第 25 页

You was always at it--if not with your right hand, with your left. What

was they a doing in the Yard? Why, take a look at 'em and see. There

was the girls and their mothers a working at their sewing, or their

shoe-binding, or their trimming, or their waistcoat making, day and

night and night and day, and not more than able to keep body and soul

together after all--often not so much. There was people of pretty well

all sorts of trades you could name, all wanting to work, and yet not

able to get it. There was old people, after working all their lives,

going and being shut up in the workhouse, much worse fed and lodged and

treated altogether, than--Mr Plornish said manufacturers, but appeared

to mean malefactors. Why, a man didn't know where to turn himself for a

crumb of comfort. As to who was to blame for it, Mr Plornish didn't know

who was to blame for it. He could tell you who suffered, but he couldn't

tell you whose fault it was. It wasn't HIS place to find out, and who'd

mind what he said, if he did find out? He only know'd that it wasn't put

right by them what undertook that line of business, and that it didn't

come right of itself. And, in brief, his illogical opinion was, that if

you couldn't do nothing for him, you had better take nothing from him

for doing of it; so far as he could make out, that was about what it

come to. Thus, in a prolix, gently-growling, foolish way, did Plornish

turn the tangled skein of his estate about and about, like a blind man

who was trying to find some beginning or end to it; until they reached

the prison gate. There, he left his Principal alone; to wonder, as he

rode away, how many thousand Plornishes there might be within a day

or two's journey of the Circumlocution Office, playing sundry curious

variations on the same tune, which were not known by ear in that

glorious institution.

CHAPTER 13. Patriarchal

The mention of Mr Casby again revived in Clennam's memory the

smouldering embers of curiosity and interest which Mrs Flintwinch had

fanned on the night of his arrival. Flora Casby had been the beloved of

his boyhood; and Flora was the daughter and only child of wooden-headed

old Christopher (so he was still occasionally spoken of by some

irreverent spirits who had had dealings with him, and in whom

familiarity had bred its proverbial result perhaps), who was reputed to

be rich in weekly tenants, and to get a good quantity of blood out of

the stones of several unpromising courts and alleys. After some days of

inquiry and research, Arthur Clennam became convinced that the case of

the Father of the Marshalsea was indeed a hopeless one, and sorrowfully

resigned the idea of helping him to freedom again. He had no hopeful

inquiry to make at present, concerning Little Dorrit either; but he

argued with himself that it might--for anything he knew--it might be

serviceable to the poor child, if he renewed this acquaintance. It is

hardly necessary to add that beyond all doubt he would have presented

himself at Mr Casby's door, if there had been no Little Dorrit in

existence; for we all know how we all deceive ourselves--that is to

say, how people in general, our profounder selves excepted, deceive

themselves--as to motives of action.

With a comfortable impression upon him, and quite an honest one in its

way, that he was still patronising Little Dorrit in doing what had no

reference to her, he found himself one afternoon at the corner of Mr

Casby's street. Mr Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn Road, which

had set off from that thoroughfare with the intention of running at one

heat down into the valley, and up again to the top of Pentonville Hill;

but which had run itself out of breath in twenty yards, and had stood

still ever since. There is no such place in that part now; but it

remained there for many years, looking with a baulked countenance at

the wilderness patched with unfruitful gardens and pimpled with eruptive

summerhouses, that it had meant to run over in no time.

'The house,' thought Clennam, as he crossed to the door, 'is as little

changed as my mother's, and looks almost as gloomy. But the likeness

ends outside. I know its staid repose within. The smell of its jars of

old rose-leaves and lavender seems to come upon me even here.'

When his knock at the bright brass knocker of obsolete shape brought a

woman-servant to the door, those faded scents in truth saluted him like

wintry breath that had a faint remembrance in it of the bygone spring.

