第 69 页

and cheering everybody; but she, honest soul, had her flights into store

rooms, where she would cry until her eyes were red, and would then

come out, attributing that appearance to pickled onions and pepper, and

singing clearer than ever. Mrs Tickit, finding no balsam for a wounded

mind in Buchan's Domestic Medicine, suffered greatly from low spirits,

and from moving recollections of Minnie's infancy. When the latter was

powerful with her, she usually sent up secret messages importing

that she was not in parlour condition as to her attire, and that she

solicited a sight of 'her child' in the kitchen; there, she would bless

her child's face, and bless her child's heart, and hug her child, in a

medley of tears and congratulations, chopping-boards, rolling-pins, and

pie-crust, with the tenderness of an old attached servant, which is a

very pretty tenderness indeed.

But all days come that are to be; and the marriage-day was to be, and it

came; and with it came all the Barnacles who were bidden to the feast.

There was Mr Tite Barnacle, from the Circumlocution Office, and Mews

Street, Grosvenor Square, with the expensive Mrs Tite Barnacle NEE

Stiltstalking, who made the Quarter Days so long in coming, and the

three expensive Miss Tite Barnacles, double-loaded with accomplishments

and ready to go off, and yet not going off with the sharpness of flash

and bang that might have been expected, but rather hanging fire. There

was Barnacle junior, also from the Circumlocution Office, leaving the

Tonnage of the country, which he was somehow supposed to take under

his protection, to look after itself, and, sooth to say, not at all

impairing the efficiency of its protection by leaving it alone. There

was the engaging Young Barnacle, deriving from the sprightly side of the

family, also from the Circumlocution Office, gaily and agreeably helping

the occasion along, and treating it, in his sparkling way, as one of the

official forms and fees of the Church Department of How not to do it.

There were three other Young Barnacles from three other offices, insipid

to all the senses, and terribly in want of seasoning, doing the marriage

as they would have 'done' the Nile, Old Rome, the new singer, or

Jerusalem.

But there was greater game than this. There was Lord Decimus Tite

Barnacle himself, in the odour of Circumlocution--with the very smell of

Despatch-Boxes upon him. Yes, there was Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, who

had risen to official heights on the wings of one indignant idea, and

that was, My Lords, that I am yet to be told that it behoves a Minister

of this free country to set bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp the

charity, to fetter the public spirit, to contract the enterprise, to

damp the independent self-reliance, of its people. That was, in other

words, that this great statesman was always yet to be told that it

behoved the Pilot of the ship to do anything but prosper in the private

loaf and fish trade ashore, the crew being able, by dint of hard

pumping, to keep the ship above water without him. On this sublime

discovery in the great art How not to do it, Lord Decimus had long

sustained the highest glory of the Barnacle family; and let any

ill-advised member of either House but try How to do it by bringing in

a Bill to do it, that Bill was as good as dead and buried when Lord

Decimus Tite Barnacle rose up in his place and solemnly said, soaring

into indignant majesty as the Circumlocution cheering soared around

him, that he was yet to be told, My Lords, that it behoved him as the

Minister of this free country, to set bounds to the philanthropy,

to cramp the charity, to fetter the public spirit, to contract the

enterprise, to damp the independent self-reliance, of its people. The

discovery of this Behoving Machine was the discovery of the political

perpetual motion. It never wore out, though it was always going round

and round in all the State Departments.

