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

have on now can prove it and sweetly made though there is no denying that it would tell better on a better figure for my own is much too fat though how to bring it down I know not, pray excuse me I am roving off again.”

Mr. Dorrit backed to his chair in a stony way, and seated himself, as Flora gave him a softening look and played with her parasol.

“The dear little thing,” said Flora, “having gone off perfectly limp and white and cold in my own house or at least papa’s for though not a freehold still a long lease at a peppercorn on the morning when Arthur⁠—foolish habit of our youthful days and Mr. Clennam far more adapted to existing circumstances particularly addressing a stranger and that stranger a gentleman in an elevated station⁠—communicated the glad tidings imparted by a person of name of Pancks emboldens me.”

At the mention of these two names, Mr. Dorrit frowned, stared, frowned again, hesitated with his fingers at his lips, as he had hesitated long ago, and said, “Do me the favour to⁠—ha⁠—state your pleasure, madam.”

“Mr. Dorrit,” said Flora, “you are very kind in giving me permission and highly natural it seems to me that you should be kind for though more stately I perceive a likeness filled out of course but a likeness still, the object of my intruding is my own without the slightest consultation with any human being and most decidedly not with Arthur⁠—pray excuse me Doyce and Clennam I don’t know what I am saying Mr. Clennam solus⁠—for to put that individual linked by a golden chain to a purple time when all was ethereal out of any anxiety would be worth to me the ransom of a monarch not that I have the least idea how much that would come to but using it as the total of all I have in the world and more.”

Mr. Dorrit, without greatly regarding the earnestness of these latter words, repeated, “State your pleasure, madam.”

“It’s not likely I well know,” said Flora, “but it’s possible and being possible when I had the gratification of reading in the papers that you had arrived from Italy and were going back I made up my mind to try it for you might come across him or hear something of him and if so what a blessing and relief to all!”

“Allow me to ask, madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, with his ideas in wild confusion, “to whom⁠—ha⁠—to whom,” he repeated it with a raised voice in mere desperation, “you at present allude?”

“To the foreigner from Italy who disappeared in the City as no doubt you have read in the papers equally with myself,” said Flora, “not referring to private sources by the name of Pancks from which one gathers what dreadfully ill-natured things some people are wicked enough to whisper most likely judging others by themselves and what the uneasiness and indignation of Arthur⁠—quite unable to overcome it Doyce and Clennam⁠—cannot fail to be.”

It happened, fortunately for the elucidation of any intelligible result, that Mr. Dorrit had heard or read nothing about the matter. This caused Mrs. Finching, with many apologies for being in great practical difficulties as to finding the way to her pocket among the stripes of her dress at length to produce a police handbill, setting forth that a foreign gentleman of the name of Blandois, last from Venice, had unaccountably disappeared on such a night in such a part of the city of London; that he was known to have entered such a house, at such an hour; that he was stated by the inmates of that house to have left it, about so many minutes before midnight; and that he had never been beheld since. This, with exact particulars of time and locality, and with a good detailed description of the foreign gentleman who had so mysteriously vanished, Mr. Dorrit read at large.

“Blandois!” said Mr. Dorrit. “Venice! And this description! I know this gentleman. He has been in my house. He is intimately acquainted with a gentleman of good family (but in indifferent circumstances), of whom I am a⁠—hum⁠—patron.”

“Then my humble and pressing entreaty is the more,” said Flora, “that in travelling back you will have the kindness to look for this foreign gentleman along all the roads and up and down all the turnings and to make inquiries for him at all the hotels and orange-trees and vineyards and volcanoes and places for he must be somewhere and why doesn’t he come forward and say he’s there and clear all parties up?”

“Pray, madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, referring to the handbill again, “who is Clennam and Co.? Ha. I see the name mentioned here, in connection with the occupation of the house which Monsieur Blandois was seen to enter: who is Clennam and Co.? Is it the individual of whom I had formerly⁠—hum⁠—some⁠—ha⁠—slight transitory knowledge, and to whom I believe you have referred? Is it⁠—ha⁠—that person?”

“It’s a very different person indeed,” replied Flora, “with no limbs and wheels instead and the grimmest of women though his mother.”

“Clennam and Co. a⁠—hum⁠—a mother!” exclaimed Mr. Dorrit.

“And an old man besides,” said Flora.

Mr. Dorrit looked as if he must immediately be driven out of his mind by this account. Neither was it rendered more favourable to sanity by Flora’s dashing into a rapid analysis of Mr. Flintwinch’s cravat, and describing him, without the lightest boundary line of separation between his identity and Mrs. Clennam’s, as a rusty screw in gaiters. Which compound of man and woman, no limbs, wheels, rusty screw, grimness, and gaiters, so completely stupefied Mr. Dorrit, that he was a spectacle to be pitied.

“But I would not detain you one moment longer,” said Flora, upon whom his condition wrought its effect, though she was quite unconscious of having produced it, “if you would have the goodness to give your promise as a gentleman that both in going back to Italy and in Italy too you would look for this Mr. Blandois high and low and if you found or heard of him make him come forward for the