The dinner-party was at the great Physician's. Bar was there, and in

full force. Ferdinand Barnacle was there, and in his most engaging

state.

Few ways of life were hidden from Physician, and he was oftener

in its darkest places than even Bishop. There were brilliant ladies

about London who perfectly doted on him, my dear, as the most charming

creature and the most delightful person, who would have been shocked to

find themselves so close to him if they could have known on what sights

those thoughtful eyes of his had rested within an hour or two, and near

to whose beds, and under what roofs, his composed figure had stood.

But Physician was a composed man, who performed neither on his own trumpet,

nor on the trumpets of other people. Many wonderful things did he see

and hear, and much irreconcilable moral contradiction did he pass his

life among; yet his equality of compassion was no more disturbed than

the Divine Master's of all healing was. He went, like the rain,

among the just and unjust, doing all the good he could, and neither

proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at the corner of streets.

As no man of large experience of humanity, however quietly carried

it may be, can fail to be invested with an interest peculiar to the

possession of such knowledge, Physician was an attractive man. Even the

daintier gentlemen and ladies who had no idea of his secret, and

who would have been startled out of more wits than they had, by the

monstrous impropriety of his proposing to them 'Come and see what I

see!' confessed his attraction. Where he was, something real was. And

half a grain of reality, like the smallest portion of some other scarce

natural productions, will flavour an enormous quantity of diluent.

It came to pass, therefore, that Physician's little dinners always

presented people in their least conventional lights. The guests said to

themselves, whether they were conscious of it or no, 'Here is a man who

really has an acquaintance with us as we are, who is admitted to some

of us every day with our wigs and paint off, who hears the wanderings of

our minds, and sees the undisguised expression of our faces, when both

are past our control; we may as well make an approach to reality with

him, for the man has got the better of us and is too strong for us.'

Therefore, Physician's guests came out so surprisingly at his round

table that they were almost natural.

Bar's knowledge of that agglomeration of jurymen which is called

humanity was as sharp as a razor; yet a razor is not a generally

convenient instrument, and Physician's plain bright scalpel, though far

less keen, was adaptable to far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the

gullibility and knavery of people; but Physician could have given him

a better insight into their tendernesses and affections, in one week of

his rounds, than Westminster Hall and all the circuits put together,

in threescore years and ten. Bar always had a suspicion of this, and

perhaps was glad to encourage it (for, if the world were really a great

Law Court, one would think that the last day of Term could not too soon

arrive); and so he liked and respected Physician quite as much as any

other kind of man did.

Mr Merdle's default left a Banquo's chair at the table; but, if he had

been there, he would have merely made the difference of Banquo in it,

and consequently he was no loss. Bar, who picked up all sorts of odds

and ends about Westminster Hall, much as a raven would have done if he

had passed as much of his time there, had been picking up a great many

straws lately and tossing them about, to try which way the Merdle wind

blew. He now had a little talk on the subject with Mrs Merdle herself;

sidling up to that lady, of course, with his double eye-glass and his

jury droop.

'A certain bird,' said Bar; and he looked as if it could have been no

other bird than a magpie; 'has been whispering among us lawyers lately,

that there is to be an addition to the titled personages of this realm.'

'Really?' said Mrs Merdle.

'Yes,' said Bar. 'Has not the bird been whispering in very different

ears from ours--in lovely ears?' He looked expressively at Mrs Merdle's

nearest ear-ring.

'Do you mean mine?' asked Mrs Merdle.

'When I say lovely,' said Bar, 'I always mean you.'

'You never mean anything, I think,' returned Mrs Merdle (not

displeased).

'Oh, cruelly unjust!' said Bar. 'But, the bird.'

'I am the last person in the world to hear news,' observed Mrs Merdle,

carelessly arranging her stronghold. 'Who is it?'

'What an admirable witness you would make!' said Bar. 'No jury (unless

we could empanel one of blind men) could resist you, if you were ever so

bad a one; but you would be such a good one!'

'Why, you ridiculous man?' asked Mrs Merdle, laughing.

Bar waved his double eye-glass three or four times between himself and

the Bosom, as a rallying answer, and inquired in his most insinuating

accents:

'What am I to call the most elegant, accomplished and charming of women,

a few weeks, or it may be a few days, hence?'

