Chapter 30: The Word of a Gentleman

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

When Mr and Mrs Flintwinch panted up to the door of the old house
in the twilight, Jeremiah within a second of Affery, the stranger
started back. 'Death of my soul!' he exclaimed. 'Why, how did you
get here?'

Mr Flintwinch, to whom these words were spoken, repaid the
stranger's wonder in full. He gazed at him with blank astonishment;
he looked over his own shoulder, as expecting to see some one he had
not been aware of standing behind him; he gazed at the stranger
again, speechlessly, at a loss to know what he meant; he looked to
his wife for explanation; receiving none, he pounced upon her, and
shook her with such heartiness that he shook her cap off her head,
saying between his teeth, with grim raillery, as he did it, 'Affery,
my woman, you must have a dose, my woman! This is some of your
tricks! You have been dreaming again, mistress. What's it about?
Who is it? What does it mean! Speak out or be choked! It's the
only choice I'll give you.'

Supposing Mistress Affery to have any power of election at the
moment, her choice was decidedly to be choked; for she answered not a
syllable to this adjuration, but, with her bare head wagging
violently backwards and forwards, resigned herself to her punishment.
The stranger, however, picking up her cap with an air of gallantry,
interposed.

'Permit me,' said he, laying his hand on the shoulder of
Jeremiah, who stopped and released his victim. 'Thank you. Excuse
me. Husband and wife I know, from this playfulness. Haha! Always
agreeable to see that relation playfully maintained. Listen! May I
suggest that somebody up-stairs, in the dark, is becoming
energetically curious to know what is going on here?'

This reference to Mrs Clennam's voice reminded Mr Flintwinch to
step into the hall and call up the staircase. 'It's all right, I am
here, Affery is coming with your light.' Then he said to the latter
flustered woman, who was putting her cap on, 'Get out with you, and
get up-stairs!' and then turned to the stranger and said to him,
'Now, sir, what might you please to want?'

'I am afraid,' said the stranger, 'I must be so troublesome as
to propose a candle.'

'True,' assented Jeremiah. 'I was going to do so. Please to
stand where you are while I get one.'

The visitor was standing in the doorway, but turned a little
into the gloom of the house as Mr Flintwinch turned, and pursued him
with his eyes into the little room, where he groped about for a
phosphorus box. When he found it, it was damp, or otherwise out of
order; and match after match that he struck into it lighted
sufficiently to throw a dull glare about his groping face, and to
sprinkle his hands with pale little spots of fire, but not
sufficiently to light the candle. The stranger, taking advantage of
this fitful illumination of his visage, looked intently and
wonderingly at him. Jeremiah, when he at last lighted the candle,
knew he had been doing this, by seeing the last shade of a lowering
watchfulness clear away from his face, as it broke into the doubtful
smile that was a large ingredient in its expression.

'Be so good,' said Jeremiah, closing the house door, and taking
a pretty sharp survey of the smiling visitor in his turn, 'as to step
into my counting-house.-- It's all right, I tell you!' petulantly
breaking off to answer the voice up-stairs, still unsatisfied, though
Affery was there, speaking in persuasive tones. 'Don't I tell you
it's all right? Preserve the woman, has she no reason at all in
her!'

'Timorous,' remarked the stranger.

'Timorous?' said Mr Flintwinch, turning his head to retort, as
he went before with the candle. 'More courageous than ninety men in
a hundred, sir, let me tell you.'

'Though an invalid?'

'Many years an invalid. Mrs Clennam. The only one of that name
left in the House now. My partner.' Saying something apologetically
as he crossed the hall, to the effect that at that time of night they
were not in the habit of receiving any one, and were always shut up,
Mr Flintwinch led the way into his own office, which presented a
sufficiently business- like appearance. Here he put the light on his
desk, and said to the stranger, with his wryest twist upon him, 'Your
commands.'

'My name is Blandois.'

'Blandois. I don't know it,' said Jeremiah.

'I thought it possible,' resumed the other, 'that you might have
been advised from Paris--'

'We have had no advice from Paris respecting anybody of the name
of Blandois,' said Jeremiah.

'No?'

'No.'

Jeremiah stood in his favourite attitude. The smiling Mr
Blandois, opening his cloak to get his hand to a breast-pocket,
paused to say, with a laugh in his glittering eyes, which it occurred
to Mr Flintwinch were too near together:

'You are so like a friend of mine! Not so identically the same
as I supposed when I really did for the moment take you to be the
same in the dusk--for which I ought to apologise; permit me to do so;
a readiness to confess my errors is, I hope, a part of the frankness
of my character--still, however, uncommonly like.'

