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

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 teapot 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 teapot 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 ciphers!” 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