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

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 teacup, 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, everyone, 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