'Indeed?' said Jeremiah, perversely. 'But I have not received
any letter of advice from anywhere respecting anybody of the name of
Blandois.'

'Just so,' said the stranger.

'Just so,' said Jeremiah.

Mr Blandois, not at all put out by this omission on the part of
the correspondents of the house of Clennam and Co., took his pocket-
book from his breast-pocket, selected a letter from that receptacle,
and handed it to Mr Flintwinch. 'No doubt you are well acquainted
with the writing. Perhaps the letter speaks for itself, and requires
no advice. You are a far more competent judge of such affairs than I
am. It is my misfortune to be, not so much a man of business, as
what the world calls (arbitrarily) a gentleman.'

Mr Flintwinch took the letter, and read, under date of Paris,
'We have to present to you, on behalf of a highly esteemed
correspondent of our Firm, M. Blandois, of this city,' &c.
&c. 'Such facilities as he may require and such attentions as
may lie in your power,' &c. &c. 'Also have to add that if
you will honour M. Blandois' drafts at sight to the extent of, say
Fifty Pounds sterling (l50),' &c. &c.

'Very good, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Take a chair. To the
extent of anything that our House can do--we are in a retired, old-
fashioned, steady way of business, sir--we shall be happy to render
you our best assistance. I observe, from the date of this, that we
could not yet be advised of it. Probably you came over with the
delayed mail that brings the advice.'

'That I came over with the delayed mail, sir,' returned Mr
Blandois, passing his white hand down his high-hooked nose, 'I know
to the cost of my head and stomach: the detestable and intolerable
weather having racked them both. You see me in the plight in which I
came out of the packet within this half-hour. I ought to have been
here hours ago, and then I should not have to apologise-- permit me
to apologise--for presenting myself so unreasonably, and
frightening--no, by-the-bye, you said not frightening; permit me to
apologise again--the esteemed lady, Mrs Clennam, in her invalid
chamber above stairs.'

Swagger and an air of authorised condescension do so much, that
Mr Flintwinch had already begun to think this a highly gentlemanly
personage. Not the less unyielding with him on that account, he
scraped his chin and said, what could he have the honour of doing for
Mr Blandois to-night, out of business hours?

'Faith!' returned that gentleman, shrugging his cloaked
shoulders, 'I must change, and eat and drink, and be lodged
somewhere. Have the kindness to advise me, a total stranger, where,
and money is a matter of perfect indifference until to-morrow. The
nearer the place, the better. Next door, if that's all.'

Mr Flintwinch was slowly beginning, 'For a gentleman of your
habits, there is not in this immediate neighbourhood any hotel--'
when Mr Blandois took him up.

'So much for my habits! my dear sir,' snapping his fingers. 'A
citizen of the world has no habits. That I am, in my poor way, a
gentleman, by Heaven! I will not deny, but I have no unaccommodating
prejudiced habits. A clean room, a hot dish for dinner, and a bottle
of not absolutely poisonous wine, are all I want tonight. But I want
that much without the trouble of going one unnecessary inch to get
it.'

'There is,' said Mr Flintwinch, with more than his usual
deliberation, as he met, for a moment, Mr Blandois' shining eyes,
which were restless; 'there is a coffee-house and tavern close here,
which, so far, I can recommend; but there's no style about it.'

'I dispense with style!' said Mr Blandois, waving his hand. 'Do
me the honour to show me the house, and introduce me there (if I am
not too troublesome), and I shall be infinitely obliged.' Mr
Flintwinch, upon this, looked up his hat, and lighted Mr Blandois
across the hall again. As he put the candle on a bracket, where the
dark old panelling almost served as an extinguisher for it, he
bethought himself of going up to tell the invalid that he would not
be absent five minutes. 'Oblige me,' said the visitor, on his saying
so, 'by presenting my card of visit. Do me the favour to add that I
shall be happy to wait on Mrs Clennam, to offer my personal
compliments, and to apologise for having occasioned any agitation in
this tranquil corner, if it should suit her convenience to endure the
presence of a stranger for a few minutes, after he shall have changed
his wet clothes and fortified himself with something to eat and
drink.'

Jeremiah made all despatch, and said, on his return, 'She'll be
glad to see you, sir; but, being conscious that her sick room has no
attractions, wishes me to say that she won't hold you to your offer,
in case you should think better of it.'

