Chapter 6: Something Right Somewhere

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

To be in the halting state of Mr Henry Gowan; to have left one of
two powers in disgust; to want the necessary qualifications for
finding promotion with another, and to be loitering moodily about on
neutral ground, cursing both; is to be in a situation unwholesome for
the mind, which time is not likely to improve. The worst class of
sum worked in the every-day world is cyphered by the diseased
arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction as to the
merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as to their
own.

The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recompense in the
discontented boast of being disappointed, is a habit fraught with
degeneracy. A certain idle carelessness and recklessness of
consistency soon comes of it. To bring deserving things down by
setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and
there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game,
without growing the worse for it.

In his expressed opinions of all performances in the Art of
painting that were completely destitute of merit, Gowan was the most
liberal fellow on earth. He would declare such a man to have more
power in his little finger (provided he had none), than such another
had (provided he had much) in his whole mind and body. If the
objection were taken that the thing commended was trash, he would
reply, on behalf of his art, 'My good fellow, what do we all turn out
but trash? I turn out nothing else, and I make you a present of the
confession.'

To make a vaunt of being poor was another of the incidents of
his splenetic state, though this may have had the design in it of
showing that he ought to be rich; just as he would publicly laud and
decry the Barnacles, lest it should be forgotten that he belonged to
the family. Howbeit, these two subjects were very often on his lips;
and he managed them so well that he might have praised himself by the
month together, and not have made himself out half so important a man
as he did by his light disparagement of his claims on anybody's
consideration.

Out of this same airy talk of his, it always soon came to be
understood, wherever he and his wife went, that he had married
against the wishes of his exalted relations, and had had much ado to
prevail on them to countenance her. He never made the
representation, on the contrary seemed to laugh the idea to scorn;
but it did happen that, with all his pains to depreciate himself, he
was always in the superior position. From the days of their
honeymoon, Minnie Gowan felt sensible of being usually regarded as
the wife of a man who had made a descent in marrying her, but whose
chivalrous love for her had cancelled that inequality.

To Venice they had been accompanied by Monsieur Blandois of
Paris, and at Venice Monsieur Blandois of Paris was very much in the
society of Gowan. When they had first met this gallant gentleman at
Geneva, Gowan had been undecided whether to kick him or encourage
him; and had remained for about four-and-twenty hours, so troubled to
settle the point to his satisfaction, that he had thought of tossing
up a five-franc piece on the terms, 'Tails, kick; heads, encourage,'
and abiding by the voice of the oracle. It chanced, however, that
his wife expressed a dislike to the engaging Blandois, and that the
balance of feeling in the hotel was against him. Upon it, Gowan
resolved to encourage him.

Why this perversity, if it were not in a generous fit?--which it
was not. Why should Gowan, very much the superior of Blandois of
Paris, and very well able to pull that prepossessing gentleman to
pieces and find out the stuff he was made of, take up with such a
man? In the first place, he opposed the first separate wish he
observed in his wife, because her father had paid his debts and it
was desirable to take an early opportunity of asserting his
independence. In the second place, he opposed the prevalent feeling,
because with many capacities of being otherwise, he was an
ill-conditioned man. He found a pleasure in declaring that a
courtier with the refined manners of Blandois ought to rise to the
greatest distinction in any polished country. He found a pleasure in
setting up Blandois as the type of elegance, and making him a satire
upon others who piqued themselves on personal graces. He seriously
protested that the bow of Blandois was perfect, that the address of
Blandois was irresistible, and that the picturesque ease of Blandois
would be cheaply purchased (if it were not a gift, and unpurchasable)
for a hundred thousand francs. That exaggeration in the manner of
the man which has been noticed as appertaining to him and to every
such man, whatever his original breeding, as certainly as the sun
belongs to this system, was acceptable to Gowan as a caricature,
which he found it a humorous resource to have at hand for the
ridiculing of numbers of people who necessarily did more or less of
what Blandois overdid. Thus he had taken up with him; and thus,
negligently strengthening these inclinations with habit, and idly
deriving some amusement from his talk, he had glided into a way of
having him for a companion. This, though he supposed him to live by
his wits at play-tables and the like; though he suspected him to be a
coward, while he himself was daring and courageous; though he
thoroughly knew him to be disliked by Minnie; and though he cared so
little for him, after all, that if he had given her any tangible
personal cause to regard him with aversion, he would have had no
compunction whatever in flinging him out of the highest window in
Venice into the deepest water of the city.

