'Does? It makes me shake from head to foot, to hear him give it her. My
husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, can conquer even your mother. What can he
be but a clever one to do that!'
His shuffling footstep coming towards them caused her to retreat to the
other end of the room. Though a tall, hard-favoured, sinewy old woman,
who in her youth might have enlisted in the Foot Guards without much
fear of discovery, she collapsed before the little keen-eyed crab-like
old man. 'Now, Affery,' said he, 'now, woman, what are you doing? Can't you find
Master Arthur something or another to pick at?'
Master Arthur repeated his recent refusal to pick at anything.
'Very well, then,' said the old man; 'make his bed. Stir yourself.' His
neck was so twisted that the knotted ends of his white cravat usually
dangled under one ear; his natural acerbity and energy, always
contending with a second nature of habitual repression, 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.