Little Dorrit
and the consequence resulted that she was absolutely tempted and
goaded into making herself disagreeable. Besides (she angrily told
her looking-glass), she didn’t want to be forgiven. It was not a right
example, that she should be constantly stooping to be forgiven by a
younger sister. And this was the Art of it--that she was always being
placed in the position of being forgiven, whether she liked it or not.
Finally she burst into violent weeping, and, when her sister came and
sat close at her side to comfort her, said, ‘Amy, you’re an Angel!’
‘But, I tell you what, my Pet,’ said Fanny, when her sister’s gentleness
had calmed her, ‘it now comes to this; that things cannot and shall not
go on as they are at present going on, and that there must be an end of
this, one way or another.’
As the announcement was vague, though very peremptory, Little Dorrit
returned, ‘Let us talk about it.’
‘Quite so, my dear,’ assented Fanny, as she dried her eyes. ‘Let us talk
about it. I am rational again now, and you shall advise me. _Will_ you
advise me, my sweet child?’
Even Amy smiled at this notion, but she said, ‘I will, Fanny, as well as
I can.’
‘Thank you, dearest Amy,’ returned Fanny, kissing her. ‘You are my
anchor.’
Having embraced her Anchor with great affection, Fanny took a bottle of
sweet toilette water from the table, and called to her maid for a fine
handkerchief. She then dismissed that attendant for the night, and went
on to be advised; dabbing her eyes and forehead from time to time to
cool them.
‘My love,’ Fanny began, ‘our characters and points of view are
sufficiently different (kiss me again, my darling), to make it very
probable that I shall surprise you by what I am going to say. What I am
going to say, my dear, is, that notwithstanding our property, we labour,
socially speaking, under disadvantages. You don’t quite understand what
I mean, Amy?’
‘I have no doubt I shall,’ said Amy, mildly, ‘after a few words more.’
‘Well, my dear, what I mean is, that we are, after all, newcomers into
fashionable life.’
‘I am sure, Fanny,’ Little Dorrit interposed in her zealous admiration,
‘no one need find that out in you.’
‘Well, my dear child, perhaps not,’ said Fanny, ‘though it’s most kind
and most affectionate in you, you precious girl, to say so.’ Here she
dabbed her sister’s forehead, and blew upon it a little. ‘But you are,’
resumed Fanny, ‘as is well known, the dearest little thing that ever
was! To resume, my child. Pa is extremely gentlemanly and extremely well
informed, but he is, in some trifling respects, a little different from
other gentlemen of his fortune: partly on account of what he has gone
through, poor dear: partly, I fancy, on account of its often running in
his mind that other people are thinking about that, while he is talking
to them. Uncle, my love, is altogether unpresentable. Though a dear
creature to whom I am tenderly attached, he is, socially speaking,
shocking. Edward is frightfully expensive and dissipated. I don’t mean
that there is anything ungenteel in that itself--far from it--but I
do mean that he doesn’t do it well, and that he doesn’t, if I may
so express myself, get the money’s-worth in the sort of dissipated
reputation that attaches to him.’
‘Poor Edward!’ sighed Little Dorrit, with the whole family history in
the sigh.
‘Yes. And poor you and me, too,’ returned Fanny, rather sharply.
‘Very true! Then, my dear, we have no mother, and we have a Mrs General.
And I tell you again, darling, that Mrs General, if I may reverse a
common proverb and adapt it to her, is a cat in gloves who _will_
catch mice. That woman, I am quite sure and confident, will be our
mother-in-law.’
‘I can hardly think, Fanny--’ Fanny stopped her.
‘Now, don’t argue with me about it, Amy,’ said she, ‘because I know
better.’ Feeling that she had been sharp again, she dabbed her sister’s
forehead again, and blew upon it again. ‘To resume once more, my dear.
It then becomes a question with me (I am proud and spirited, Amy, as you
very well know: too much so, I dare say) whether I shall make up my mind
to take it upon myself to carry the family through.’
‘How?’ asked her sister, anxiously.
‘I will not,’ said Fanny, without answering the question, ‘submit to
be mother-in-lawed by Mrs General; and I will not submit to be, in any
respect whatever, either patronised or tormented by Mrs Merdle.’
Little Dorrit laid her hand upon the hand that held the bottle of sweet
water, with a still more anxious look. Fanny, quite punishing her own
forehead with the vehement dabs she now began to give it, fitfully went
on.
‘That he has somehow or other, and how is of no consequence, attained a
very good position, no one can deny. That it is a very good connection,
no one can deny. And as to the question of clever or not clever, I doubt
very much whether a clever husband would be suitable to me. I cannot
submit. I should not be able to defer to him enough.’
‘O, my dear Fanny!’ expostulated Little Dorrit, upon whom a kind of
terror had been stealing as she perceived what her sister meant. ‘If you
loved any one, all this feeling would change. If you loved any one, you
would no more be yourself, but you would quite lose and forget yourself
in your devotion to him. If you loved him, Fanny--’ Fanny had stopped
the dabbing hand, and was looking at her fixedly.
‘O, indeed!’ cried Fanny. ‘Really? Bless me, how much some people know
of some subjects! They say every one has a subject, and I certainly
seem to have hit upon yours, Amy. There, you little thing, I was only in
fun,’ dabbing her sister’s forehead; ‘but don’t you be a silly puss,
and don’t you think flightily and eloquently about degenerate
impossibilities. There! Now, I’ll go back to myself.’
