第 95 页

subsequently looked as if he thought he wouldn't. The interval afforded

time for Bishop to be announced. Bishop came in with meekness, and yet

with a strong and rapid step as if he wanted to get his seven-league

dress-shoes on, and go round the world to see that everybody was in

a satisfactory state. Bishop had no idea that there was anything

significant in the occasion. That was the most remarkable trait in

his demeanour. He was crisp, fresh, cheerful, affable, bland; but so

surprisingly innocent.

Bar sidled up to prefer his politest inquiries in reference to the

health of Mrs Bishop. Mrs Bishop had been a little unfortunate in the

article of taking cold at a Confirmation, but otherwise was well. Young

Mr Bishop was also well. He was down, with his young wife and little

family, at his Cure of Souls. The representatives of the Barnacle Chorus

dropped in next, and Mr Merdle's physician dropped in next. Bar, who

had a bit of one eye and a bit of his double eye-glass for every one who

came in at the door, no matter with whom he was conversing or what he

was talking about, got among them all by some skilful means, without

being seen to get at them, and touched each individual gentleman of the

jury on his own individual favourite spot. With some of the Chorus,

he laughed about the sleepy member who had gone out into the lobby the

other night, and voted the wrong way: with others, he deplored that

innovating spirit in the time which could not even be prevented from

taking an unnatural interest in the public service and the public money:

with the physician he had a word to say about the general health; he had

also a little information to ask him for, concerning a professional man

of unquestioned erudition and polished manners--but those credentials

in their highest development he believed were the possession of other

professors of the healing art (jury droop)--whom he had happened to

have in the witness-box the day before yesterday, and from whom he had

elicited in cross-examination that he claimed to be one of the exponents

of this new mode of treatment which appeared to Bar to--eh?--well, Bar

thought so; Bar had thought, and hoped, Physician would tell him so.

Without presuming to decide where doctors disagreed, it did appear to

Bar, viewing it as a question of common sense and not of so-called legal

penetration, that this new system was--might be, in the presence of so

great an authority--say, Humbug? Ah! Fortified by such encouragement, he

could venture to say Humbug; and now Bar's mind was relieved.

Mr Tite Barnacle, who, like Dr johnson's celebrated acquaintance, had

only one idea in his head and that was a wrong one, had appeared by this

time. This eminent gentleman and Mr Merdle, seated diverse ways and with

ruminating aspects on a yellow ottoman in the light of the fire,

holding no verbal communication with each other, bore a strong general

resemblance to the two cows in the Cuyp picture over against them.

But now, Lord Decimus arrived. The Chief Butler, who up to this time

had limited himself to a branch of his usual function by looking at the

company as they entered (and that, with more of defiance than favour),

put himself so far out of his way as to come up-stairs with him and

announce him. Lord Decimus being an overpowering peer, a bashful young

member of the Lower House who was the last fish but one caught by the

Barnacles, and who had been invited on this occasion to commemorate his

capture, shut his eyes when his Lordship came in.

Lord Decimus, nevertheless, was glad to see the Member. He was also

glad to see Mr Merdle, glad to see Bishop, glad to see Bar, glad to see

Physician, glad to see Tite Barnacle, glad to see Chorus, glad to

see Ferdinand his private secretary. Lord Decimus, though one of the

greatest of the earth, was not remarkable for ingratiatory manners, and

Ferdinand had coached him up to the point of noticing all the fellows

he might find there, and saying he was glad to see them. When he had

achieved this rush of vivacity and condescension, his Lordship composed

himself into the picture after Cuyp, and made a third cow in the group.

Bar, who felt that he had got all the rest of the jury and must now lay

hold of the Foreman, soon came sidling up, double eye-glass in hand. Bar

tendered the weather, as a subject neatly aloof from official reserve,

for the Foreman's consideration. Bar said that he was told (as everybody

always is told, though who tells them, and why, will ever remain a

mystery), that there was to be no wall-fruit this year. Lord Decimus

had not heard anything amiss of his peaches, but rather believed, if his

people were correct, he was to have no apples. No apples? Bar was lost

in astonishment and concern. It would have been all one to him, in

reality, if there had not been a pippin on the surface of the earth, but

his show of interest in this apple question was positively painful.

