Little Dorrit
knives, committing no outrageous immoralities, living chiefly on
farinaceous and milk diet, and playing with Mrs Plornish’s children of
an evening, they began to think that although he could never hope to be
an Englishman, still it would be hard to visit that affliction on his
head. They began to accommodate themselves to his level, calling him ‘Mr
Baptist,’ but treating him like a baby, and laughing immoderately at his
lively gestures and his childish English--more, because he didn’t mind
it, and laughed too. They spoke to him in very loud voices as if he
were stone deaf. They constructed sentences, by way of teaching him the
language in its purity, such as were addressed by the savages to Captain
Cook, or by Friday to Robinson Crusoe. Mrs Plornish was particularly
ingenious in this art; and attained so much celebrity for saying ‘Me ope
you leg well soon,’ that it was considered in the Yard but a very short
remove indeed from speaking Italian. Even Mrs Plornish herself began to
think that she had a natural call towards that language. As he became
more popular, household objects were brought into requisition for his
instruction in a copious vocabulary; and whenever he appeared in the
Yard ladies would fly out at their doors crying ‘Mr Baptist--tea-pot!’
‘Mr Baptist--dust-pan!’ ‘Mr Baptist--flour-dredger!’ ‘Mr
Baptist--coffee-biggin!’ At the same time exhibiting those articles,
and penetrating him with a sense of the appalling difficulties of the
Anglo-Saxon tongue.
It was in this stage of his progress, and in about the third week of his
occupation, that Mr Pancks’s fancy became attracted by the little man.
Mounting to his attic, attended by Mrs Plornish as interpreter, he found
Mr Baptist with no furniture but his bed on the ground, a table, and a
chair, carving with the aid of a few simple tools, in the blithest way
possible.
‘Now, old chap,’ said Mr Pancks, ‘pay up!’
He had his money ready, folded in a scrap of paper, and laughingly
handed it in; then with a free action, threw out as many fingers of his
right hand as there were shillings, and made a cut crosswise in the air
for an odd sixpence.
‘Oh!’ said Mr Pancks, watching him, wonderingly. ‘That’s it, is it?
You’re a quick customer. It’s all right. I didn’t expect to receive it,
though.’
Mrs Plornish here interposed with great condescension, and explained to
Mr Baptist. ‘E please. E glad get money.’
The little man smiled and nodded. His bright face seemed uncommonly
attractive to Mr Pancks. ‘How’s he getting on in his limb?’ he asked Mrs
Plornish.
‘Oh, he’s a deal better, sir,’ said Mrs Plornish. ‘We expect next week
he’ll be able to leave off his stick entirely.’ (The opportunity
being too favourable to be lost, Mrs Plornish displayed her great
accomplishment by explaining with pardonable pride to Mr Baptist, ‘E ope
you leg well soon.’)
‘He’s a merry fellow, too,’ said Mr Pancks, admiring him as if he were a
mechanical toy. ‘How does he live?’
‘Why, sir,’ rejoined Mrs Plornish, ‘he turns out to have quite a power
of carving them flowers that you see him at now.’ (Mr Baptist, watching
their faces as they spoke, held up his work. Mrs Plornish interpreted in
her Italian manner, on behalf of Mr Pancks, ‘E please. Double good!’)
‘Can he live by that?’ asked Mr Pancks.
‘He can live on very little, sir, and it is expected as he will be able,
in time, to make a very good living. Mr Clennam got it him to do, and
gives him odd jobs besides in at the Works next door--makes ‘em for him,
in short, when he knows he wants ‘em.’
‘And what does he do with himself, now, when he ain’t hard at it?’ said
Mr Pancks.
‘Why, not much as yet, sir, on accounts I suppose of not being able to
walk much; but he goes about the Yard, and he chats without particular
understanding or being understood, and he plays with the children,
and he sits in the sun--he’ll sit down anywhere, as if it was an
arm-chair--and he’ll sing, and he’ll laugh!’
‘Laugh!’ echoed Mr Pancks. ‘He looks to me as if every tooth in his head
was always laughing.’
‘But whenever he gets to the top of the steps at t’other end of the
Yard,’ said Mrs Plornish, ‘he’ll peep out in the curiousest way! So that
some of us thinks he’s peeping out towards where his own country is, and
some of us thinks he’s looking for somebody he don’t want to see, and
some of us don’t know what to think.’
Mr Baptist seemed to have a general understanding of what she said; or
perhaps his quickness caught and applied her slight action of peeping.
In any case he closed his eyes and tossed his head with the air of a man
who had sufficient reasons for what he did, and said in his own tongue,
it didn’t matter. Altro!
‘What’s Altro?’ said Pancks.
‘Hem! It’s a sort of a general kind of expression, sir,’ said Mrs
Plornish.
‘Is it?’ said Pancks. ‘Why, then Altro to you, old chap. Good afternoon.
Altro!’
Mr Baptist in his vivacious way repeating the word several times, Mr
Pancks in his duller way gave it him back once. From that time it became
a frequent custom with Pancks the gipsy, as he went home jaded at night,
to pass round by Bleeding Heart Yard, go quietly up the stairs, look in
at Mr Baptist’s door, and, finding him in his room, to say, ‘Hallo, old
chap! Altro!’ To which Mr Baptist would reply with innumerable bright
nods and smiles, ‘Altro, signore, altro, altro, altro!’ After this
highly condensed conversation, Mr Pancks would go his way with an
appearance of being lightened and refreshed.