'To think better of it,' returned the gallant Blandois, 'would
be to slight a lady; to slight a lady would be to be deficient in
chivalry towards the sex; and chivalry towards the sex is a part of
my character!' Thus expressing himself, he threw the draggled skirt
of his cloak over his shoulder, and accompanied Mr Flintwinch to the
tavern; taking up on the road a porter who was waiting with his
portmanteau on the outer side of the gateway.

The house was kept in a homely manner, and the condescension of
Mr Blandois was infinite. It seemed to fill to inconvenience the
little bar in which the widow landlady and her two daughters received
him; it was much too big for the narrow wainscoted room with a
bagatelle-board in it, that was first proposed for his reception; it
perfectly swamped the little private holiday sitting- room of the
family, which was finally given up to him. Here, in dry clothes and
scented linen, with sleeked hair, a great ring on each forefinger and
a massive show of watch-chain, Mr Blandois waiting for his dinner,
lolling on a window-seat with his knees drawn up, looked (for all the
difference in the setting of the jewel) fearfully and wonderfully
like a certain Monsieur Rigaud who had once so waited for his
breakfast, lying on the stone ledge of the iron grating of a cell in
a villainous dungeon at Marseilles.

His greed at dinner, too, was closely in keeping with the greed
of Monsieur Rigaud at breakfast. His avaricious manner of collecting
all the eatables about him, and devouring some with his eyes while
devouring others with his jaws, was the same manner. His utter
disregard of other people, as shown in his way of tossing the little
womanly toys of furniture about, flinging favourite cushions under
his boots for a softer rest, and crushing delicate coverings with his
big body and his great black head, had the same brute selfishness at
the bottom of it. The softly moving hands that were so busy among
the dishes had the old wicked facility of the hands that had clung to
the bars. And when he could eat no more, and sat sucking his
delicate fingers one by one and wiping them on a cloth, there wanted
nothing but the substitution of vine-leaves to finish the picture.

On this man, with his moustache going up and his nose coming
down in that most evil of smiles, and with his surface eyes looking
as if they belonged to his dyed hair, and had had their natural power
of reflecting light stopped by some similar process, Nature, always
true, and never working in vain, had set the mark, Beware! It was
not her fault, if the warning were fruitless. She is never to blame
in any such instance.

Mr Blandois, having finished his repast and cleaned his fingers,
took a cigar from his pocket, and, lying on the window-seat again,
smoked it out at his leisure, occasionally apostrophising the smoke
as it parted from his thin lips in a thin stream:

'Blandois, you shall turn the tables on society, my little
child. Haha! Holy blue, you have begun well, Blandois! At a pinch,
an excellent master in English or French; a man for the bosom of
families! You have a quick perception, you have humour, you have
ease, you have insinuating manners, you have a good appearance; in
effect, you are a gentleman! A gentleman you shall live, my small
boy, and a gentleman you shall die. You shall win, however the game
goes. They shall all confess your merit, Blandois. You shall subdue
the society which has grievously wronged you, to your own high
spirit. Death of my soul! You are high spirited by right and by
nature, my Blandois!'

To such soothing murmurs did this gentleman smoke out his cigar
and drink out his bottle of wine. Both being finished, he shook
himself into a sitting attitude; and with the concluding serious
apostrophe, 'Hold, then! Blandois, you ingenious one, have all your
wits about you!' arose and went back to the house of Clennam and
Co.

He was received at the door by Mistress Affery, who, under
instructions from her lord, had lighted up two candles in the hall
and a third on the staircase, and who conducted him to Mrs Clennam's
room. Tea was prepared there, and such little company arrangements
had been made as usually attended the reception of expected visitors.
They were slight on the greatest occasion, never extending beyond
the production of the China tea-service, and the covering of the bed
with a sober and sad drapery. For the rest, there was the bier-like
sofa with the block upon it, and the figure in the widow's dress, as
if 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 tea- pot
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 tea-pot 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 cyphers!'
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 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 tea-cup, 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, every one, 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 thanked her, and kissed his hand several times.
'This is an old room,' he remarked, with a sudden sprightliness of
manner, looking round when he got near the door, 'I have been so
interested that I have not observed it. But it's a genuine old
room.'

'It is a genuine old house,' said Mrs Clennam, with her frozen
smile. 'A place of no pretensions, but a piece of antiquity.'

'Faith!' cried the visitor. 'If Mr Flintwinch would do me the
favour to take me through the rooms on my way out, he could hardly
oblige me more. An old house is a weakness with me. I have many
weaknesses, but none greater. I love and study the picturesque in
all its varieties. I have been called picturesque myself. It is no
merit to be picturesque--I have greater merits, perhaps--but I may
be, by an accident. Sympathy, sympathy!'

