Little Dorrit
Tudor Stiltstalking, when they came over to one another and formed
their ever-memorable coalition, had boldly muzzled the newspapers,
and rendered it penal for any Editor-person to presume to discuss the
conduct of any appointed authority abroad or at home, he thought the
country would have been preserved.
It was agreed that the country (another word for the Barnacles and
Stiltstalkings) wanted preserving, but how it came to want preserving
was not so clear. It was only clear that the question was all about
John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking, William Barnacle and Tudor
Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle or Stiltstalking, because
there was nobody else but mob. And this was the feature of the
conversation which impressed Clennam, as a man not used to it, very
disagreeably: making him doubt if it were quite right to sit there,
silently hearing a great nation narrowed to such little bounds.
Remembering, however, that in the Parliamentary debates, whether on the
life of that nation’s body or the life of its soul, the question was
usually all about and between John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking,
William Barnacle and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle
or Stiltstalking, and nobody else; he said nothing on the part of mob,
bethinking himself that mob was used to it.
Mr Henry Gowan seemed to have a malicious pleasure in playing off the
three talkers against each other, and in seeing Clennam startled by what
they said. Having as supreme a contempt for the class that had thrown
him off as for the class that had not taken him on, he had no personal
disquiet in anything that passed. His healthy state of mind appeared
even to derive a gratification from Clennam’s position of embarrassment
and isolation among the good company; and if Clennam had been in that
condition with which Nobody was incessantly contending, he would have
suspected it, and would have struggled with the suspicion as a meanness,
even while he sat at the table.
In the course of a couple of hours the noble Refrigerator, at no time
less than a hundred years behind the period, got about five centuries
in arrears, and delivered solemn political oracles appropriate to that
epoch. He finished by freezing a cup of tea for his own drinking,
and retiring at his lowest temperature.
Then Mrs Gowan, who had been accustomed in her days of a vacant
arm-chair beside her to which to summon state to retain her devoted
slaves, one by one, for short audiences as marks of her especial favour,
invited Clennam with a turn of her fan to approach the presence. He
obeyed, and took the tripod recently vacated by Lord Lancaster
Stiltstalking.
‘Mr Clennam,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘apart from the happiness I have in
becoming known to you, though in this odiously inconvenient place--a
mere barrack--there is a subject on which I am dying to speak to you. It
is the subject in connection with which my son first had, I believe, the
pleasure of cultivating your acquaintance.’
Clennam inclined his head, as a generally suitable reply to what he did
not yet quite understand.
‘First,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘now, is she really pretty?’
In nobody’s difficulties, he would have found it very difficult to
answer; very difficult indeed to smile, and say ‘Who?’
‘Oh! You know!’ she returned. ‘This flame of Henry’s. This unfortunate
fancy. There! If it is a point of honour that I should originate the
name--Miss Mickles--Miggles.’
‘Miss Meagles,’ said Clennam, ‘is very beautiful.’
‘Men are so often mistaken on those points,’ returned Mrs Gowan, shaking
her head, ‘that I candidly confess to you I feel anything but sure of
it, even now; though it is something to have Henry corroborated with so
much gravity and emphasis. He picked the people up at Rome, I think?’
The phrase would have given nobody mortal offence. Clennam replied,
‘Excuse me, I doubt if I understand your expression.’
‘Picked the people up,’ said Mrs Gowan, tapping the sticks of her closed
fan (a large green one, which she used as a hand-screen) on her little
table. ‘Came upon them. Found them out. Stumbled against them.’
‘The people?’
‘Yes. The Miggles people.’
‘I really cannot say,’ said Clennam, ‘where my friend Mr Meagles first
presented Mr Henry Gowan to his daughter.’
‘I am pretty sure he picked her up at Rome; but never mind
where--somewhere. Now (this is entirely between ourselves), is she very
plebeian?’
‘Really, ma’am,’ returned Clennam, ‘I am so undoubtedly plebeian myself,
that I do not feel qualified to judge.’
‘Very neat!’ said Mrs Gowan, coolly unfurling her screen. ‘Very happy!
From which I infer that you secretly think her manner equal to her
looks?’
Clennam, after a moment’s stiffness, bowed.
‘That’s comforting, and I hope you may be right. Did Henry tell me you
had travelled with them?’
‘I travelled with my friend Mr Meagles, and his wife and daughter,
during some months.’ (Nobody’s heart might have been wrung by the
remembrance.)
‘Really comforting, because you must have had a large experience of
them. You see, Mr Clennam, this thing has been going on for a long time,
and I find no improvement in it. Therefore to have the opportunity of
speaking to one so well informed about it as yourself, is an immense
relief to me. Quite a boon. Quite a blessing, I am sure.’
‘Pardon me,’ returned Clennam, ‘but I am not in Mr Henry Gowan’s
confidence. I am far from being so well informed as you suppose me to
be. Your mistake makes my position a very delicate one. No word on this
topic has ever passed between Mr Henry Gowan and myself.’
Mrs Gowan glanced at the other end of the room, where her son was
playing ecarte on a sofa, with the old lady who was for a charge of
cavalry.
‘Not in his confidence? No,’ said Mrs Gowan. ‘No word has passed between
you? No. That I can imagine. But there are unexpressed confidences, Mr
Clennam; and as you have been together intimately among these people, I
cannot doubt that a confidence of that sort exists in the present case.