CHAPTER 26. Nobody’s State of Mind
If Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to
restrain himself from loving Pet, he would have lived on in a state of
much perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own heart. Not
the least of these would have been a contention, always waging within
it, between a tendency to dislike Mr Henry Gowan, if not to regard
him with positive repugnance, and a whisper that the inclination was
unworthy. A generous nature is not prone to strong aversions, and is
slow to admit them even dispassionately; but when it finds ill-will
gaining upon it, and can discern between-whiles that its origin is not
dispassionate, such a nature becomes distressed.
Therefore Mr Henry Gowan would have clouded Clennam’s mind, and would
have been far oftener present to it than more agreeable persons and
subjects but for the great prudence of his decision aforesaid. As it
was, Mr Gowan seemed transferred to Daniel Doyce’s mind; at all events,
it so happened that it usually fell to Mr Doyce’s turn, rather than
to Clennam’s, to speak of him in the friendly conversations they held
together. These were of frequent occurrence now; as the two partners
shared a portion of a roomy house in one of the grave old-fashioned City
streets, lying not far from the Bank of England, by London Wall.
Mr Doyce had been to Twickenham to pass the day. Clennam had excused
himself. Mr Doyce was just come home. He put in his head at the door of
Clennam’s sitting-room to say Good night.
‘Come in, come in!’ said Clennam.
‘I saw you were reading,’ returned Doyce, as he entered, ‘and thought
you might not care to be disturbed.’
But for the notable resolution he had made, Clennam really might not
have known what he had been reading; really might not have had his eyes
upon the book for an hour past, though it lay open before him. He shut
it up, rather quickly.
‘Are they well?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Doyce; ‘they are well. They are all well.’
Daniel had an old workmanlike habit of carrying his pocket-handkerchief
in his hat. He took it out and wiped his forehead with it, slowly
repeating, ‘They are all well. Miss Minnie looking particularly well, I
thought.’
‘Any company at the cottage?’
‘No, no company.’
‘And how did you get on, you four?’ asked Clennam gaily.
‘There were five of us,’ returned his partner. ‘There was
What’s-his-name. He was there.’
‘Who is he?’ said Clennam.
‘Mr Henry Gowan.’
‘Ah, to be sure!’ cried Clennam with unusual vivacity, ‘Yes!--I forgot
him.’
‘As I mentioned, you may remember,’ said Daniel Doyce, ‘he is always
there on Sunday.’
‘Yes, yes,’ returned Clennam; ‘I remember now.’
Daniel Doyce, still wiping his forehead, ploddingly repeated. ‘Yes. He
was there, he was there. Oh yes, he was there. And his dog. _He_ was
there too.’
‘Miss Meagles is quite attached to--the--dog,’ observed Clennam.
‘Quite so,’ assented his partner. ‘More attached to the dog than I am to
the man.’
‘You mean Mr--?’
‘I mean Mr Gowan, most decidedly,’ said Daniel Doyce.
There was a gap in the conversation, which Clennam devoted to winding up
his watch.
‘Perhaps you are a little hasty in your judgment,’ he said. ‘Our
judgments--I am supposing a general case--’
‘Of course,’ said Doyce.
‘Are so liable to be influenced by many considerations, which, almost
without our knowing it, are unfair, that it is necessary to keep a guard
upon them. For instance, Mr--’
‘Gowan,’ quietly said Doyce, upon whom the utterance of the name almost
always devolved.
‘Is young and handsome, easy and quick, has talent, and has seen a
good deal of various kinds of life. It might be difficult to give an
unselfish reason for being prepossessed against him.’
‘Not difficult for me, I think, Clennam,’ returned his partner. ‘I see
him bringing present anxiety, and, I fear, future sorrow, into my old
friend’s house. I see him wearing deeper lines into my old friend’s
face, the nearer he draws to, and the oftener he looks at, the face
of his daughter. In short, I see him with a net about the pretty and
affectionate creature whom he will never make happy.’
‘We don’t know,’ said Clennam, almost in the tone of a man in pain,
‘that he will not make her happy.’
‘We don’t know,’ returned his partner, ‘that the earth will last another
hundred years, but we think it highly probable.’
‘Well, well!’ said Clennam, ‘we must be hopeful, and we must at least
try to be, if not generous (which, in this case, we have no opportunity
of being), just. We will not disparage this gentleman, because he is
successful in his addresses to the beautiful object of his ambition; and
we will not question her natural right to bestow her love on one whom
she finds worthy of it.’
‘Maybe, my friend,’ said Doyce. ‘Maybe also, that she is too young and
petted, too confiding and inexperienced, to discriminate well.’
‘That,’ said Clennam, ‘would be far beyond our power of correction.’
Daniel Doyce shook his head gravely, and rejoined, ‘I fear so.’
‘Therefore, in a word,’ said Clennam, ‘we should make up our minds that
it is not worthy of us to say any ill of Mr Gowan. It would be a poor
thing to gratify a prejudice against him. And I resolve, for my part,
not to depreciate him.’
‘I am not quite so sure of myself, and therefore I reserve my privilege
of objecting to him,’ returned the other. ‘But, if I am not sure of
myself, I am sure of you, Clennam, and I know what an upright man you
are, and how much to be respected. Good night, _my_ friend and partner!’
He shook his hand in saying this, as if there had been something serious
at the bottom of their conversation; and they separated.
By this time they had visited the family on several occasions, and had
always observed that even a passing allusion to Mr Henry Gowan when
he was not among them, brought back the cloud which had obscured Mr
Meagles’s sunshine on the morning of the chance encounter at the Ferry.
If Clennam had ever admitted the forbidden passion into his breast,
this period might have been a period of real trial; under the actual
circumstances, doubtless it was nothing--nothing.
Equally, if his heart had given entertainment to that prohibited guest,
his silent fighting of his way through the mental condition of this