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'What should there be more than that! What could there be more than

that!' she ejaculated in her sternly wondering way.

Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, that, for the space of a minute or two, they

remained looking at each other with the candle between them, and

that she somehow derived an impression that they looked at each other

fixedly.

'Do you happen to know, Mrs Clennam,' Affery's liege lord then demanded

in a much lower voice, and with an amount of expression that seemed

quite out of proportion to the simple purpose of his words, 'where she

lives?'

'No.'

'Would you--now, would you like to know?' said Jeremiah with a pounce as

if he had sprung upon her.

'If I cared to know, I should know already. Could I not have asked her

any day?'

'Then you don't care to know?'

'I do not.'

Mr Flintwinch, having expelled a long significant breath said, with his

former emphasis, 'For I have accidentally--mind!--found out.'

'Wherever she lives,' said Mrs Clennam, speaking in one unmodulated hard

voice, and separating her words as distinctly as if she were reading

them off from separate bits of metal that she took up one by one, 'she

has made a secret of it, and she shall always keep her secret from me.'

'After all, perhaps you would rather not have known the fact, any how?'

said Jeremiah; and he said it with a twist, as if his words had come out

of him in his own wry shape.

'Flintwinch,' said his mistress and partner, flashing into a sudden

energy that made Affery start, 'why do you goad me? Look round this

room. If it is any compensation for my long confinement within these

narrow limits--not that I complain of being afflicted; you know I never

complain of that--if it is any compensation to me for long confinement

to this room, that while I am shut up from all pleasant change I am also

shut up from the knowledge of some things that I may prefer to avoid

knowing, why should you, of all men, grudge me that belief?'

'I don't grudge it to you,' returned Jeremiah.

'Then say no more. Say no more. Let Little Dorrit keep her secret from

me, and do you keep it from me also. Let her come and go, unobserved and

unquestioned. Let me suffer, and let me have what alleviation belongs to

my condition. Is it so much, that you torment me like an evil spirit?'

'I asked you a question. That's all.'

'I have answered it. So, say no more. Say no more.' Here the sound of

the wheeled chair was heard upon the floor, and Affery's bell rang with

a hasty jerk.

More afraid of her husband at the moment than of the mysterious sound in

the kitchen, Affery crept away as lightly and as quickly as she could,

descended the kitchen stairs almost as rapidly as she had ascended them,

resumed her seat before the fire, tucked up her skirt again, and finally

threw her apron over her head. Then the bell rang once more, and then

once more, and then kept on ringing; in despite of which importunate

summons, Affery still sat behind her apron, recovering her breath.

At last Mr Flintwinch came shuffling down the staircase into the

hall, muttering and calling 'Affery woman!' all the way. Affery still

remaining behind her apron, he came stumbling down the kitchen stairs,

candle in hand, sidled up to her, twitched her apron off, and roused

her.

'Oh Jeremiah!' cried Affery, waking. 'What a start you gave me!'

'What have you been doing, woman?' inquired Jeremiah. 'You've been rung

for fifty times.'

'Oh Jeremiah,' said Mistress Affery, 'I have been a-dreaming!'

Reminded of her former achievement in that way, Mr Flintwinch held the

candle to her head, as if he had some idea of lighting her up for the

illumination of the kitchen.

'Don't you know it's her tea-time?' he demanded with a vicious grin, and

giving one of the legs of Mistress Affery's chair a kick.

'Jeremiah? Tea-time? I don't know what's come to me. But I got such a

dreadful turn, Jeremiah, before I went--off a-dreaming, that I think it

must be that.'

'Yoogh! Sleepy-Head!' said Mr Flintwinch, 'what are you talking about?'

'Such a strange noise, Jeremiah, and such a curious movement. In the

kitchen here--just here.'

Jeremiah held up his light and looked at the blackened ceiling, held

down his light and looked at the damp stone floor, turned round with his

light and looked about at the spotted and blotched walls.