'I tell you beforehand, Mr Blandois, that you'll find it very
dingy and very bare,' said Jeremiah, taking up the candle. 'It's not
worth your looking at.'But Mr Blandois, smiting him in a friendly
manner on the back, only laughed; so the said Blandois kissed his
hand again to Mrs Clennam, and they went out of the room together.

'You don't care to go up-stairs?' said Jeremiah, on the landing.
'On the contrary, Mr Flintwinch; if not tiresome to you, I shall be
ravished!'

Mr Flintwinch, therefore, wormed himself up the staircase, and
Mr Blandois followed close. They ascended to the great garret bed-
room which Arthur had occupied on the night of his return. 'There,
Mr Blandois!' said Jeremiah, showing it, 'I hope you may think that
worth coming so high to see. I confess I don't.'

Mr Blandois being enraptured, they walked through other garrets
and passages, and came down the staircase again. By this time Mr
Flintwinch had remarked that he never found the visitor looking at
any room, after throwing one quick glance around, but always found
the visitor looking at him, Mr Flintwinch. With this discovery in
his thoughts, he turned about on the staircase for another
experiment. He met his eyes directly; and on the instant of their
fixing one another, the visitor, with that ugly play of nose and
moustache, laughed (as he had done at every similar moment since they
left Mrs Clennam's chamber) a diabolically silent laugh.

As a much shorter man than the visitor, Mr Flintwinch was at the
physical disadvantage of being thus disagreeably leered at from a
height; and as he went first down the staircase, and was usually a
step or two lower than the other, this disadvantage was at the time
increased. He postponed looking at Mr Blandois again until this
accidental inequality was removed by their having entered the late Mr
Clennam's room. But, then twisting himself suddenly round upon him,
he found his look unchanged.

'A most admirable old house,' smiled Mr Blandois. 'So
mysterious. Do you never hear any haunted noises here?'

'Noises,' returned Mr Flintwinch. 'No.'

'Nor see any devils?'

'Not,' said Mr Flintwinch, grimly screwing himself at his
questioner, 'not any that introduce themselves under that name and in
that capacity.'

'Haha! A portrait here, I see.'

(Still looking at Mr Flintwinch, as if he were the portrait.)

'It's a portrait, sir, as you observe.'

'May I ask the subject, Mr Flintwinch?'

'Mr Clennam, deceased. Her husband.' 'Former owner of the
remarkable watch, perhaps?' said the visitor.

Mr Flintwinch, who had cast his eyes towards the portrait,
twisted himself about again, and again found himself the subject of
the same look and smile. 'Yes, Mr Blandois,' he replied tartly. 'It
was his, and his uncle's before him, and Lord knows who before him;
and that's all I can tell you of its pedigree.'

'That's a strongly marked character, Mr Flintwinch, our friend
up- stairs.'

'Yes, sir,' said Jeremiah, twisting himself at the visitor
again, as he did during the whole of this dialogue, like some screw-
machine that fell short of its grip; for the other never changed, and
he always felt obliged to retreat a little. 'She is a remarkable
woman. Great fortitude--great strength of mind.'

'They must have been very happy,' said Blandois.

'Who?' demanded Mr Flintwinch, with another screw at him.

Mr Blandois shook his right forefinger towards the sick room,
and his left forefinger towards the portrait, and then, putting his
arms akimbo and striding his legs wide apart, stood smiling down at
Mr Flintwinch with the advancing nose and the retreating
moustache.

'As happy as most other married people, I suppose,' returned Mr
Flintwinch. 'I can't say. I don't know. There are secrets in all
families.'

'Secrets!' cried Mr Blandois, quickly. 'Say it again, my
son.'

'I say,' replied Mr Flintwinch, upon whom he had swelled himself
so suddenly that Mr Flintwinch found his face almost brushed by the
dilated chest. 'I say there are secrets in all families.'

'So there are,' cried the other, clapping him on both shoulders,
and rolling him backwards and forwards. 'Haha! you are right. So
there are! Secrets! Holy Blue! There are the devil's own secrets
in some families, Mr Flintwinch!' With that, after clapping Mr
Flintwinch on both shoulders several times, as if in a friendly and
humorous way he were rallying him on a joke he had made, he threw up
his arms, threw back his head, hooked his hands together behind it,
and burst into a roar of laughter. It was in vain for Mr Flintwinch
to try another screw at him. He had his laugh out.

