Little Dorrit
laughing outright. ‘I don’t know why we unfortunate creatures should
be supposed to want common sense, but it is generally taken for granted
that we do. Even the best friend I have in the world, our excellent
friend over yonder,’ said Doyce, nodding towards Twickenham, ‘extends
a sort of protection to me, don’t you know, as a man not quite able to
take care of himself?’
Arthur Clennam could not help joining in the good-humoured laugh, for he
recognised the truth of the description.
‘So I find that I must have a partner who is a man of business and not
guilty of any inventions,’ said Daniel Doyce, taking off his hat to pass
his hand over his forehead, ‘if it’s only in deference to the current
opinion, and to uphold the credit of the Works. I don’t think he’ll find
that I have been very remiss or confused in my way of conducting them;
but that’s for him to say--whoever he is--not for me.’
‘You have not chosen him yet, then?’
‘No, sir, no. I have only just come to a decision to take one. The fact
is, there’s more to do than there used to be, and the Works are enough
for me as I grow older. What with the books and correspondence, and
foreign journeys for which a Principal is necessary, I can’t do all. I
am going to talk over the best way of negotiating the matter, if I find
a spare half-hour between this and Monday morning, with my--my Nurse and
protector,’ said Doyce, with laughing eyes again. ‘He is a sagacious man
in business, and has had a good apprenticeship to it.’
After this, they conversed on different subjects until they arrived at
their journey’s end. A composed and unobtrusive self-sustainment was
noticeable in Daniel Doyce--a calm knowledge that what was true must
remain true, in spite of all the Barnacles in the family ocean, and
would be just the truth, and neither more nor less when even that sea
had run dry--which had a kind of greatness in it, though not of the
official quality.
As he knew the house well, he conducted Arthur to it by the way that
showed it to the best advantage. It was a charming place (none the worse
for being a little eccentric), on the road by the river, and just what
the residence of the Meagles family ought to be. It stood in a garden,
no doubt as fresh and beautiful in the May of the Year as Pet now was
in the May of her life; and it was defended by a goodly show of handsome
trees and spreading evergreens, as Pet was by Mr and Mrs Meagles. It
was made out of an old brick house, of which a part had been altogether
pulled down, and another part had been changed into the present cottage;
so there was a hale elderly portion, to represent Mr and Mrs Meagles,
and a young picturesque, very pretty portion to represent Pet. There was
even the later addition of a conservatory sheltering itself against it,
uncertain of hue in its deep-stained glass, and in its more transparent
portions flashing to the sun’s rays, now like fire and now like harmless
water drops; which might have stood for Tattycoram. Within view was
the peaceful river and the ferry-boat, to moralise to all the inmates
saying: Young or old, passionate or tranquil, chafing or content, you,
thus runs the current always. Let the heart swell into what discord it
will, thus plays the rippling water on the prow of the ferry-boat ever
the same tune. Year after year, so much allowance for the drifting of
the boat, so many miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the
rushes, there the lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet, upon this road
that steadily runs away; while you, upon your flowing road of time, are
so capricious and distracted.
The bell at the gate had scarcely sounded when Mr Meagles came out to
receive them. Mr Meagles had scarcely come out, when Mrs Meagles came
out. Mrs Meagles had scarcely come out, when Pet came out. Pet scarcely
had come out, when Tattycoram came out. Never had visitors a more
hospitable reception.
‘Here we are, you see,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘boxed up, Mr Clennam, within
our own home-limits, as if we were never going to expand--that is,
travel--again. Not like Marseilles, eh? No allonging and marshonging
here!’
‘A different kind of beauty, indeed!’ said Clennam, looking about him.
‘But, Lord bless me!’ cried Mr Meagles, rubbing his hands with a relish,
‘it was an uncommonly pleasant thing being in quarantine, wasn’t it?
Do you know, I have often wished myself back again? We were a capital
party.’
This was Mr Meagles’s invariable habit. Always to object to everything
while he was travelling, and always to want to get back to it when he
was not travelling.
‘If it was summer-time,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘which I wish it was on your
account, and in order that you might see the place at its best, you
would hardly be able to hear yourself speak for birds. Being practical
people, we never allow anybody to scare the birds; and the birds, being
practical people too, come about us in myriads. We are delighted to see
you, Clennam (if you’ll allow me, I shall drop the Mister); I heartily
assure you, we are delighted.’
‘I have not had so pleasant a greeting,’ said Clennam--then he recalled
what Little Dorrit had said to him in his own room, and faithfully
added ‘except once--since we last walked to and fro, looking down at the
Mediterranean.’
‘Ah!’ returned Mr Meagles. ‘Something like a look out, _that_ was, wasn’t
it? I don’t want a military government, but I shouldn’t mind a little
allonging and marshonging--just a dash of it--in this neighbourhood
sometimes. It’s Devilish still.’
