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place.'

Glancing at Jeremiah, Clennam saw in his very gaiters that his attention

was closely directed to them, though he stood leaning against the wall

scraping his jaw, and pretended to listen to Flora as she held forth in

a most distracting manner on a chaos of subjects, in which mackerel, and

Mr F.'s Aunt in a swing, had become entangled with cockchafers and the

wine trade.

'A prisoner, in a French gaol, on an accusation of murder,' repeated

Mrs Clennam, steadily going over what her son had said. 'That is all you

know of him from the fellow-prisoner?'

'In substance, all.'

'And was the fellow-prisoner his accomplice and a murderer, too? But, of

course, he gives a better account of himself than of his friend; it is

needless to ask. This will supply the rest of them here with something

new to talk about. Casby, Arthur tells me--'

'Stay, mother! Stay, stay!' He interrupted her hastily, for it had not

entered his imagination that she would openly proclaim what he had told

her.

'What now?' she said with displeasure. 'What more?'

'I beg you to excuse me, Mr Casby--and you, too, Mrs Finching--for one

other moment with my mother--'

He had laid his hand upon her chair, or she would otherwise have wheeled

it round with the touch of her foot upon the ground. They were still

face to face. She looked at him, as he ran over the possibilities of

some result he had not intended, and could not foresee, being influenced

by Cavalletto's disclosure becoming a matter of notoriety, and hurriedly

arrived at the conclusion that it had best not be talked about; though

perhaps he was guided by no more distinct reason than that he had taken

it for granted that his mother would reserve it to herself and her

partner.

'What now?' she said again, impatiently. 'What is it?'

'I did not mean, mother, that you should repeat what I have

communicated. I think you had better not repeat it.'

'Do you make that a condition with me?'

'Well! Yes.'

'Observe, then! It is you who make this a secret,' said she, holding

up her hand, 'and not I. It is you, Arthur, who bring here doubts and

suspicions and entreaties for explanations, and it is you, Arthur, who

bring secrets here. What is it to me, do you think, where the man has

been, or what he has been? What can it be to me? The whole world may

know it, if they care to know it; it is nothing to me. Now, let me go.'

He yielded to her imperious but elated look, and turned her chair back

to the place from which he had wheeled it. In doing so he saw elation

in the face of Mr Flintwinch, which most assuredly was not inspired by

Flora. This turning of his intelligence and of his whole attempt and

design against himself, did even more than his mother's fixedness and

firmness to convince him that his efforts with her were idle. Nothing

remained but the appeal to his old friend Affery.

But even to get the very doubtful and preliminary stage of making the

appeal, seemed one of the least promising of human undertakings. She

was so completely under the thrall of the two clever ones, was so

systematically kept in sight by one or other of them, and was so afraid

to go about the house besides, that every opportunity of speaking to her

alone appeared to be forestalled. Over and above that, Mistress Affery,

by some means (it was not very difficult to guess, through the sharp

arguments of her liege lord), had acquired such a lively conviction

of the hazard of saying anything under any circumstances, that she had

remained all this time in a corner guarding herself from approach with

that symbolical instrument of hers; so that, when a word or two had

been addressed to her by Flora, or even by the bottle-green patriarch

himself, she had warded off conversation with the toasting-fork like a

dumb woman.

After several abortive attempts to get Affery to look at him while

she cleared the table and washed the tea-service, Arthur thought of an

expedient which Flora might originate. To whom he therefore whispered,

'Could you say you would like to go through the house?'

Now, poor Flora, being always in fluctuating expectation of the time

when Clennam would renew his boyhood and be madly in love with her

again, received the whisper with the utmost delight; not only as

rendered precious by its mysterious character, but as preparing the

way for a tender interview in which he would declare the state of his

affections. She immediately began to work out the hint.

'Ah dear me the poor old room,' said Flora, glancing round, 'looks just

as ever Mrs Clennam I am touched to see except for being smokier which

was to be expected with time and which we must all expect and reconcile

ourselves to being whether we like it or not as I am sure I have had to

do myself if not exactly smokier dreadfully stouter which is the same or

worse, to think of the days when papa used to bring me here the least of

girls a perfect mass of chilblains to be stuck upon a chair with my feet

on the rails and stare at Arthur--pray excuse me--Mr Clennam--the

least of boys in the frightfullest of frills and jackets ere yet Mr

F. appeared a misty shadow on the horizon paying attentions like the

well-known spectre of some place in Germany beginning with a B is a

moral lesson inculcating that all the paths in life are similar to the

paths down in the North of England where they get the coals and make the

iron and things gravelled with ashes!'

Having paid the tribute of a sigh to the instability of human existence,

Flora hurried on with her purpose.

'Not that at any time,' she proceeded, 'its worst enemy could have said

it was a cheerful house for that it was never made to be but always

highly impressive, fond memory recalls an occasion in youth ere yet the

judgment was mature when Arthur--confirmed habit--Mr Clennam--took

me down into an unused kitchen eminent for mouldiness and proposed to

secrete me there for life and feed me on what he could hide from his

meals when he was not at home for the holidays and on dry bread in

disgrace which at that halcyon period too frequently occurred, would

it be inconvenient or asking too much to beg to be permitted to revive

those scenes and walk through the house?'

Mrs Clennam, who responded with a constrained grace to Mrs Finching's

good nature in being there at all, though her visit (before Arthur's

unexpected arrival) was undoubtedly an act of pure good nature and no

self-gratification, intimated that all the house was open to her. Flora

rose and looked to Arthur for his escort. 'Certainly,' said he, aloud;

'and Affery will light us, I dare say.'

