Chapter 9: Appearance and Disappearance

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

'Arthur, my dear boy,' said Mr Meagles, on the evening of the
following day, 'Mother and I have been talking this over, and we
don't feel comfortable in remaining as we are. That elegant
connection of ours--that dear lady who was here yesterday--'

'I understand,' said Arthur.

'Even that affable and condescending ornament of society,'
pursued Mr Meagles, 'may misrepresent us, we are afraid. We could
bear a great deal, Arthur, for her sake; but we think we would rather
not bear that, if it was all the same to her.'

'Good,' said Arthur. 'Go on.'

'You see,' proceeded Mr Meagles 'it might put us wrong with our
son-in-law, it might even put us wrong with our daughter, and it
might lead to a great deal of domestic trouble. You see, don't
you?'

'Yes, indeed,' returned Arthur, 'there is much reason in what
you say.' He had glanced at Mrs Meagles, who was always on the good
and sensible side; and a petition had shone out of her honest face
that he would support Mr Meagles in his present inclinings.

'So we are very much disposed, are Mother and I,' said Mr
Meagles, 'to pack up bags and baggage and go among the Allongers and
Marshongers once more. I mean, we are very much disposed to be off,
strike right through France into Italy, and see our Pet.'

'And I don't think,' replied Arthur, touched by the motherly
anticipation in the bright face of Mrs Meagles (she must have been
very like her daughter, once), 'that you could do better. And if you
ask me for my advice, it is that you set off to-morrow.'

'Is it really, though?' said Mr Meagles. 'Mother, this is being
backed in an idea!'

Mother, with a look which thanked Clennam in a manner very
agreeable to him, answered that it was indeed.

'The fact is, besides, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, the old cloud
coming over his face, 'that my son-in-law is already in debt again,
and that I suppose I must clear him again. It may be as well, even
on this account, that I should step over there, and look him up in a
friendly way. Then again, here's Mother foolishly anxious (and yet
naturally too) about Pet's state of health, and that she should not
be left to feel lonesome at the present time. It's undeniably a long
way off, Arthur, and a strange place for the poor love under all the
circumstances. Let her be as well cared for as any lady in that
land, still it is a long way off. just as Home is Home though it's
never so Homely, why you see,' said Mr Meagles, adding a new version
to the proverb, 'Rome is Rome, though it's never so Romely.'

'All perfectly true,' observed Arthur, 'and all sufficient
reasons for going.'

'I am glad you think so; it decides me. Mother, my dear, you
may get ready. We have lost our pleasant interpreter (she spoke
three foreign languages beautifully, Arthur; you have heard her many
a time), and you must pull me through it, Mother, as well as you
can.

I require a deal of pulling through, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles,
shaking his head, 'a deal of pulling through. I stick at everything
beyond a noun-substantive--and I stick at him, if he's at all a tight
one.'

'Now I think of it,' returned Clennam, 'there's Cavalletto. He
shall go with you, if you like. I could not afford to lose him, but
you will bring him safe back.'

'Well! I am much obliged to you, my boy,' said Mr Meagles,
turning it over, 'but I think not. No, I think I'll be pulled
through by Mother. Cavallooro (I stick at his very name to start
with, and it sounds like the chorus to a comic song) is so necessary
to you, that I don't like the thought of taking him away. More than
that, there's no saying when we may come home again; and it would
never do to take him away for an indefinite time. The cottage is not
what it was. It only holds two little people less than it ever did,
Pet, and her poor unfortunate maid Tattycoram; but it seems empty
now. Once out of it, there's no knowing when we may come back to it.
No, Arthur, I'll be pulled through by Mother.'

They would do best by themselves perhaps, after all, Clennam
thought; therefore did not press his proposal.

'If you would come down and stay here for a change, when it
wouldn't trouble you,' Mr Meagles resumed, 'I should be glad to
think--and so would Mother too, I know--that you were brightening up
the old place with a bit of life it was used to when it was full, and
that the Babies on the wall there had a kind eye upon them sometimes.
You so belong to the spot, and to them, Arthur, and we should every
one of us have been so happy if it had fallen out--but, let us
see--how's the weather for travelling now?' Mr Meagles broke off,
cleared his throat, and got up to look out of the window.