Little Dorrit would have been glad to make her visit to Mrs
Gowan, alone; but as Fanny, who had not yet recovered from her
Uncle's protest, though it was four-and-twenty hours of age,
pressingly offered her company, the two sisters stepped together into
one of the gondolas under Mr Dorrit's window, and, with the courier
in attendance, were taken in high state to Mrs Gowan's lodging. In
truth, their state was rather too high for the lodging, which was, as
Fanny complained, 'fearfully out of the way,' and which took them
through a complexity of narrow streets of water, which the same lady
disparaged as 'mere ditches.'

The house, on a little desert island, looked as if it had broken
away from somewhere else, and had floated by chance into its present
anchorage in company with a vine almost as much in want of training
as the poor wretches who were lying under its leaves. The features
of the surrounding picture were, a church with hoarding and
scaffolding about it, which had been under suppositious repair so
long that the means of repair looked a hundred years old, and had
themselves fallen into decay; a quantity of washed linen, spread to
dry in the sun; a number of houses at odds with one another and
grotesquely out of the perpendicular, like rotten pre- Adamite
cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of mites; and a feverish
bewilderment of windows, with their lattice-blinds all hanging askew,
and something draggled and dirty dangling out of most of them.

On the first-floor of the house was a Bank--a surprising
experience for any gentleman of commercial pursuits bringing laws for
all mankind from a British city--where two spare clerks, like dried
dragoons, in green velvet caps adorned with golden tassels, stood,
bearded, behind a small counter in a small room, containing no other
visible objects than an empty iron-safe with the door open, a jug of
water, and a papering of garland of roses; but who, on lawful
requisition, by merely dipping their hands out of sight, could
produce exhaustless mounds of five-franc pieces. Below the Bank was
a suite of three or four rooms with barred windows, which had the
appearance of a jail for criminal rats. Above the Bank was Mrs
Gowan's residence.

Notwithstanding that its walls were blotched, as if missionary
maps were bursting out of them to impart geographical knowledge;
notwithstanding that its weird furniture was forlornly faded and
musty, and that the prevailing Venetian odour of bilge water and an
ebb tide on a weedy shore was very strong; the place was better
within, than it promised. The door was opened by a smiling man like
a reformed assassin--a temporary servant--who ushered them into the
room where Mrs Gowan sat, with the announcement that two beautiful
English ladies were come to see the mistress.

Mrs Gowan, who was engaged in needlework, put her work aside in
a covered basket, and rose, a little hurriedly. Miss Fanny was
excessively courteous to her, and said the usual nothings with the
skill of a veteran.

'Papa was extremely sorry,' proceeded Fanny, 'to be engaged
to-day (he is so much engaged here, our acquaintance being so
wretchedly large!); and particularly requested me to bring his card
for Mr Gowan. That I may be sure to acquit myself of a commission
which he impressed upon me at least a dozen times, allow me to
relieve my conscience by placing it on the table at once.'

Which she did with veteran ease.

'We have been,' said Fanny, 'charmed to understand that you know
the Merdles. We hope it may be another means of bringing us
together.'

'They are friends,' said Mrs Gowan, 'of Mr Gowan's family. I
have not yet had the pleasure of a personal introduction to Mrs
Merdle, but I suppose I shall be presented to her at Rome.'

'Indeed?' returned Fanny, with an appearance of amiably
quenching her own superiority. 'I think you'll like her.'

'You know her very well?'

'Why, you see,' said Fanny, with a frank action of her pretty
shoulders, 'in London one knows every one. We met her on our way
here, and, to say the truth, papa was at first rather cross with her
for taking one of the rooms that our people had ordered for us.

However, of course, that soon blew over, and we were all good
friends again.'

Although the visit had as yet given Little Dorrit no opportunity
of conversing with Mrs Gowan, there was a silent understanding
between them, which did as well. She looked at Mrs Gowan with keen
and unabated interest; the sound of her voice was thrilling to her;
nothing that was near her, or about her, or at all concerned her,
escaped Little Dorrit. She was quicker to perceive the slightest
matter here, than in any other case--but one.

'You have been quite well,' she now said, 'since that night?'

'Quite, my dear. And you?' 'Oh! I am always well,' said Little
Dorrit, timidly. 'I--yes, thank you.'

