Little Dorrit
‘in London one knows every one. We met her on our way here, and, to say
the truth, papa was at first rather cross with her for taking one of the
rooms that our people had ordered for us. However, of course, that soon
blew over, and we were all good friends again.’
Although the visit had as yet given Little Dorrit no opportunity of
conversing with Mrs Gowan, there was a silent understanding between
them, which did as well. She looked at Mrs Gowan with keen and unabated
interest; the sound of her voice was thrilling to her; nothing that was
near her, or about her, or at all concerned her, escaped Little Dorrit.
She was quicker to perceive the slightest matter here, than in any other
case--but one.
‘You have been quite well,’ she now said, ‘since that night?’
‘Quite, my dear. And you?’
‘Oh! I am always well,’ said Little Dorrit, timidly. ‘I--yes, thank you.’
There was no reason for her faltering and breaking off, other than that
Mrs Gowan had touched her hand in speaking to her, and their looks had
met. Something thoughtfully apprehensive in the large, soft eyes, had
checked Little Dorrit in an instant.
‘You don’t know that you are a favourite of my husband’s, and that I am
almost bound to be jealous of you?’ said Mrs Gowan.
Little Dorrit, blushing, shook her head.
‘He will tell you, if he tells you what he tells me, that you are
quieter and quicker of resource than any one he ever saw.’
‘He speaks far too well of me,’ said Little Dorrit.
‘I doubt that; but I don’t at all doubt that I must tell him you
are here. I should never be forgiven, if I were to let you--and Miss
Dorrit--go, without doing so. May I? You can excuse the disorder and
discomfort of a painter’s studio?’
The inquiries were addressed to Miss Fanny, who graciously replied that
she would be beyond anything interested and enchanted. Mrs Gowan went to
a door, looked in beyond it, and came back. ‘Do Henry the favour to come
in,’ said she, ‘I knew he would be pleased!’
The first object that confronted Little Dorrit, entering first, was
Blandois of Paris in a great cloak and a furtive slouched hat, standing
on a throne platform in a corner, as he had stood on the Great Saint
Bernard, when the warning arms seemed to be all pointing up at him. She
recoiled from this figure, as it smiled at her.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Gowan, coming from his easel behind the door.
‘It’s only Blandois. He is doing duty as a model to-day. I am making
a study of him. It saves me money to turn him to some use. We poor
painters have none to spare.’
Blandois of Paris pulled off his slouched hat, and saluted the ladies
without coming out of his corner.
‘A thousand pardons!’ said he. ‘But the Professore here is so inexorable
with me, that I am afraid to stir.’
‘Don’t stir, then,’ said Gowan coolly, as the sisters approached the
easel. ‘Let the ladies at least see the original of the daub, that they
may know what it’s meant for. There he stands, you see. A bravo waiting
for his prey, a distinguished noble waiting to save his country, the
common enemy waiting to do somebody a bad turn, an angelic messenger
waiting to do somebody a good turn--whatever you think he looks most
like!’
‘Say, Professore Mio, a poor gentleman waiting to do homage to
elegance and beauty,’ remarked Blandois.
‘Or say, Cattivo Soggetto Mio,’ returned Gowan, touching the painted
face with his brush in the part where the real face had moved, ‘a
murderer after the fact. Show that white hand of yours, Blandois. Put it
outside the cloak. Keep it still.’
Blandois’ hand was unsteady; but he laughed, and that would naturally
shake it.
‘He was formerly in some scuffle with another murderer, or with a
victim, you observe,’ said Gowan, putting in the markings of the hand
with a quick, impatient, unskilful touch, ‘and these are the tokens of
it. Outside the cloak, man!--Corpo di San Marco, what are you thinking
of?’
Blandois of Paris shook with a laugh again, so that his hand shook more;
now he raised it to twist his moustache, which had a damp appearance;
and now he stood in the required position, with a little new swagger.
His face was so directed in reference to the spot where Little Dorrit
stood by the easel, that throughout he looked at her. Once attracted by
his peculiar eyes, she could not remove her own, and they had looked
at each other all the time. She trembled now; Gowan, feeling it, and
supposing her to be alarmed by the large dog beside him, whose head she
caressed in her hand, and who had just uttered a low growl, glanced at
her to say, ‘He won’t hurt you, Miss Dorrit.’
‘I am not afraid of him,’ she returned in the same breath; ‘but will you
look at him?’
In a moment Gowan had thrown down his brush, and seized the dog with
both hands by the collar.
‘Blandois! How can you be such a fool as to provoke him! By Heaven, and
the other place too, he’ll tear you to bits! Lie down! Lion! Do you hear
my voice, you rebel!’
The great dog, regardless of being half-choked by his collar, was
obdurately pulling with his dead weight against his master, resolved to
get across the room. He had been crouching for a spring at the moment
when his master caught him.
‘Lion! Lion!’ He was up on his hind legs, and it was a wrestle between
master and dog. ‘Get back! Down, Lion! Get out of his sight, Blandois!
What devil have you conjured into the dog?’
‘I have done nothing to him.’
‘Get out of his sight or I can’t hold the wild beast! Get out of the
room! By my soul, he’ll kill you!’
The dog, with a ferocious bark, made one other struggle as Blandois
vanished; then, in the moment of the dog’s submission, the master,
little less angry than the dog, felled him with a blow on the head, and
standing over him, struck him many times severely with the heel of his
boot, so that his mouth was presently bloody.