And there, with his noble friend and relative Lord Decimus, was

William Barnacle, who had made the ever-famous coalition with Tudor

Stiltstalking, and who always kept ready his own particular recipe for

How not to do it; sometimes tapping the Speaker, and drawing it fresh

out of him, with a 'First, I will beg you, sir, to inform the House what

Precedent we have for the course into which the honourable gentleman

would precipitate us;' sometimes asking the honourable gentleman to

favour him with his own version of the Precedent; sometimes telling

the honourable gentleman that he (William Barnacle) would search for a

Precedent; and oftentimes crushing the honourable gentleman flat on

the spot by telling him there was no Precedent. But Precedent and

Precipitate were, under all circumstances, the well-matched pair of

battle-horses of this able Circumlocutionist. No matter that the unhappy

honourable gentleman had been trying in vain, for twenty-five years, to

precipitate William Barnacle into this--William Barnacle still put it to

the House, and (at second-hand or so) to the country, whether he was to

be precipitated into this. No matter that it was utterly irreconcilable

with the nature of things and course of events that the wretched

honourable gentleman could possibly produce a Precedent for

this--William Barnacle would nevertheless thank the honourable gentleman

for that ironical cheer, and would close with him upon that issue, and

would tell him to his teeth that there Was NO Precedent for this. It

might perhaps have been objected that the William Barnacle wisdom was

not high wisdom or the earth it bamboozled would never have been made,

or, if made in a rash mistake, would have remained blank mud. But

Precedent and Precipitate together frightened all objection out of most

people.

And there, too, was another Barnacle, a lively one, who had leaped

through twenty places in quick succession, and was always in two or

three at once, and who was the much-respected inventor of an art

which he practised with great success and admiration in all Barnacle

Governments. This was, when he was asked a Parliamentary question on

any one topic, to return an answer on any other. It had done immense

service, and brought him into high esteem with the Circumlocution

Office.

And there, too, was a sprinkling of less distinguished Parliamentary

Barnacles, who had not as yet got anything snug, and were going through

their probation to prove their worthiness. These Barnacles perched upon

staircases and hid in passages, waiting their orders to make houses

or not to make houses; and they did all their hearing, and ohing, and

cheering, and barking, under directions from the heads of the family;

and they put dummy motions on the paper in the way of other men's

motions; and they stalled disagreeable subjects off until late in the

night and late in the session, and then with virtuous patriotism cried

out that it was too late; and they went down into the country, whenever

they were sent, and swore that Lord Decimus had revived trade from a

swoon, and commerce from a fit, and had doubled the harvest of corn,

quadrupled the harvest of hay, and prevented no end of gold from flying

out of the Bank. Also these Barnacles were dealt, by the heads of the

family, like so many cards below the court-cards, to public meetings and

dinners; where they bore testimony to all sorts of services on the part

of their noble and honourable relatives, and buttered the Barnacles on

all sorts of toasts. And they stood, under similar orders, at all sorts

of elections; and they turned out of their own seats, on the shortest

notice and the most unreasonable terms, to let in other men; and they

fetched and carried, and toadied and jobbed, and corrupted, and ate

heaps of dirt, and were indefatigable in the public service. And there

was not a list, in all the Circumlocution Office, of places that might

fall vacant anywhere within half a century, from a lord of the Treasury

to a Chinese consul, and up again to a governor-general of India, but as

applicants for such places, the names of some or of every one of these

hungry and adhesive Barnacles were down.

It was necessarily but a sprinkling of any class of Barnacles that

attended the marriage, for there were not two score in all, and what

is that subtracted from Legion! But the sprinkling was a swarm in the

Twickenham cottage, and filled it. A Barnacle (assisted by a Barnacle)

married the happy pair, and it behoved Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle

himself to conduct Mrs Meagles to breakfast.

The entertainment was not as agreeable and natural as it might have

been. Mr Meagles, hove down by his good company while he highly

appreciated it, was not himself. Mrs Gowan was herself, and that did not

improve him. The fiction that it was not Mr Meagles who had stood in the

way, but that it was the Family greatness, and that the Family greatness

had made a concession, and there was now a soothing unanimity, pervaded

the affair, though it was never openly expressed. Then the Barnacles

felt that they for their parts would have done with the Meagleses when

the present patronising occasion was over; and the Meagleses felt the

same for their parts. Then Gowan asserting his rights as a disappointed

man who had his grudge against the family, and who, perhaps, had allowed

his mother to have them there, as much in the hope it might give them

some annoyance as with any other benevolent object, aired his pencil and

his poverty ostentatiously before them, and told them he hoped in time

to settle a crust of bread and cheese on his wife, and that he begged

such of them as (more fortunate than himself) came in for any good

thing, and could buy a picture, to please to remember the poor painter.

