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by working heart and soul, might and main. So now Mr Gowan, like that

worn-out old coffin which never was Mahomet's nor anybody else's, hung

midway between two points: jaundiced and jealous as to the one he had

left: jaundiced and jealous as to the other that he couldn't reach.

Such was the substance of Clennam's discoveries concerning him, made

that rainy Sunday afternoon and afterwards.

About an hour or so after dinner time, Young Barnacle appeared, attended

by his eye-glass; in honour of whose family connections, Mr Meagles had

cashiered the pretty parlour-maids for the day, and had placed on duty

in their stead two dingy men. Young Barnacle was in the last

degree amazed and disconcerted at sight of Arthur, and had murmured

involuntarily, 'Look here! upon my soul, you know!' before his presence

of mind returned.

Even then, he was obliged to embrace the earliest opportunity of taking

his friend into a window, and saying, in a nasal way that was a part of

his general debility:

'I want to speak to you, Gowan. I say. Look here. Who is that fellow?'

'A friend of our host's. None of mine.'

'He's a most ferocious Radical, you know,' said Young Barnacle.

'Is he? How do you know?'

'Ecod, sir, he was Pitching into our people the other day in the most

tremendous manner. Went up to our place and Pitched into my father to

that extent that it was necessary to order him out. Came back to

our Department, and Pitched into me. Look here. You never saw such a

fellow.'

'What did he want?'

'Ecod, sir,' returned Young Barnacle, 'he said he wanted to know, you

know! Pervaded our Department--without an appointment--and said he

wanted to know!'

The stare of indignant wonder with which Young Barnacle accompanied

this disclosure, would have strained his eyes injuriously but for

the opportune relief of dinner. Mr Meagles (who had been extremely

solicitous to know how his uncle and aunt were) begged him to conduct

Mrs Meagles to the dining-room. And when he sat on Mrs Meagles's right

hand, Mr Meagles looked as gratified as if his whole family were there.

All the natural charm of the previous day was gone. The eaters of the

dinner, like the dinner itself, were lukewarm, insipid, overdone--and

all owing to this poor little dull Young Barnacle. Conversationless at

any time, he was now the victim of a weakness special to the occasion,

and solely referable to Clennam. He was under a pressing and continual

necessity of looking at that gentleman, which occasioned his eye-glass

to get into his soup, into his wine-glass, into Mrs Meagles's plate, to

hang down his back like a bell-rope, and be several times disgracefully

restored to his bosom by one of the dingy men. Weakened in mind by his

frequent losses of this instrument, and its determination not to stick

in his eye, and more and more enfeebled in intellect every time he

looked at the mysterious Clennam, he applied spoons to his eyes,

forks, and other foreign matters connected with the furniture of the

dinner-table. His discovery of these mistakes greatly increased his

difficulties, but never released him from the necessity of looking at

Clennam. And whenever Clennam spoke, this ill-starred young man was

clearly seized with a dread that he was coming, by some artful device,

round to that point of wanting to know, you know.

It may be questioned, therefore, whether any one but Mr Meagles had much

enjoyment of the time. Mr Meagles, however, thoroughly enjoyed Young

Barnacle. As a mere flask of the golden water in the tale became a full

fountain when it was poured out, so Mr Meagles seemed to feel that this

small spice of Barnacle imparted to his table the flavour of the whole

family-tree. In its presence, his frank, fine, genuine qualities

paled; he was not so easy, he was not so natural, he was striving after

something that did not belong to him, he was not himself. What a strange

peculiarity on the part of Mr Meagles, and where should we find another

such case!

At last the wet Sunday wore itself out in a wet night; and Young

Barnacle went home in a cab, feebly smoking; and the objectionable Gowan

went away on foot, accompanied by the objectionable dog. Pet had taken

the most amiable pains all day to be friendly with Clennam, but Clennam

had been a little reserved since breakfast--that is to say, would have

been, if he had loved her.