'Rats, cats, water, drains,' said Jeremiah.

Mistress Affery negatived each with a shake of her head. 'No, Jeremiah;

I have felt it before. I have felt it up-stairs, and once on the

staircase as I was going from her room to ours in the night--a rustle

and a sort of trembling touch behind me.'

'Affery, my woman,' said Mr Flintwinch grimly, after advancing his nose

to that lady's lips as a test for the detection of spirituous liquors,

'if you don't get tea pretty quick, old woman, you'll become sensible

of a rustle and a touch that'll send you flying to the other end of the

kitchen.'

This prediction stimulated Mrs Flintwinch to bestir herself, and to

hasten up-stairs to Mrs Clennam's chamber. But, for all that, she now

began to entertain a settled conviction that there was something wrong

in the gloomy house. Henceforth, she was never at peace in it after

daylight departed; and never went up or down stairs in the dark without

having her apron over her head, lest she should see something.

What with these ghostly apprehensions and her singular dreams, Mrs

Flintwinch fell that evening into a haunted state of mind, from which

it may be long before this present narrative descries any trace of her

recovery. In the vagueness and indistinctness of all her new experiences

and perceptions, as everything about her was mysterious to herself she

began to be mysterious to others: and became as difficult to be made out

to anybody's satisfaction as she found the house and everything in it

difficult to make out to her own.

She had not yet finished preparing Mrs Clennam's tea, when the soft

knock came to the door which always announced Little Dorrit. Mistress

Affery looked on at Little Dorrit taking off her homely bonnet in the

hall, and at Mr Flintwinch scraping his jaws and contemplating her in

silence, as expecting some wonderful consequence to ensue which would

frighten her out of her five wits or blow them all three to pieces.

After tea there came another knock at the door, announcing Arthur.

Mistress Affery went down to let him in, and he said on entering,

'Affery, I am glad it's you. I want to ask you a question.' Affery

immediately replied, 'For goodness sake don't ask me nothing, Arthur! I

am frightened out of one half of my life, and dreamed out of the

other. Don't ask me nothing! I don't know which is which, or what is

what!'--and immediately started away from him, and came near him no

more.

Mistress Affery having no taste for reading, and no sufficient light for

needlework in the subdued room, supposing her to have the inclination,

now sat every night in the dimness from which she had momentarily

emerged on the evening of Arthur Clennam's return, occupied with crowds

of wild speculations and suspicions respecting her mistress and her

husband and the noises in the house. When the ferocious devotional

exercises were engaged in, these speculations would distract Mistress

Affery's eyes towards the door, as if she expected some dark form to

appear at those propitious moments, and make the party one too many.

Otherwise, Affery never said or did anything to attract the attention of

the two clever ones towards her in any marked degree, except on certain

occasions, generally at about the quiet hour towards bed-time, when she

would suddenly dart out of her dim corner, and whisper with a face of

terror to Mr Flintwinch, reading the paper near Mrs Clennam's little

table: 'There, jeremiah! Now! What's that noise?'

Then the noise, if there were any, would have ceased, and Mr Flintwinch

would snarl, turning upon her as if she had cut him down that moment

against his will, 'Affery, old woman, you shall have a dose, old woman,

such a dose! You have been dreaming again!'

CHAPTER 16. Nobody's Weakness

The time being come for the renewal of his acquaintance with the Meagles

family, Clennam, pursuant to contract made between himself and Mr

Meagles within the precincts of Bleeding Heart Yard, turned his face

on a certain Saturday towards Twickenham, where Mr Meagles had a

cottage-residence of his own. The weather being fine and dry, and any

English road abounding in interest for him who had been so long away,

he sent his valise on by the coach, and set out to walk. A walk was in

itself a new enjoyment to him, and one that had rarely diversified his

life afar off.

