Left alone, with the expressive looks and gestures of Mr Baptist,
otherwise Giovanni Baptista Cavalletto, vividly before him, Clennam
entered on a weary day. It was in vain that he tried to control his
attention by directing it to any business occupation or train of
thought; it rode at anchor by the haunting topic, and would hold to no
other idea.
As though a criminal should be chained in a stationary boat
on a deep clear river, condemned, whatever countless leagues of water
flowed past him, always to see the body of the fellow-creature he had
drowned lying at the bottom, immovable, and unchangeable, except as
the eddies made it broad or long, now expanding, now contracting
its terrible lineaments; so Arthur, below the shifting current of
transparent thoughts and fancies which were gone and succeeded by others
as soon as come, saw, steady and dark, and not to be stirred from its
place, the one subject that he endeavoured with all his might to rid
himself of, and that he could not fly from.
The assurance he now
had, that Blandois, whatever his right name, was one of the worst of
characters, greatly augmented the burden of his anxieties. Though the
disappearance should be accounted for to-morrow, the fact that
his mother had been in communication with such a man, would remain
unalterable.
That the communication had been of a secret kind, and that
she had been submissive to him and afraid of him, he hoped might be
known to no one beyond himself; yet, knowing it, how could he separate
it from his old vague fears, and how believe that there was nothing evil
in such relations? Her resolution not to enter on the question with him,
and his knowledge of her indomitable character, enhanced his sense of
helplessness.
It was like the oppression of a dream to believe that
shame and exposure were impending over her and his father's memory, and
to be shut out, as by a brazen wall, from the possibility of coming to
their aid. The purpose he had brought home to his native country, and
had ever since kept in view, was, with her greatest determination,
defeated by his mother herself, at the time of all others when he feared
that it pressed most.
His advice, energy, activity, money, credit,
all his resources whatsoever, were all made useless. If she had been
possessed of the old fabled influence, and had turned those who looked
upon her into stone, she could not have rendered him more completely
powerless (so it seemed to him in his distress of mind) than she did,
when she turned her unyielding face to his in her gloomy room.
But the light of that day's discovery, shining on these considerations,
roused him to take a more decided course of action.
Confident in the rectitude of his purpose, and impelled by a sense of
overhanging danger closing in around, he resolved, if his mother would
still admit of no approach, to make a desperate appeal to Affery. If she
could be brought to become communicative, and to do what lay in her to
break the spell of secrecy that enshrouded the house, he might shake
off the paralysis of which every hour that passed over his head made
him more acutely sensible. This was the result of his day's anxiety, and
this was the decision he put in practice when the day closed in.
His first disappointment, on arriving at the house, was to find the door
open, and Mr Flintwinch smoking a pipe on the steps. If circumstances
had been commonly favourable, Mistress Affery would have opened the
door to his knock. Circumstances being uncommonly unfavourable, the door
stood open, and Mr Flintwinch was smoking his pipe on the steps.
'Good evening,' said Arthur.
'Good evening,' said Mr Flintwinch.
The smoke came crookedly out of Mr Flintwinch's mouth, as if it
circulated through the whole of his wry figure and came back by his wry
throat, before coming forth to mingle with the smoke from the crooked
chimneys and the mists from the crooked river.
'Have you any news?' said Arthur.
'We have no news,' said Jeremiah.
'I mean of the foreign man,' Arthur explained.
'I mean of the foreign man,' said Jeremiah.
He looked so grim, as he stood askew, with the knot of his cravat under
his ear, that the thought passed into Clennam's mind, and not for the
first time by many, could Flintwinch for a purpose of his own have got
rid of Blandois? Could it have been his secret, and his safety, that
were at issue? He was small and bent, and perhaps not actively strong;
yet he was as tough as an old yew-tree, and as crusty as an old jackdaw.
Such a man, coming behind a much younger and more vigorous man, and
having the will to put an end to him and no relenting, might do it
pretty surely in that solitary place at a late hour.
While, in the morbid condition of his thoughts, these thoughts drifted
over the main one that was always in Clennam's mind, Mr Flintwinch,
regarding the opposite house over the gateway with his neck twisted and
one eye shut up, stood smoking with a vicious expression upon him; more
as if he were trying to bite off the stem of his pipe, than as if he
were enjoying it. Yet he was enjoying it in his own way.