When he had gone to his own room, and had again thrown himself into the

chair by the fire, Mr Doyce knocked at the door, candle in hand, to

ask him how and at what hour he proposed returning on the morrow? After

settling this question, he said a word to Mr Doyce about this Gowan--who

would have run in his head a good deal, if he had been his rival.

'Those are not good prospects for a painter,' said Clennam.

'No,' returned Doyce.

Mr Doyce stood, chamber-candlestick in hand, the other hand in his

pocket, looking hard at the flame of his candle, with a certain quiet

perception in his face that they were going to say something more. 'I

thought our good friend a little changed, and out of spirits, after he

came this morning?' said Clennam.

'Yes,' returned Doyce.

'But not his daughter?' said Clennam.

'No,' said Doyce.

There was a pause on both sides. Mr Doyce, still looking at the flame of

his candle, slowly resumed:

'The truth is, he has twice taken his daughter abroad in the hope of

separating her from Mr Gowan. He rather thinks she is disposed to like

him, and he has painful doubts (I quite agree with him, as I dare say

you do) of the hopefulness of such a marriage.'

'There--' Clennam choked, and coughed, and stopped.

'Yes, you have taken cold,' said Daniel Doyce. But without looking at

him.

'There is an engagement between them, of course?' said Clennam airily.

'No. As I am told, certainly not. It has been solicited on the

gentleman's part, but none has been made. Since their recent return,

our friend has yielded to a weekly visit, but that is the utmost. Minnie

would not deceive her father and mother. You have travelled with them,

and I believe you know what a bond there is among them, extending even

beyond this present life. All that there is between Miss Minnie and Mr

Gowan, I have no doubt we see.'

'Ah! We see enough!' cried Arthur.

Mr Doyce wished him Good Night in the tone of a man who had heard a

mournful, not to say despairing, exclamation, and who sought to infuse

some encouragement and hope into the mind of the person by whom it had

been uttered. Such tone was probably a part of his oddity, as one of

a crotchety band; for how could he have heard anything of that kind,

without Clennam's hearing it too?

The rain fell heavily on the roof, and pattered on the ground, and

dripped among the evergreens and the leafless branches of the trees. The

rain fell heavily, drearily. It was a night of tears.

If Clennam had not decided against falling in love with Pet; if he

had had the weakness to do it; if he had, little by little, persuaded

himself to set all the earnestness of his nature, all the might of his

hope, and all the wealth of his matured character, on that cast; if

he had done this and found that all was lost; he would have been,

that night, unutterably miserable. As it was--As it was, the rain fell

heavily, drearily.

CHAPTER 18. Little Dorrit's Lover

Little Dorrit had not attained her twenty-second birthday without

finding a lover. Even in the shallow Marshalsea, the ever young Archer

shot off a few featherless arrows now and then from a mouldy bow, and

winged a Collegian or two.

Little Dorrit's lover, however, was not a Collegian. He was the

sentimental son of a turnkey. His father hoped, in the fulness of time,

to leave him the inheritance of an unstained key; and had from his

early youth familiarised him with the duties of his office, and with an

ambition to retain the prison-lock in the family. While the succession

was yet in abeyance, he assisted his mother in the conduct of a snug

tobacco business round the corner of Horsemonger Lane (his father being

a non-resident turnkey), which could usually command a neat connection

within the College walls.

Years agone, when the object of his affections was wont to sit in her

little arm-chair by the high Lodge-fender, Young John (family name,

Chivery), a year older than herself, had eyed her with admiring wonder.

When he had played with her in the yard, his favourite game had been to

counterfeit locking her up in corners, and to counterfeit letting

her out for real kisses. When he grew tall enough to peep through the

keyhole of the great lock of the main door, he had divers times set down

his father's dinner, or supper, to get on as it might on the outer side

thereof, while he stood taking cold in one eye by dint of peeping at her

through that airy perspective.

If Young John had ever slackened in his truth in the less penetrable

days of his boyhood, when youth is prone to wear its boots unlaced and

is happily unconscious of digestive organs, he had soon strung it up

again and screwed it tight. At nineteen, his hand had inscribed in chalk

on that part of the wall which fronted her lodgings, on the occasion of

her birthday, 'Welcome sweet nursling of the Fairies!' At twenty-three,

the same hand falteringly presented cigars on Sundays to the Father of

the Marshalsea, and Father of the queen of his soul.