‘Now get you into that corner and lie down,’ said Gowan, ‘or I’ll take
you out and shoot you.’
Lion did as he was ordered, and lay down licking his mouth and chest.
Lion’s master stopped for a moment to take breath, and then, recovering
his usual coolness of manner, turned to speak to his frightened wife
and her visitors. Probably the whole occurrence had not occupied two
minutes.
‘Come, come, Minnie! You know he is always good-humoured and tractable.
Blandois must have irritated him,--made faces at him. The dog has his
likings and dislikings, and Blandois is no great favourite of his; but
I am sure you will give him a character, Minnie, for never having been
like this before.’
Minnie was too much disturbed to say anything connected in reply; Little
Dorrit was already occupied in soothing her; Fanny, who had cried out
twice or thrice, held Gowan’s arm for protection; Lion, deeply ashamed
of having caused them this alarm, came trailing himself along the ground
to the feet of his mistress.
‘You furious brute,’ said Gowan, striking him with his foot again. ‘You
shall do penance for this.’ And he struck him again, and yet again.
‘O, pray don’t punish him any more,’ cried Little Dorrit. ‘Don’t hurt
him. See how gentle he is!’ At her entreaty, Gowan spared him; and he
deserved her intercession, for truly he was as submissive, and as sorry,
and as wretched as a dog could be.
It was not easy to recover this shock and make the visit unrestrained,
even though Fanny had not been, under the best of circumstances, the
least trifle in the way. In such further communication as passed among
them before the sisters took their departure, Little Dorrit fancied it
was revealed to her that Mr Gowan treated his wife, even in his very
fondness, too much like a beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of
the depths of feeling which she knew must lie below that surface, that
she doubted if there could be any such depths in himself. She wondered
whether his want of earnestness might be the natural result of his want
of such qualities, and whether it was with people as with ships, that,
in too shallow and rocky waters, their anchors had no hold, and they
drifted anywhere.
He attended them down the staircase, jocosely apologising for the
poor quarters to which such poor fellows as himself were limited, and
remarking that when the high and mighty Barnacles, his relatives, who
would be dreadfully ashamed of them, presented him with better, he would
live in better to oblige them. At the water’s edge they were saluted by
Blandois, who looked white enough after his late adventure, but who made
very light of it notwithstanding,--laughing at the mention of Lion.
Leaving the two together under the scrap of vine upon the causeway,
Gowan idly scattering the leaves from it into the water, and Blandois
lighting a cigarette, the sisters were paddled away in state as they had
come. They had not glided on for many minutes, when Little Dorrit became
aware that Fanny was more showy in manner than the occasion appeared to
require, and, looking about for the cause through the window and through
the open door, saw another gondola evidently in waiting on them.
As this gondola attended their progress in various artful ways;
sometimes shooting on a-head, and stopping to let them pass; sometimes,
when the way was broad enough, skimming along side by side with them;
and sometimes following close astern; and as Fanny gradually made no
disguise that she was playing off graces upon somebody within it, of
whom she at the same time feigned to be unconscious; Little Dorrit at
length asked who it was?
To which Fanny made the short answer, ‘That gaby.’
‘Who?’ said Little Dorrit.
‘My dear child,’ returned Fanny (in a tone suggesting that before her
Uncle’s protest she might have said, You little fool, instead), ‘how
slow you are! Young Sparkler.’
She lowered the window on her side, and, leaning back and resting her
elbow on it negligently, fanned herself with a rich Spanish fan of black
and gold. The attendant gondola, having skimmed forward again, with some
swift trace of an eye in the window, Fanny laughed coquettishly and
said, ‘Did you ever see such a fool, my love?’
‘Do you think he means to follow you all the way?’ asked Little Dorrit.
‘My precious child,’ returned Fanny, ‘I can’t possibly answer for what
an idiot in a state of desperation may do, but I should think it highly
probable. It’s not such an enormous distance. All Venice would scarcely
be that, I imagine, if he’s dying for a glimpse of me.’
‘And is he?’ asked Little Dorrit in perfect simplicity.
‘Well, my love, that really is an awkward question for me to answer,’
said her sister. ‘I believe he is. You had better ask Edward. He tells
Edward he is, I believe. I understand he makes a perfect spectacle of
himself at the Casino, and that sort of places, by going on about me.
But you had better ask Edward if you want to know.’
‘I wonder he doesn’t call,’ said Little Dorrit after thinking a moment.
‘My dear Amy, your wonder will soon cease, if I am rightly informed.
I should not be at all surprised if he called to-day. The creature has
only been waiting to get his courage up, I suspect.’
‘Will you see him?’
‘Indeed, my darling,’ said Fanny, ‘that’s just as it may happen. Here he
is again. Look at him. O, you simpleton!’
Mr Sparkler had, undeniably, a weak appearance; with his eye in the
window like a knot in the glass, and no reason on earth for stopping his
bark suddenly, except the real reason.
‘When you asked me if I will see him, my dear,’ said Fanny, almost as
well composed in the graceful indifference of her attitude as Mrs Merdle
herself, ‘what do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ said Little Dorrit--‘I think I rather mean what do you mean,
dear Fanny?’
Fanny laughed again, in a manner at once condescending, arch, and
affable; and said, putting her arm round her sister in a playfully
affectionate way: