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would put my name down directly; but as, moving in Society, we can't be

Indians, unfortunately--Good morning!'

They came down-stairs with powder before them and powder behind, the

elder sister haughty and the younger sister humbled, and were shut out

into unpowdered Harley Street, Cavendish Square.

'Well?' said Fanny, when they had gone a little way without speaking.

'Have you nothing to say, Amy?'

'Oh, I don't know what to say!' she answered, distressed. 'You didn't

like this young man, Fanny?'

'Like him? He is almost an idiot.'

'I am so sorry--don't be hurt--but, since you ask me what I have to

say, I am so very sorry, Fanny, that you suffered this lady to give you

anything.'

'You little Fool!' returned her sister, shaking her with the sharp pull

she gave her arm. 'Have you no spirit at all? But that's just the way!

You have no self-respect, you have no becoming pride, just as you allow

yourself to be followed about by a contemptible little Chivery of a

thing,' with the scornfullest emphasis, 'you would let your family be

trodden on, and never turn.'

'Don't say that, dear Fanny. I do what I can for them.'

'You do what you can for them!' repeated Fanny, walking her on very

fast. 'Would you let a woman like this, whom you could see, if you had

any experience of anything, to be as false and insolent as a woman can

be--would you let her put her foot upon your family, and thank her for

it?'

'No, Fanny, I am sure.' 'Then make her pay for it, you mean little

thing. What else can you make her do? Make her pay for it, you stupid

child; and do your family some credit with the money!'

They spoke no more all the way back to the lodging where Fanny and her

uncle lived. When they arrived there, they found the old man practising

his clarionet in the dolefullest manner in a corner of the room.

Fanny had a composite meal to make, of chops, and porter, and tea; and

indignantly pretended to prepare it for herself, though her sister did

all that in quiet reality. When at last Fanny sat down to eat and drink,

she threw the table implements about and was angry with her bread, much

as her father had been last night.

'If you despise me,' she said, bursting into vehement tears, 'because I

am a dancer, why did you put me in the way of being one?

It was your doing. You would have me stoop as low as the ground before

this Mrs Merdle, and let her say what she liked and do what she liked,

and hold us all in contempt, and tell me so to my face. Because I am a

dancer!'

'O Fanny!'

'And Tip, too, poor fellow. She is to disparage him just as much as she

likes, without any check--I suppose because he has been in the law, and

the docks, and different things. Why, it was your doing, Amy. You might

at least approve of his being defended.'

All this time the uncle was dolefully blowing his clarionet in the

corner, sometimes taking it an inch or so from his mouth for a moment

while he stopped to gaze at them, with a vague impression that somebody

had said something.

'And your father, your poor father, Amy. Because he is not free to show

himself and to speak for himself, you would let such people insult him

with impunity. If you don't feel for yourself because you go out to

work, you might at least feel for him, I should think, knowing what he

has undergone so long.'

Poor Little Dorrit felt the injustice of this taunt rather sharply.

The remembrance of last night added a barbed point to it. She said

nothing in reply, but turned her chair from the table towards the fire.

Uncle, after making one more pause, blew a dismal wail and went on

again.

Fanny was passionate with the tea-cups and the bread as long as her

passion lasted, and then protested that she was the wretchedest girl in

the world, and she wished she was dead. After that, her crying became

remorseful, and she got up and put her arms round her sister. Little

Dorrit tried to stop her from saying anything, but she answered that

she would, she must! Thereupon she said again, and again, 'I beg your

pardon, Amy,' and 'Forgive me, Amy,' almost as passionately as she had

said what she regretted.

'But indeed, indeed, Amy,' she resumed when they were seated in sisterly

accord side by side, 'I hope and I think you would have seen this

differently, if you had known a little more of Society.'

'Perhaps I might, Fanny,' said the mild Little Dorrit.

'You see, while you have been domestic and resignedly shut up there,

Amy,' pursued her sister, gradually beginning to patronise, 'I have

been out, moving more in Society, and may have been getting proud and

spirited--more than I ought to be, perhaps?'

Little Dorrit answered 'Yes. O yes!'

'And while you have been thinking of the dinner or the clothes, I may

have been thinking, you know, of the family. Now, may it not be so,

Amy?'

Little Dorrit again nodded 'Yes,' with a more cheerful face than heart.

'Especially as we know,' said Fanny, 'that there certainly is a tone in

the place to which you have been so true, which does belong to it, and

which does make it different from other aspects of Society. So kiss me

once again, Amy dear, and we will agree that we may both be right, and

that you are a tranquil, domestic, home-loving, good girl.'

The clarionet had been lamenting most pathetically during this dialogue,

but was cut short now by Fanny's announcement that it was time to go;

which she conveyed to her uncle by shutting up his scrap of music, and

taking the clarionet out of his mouth.

Little Dorrit parted from them at the door, and hastened back to the

Marshalsea. It fell dark there sooner than elsewhere, and going into it

that evening was like going into a deep trench. The shadow of the wall

was on every object. Not least upon the figure in the old grey gown and

the black velvet cap, as it turned towards her when she opened the door

of the dim room.

'Why not upon me too!' thought Little Dorrit, with the door Yet in her

hand. 'It was not unreasonable in Fanny.'

CHAPTER 21. Mr Merdle's Complaint

Upon that establishment of state, the Merdle establishment in Harley

Street, Cavendish Square, there was the shadow of no more common wall

than the fronts of other establishments of state on the opposite side of

the street. Like unexceptionable Society, the opposing rows of houses in

Harley Street were very grim with one another. Indeed, the mansions and

their inhabitants were so much alike in that respect, that the people

were often to be found drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in

the shade of their own loftiness, staring at the other side of the way

with the dullness of the houses.