They agreed that the weather was of high promise; and Clennam
kept the talk in that safe direction until it had become easy again,
when he gently diverted it to Henry Gowan and his quick sense and
agreeable qualities when he was delicately dealt With; he likewise
dwelt on the indisputable affection he entertained for his wife.
Clennam did not fail of his effect upon good Mr Meagles, whom these
commendations greatly cheered; and who took Mother to witness that
the single and cordial desire of his heart in reference to their
daughter's husband, was harmoniously to exchange friendship for
friendship, and confidence for confidence. Within a few hours the
cottage furniture began to be wrapped up for preservation in the
family absence--or, as Mr Meagles expressed it, the house began to
put its hair in papers--and within a few days Father and Mother were
gone, Mrs Tickit and Dr Buchan were posted, as of yore, behind the
parlour blind, and Arthur's solitary feet were rustling among the dry
fallen leaves in the garden walks.

As he had a liking for the spot, he seldom let a week pass
without paying a visit. Sometimes, he went down alone from Saturday
to Monday; sometimes his partner accompanied him; sometimes, he
merely strolled for an hour or two about the house and garden, saw
that all was right, and returned to London again. At all times, and
under all circumstances, Mrs Tickit, with her dark row of curls, and
Dr Buchan, sat in the parlour window, looking out for the family
return.

On one of his visits Mrs Tickit received him with the words, 'I
have something to tell you, Mr Clennam, that will surprise you.' So
surprising was the something in question, that it actually brought
Mrs Tickit out of the parlour window and produced her in the garden
walk, when Clennam went in at the gate on its being opened for
him.

'What is it, Mrs Tickit?' said he.

'Sir,' returned that faithful housekeeper, having taken him into
the parlour and closed the door; 'if ever I saw the led away and
deluded child in my life, I saw her identically in the dusk of
yesterday evening.'

'You don't mean Tatty--'

'Coram yes I do!' quoth Mrs Tickit, clearing the disclosure at a
leap.

'Where?'

'Mr Clennam,' returned Mrs Tickit, 'I was a little heavy in my
eyes, being that I was waiting longer than customary for my cup of
tea which was then preparing by Mary Jane. I was not sleeping, nor
what a person would term correctly, dozing. I was more what a person
would strictly call watching with my eyes closed.'

Without entering upon an inquiry into this curious abnormal
condition, Clennam said, 'Exactly. Well?'

'Well, sir,' proceeded Mrs Tickit, 'I was thinking of one thing
and thinking of another. just as you yourself might. just as
anybody might.' 'Precisely so,' said Clennam. 'Well?'

'And when I do think of one thing and do think of another,'
pursued Mrs Tickit, 'I hardly need to tell you, Mr Clennam, that I
think of the family. Because, dear me! a person's thoughts,' Mrs
Tickit said this with an argumentative and philosophic air, 'however
they may stray, will go more or less on what is uppermost in their
minds. They will do it, sir, and a person can't prevent them.'

Arthur subscribed to this discovery with a nod.

'You find it so yourself, sir, I'll be bold to say,' said Mrs
Tickit, 'and we all find it so. It an't our stations in life that
changes us, Mr Clennam; thoughts is free!--As I was saying, I was
thinking of one thing and thinking of another, and thinking very much
of the family. Not of the family in the present times only, but in
the past times too. For when a person does begin thinking of one
thing and thinking of another in that manner, as it's getting dark,
what I say is, that all times seem to be present, and a person must
get out of that state and consider before they can say which is
which.'

He nodded again; afraid to utter a word, lest it should present
any new opening to Mrs Tickit's conversational powers.