'You'll be able to take my likeness, the next time you call, Arthur,
I should think,' said Mr Flintwinch, drily, as he stooped to knock the
ashes out.
Rather conscious and confused, Arthur asked his pardon, if he had stared
at him unpolitely. 'But my mind runs so much upon this matter,' he said,
'that I lose myself.'
'Hah! Yet I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, quite at his leisure,
'why it should trouble YOU, Arthur.'
'No?'
'No,' said Mr Flintwinch, very shortly and decidedly: much as if he were
of the canine race, and snapped at Arthur's hand.
'Is it nothing to see those placards about? Is it nothing to me to
see my mother's name and residence hawked up and down in such an
association?'
'I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, scraping his horny cheek, 'that
it need signify much to you. But I'll tell you what I do see, Arthur,'
glancing up at the windows; 'I see the light of fire and candle in your
mother's room!'
'And what has that to do with it?'
'Why, sir, I read by it,' said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself at him,
'that if it's advisable (as the proverb says it is) to let sleeping dogs
lie, it's just as advisable, perhaps, to let missing dogs lie. Let 'em
be. They generally turn up soon enough.'
Mr Flintwinch turned short round when he had made this remark, and went
into the dark hall. Clennam stood there, following him with his eyes,
as he dipped for a light in the phosphorus-box in the little room at the
side, got one after three or four dips, and lighted the dim lamp against
the wall. All the while, Clennam was pursuing the probabilities--rather
as if they were being shown to him by an invisible hand than as if he
himself were conjuring them up--of Mr Flintwinch's ways and means of
doing that darker deed, and removing its traces by any of the black
avenues of shadow that lay around them.
'Now, sir,' said the testy Jeremiah; 'will it be agreeable to walk
up-stairs?'
'My mother is alone, I suppose?'
'Not alone,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Mr Casby and his daughter are with
her. They came in while I was smoking, and I stayed behind to have my
smoke out.'
This was the second disappointment. Arthur made no remark upon it, and
repaired to his mother's room, where Mr Casby and Flora had been
taking tea, anchovy paste, and hot buttered toast. The relics of those
delicacies were not yet removed, either from the table or from the
scorched countenance of Affery, who, with the kitchen toasting-fork
still in her hand, looked like a sort of allegorical personage; except
that she had a considerable advantage over the general run of such
personages in point of significant emblematical purpose.
Flora had spread her bonnet and shawl upon the bed, with a care
indicative of an intention to stay some time. Mr Casby, too, was beaming
near the hob, with his benevolent knobs shining as if the warm butter of
the toast were exuding through the patriarchal skull, and with his face
as ruddy as if the colouring matter of the anchovy paste were mantling
in the patriarchal visage. Seeing this, as he exchanged the
usual salutations, Clennam decided to speak to his mother without
postponement.
It had long been customary, as she never changed her room, for those who
had anything to say to her apart, to wheel her to her desk; where she
sat, usually with the back of her chair turned towards the rest of the
room, and the person who talked with her seated in a corner, on a stool
which was always set in that place for that purpose. Except that it
was long since the mother and son had spoken together without the
intervention of a third person, it was an ordinary matter of course
within the experience of visitors for Mrs Clennam to be asked, with a
word of apology for the interruption, if she could be spoken with on
a matter of business, and, on her replying in the affirmative, to be
wheeled into the position described.
Therefore, when Arthur now made such an apology, and such a request,
and moved her to her desk and seated himself on the stool, Mrs Finching
merely began to talk louder and faster, as a delicate hint that she
could overhear nothing, and Mr Casby stroked his long white locks with
sleepy calmness.
'Mother, I have heard something to-day which I feel persuaded you don't
know, and which I think you should know, of the antecedents of that man
I saw here.'
'I know nothing of the antecedents of the man you saw here, Arthur.'
She spoke aloud. He had lowered his own voice; but she rejected that
advance towards confidence as she rejected every other, and spoke in her
usual key and in her usual stern voice.
'I have received it on no circuitous information; it has come to me
direct.' She asked him, exactly as before, if he were there to tell her
what it was?
