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entombed Mrs Sparkler's hand: wrist, bracelet, and all. Where his own

hand had shrunk to, was not made manifest, but it was as remote from Mrs

Sparkler's sense of touch as if he had been a highly meritorious Chelsea

Veteran or Greenwich Pensioner.

Thoroughly convinced, as he went out of the room, that it was the

longest day that ever did come to an end at last, and that there never

was a woman, not wholly devoid of personal attractions, so worn out by

idiotic and lumpish people, Fanny passed into the balcony for a breath

of air. Waters of vexation filled her eyes; and they had the effect of

making the famous Mr Merdle, in going down the street, appear to leap,

and waltz, and gyrate, as if he were possessed of several Devils.

CHAPTER 25. The Chief Butler Resigns the Seals of Office

The dinner-party was at the great Physician's. Bar was there, and in

full force. Ferdinand Barnacle was there, and in his most engaging

state. Few ways of life were hidden from Physician, and he was oftener

in its darkest places than even Bishop. There were brilliant ladies

about London who perfectly doted on him, my dear, as the most charming

creature and the most delightful person, who would have been shocked to

find themselves so close to him if they could have known on what sights

those thoughtful eyes of his had rested within an hour or two, and near

to whose beds, and under what roofs, his composed figure had stood. But

Physician was a composed man, who performed neither on his own trumpet,

nor on the trumpets of other people. Many wonderful things did he see

and hear, and much irreconcilable moral contradiction did he pass his

life among; yet his equality of compassion was no more disturbed than

the Divine Master's of all healing was. He went, like the rain,

among the just and unjust, doing all the good he could, and neither

proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at the corner of streets.

As no man of large experience of humanity, however quietly carried

it may be, can fail to be invested with an interest peculiar to the

possession of such knowledge, Physician was an attractive man. Even the

daintier gentlemen and ladies who had no idea of his secret, and

who would have been startled out of more wits than they had, by the

monstrous impropriety of his proposing to them 'Come and see what I

see!' confessed his attraction. Where he was, something real was. And

half a grain of reality, like the smallest portion of some other scarce

natural productions, will flavour an enormous quantity of diluent.

It came to pass, therefore, that Physician's little dinners always

presented people in their least conventional lights. The guests said to

themselves, whether they were conscious of it or no, 'Here is a man who

really has an acquaintance with us as we are, who is admitted to some

of us every day with our wigs and paint off, who hears the wanderings of

our minds, and sees the undisguised expression of our faces, when both

are past our control; we may as well make an approach to reality with

him, for the man has got the better of us and is too strong for us.'

Therefore, Physician's guests came out so surprisingly at his round

table that they were almost natural.

Bar's knowledge of that agglomeration of jurymen which is called

humanity was as sharp as a razor; yet a razor is not a generally

convenient instrument, and Physician's plain bright scalpel, though far

less keen, was adaptable to far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the

gullibility and knavery of people; but Physician could have given him

a better insight into their tendernesses and affections, in one week of

his rounds, than Westminster Hall and all the circuits put together,

in threescore years and ten. Bar always had a suspicion of this, and

perhaps was glad to encourage it (for, if the world were really a great

Law Court, one would think that the last day of Term could not too soon

arrive); and so he liked and respected Physician quite as much as any

other kind of man did.

Mr Merdle's default left a Banquo's chair at the table; but, if he had

been there, he would have merely made the difference of Banquo in it,

and consequently he was no loss. Bar, who picked up all sorts of odds

and ends about Westminster Hall, much as a raven would have done if he

had passed as much of his time there, had been picking up a great many

straws lately and tossing them about, to try which way the Merdle wind

blew. He now had a little talk on the subject with Mrs Merdle herself;

sidling up to that lady, of course, with his double eye-glass and his

jury droop.

'A certain bird,' said Bar; and he looked as if it could have been no

other bird than a magpie; 'has been whispering among us lawyers lately,

that there is to be an addition to the titled personages of this realm.'

'Really?' said Mrs Merdle.

'Yes,' said Bar. 'Has not the bird been whispering in very different

ears from ours--in lovely ears?' He looked expressively at Mrs Merdle's

nearest ear-ring.

'Do you mean mine?' asked Mrs Merdle.

'When I say lovely,' said Bar, 'I always mean you.'

'You never mean anything, I think,' returned Mrs Merdle (not

displeased).

'Oh, cruelly unjust!' said Bar. 'But, the bird.'

'I am the last person in the world to hear news,' observed Mrs Merdle,

carelessly arranging her stronghold. 'Who is it?'

'What an admirable witness you would make!' said Bar. 'No jury (unless

we could empanel one of blind men) could resist you, if you were ever so

bad a one; but you would be such a good one!'

'Why, you ridiculous man?' asked Mrs Merdle, laughing.

Bar waved his double eye-glass three or four times between himself and

the Bosom, as a rallying answer, and inquired in his most insinuating

accents:

'What am I to call the most elegant, accomplished and charming of women,

a few weeks, or it may be a few days, hence?'

'Didn't your bird tell you what to call her?' answered Mrs Merdle. 'Do

ask it to-morrow, and tell me the next time you see me what it says.'

This led to further passages of similar pleasantry between the two; but

Bar, with all his sharpness, got nothing out of them. Physician, on the

other hand, taking Mrs Merdle down to her carriage and attending on her

as she put on her cloak, inquired into the symptoms with his usual calm

directness.

'May I ask,' he said, 'is this true about Merdle?'

'My dear doctor,' she returned, 'you ask me the very question that I was

half disposed to ask you.' 'To ask me! Why me?'

'Upon my honour, I think Mr Merdle reposes greater confidence in you

than in any one.'

'On the contrary, he tells me absolutely nothing, even professionally.

