Little Dorrit
we should find ourselves compelled to look down with contempt, and
from which (socially speaking) we should feel obliged to recoil with
abhorrence. In short, I made an appeal to that laudable pride in your
sister.’
‘Let my sister know, if you please, Mrs Merdle,’ Fanny pouted, with a
toss of her gauzy bonnet, ‘that I had already had the honour of telling
your son that I wished to have nothing whatever to say to him.’
‘Well, Miss Dorrit,’ assented Mrs Merdle, ‘perhaps I might have
mentioned that before. If I did not think of it, perhaps it was because
my mind reverted to the apprehensions I had at the time that he might
persevere and you might have something to say to him. I also mentioned
to your sister--I again address the non-professional Miss Dorrit--that
my son would have nothing in the event of such a marriage, and would be
an absolute beggar. (I mention that merely as a fact which is part of
the narrative, and not as supposing it to have influenced your sister,
except in the prudent and legitimate way in which, constituted as our
artificial system is, we must all be influenced by such considerations.)
Finally, after some high words and high spirit on the part of your
sister, we came to the complete understanding that there was no danger;
and your sister was so obliging as to allow me to present her with a
mark or two of my appreciation at my dressmaker’s.’
Little Dorrit looked sorry, and glanced at Fanny with a troubled face.
‘Also,’ said Mrs Merdle, ‘as to promise to give me the present pleasure
of a closing interview, and of parting with her on the best of terms.
On which occasion,’ added Mrs Merdle, quitting her nest, and putting
something in Fanny’s hand, ‘Miss Dorrit will permit me to say Farewell
with best wishes in my own dull manner.’
The sisters rose at the same time, and they all stood near the cage of
the parrot, as he tore at a claw-full of biscuit and spat it out, seemed
to mock them with a pompous dance of his body without moving his feet,
and suddenly turned himself upside down and trailed himself all over
the outside of his golden cage, with the aid of his cruel beak and black
tongue.
‘Adieu, Miss Dorrit, with best wishes,’ said Mrs Merdle. ‘If we could
only come to a Millennium, or something of that sort, I for one might
have the pleasure of knowing a number of charming and talented persons
from whom I am at present excluded. A more primitive state of society
would be delicious to me. There used to be a poem when I learnt lessons,
something about Lo the poor Indians whose something mind! If a few
thousand persons moving in Society, could only go and be Indians, I
would put my name down directly; but as, moving in Society, we can’t be
Indians, unfortunately--Good morning!’
They came down-stairs with powder before them and powder behind, the
elder sister haughty and the younger sister humbled, and were shut out
into unpowdered Harley Street, Cavendish Square.
‘Well?’ said Fanny, when they had gone a little way without speaking.
‘Have you nothing to say, Amy?’
‘Oh, I don’t know what to say!’ she answered, distressed. ‘You didn’t
like this young man, Fanny?’
‘Like him? He is almost an idiot.’
‘I am so sorry--don’t be hurt--but, since you ask me what I have to
say, I am so very sorry, Fanny, that you suffered this lady to give you
anything.’
‘You little Fool!’ returned her sister, shaking her with the sharp pull
she gave her arm. ‘Have you no spirit at all? But that’s just the way!
You have no self-respect, you have no becoming pride, just as you allow
yourself to be followed about by a contemptible little Chivery of a
thing,’ with the scornfullest emphasis, ‘you would let your family be
trodden on, and never turn.’
‘Don’t say that, dear Fanny. I do what I can for them.’
‘You do what you can for them!’ repeated Fanny, walking her on very
fast. ‘Would you let a woman like this, whom you could see, if you had
any experience of anything, to be as false and insolent as a woman can
be--would you let her put her foot upon your family, and thank her for
it?’
‘No, Fanny, I am sure.’
‘Then make her pay for it, you mean little thing. What else can you make
her do? Make her pay for it, you stupid child; and do your family some
credit with the money!’
They spoke no more all the way back to the lodging where Fanny and her
uncle lived. When they arrived there, they found the old man practising
his clarionet in the dolefullest manner in a corner of the room.
Fanny had a composite meal to make, of chops, and porter, and tea; and
indignantly pretended to prepare it for herself, though her sister did
all that in quiet reality. When at last Fanny sat down to eat and drink,
she threw the table implements about and was angry with her bread, much
as her father had been last night.
‘If you despise me,’ she said, bursting into vehement tears, ‘because I
am a dancer, why did you put me in the way of being one? It was your
doing. You would have me stoop as low as the ground before this Mrs
Merdle, and let her say what she liked and do what she liked, and hold
us all in contempt, and tell me so to my face. Because I am a dancer!’
‘O Fanny!’
‘And Tip, too, poor fellow. She is to disparage him just as much as she
likes, without any check--I suppose because he has been in the law, and
the docks, and different things. Why, it was your doing, Amy. You might
at least approve of his being defended.’
All this time the uncle was dolefully blowing his clarionet in the
corner, sometimes taking it an inch or so from his mouth for a moment
while he stopped to gaze at them, with a vague impression that somebody
had said something.