'I thought it right that you should know it.'
'And what is it?'
'He has been a prisoner in a French gaol.'
She answered with composure, 'I should think that very likely.'
'But in a gaol for criminals, mother. On an accusation of murder.'
She started at the word, and her looks expressed her natural horror. Yet
she still spoke aloud, when she demanded:--
'Who told you so?'
'A man who was his fellow-prisoner.'
'That man's antecedents, I suppose, were not known to you, before he
told you?'
'No.'
'Though the man himself was?'
'Yes.'
'My case and Flintwinch's, in respect of this other man! I dare say the
resemblance is not so exact, though, as that your informant became known
to you through a letter from a correspondent with whom he had deposited
money? How does that part of the parallel stand?'
Arthur had no choice but to say that his informant had not become known
to him through the agency of any such credentials, or indeed of any
credentials at all. Mrs Clennam's attentive frown expanded by degrees
into a severe look of triumph, and she retorted with emphasis, 'Take
care how you judge others, then. I say to you, Arthur, for your good,
take care how you judge!' Her emphasis had been derived from her eyes
quite as much as from the stress she laid upon her words. She continued
to look at him; and if, when he entered the house, he had had any latent
hope of prevailing in the least with her, she now looked it out of his
heart.
'Mother, shall I do nothing to assist you?'
'Nothing.'
'Will you entrust me with no confidence, no charge, no explanation?
Will you take no counsel with me? Will you not let me come near you?'
'How can you ask me? You separated yourself from my affairs. It was not
my act; it was yours. How can you consistently ask me such a question?
You know that you left me to Flintwinch, and that he occupies your
place.'
Glancing at Jeremiah, Clennam saw in his very gaiters that his attention
was closely directed to them, though he stood leaning against the wall
scraping his jaw, and pretended to listen to Flora as she held forth in
a most distracting manner on a chaos of subjects, in which mackerel, and
Mr F.'s Aunt in a swing, had become entangled with cockchafers and the
wine trade.
'A prisoner, in a French gaol, on an accusation of murder,' repeated
Mrs Clennam, steadily going over what her son had said. 'That is all you
know of him from the fellow-prisoner?'
'In substance, all.'
'And was the fellow-prisoner his accomplice and a murderer, too? But, of
course, he gives a better account of himself than of his friend; it is
needless to ask. This will supply the rest of them here with something
new to talk about. Casby, Arthur tells me--'
'Stay, mother! Stay, stay!' He interrupted her hastily, for it had not
entered his imagination that she would openly proclaim what he had told
her.
'What now?' she said with displeasure. 'What more?'
'I beg you to excuse me, Mr Casby--and you, too, Mrs Finching--for one
other moment with my mother--'
He had laid his hand upon her chair, or she would otherwise have wheeled
it round with the touch of her foot upon the ground. They were still
face to face. She looked at him, as he ran over the possibilities of
some result he had not intended, and could not foresee, being influenced
by Cavalletto's disclosure becoming a matter of notoriety, and hurriedly
arrived at the conclusion that it had best not be talked about; though
perhaps he was guided by no more distinct reason than that he had taken
it for granted that his mother would reserve it to herself and her
partner.
'What now?' she said again, impatiently. 'What is it?'
'I did not mean, mother, that you should repeat what I have
communicated. I think you had better not repeat it.'
'Do you make that a condition with me?'
'Well! Yes.'
'Observe, then! It is you who make this a secret,' said she, holding
up her hand, 'and not I. It is you, Arthur, who bring here doubts and
suspicions and entreaties for explanations, and it is you, Arthur, who
bring secrets here. What is it to me, do you think, where the man has
been, or what he has been? What can it be to me? The whole world may
know it, if they care to know it; it is nothing to me. Now, let me go.'
He yielded to her imperious but elated look, and turned her chair back
to the place from which he had wheeled it. In doing so he saw elation
in the face of Mr Flintwinch, which most assuredly was not inspired by
Flora. This turning of his intelligence and of his whole attempt and
design against himself, did even more than his mother's fixedness and
firmness to convince him that his efforts with her were idle. Nothing
remained but the appeal to his old friend Affery.
