The changes of a fevered room are slow and fluctuating; but the changes
of the fevered world are rapid and irrevocable.
It was Little Dorrit's lot to wait upon both kinds of change. The
Marshalsea walls, during a portion of every day, again embraced her in
their shadows as their child, while she thought for Clennam, worked for
him, watched him, and only left him, still to devote her utmost love and
care to him.
Her part in the life outside the gate urged its pressing
claims upon her too, and her patience untiringly responded to them.
Here was Fanny, proud, fitful, whimsical, further advanced in that
disqualified state for going into society which had so much fretted
her on the evening of the tortoise-shell knife, resolved always to want
comfort, resolved not to be comforted, resolved to be deeply wronged,
and resolved that nobody should have the audacity to think her so.
Here was her brother, a weak, proud, tipsy, young old man, shaking from
head to foot, talking as indistinctly as if some of the money he plumed
himself upon had got into his mouth and couldn't be got out, unable to
walk alone in any act of his life, and patronising the sister whom he
selfishly loved (he always had that negative merit, ill-starred and
ill-launched Tip!) because he suffered her to lead him. Here was Mrs
Merdle in gauzy mourning--the original cap whereof had possibly been
rent to pieces in a fit of grief, but had certainly yielded to a highly
becoming article from the Parisian market--warring with Fanny foot to
foot, and breasting her with her desolate bosom every hour in the day.
Here was poor Mr Sparkler, not knowing how to keep the peace between
them, but humbly inclining to the opinion that they could do no better
than agree that they were both remarkably fine women, and that there was
no nonsense about either of them--for which gentle recommendation they
united in falling upon him frightfully. Then, too, here was Mrs General,
got home from foreign parts, sending a Prune and a Prism by post every
other day, demanding a new Testimonial by way of recommendation to some
vacant appointment or other.
Of which remarkable gentlewoman it may be
finally observed, that there surely never was a gentlewoman of whose
transcendent fitness for any vacant appointment on the face of this
earth, so many people were (as the warmth of her Testimonials evinced)
so perfectly satisfied--or who was so very unfortunate in having a
large circle of ardent and distinguished admirers, who never themselves
happened to want her in any capacity.
On the first crash of the eminent Mr Merdle's decease, many important
persons had been unable to determine whether they should cut Mrs Merdle,
or comfort her. As it seemed, however, essential to the strength of
their own case that they should admit her to have been cruelly deceived,
they graciously made the admission, and continued to know her. It
followed that Mrs Merdle, as a woman of fashion and good breeding who
had been sacrificed to the wiles of a vulgar barbarian (for Mr Merdle
was found out from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, the
moment he was found out in his pocket), must be actively championed by
her order for her order's sake.