Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

at t’other end of the Yard,” said Mrs. Plornish, “he’ll peep out in the curiousest way! So that some of us thinks he’s peeping out towards where his own country is, and some of us thinks he’s looking for somebody he don’t want to see, and some of us don’t know what to think.”

Mr. Baptist seemed to have a general understanding of what she said; or perhaps his quickness caught and applied her slight action of peeping. In any case he closed his eyes and tossed his head with the air of a man who had sufficient reasons for what he did, and said in his own tongue, it didn’t matter. Altro!

“What’s Altro?” said Pancks.

“Hem! It’s a sort of a general kind of expression, sir,” said Mrs. Plornish.

“Is it?” said Pancks. “Why, then Altro to you, old chap. Good afternoon. Altro!”

Mr. Baptist in his vivacious way repeating the word several times, Mr. Pancks in his duller way gave it him back once. From that time it became a frequent custom with Pancks the gipsy, as he went home jaded at night, to pass round by Bleeding Heart Yard, go quietly up the stairs, look in at Mr. Baptist’s door, and, finding him in his room, to say, “Hallo, old chap! Altro!” To which Mr. Baptist would reply with innumerable bright nods and smiles, “Altro, signore, altro, altro, altro!” After this highly condensed conversation, Mr. Pancks would go his way with an appearance of being lightened and refreshed.

XXVI Nobody’s State of Mind

If Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to restrain himself from loving Pet, he would have lived on in a state of much perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own heart. Not the least of these would have been a contention, always waging within it, between a tendency to dislike Mr. Henry Gowan, if not to regard him with positive repugnance, and a whisper that the inclination was unworthy. A generous nature is not prone to strong aversions, and is slow to admit them even dispassionately; but when it finds ill-will gaining upon it, and can discern between-whiles that its origin is not dispassionate, such a nature becomes distressed.

Therefore Mr. Henry Gowan would have clouded Clennam’s mind, and would have been far oftener present to it than more agreeable persons and subjects but for the great prudence of his decision aforesaid. As it was, Mr. Gowan seemed transferred to Daniel Doyce’s mind; at all events, it so happened that it usually fell to Mr. Doyce’s turn, rather than to Clennam’s, to speak of him in the friendly conversations they held together. These were of frequent occurrence now; as the two partners shared a portion of a roomy house in one of the grave old-fashioned City streets, lying not far from the Bank of England, by London Wall.

Mr. Doyce had been to Twickenham to pass the day. Clennam had excused himself. Mr. Doyce was just come home. He put in his head at the door of Clennam’s sitting-room to say Good night.

“Come in, come in!” said Clennam.

“I saw you were reading,” returned Doyce, as he entered, “and thought you might not care to be disturbed.”

But for the notable resolution he had made, Clennam really might not have known what he had been reading; really might not have had his eyes upon the book for an hour past, though it lay open before him. He shut it up, rather quickly.

“Are they well?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Doyce; “they are well. They are all well.”

Daniel had an old workmanlike habit of carrying his pocket-handkerchief in his hat. He took it out and wiped his forehead with it, slowly repeating, “They are all well. Miss Minnie looking particularly well, I thought.”

“Any company at the cottage?”

“No, no company.”

“And how did you get on, you four?” asked Clennam gaily.

“There were five of us,” returned his partner. “There was What’s-his-name. He was there.”

“Who is he?” said Clennam.

“Mr. Henry Gowan.”

“Ah, to be sure!” cried Clennam with unusual vivacity, “Yes!⁠—I forgot him.”

“As I mentioned, you may remember,” said Daniel Doyce, “he is always there on Sunday.”

“Yes, yes,” returned Clennam; “I remember now.”

Daniel Doyce, still wiping his forehead, ploddingly repeated. “Yes. He was there, he was there. Oh yes, he was there. And his dog. He was there too.”

“Miss Meagles is quite attached to⁠—the⁠—dog,” observed Clennam.

“Quite so,” assented his partner. “More attached to the dog than I am to the man.”

“You mean Mr.⁠—?”

“I mean Mr. Gowan, most decidedly,” said Daniel Doyce.

There was a gap in the conversation, which Clennam devoted to winding up his watch.

“Perhaps you are a little hasty in your judgment,” he said. “Our judgments⁠—I am supposing a general case⁠—”

“Of course,” said Doyce.

“Are so liable to be influenced by many considerations, which, almost without our knowing it, are unfair, that it is necessary to keep a guard upon them. For instance, Mr.⁠—”

“Gowan,” quietly said Doyce, upon whom the utterance of the name almost always devolved.

“Is young and handsome, easy and quick, has talent, and has seen a good deal of various kinds of life. It might be difficult to give an unselfish reason for being prepossessed against him.”

“Not difficult for me, I think, Clennam,” returned his partner. “I see him bringing present anxiety, and, I fear, future sorrow, into my old friend’s house. I see him wearing deeper lines into my old friend’s face, the nearer he draws to, and the oftener he looks at, the face of his daughter. In short, I see him with a net about the pretty and affectionate creature whom he will never make happy.”

“We don’t know,” said Clennam, almost in the tone of a man in pain, “that he will not make her happy.”

“We don’t know,” returned his partner, “that the earth will last another hundred years, but we think it highly probable.”

“Well, well!” said Clennam, “we must be hopeful, and we must at least try to be, if not generous (which, in this case, we have no opportunity of being), just. We will not disparage this gentleman, because