"I am not afraid of him," she returned in the same breath; "but will you look at him?"
In a moment Gowan had thrown down his brush, and seized the dog with both hands by the collar.
"Blandois! How can you be such a fool as to provoke him! By Heaven, and the other place too, he"ll tear you to bits! Lie down!
Lion! Do you hear my voice, you rebel!
"The great dog, regardless of being half-choked by his collar, was obdurately pulling with his dead weight against his master, resolved to get across the room. He had been crouching for a spring at the moment when his master caught him.
"Lion! Lion!" He was up on his hind legs, and it was a wrestle between master and dog. "Get back! Down, Lion! Get out of his sight, Blandois!
What devil have you conjured into the dog?"
"I have done nothing to him."
"Get out of his sight or I can"t hold the wild beast! Get out of the room! By my soul, he"ll kill you!"
The dog, with a ferocious bark, made one other struggle as Blandois vanished; then, in the moment of the dog"s submission, the master, little less angry than the dog, felled him with a blow on the head, and standing over him, struck him many times severely with the heel of his boot, so that his mouth was presently b.l.o.o.d.y.
"Now get you into that corner and lie down," said Gowan, "or I"ll take you out and shoot you."
Lion did as he was ordered, and lay down licking his mouth and chest.
Lion"s master stopped for a moment to take breath, and then, recovering his usual coolness of manner, turned to speak to his frightened wife and her visitors. Probably the whole occurrence had not occupied two minutes.
"Come, come, Minnie! You know he is always good-humoured and tractable.
Blandois must have irritated him,--made faces at him. The dog has his likings and dislikings, and Blandois is no great favourite of his; but I am sure you will give him a character, Minnie, for never having been like this before."
Minnie was too much disturbed to say anything connected in reply; Little Dorrit was already occupied in soothing her; f.a.n.n.y, who had cried out twice or thrice, held Gowan"s arm for protection; Lion, deeply ashamed of having caused them this alarm, came trailing himself along the ground to the feet of his mistress.
"You furious brute," said Gowan, striking him with his foot again. "You shall do penance for this." And he struck him again, and yet again.
"O, pray don"t punish him any more," cried Little Dorrit. "Don"t hurt him. See how gentle he is!" At her entreaty, Gowan spared him; and he deserved her intercession, for truly he was as submissive, and as sorry, and as wretched as a dog could be.
It was not easy to recover this shock and make the visit unrestrained, even though f.a.n.n.y had not been, under the best of circ.u.mstances, the least trifle in the way. In such further communication as pa.s.sed among them before the sisters took their departure, Little Dorrit fancied it was revealed to her that Mr Gowan treated his wife, even in his very fondness, too much like a beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of the depths of feeling which she knew must lie below that surface, that she doubted if there could be any such depths in himself. She wondered whether his want of earnestness might be the natural result of his want of such qualities, and whether it was with people as with ships, that, in too shallow and rocky waters, their anchors had no hold, and they drifted anywhere.
He attended them down the staircase, jocosely apologising for the poor quarters to which such poor fellows as himself were limited, and remarking that when the high and mighty Barnacles, his relatives, who would be dreadfully ashamed of them, presented him with better, he would live in better to oblige them. At the water"s edge they were saluted by Blandois, who looked white enough after his late adventure, but who made very light of it notwithstanding,--laughing at the mention of Lion.
Leaving the two together under the sc.r.a.p of vine upon the causeway, Gowan idly scattering the leaves from it into the water, and Blandois lighting a cigarette, the sisters were paddled away in state as they had come. They had not glided on for many minutes, when Little Dorrit became aware that f.a.n.n.y was more showy in manner than the occasion appeared to require, and, looking about for the cause through the window and through the open door, saw another gondola evidently in waiting on them.
As this gondola attended their progress in various artful ways; sometimes shooting on a-head, and stopping to let them pa.s.s; sometimes, when the way was broad enough, skimming along side by side with them; and sometimes following close astern; and as f.a.n.n.y gradually made no disguise that she was playing off graces upon somebody within it, of whom she at the same time feigned to be unconscious; Little Dorrit at length asked who it was?
To which f.a.n.n.y made the short answer, "That gaby."
"Who?" said Little Dorrit.
"My dear child," returned f.a.n.n.y (in a tone suggesting that before her Uncle"s protest she might have said, You little fool, instead), "how slow you are! Young Sparkler."