Bestowing this eulogium on the retired character of his retreat with a
dubious shake of the head, Mr Meagles led the way into the house. It was
just large enough, and no more; was as pretty within as it was without,
and was perfectly well-arranged and comfortable. Some traces of the
migratory habits of the family were to be observed in the covered frames
and furniture, and wrapped-up hangings; but it was easy to see that it
was one of Mr Meagles’s whims to have the cottage always kept, in their
absence, as if they were always coming back the day after to-morrow. Of
articles collected on his various expeditions, there was such a vast
miscellany that it was like the dwelling of an amiable Corsair. There
were antiquities from Central Italy, made by the best modern houses in
that department of industry; bits of mummy from Egypt (and perhaps
Birmingham); model gondolas from Venice; model villages from
Switzerland; morsels of tesselated pavement from Herculaneum and
Pompeii, like petrified minced veal; ashes out of tombs, and lava out of
Vesuvius; Spanish fans, Spezzian straw hats, Moorish slippers, Tuscan
hairpins, Carrara sculpture, Trastaverini scarves, Genoese velvets and
filigree, Neapolitan coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jewellery, Arab
lanterns, rosaries blest all round by the Pope himself, and an infinite
variety of lumber. There were views, like and unlike, of a multitude of
places; and there was one little picture-room devoted to a few of the
regular sticky old Saints, with sinews like whipcord, hair like
Neptune’s, wrinkles like tattooing, and such coats of varnish that every
holy personage served for a fly-trap, and became what is now called in
the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O. Of these pictorial acquisitions Mr
Meagles spoke in the usual manner. He was no judge, he said, except of
what pleased himself; he had picked them up, dirt-cheap, and people
_had_ considered them rather fine. One man, who at any rate ought to
know something of the subject, had declared that ‘Sage, Reading’ (a
specially oily old gentleman in a blanket, with a swan’s-down tippet for
a beard, and a web of cracks all over him like rich pie-crust), to be a
fine Guercino. As for Sebastian del Piombo there, you would judge for
yourself; if it were not his later manner, the question was, Who was it?
Titian, that might or might not be--perhaps he had only touched it.
Daniel Doyce said perhaps he hadn’t touched it, but Mr Meagles rather
declined to overhear the remark.
When he had shown all his spoils, Mr Meagles took them into his own
snug room overlooking the lawn, which was fitted up in part like a
dressing-room and in part like an office, and in which, upon a kind of
counter-desk, were a pair of brass scales for weighing gold, and a scoop
for shovelling out money.
‘Here they are, you see,’ said Mr Meagles. ‘I stood behind these two
articles five-and-thirty years running, when I no more thought of
gadding about than I now think of--staying at home. When I left the Bank
for good, I asked for them, and brought them away with me. I mention it
at once, or you might suppose that I sit in my counting-house (as Pet
says I do), like the king in the poem of the four-and-twenty blackbirds,
counting out my money.’
Clennam’s eyes had strayed to a natural picture on the wall, of two
pretty little girls with their arms entwined. ‘Yes, Clennam,’ said
Mr Meagles, in a lower voice. ‘There they both are. It was taken some
seventeen years ago. As I often say to Mother, they were babies then.’
‘Their names?’ said Arthur.
‘Ah, to be sure! You have never heard any name but Pet. Pet’s name is
Minnie; her sister’s Lillie.’
‘Should you have known, Mr Clennam, that one of them was meant for me?’
asked Pet herself, now standing in the doorway.
‘I might have thought that both of them were meant for you, both
are still so like you. Indeed,’ said Clennam, glancing from the fair
original to the picture and back, ‘I cannot even now say which is not
your portrait.’
‘D’ye hear that, Mother?’ cried Mr Meagles to his wife, who had followed
her daughter. ‘It’s always the same, Clennam; nobody can decide. The
child to your left is Pet.’
The picture happened to be near a looking-glass. As Arthur looked at
it again, he saw, by the reflection of the mirror, Tattycoram stop in
passing outside the door, listen to what was going on, and pass away
with an angry and contemptuous frown upon her face, that changed its
beauty into ugliness.
‘But come!’ said Mr Meagles. ‘You have had a long walk, and will be glad
to get your boots off. As to Daniel here, I suppose he’d never think of
taking _his_ boots off, unless we showed him a boot-jack.’
‘Why not?’ asked Daniel, with a significant smile at Clennam.
‘Oh! You have so many things to think about,’ returned Mr Meagles,
clapping him on the shoulder, as if his weakness must not be left to
itself on any account. ‘Figures, and wheels, and cogs, and levers, and
screws, and cylinders, and a thousand things.’
‘In my calling,’ said Daniel, amused, ‘the greater usually includes the
less. But never mind, never mind! Whatever pleases you, pleases me.’
Clennam could not help speculating, as he seated himself in his room
by the fire, whether there might be in the breast of this honest,
affectionate, and cordial Mr Meagles, any microscopic portion of
the mustard-seed that had sprung up into the great tree of the
Circumlocution Office. His curious sense of a general superiority to
Daniel Doyce, which seemed to be founded, not so much on anything
in Doyce’s personal character as on the mere fact of his being an
originator and a man out of the beaten track of other men, suggested the
idea. It might have occupied him until he went down to dinner an hour
afterwards, if he had not had another question to consider, which
had been in his mind so long ago as before he was in quarantine at
Marseilles, and which had now returned to it, and was very urgent with
it. No less a question than this: Whether he should allow himself to
fall in love with Pet?
He was twice her age. (He changed the leg he had crossed over the other,
and tried the calculation again, but could not bring out the total at
less.) He was twice her age. Well! He was young in appearance, young