Now, to what, Lord Decimus--for we troublesome lawyers loved to gather

information, and could never tell how useful it might prove to us--to

what, Lord Decimus, was this to be attributed? Lord Decimus could not

undertake to propound any theory about it. This might have stopped

another man; but Bar, sticking to him fresh as ever, said, 'As to pears,

now?'

Long after Bar got made Attorney-General, this was told of him as

a master-stroke. Lord Decimus had a reminiscence about a pear-tree

formerly growing in a garden near the back of his dame's house at Eton,

upon which pear-tree the only joke of his life perennially bloomed. It

was a joke of a compact and portable nature, turning on the difference

between Eton pears and Parliamentary pairs; but it was a joke, a refined

relish of which would seem to have appeared to Lord Decimus impossible

to be had without a thorough and intimate acquaintance with the tree.

Therefore, the story at first had no idea of such a tree, sir, then

gradually found it in winter, carried it through the changing season,

saw it bud, saw it blossom, saw it bear fruit, saw the fruit ripen; in

short, cultivated the tree in that diligent and minute manner before it

got out of the bed-room window to steal the fruit, that many thanks had

been offered up by belated listeners for the trees having been planted

and grafted prior to Lord Decimus's time. Bar's interest in apples was

so overtopped by the wrapt suspense in which he pursued the changes

of these pears, from the moment when Lord Decimus solemnly opened with

'Your mentioning pears recalls to my remembrance a pear-tree,' down to

the rich conclusion, 'And so we pass, through the various changes

of life, from Eton pears to Parliamentary pairs,' that he had to go

down-stairs with Lord Decimus, and even then to be seated next to him

at table in order that he might hear the anecdote out. By that time, Bar

felt that he had secured the Foreman, and might go to dinner with a good

appetite.

It was a dinner to provoke an appetite, though he had not had one. The

rarest dishes, sumptuously cooked and sumptuously served; the choicest

fruits; the most exquisite wines; marvels of workmanship in gold and

silver, china and glass; innumerable things delicious to the senses of

taste, smell, and sight, were insinuated into its composition. O, what

a wonderful man this Merdle, what a great man, what a master man, how

blessedly and enviably endowed--in one word, what a rich man!

He took his usual poor eighteenpennyworth of food in his usual

indigestive way, and had as little to say for himself as ever a

wonderful man had. Fortunately Lord Decimus was one of those sublimities

who have no occasion to be talked to, for they can be at any time

sufficiently occupied with the contemplation of their own greatness.

This enabled the bashful young Member to keep his eyes open long enough

at a time to see his dinner. But, whenever Lord Decimus spoke, he shut

them again.

The agreeable young Barnacle, and Bar, were the talkers of the party.

Bishop would have been exceedingly agreeable also, but that his

innocence stood in his way. He was so soon left behind. When there was

any little hint of anything being in the wind, he got lost directly.

Worldly affairs were too much for him; he couldn't make them out at all.

This was observable when Bar said, incidentally, that he was happy to

have heard that we were soon to have the advantage of enlisting on

the good side, the sound and plain sagacity--not demonstrative or

ostentatious, but thoroughly sound and practical--of our friend Mr

Sparkler.

Ferdinand Barnacle laughed, and said oh yes, he believed so. A vote was

a vote, and always acceptable.

Bar was sorry to miss our good friend Mr Sparkler to-day, Mr Merdle.

'He is away with Mrs Merdle,' returned that gentleman, slowly coming

out of a long abstraction, in the course of which he had been fitting a

tablespoon up his sleeve. 'It is not indispensable for him to be on the

spot.'

'The magic name of Merdle,' said Bar, with the jury droop, 'no doubt

will suffice for all.'

'Why--yes--I believe so,' assented Mr Merdle, putting the spoon aside,

and clumsily hiding each of his hands in the coat-cuff of the other

hand. 'I believe the people in my interest down there will not make any

difficulty.'