He stepped into the sober, silent, air-tight house--one might have

fancied it to have been stifled by Mutes in the Eastern manner--and the

door, closing again, seemed to shut out sound and motion. The

furniture was formal, grave, and quaker-like, but well-kept; and had as

prepossessing an aspect as anything, from a human creature to a wooden

stool, that is meant for much use and is preserved for little, can ever

wear. There was a grave clock, ticking somewhere up the staircase; and

there was a songless bird in the same direction, pecking at his cage, as

if he were ticking too. The parlour-fire ticked in the grate. There was

only one person on the parlour-hearth, and the loud watch in his pocket

ticked audibly.

The servant-maid had ticked the two words 'Mr Clennam' so softly that

she had not been heard; and he consequently stood, within the door

she had closed, unnoticed. The figure of a man advanced in life, whose

smooth grey eyebrows seemed to move to the ticking as the fire-light

flickered on them, sat in an arm-chair, with his list shoes on the

rug, and his thumbs slowly revolving over one another. This was old

Christopher Casby--recognisable at a glance--as unchanged in twenty

years and upward as his own solid furniture--as little touched by the

influence of the varying seasons as the old rose-leaves and old lavender

in his porcelain jars.

Perhaps there never was a man, in this troublesome world, so troublesome

for the imagination to picture as a boy. And yet he had changed very

little in his progress through life. Confronting him, in the room in

which he sat, was a boy's portrait, which anybody seeing him would have

identified as Master Christopher Casby, aged ten: though disguised with

a haymaking rake, for which he had had, at any time, as much taste or

use as for a diving-bell; and sitting (on one of his own legs) upon a

bank of violets, moved to precocious contemplation by the spire of a

village church. There was the same smooth face and forehead, the same

calm blue eye, the same placid air. The shining bald head, which looked

so very large because it shone so much; and the long grey hair at its

sides and back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very

benevolent because it was never cut; were not, of course, to be seen in

the boy as in the old man. Nevertheless, in the Seraphic creature with

the haymaking rake, were clearly to be discerned the rudiments of the

Patriarch with the list shoes.

Patriarch was the name which many people delighted to give him.

Various old ladies in the neighbourhood spoke of him as The Last of the

Patriarchs. So grey, so slow, so quiet, so impassionate, so very bumpy

in the head, Patriarch was the word for him. He had been accosted in the

streets, and respectfully solicited to become a Patriarch for painters

and for sculptors; with so much importunity, in sooth, that it would

appear to be beyond the Fine Arts to remember the points of a Patriarch,

or to invent one. Philanthropists of both sexes had asked who he was,

and on being informed, 'Old Christopher Casby, formerly Town-agent to

Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle,' had cried in a rapture of disappointment,

'Oh! why, with that head, is he not a benefactor to his species! Oh!

why, with that head, is he not a father to the orphan and a friend to

the friendless!' With that head, however, he remained old Christopher

Casby, proclaimed by common report rich in house property; and with that

head, he now sat in his silent parlour. Indeed it would be the height of

unreason to expect him to be sitting there without that head.

Arthur Clennam moved to attract his attention, and the grey eyebrows

turned towards him.

'I beg your pardon,' said Clennam, 'I fear you did not hear me

announced?'

'No, sir, I did not. Did you wish to see me, sir?'

'I wished to pay my respects.'

Mr Casby seemed a feather's weight disappointed by the last words,

having perhaps prepared himself for the visitor's wishing to pay

something else. 'Have I the pleasure, sir,' he proceeded--'take a chair,

if you please--have I the pleasure of knowing--? Ah! truly, yes, I think

I have! I believe I am not mistaken in supposing that I am acquainted

with those features? I think I address a gentleman of whose return to

this country I was informed by Mr Flintwinch?'

'That is your present visitor.'

'Really! Mr Clennam?'

'No other, Mr Casby.'

'Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. How have you been since we met?'

Without thinking it worth while to explain that in the course of some

quarter of a century he had experienced occasional slight fluctuations

in his health and spirits, Clennam answered generally that he had never

been better, or something equally to the purpose; and shook hands with

the possessor of 'that head' as it shed its patriarchal light upon him.