Affery was excusing herself with 'Don't ask nothing of me, Arthur!' when

Mr Flintwinch stopped her with 'Why not? Affery, what's the matter with

you, woman? Why not, jade!' Thus expostulated with, she came unwillingly

out of her corner, resigned the toasting-fork into one of her husband's

hands, and took the candlestick he offered from the other.

'Go before, you fool!' said Jeremiah. 'Are you going up, or down, Mrs

Finching?'

Flora answered, 'Down.'

'Then go before, and down, you Affery,' said Jeremiah. 'And do it

properly, or I'll come rolling down the banisters, and tumbling over

you!'

Affery headed the exploring party; Jeremiah closed it. He had no

intention of leaving them. Clennam looking back, and seeing him

following three stairs behind, in the coolest and most methodical

manner exclaimed in a low voice, 'Is there no getting rid of him!' Flora

reassured his mind by replying promptly, 'Why though not exactly

proper Arthur and a thing I couldn't think of before a younger man or

a stranger still I don't mind him if you so particularly wish it and

provided you'll have the goodness not to take me too tight.'

Wanting the heart to explain that this was not at all what he meant,

Arthur extended his supporting arm round Flora's figure. 'Oh my goodness

me,' said she. 'You are very obedient indeed really and it's extremely

honourable and gentlemanly in you I am sure but still at the same time

if you would like to be a little tighter than that I shouldn't consider

it intruding.'

In this preposterous attitude, unspeakably at variance with his anxious

mind, Clennam descended to the basement of the house; finding that

wherever it became darker than elsewhere, Flora became heavier, and

that when the house was lightest she was too. Returning from the dismal

kitchen regions, which were as dreary as they could be, Mistress Affery

passed with the light into his father's old room, and then into the old

dining-room; always passing on before like a phantom that was not to be

overtaken, and neither turning nor answering when he whispered, 'Affery!

I want to speak to you!'

In the dining-room, a sentimental desire came over Flora to look into

the dragon closet which had so often swallowed Arthur in the days of his

boyhood--not improbably because, as a very dark closet, it was a likely

place to be heavy in. Arthur, fast subsiding into despair, had opened

it, when a knock was heard at the outer door.

Mistress Affery, with a suppressed cry, threw her apron over her head.

'What? You want another dose!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'You shall have it,

my woman, you shall have a good one! Oh! You shall have a sneezer, you

shall have a teaser!'

'In the meantime is anybody going to the door?' said Arthur.

'In the meantime, I am going to the door, sir,' returned the old man so

savagely, as to render it clear that in a choice of difficulties he felt

he must go, though he would have preferred not to go. 'Stay here the

while, all! Affery, my woman, move an inch, or speak a word in your

foolishness, and I'll treble your dose!'

The moment he was gone, Arthur released Mrs Finching: with some

difficulty, by reason of that lady misunderstanding his intentions, and

making arrangements with a view to tightening instead of slackening.

'Affery, speak to me now!'

'Don't touch me, Arthur!' she cried, shrinking from him. 'Don't come

near me. He'll see you. Jeremiah will. Don't.'

'He can't see me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the word, 'if

I blow the candle out.'

'He'll hear you,' cried Affery.

'He can't hear me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the words

again, 'if I draw you into this black closet, and speak here.

Why do you hide your face?'

'Because I am afraid of seeing something.'

'You can't be afraid of seeing anything in this darkness, Affery.'

'Yes I am. Much more than if it was light.'

'Why are you afraid?'

'Because the house is full of mysteries and secrets; because it's full

of whisperings and counsellings; because it's full of noises. There

never was such a house for noises. I shall die of 'em, if Jeremiah don't

strangle me first. As I expect he will.'

'I have never heard any noises here, worth speaking of.'

'Ah! But you would, though, if you lived in the house, and was obliged

to go about it as I am,' said Affery; 'and you'd feel that they was so

well worth speaking of, that you'd feel you was nigh bursting through

not being allowed to speak of 'em. Here's Jeremiah! You'll get me

killed.'

'My good Affery, I solemnly declare to you that I can see the light of

the open door on the pavement of the hall, and so could you if you would

uncover your face and look.'

'I durstn't do it,' said Affery, 'I durstn't never, Arthur. I'm always

blind-folded when Jeremiah an't a looking, and sometimes even when he

is.'

'He cannot shut the door without my seeing him,' said Arthur. 'You are

as safe with me as if he was fifty miles away.'

('I wish he was!' cried Affery.)

'Affery, I want to know what is amiss here; I want some light thrown

on the secrets of this house.' 'I tell you, Arthur,' she interrupted,

'noises is the secrets, rustlings and stealings about, tremblings,

treads overhead and treads underneath.'

'But those are not all the secrets.'

'I don't know,' said Affery. 'Don't ask me no more. Your old sweetheart

an't far off, and she's a blabber.'

His old sweetheart, being in fact so near at hand that she was then

reclining against him in a flutter, a very substantial angle of

forty-five degrees, here interposed to assure Mistress Affery with

greater earnestness than directness of asseveration, that what she heard

should go no further, but should be kept inviolate, 'if on no other

account on Arthur's--sensible of intruding in being too familiar Doyce

and Clennam's.'

'I make an imploring appeal to you, Affery, to you, one of the few

agreeable early remembrances I have, for my mother's sake, for your

husband's sake, for my own, for all our sakes. I am sure you can tell me

something connected with the coming here of this man, if you will.'

'Why, then I'll tell you, Arthur,' returned Affery--'Jeremiah's coming!'

'No, indeed he is not. The door is open, and he is standing outside,

talking.'

'I'll tell you then,' said Affery, after listening, 'that the first time

he ever come he heard the noises his own self. "What's that?" he said to

me. "I don't know what it is," I says to him, catching hold of him,

"but I have heard it over and over again." While I says it, he stands a

looking at me, all of a shake, he do.'

'Has he been here often?'