Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

The Evening of a Long Day

That illustrious man and great national ornament, Mr Merdle,
continued his shining course. It began to be widely understood
that one who had done society the admirable service of making so
much money out of it, could not be suffered to remain a commoner.
A baronetcy was spoken of with confidence; a peerage was frequently
mentioned. Rumour had it that Mr Merdle had set his golden face
against a baronetcy; that he had plainly intimated to Lord Decimus
that a baronetcy was not enough for him; that he had said, 'No--a
Peerage, or plain Merdle.' This was reported to have plunged Lord
Decimus as nigh to his noble chin in a slough of doubts as so lofty
a person could be sunk. For the Barnacles, as a group of
themselves in creation, had an idea that such distinctions belonged
to them; and that when a soldier, sailor, or lawyer became
ennobled, they let him in, as it were, by an act of condescension,
at the family door, and immediately shut it again. Not only (said
Rumour) had the troubled Decimus his own hereditary part in this
impression, but he also knew of several Barnacle claims already on
the file, which came into collision with that of the master spirit.

Right or wrong, Rumour was very busy; and Lord Decimus, while he
was, or was supposed to be, in stately excogitation of the
difficulty, lent her some countenance by taking, on several public
occasions, one of those elephantine trots of his through a jungle
of overgrown sentences, waving Mr Merdle about on his trunk as
Gigantic Enterprise, The Wealth of England, Elasticity, Credit,
Capital, Prosperity, and all manner of blessings.

So quietly did the mowing of the old scythe go on, that fully three
months had passed unnoticed since the two English brothers had been
laid in one tomb in the strangers' cemetery at Rome. Mr and Mrs
Sparkler were established in their own house: a little manSion,
rather of the Tite Barnacle class, quite a triumph of
inconvenience, with a perpetual smell in it of the day before
yesterday's soup and coach-horses, but extremely dear, as being
exactly in the centre of the habitable globe. In this enviable
abode (and envied it really was by many people), Mrs Sparkler had
intended to proceed at once to the demolition of the Bosom, when
active hostilities had been suspended by the arrival of the Courier
with his tidings of death. Mrs Sparkler, who was not unfeeling,
had received them with a violent burst of grief, which had lasted
twelve hours; after which, she had arisen to see about her
mourning, and to take every precaution that could ensure its being
as becoming as Mrs Merdle's. A gloom was then cast over more than
one distinguished family (according to the politest