Like all his other speculations, it was sound and successful. The jewels
showed to the richest advantage. The bosom moving in Society with
the jewels displayed upon it, attracted general admiration. Society
approving, Mr Merdle was satisfied. He was the most disinterested of
men,--did everything for Society, and got as little for himself out of
all his gain and care, as a man might.
That is to say, it may be supposed that he got all he wanted, otherwise
with unlimited wealth he would have got it. But his desire was to the
utmost to satisfy Society (whatever that was), and take up all its
drafts upon him for tribute. He did not shine in company; he had not
very much to say for himself; he was a reserved man, with a broad,
overhanging, watchful head, that particular kind of dull red colour
in his cheeks which is rather stale than fresh, and a somewhat uneasy
expression about his coat-cuffs, as if they were in his confidence, and
had reasons for being anxious to hide his hands. In the little he said,
he was a pleasant man enough; plain, emphatic about public and private
confidence, and tenacious of the utmost deference being shown by every
one, in all things, to Society. In this same Society (if that were it
which came to his dinners, and to Mrs Merdle's receptions and concerts),
he hardly seemed to enjoy himself much, and was mostly to be found
against walls and behind doors. Also when he went out to it, instead of
its coming home to him, he seemed a little fatigued, and upon the
whole rather more disposed for bed; but he was always cultivating it
nevertheless, and always moving in it--and always laying out money on it
with the greatest liberality.
Mrs Merdle's first husband had been a colonel, under whose auspices the
bosom had entered into competition with the snows of North America, and
had come off at little disadvantage in point of whiteness, and at none
in point of coldness. The colonel's son was Mrs Merdle's only child. He
was of a chuckle-headed, high-shouldered make, with a general appearance
of being, not so much a young man as a swelled boy. He had given so few
signs of reason, that a by-word went among his companions that his brain
had been frozen up in a mighty frost which prevailed at St john's, New
Brunswick, at the period of his birth there, and had never thawed from
that hour. Another by-word represented him as having in his infancy,
through the negligence of a nurse, fallen out of a high window on his
head, which had been heard by responsible witnesses to crack. It is
probable that both these representations were of ex post facto
origin; the young gentleman (whose expressive name was Sparkler) being
monomaniacal in offering marriage to all manner of undesirable young
ladies, and in remarking of every successive young lady to whom he
tendered a matrimonial proposal that she was 'a doosed fine gal--well
educated too--with no biggodd nonsense about her.'