第 7 页

'The world has narrowed to these dimensions, Arthur,' she rep lied,

glancing round the room. 'It is well for me that I never set my heart

upon its hollow vanities.'

The old influence of her presence and her stern strong voice, so

gathered about her son, that he felt conscious of a renewal of the timid

chill and reserve of his childhood.

'Do you never leave your room, mother?'

'What with my rheumatic affection, and what with its attendant debility

or nervous weakness--names are of no matter now--I have lost the use

of my limbs. I never leave my room. I have not been outside this door

for--tell him for how long,' she said, speaking over her shoulder.

'A dozen year next Christmas,' returned a cracked voice out of the

dimness behind.

'Is that Affery?' said Arthur, looking towards it.

The cracked voice replied that it was Affery: and an old woman came

forward into what doubtful light there was, and kissed her hand once;

then subsided again into the dimness.

'I am able,' said Mrs Clennam, with a slight motion of her

worsted-muffled right hand toward a chair on wheels, standing before a

tall writing cabinet close shut up, 'I am able to attend to my business

duties, and I am thankful for the privilege. It is a great privilege.

But no more of business on this day. It is a bad night, is it not?'

'Yes, mother.'

'Does it snow?'

'Snow, mother? And we only yet in September?'

'All seasons are alike to me,' she returned, with a grim kind of

luxuriousness. 'I know nothing of summer and winter, shut up here.

The Lord has been pleased to put me beyond all that.' With her cold grey

eyes and her cold grey hair, and her immovable face, as stiff as the

folds of her stony head-dress,--her being beyond the reach of the

seasons seemed but a fit sequence to her being beyond the reach of all

changing emotions.

On her little table lay two or three books, her handkerchief, a pair of

steel spectacles newly taken off, and an old-fashioned gold watch in a

heavy double case. Upon this last object her son's eyes and her own now

rested together.

'I see that you received the packet I sent you on my father's death,

safely, mother.'

'You see.'

'I never knew my father to show so much anxiety on any subject, as that

his watch should be sent straight to you.'

'I keep it here as a remembrance of your father.'

'It was not until the last, that he expressed the wish; when he could

only put his hand upon it, and very indistinctly say to me "your

mother." A moment before, I thought him wandering in his mind, as he

had been for many hours--I think he had no consciousness of pain in his

short illness--when I saw him turn himself in his bed and try to open

it.'

'Was your father, then, not wandering in his mind when he tried to open

it?'

'No. He was quite sensible at that time.'

Mrs Clennam shook her head; whether in dismissal of the deceased or

opposing herself to her son's opinion, was not clearly expressed.

'After my father's death I opened it myself, thinking there might be,

for anything I knew, some memorandum there. However, as I need not tell

you, mother, there was nothing but the old silk watch-paper worked in

beads, which you found (no doubt) in its place between the cases, where

I found and left it.'

Mrs Clennam signified assent; then added, 'No more of business on this

day,' and then added, 'Affery, it is nine o'clock.'

Upon this, the old woman cleared the little table, went out of the room,

and quickly returned with a tray on which was a dish of little rusks and

a small precise pat of butter, cool, symmetrical, white, and plump. The

old man who had been standing by the door in one attitude during the

whole interview, looking at the mother up-stairs as he had looked at the

son down-stairs, went out at the same time, and, after a longer absence,

returned with another tray on which was the greater part of a bottle

of port wine (which, to judge by his panting, he had brought from the

cellar), a lemon, a sugar-basin, and a spice box. With these materials

and the aid of the kettle, he filled a tumbler with a hot and

odorous mixture, measured out and compounded with as much nicety as a

physician's prescription. Into this mixture Mrs Clennam dipped certain

of the rusks, and ate them; while the old woman buttered certain other

of the rusks, which were to be eaten alone. When the invalid had eaten

all the rusks and drunk all the mixture, the two trays were removed;

and the books and the candle, watch, handkerchief, and spectacles were

replaced upon the table. She then put on the spectacles and read certain

passages aloud from a book--sternly, fiercely, wrathfully--praying that

her enemies (she made them by her tone and manner expressly hers) might

be put to the edge of the sword, consumed by fire, smitten by plagues

and leprosy, that their bones might be ground to dust, and that they

might be utterly exterminated. As she read on, years seemed to fall

away from her son like the imaginings of a dream, and all the old dark

horrors of his usual preparation for the sleep of an innocent child to

overshadow him.

She shut the book and remained for a little time with her face shaded by

her hand. So did the old man, otherwise still unchanged in attitude; so,

probably, did the old woman in her dimmer part of the room. Then the

sick woman was ready for bed.

'Good night, Arthur. Affery will see to your accommodation. Only touch

me, for my hand is tender.' He touched the worsted muffling of her

hand--that was nothing; if his mother had been sheathed in brass there

would have been no new barrier between them--and followed the old man

and woman down-stairs.

The latter asked him, when they were alone together among the heavy

shadows of the dining-room, would he have some supper?

'No, Affery, no supper.'

'You shall if you like,' said Affery. 'There's her tomorrow's partridge

in the larder--her first this year; say the word and I'll cook it.'

No, he had not long dined, and could eat nothing.

'Have something to drink, then,' said Affery; 'you shall have some of

her bottle of port, if you like. I'll tell Jeremiah that you ordered me

to bring it you.'

No; nor would he have that, either.

'It's no reason, Arthur,' said the old woman, bending over him to

whisper, 'that because I am afeared of my life of 'em, you should be.

You've got half the property, haven't you?'

'Yes, yes.'

'Well then, don't you be cowed. You're clever, Arthur, an't you?' He

nodded, as she seemed to expect an answer in the affirmative. 'Then

stand up against them! She's awful clever, and none but a clever one

durst say a word to her. HE'S a clever one--oh, he's a clever one!--and

he gives it her when he has a mind to't, he does!'