Then Lord Decimus, who was a wonder on his own Parliamentary pedestal,

turned out to be the windiest creature here: proposing happiness to the

bride and bridegroom in a series of platitudes that would have made the

hair of any sincere disciple and believer stand on end; and trotting,

with the complacency of an idiotic elephant, among howling labyrinths of

sentences which he seemed to take for high roads, and never so much

as wanted to get out of. Then Mr Tite Barnacle could not but feel that

there was a person in company, who would have disturbed his life-long

sitting to Sir Thomas Lawrence in full official character, if such

disturbance had been possible: while Barnacle junior did, with

indignation, communicate to two vapid gentlemen, his relatives, that

there was a feller here, look here, who had come to our Department

without an appointment and said he wanted to know, you know; and that,

look here, if he was to break out now, as he might you know (for you

never could tell what an ungentlemanly Radical of that sort would be up

to next), and was to say, look here, that he wanted to know this moment,

you know, that would be jolly; wouldn't it?

The pleasantest part of the occasion by far, to Clennam, was the

painfullest. When Mr and Mrs Meagles at last hung about Pet in the room

with the two pictures (where the company were not), before going with

her to the threshold which she could never recross to be the old Pet and

the old delight, nothing could be more natural and simple than the three

were. Gowan himself was touched, and answered Mr Meagles's 'O Gowan,

take care of her, take care of her!' with an earnest 'Don't be so

broken-hearted, sir. By Heaven I will!'

And so, with the last sobs and last loving words, and a last look to

Clennam of confidence in his promise, Pet fell back in the carriage,

and her husband waved his hand, and they were away for Dover; though not

until the faithful Mrs Tickit, in her silk gown and jet black curls, had

rushed out from some hiding-place, and thrown both her shoes after

the carriage: an apparition which occasioned great surprise to the

distinguished company at the windows.

The said company being now relieved from further attendance, and the

chief Barnacles being rather hurried (for they had it in hand just

then to send a mail or two which was in danger of going straight to its

destination, beating about the seas like the Flying Dutchman, and to

arrange with complexity for the stoppage of a good deal of important

business otherwise in peril of being done), went their several ways;

with all affability conveying to Mr and Mrs Meagles that general

assurance that what they had been doing there, they had been doing at a

sacrifice for Mr and Mrs Meagles's good, which they always conveyed to

Mr John Bull in their official condescension to that most unfortunate

creature.

A miserable blank remained in the house and in the hearts of the father

and mother and Clennam. Mr Meagles called only one remembrance to his

aid, that really did him good.

'It's very gratifying, Arthur,' he said, 'after all, to look back upon.'

'The past?' said Clennam.

'Yes--but I mean the company.'

It had made him much more low and unhappy at the time, but now it really

did him good. 'It's very gratifying,' he said, often repeating the

remark in the course of the evening. 'Such high company!'

CHAPTER 35. What was behind Mr Pancks on Little Dorrit's Hand

It was at this time that Mr Pancks, in discharge of his compact with

Clennam, revealed to him the whole of his gipsy story, and told him

Little Dorrit's fortune. Her father was heir-at-law to a great estate

that had long lain unknown of, unclaimed, and accumulating. His right

was now clear, nothing interposed in his way, the Marshalsea gates stood

open, the Marshalsea walls were down, a few flourishes of his pen, and

he was extremely rich.

In his tracking out of the claim to its complete establishment, Mr

Pancks had shown a sagacity that nothing could baffle, and a patience

and secrecy that nothing could tire. 'I little thought, sir,' said

Pancks, 'when you and I crossed Smithfield that night, and I told you

what sort of a Collector I was, that this would come of it. I little

thought, sir, when I told you you were not of the Clennams of