‘Dear Fanny, let me say first, that I would far rather we worked for
a scanty living again than I would see you rich and married to Mr
Sparkler.’
‘_Let_ you say, my dear?’ retorted Fanny. ‘Why, of course, I will _let_
you say anything. There is no constraint upon you, I hope. We are
together to talk it over. And as to marrying Mr Sparkler, I have not the
slightest intention of doing so to-night, my dear, or to-morrow morning
either.’
‘But at some time?’
‘At no time, for anything I know at present,’ answered Fanny, with
indifference. Then, suddenly changing her indifference into a burning
restlessness, she added, ‘You talk about the clever men, you little
thing! It’s all very fine and easy to talk about the clever men; but
where are they? _I_ don’t see them anywhere near _me_!’
‘My dear Fanny, so short a time--’
‘Short time or long time,’ interrupted Fanny. ‘I am impatient of our
situation. I don’t like our situation, and very little would induce
me to change it. Other girls, differently reared and differently
circumstanced altogether, might wonder at what I say or may do. Let
them. They are driven by their lives and characters; I am driven by
mine.’
‘Fanny, my dear Fanny, you know that you have qualities to make you the
wife of one very superior to Mr Sparkler.’
‘Amy, my dear Amy,’ retorted Fanny, parodying her words, ‘I know that I
wish to have a more defined and distinct position, in which I can assert
myself with greater effect against that insolent woman.’
‘Would you therefore--forgive my asking, Fanny--therefore marry her
son?’
‘Why, perhaps,’ said Fanny, with a triumphant smile. ‘There may be many
less promising ways of arriving at an end than that, my dear. That piece
of insolence may think, now, that it would be a great success to get her
son off upon me, and shelve me. But, perhaps, she little thinks how I
would retort upon her if I married her son. I would oppose her in
everything, and compete with her. I would make it the business of my
life.’
Fanny set down the bottle when she came to this, and walked about the
room; always stopping and standing still while she spoke.
‘One thing I could certainly do, my child: I could make her older. And I
would!’
This was followed by another walk.
‘I would talk of her as an old woman. I would pretend to know--if I
didn’t, but I should from her son--all about her age. And she should
hear me say, Amy: affectionately, quite dutifully and affectionately:
how well she looked, considering her time of life. I could make her seem
older at once, by being myself so much younger. I may not be as handsome
as she is; I am not a fair judge of that question, I suppose; but I know
I am handsome enough to be a thorn in her side. And I would be!’
‘My dear sister, would you condemn yourself to an unhappy life for
this?’
‘It wouldn’t be an unhappy life, Amy. It would be the life I am fitted
for. Whether by disposition, or whether by circumstances, is no matter;
I am better fitted for such a life than for almost any other.’
There was something of a desolate tone in those words; but, with a
short proud laugh she took another walk, and after passing a great
looking-glass came to another stop.
‘Figure! Figure, Amy! Well. The woman has a good figure. I will give her
her due, and not deny it. But is it so far beyond all others that it is
altogether unapproachable? Upon my word, I am not so sure of it. Give
some much younger woman the latitude as to dress that she has, being
married; and we would see about that, my dear!’
Something in the thought that was agreeable and flattering, brought her
back to her seat in a gayer temper. She took her sister’s hands in hers,
and clapped all four hands above her head as she looked in her sister’s
face laughing:
‘And the dancer, Amy, that she has quite forgotten--the dancer who bore
no sort of resemblance to me, and of whom I never remind her, oh dear
no!--should dance through her life, and dance in her way, to such a tune
as would disturb her insolent placidity a little. Just a little, my dear
Amy, just a little!’
Meeting an earnest and imploring look in Amy’s face, she brought the
four hands down, and laid only one on Amy’s lips.
‘Now, don’t argue with me, child,’ she said in a sterner way, ‘because
it is of no use. I understand these subjects much better than you do. I
have not nearly made up my mind, but it may be. Now we have talked this
over comfortably, and may go to bed. You best and dearest little mouse,
Good night!’ With those words Fanny weighed her Anchor, and--having
taken so much advice--left off being advised for that occasion.
Thenceforward, Amy observed Mr Sparkler’s treatment by his enslaver,
with new reasons for attaching importance to all that passed between
them. There were times when Fanny appeared quite unable to endure his
mental feebleness, and when she became so sharply impatient of it that
she would all but dismiss him for good. There were other times when she
got on much better with him; when he amused her, and when her sense of
superiority seemed to counterbalance that opposite side of the scale. If
Mr Sparkler had been other than the faithfullest and most submissive of
swains, he was sufficiently hard pressed to have fled from the scene of
his trials, and have set at least the whole distance from Rome to London
between himself and his enchantress. But he had no greater will of his
own than a boat has when it is towed by a steam-ship; and he followed
his cruel mistress through rough and smooth, on equally strong
compulsion.
Mrs Merdle, during these passages, said little to Fanny, but said
more about her. She was, as it were, forced to look at her through her
eye-glass, and in general conversation to allow commendations of her
beauty to be wrung from her by its irresistible demands. The defiant
character it assumed when Fanny heard these extollings (as it generally
happened that she did), was not expressive of concessions to the