She lowered the window on her side, and, leaning back and resting her elbow on it negligently, fanned herself with a rich Spanish fan of black and gold. The attendant gondola, having skimmed forward again, with some swift trace of an eye in the window, f.a.n.n.y laughed coquettishly and said, "Did you ever see such a fool, my love?"
"Do you think he means to follow you all the way?" asked Little Dorrit.
"My precious child," returned f.a.n.n.y, "I can"t possibly answer for what an idiot in a state of desperation may do, but I should think it highly probable. It"s not such an enormous distance. All Venice would scarcely be that, I imagine, if he"s dying for a glimpse of me."
"And is he?" asked Little Dorrit in perfect simplicity.
"Well, my love, that really is an awkward question for me to answer,"
said her sister. "I believe he is. You had better ask Edward. He tells Edward he is, I believe. I understand he makes a perfect spectacle of himself at the Casino, and that sort of places, by going on about me.
But you had better ask Edward if you want to know."
"I wonder he doesn"t call," said Little Dorrit after thinking a moment.
"My dear Amy, your wonder will soon cease, if I am rightly informed.
I should not be at all surprised if he called to-day. The creature has only been waiting to get his courage up, I suspect."
"Will you see him?"
"Indeed, my darling," said f.a.n.n.y, "that"s just as it may happen. Here he is again. Look at him. O, you simpleton!"
Mr Sparkler had, undeniably, a weak appearance; with his eye in the window like a knot in the gla.s.s, and no reason on earth for stopping his bark suddenly, except the real reason.
"When you asked me if I will see him, my dear," said f.a.n.n.y, almost as well composed in the graceful indifference of her att.i.tude as Mrs Merdle herself, "what do you mean?" "I mean," said Little Dorrit--"I think I rather mean what do you mean, dear f.a.n.n.y?"
f.a.n.n.y laughed again, in a manner at once condescending, arch, and affable; and said, putting her arm round her sister in a playfully affectionate way:
"Now tell me, my little pet. When we saw that woman at Martigny, how did you think she carried it off? Did you see what she decided on in a moment?"
"No, f.a.n.n.y."
"Then I"ll tell you, Amy. She settled with herself, now I"ll never refer to that meeting under such different circ.u.mstances, and I"ll never pretend to have any idea that these are the same girls. That"s her way out of a difficulty. What did I tell you when we came away from Harley Street that time? She is as insolent and false as any woman in the world. But in the first capacity, my love, she may find people who can match her."
A significant turn of the Spanish fan towards f.a.n.n.y"s bosom, indicated with great expression where one of these people was to be found.
"Not only that," pursued f.a.n.n.y, "but she gives the same charge to Young Sparkler; and doesn"t let him come after me until she has got it thoroughly into his most ridiculous of all ridiculous noddles (for one really can"t call it a head), that he is to pretend to have been first struck with me in that Inn Yard."
"Why?" asked Little Dorrit.
"Why? Good gracious, my love!" (again very much in the tone of You stupid little creature) "how can you ask? Don"t you see that I may have become a rather desirable match for a noddle? And don"t you see that she puts the deception upon us, and makes a pretence, while she shifts it from her own shoulders (very good shoulders they are too, I must say),"
observed Miss f.a.n.n.y, glancing complacently at herself, "of considering our feelings?"
"But we can always go back to the plain truth."
"Yes, but if you please we won"t," retorted f.a.n.n.y. "No; I am not going to have that done, Amy. The pretext is none of mine; it"s hers, and she shall have enough of it."
In the triumphant exaltation of her feelings, Miss f.a.n.n.y, using her Spanish fan with one hand, squeezed her sister"s waist with the other, as if she were crushing Mrs Merdle.
"No," repeated f.a.n.n.y. "She shall find me go her way. She took it, and I"ll follow it. And, with the blessing of fate and fortune, I"ll go on improving that woman"s acquaintance until I have given her maid, before her eyes, things from my dressmaker"s ten times as handsome and expensive as she once gave me from hers!"
Little Dorrit was silent; sensible that she was not to be heard on any question affecting the family dignity, and unwilling to lose to no purpose her sister"s newly and unexpectedly restored favour. She could not concur, but she was silent. f.a.n.n.y well knew what she was thinking of; so well, that she soon asked her.