Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [ereader iphone .txt] 📗

a footstep stopped at his door, and a hand tapped at it. He arose and opened it, and an agreeable voice accosted him with ‘How do you do, Mr Clennam? I hope I am not unwelcome in calling to see you.’

It was the sprightly young Barnacle, Ferdinand. He looked very good-natured and prepossessing, though overpoweringly gay and free, in contrast with the squalid prison.

‘You are surprised to see me, Mr Clennam,’ he said, taking the seat which Clennam offered him.

‘I must confess to being much surprised.’

‘Not disagreeably, I hope?’

‘By no means.’

‘Thank you. Frankly,’ said the engaging young Barnacle, ‘I have been excessively sorry to hear that you were under the necessity of a temporary retirement here, and I hope (of course as between two private gentlemen) that our place has had nothing to do with it?’

‘Your office?’

‘Our Circumlocution place.’

‘I cannot charge any part of my reverses upon that remarkable establishment.’

Upon my life,’ said the vivacious young Barnacle, ‘I am heartily glad to know it. It is quite a relief to me to hear you say it. I should have so exceedingly regretted our place having had anything to do with your difficulties.’

Clennam again assured him that he absolved it of the responsibility.

‘That’s right,’ said Ferdinand. ‘I am very happy to hear it. I was rather afraid in my own mind that we might have helped to floor you, because there is no doubt that it is our misfortune to do that kind of thing now and then. We don’t want to do it; but if men will be gravelled, why—we can’t help it.’

‘Without giving an unqualified assent to what you say,’ returned Arthur, gloomily, ‘I am much obliged to you for your interest in me.’

‘No, but really! Our place is,’ said the easy young Barnacle, ‘the most inoffensive place possible. You’ll say we are a humbug. I won’t say we are not; but all that sort of thing is intended to be, and must be. Don’t you see?’

‘I do not,’ said Clennam.

‘You don’t regard it from the right point of view. It is the point of view that is the essential thing. Regard our place from the point of view that we only ask you to leave us alone, and we are as capital a Department as you’ll find anywhere.’

‘Is your place there to be left alone?’ asked Clennam.

‘You exactly hit it,’ returned Ferdinand. ‘It is there with the express intention that everything shall be left alone. That is what it means. That is what it’s for. No doubt there’s a certain form to be kept up that it’s for something else, but it’s only a form. Why, good Heaven, we are nothing but forms! Think what a lot of our forms you have gone through. And you have never got any nearer to an end?’

‘Never,’ said Clennam.

‘Look at it from the right point of view, and there you have us— official and effectual. It’s like a limited game of cricket. A field of outsiders are always going in to bowl at the Public Service, and we block the balls.’

Clennam asked what became of the bowlers? The airy young Barnacle replied that they grew tired, got dead beat, got lamed, got their backs broken, died off, gave it up, went in for other games.

‘And this occasions me to congratulate myself again,’ he pursued, ‘on the circumstance that our place has had nothing to do with your temporary retirement. It very easily might have had a hand in it; because it is undeniable that we are sometimes a most unlucky place, in our effects upon people who will not leave us alone. Mr Clennam, I am quite unreserved with you. As between yourself and myself, I know I may be. I was so, when I first saw you making the mistake of not leaving us alone; because I perceived that you were inexperienced and sanguine, and had—I hope you’ll not object to my saying—some simplicity.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Some simplicity. Therefore I felt what a pity it was, and I went out of my way to hint to you (which really was not official, but I never am official when I can help it) something to the effect that if I were you, I wouldn’t bother myself. However, you did bother yourself, and you have since bothered yourself. Now, don’t do it any more.’

‘I am not likely to have the opportunity,’ said Clennam.

‘Oh yes, you are! You’ll leave here. Everybody leaves here. There are no ends of ways of leaving here. Now, don’t come back to us. That entreaty is the second object of my call. Pray, don’t come back to us. Upon my honour,’ said Ferdinand in a very friendly and confiding way, ‘I shall be greatly vexed if you don’t take warning by the past and keep away from us.’

‘And the invention?’ said Clennam.

‘My good fellow,’ returned Ferdinand, ‘if you’ll excuse the freedom of that form of address, nobody wants to know of the invention, and nobody cares twopence-halfpenny about it.’

‘Nobody in the Office, that is to say?’

‘Nor out of it. Everybody is ready to dislike and ridicule any invention. You have no idea how many people want to be left alone.

You have no idea how the Genius of the country (overlook the Parliamentary nature of the phrase, and don’t be bored by it) tends to being left alone. Believe me, Mr Clennam,’ said the sprightly young Barnacle in his pleasantest manner, ‘our place is not a wicked Giant to be charged at full tilt; but only a windmill showing you, as it grinds immense quantities of chaff, which way the country wind blows.’

‘If I could believe that,’ said Clennam, ‘it would be a dismal prospect for all of us.’

‘Oh! Don’t say so!’ returned Ferdinand. ‘It’s all right. We must have humbug, we all like humbug, we couldn’t get on without humbug.