'In consequence of which,' said Mrs Tickit, 'when I quivered my
eyes and saw her actual form and figure looking in at the gate, I let
them close again without so much as starting, for that actual form
and figure came so pat to the time when it belonged to the house as
much as mine or your own, that I never thought at the moment of its
having gone away. But, sir, when I quivered my eyes again, and saw
that it wasn't there, then it all flooded upon me with a fright, and
I jumped up.'

'You ran out directly?' said Clennam.

'I ran out,' assented Mrs Tickit, 'as fast as ever my feet would
carry me; and if you'll credit it, Mr Clennam, there wasn't in the
whole shining Heavens, no not so much as a finger of that young
woman.'

Passing over the absence from the firmament of this novel
constellation, Arthur inquired of Mrs Tickit if she herself went
beyond the gate?

'Went to and fro, and high and low,' said Mrs Tickit, 'and saw
no sign of her!'

He then asked Mrs Tickit how long a space of time she supposed
there might have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she
had experienced? Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her
reply, had no settled opinion between five seconds and ten
minutes.

She was so plainly at sea on this part of the case, and had so
clearly been startled out of slumber, that Clennam was much disposed
to regard the appearance as a dream. Without hurting Mrs Tickit's
feelings with that infidel solution of her mystery, he took it away
from the cottage with him; and probably would have retained it ever
afterwards if a circumstance had not soon happened to change his
opinion. He was passing at nightfall along the Strand, and the
lamp-lighter was going on before him, under whose hand the
street-lamps, blurred by the foggy air, burst out one after another,
like so many blazing sunflowers coming into full-blow all at
once,--when a stoppage on the pavement, caused by a train of
coal-waggons toiling up from the wharves at the river-side, brought
him to a stand-still. He had been walking quickly, and going with
some current of thought, and the sudden check given to both
operations caused him to look freshly about him, as people under such
circumstances usually do.

Immediately, he saw in advance--a few people intervening, but
still so near to him that he could have touched them by stretching
out his arm--Tattycoram and a strange man of a remarkable appearance:
a swaggering man, with a high nose, and a black moustache as false in
its colour as his eyes were false in their expression, who wore his
heavy cloak with the air of a foreigner. His dress and general
appearance were those of a man on travel, and he seemed to have very
recently joined the girl. In bending down (being much taller than
she was), listening to whatever she said to him, he looked over his
shoulder with the suspicious glance of one who was not unused to be
mistrustful that his footsteps might be dogged. It was then that
Clennam saw his face; as his eyes lowered on the people behind him in
the aggregate, without particularly resting upon Clennam's face or
any other.

He had scarcely turned his head about again, and it was still
bent down, listening to the girl, when the stoppage ceased, and the
obstructed stream of people flowed on. Still bending his head and
listening to the girl, he went on at her side, and Clennam followed
them, resolved to play this unexpected play out, and see where they
went.

He had hardly made the determination (though he was not long
about it), when he was again as suddenly brought up as he had been by
the stoppage. They turned short into the Adelphi,--the girl
evidently leading,--and went straight on, as if they were going to
the Terrace which overhangs the river.

There is always, to this day, a sudden pause in that place to
the roar of the great thoroughfare. The many sounds become so
deadened that the change is like putting cotton in the ears, or
having the head thickly muffled. At that time the contrast was far
greater; there being no small steam-boats on the river, no landing
places but slippery wooden stairs and foot-causeways, no railroad on
the opposite bank, no hanging bridge or fish-market near at hand, no
traffic on the nearest bridge of stone, nothing moving on the stream
but watermen's wherries and coal-lighters. Long and broad black
tiers of the latter, moored fast in the mud as if they were never to
move again, made the shore funereal and silent after dark; and kept
what little water-movement there was, far out towards mid- stream.
At any hour later than sunset, and not least at that hour when most
of the people who have anything to eat at home are going home to eat
it, and when most of those who have nothing have hardly yet slunk out
to beg or steal, it was a deserted place and looked on a deserted
scene.