There was no reason for her faltering and breaking off, other
than that Mrs Gowan had touched her hand in speaking to her, and
their looks had met. Something thoughtfully apprehensive in the
large, soft eyes, had checked Little Dorrit in an instant.

'You don't know that you are a favourite of my husband's, and
that I am almost bound to be jealous of you?' said Mrs Gowan.

Little Dorrit, blushing, shook her head.

'He will tell you, if he tells you what he tells me, that you
are quieter and quicker of resource than any one he ever saw.'

'He speaks far too well of me,' said Little Dorrit.

'I doubt that; but I don't at all doubt that I must tell him you
are here. I should never be forgiven, if I were to let you--and Miss
Dorrit--go, without doing so. May I? You can excuse the disorder
and discomfort of a painter's studio?'

The inquiries were addressed to Miss Fanny, who graciously
replied that she would be beyond anything interested and enchanted.
Mrs Gowan went to a door, looked in beyond it, and came back. 'Do
Henry the favour to come in,' said she, 'I knew he would be
pleased!'

The first object that confronted Little Dorrit, entering first,
was Blandois of Paris in a great cloak and a furtive slouched hat,
standing on a throne platform in a corner, as he had stood on the
Great Saint Bernard, when the warning arms seemed to be all pointing
up at him. She recoiled from this figure, as it smiled at her.

'Don't be alarmed,' said Gowan, coming from his easel behind the
door. 'It's only Blandois. He is doing duty as a model to-day. I
am making a study of him. It saves me money to turn him to some use.
We poor painters have none to spare.'

Blandois of Paris pulled off his slouched hat, and saluted the
ladies without coming out of his corner.

'A thousand pardons!' said he. 'But the Professore here is so
inexorable with me, that I am afraid to stir.'

'Don't stir, then,' said Gowan coolly, as the sisters approached
the easel. 'Let the ladies at least see the original of the daub,
that they may know what it's meant for. There he stands, you see. A
bravo waiting for his prey, a distinguished noble waiting to save his
country, the common enemy waiting to do somebody a bad turn, an
angelic messenger waiting to do somebody a good turn--whatever you
think he looks most like!' 'Say, Professore Mio, a poor gentleman
waiting to do homage to elegance and beauty,' remarked Blandois.

'Or say, Cattivo Soggetto Mio,' returned Gowan, touching the
painted face with his brush in the part where the real face had
moved, 'a murderer after the fact. Show that white hand of yours,
Blandois. Put it outside the cloak. Keep it still.'

Blandois' hand was unsteady; but he laughed, and that would
naturally shake it.

'He was formerly in some scuffle with another murderer, or with
a victim, you observe,' said Gowan, putting in the markings of the
hand with a quick, impatient, unskilful touch, 'and these are the
tokens of it. Outside the cloak, man!--Corpo di San Marco, what are
you thinking of?'

Blandois of Paris shook with a laugh again, so that his hand
shook more; now he raised it to twist his moustache, which had a damp
appearance; and now he stood in the required position, with a little
new swagger.

His face was so directed in reference to the spot where Little
Dorrit stood by the easel, that throughout he looked at her. Once
attracted by his peculiar eyes, she could not remove her own, and
they had looked at each other all the time. She trembled now; Gowan,
feeling it, and supposing her to be alarmed by the large dog beside
him, whose head she caressed in her hand, and who had just uttered a
low growl, glanced at her to say, 'He won't hurt you, Miss
Dorrit.'

'I am not afraid of him,' she returned in the same breath; 'but
will you look at him?'

In a moment Gowan had thrown down his brush, and seized the dog
with both hands by the collar.

'Blandois! How can you be such a fool as to provoke him! By
Heaven, and the other place too, he'll tear you to bits! Lie
down!

Lion! Do you hear my voice, you rebel!

'The great dog, regardless of being half-choked by his collar,
was obdurately pulling with his dead weight against his master,
resolved to get across the room. He had been crouching for a spring
at the moment when his master caught him.

'Lion! Lion!' He was up on his hind legs, and it was a wrestle
between master and dog. 'Get back! Down, Lion! Get out of his
sight, Blandois! What devil have you conjured into the dog?'

'I have done nothing to him.'

'Get out of his sight or I can't hold the wild beast! Get out
of the room! By my soul, he'll kill you!'

The dog, with a ferocious bark, made one other struggle as
Blandois vanished; then, in the moment of the dog's submission, the
master, little less angry than the dog, felled him with a blow on the
head, and standing over him, struck him many times severely with the
heel of his boot, so that his mouth was presently bloody.