You have heard the talk, of course?'

'Of course I have. But you know what Mr Merdle is; you know how

taciturn and reserved he is. I assure you I have no idea what foundation

for it there may be. I should like it to be true; why should I deny that

to you? You would know better, if I did!'

'Just so,' said Physician.

'But whether it is all true, or partly true, or entirely false, I am

wholly unable to say. It is a most provoking situation, a most absurd

situation; but you know Mr Merdle, and are not surprised.'

Physician was not surprised, handed her into her carriage, and bade her

Good Night. He stood for a moment at his own hall door, looking sedately

at the elegant equipage as it rattled away. On his return up-stairs, the

rest of the guests soon dispersed, and he was left alone. Being a great

reader of all kinds of literature (and never at all apologetic for that

weakness), he sat down comfortably to read.

The clock upon his study table pointed to a few minutes short of twelve,

when his attention was called to it by a ringing at the door bell. A man

of plain habits, he had sent his servants to bed and must needs go down

to open the door. He went down, and there found a man without hat or

coat, whose shirt sleeves were rolled up tight to his shoulders. For a

moment, he thought the man had been fighting: the rather, as he was much

agitated and out of breath. A second look, however, showed him that

the man was particularly clean, and not otherwise discomposed as to his

dress than as it answered this description.

'I come from the warm-baths, sir, round in the neighbouring street.'

'And what is the matter at the warm-baths?'

'Would you please to come directly, sir. We found that, lying on the

table.'

He put into the physician's hand a scrap of paper. Physician looked at

it, and read his own name and address written in pencil; nothing more.

He looked closer at the writing, looked at the man, took his hat from

its peg, put the key of his door in his pocket, and they hurried away

together.

When they came to the warm-baths, all the other people belonging to that

establishment were looking out for them at the door, and running up and

down the passages. 'Request everybody else to keep back, if you please,'

said the physician aloud to the master; 'and do you take me straight to

the place, my friend,' to the messenger.

The messenger hurried before him, along a grove of little rooms,

and turning into one at the end of the grove, looked round the door.

Physician was close upon him, and looked round the door too.

There was a bath in that corner, from which the water had been hastily

drained off. Lying in it, as in a grave or sarcophagus, with a hurried

drapery of sheet and blanket thrown across it, was the body of a

heavily-made man, with an obtuse head, and coarse, mean, common

features. A sky-light had been opened to release the steam with which

the room had been filled; but it hung, condensed into water-drops,

heavily upon the walls, and heavily upon the face and figure in the

bath. The room was still hot, and the marble of the bath still warm; but

the face and figure were clammy to the touch. The white marble at the

bottom of the bath was veined with a dreadful red. On the ledge at

the side, were an empty laudanum-bottle and a tortoise-shell handled

penknife--soiled, but not with ink.

'Separation of jugular vein--death rapid--been dead at least half an

hour.' This echo of the physician's words ran through the passages

and little rooms, and through the house while he was yet straightening

himself from having bent down to reach to the bottom of the bath, and

while he was yet dabbling his hands in water; redly veining it as the

marble was veined, before it mingled into one tint.

He turned his eyes to the dress upon the sofa, and to the watch, money,

and pocket-book on the table. A folded note half buckled up in the

pocket-book, and half protruding from it, caught his observant glance.

He looked at it, touched it, pulled it a little further out from among

the leaves, said quietly, 'This is addressed to me,' and opened and read

it.

There were no directions for him to give. The people of the house knew

what to do; the proper authorities were soon brought; and they took an

equable business-like possession of the deceased, and of what had been

his property, with no greater disturbance of manner or countenance than

usually attends the winding-up of a clock. Physician was glad to walk

out into the night air--was even glad, in spite of his great experience,

to sit down upon a door-step for a little while: feeling sick and faint.

Bar was a near neighbour of his, and, when he came to the house, he saw

a light in the room where he knew his friend often sat late getting up

his work. As the light was never there when Bar was not, it gave him

assurance that Bar was not yet in bed. In fact, this busy bee had

a verdict to get to-morrow, against evidence, and was improving the

shining hours in setting snares for the gentlemen of the jury.

Physician's knock astonished Bar; but, as he immediately suspected that

somebody had come to tell him that somebody else was robbing him, or

otherwise trying to get the better of him, he came down promptly and

softly. He had been clearing his head with a lotion of cold water, as a

good preparative to providing hot water for the heads of the jury, and

had been reading with the neck of his shirt thrown wide open that he

might the more freely choke the opposite witnesses. In consequence, he

came down, looking rather wild. Seeing Physician, the least expected of

men, he looked wilder and said, 'What's the matter?'

'You asked me once what Merdle's complaint was.'

'Extraordinary answer! I know I did.'

'I told you I had not found out.'

'Yes. I know you did.'

'I have found it out.'

'My God!' said Bar, starting back, and clapping his hand upon the

other's breast. 'And so have I! I see it in your face.'

They went into the nearest room, where Physician gave him the letter to

read. He read it through half-a-dozen times. There was not much in it

as to quantity; but it made a great demand on his close and continuous

attention. He could not sufficiently give utterance to his regret that

he had not himself found a clue to this. The smallest clue, he said,

would have made him master of the case, and what a case it would have

been to have got to the bottom of!

Physician had engaged to break the intelligence in Harley Street. Bar

could not at once return to his inveiglements of the most enlightened

and remarkable jury he had ever seen in that box, with whom, he could

tell his learned friend, no shallow sophistry would go down, and no

unhappily abused professional tact and skill prevail (this was the way

he meant to begin with them); so he said he would go too, and would

loiter to and fro near the house while his friend was inside. They

walked there, the better to recover self-possession in the air; and the

wings of day were fluttering the night when Physician knocked at the