Such was the hour when Clennam stopped at the corner, observing
the girl and the strange man as they went down the street. The man's
footsteps were so noisy on the echoing stones that he was unwilling
to add the sound of his own. But when they had passed the turning
and were in the darkness of the dark corner leading to the terrace,
he made after them with such indifferent appearance of being a casual
passenger on his way, as he could assume.

When he rounded the dark corner, they were walking along the
terrace towards a figure which was coming towards them. If he had
seen it by itself, under such conditions of gas-lamp, mist, and
distance, he might not have known it at first sight, but with the
figure of the girl to prompt him, he at once recognised Miss Wade.

He stopped at the corner, seeming to look back expectantly up
the street as if he had made an appointment with some one to meet him
there; but he kept a careful eye on the three. When they came
together, the man took off his hat, and made Miss Wade a bow. The
girl appeared to say a few words as though she presented him, or
accounted for his being late, or early, or what not; and then fell a
pace or so behind, by herself. Miss Wade and the man then began to
walk up and down; the man having the appearance of being extremely
courteous and complimentary in manner; Miss Wade having the
appearance of being extremely haughty.

When they came down to the corner and turned, she was saying,

'If I pinch myself for it, sir, that is my business. Confine
yourself to yours, and ask me no question.'

'By Heaven, ma'am!' he replied, making her another bow. 'It was
my profound respect for the strength of your character, and my
admiration of your beauty.'

'I want neither the one nor the other from any one,' said she,
'and certainly not from you of all creatures. Go on with your
report.'

'Am I pardoned?' he asked, with an air of half abashed
gallantry.

'You are paid,' she said, 'and that is all you want.'

Whether the girl hung behind because she was not to hear the
business, or as already knowing enough about it, Clennam could not
determine. They turned and she turned. She looked away at the
river, as she walked with her hands folded before her; and that was
all he could make of her without showing his face. There happened,
by good fortune, to be a lounger really waiting for some one; and he
sometimes looked over the railing at the water, and sometimes came to
the dark corner and looked up the street, rendering Arthur less
conspicuous.

When Miss Wade and the man came back again, she was saying, 'You
must wait until to-morrow.'

'A thousand pardons?' he returned. 'My faith! Then it's not
convenient to-night?'

'No. I tell you I must get it before I can give it to you.'

She stopped in the roadway, as if to put an end to the
conference. He of course stopped too. And the girl stopped.

'It's a little inconvenient,' said the man. 'A little. But,
Holy Blue! that's nothing in such a service. I am without money to-
night, by chance. I have a good banker in this city, but I would not
wish to draw upon the house until the time when I shall draw for a
round sum.'

'Harriet,' said Miss Wade, 'arrange with him--this gentleman
here-- for sending him some money to-morrow.' She said it with a
slur of the word gentleman which was more contemptuous than any
emphasis, and walked slowly on. The man bent his head again, and the
girl spoke to him as they both followed her. Clennam ventured to
look at the girl as they Moved away. He could note that her rich
black eyes were fastened upon the man with a scrutinising expression,
and that she kept at a little distance from him, as they walked side
by side to the further end of the terrace.

A loud and altered clank upon the pavement warned him, before he
could discern what was passing there, that the man was coming back
alone. Clennam lounged into the road, towards the railing; and the
man passed at a quick swing, with the end of his cloak thrown over
his shoulder, singing a scrap of a French song.

The whole vista had no one in it now but himself. The lounger
had lounged out of view, and Miss Wade and Tattycoram were gone.
More than ever bent on seeing what became of them, and on having some
information to give his good friend, Mr Meagles, he went out at the
further end of the terrace, looking cautiously about him. He rightly
judged that, at first at all events, they would go in a contrary
direction from their late companion. He soon saw them in a
neighbouring bye-street, which was not a thoroughfare, evidently
allowing time for the man to get well out of their way. They walked
leisurely arm-in-arm down one side of the street, and returned on the
opposite side. When they came back to the street- corner, they
changed their pace for the pace of people with an object and a
distance before them, and walked steadily away. Clennam, no less
steadily, kept them in sight.