'Didn't your bird tell you what to call her?' answered Mrs Merdle. 'Do

ask it to-morrow, and tell me the next time you see me what it says.'

This led to further passages of similar pleasantry between the two; but

Bar, with all his sharpness, got nothing out of them. Physician, on the

other hand, taking Mrs Merdle down to her carriage and attending on her

as she put on her cloak, inquired into the symptoms with his usual calm

directness.

'May I ask,' he said, 'is this true about Merdle?'

'My dear doctor,' she returned, 'you ask me the very question that I was

half disposed to ask you.' 'To ask me! Why me?'

'Upon my honour, I think Mr Merdle reposes greater confidence in you

than in any one.'

'On the contrary, he tells me absolutely nothing, even professionally.

You have heard the talk, of course?'

'Of course I have. But you know what Mr Merdle is; you know how

taciturn and reserved he is. I assure you I have no idea what foundation

for it there may be. I should like it to be true; why should I deny that

to you? You would know better, if I did!'

'Just so,' said Physician.

'But whether it is all true, or partly true, or entirely false, I am

wholly unable to say. It is a most provoking situation, a most absurd

situation; but you know Mr Merdle, and are not surprised.'

Physician was not surprised, handed her into her carriage, and bade her

Good Night. He stood for a moment at his own hall door, looking sedately

at the elegant equipage as it rattled away. On his return up-stairs, the

rest of the guests soon dispersed, and he was left alone. Being a great

reader of all kinds of literature (and never at all apologetic for that

weakness), he sat down comfortably to read.

The clock upon his study table pointed to a few minutes short of twelve,

when his attention was called to it by a ringing at the door bell. A man

of plain habits, he had sent his servants to bed and must needs go down

to open the door. He went down, and there found a man without hat or

coat, whose shirt sleeves were rolled up tight to his shoulders. For a

moment, he thought the man had been fighting: the rather, as he was much

agitated and out of breath. A second look, however, showed him that

the man was particularly clean, and not otherwise discomposed as to his

dress than as it answered this description.

'I come from the warm-baths, sir, round in the neighbouring street.'

'And what is the matter at the warm-baths?'

'Would you please to come directly, sir. We found that, lying on the

table.'

He put into the physician's hand a scrap of paper. Physician looked at

it, and read his own name and address written in pencil; nothing more.

He looked closer at the writing, looked at the man, took his hat from

its peg, put the key of his door in his pocket, and they hurried away

together.

When they came to the warm-baths, all the other people belonging to that

establishment were looking out for them at the door, and running up and

down the passages. 'Request everybody else to keep back, if you please,'

said the physician aloud to the master; 'and do you take me straight to

the place, my friend,' to the messenger.

The messenger hurried before him, along a grove of little rooms,

and turning into one at the end of the grove, looked round the door.

Physician was close upon him, and looked round the door too.

There was a bath in that corner, from which the water had been hastily

drained off. Lying in it, as in a grave or sarcophagus, with a hurried

drapery of sheet and blanket thrown across it, was the body of a

heavily-made man, with an obtuse head, and coarse, mean, common

features. A sky-light had been opened to release the steam with which

the room had been filled; but it hung, condensed into water-drops,

heavily upon the walls, and heavily upon the face and figure in the

bath. The room was still hot, and the marble of the bath still warm; but

the face and figure were clammy to the touch. The white marble at the

bottom of the bath was veined with a dreadful red. On the ledge at

the side, were an empty laudanum-bottle and a tortoise-shell handled

penknife--soiled, but not with ink.

'Separation of jugular vein--death rapid--been dead at least half an

hour.' This echo of the physician's words ran through the passages

and little rooms, and through the house while he was yet straightening

himself from having bent down to reach to the bottom of the bath, and

while he was yet dabbling his hands in water; redly veining it as the

marble was veined, before it mingled into one tint.

He turned his eyes to the dress upon the sofa, and to the watch, money,

and pocket-book on the table. A folded note half buckled up in the

pocket-book, and half protruding from it, caught his observant glance.

He looked at it, touched it, pulled it a little further out from among

the leaves, said quietly, 'This is addressed to me,' and opened and read

it.