'Model people!' said Bar. 'I am glad you approve of them,' said Mr

Merdle.

'And the people of those other two places, now,' pursued Bar, with a

bright twinkle in his keen eye, as it slightly turned in the direction

of his magnificent neighbour; 'we lawyers are always curious, always

inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds,

since there is no knowing when and where they may fit into some

corner;--the people of those other two places now? Do they yield so

laudably to the vast and cumulative influence of such enterprise and

such renown; do those little rills become absorbed so quietly

and easily, and, as it were by the influence of natural laws, so

beautifully, in the swoop of the majestic stream as it flows upon its

wondrous way enriching the surrounding lands; that their course is

perfectly to be calculated, and distinctly to be predicated?'

Mr Merdle, a little troubled by Bar's eloquence, looked fitfully about

the nearest salt-cellar for some moments, and then said hesitating:

'They are perfectly aware, sir, of their duty to Society. They will

return anybody I send to them for that purpose.'

'Cheering to know,' said Bar. 'Cheering to know.'

The three places in question were three little rotten holes in this

Island, containing three little ignorant, drunken, guzzling, dirty,

out-of-the-way constituencies, that had reeled into Mr Merdle's pocket.

Ferdinand Barnacle laughed in his easy way, and airily said they were

a nice set of fellows. Bishop, mentally perambulating among paths of

peace, was altogether swallowed up in absence of mind.

'Pray,' asked Lord Decimus, casting his eyes around the table, 'what

is this story I have heard of a gentleman long confined in a debtors'

prison proving to be of a wealthy family, and having come into the

inheritance of a large sum of money? I have met with a variety of

allusions to it. Do you know anything of it, Ferdinand?'

'I only know this much,' said Ferdinand, 'that he has given the

Department with which I have the honour to be associated;' this

sparkling young Barnacle threw off the phrase sportively, as who should

say, We know all about these forms of speech, but we must keep it up,

we must keep the game alive; 'no end of trouble, and has put us into

innumerable fixes.'

'Fixes?' repeated Lord Decimus, with a majestic pausing and pondering

on the word that made the bashful Member shut his eyes quite tight.

'Fixes?'

'A very perplexing business indeed,' observed Mr Tite Barnacle, with an

air of grave resentment.

'What,' said Lord Decimus, 'was the character of his business; what was

the nature of these--a--Fixes, Ferdinand?'

'Oh, it's a good story, as a story,' returned that gentleman; 'as good

a thing of its kind as need be. This Mr Dorrit (his name is Dorrit) had

incurred a responsibility to us, ages before the fairy came out of

the Bank and gave him his fortune, under a bond he had signed for the

performance of a contract which was not at all performed. He was a

partner in a house in some large way--spirits, or buttons, or wine, or

blacking, or oatmeal, or woollen, or pork, or hooks and eyes, or iron,

or treacle, or shoes, or something or other that was wanted for troops,

or seamen, or somebody--and the house burst, and we being among

the creditors, detainees were lodged on the part of the Crown in a

scientific manner, and all the rest Of it. When the fairy had appeared

and he wanted to pay us off, Egad we had got into such an exemplary

state of checking and counter-checking, signing and counter-signing,

that it was six months before we knew how to take the money, or how to

give a receipt for it. It was a triumph of public business,' said this

handsome young Barnacle, laughing heartily, 'You never saw such a lot of

forms in your life. "Why," the attorney said to me one day, "if I wanted

this office to give me two or three thousand pounds instead of take it,

I couldn't have more trouble about it." "You are right, old fellow,"

I told him, "and in future you'll know that we have something to do

here."' The pleasant young Barnacle finished by once more laughing

heartily. He was a very easy, pleasant fellow indeed, and his manners

were exceedingly winning.

Mr Tite Barnacle's view of the business was of a less airy character. He

took it ill that Mr Dorrit had troubled the Department by wanting to

pay the money, and considered it a grossly informal thing to do after so

many years. But Mr Tite Barnacle was a buttoned-up man, and consequently

a weighty one. All buttoned-up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are