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 third time of asking (for I’ve put ‘em up a fortnight), is my reason for naming Monday. She’ll speak to you about it herself, and now she’ll find you prepared, Affery.” That same day she spoke to me, and she said, “So, Affery, I understand that you and Jeremiah are going to be married. I am glad of it, and so are you, with reason. It is a very good thing for you, and very welcome under the circumstances to me. He is a sensible man, and a trustworthy man, and a persevering man, and a pious man.” What could I say when it had come to that? Why, if it had been – a smothering instead of a wedding,’ Mrs Flintwinch cast about in her mind with great pains for this form of expression, ‘I couldn’t have said a word upon it, against them two clever ones.’
‘In good faith, I believe so.’
‘And so you may, Arthur.’
‘Affery, what girl was that in my mother’s room just now?’
‘Girl?’ said Mrs Flintwinch in a rather sharp key.
‘It was a girl, surely, whom I saw near you – almost hidden in the dark corner?’
‘Oh! She? Little Dorrit? She’s nothing; she’s a whim of – hers.’ It was a peculiarity of Affery Flintwinch that she never spoke of Mrs Clennam by name. ‘But there’s another sort of girls than that about. Have you forgot your old sweetheart? Long and long ago, I’ll be bound.’
‘I suffered enough from my mother’s separating us, to remember her. I recollect her very well.’
‘Have you got another?’
‘No.’
‘Here’s