They crossed the Strand, and passed through Covent Garden (under
the windows of his old lodging where dear Little Dorrit had come that
night), and slanted away north-east, until they passed the great
building whence Tattycoram derived her name, and turned into the
Gray's Inn Road. Clennam was quite at home here, in right of Flora,
not to mention the Patriarch and Pancks, and kept them in view with
ease. He was beginning to wonder where they might be going next,
when that wonder was lost in the greater wonder with which he saw
them turn into the Patriarchal street. That wonder was in its turn
swallowed up on the greater wonder with which he saw them stop at the
Patriarchal door. A low double knock at the bright brass knocker, a
gleam of light into the road from the opened door, a brief pause for
inquiry and answer and the door was shut, and they were housed.

After looking at the surrounding objects for assurance that he
was not in an odd dream, and after pacing a little while before the
house, Arthur knocked at the door. It was opened by the usual
maid-servant, and she showed him up at once, with her usual alacrity,
to Flora's sitting-room.

There was no one with Flora but Mr F.'s Aunt, which respectable
gentlewoman, basking in a balmy atmosphere of tea and toast, was
ensconced in an easy-chair by the fireside, with a little table at
her elbow, and a clean white handkerchief spread over her lap on
which two pieces of toast at that moment awaited consumption.
Bending over a steaming vessel of tea, and looking through the steam,
and breathing forth the steam, like a malignant Chinese enchantress
engaged in the performance of unholy rites, Mr F.'s Aunt put down her
great teacup and exclaimed, 'Drat him, if he an't come back
again!'

It would seem from the foregoing exclamation that this
uncompromising relative of the lamented Mr F., measuring time by the
acuteness of her sensations and not by the clock, supposed Clennam to
have lately gone away; whereas at least a quarter of a year had
elapsed since he had had the temerity to present himself before
her.

'My goodness Arthur!' cried Flora, rising to give him a cordial
reception, 'Doyce and Clennam what a start and a surprise for though
not far from the machinery and foundry business and surely might be
taken sometimes if at no other time about mid-day when a glass of
sherry and a humble sandwich of whatever cold meat in the larder
might not come amiss nor taste the worse for being friendly for you
know you buy it somewhere and wherever bought a profit must be made
or they would never keep the place it stands to reason without a
motive still never seen and learnt now not to be expected, for as Mr
F. himself said if seeing is believing not seeing is believing too
and when you don't see you may fully believe you're not remembered
not that I expect you Arthur Doyce and Clennam to remember me why
should I for the days are gone but bring another teacup here directly
and tell her fresh toast and pray sit near the fire.'

Arthur was in the greatest anxiety to explain the object of his
visit; but was put off for the moment, in spite of himself, by what
he understood of the reproachful purport of these words, and by the
genuine pleasure she testified in seeing him. 'And now pray tell me
something all you know,' said Flora, drawing her chair near to his,
'about the good dear quiet little thing and all the changes of her
fortunes carriage people now no doubt and horses without number most
romantic, a coat of arms of course and wild beasts on their hind legs
showing it as if it was a copy they had done with mouths from ear to
ear good gracious, and has she her health which is the first
consideration after all for what is wealth without it Mr F. himself
so often saying when his twinges came that sixpence a day and find
yourself and no gout so much preferable, not that he could have lived
on anything like it being the last man or that the previous little
thing though far too familiar an expression now had any tendency of
that sort much too slight and small but looked so fragile bless
her?'

Mr F.'s Aunt, who had eaten a piece of toast down to the crust,
here solemnly handed the crust to Flora, who ate it for her as a
matter of business. Mr F.'s Aunt then moistened her ten fingers in
slow succession at her lips, and wiped them in exactly the same order
on the white handkerchief; then took the other piece of toast, and
fell to work upon it. While pursuing this routine, she looked at
Clennam with an expression of such intense severity that he felt
obliged to look at her in return, against his personal
inclinations.

'She is in Italy, with all her family, Flora,' he said, when the
dreaded lady was occupied again.