'But, favour me with the candle a moment,' he said, when he had
done. 'Let us have a look at the husband of the remarkable lady.
Hah!' holding up the light at arm's length. 'A decided expression of
face here too, though not of the same character. Looks as if he were
saying, what is it--Do Not Forget--does he not, Mr Flintwinch?

By Heaven, sir, he does!'

As he returned the candle, he looked at him once more; and then,
leisurely strolling out with him into the hall, declared it to be a
charming old house indeed, and one which had so greatly pleased him
that he would not have missed inspecting it for a hundred pounds.
Throughout these singular freedoms on the part of Mr Blandois, which
involved a general alteration in his demeanour, making it much
coarser and rougher, much more violent and audacious than before, Mr
Flintwinch, whose leathern face was not liable to many changes,
preserved its immobility intact. Beyond now appearing perhaps, to
have been left hanging a trifle too long before that friendly
operation of cutting down, he outwardly maintained an equable
composure. They had brought their survey to a close in the little
room at the side of the hall, and he stood there, eyeing Mr
Blandois.

'I am glad you are so well satisfied, sir,' was his calm remark.
'I didn't expect it. You seem to be quite in good spirits.'

'In admirable spirits,' returned Blandois. 'Word of honour!
never more refreshed in spirits. Do you ever have presentiments, Mr
Flintwinch?'

'I am not sure that I know what you mean by the term, sir,'
replied that gentleman.

'Say, in this case, Mr Flintwinch, undefined anticipations of
pleasure to come.'

'I can't say I'm sensible of such a sensation at present,'
returned Mr Flintwinch with the utmost gravity. 'If I should find it
coming on, I'll mention it.'

'Now I,' said Blandois, 'I, my son, have a presentiment to-night
that we shall be well acquainted. Do you find it coming on?'

'N-no,' returned Mr Flintwinch, deliberately inquiring of
himself. 'I can't say I do.'

'I have a strong presentiment that we shall become intimately
acquainted.--You have no feeling of that sort yet?'

'Not yet,' said Mr Flintwinch.

Mr Blandois, taking him by both shoulders again, rolled him
about a little in his former merry way, then drew his arm through his
own, and invited him to come off and drink a bottle of wine like a
dear deep old dog as he was.

Without a moment's indecision, Mr Flintwinch accepted the
invitation, and they went out to the quarters where the traveller was
lodged, through a heavy rain which had rattled on the windows, roofs,
and pavements, ever since nightfall. The thunder and lightning had
long ago passed over, but the rain was furious. On their arrival at
Mr Blandois' room, a bottle of port wine was ordered by that gallant
gentleman; who (crushing every pretty thing he could collect, in the
soft disposition of his dainty figure) coiled himself upon the
window-seat, while Mr Flintwinch took a chair opposite to him, with
the table between them. Mr Blandois proposed having the largest
glasses in the house, to which Mr Flintwinch assented. The bumpers
filled, Mr Blandois, with a roystering gaiety, clinked the top of his
glass against the bottom of Mr Flintwinch's, and the bottom of his
glass against the top of Mr Flintwinch's, and drank to the intimate
acquaintance he foresaw.

Mr Flintwinch gravely pledged him, and drank all the wine he
could get, and said nothing. As often as Mr Blandois clinked glasses
(which was at every replenishment), Mr Flintwinch stolidly did his
part of the clinking, and would have stolidly done his companion's
part of the wine as well as his own: being, except in the article of
palate, a mere cask.

In short, Mr Blandois found that to pour port wine into the
reticent Flintwinch was, not to open him but to shut him up.
Moreover, he had the appearance of a perfect ability to go on all
night; or, if occasion were, all next day and all next night; whereas
Mr Blandois soon grew indistinctly conscious of swaggering too
fiercely and boastfully. He therefore terminated the entertainment
at the end of the third bottle.

'You will draw upon us to-morrow, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch, with
a business-like face at parting.

'My Cabbage,' returned the other, taking him by the collar with
both hands, 'I'll draw upon you; have no fear. Adieu, my Flintwinch.
Receive at parting;' here he gave him a southern embrace, and kissed
him soundly on both cheeks; 'the word of a gentleman! By a thousand
Thunders, you shall see me again!'

He did not present himself next day, though the letter of advice
came duly to hand. Inquiring after him at night, Mr Flintwinch
found, with surprise, that he had paid his bill and gone back to the
Continent by way of Calais. Nevertheless, Jeremiah scraped out of
his cogitating face a lively conviction that Mr Blandois would keep
his word on this occasion, and would be seen again.