Perhaps you have heard that I have suffered the keenest distress of
mind from Henry’s having taken to a pursuit which--well!’ shrugging her
shoulders, ‘a very respectable pursuit, I dare say, and some artists
are, as artists, quite superior persons; still, we never yet in our
family have gone beyond an Amateur, and it is a pardonable weakness to
feel a little--’
As Mrs Gowan broke off to heave a sigh, Clennam, however resolute to
be magnanimous, could not keep down the thought that there was mighty
little danger of the family’s ever going beyond an Amateur, even as it
was.
‘Henry,’ the mother resumed, ‘is self-willed and resolute; and as these
people naturally strain every nerve to catch him, I can entertain very
little hope, Mr Clennam, that the thing will be broken off. I apprehend
the girl’s fortune will be very small; Henry might have done much
better; there is scarcely anything to compensate for the connection:
still, he acts for himself; and if I find no improvement within a short
time, I see no other course than to resign myself and make the best of
these people. I am infinitely obliged to you for what you have told
me.’
As she shrugged her shoulders, Clennam stiffly bowed again. With an
uneasy flush upon his face, and hesitation in his manner, he then said
in a still lower tone than he had adopted yet:
‘Mrs Gowan, I scarcely know how to acquit myself of what I feel to be a
duty, and yet I must ask you for your kind consideration in
attempting to discharge it. A misconception on your part, a very great
misconception if I may venture to call it so, seems to require setting
right. You have supposed Mr Meagles and his family to strain every
nerve, I think you said--’
‘Every nerve,’ repeated Mrs Gowan, looking at him in calm obstinacy,
with her green fan between her face and the fire.
‘To secure Mr Henry Gowan?’
The lady placidly assented.
‘Now that is so far,’ said Arthur, ‘from being the case, that I know
Mr Meagles to be unhappy in this matter; and to have interposed all
reasonable obstacles with the hope of putting an end to it.’
Mrs Gowan shut up her great green fan, tapped him on the arm with it,
and tapped her smiling lips. ‘Why, of course,’ said she. ‘Just what I
mean.’
Arthur watched her face for some explanation of what she did mean.
‘Are you really serious, Mr Clennam? Don’t you see?’
Arthur did not see; and said so.
‘Why, don’t I know my son, and don’t I know that this is exactly the way
to hold him?’ said Mrs Gowan, contemptuously; ‘and do not these Miggles
people know it, at least as well as I? Oh, shrewd people, Mr Clennam:
evidently people of business! I believe Miggles belonged to a Bank. It
ought to have been a very profitable Bank, if he had much to do with its
management. This is very well done, indeed.’
‘I beg and entreat you, ma’am--’ Arthur interposed.
‘Oh, Mr Clennam, can you really be so credulous?’
It made such a painful impression upon him to hear her talking in this
haughty tone, and to see her patting her contemptuous lips with her
fan, that he said very earnestly, ‘Believe me, ma’am, this is unjust, a
perfectly groundless suspicion.’
‘Suspicion?’ repeated Mrs Gowan. ‘Not suspicion, Mr Clennam, Certainty.
It is very knowingly done indeed, and seems to have taken _you_ in
completely.’ She laughed; and again sat tapping her lips with her fan,
and tossing her head, as if she added, ‘Don’t tell me. I know such
people will do anything for the honour of such an alliance.’
At this opportune moment, the cards were thrown up, and Mr Henry Gowan
came across the room saying, ‘Mother, if you can spare Mr Clennam for
this time, we have a long way to go, and it’s getting late.’ Mr Clennam
thereupon rose, as he had no choice but to do; and Mrs Gowan showed him,
to the last, the same look and the same tapped contemptuous lips.
‘You have had a portentously long audience of my mother,’ said Gowan, as
the door closed upon them. ‘I fervently hope she has not bored you?’
‘Not at all,’ said Clennam.
They had a little open phaeton for the journey, and were soon in it on
the road home. Gowan, driving, lighted a cigar; Clennam declined one. Do
what he would, he fell into such a mood of abstraction that Gowan said
again, ‘I am very much afraid my mother has bored you?’ To which he
roused himself to answer, ‘Not at all!’ and soon relapsed again.
In that state of mind which rendered nobody uneasy, his thoughtfulness
would have turned principally on the man at his side. He would have
thought of the morning when he first saw him rooting out the stones with
his heel, and would have asked himself, ‘Does he jerk me out of the
path in the same careless, cruel way?’ He would have thought, had this
introduction to his mother been brought about by him because he knew
what she would say, and that he could thus place his position before
a rival and loftily warn him off, without himself reposing a word of
confidence in him? He would have thought, even if there were no such
design as that, had he brought him there to play with his repressed
emotions, and torment him? The current of these meditations would have
been stayed sometimes by a rush of shame, bearing a remonstrance to
himself from his own open nature, representing that to shelter such
suspicions, even for the passing moment, was not to hold the high,
unenvious course he had resolved to keep. At those times, the striving
within him would have been hardest; and looking up and catching Gowan’s
eyes, he would have started as if he had done him an injury.
Then, looking at the dark road and its uncertain objects, he would have
gradually trailed off again into thinking, ‘Where are we driving, he
and I, I wonder, on the darker road of life? How will it be with us, and