There were no directions for him to give. The people of the house knew

what to do; the proper authorities were soon brought; and they took an

equable business-like possession of the deceased, and of what had been

his property, with no greater disturbance of manner or countenance than

usually attends the winding-up of a clock. Physician was glad to walk

out into the night air--was even glad, in spite of his great experience,

to sit down upon a door-step for a little while: feeling sick and faint.

Bar was a near neighbour of his, and, when he came to the house, he saw

a light in the room where he knew his friend often sat late getting up

his work. As the light was never there when Bar was not, it gave him

assurance that Bar was not yet in bed. In fact, this busy bee had

a verdict to get to-morrow, against evidence, and was improving the

shining hours in setting snares for the gentlemen of the jury.

Physician's knock astonished Bar; but, as he immediately suspected that

somebody had come to tell him that somebody else was robbing him, or

otherwise trying to get the better of him, he came down promptly and

softly. He had been clearing his head with a lotion of cold water, as a

good preparative to providing hot water for the heads of the jury, and

had been reading with the neck of his shirt thrown wide open that he

might the more freely choke the opposite witnesses. In consequence, he

came down, looking rather wild. Seeing Physician, the least expected of

men, he looked wilder and said, 'What's the matter?'

'You asked me once what Merdle's complaint was.'

'Extraordinary answer! I know I did.'

'I told you I had not found out.'

'Yes. I know you did.'

'I have found it out.'

'My God!' said Bar, starting back, and clapping his hand upon the

other's breast. 'And so have I! I see it in your face.'

They went into the nearest room, where Physician gave him the letter to

read. He read it through half-a-dozen times. There was not much in it

as to quantity; but it made a great demand on his close and continuous

attention. He could not sufficiently give utterance to his regret that

he had not himself found a clue to this. The smallest clue, he said,

would have made him master of the case, and what a case it would have

been to have got to the bottom of!

Physician had engaged to break the intelligence in Harley Street. Bar

could not at once return to his inveiglements of the most enlightened

and remarkable jury he had ever seen in that box, with whom, he could

tell his learned friend, no shallow sophistry would go down, and no

unhappily abused professional tact and skill prevail (this was the way

he meant to begin with them); so he said he would go too, and would

loiter to and fro near the house while his friend was inside. They

walked there, the better to recover self-possession in the air; and the

wings of day were fluttering the night when Physician knocked at the

door.

A footman of rainbow hues, in the public eye, was sitting up for his

master--that is to say, was fast asleep in the kitchen over a couple

of candles and a newspaper, demonstrating the great accumulation of

mathematical odds against the probabilities of a house being set on fire

by accident When this serving man was roused, Physician had still to

await the rousing of the Chief Butler. At last that noble creature came

into the dining-room in a flannel gown and list shoes; but with his

cravat on, and a Chief Butler all over. It was morning now. Physician

had opened the shutters of one window while waiting, that he might see

the light. 'Mrs Merdle's maid must be called, and told to get Mrs Merdle

up, and prepare her as gently as she can to see me. I have dreadful news

to break to her.'

Thus Physician to the Chief Butler. The latter, who had a candle in his

hand, called his man to take it away. Then he approached the window with

dignity; looking on at Physician's news exactly as he had looked on at

the dinners in that very room.

'Mr Merdle is dead.'

'I should wish,' said the Chief Butler, 'to give a month's notice.'

'Mr Merdle has destroyed himself.'

'Sir,' said the Chief Butler, 'that is very unpleasant to the feelings

of one in my position, as calculated to awaken prejudice; and I should

wish to leave immediately.'

'If you are not shocked, are you not surprised, man?' demanded the

Physician, warmly.

The Chief Butler, erect and calm, replied in these memorable words.

'Sir, Mr Merdle never was the gentleman, and no ungentlemanly act on

Mr Merdle's part would surprise me. Is there anybody else I can send to

you, or any other directions I can give before I leave, respecting what

you would wish to be done?'

When Physician, after discharging himself of his trust up-stairs,

rejoined Bar in the street, he said no more of his interview with Mrs

Merdle than that he had not yet told her all, but that what he had told

her she had borne pretty well. Bar had devoted his leisure in the street

to the construction of a most ingenious man-trap for catching the whole

of his jury at a blow; having got that matter settled in his mind,

it was lucid on the late catastrophe, and they walked home slowly,

discussing it in every bearing. Before parting at the Physician's door,

they both looked up at the sunny morning sky, into which the smoke of a

few early fires and the breath and voices of a few early stirrers were

peacefully rising, and then looked round upon the immense city, and

said, if all those hundreds and thousands of beggared people who were

yet asleep could only know, as they two spoke, the ruin that impended

over them, what a fearful cry against one miserable soul would go up to

Heaven!