Young John was small of stature, with rather weak legs and very weak

light hair. One of his eyes (perhaps the eye that used to peep through

the keyhole) was also weak, and looked larger than the other, as if

it couldn't collect itself. Young John was gentle likewise. But he was

great of soul. Poetical, expansive, faithful.

Though too humble before the ruler of his heart to be sanguine, Young

John had considered the object of his attachment in all its lights and

shades. Following it out to blissful results, he had descried, without

self-commendation, a fitness in it. Say things prospered, and they were

united. She, the child of the Marshalsea; he, the lock-keeper. There

was a fitness in that. Say he became a resident turnkey. She would

officially succeed to the chamber she had rented so long. There was a

beautiful propriety in that. It looked over the wall, if you stood on

tip-toe; and, with a trellis-work of scarlet beans and a canary or so,

would become a very Arbour. There was a charming idea in that. Then,

being all in all to one another, there was even an appropriate grace in

the lock. With the world shut out (except that part of it which would

be shut in); with its troubles and disturbances only known to them by

hearsay, as they would be described by the pilgrims tarrying with them

on their way to the Insolvent Shrine; with the Arbour above, and the

Lodge below; they would glide down the stream of time, in pastoral

domestic happiness. Young John drew tears from his eyes by finishing the

picture with a tombstone in the adjoining churchyard, close against the

prison wall, bearing the following touching inscription: 'Sacred to

the Memory Of JOHN CHIVERY, Sixty years Turnkey, and fifty years

Head Turnkey, Of the neighbouring Marshalsea, Who departed this life,

universally respected, on the thirty-first of December, One thousand

eight hundred and eighty-six, Aged eighty-three years. Also of his truly

beloved and truly loving wife, AMY, whose maiden name was DORRIT, Who

survived his loss not quite forty-eight hours, And who breathed her last

in the Marshalsea aforesaid. There she was born, There she lived, There

she died.'

The Chivery parents were not ignorant of their son's attachment--indeed

it had, on some exceptional occasions, thrown him into a state of mind

that had impelled him to conduct himself with irascibility towards the

customers, and damage the business--but they, in their turns, had worked

it out to desirable conclusions. Mrs Chivery, a prudent woman, had

desired her husband to take notice that their john's prospects of the

Lock would certainly be strengthened by an alliance with Miss Dorrit,

who had herself a kind of claim upon the College and was much respected

there. Mrs Chivery had desired her husband to take notice that if, on

the one hand, their John had means and a post of trust, on the other

hand, Miss Dorrit had family; and that her (Mrs Chivery's) sentiment

was, that two halves made a whole. Mrs Chivery, speaking as a mother and

not as a diplomatist, had then, from a different point of view, desired

her husband to recollect that their John had never been strong, and

that his love had fretted and worrited him enough as it was, without

his being driven to do himself a mischief, as nobody couldn't say

he wouldn't be if he was crossed. These arguments had so powerfully

influenced the mind of Mr Chivery, who was a man of few words, that he

had on sundry Sunday mornings, given his boy what he termed 'a lucky

touch,' signifying that he considered such commendation of him to Good

Fortune, preparatory to his that day declaring his passion and

becoming triumphant. But Young John had never taken courage to make

the declaration; and it was principally on these occasions that he had

returned excited to the tobacco shop, and flown at the customers. In

this affair, as in every other, Little Dorrit herself was the last

person considered. Her brother and sister were aware of it, and attained

a sort of station by making a peg of it on which to air the miserably

ragged old fiction of the family gentility. Her sister asserted the

family gentility by flouting the poor swain as he loitered about the

prison for glimpses of his dear. Tip asserted the family gentility, and

his own, by coming out in the character of the aristocratic brother, and

loftily swaggering in the little skittle ground respecting seizures by

the scruff of the neck, which there were looming probabilities of some