But even to get the very doubtful and preliminary stage of making the
appeal, seemed one of the least promising of human undertakings. She
was so completely under the thrall of the two clever ones, was so
systematically kept in sight by one or other of them, and was so afraid
to go about the house besides, that every opportunity of speaking to her
alone appeared to be forestalled. Over and above that, Mistress Affery,
by some means (it was not very difficult to guess, through the sharp
arguments of her liege lord), had acquired such a lively conviction
of the hazard of saying anything under any circumstances, that she had
remained all this time in a corner guarding herself from approach with
that symbolical instrument of hers; so that, when a word or two had
been addressed to her by Flora, or even by the bottle-green patriarch
himself, she had warded off conversation with the toasting-fork like a
dumb woman.
After several abortive attempts to get Affery to look at him while
she cleared the table and washed the tea-service, Arthur thought of an
expedient which Flora might originate. To whom he therefore whispered,
'Could you say you would like to go through the house?'
Now, poor Flora, being always in fluctuating expectation of the time
when Clennam would renew his boyhood and be madly in love with her
again, received the whisper with the utmost delight; not only as
rendered precious by its mysterious character, but as preparing the
way for a tender interview in which he would declare the state of his
affections. She immediately began to work out the hint.
'Ah dear me the poor old room,' said Flora, glancing round, 'looks just
as ever Mrs Clennam I am touched to see except for being smokier which
was to be expected with time and which we must all expect and reconcile
ourselves to being whether we like it or not as I am sure I have had to
do myself if not exactly smokier dreadfully stouter which is the same or
worse, to think of the days when papa used to bring me here the least of
girls a perfect mass of chilblains to be stuck upon a chair with my feet
on the rails and stare at Arthur--pray excuse me--Mr Clennam--the
least of boys in the frightfullest of frills and jackets ere yet Mr
F. appeared a misty shadow on the horizon paying attentions like the
well-known spectre of some place in Germany beginning with a B is a
moral lesson inculcating that all the paths in life are similar to the
paths down in the North of England where they get the coals and make the
iron and things gravelled with ashes!'
Having paid the tribute of a sigh to the instability of human existence,
Flora hurried on with her purpose.
'Not that at any time,' she proceeded, 'its worst enemy could have said
it was a cheerful house for that it was never made to be but always
highly impressive, fond memory recalls an occasion in youth ere yet the
judgment was mature when Arthur--confirmed habit--Mr Clennam--took
me down into an unused kitchen eminent for mouldiness and proposed to
secrete me there for life and feed me on what he could hide from his
meals when he was not at home for the holidays and on dry bread in
disgrace which at that halcyon period too frequently occurred, would
it be inconvenient or asking too much to beg to be permitted to revive
those scenes and walk through the house?'
Mrs Clennam, who responded with a constrained grace to Mrs Finching's
good nature in being there at all, though her visit (before Arthur's
unexpected arrival) was undoubtedly an act of pure good nature and no
self-gratification, intimated that all the house was open to her. Flora
rose and looked to Arthur for his escort. 'Certainly,' said he, aloud;
'and Affery will light us, I dare say.'
Affery was excusing herself with 'Don't ask nothing of me, Arthur!' when
Mr Flintwinch stopped her with 'Why not? Affery, what's the matter with
you, woman? Why not, jade!' Thus expostulated with, she came unwillingly
out of her corner, resigned the toasting-fork into one of her husband's
hands, and took the candlestick he offered from the other.
'Go before, you fool!' said Jeremiah. 'Are you going up, or down, Mrs
Finching?'
Flora answered, 'Down.'
'Then go before, and down, you Affery,' said Jeremiah. 'And do it
properly, or I'll come rolling down the banisters, and tumbling over
you!'
Affery headed the exploring party; Jeremiah closed it. He had no
intention of leaving them. Clennam looking back, and seeing him
following three stairs behind, in the coolest and most methodical
manner exclaimed in a low voice, 'Is there no getting rid of him!' Flora
reassured his mind by replying promptly, 'Why though not exactly
proper Arthur and a thing I couldn't think of before a younger man or
a stranger still I don't mind him if you so particularly wish it and
provided you'll have the goodness not to take me too tight.'