'Now get you into that corner and lie down,' said Gowan, 'or
I'll take you out and shoot you.'

Lion did as he was ordered, and lay down licking his mouth and
chest. Lion's master stopped for a moment to take breath, and then,
recovering his usual coolness of manner, turned to speak to his
frightened wife and her visitors. Probably the whole occurrence had
not occupied two minutes.

'Come, come, Minnie! You know he is always good-humoured and
tractable. Blandois must have irritated him,--made faces at him.
The dog has his likings and dislikings, and Blandois is no great
favourite of his; but I am sure you will give him a character,
Minnie, for never having been like this before.'

Minnie was too much disturbed to say anything connected in
reply; Little Dorrit was already occupied in soothing her; Fanny, who
had cried out twice or thrice, held Gowan's arm for protection; Lion,
deeply ashamed of having caused them this alarm, came trailing
himself along the ground to the feet of his mistress.

'You furious brute,' said Gowan, striking him with his foot
again. 'You shall do penance for this.' And he struck him again,
and yet again.

'O, pray don't punish him any more,' cried Little Dorrit.
'Don't hurt him. See how gentle he is!' At her entreaty, Gowan
spared him; and he deserved her intercession, for truly he was as
submissive, and as sorry, and as wretched as a dog could be.

It was not easy to recover this shock and make the visit
unrestrained, even though Fanny had not been, under the best of
circumstances, the least trifle in the way. In such further
communication as passed among them before the sisters took their
departure, Little Dorrit fancied it was revealed to her that Mr Gowan
treated his wife, even in his very fondness, too much like a
beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of the depths of feeling
which she knew must lie below that surface, that she doubted if there
could be any such depths in himself. She wondered whether his want
of earnestness might be the natural result of his want of such
qualities, and whether it was with people as with ships, that, in too
shallow and rocky waters, their anchors had no hold, and they drifted
anywhere.

He attended them down the staircase, jocosely apologising for
the poor quarters to which such poor fellows as himself were limited,
and remarking that when the high and mighty Barnacles, his relatives,
who would be dreadfully ashamed of them, presented him with better,
he would live in better to oblige them. At the water's edge they
were saluted by Blandois, who looked white enough after his late
adventure, but who made very light of it notwithstanding,--laughing
at the mention of Lion.

Leaving the two together under the scrap of vine upon the
causeway, Gowan idly scattering the leaves from it into the water,
and Blandois lighting a cigarette, the sisters were paddled away in
state as they had come. They had not glided on for many minutes,
when Little Dorrit became aware that Fanny was more showy in manner
than the occasion appeared to require, and, looking about for the
cause through the window and through the open door, saw another
gondola evidently in waiting on them.

As this gondola attended their progress in various artful ways;
sometimes shooting on a-head, and stopping to let them pass;
sometimes, when the way was broad enough, skimming along side by side
with them; and sometimes following close astern; and as Fanny
gradually made no disguise that she was playing off graces upon
somebody within it, of whom she at the same time feigned to be
unconscious; Little Dorrit at length asked who it was?

To which Fanny made the short answer, 'That gaby.'

'Who?' said Little Dorrit.

'My dear child,' returned Fanny (in a tone suggesting that
before her Uncle's protest she might have said, You little fool,
instead), 'how slow you are! Young Sparkler.'

She lowered the window on her side, and, leaning back and
resting her elbow on it negligently, fanned herself with a rich
Spanish fan of black and gold. The attendant gondola, having skimmed
forward again, with some swift trace of an eye in the

window, Fanny laughed coquettishly and said, 'Did you ever see
such a fool, my love?'

'Do you think he means to follow you all the way?' asked Little
Dorrit.

'My precious child,' returned Fanny, 'I can't possibly answer
for what an idiot in a state of desperation may do, but I should
think it highly probable. It's not such an enormous distance. All
Venice would scarcely be that, I imagine, if he's dying for a glimpse
of me.'

'And is he?' asked Little Dorrit in perfect simplicity.

'Well, my love, that really is an awkward question for me to
answer,' said her sister. 'I believe he is. You had better ask
Edward. He tells Edward he is, I believe. I understand he makes a
perfect spectacle of himself at the Casino, and that sort of places,
by going on about me. But you had better ask Edward if you want to
know.'

'I wonder he doesn't call,' said Little Dorrit after thinking a
moment.