He went by Fulham and Putney, for the pleasure of strolling over the

heath. It was bright and shining there; and when he found himself so far

on his road to Twickenham, he found himself a long way on his road to

a number of airier and less substantial destinations. They had risen

before him fast, in the healthful exercise and the pleasant road. It is

not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something. And

he had plenty of unsettled subjects to meditate upon, though he had been

walking to the Land's End.

First, there was the subject seldom absent from his mind, the question,

what he was to do henceforth in life; to what occupation he should

devote himself, and in what direction he had best seek it. He was far

from rich, and every day of indecision and inaction made his inheritance

a source of greater anxiety to him. As often as he began to consider how

to increase this inheritance, or to lay it by, so often his misgiving

that there was some one with an unsatisfied claim upon his justice,

returned; and that alone was a subject to outlast the longest walk.

Again, there was the subject of his relations with his mother, which

were now upon an equable and peaceful but never confidential footing,

and whom he saw several times a week. Little Dorrit was a leading and a

constant subject: for the circumstances of his life, united to those of

her own story, presented the little creature to him as the only person

between whom and himself there were ties of innocent reliance on one

hand, and affectionate protection on the other; ties of compassion,

respect, unselfish interest, gratitude, and pity. Thinking of her, and

of the possibility of her father's release from prison by the unbarring

hand of death--the only change of circumstance he could foresee that

might enable him to be such a friend to her as he wished to be, by

altering her whole manner of life, smoothing her rough road, and

giving her a home--he regarded her, in that perspective, as his adopted

daughter, his poor child of the Marshalsea hushed to rest. If there were

a last subject in his thoughts, and it lay towards Twickenham, its form

was so indefinite that it was little more than the pervading atmosphere

in which these other subjects floated before him.

He had crossed the heath and was leaving it behind when he gained upon a

figure which had been in advance of him for some time, and which, as

he gained upon it, he thought he knew. He derived this impression

from something in the turn of the head, and in the figure's action of

consideration, as it went on at a sufficiently sturdy walk. But when

the man--for it was a man's figure--pushed his hat up at the back of his

head, and stopped to consider some object before him, he knew it to be

Daniel Doyce.

'How do you do, Mr Doyce?' said Clennam, overtaking him. 'I am glad to

see you again, and in a healthier place than the Circumlocution Office.'

'Ha! Mr Meagles's friend!' exclaimed that public criminal, coming out of

some mental combinations he had been making, and offering his hand. 'I

am glad to see you, sir. Will you excuse me if I forget your name?'

'Readily. It's not a celebrated name. It's not Barnacle.' 'No, no,' said

Daniel, laughing. 'And now I know what it is. It's Clennam. How do you

do, Mr Clennam?'

'I have some hope,' said Arthur, as they walked on together, 'that we

may be going to the same place, Mr Doyce.'

'Meaning Twickenham?' returned Daniel. 'I am glad to hear it.'

They were soon quite intimate, and lightened the way with a variety of

conversation. The ingenious culprit was a man of great modesty and good

sense; and, though a plain man, had been too much accustomed to combine

what was original and daring in conception with what was patient and

minute in execution, to be by any means an ordinary man. It was at first

difficult to lead him to speak about himself, and he put off Arthur's

advances in that direction by admitting slightly, oh yes, he had done

this, and he had done that, and such a thing was of his making, and

such another thing was his discovery, but it was his trade, you see, his

trade; until, as he gradually became assured that his companion had a

real interest in his account of himself, he frankly yielded to it. Then

it appeared that he was the son of a north-country blacksmith, and had

originally been apprenticed by his widowed mother to a lock-maker; that

he had 'struck out a few little things' at the lock-maker's, which had

led to his being released from his indentures with a present, which

present had enabled him to gratify his ardent wish to bind himself to

a working engineer, under whom he had laboured hard, learned hard, and

lived hard, seven years. His time being out, he had 'worked in the shop'

at weekly wages seven or eight years more; and had then betaken

himself to the banks of the Clyde, where he had studied, and filed, and