Wanting the heart to explain that this was not at all what he meant,
Arthur extended his supporting arm round Flora's figure. 'Oh my goodness
me,' said she. 'You are very obedient indeed really and it's extremely
honourable and gentlemanly in you I am sure but still at the same time
if you would like to be a little tighter than that I shouldn't consider
it intruding.'
In this preposterous attitude, unspeakably at variance with his anxious
mind, Clennam descended to the basement of the house; finding that
wherever it became darker than elsewhere, Flora became heavier, and
that when the house was lightest she was too. Returning from the dismal
kitchen regions, which were as dreary as they could be, Mistress Affery
passed with the light into his father's old room, and then into the old
dining-room; always passing on before like a phantom that was not to be
overtaken, and neither turning nor answering when he whispered, 'Affery!
I want to speak to you!'
In the dining-room, a sentimental desire came over Flora to look into
the dragon closet which had so often swallowed Arthur in the days of his
boyhood--not improbably because, as a very dark closet, it was a likely
place to be heavy in. Arthur, fast subsiding into despair, had opened
it, when a knock was heard at the outer door.
Mistress Affery, with a suppressed cry, threw her apron over her head.
'What? You want another dose!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'You shall have it,
my woman, you shall have a good one! Oh! You shall have a sneezer, you
shall have a teaser!'
'In the meantime is anybody going to the door?' said Arthur.
'In the meantime, I am going to the door, sir,' returned the old man so
savagely, as to render it clear that in a choice of difficulties he felt
he must go, though he would have preferred not to go. 'Stay here the
while, all! Affery, my woman, move an inch, or speak a word in your
foolishness, and I'll treble your dose!'
The moment he was gone, Arthur released Mrs Finching: with some
difficulty, by reason of that lady misunderstanding his intentions, and
making arrangements with a view to tightening instead of slackening.
'Affery, speak to me now!'
'Don't touch me, Arthur!' she cried, shrinking from him. 'Don't come
near me. He'll see you. Jeremiah will. Don't.'
'He can't see me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the word, 'if
I blow the candle out.'
'He'll hear you,' cried Affery.
'He can't hear me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the words
again, 'if I draw you into this black closet, and speak here.
Why do you hide your face?'
'Because I am afraid of seeing something.'
'You can't be afraid of seeing anything in this darkness, Affery.'
'Yes I am. Much more than if it was light.'
'Why are you afraid?'
'Because the house is full of mysteries and secrets; because it's full
of whisperings and counsellings; because it's full of noises. There
never was such a house for noises. I shall die of 'em, if Jeremiah don't
strangle me first. As I expect he will.'
'I have never heard any noises here, worth speaking of.'
'Ah! But you would, though, if you lived in the house, and was obliged
to go about it as I am,' said Affery; 'and you'd feel that they was so
well worth speaking of, that you'd feel you was nigh bursting through
not being allowed to speak of 'em. Here's Jeremiah! You'll get me
killed.'
'My good Affery, I solemnly declare to you that I can see the light of
the open door on the pavement of the hall, and so could you if you would
uncover your face and look.'
'I durstn't do it,' said Affery, 'I durstn't never, Arthur. I'm always
blind-folded when Jeremiah an't a looking, and sometimes even when he
is.'
'He cannot shut the door without my seeing him,' said Arthur. 'You are
as safe with me as if he was fifty miles away.'
('I wish he was!' cried Affery.)
'Affery, I want to know what is amiss here; I want some light thrown
on the secrets of this house.' 'I tell you, Arthur,' she interrupted,
'noises is the secrets, rustlings and stealings about, tremblings,
treads overhead and treads underneath.'
'But those are not all the secrets.'
'I don't know,' said Affery. 'Don't ask me no more. Your old sweetheart
an't far off, and she's a blabber.'
His old sweetheart, being in fact so near at hand that she was then
reclining against him in a flutter, a very substantial angle of
forty-five degrees, here interposed to assure Mistress Affery with
greater earnestness than directness of asseveration, that what she heard
should go no further, but should be kept inviolate, 'if on no other
account on Arthur's--sensible of intruding in being too familiar Doyce
and Clennam's.'
'I make an imploring appeal to you, Affery, to you, one of the few
agreeable early remembrances I have, for my mother's sake, for your
husband's sake, for my own, for all our sakes. I am sure you can tell me
something connected with the coming here of this man, if you will.'