'Your husband does?'

'Does? It makes me shake from head to foot, to hear him give it her. My

husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, can conquer even your mother. What can he

be but a clever one to do that!'

His shuffling footstep coming towards them caused her to retreat to the

other end of the room. Though a tall, hard-favoured, sinewy old woman,

who in her youth might have enlisted in the Foot Guards without much

fear of discovery, she collapsed before the little keen-eyed crab-like

old man.

'Now, Affery,' said he, 'now, woman, what are you doing? Can't you find

Master Arthur something or another to pick at?'

Master Arthur repeated his recent refusal to pick at anything.

'Very well, then,' said the old man; 'make his bed. Stir yourself.' His

neck was so twisted that the knotted ends of his white cravat usually

dangled under one ear; his natural acerbity and energy, always

contending with a second nature of habitual repression, gave his

features a swollen and suffused look; and altogether, he had a weird

appearance of having hanged himself at one time or other, and of having

gone about ever since, halter and all, exactly as some timely hand had

cut him down.

'You'll have bitter words together to-morrow, Arthur; you and your

mother,' said Jeremiah. 'Your having given up the business on your

father's death--which she suspects, though we have left it to you to

tell her--won't go off smoothly.'

'I have given up everything in life for the business, and the time came

for me to give up that.'

'Good!' cried Jeremiah, evidently meaning Bad. 'Very good! only don't

expect me to stand between your mother and you, Arthur. I stood between

your mother and your father, fending off this, and fending off that, and

getting crushed and pounded betwixt em; and I've done with such work.'

'You will never be asked to begin it again for me, Jeremiah.'

'Good. I'm glad to hear it; because I should have had to decline it, if

I had been. That's enough--as your mother says--and more than enough of

such matters on a Sabbath night. Affery, woman, have you found what you

want yet?'

She had been collecting sheets and blankets from a press, and hastened

to gather them up, and to reply, 'Yes, Jeremiah.' Arthur Clennam helped

her by carrying the load himself, wished the old man good night, and

went up-stairs with her to the top of the house.

They mounted up and up, through the musty smell of an old close house,

little used, to a large garret bed-room. Meagre and spare, like all the

other rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer than the rest, by being the

place of banishment for the worn-out furniture. Its movables were ugly

old chairs with worn-out seats, and ugly old chairs without any seats;

a threadbare patternless carpet, a maimed table, a crippled wardrobe,

a lean set of fire-irons like the skeleton of a set deceased, a

washing-stand that looked as if it had stood for ages in a hail of

dirty soapsuds, and a bedstead with four bare atomies of posts, each

terminating in a spike, as if for the dismal accommodation of lodgers

who might prefer to impale themselves. Arthur opened the long low

window, and looked out upon the old blasted and blackened forest of

chimneys, and the old red glare in the sky, which had seemed to him once

upon a time but a nightly reflection of the fiery environment that was

presented to his childish fancy in all directions, let it look where it

would.

He drew in his head again, sat down at the bedside, and looked on at

Affery Flintwinch making the bed.

'Affery, you were not married when I went away.'

She screwed her mouth into the form of saying 'No,' shook her head, and

proceeded to get a pillow into its case.

'How did it happen?'

'Why, Jeremiah, o' course,' said Affery, with an end of the pillow-case

between her teeth.

'Of course he proposed it, but how did it all come about? I should have

thought that neither of you would have married; least of all should I

have thought of your marrying each other.'

'No more should I,' said Mrs Flintwinch, tying the pillow tightly in its

case.

'That's what I mean. When did you begin to think otherwise?'

'Never begun to think otherwise at all,' said Mrs Flintwinch.

Seeing, as she patted the pillow into its place on the bolster, that he

was still looking at her as if waiting for the rest of her reply,

she gave it a great poke in the middle, and asked, 'How could I help

myself?'

'How could you help yourself from being married!'

'O' course,' said Mrs Flintwinch. 'It was no doing o' mine. I'D never

thought of it. I'd got something to do, without thinking, indeed! She

kept me to it (as well as he) when she could go about, and she could go

about then.' 'Well?'

'Well?' echoed Mrs Flintwinch. 'That's what I said myself. Well! What's

the use of considering? If them two clever ones have made up their minds

to it, what's left for me to do? Nothing.'

'Was it my mother's project, then?'

'The Lord bless you, Arthur, and forgive me the wish!' cried Affery,

speaking always in a low tone. 'If they hadn't been both of a mind in

it, how could it ever have been? Jeremiah never courted me; t'ant likely

that he would, after living in the house with me and ordering me

about for as many years as he'd done. He said to me one day, he said,

"Affery," he said, "now I am going to tell you something. What do you

think of the name of Flintwinch?" "What do I think of it?" I says.

"Yes," he said, "because you're going to take it," he said. "Take it?" I

says. "Jere-MI-ah?" Oh! he's a clever one!'

Mrs Flintwinch went on to spread the upper sheet over the bed, and the

blanket over that, and the counterpane over that, as if she had quite

concluded her story. 'Well?' said Arthur again.

'Well?' echoed Mrs Flintwinch again. 'How could I help myself? He said

to me, "Affery, you and me must be married, and I'll tell you why. She's

failing in health, and she'll want pretty constant attendance up in

her room, and we shall have to be much with her, and there'll be nobody

about now but ourselves when we're away from her, and altogether it will

be more convenient. She's of my opinion," he said, "so if you'll put

your bonnet on next Monday morning at eight, we'll get it over."' Mrs

Flintwinch tucked up the bed.

'Well?'

'Well?' repeated Mrs Flintwinch, 'I think so! I sits me down and says

it. Well!--Jeremiah then says to me, "As to banns, next Sunday being the