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!'
'He's not at home,' cried Affery.
'Fetch him!' cried the stranger. 'Fetch my Flintwinch! Tell him that it is
his old Blandois, who comes from arriving in England; tell him that it is his
little boy who is here, his cabbage, his well-beloved! Open the door, beautiful
Mrs Flintwinch, and in the meantime let me to pass upstairs, to present my
compliments-- homage of Blandois--to my lady! My lady lives always? It is well.
Open then!'
To Arthur's increased surprise, Mistress Affery, stretching her eyes wide at
himself, as if in warning that this was not a gentleman for him to interfere
with, drew back the chain, and opened the door. The stranger, without ceremony,
walked into the hall, leaving Arthur to follow him.
'Despatch then! Achieve then! Bring my Flintwinch! Announce me to my lady!'
cried the stranger, clanking about the stone floor.
'Pray tell me, Affery,' said Arthur aloud and sternly, as he surveyed him
from head to foot with indignation; 'who is this gentleman?'
'Pray tell me, Affery,' the stranger repeated in his turn, 'who-- ha, ha,
ha!--who is this gentleman?'
The voice of Mrs Clennam opportunely called from her chamber above, 'Affery,
let them both come up. Arthur, come straight to me!'
'Arthur?' exclaimed Blandois, taking off his hat at arm's length, and
bringing his heels together from a great stride in making him a flourishing bow.
'The son of my lady? I am the all-devoted of the son of my lady!'
Arthur looked at him again in no more flattering manner than before, and,
turning on his heel without acknowledgment, went up- stairs. The visitor
followed him up-stairs. Mistress Affery took the key from behind the door, and
deftly slipped out to fetch her lord.
A bystander, informed of the previous appearance of Monsieur Blandois in that
room, would have observed a difference in Mrs Clennam's present reception of
him. Her face was not one to betray it; and her suppressed manner, and her set
voice, were equally under her control. It wholly consisted in her never taking
her eyes off his face from the moment of his entrance, and in her twice or
thrice, when he was becoming noisy, swaying herself a very little forward in the
chair in which she sat upright, with her hands immovable upon its elbows; as if
she gave him the assurance that he should be presently heard at any length he
would. Arthur did not fail to observe this; though the difference between the
present occasion and the former was not within his power of observation.
'Madame,' said Blandois, 'do me the honour to present me to Monsieur, your
son. It appears to me, madame, that Monsieur, your son, is disposed to complain
of me. He is not polite.'
'Sir,' said Arthur, striking in expeditiously, 'whoever you are, and however
you come to be here, if I were the master of this house I would lose no time in
placing you on the outside of it.'
'But you are not,' said his mother, without looking at him. 'Unfortunately
for the gratification of your unreasonable temper, you are not the master,
Arthur.'
'I make no claim to be, mother. If I object to this person's manner of
conducting himself here, and object to it so much, that if I had any authority
here I certainly would not suffer him to remain a minute, I object on your
account.'
'In the case of objection being necessary,' she returned, 'I could object for
myself. And of course I should.'
The subject of their dispute, who had seated himself, laughed aloud, and
rapped his legs with his hand.
'You have no right,' said Mrs Clennam, always intent on Blandois, however
directly she addressed her son, 'to speak to the prejudice of any gentleman
(least of all a gentleman from another country), because he does not conform to
your standard, or square his behaviour by your rules. It is possible that the
gentleman may, on similar grounds, object to you.'
'I hope so,' returned Arthur.
'The gentleman,' pursued Mrs Clennam, 'on a former occasion brought a letter
of recommendation to us from highly esteemed and responsible correspondents. I
am perfectly unacquainted with the gentleman's object in coming here at present.
I am entirely ignorant of it, and cannot be supposed likely to be able to form
the remotest guess at its nature;' her habitual frown became stronger, as she
very slowly and weightily emphasised those words; 'but, when the gentleman
proceeds to explain his object, as I shall beg him to have the goodness to do to
myself and Flintwinch, when Flintwinch returns, it will prove, no doubt, to be
one more or less in the usual way of our business, which it will be both our
business and our pleasure to advance. It can be nothing else.'
'We shall see, madame!' said the man of business.
'We shall see,' she assented. 'The gentleman is acquainted with Flintwinch;
and when the gentleman was in London last, I remember to have heard that he and
Flintwinch had some entertainment or good-fellowship together. I am not in the
way of knowing much that passes outside this room, and the jingle of little
worldly things beyond it does not much interest me; but I remember to have heard
that.'
'Right, madame. It is true.' He laughed again, and whistled the burden of the
tune he had sung at the door.
'Therefore, Arthur,' said his mother, 'the gentleman comes here as an
acquaintance, and no stranger; and it is much to be regretted that your
unreasonable temper should have found offence in him. I regret it. I say so to
the gentleman. You will not say so, I know; therefore I say it for myself and
Flintwinch, since with us two the gentleman's business lies.'