'My dear Amy, your wonder will soon cease, if I am rightly
informed. I should not be at all surprised if he called to-day. The
creature has only been waiting to get his courage up, I suspect.'

'Will you see him?'

'Indeed, my darling,' said Fanny, 'that's just as it may happen.
Here he is again. Look at him. O, you simpleton!'

Mr Sparkler had, undeniably, a weak appearance; with his eye in
the window like a knot in the glass, and no reason on earth for
stopping his bark suddenly, except the real reason.

'When you asked me if I will see him, my dear,' said Fanny,
almost as well composed in the graceful indifference of her attitude
as Mrs Merdle herself, 'what do you mean?' 'I mean,' said Little
Dorrit--'I think I rather mean what do you mean, dear Fanny?'

Fanny laughed again, in a manner at once condescending, arch,
and affable; and said, putting her arm round her sister in a
playfully affectionate way:

'Now tell me, my little pet. When we saw that woman at
Martigny, how did you think she carried it off? Did you see what she
decided on in a moment?'

'No, Fanny.'

'Then I'll tell you, Amy. She settled with herself, now I'll
never refer to that meeting under such different circumstances, and
I'll never pretend to have any idea that these are the same girls.
That's her way out of a difficulty. What did I tell you when we came
away from Harley Street that time? She is as insolent and false as
any woman in the world. But in the first capacity, my love, she may
find people who can match her.'

A significant turn of the Spanish fan towards Fanny's bosom,
indicated with great expression where one of these people was to be
found.

'Not only that,' pursued Fanny, 'but she gives the same charge
to Young Sparkler; and doesn't let him come after me until she has
got it thoroughly into his most ridiculous of all ridiculous noddles
(for one really can't call it a head), that he is to pretend to have
been first struck with me in that Inn Yard.'

'Why?' asked Little Dorrit.

'Why? Good gracious, my love!' (again very much in the tone of
You stupid little creature) 'how can you ask? Don't you see that I
may have become a rather desirable match for a noddle? And don't you
see that she puts the deception upon us, and makes a pretence, while
she shifts it from her own shoulders (very good shoulders they are
too, I must say),' observed Miss Fanny, glancing complacently at
herself, 'of considering our feelings?'

'But we can always go back to the plain truth.'

'Yes, but if you please we won't,' retorted Fanny. 'No; I am
not going to have that done, Amy. The pretext is none of mine; it's
hers, and she shall have enough of it.'

In the triumphant exaltation of her feelings, Miss Fanny, using
her Spanish fan with one hand, squeezed her sister's waist with the
other, as if she were crushing Mrs Merdle.

'No,' repeated Fanny. 'She shall find me go her way. She took
it, and I'll follow it. And, with the blessing of fate and fortune,
I'll go on improving that woman's acquaintance until I have given her
maid, before her eyes, things from my dressmaker's ten times as
handsome and expensive as she once gave me from hers!'

Little Dorrit was silent; sensible that she was not to be heard
on any question affecting the family dignity, and unwilling to lose
to no purpose her sister's newly and unexpectedly restored favour.
She could not concur, but she was silent. Fanny well knew what she
was thinking of; so well, that she soon asked her.

Her reply was, 'Do you mean to encourage Mr Sparkler, Fanny?'

'Encourage him, my dear?' said her sister, smiling
contemptuously, 'that depends upon what you call encourage. No, I
don't mean to encourage him. But I'll make a slave of him.'

Little Dorrit glanced seriously and doubtfully in her face, but
Fanny was not to be so brought to a check. She furled her fan of
black and gold, and used it to tap her sister's nose; with the air of
a proud beauty and a great spirit, who toyed with and playfully
instructed a homely companion.

'I shall make him fetch and carry, my dear, and I shall make him
subject to me. And if I don't make his mother subject to me, too, it
shall not be my fault.'

'Do you think--dear Fanny, don't be offended, we are so
comfortable together now--that you can quite see the end of that
course?'

'I can't say I have so much as looked for it yet, my dear,'
answered Fanny, with supreme indifference; 'all in good time. Such
are my intentions. And really they have taken me so long to develop,
that here we are at home. And Young Sparkler at the door, inquiring
who is within. By the merest accident, of course!'

