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

are together to talk it over. And as to marrying Mr. Sparkler, I have not the slightest intention of doing so tonight, my dear, or tomorrow morning either.”

“But at some time?”

“At no time, for anything I know at present,” answered Fanny, with indifference. Then, suddenly changing her indifference into a burning restlessness, she added, “You talk about the clever men, you little thing! It’s all very fine and easy to talk about the clever men; but where are they? I don’t see them anywhere near me!”

“My dear Fanny, so short a time⁠—”

“Short time or long time,” interrupted Fanny. “I am impatient of our situation. I don’t like our situation, and very little would induce me to change it. Other girls, differently reared and differently circumstanced altogether, might wonder at what I say or may do. Let them. They are driven by their lives and characters; I am driven by mine.”

“Fanny, my dear Fanny, you know that you have qualities to make you the wife of one very superior to Mr. Sparkler.”

“Amy, my dear Amy,” retorted Fanny, parodying her words, “I know that I wish to have a more defined and distinct position, in which I can assert myself with greater effect against that insolent woman.”

“Would you therefore⁠—forgive my asking, Fanny⁠—therefore marry her son?”

“Why, perhaps,” said Fanny, with a triumphant smile. “There may be many less promising ways of arriving at an end than that, my dear. That piece of insolence may think, now, that it would be a great success to get her son off upon me, and shelve me. But, perhaps, she little thinks how I would retort upon her if I married her son. I would oppose her in everything, and compete with her. I would make it the business of my life.”

Fanny set down the bottle when she came to this, and walked about the room; always stopping and standing still while she spoke.

“One thing I could certainly do, my child: I could make her older. And I would!”

This was followed by another walk.

“I would talk of her as an old woman. I would pretend to know⁠—if I didn’t, but I should from her son⁠—all about her age. And she should hear me say, Amy: affectionately, quite dutifully and affectionately: how well she looked, considering her time of life. I could make her seem older at once, by being myself so much younger. I may not be as handsome as she is; I am not a fair judge of that question, I suppose; but I know I am handsome enough to be a thorn in her side. And I would be!”

“My dear sister, would you condemn yourself to an unhappy life for this?”

“It wouldn’t be an unhappy life, Amy. It would be the life I am fitted for. Whether by disposition, or whether by circumstances, is no matter; I am better fitted for such a life than for almost any other.”

There was something of a desolate tone in those words; but, with a short proud laugh she took another walk, and after passing a great looking-glass came to another stop.

“Figure! Figure, Amy! Well. The woman has a good figure. I will give her her due, and not deny it. But is it so far beyond all others that it is altogether unapproachable? Upon my word, I am not so sure of it. Give some much younger woman the latitude as to dress that she has, being married; and we would see about that, my dear!”

Something in the thought that was agreeable and flattering, brought her back to her seat in a gayer temper. She took her sister’s hands in hers, and clapped all four hands above her head as she looked in her sister’s face laughing:

“And the dancer, Amy, that she has quite forgotten⁠—the dancer who bore no sort of resemblance to me, and of whom I never remind her, oh dear no!⁠—should dance through her life, and dance in her way, to such a tune as would disturb her insolent placidity a little. Just a little, my dear Amy, just a little!”

Meeting an earnest and imploring look in Amy’s face, she brought the four hands down, and laid only one on Amy’s lips.

“Now, don’t argue with me, child,” she said in a sterner way, “because it is of no use. I understand these subjects much better than you do. I have not nearly made up my mind, but it may be. Now we have talked this over comfortably, and may go to bed. You best and dearest little mouse, Good night!” With those words Fanny weighed her Anchor, and⁠—having taken so much advice⁠—left off being advised for that occasion.

Thenceforward, Amy observed Mr. Sparkler’s treatment by his enslaver, with new reasons for attaching importance to all that passed between them. There were times when Fanny appeared quite unable to endure his mental feebleness, and when she became so sharply impatient of it that she would all but dismiss him for good. There were other times when she got on much better with him; when he amused her, and when her sense of superiority seemed to counterbalance that opposite side of the scale. If Mr. Sparkler had been other than the faithfullest and most submissive of swains, he was sufficiently hard pressed to have fled from the scene of his trials, and have set at least the whole distance from Rome to London between himself and his enchantress. But he had no greater will of his own than a boat has when it is towed by a steamship; and he followed his cruel mistress through rough and smooth, on equally strong compulsion.

Mrs. Merdle, during these passages, said little to Fanny, but said more about her. She was, as it were, forced to look at her through her eyeglass, and in general conversation to allow commendations of her beauty to be wrung from her by its irresistible demands. The defiant character it assumed when Fanny heard these extollings (as it generally happened that she did), was not expressive of concessions to the impartial bosom;