'We are older, Mr Clennam,' said Christopher Casby.

'We are--not younger,' said Clennam. After this wise remark he felt that

he was scarcely shining with brilliancy, and became aware that he was

nervous.

'And your respected father,' said Mr Casby, 'is no more! I was grieved

to hear it, Mr Clennam, I was grieved.'

Arthur replied in the usual way that he felt infinitely obliged to him.

'There was a time,' said Mr Casby, 'when your parents and myself were

not on friendly terms. There was a little family misunderstanding among

us. Your respected mother was rather jealous of her son, maybe; when I

say her son, I mean your worthy self, your worthy self.'

His smooth face had a bloom upon it like ripe wall-fruit. What with

his blooming face, and that head, and his blue eyes, he seemed to be

delivering sentiments of rare wisdom and virtue. In like manner, his

physiognomical expression seemed to teem with benignity. Nobody could

have said where the wisdom was, or where the virtue was, or where the

benignity was; but they all seemed to be somewhere about him. 'Those

times, however,' pursued Mr Casby, 'are past and gone, past and gone.

I do myself the pleasure of making a visit to your respected mother

occasionally, and of admiring the fortitude and strength of mind with

which she bears her trials, bears her trials.' When he made one of these

little repetitions, sitting with his hands crossed before him, he did it

with his head on one side, and a gentle smile, as if he had something in

his thoughts too sweetly profound to be put into words. As if he denied

himself the pleasure of uttering it, lest he should soar too high; and

his meekness therefore preferred to be unmeaning.

'I have heard that you were kind enough on one of those occasions,' said

Arthur, catching at the opportunity as it drifted past him, 'to mention

Little Dorrit to my mother.'

'Little--Dorrit? That's the seamstress who was mentioned to me by a

small tenant of mine? Yes, yes. Dorrit? That's the name. Ah, yes, yes!

You call her Little Dorrit?'

No road in that direction. Nothing came of the cross-cut. It led no

further.

'My daughter Flora,' said Mr Casby, 'as you may have heard probably, Mr

Clennam, was married and established in life, several years ago. She

had the misfortune to lose her husband when she had been married a few

months. She resides with me again. She will be glad to see you, if you

will permit me to let her know that you are here.'

'By all means,' returned Clennam. 'I should have preferred the request,

if your kindness had not anticipated me.'

Upon this Mr Casby rose up in his list shoes, and with a slow, heavy

step (he was of an elephantine build), made for the door. He had a long

wide-skirted bottle-green coat on, and a bottle-green pair of trousers,

and a bottle-green waistcoat. The Patriarchs were not dressed in

bottle-green broadcloth, and yet his clothes looked patriarchal.

He had scarcely left the room, and allowed the ticking to become audible

again, when a quick hand turned a latchkey in the house-door, opened it,

and shut it. Immediately afterwards, a quick and eager short dark man

came into the room with so much way upon him that he was within a foot

of Clennam before he could stop.

'Halloa!' he said.

Clennam saw no reason why he should not say 'Halloa!' too.

'What's the matter?' said the short dark man.

'I have not heard that anything is the matter,' returned Clennam.

'Where's Mr Casby?' asked the short dark man, looking about. 'He will be

here directly, if you want him.'

'_I_ want him?' said the short dark man. 'Don't you?' This elicited a

word or two of explanation from Clennam, during the delivery of which

the short dark man held his breath and looked at him. He was dressed in

black and rusty iron grey; had jet black beads of eyes; a scrubby little

black chin; wiry black hair striking out from his head in prongs, like

forks or hair-pins; and a complexion that was very dingy by nature, or

very dirty by art, or a compound of nature and art. He had dirty hands

and dirty broken nails, and looked as if he had been in the coals; he

was in a perspiration, and snorted and sniffed and puffed and blew, like

a little labouring steam-engine.

'Oh!' said he, when Arthur told him how he came to be there. 'Very well.

That's right. If he should ask for Pancks, will you be so good as to say