The key of the door below was now heard in the lock, and the door was heard
to open and close. In due sequence Mr Flintwinch appeared; on whose entrance the
visitor rose from his chair, laughing loud, and folded him in a close embrace.
'How goes it, my cherished friend!' said he. 'How goes the world, my
Flintwinch? Rose-coloured? So much the better, so much the better! Ah, but you
look charming! Ah, but you look young and fresh as the flowers of Spring! Ah,
good little boy! Brave child, brave child!'
While heaping these compliments on Mr Flintwinch, he rolled him about with a
hand on each of his shoulders, until the staggerings of that gentleman, who
under the circumstances was dryer and more twisted than ever, were like those of
a teetotum nearly spent.
'I had a presentiment, last time, that we should be better and more
intimately acquainted. Is it coming on you, Flintwinch? Is it yet coming on?'
'Why, no, sir,' retorted Mr Flintwinch. 'Not unusually. Hadn't you better be
seated? You have been calling for some more of that port, sir, I guess?'
'Ah, Little joker! Little pig!' cried the visitor. 'Ha ha ha ha!' And
throwing Mr Flintwinch away, as a closing piece of raillery, he sat down again.
The amazement, suspicion, resentment, and shame, with which Arthur looked on
at all this, struck him dumb. Mr Flintwinch, who had spun backward some two or
three yards under the impetus last given to him, brought himself up with a face
completely unchanged in its stolidity except as it was affected by shortness of
breath, and looked hard at Arthur. Not a whit less reticent and wooden was Mr
Flintwinch outwardly, than in the usual course of things: the only perceptible
difference in him being that the knot of cravat which was generally under his
ear, had worked round to the back of his head: where it formed an ornamental
appendage not unlike a bagwig, and gave him something of a courtly appearance.
As Mrs Clennam never removed her eyes from Blandois (on whom they had some
effect, as a steady look has on a lower sort of dog), so Jeremiah never removed
his from Arthur. It was as if they had tacitly agreed to take their different
provinces. Thus, in the ensuing silence, Jeremiah stood scraping his chin and
looking at Arthur as though he were trying to screw his thoughts out of him with
an instrument.
After a little, the visitor, as if he felt the silence irksome, rose, and
impatiently put himself with his back to the sacred fire which had burned
through so many years. Thereupon Mrs Clennam said, moving one of her hands for
the first time, and moving it very slightly with an action of dismissal:
'Please to leave us to our business, Arthur.' 'Mother, I do so with
reluctance.'
'Never mind with what,' she returned, 'or with what not. Please to leave us.
Come back at any other time when you may consider it a duty to bury half an hour
wearily here. Good night.'
She held up her muffled fingers that he might touch them with his, according
to their usual custom, and he stood over her wheeled chair to touch her face
with his lips. He thought, then, that her cheek was more strained than usual,
and that it was colder. As he followed the direction of her eyes, in rising
again, towards Mr Flintwinch's good friend, Mr Blandois, Mr Blandois snapped his
finger and thumb with one loud contemptuous snap.
'I leave your--your business acquaintance in my mother's room, Mr
Flintwinch,' said Clennam, 'with a great deal of surprise and a great deal of
unwillingness.'
The person referred to snapped his finger and thumb again.
'Good night, mother.'
'Good night.'
'I had a friend once, my good comrade Flintwinch,' said Blandois, standing
astride before the fire, and so evidently saying it to arrest Clennam's
retreating steps, that he lingered near the door; 'I had a friend once, who had
heard so much of the dark side of this city and its ways, that he wouldn't have
confided himself alone by night with two people who had an interest in getting
him under the ground--my faith! not even in a respectable house like
this--unless he was bodily too strong for them. Bah! What a poltroon, my
Flintwinch! Eh?'
'A cur, sir.'
'Agreed! A cur. But he wouldn't have done it, my Flintwinch, unless he had
known them to have the will to silence him, without the power. He wouldn't have
drunk from a glass of water under such circumstances--not even in a respectable
house like this, my Flintwinch--unless he had seen one of them drink first, and
swallow too!'
Disdaining to speak, and indeed not very well able, for he was half-choking,
Clennam only glanced at the visitor as he passed out.
The visitor saluted him with another parting snap, and his nose came down
over his moustache and his moustache went up under his nose, in an ominous and
ugly smile.
'For Heaven's sake, Affery,' whispered Clennam, as she opened the door for
him in the dark hall, and he groped his way to the sight of the night-sky, 'what
is going on here?'
Her own appearance was sufficiently ghastly, standing in the dark with her
apron thrown over her head, and speaking behind it in a low, deadened voice.
'Don't ask me anything, Arthur. I've been in a dream for ever so long. Go
away!'
He went out, and she shut the door upon him. He looked up at the windows of
his mother's room, and the dim light, deadened by the yellow blinds, seemed to
say a response after Affery, and to mutter, 'Don't ask me anything. Go away!'
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