'In Italy is she really?' said Flora, 'with the grapes growing
everywhere and lava necklaces and bracelets too that land of poetry
with burning mountains picturesque beyond belief though if the
organ-boys come away from the neighbourhood not to be scorched nobody
can wonder being so young and bringing their white mice with them
most humane, and is she really in that favoured land with nothing but
blue about her and dying gladiators and Belvederes though Mr F.
himself did not believe for his objection when in spirits was that
the images could not be true there being no medium between expensive
quantities of linen badly got up and all in creases and none
whatever, which certainly does not seem probable though perhaps in
consequence of the extremes of rich and poor which may account for
it.'

Arthur tried to edge a word in, but Flora hurried on again.

'Venice Preserved too,' said she, 'I think you have been there
is it well or ill preserved for people differ so and Maccaroni if
they really eat it like the conjurors why not cut it shorter, you are
acquainted Arthur--dear Doyce and Clennam at least not dear and most
assuredly not Doyce for I have not the pleasure but pray excuse
me--acquainted I believe with Mantua what has it got to do with
Mantua-making for I never have been able to conceive?'

'I believe there is no connection, Flora, between the two,'
Arthur was beginning, when she caught him up again.

'Upon your word no isn't there I never did but that's like me I
run away with an idea and having none to spare I keep it, alas there
was a time dear Arthur that is to say decidedly not dear nor Arthur
neither but you understand me when one bright idea gilded the
what's-his-name horizon of et cetera but it is darkly clouded now and
all is over.'

Arthur's increasing wish to speak of something very different
was by this time so plainly written on his face, that Flora stopped
in a tender look, and asked him what it was?

'I have the greatest desire, Flora, to speak to some one who is
now in this house--with Mr Casby no doubt. Some one whom I saw come
in, and who, in a misguided and deplorable way, has deserted the
house of a friend of mine.'

'Papa sees so many and such odd people,' said Flora, rising,
'that I shouldn't venture to go down for any one but you Arthur but
for you I would willingly go down in a diving-bell much more a
dining- room and will come back directly if you'll mind and at the
same time not mind Mr F.'s Aunt while I'm gone.'

With those words and a parting glance, Flora bustled out,
leaving Clennam under dreadful apprehension of this terrible
charge.

The first variation which manifested itself in Mr F.'s Aunt's
demeanour when she had finished her piece of toast, was a loud and
prolonged sniff. Finding it impossible to avoid construing this
demonstration into a defiance of himself, its gloomy significance
being unmistakable, Clennam looked plaintively at the excellent
though prejudiced lady from whom it emanated, in the hope that she
might be disarmed by a meek submission.

'None of your eyes at me,' said Mr F.'s Aunt, shivering with
hostility. 'Take that.'

'That' was the crust of the piece of toast. Clennam accepted
the boon with a look of gratitude, and held it in his hand under the
pressure of a little embarrassment, which was not relieved when Mr
F.'s Aunt, elevating her voice into a cry of considerable power,
exclaimed, 'He has a proud stomach, this chap! He's too proud a chap
to eat it!' and, coming out of her chair, shook her venerable fist so
very close to his nose as to tickle the surface. But for the timely
return of Flora, to find him in this difficult situation, further
consequences might have ensued. Flora, without the least
discomposure or surprise, but congratulating the old lady in an
approving manner on being 'very lively to-night', handed her back to
her chair.

'He has a proud stomach, this chap,' said Mr F.'s relation, on
being reseated. 'Give him a meal of chaff!'

'Oh! I don't think he would like that, aunt,' returned
Flora.

'Give him a meal of chaff, I tell you,' said Mr F.'s Aunt,
glaring round Flora on her enemy. 'It's the only thing for a proud
stomach. Let him eat up every morsel. Drat him, give him a meal of
chaff!'