The report that the great man was dead, got about with astonishing

rapidity. At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were

known, and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of

Light to meet the demand of the occasion. He had concealed a dropsy from

infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest from his

grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every morning

of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of

important veins in his body after the manner of fireworks, he had had

something the matter with his lungs, he had had something the matter

with his heart, he had had something the matter with his brain. Five

hundred people who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed on the

whole subject, believed before they had done breakfast, that they

privately and personally knew Physician to have said to Mr Merdle, 'You

must expect to go out, some day, like the snuff of a candle;' and that

they knew Mr Merdle to have said to Physician, 'A man can die but once.'

By about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the

brain, became the favourite theory against the field; and by twelve the

something had been distinctly ascertained to be 'Pressure.'

Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and seemed to

make everybody so comfortable, that it might have lasted all day but for

Bar's having taken the real state of the case into Court at half-past

nine. This led to its beginning to be currently whispered all over

London by about one, that Mr Merdle had killed himself. Pressure,

however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, became a greater

favourite than ever. There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in

every street. All the people who had tried to make money and had not

been able to do it, said, There you were! You no sooner began to devote

yourself to the pursuit of wealth than you got Pressure. The idle people

improved the occasion in a similar manner. See, said they, what you

brought yourself to by work, work, work! You persisted in working, you

overdid it. Pressure came on, and you were done for! This consideration

was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more so than among the

young clerks and partners who had never been in the slightest danger

of overdoing it. These, one and all, declared, quite piously, that they

hoped they would never forget the warning as long as they lived, and

that their conduct might be so regulated as to keep off Pressure, and

preserve them, a comfort to their friends, for many years.

But, at about the time of High 'Change, Pressure began to wane, and

appalling whispers to circulate, east, west, north, and south. At first

they were faint, and went no further than a doubt whether Mr Merdle's

wealth would be found to be as vast as had been supposed; whether there

might not be a temporary difficulty in 'realising' it; whether there

might not even be a temporary suspension (say a month or so), on the

part of the wonderful Bank. As the whispers became louder, which they

did from that time every minute, they became more threatening. He had

sprung from nothing, by no natural growth or process that any one could

account for; he had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow; he had been

a down-looking man, and no one had ever been able to catch his eye;

he had been taken up by all sorts of people in quite an unaccountable

manner; he had never had any money of his own, his ventures had been

utterly reckless, and his expenditure had been most enormous. In steady

progression, as the day declined, the talk rose in sound and purpose.

He had left a letter at the Baths addressed to his physician, and his

physician had got the letter, and the letter would be produced at the

Inquest on the morrow, and it would fall like a thunderbolt upon the

multitude he had deluded. Numbers of men in every profession and trade

would be blighted by his insolvency; old people who had been in easy

circumstances all their lives would have no place of repentance for

their trust in him but the workhouse; legions of women and children

would have their whole future desolated by the hand of this mighty

scoundrel. Every partaker of his magnificent feasts would be seen to

have been a sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes; every servile

worshipper of riches who had helped to set him on his pedestal, would

have done better to worship the Devil point-blank. So, the talk, lashed

louder and higher by confirmation on confirmation, and by edition after

edition of the evening papers, swelled into such a roar when night came,

as might have brought one to believe that a solitary watcher on the

gallery above the Dome of St Paul's would have perceived the night air

to be laden with a heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled with

every form of execration.

For by that time it was known that the late Mr Merdle's complaint

had been simply Forgery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of such

wide-spread adulation, the sitter at great men's feasts, the roc's egg

of great ladies' assemblies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller

of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargain-driver with a Minister

for Lordships of the Circumlocution Office, the recipient of more

acknowledgment within some ten or fifteen years, at most, than had been

bestowed in England upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon

all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, with all their works to

testify for them, during two centuries at least--he, the shining wonder,

the new constellation to be followed by the wise men bringing gifts,

until it stopped over a certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and

disappeared--was simply the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that

ever cheated the gallows.




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