A little humbug, and a groove, and everything goes on admirably, if you leave it alone.’

With this hopeful confession of his faith as the head of the rising Barnacles who were born of woman, to be followed under a variety of watchwords which they utterly repudiated and disbelieved, Ferdinand rose. Nothing could be more agreeable than his frank and courteous bearing, or adapted with a more gentlemanly instinct to the circumstances of his visit.

‘Is it fair to ask,’ he said, as Clennam gave him his hand with a real feeling of thankfulness for his candour and good-humour, ‘whether it is true that our late lamented Merdle is the cause of this passing inconvenience?’

‘I am one of the many he has ruined. Yes.’

‘He must have been an exceedingly clever fellow,’ said Ferdinand Barnacle.

Arthur, not being in the mood to extol the memory of the deceased, was silent.

‘A consummate rascal, of course,’ said Ferdinand, ‘but remarkably clever! One cannot help admiring the fellow. Must have been such a master of humbug. Knew people so well—got over them so completely—did so much with them!’ In his easy way, he was really moved to genuine admiration.

‘I hope,’ said Arthur, ‘that he and his dupes may be a warning to people not to have so much done with them again.’

‘My dear Mr Clennam,’ returned Ferdinand, laughing, ‘have you really such a verdant hope? The next man who has as large a capacity and as genuine a taste for swindling, will succeed as well. Pardon me, but I think you really have no idea how the human bees will swarm to the beating of any old tin kettle; in that fact lies the complete manual of governing them. When they can be got to believe that the kettle is made of the precious metals, in that fact lies the whole power of men like our late lamented. No doubt there are here and there,’ said Ferdinand politely, ‘exceptional cases, where people have been taken in for what appeared to them to be much better reasons; and I need not go far to find such a case; but they don’t invalidate the rule. Good day! I hope that when I have the pleasure of seeing you, next, this passing cloud will have given place to sunshine. Don’t come a step beyond the door. I know the way out perfectly. Good day!’

With those words, the best and brightest of the Barnacles went downstairs, hummed his way through the Lodge, mounted his horse in the front courtyard, and rode off to keep an appointment with his noble kinsman, who wanted a little coaching before he could triumphantly answer certain infidel Snobs who were going to question the Nobs about their statesmanship.

He must have passed Mr Rugg on his way out, for, a minute or two afterwards, that ruddy-headed gentleman shone in at the door, like an elderly Phoebus.

‘How do you do to-day, sir?’ said Mr Rugg. ‘Is there any little thing I can do for you to-day, sir?’

‘No, I thank you.’

Mr Rugg’s enjoyment of embarrassed affairs was like a housekeeper’s enjoyment in pickling and preserving, or a washerwoman’s enjoyment of a heavy wash, or a dustman’s enjoyment of an overflowing dust-bin, or any other professional enjoyment of a mess in the way of business.

‘I still look round, from time to time, sir,’ said Mr Rugg, cheerfully, ‘to see whether any lingering Detainers are accumulating at the gate. They have fallen in pretty thick, sir; as thick as we could have expected.’

He remarked upon the circumstance as if it were matter of congratulation: rubbing his hands briskly, and rolling his head a little.

‘As thick,’ repeated Mr Rugg, ‘as we could reasonably have expected. Quite a shower-bath of ‘em. I don’t often intrude upon you now, when I look round, because I know you are not inclined for company, and that if you wished to see me, you would leave word in the Lodge. But I am here pretty well every day, sir. Would this be an unseasonable time, sir,’ asked Mr Rugg, coaxingly, ‘for me to offer an observation?’

‘As seasonable a time as any other.’

‘Hum! Public opinion, sir,’ said Mr Rugg, ‘has been busy with you.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘Might it not be advisable, sir,’ said Mr Rugg, more coaxingly yet, ‘now to make, at last and after all, a trifling concession to public opinion? We all do it in one way or another. The fact is, we must do it.’

‘I cannot set myself right with it, Mr Rugg, and have no business to expect that I ever shall.’

‘Don’t say that, sir, don’t say that. The cost of being moved to the Bench is almost insignificant, and if the general feeling is strong that you ought to be there, why—really—’

‘I thought you had settled, Mr Rugg,’ said Arthur, ‘that my determination to remain here was a matter of taste.’

‘Well, sir, well! But is it good taste, is it good taste? That’s the Question.’ Mr Rugg was so soothingly persuasive as to be quite pathetic. ‘I was almost going to say, is it good feeling? This is an extensive affair of yours; and your remaining here where a man can come for a pound or two, is remarked upon as not in keeping. It is not in keeping. I can’t tell you, sir, in how many quarters I heard it mentioned. I heard comments made upon it last night in a Parlour frequented by what I should call, if I did not look in there now and then myself, the best legal company—I heard, there, comments on it that I was sorry to hear. They hurt me on your account. Again, only this morning at breakfast. My daughter (but a woman, you’ll say: yet still with a feeling for these things, and even with some little personal experience, as the plaintiff in Rugg and