Under a general pretence of helping him to this refreshment,
Flora got him out on the staircase; Mr F.'s Aunt even then constantly
reiterating, with inexpressible bitterness, that he was 'a chap,' and
had a 'proud stomach,' and over and over again insisting on that
equine provision being made for him which she had already so strongly
prescribed.

'Such an inconvenient staircase and so many corner-stairs
Arthur,' whispered Flora, 'would you object to putting your arm round
me under my pelerine?'

With a sense of going down-stairs in a highly-ridiculous manner,
Clennam descended in the required attitude, and only released his
fair burden at the dining-room door; indeed, even there she was
rather difficult to be got rid of, remaining in his embrace to
murmur, 'Arthur, for mercy's sake, don't breathe it to papa!'

She accompanied Arthur into the room, where the Patriarch sat
alone, with his list shoes on the fender, twirling his thumbs as if
he had never left off. The youthful Patriarch, aged ten, looked out
of his picture-frame above him with no calmer air than he. Both
smooth heads were alike beaming, blundering, and bumpy.

'Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well, sir, I
hope you are well. Please to sit down, please to sit down.'

'I had hoped, sir,' said Clennam, doing so, and looking round
with a face of blank disappointment, 'not to find you alone.'

'Ah, indeed?' said the Patriarch, sweetly. 'Ah, indeed?'

'I told you so you know papa,' cried Flora.

'Ah, to be sure!' returned the Patriarch. 'Yes, just so. Ah,
to be sure!'

'Pray, sir,'demanded Clennam, anxiously, 'is Miss Wade gone?'

'Miss--? Oh, you call her Wade,' returned Mr Casby. 'Highly
proper.' Arthur quickly returned, 'What do you call her?'

'Wade,' said Mr Casby. 'Oh, always Wade.'

After looking at the philanthropic visage and the long silky
white hair for a few seconds, during which Mr Casby twirled his
thumbs, and smiled at the fire as if he were benevolently wishing it
to burn him that he might forgive it, Arthur began:

'I beg your pardon, Mr Casby--'

'Not so, not so,' said the Patriarch, 'not so.'

'--But, Miss Wade had an attendant with her--a young woman
brought up by friends of mine, over whom her influence is not
considered very salutary, and to whom I should be glad to have the
opportunity of giving the assurance that she has not yet forfeited
the interest of those protectors.'

'Really, really?' returned the Patriarch.

'Will you therefore be so good as to give me the address of Miss
Wade?'

'Dear, dear, dear!' said the Patriarch, 'how very unfortunate!
If you had only sent in to me when they were here! I observed the
young woman, Mr Clennam. A fine full-coloured young woman, Mr
Clennam, with very dark hair and very dark eyes. If I mistake not,
if I mistake not?'

Arthur assented, and said once more with new expression, 'If you
would be so good as to give me the address.'

'Dear, dear, dear!' exclaimed the Patriarch in sweet regret.
'Tut, tut, tut! what a pity, what a pity! I have no address, sir.
Miss Wade mostly lives abroad, Mr Clennam. She has done so for some
years, and she is (if I may say so of a fellow-creature and a lady)
fitful and uncertain to a fault, Mr Clennam. I may not see her again
for a long, long time. I may never see her again. What a pity, what
a pity!'

Clennam saw now, that he had as much hope of getting assistance
out of the Portrait as out of the Patriarch; but he said
nevertheless:

'Mr Casby, could you, for the satisfaction of the friends I have
mentioned, and under any obligation of secrecy that you may consider
it your duty to impose, give me any information at all touching Miss
Wade? I have seen her abroad, and I have seen her at home, but I
know nothing of her. Could you give me any account of her
whatever?'

'None,' returned the Patriarch, shaking his big head with his
utmost benevolence. 'None at all. Dear, dear, dear! What a real
pity that she stayed so short a time, and you delayed! As
confidential agency business, agency business, I have occasionally
paid this lady money; but what satisfaction is it to you, sir, to
know that?'

'Truly, none at all,' said Clennam.