'Why, then I'll tell you, Arthur,' returned Affery--'Jeremiah's coming!'
'No, indeed he is not. The door is open, and he is standing outside,
talking.'
'I'll tell you then,' said Affery, after listening, 'that the first time
he ever come he heard the noises his own self. "What's that?" he said to
me. "I don't know what it is," I says to him, catching hold of him,
"but I have heard it over and over again." While I says it, he stands a
looking at me, all of a shake, he do.'
'Has he been here often?'
'Only that night, and the last night.'
'What did you see of him on the last night, after I was gone?'
'Them two clever ones had him all alone to themselves. Jeremiah come
a dancing at me sideways, after I had let you out (he always comes a
dancing at me sideways when he's going to hurt me), and he said to me,
"Now, Affery," he said, "I am a coming behind you, my woman, and a going
to run you up." So he took and squeezed the back of my neck in his hand,
till it made me open MY mouth, and then he pushed me before him to bed,
squeezing all the way. That's what he calls running me up, he do. Oh,
he's a wicked one!'
'And did you hear or see no more, Affery?'
'Don't I tell you I was sent to bed, Arthur! Here he is!'
'I assure you he is still at the door. Those whisperings and
counsellings, Affery, that you have spoken of. What are they?'
'How should I know? Don't ask me nothing about 'em, Arthur. Get away!'
'But my dear Affery; unless I can gain some insight into these hidden
things, in spite of your husband and in spite of my mother, ruin will
come of it.'
'Don't ask me nothing,' repeated Affery. 'I have been in a dream for
ever so long. Go away, go away!'
'You said that before,' returned Arthur. 'You used the same expression
that night, at the door, when I asked you what was going on here. What
do you mean by being in a dream?'
'I an't a going to tell you. Get away! I shouldn't tell you, if you was
by yourself; much less with your old sweetheart here.'
It was equally vain for Arthur to entreat, and for Flora to protest.
Affery, who had been trembling and struggling the whole time, turned a
deaf ear to all adjuration, and was bent on forcing herself out of the
closet.
'I'd sooner scream to Jeremiah than say another word! I'll call out to
him, Arthur, if you don't give over speaking to me. Now here's the very
last word I'll say afore I call to him--If ever you begin to get the
better of them two clever ones your own self (you ought to it, as I told
you when you first come home, for you haven't been a living here long
years, to be made afeared of your life as I have), then do you get the
better of 'em afore my face; and then do you say to me, Affery tell your
dreams! Maybe, then I'll tell 'em!'
The shutting of the door stopped Arthur from replying. They glided into
the places where Jeremiah had left them; and Clennam, stepping forward
as that old gentleman returned, informed him that he had accidentally
extinguished the candle. Mr Flintwinch looked on as he re-lighted it at
the lamp in the hall, and preserved a profound taciturnity respecting
the person who had been holding him in conversation. Perhaps his
irascibility demanded compensation for some tediousness that the visitor
had expended on him; however that was, he took such umbrage at seeing
his wife with her apron over her head, that he charged at her, and
taking her veiled nose between his thumb and finger, appeared to throw
the whole screw-power of his person into the wring he gave it.
Flora, now permanently heavy, did not release Arthur from the survey of
the house, until it had extended even to his old garret bedchamber. His
thoughts were otherwise occupied than with the tour of inspection; yet
he took particular notice at the time, as he afterwards had occasion to
remember, of the airlessness and closeness of the house; that they left
the track of their footsteps in the dust on the upper floors; and that
there was a resistance to the opening of one room door, which occasioned
Affery to cry out that somebody was hiding inside, and to continue to
believe so, though somebody was sought and not discovered. When they at
last returned to his mother's room, they found her shading her face
with her muffled hand, and talking in a low voice to the Patriarch as he
stood before the fire, whose blue eyes, polished head, and silken locks,
turning towards them as they came in, imparted an inestimable value and
inexhaustible love of his species to his remark:
'So you have been seeing the premises, seeing the
premises--premises--seeing the premises!'
it was not in itself a jewel of benevolence or wisdom, yet he made it an
exemplar of both that one would have liked to have a copy of.