Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33

Going!

The changes of a fevered room are slow and fluctuating; but the
changes of the fevered world are rapid and irrevocable.

It was Little Dorrit's lot to wait upon both kinds of change. The
Marshalsea walls, during a portion of every day, again embraced her
in their shadows as their child, while she thought for Clennam,
worked for him, watched him, and only left him, still to devote her
utmost love and care to him. Her part in the life outside the gate
urged its pressing claims upon her too, and her patience untiringly
responded to them. Here was Fanny, proud, fitful, whimsical,
further advanced in that disqualified state for going into society
which had so much fretted her on the evening of the tortoise-shell
knife, resolved always to want comfort, resolved not to be
comforted, resolved to be deeply wronged, and resolved that nobody
should have the audacity to think her so. Here was her brother, a
weak, proud, tipsy, young old man, shaking from head to foot,
talking as indistinctly as if some of the money he plumed himself
upon had got into his mouth and couldn't be got out, unable to walk
alone in any act of his life, and patronising the sister whom he
selfishly loved (he always had that negative merit, ill-starred and
ill-launched Tip!) because he suffered her to lead him. Here was
Mrs Merdle in gauzy mourning--the original cap whereof had possibly
been rent to pieces in a fit of grief, but had certainly yielded to
a highly becoming article from the Parisian market--warring with
Fanny foot to foot, and breasting her with her desolate bosom every
hour in the day. Here was poor Mr Sparkler, not knowing how to
keep the peace between them, but humbly inclining to the opinion
that they could do no better than agree that they were both
remarkably fine women, and that there was no nonsense about either
of them--for which gentle recommendation they united in falling
upon him frightfully. Then, too, here was Mrs General, got home
from foreign parts, sending a Prune and a Prism by post every other
day, demanding a new Testimonial by way of recommendation to some
vacant appointment or other. Of which remarkable gentlewoman it
may be finally observed, that there surely never was a gentlewoman
of whose transcendent fitness for any vacant appointment on the
face of this earth, so many people were (as the warmth of her
Testimonials evinced) so perfectly satisfied--or who was so very
unfortunate in having a large circle of ardent and distinguished
admirers, who never themselves happened to want her in any
capacity.

On the first crash of the eminent Mr Merdle's decease, many
important persons had been unable to determine whether they should
cut Mrs Merdle, or comfort