'Truly,' assented the Patriarch, with a shining face as he
philanthropically smiled at the fire, 'none at all, sir. You hit the
wise answer, Mr Clennam. Truly, none at all, sir.' His turning of
his smooth thumbs over one another as he sat there, was so typical to
Clennam of the way in which he would make the subject revolve if it
were pursued, never showing any new part of it nor allowing it to
make the smallest advance, that it did much to help to convince him
of his labour having been in vain. He might have taken any time to
think about it, for Mr Casby, well accustomed to get on anywhere by
leaving everything to his bumps and his white hair, knew his strength
to lie in silence. So there Casby sat, twirling and twirling, and
making his polished head and forehead look largely benevolent in
every knob.

With this spectacle before him, Arthur had risen to go, when
from the inner Dock where the good ship Pancks was hove down when out
in no cruising ground, the noise was heard of that steamer labouring
towards him. It struck Arthur that the noise began demonstratively
far off, as though Mr Pancks sought to impress on any one who might
happen to think about it, that he was working on from out of hearing.
Mr Pancks and he shook hands, and the former brought his employer a
letter or two to sign. Mr Pancks in shaking hands merely scratched
his eyebrow with his left forefinger and snorted once, but Clennam,
who understood him better now than of old, comprehended that he had
almost done for the evening and wished to say a word to him outside.
Therefore, when he had taken his leave of Mr Casby, and (which was a
more difficult process) of Flora, he sauntered in the neighbourhood
on Mr Pancks's line of road.

He had waited but a short time when Mr Pancks appeared. Mr
Pancks shaking hands again with another expressive snort, and taking
off his hat to put his hair up, Arthur thought he received his cue to
speak to him as one who knew pretty well what had just now passed.
Therefore he said, without any preface:

'I suppose they were really gone, Pancks?'

'Yes,' replied Pancks. 'They were really gone.'

'Does he know where to find that lady?'

'Can't say. I should think so.'

Mr Pancks did not? No, Mr Pancks did not. Did Mr Pancks know
anything about her? 'I expect,' rejoined that worthy, 'I know as much
about her as she knows about herself. She is somebody's
child--anybody's--nobody's.

Put her in a room in London here with any six people old enough
to be her parents, and her parents may be there for anything she
knows. They may be in any house she sees, they may be in any
churchyard she passes, she may run against 'em in any street, she may
make chance acquaintance of 'em at any time; and never know it.

She knows nothing about 'em. She knows nothing about any
relative whatever. Never did. Never will.' 'Mr Casby could
enlighten her, perhaps?'

'May be,' said Pancks. 'I expect so, but don't know. He has
long had money (not overmuch as I make out) in trust to dole out to
her when she can't do without it. Sometimes she's proud and won't
touch it for a length of time; sometimes she's so poor that she must
have it. She writhes under her life. A woman more angry,
passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived. She came for money
to-night. Said she had peculiar occasion for it.'

'I think,' observed Clennam musing, 'I by chance know what
occasion--I mean into whose pocket the money is to go.'

'Indeed?' said Pancks. 'If it's a compact, I recommend that
party to be exact in it. I wouldn't trust myself to that woman,
young and handsome as she is, if I had wronged her; no, not for twice
my proprietor's money! Unless,' Pancks added as a saving clause, 'I
had a lingering illness on me, and wanted to get it over.'

Arthur, hurriedly reviewing his own observation of her, found it
to tally pretty nearly with Mr Pancks's view.

'The wonder is to me,' pursued Pancks, 'that she has never done
for my proprietor, as the only person connected with her story she
can lay hold of. Mentioning that, I may tell you, between ourselves,
that I am sometimes tempted to do for him myself.'

Arthur started and said, 'Dear me, Pancks, don't say that!'

'Understand me,' said Pancks, extending five cropped coaly
finger- nails on Arthur's arm; 'I don't mean, cut his throat. But by
all that's precious, if he goes too far, I'll cut his hair!'

Having exhibited himself in the new light of enunciating this
tremendous threat, Mr Pancks, with a countenance of grave import,
snorted several times and steamed away.