‘And your father, your poor father, Amy. Because he is not free to show
himself and to speak for himself, you would let such people insult him
with impunity. If you don’t feel for yourself because you go out to
work, you might at least feel for him, I should think, knowing what he
has undergone so long.’
Poor Little Dorrit felt the injustice of this taunt rather sharply.
The remembrance of last night added a barbed point to it. She said
nothing in reply, but turned her chair from the table towards the fire.
Uncle, after making one more pause, blew a dismal wail and went on
again.
Fanny was passionate with the tea-cups and the bread as long as her
passion lasted, and then protested that she was the wretchedest girl in
the world, and she wished she was dead. After that, her crying became
remorseful, and she got up and put her arms round her sister. Little
Dorrit tried to stop her from saying anything, but she answered that
she would, she must! Thereupon she said again, and again, ‘I beg your
pardon, Amy,’ and ‘Forgive me, Amy,’ almost as passionately as she had
said what she regretted.
‘But indeed, indeed, Amy,’ she resumed when they were seated in sisterly
accord side by side, ‘I hope and I think you would have seen this
differently, if you had known a little more of Society.’
‘Perhaps I might, Fanny,’ said the mild Little Dorrit.
‘You see, while you have been domestic and resignedly shut up there,
Amy,’ pursued her sister, gradually beginning to patronise, ‘I have
been out, moving more in Society, and may have been getting proud and
spirited--more than I ought to be, perhaps?’
Little Dorrit answered ‘Yes. O yes!’
‘And while you have been thinking of the dinner or the clothes, I may
have been thinking, you know, of the family. Now, may it not be so,
Amy?’
Little Dorrit again nodded ‘Yes,’ with a more cheerful face than heart.
‘Especially as we know,’ said Fanny, ‘that there certainly is a tone in
the place to which you have been so true, which does belong to it, and
which does make it different from other aspects of Society. So kiss me
once again, Amy dear, and we will agree that we may both be right, and
that you are a tranquil, domestic, home-loving, good girl.’
The clarionet had been lamenting most pathetically during this dialogue,
but was cut short now by Fanny’s announcement that it was time to go;
which she conveyed to her uncle by shutting up his scrap of music, and
taking the clarionet out of his mouth.
Little Dorrit parted from them at the door, and hastened back to the
Marshalsea. It fell dark there sooner than elsewhere, and going into it
that evening was like going into a deep trench. The shadow of the wall
was on every object. Not least upon the figure in the old grey gown and
the black velvet cap, as it turned towards her when she opened the door
of the dim room.
‘Why not upon me too!’ thought Little Dorrit, with the door yet in her
hand. ‘It was not unreasonable in Fanny.’
CHAPTER 21. Mr Merdle’s Complaint
Upon that establishment of state, the Merdle establishment in Harley
Street, Cavendish Square, there was the shadow of no more common wall
than the fronts of other establishments of state on the opposite side of
the street. Like unexceptionable Society, the opposing rows of houses in
Harley Street were very grim with one another. Indeed, the mansions and
their inhabitants were so much alike in that respect, that the people
were often to be found drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in
the shade of their own loftiness, staring at the other side of the way
with the dullness of the houses.
Everybody knows how like the street the two dinner-rows of people who
take their stand by the street will be. The expressionless uniform
twenty houses, all to be knocked at and rung at in the same form, all
approachable by the same dull steps, all fended off by the same pattern
of railing, all with the same impracticable fire-escapes, the same
inconvenient fixtures in their heads, and everything without exception
to be taken at a high valuation--who has not dined with these? The
house so drearily out of repair, the occasional bow-window, the stuccoed
house, the newly-fronted house, the corner house with nothing but
angular rooms, the house with the blinds always down, the house with the
hatchment always up, the house where the collector has called for one
quarter of an Idea, and found nobody at home--who has not dined with
these? The house that nobody will take, and is to be had a bargain--who
does not know her? The showy house that was taken for life by the
disappointed gentleman, and which does not suit him at all--who is
unacquainted with that haunted habitation?
Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was more than aware of Mr and Mrs
Merdle. Intruders there were in Harley Street, of whom it was not aware;
but Mr and Mrs Merdle it delighted to honour. Society was aware of
Mr and Mrs Merdle. Society had said ‘Let us license them; let us know
them.’
Mr Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a
Midas without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold. He was in
everything good, from banking to building. He was in Parliament, of
course. He was in the City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this,
Trustee of that, President of the other. The weightiest of men had said
to projectors, ‘Now, what name have you got? Have you got Merdle?’ And,
the reply being in the negative, had said, ‘Then I won’t look at you.’
This great and fortunate man had provided that extensive bosom which
required so much room to be unfeeling enough in, with a nest of crimson
and gold some fifteen years before. It was not a bosom to repose
upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon. Mr Merdle wanted
something to hang jewels upon, and he bought it for the purpose. Storr
and Mortimer might have married on the same speculation.
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