of the third bottle.
'You will draw upon us to-morrow, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch, with a
business-like face at parting.
'My Cabbage,' returned the other, taking him by the collar with both hands,
'I'll draw upon you; have no fear. Adieu, my Flintwinch. Receive at parting;'
here he gave him a southern embrace, and kissed him soundly on both cheeks; 'the
word of a gentleman! By a thousand Thunders, you shall see me again!'
He did not present himself next day, though the letter of advice came duly to
hand. Inquiring after him at night, Mr Flintwinch found, with surprise, that he
had paid his bill and gone back to the Continent by way of Calais. Nevertheless,
Jeremiah scraped out of his cogitating face a lively conviction that Mr Blandois
would keep his word on this occasion, and would be seen again.
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