Everybody knows how like the street the two dinner-rows of people who

take their stand by the street will be. The expressionless uniform

twenty houses, all to be knocked at and rung at in the same form, all

approachable by the same dull steps, all fended off by the same pattern

of railing, all with the same impracticable fire-escapes, the same

inconvenient fixtures in their heads, and everything without exception

to be taken at a high valuation--who has not dined with these? The

house so drearily out of repair, the occasional bow-window, the stuccoed

house, the newly-fronted house, the corner house with nothing but

angular rooms, the house with the blinds always down, the house with the

hatchment always up, the house where the collector has called for one

quarter of an Idea, and found nobody at home--who has not dined with

these? The house that nobody will take, and is to be had a bargain--who

does not know her? The showy house that was taken for life by the

disappointed gentleman, and which does not suit him at all--who is

unacquainted with that haunted habitation?

Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was more than aware of Mr and Mrs

Merdle. Intruders there were in Harley Street, of whom it was not aware;

but Mr and Mrs Merdle it delighted to honour. Society was aware of

Mr and Mrs Merdle. Society had said 'Let us license them; let us know

them.'

Mr Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a

Midas without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold. He was in

everything good, from banking to building. He was in Parliament, of

course. He was in the City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this,

Trustee of that, President of the other. The weightiest of men had said

to projectors, 'Now, what name have you got? Have you got Merdle?' And,

the reply being in the negative, had said, 'Then I won't look at you.'

This great and fortunate man had provided that extensive bosom which

required so much room to be unfeeling enough in, with a nest of crimson

and gold some fifteen years before. It was not a bosom to repose

upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon. Mr Merdle wanted

something to hang jewels upon, and he bought it for the purpose. Storr

and Mortimer might have married on the same speculation.

Like all his other speculations, it was sound and successful. The jewels

showed to the richest advantage. The bosom moving in Society with

the jewels displayed upon it, attracted general admiration. Society

approving, Mr Merdle was satisfied. He was the most disinterested of

men,--did everything for Society, and got as little for himself out of

all his gain and care, as a man might.

That is to say, it may be supposed that he got all he wanted, otherwise

with unlimited wealth he would have got it. But his desire was to the

utmost to satisfy Society (whatever that was), and take up all its

drafts upon him for tribute. He did not shine in company; he had not

very much to say for himself; he was a reserved man, with a broad,

overhanging, watchful head, that particular kind of dull red colour

in his cheeks which is rather stale than fresh, and a somewhat uneasy

expression about his coat-cuffs, as if they were in his confidence, and

had reasons for being anxious to hide his hands. In the little he said,

he was a pleasant man enough; plain, emphatic about public and private

confidence, and tenacious of the utmost deference being shown by every

one, in all things, to Society. In this same Society (if that were it

which came to his dinners, and to Mrs Merdle's receptions and concerts),

he hardly seemed to enjoy himself much, and was mostly to be found

against walls and behind doors. Also when he went out to it, instead of

its coming home to him, he seemed a little fatigued, and upon the

whole rather more disposed for bed; but he was always cultivating it

nevertheless, and always moving in it--and always laying out money on it

with the greatest liberality.

Mrs Merdle's first husband had been a colonel, under whose auspices the

bosom had entered into competition with the snows of North America, and

had come off at little disadvantage in point of whiteness, and at none

in point of coldness. The colonel's son was Mrs Merdle's only child. He

was of a chuckle-headed, high-shouldered make, with a general appearance

of being, not so much a young man as a swelled boy. He had given so few

signs of reason, that a by-word went among his companions that his brain

had been frozen up in a mighty frost which prevailed at St john's, New

Brunswick, at the period of his birth there, and had never thawed from

that hour. Another by-word represented him as having in his infancy,

through the negligence of a nurse, fallen out of a high window on his

head, which had been heard by responsible witnesses to crack. It is

probable that both these representations were of ex post facto

origin; the young gentleman (whose expressive name was Sparkler) being

monomaniacal in offering marriage to all manner of undesirable young

ladies, and in remarking of every successive young lady to whom he

tendered a matrimonial proposal that she was 'a doosed fine gal--well

educated too--with no biggodd nonsense about her.'

A son-in-law with these limited talents, might have been a clog upon

another man; but Mr Merdle did not want a son-in-law for himself; he

wanted a son-in-law for Society. Mr Sparkler having been in the Guards,

and being in the habit of frequenting all the races, and all the

lounges, and all the parties, and being well known, Society was

satisfied with its son-in-law. This happy result Mr Merdle would have

considered well attained, though Mr Sparkler had been a more expensive

article. And he did not get Mr Sparkler by any means cheap for

Society, even as it was. There was a dinner giving in the Harley Street

establishment, while Little Dorrit was stitching at her father's new

shirts by his side that night; and there were magnates from the Court

and magnates from the City, magnates from the Commons and magnates from

the Lords, magnates from the bench and magnates from the bar,

Bishop magnates, Treasury magnates, Horse Guard magnates, Admiralty

magnates,--all the magnates that keep us going, and sometimes trip us

up.

'I am told,' said Bishop magnate to Horse Guards, 'that Mr Merdle has

made another enormous hit. They say a hundred thousand pounds.'

Horse Guards had heard two.

Treasury had heard three.

Bar, handling his persuasive double eye-glass, was by no means clear but

that it might be four. It was one of those happy strokes of calculation

and combination, the result of which it was difficult to estimate. It

was one of those instances of a comprehensive grasp, associated with

habitual luck and characteristic boldness, of which an age presented us

but few. But here was Brother Bellows, who had been in the great Bank

case, and who could probably tell us more. What did Brother Bellows put

this new success at?

Brother Bellows was on his way to make his bow to the bosom, and could

only tell them in passing that he had heard it stated, with great