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

perhaps was glad to encourage it (for, if the world were really a great Law Court, one would think that the last day of Term could not too soon arrive); and so he liked and respected Physician quite as much as any other kind of man did.

Mr. Merdle’s default left a Banquo’s chair at the table; but, if he had been there, he would have merely made the difference of Banquo in it, and consequently he was no loss. Bar, who picked up all sorts of odds and ends about Westminster Hall, much as a raven would have done if he had passed as much of his time there, had been picking up a great many straws lately and tossing them about, to try which way the Merdle wind blew. He now had a little talk on the subject with Mrs. Merdle herself; sidling up to that lady, of course, with his double eyeglass and his jury droop.

“A certain bird,” said Bar; and he looked as if it could have been no other bird than a magpie; “has been whispering among us lawyers lately, that there is to be an addition to the titled personages of this realm.”

“Really?” said Mrs. Merdle.

“Yes,” said Bar. “Has not the bird been whispering in very different ears from ours⁠—in lovely ears?” He looked expressively at Mrs. Merdle’s nearest earring.

“Do you mean mine?” asked Mrs. Merdle.

“When I say lovely,” said Bar, “I always mean you.”

“You never mean anything, I think,” returned Mrs. Merdle (not displeased).

“Oh, cruelly unjust!” said Bar. “But, the bird.”

“I am the last person in the world to hear news,” observed Mrs. Merdle, carelessly arranging her stronghold. “Who is it?”

“What an admirable witness you would make!” said Bar. “No jury (unless we could empanel one of blind men) could resist you, if you were ever so bad a one; but you would be such a good one!”

“Why, you ridiculous man?” asked Mrs. Merdle, laughing.

Bar waved his double eyeglass three or four times between himself and the Bosom, as a rallying answer, and inquired in his most insinuating accents:

“What am I to call the most elegant, accomplished and charming of women, a few weeks, or it may be a few days, hence?”

“Didn’t your bird tell you what to call her?” answered Mrs. Merdle. “Do ask it tomorrow, and tell me the next time you see me what it says.”

This led to further passages of similar pleasantry between the two; but Bar, with all his sharpness, got nothing out of them. Physician, on the other hand, taking Mrs. Merdle down to her carriage and attending on her as she put on her cloak, inquired into the symptoms with his usual calm directness.

“May I ask,” he said, “is this true about Merdle?”

“My dear doctor,” she returned, “you ask me the very question that I was half disposed to ask you.”

“To ask me! Why me?”

“Upon my honour, I think Mr. Merdle reposes greater confidence in you than in anyone.”

“On the contrary, he tells me absolutely nothing, even professionally. You have heard the talk, of course?”

“Of course I have. But you know what Mr. Merdle is; you know how taciturn and reserved he is. I assure you I have no idea what foundation for it there may be. I should like it to be true; why should I deny that to you? You would know better, if I did!”

“Just so,” said Physician.

“But whether it is all true, or partly true, or entirely false, I am wholly unable to say. It is a most provoking situation, a most absurd situation; but you know Mr. Merdle, and are not surprised.”

Physician was not surprised, handed her into her carriage, and bade her Good Night. He stood for a moment at his own hall door, looking sedately at the elegant equipage as it rattled away. On his return upstairs, the rest of the guests soon dispersed, and he was left alone. Being a great reader of all kinds of literature (and never at all apologetic for that weakness), he sat down comfortably to read.

The clock upon his study table pointed to a few minutes short of twelve, when his attention was called to it by a ringing at the door bell. A man of plain habits, he had sent his servants to bed and must needs go down to open the door. He went down, and there found a man without hat or coat, whose shirt sleeves were rolled up tight to his shoulders. For a moment, he thought the man had been fighting: the rather, as he was much agitated and out of breath. A second look, however, showed him that the man was particularly clean, and not otherwise discomposed as to his dress than as it answered this description.

“I come from the warm-baths, sir, round in the neighbouring street.”

“And what is the matter at the warm-baths?”

“Would you please to come directly, sir. We found that, lying on the table.”

He put into the physician’s hand a scrap of paper. Physician looked at it, and read his own name and address written in pencil; nothing more. He looked closer at the writing, looked at the man, took his hat from its peg, put the key of his door in his pocket, and they hurried away together.

When they came to the warm-baths, all the other people belonging to that establishment were looking out for them at the door, and running up and down the passages. “Request everybody else to keep back, if you please,” said the physician aloud to the master; “and do you take me straight to the place, my friend,” to the messenger.

The messenger hurried before him, along a grove of little rooms, and turning into one at the end of the grove, looked round the door. Physician was close upon him, and looked round the door too.

There was a bath in that corner, from which the water had been hastily drained off. Lying in it, as in a grave or sarcophagus, with a hurried drapery of sheet and blanket thrown across it, was the body of a heavily-made man, with an obtuse head,