In effect, the swain was standing up in his gondola, card-case
in hand, affecting to put the question to a servant. This
conjunction of circumstances led to his immediately afterwards
presenting himself before the young ladies in a posture, which in
ancient times would not have been considered one of favourable augury
for his suit; since the gondoliers of the young ladies, having been
put to some inconvenience by the chase, so neatly brought their own
boat in the gentlest collision with the bark of Mr Sparkler, as to
tip that gentleman over like a larger species of ninepin, and cause
him to exhibit the soles of his shoes to the object of his dearest
wishes: while the nobler portions of his anatomy struggled at the
bottom of his boat in the arms of one of his men.

However, as Miss Fanny called out with much concern, Was the
gentleman hurt, Mr Sparkler rose more restored than might have been
expected, and stammered for himself with blushes, 'Not at all so.'
Miss Fanny had no recollection of having ever seen him before, and
was passing on, with a distant inclination of her head, when he
announced himself by name. Even then she was in a difficulty from
being unable to call it to mind, until he explained that he had had
the honour of seeing her at Martigny. Then she remembered him, and
hoped his lady-mother was well.

'Thank you,' stammered Mr Sparkler, 'she's uncommonly well--at
least, poorly.'

'In Venice?' said Miss Fanny.

'In Rome,' Mr Sparkler answered. 'I am here by myself, myself.
I came to call upon Mr Edward Dorrit myself. Indeed, upon Mr Dorrit
likewise. In fact, upon the family.'

Turning graciously to the attendants, Miss Fanny inquired
whether her papa or brother was within? The reply being that they
were both within, Mr Sparkler humbly offered his arm. Miss Fanny
accepting it, was squired up the great staircase by Mr Sparkler, who,
if he still believed (which there is not any reason to doubt) that
she had no nonsense about her, rather deceived himself.

Arrived in a mouldering reception-room, where the faded
hangings, of a sad sea-green, had worn and withered until they looked
as if they might have claimed kindred with the waifs of seaweed
drifting under the windows, or clinging to the walls and weeping for
their imprisoned relations, Miss Fanny despatched emissaries for her
father and brother. Pending whose appearance, she showed to great
advantage on a sofa, completing Mr Sparkler's conquest with some
remarks upon Dante--known to that gentleman as an eccentric man in
the nature of an Old File, who used to put leaves round his head, and
sit upon a stool for some unaccountable purpose, outside the
cathedral at Florence.

Mr Dorrit welcomed the visitor with the highest urbanity, and
most courtly manners. He inquired particularly after Mrs Merdle. He
inquired particularly after Mr Merdle. Mr Sparkler said, or rather
twitched out of himself in small pieces by the shirt-collar, that Mrs
Merdle having completely used up her place in the country, and also
her house at Brighton, and being, of course, unable, don't you see,
to remain in London when there wasn't a soul there, and not feeling
herself this year quite up to visiting about at people's places, had
resolved to have a touch at Rome, where a woman like herself, with a
proverbially fine appearance, and with no nonsense about her,
couldn't fail to be a great acquisition. As to Mr Merdle, he was so
much wanted by the men in the City and the rest of those places, and
was such a doosed extraordinary phenomenon in Buying and Banking and
that, that Mr Sparkler doubted if the monetary system of the country
would be able to spare him; though that his work was occasionally one
too many for him, and that he would be all the better for a temporary
shy at an entirely new scene and climate, Mr Sparkler did not
conceal. As to himself, Mr Sparkler conveyed to the Dorrit family
that he was going, on rather particular business, wherever they were
going.

This immense conversational achievement required time, but was
effected. Being effected, Mr Dorrit expressed his hope that Mr
Sparkler would shortly dine with them. Mr Sparkler received the idea
so kindly that Mr Dorrit asked what he was going to do that day, for
instance? As he was going to do nothing that day (his usual
occupation, and one for which he was particularly qualified), he was
secured without postponement; being further bound over to accompany
the ladies to the Opera in the evening.

At dinner-time Mr Sparkler rose out of the sea, like Venus's son
taking after his mother, and made a splendid appearance ascending the
great staircase. If Fanny had been charming in the morning, she was
now thrice charming, very becomingly dressed in her most suitable
colours, and with an air of negligence upon her that doubled Mr
Sparkler's fetters, and riveted them.

'I hear you are acquainted, Mr Sparkler,' said his host at
dinner, 'with--ha--Mr Gowan. Mr Henry Gowan?'

'Perfectly, sir,' returned Mr Sparkler. 'His mother and my
mother are cronies in fact.'

'If I had thought of it, Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, with a patronage
as magnificent as that of Lord Decimus himself, 'you should have
despatched a note to them, asking them to dine to-day. Some of our
people could have--ha--fetched them, and taken them home. We could
have spared a--hum--gondola for that purpose. I am sorry to have
forgotten this. Pray remind me of them to-morrow.'

Little Dorrit was not without doubts how Mr Henry Gowan might
take their patronage; but she promised not to fail in the
reminder.

'Pray, does Mr Henry Gowan paint--ha--Portraits?' inquired Mr
Dorrit.

Mr Sparkler opined that he painted anything, if he could get the
job.

'He has no particular walk?' said Mr Dorrit.

Mr Sparkler, stimulated by Love to brilliancy, replied that for
a particular walk a man ought to have a particular pair of shoes; as,
for example, shooting, shooting-shoes; cricket, cricket-shoes.
Whereas, he believed that Henry Gowan had no particular pair of
shoes.

'No speciality?' said Mr Dorrit.

This being a very long word for Mr Sparkler, and his mind being
exhausted by his late effort, he replied, 'No, thank you. I seldom
take it.'

'Well!' said Mr Dorrit. 'It would be very agreeable to me to
present a gentleman so connected, with some--ha--Testimonial of my
desire to further his interests, and develop the--hum--germs of his
genius. I think I must engage Mr Gowan to paint my picture. If the
result should be--ha--mutually satisfactory, I might afterwards
engage him to try his hand upon my family.'

The exquisitely bold and original thought presented itself to Mr
Sparkler, that there was an opening here for saying there were some
of the family (emphasising 'some' in a marked manner) to whom no
painter could render justice. But, for want of a form of words in
which to express the idea, it returned to the skies.

This was the more to be regretted as Miss Fanny greatly
applauded the notion of the portrait, and urged her papa to act upon
it. She surmised, she said, that Mr Gowan had lost better and higher
opportunities by marrying his pretty wife; and Love in a cottage,
painting pictures for dinner, was so delightfully interesting, that
she begged her papa to give him the commission whether he could paint
a likeness or not: though indeed both she and Amy knew he could, from
having seen a speaking likeness on his easel that day, and having had
the opportunity of comparing it with the original. These remarks
made Mr Sparkler (as perhaps they were intended to do) nearly
distracted; for while on the one hand they expressed Miss Fanny's
susceptibility of the tender passion, she herself showed such an
innocent unconsciousness of his admiration that his eyes goggled in
his head with jealousy of an unknown rival.

Descending into the sea again after dinner, and ascending out of
it at the Opera staircase, preceded by one of their gondoliers, like
an attendant Merman, with a great linen lantern, they entered their
box, and Mr Sparkler entered on an evening of agony. The theatre
being dark, and the box light, several visitors lounged in during the
representation; in whom Fanny was so interested, and in conversation
with whom she fell into such charming attitudes, as she had little
confidences with them, and little disputes concerning the identity of
people in distant boxes, that the wretched Sparkler hated all
mankind. But he had two consolations at the close of the
performance. She gave him her fan to hold while she adjusted her
cloak, and it was his blessed privilege to give her his arm
down-stairs again. These crumbs of encouragement, Mr Sparkler
thought, would just keep him going; and it is not impossible that
Miss Dorrit thought so too.

The Merman with his light was ready at the box-door, and other
Mermen with other lights were ready at many of the doors. The Dorrit
Merman held his lantern low, to show the steps, and Mr Sparkler put
on another heavy set of fetters over his former set, as he watched
her radiant feet twinkling down the stairs beside him. Among the
loiterers here, was Blandois of Paris. He spoke, and moved forward
beside Fanny.

Little Dorrit was in front with her brother and Mrs General (Mr
Dorrit had remained at home), but on the brink of the quay they all
came together. She started again to find Blandois close to her,
handing Fanny into the boat.

'Gowan has had a loss,' he said, 'since he was made happy to-day
by a visit from fair ladies.'

'A loss?' repeated Fanny, relinquished by the bereaved Sparkler,
and taking her seat.

'A loss,' said Blandois. 'His dog Lion.'

Little Dorrit's hand was in his, as he spoke.

'He is dead,' said Blandois.

'Dead?' echoed Little Dorrit. 'That noble dog?'

'Faith, dear ladies!' said Blandois, smiling and shrugging his
shoulders, 'somebody has poisoned that noble dog. He is as dead as
the Doges!'