CHAPTER 26. Nobody’s State of Mind
If Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to restrain himself from loving Pet, he would have lived on in a state of much perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own heart. Not the least of these would have been a contention, always waging within it, between a tendency to dislike Mr Henry Gowan, if not to regard him with positive repugnance, and a whisper that the inclination was unworthy. A generous nature is not prone to strong aversions, and is slow to admit them even dispassionately; but when it finds ill-will gaining upon it, and can discern between-whiles that its origin is not dispassionate, such a nature becomes distressed.
Therefore Mr Henry Gowan would have clouded Clennam’s mind, and would have been far oftener present to it than more agreeable persons and subjects but for the great prudence of his decision aforesaid. As it was, Mr Gowan seemed transferred to Daniel Doyce’s mind; at all events, it so happened that it usually fell to Mr Doyce’s turn, rather than to Clennam’s, to speak of him in the friendly conversations they held together. These were of frequent occurrence now; as the two partners shared a portion of a roomy house in one of the grave old-fashioned City streets, lying not far from the Bank of England, by London Wall.
Mr Doyce had been to Twickenham to pass the day. Clennam had excused himself. Mr Doyce was just come home. He put in his head at the door of Clennam’s sitting-room to say Good night.
‘Come in, come in!’ said Clennam.
‘I saw you were reading,’ returned Doyce, as he entered, ‘and thought you might not care to be disturbed.’
But for the notable resolution he had made, Clennam really might not have known what he had been reading; really might not have had his eyes upon the book for an hour past, though it lay open before him. He shut it up, rather quickly.
‘Are they well?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Doyce; ‘they are well. They are all well.’
Daniel had an old workmanlike habit of carrying his pocket-handkerchief in his hat. He took it out and wiped his forehead with it, slowly repeating, ‘They are all well. Miss Minnie looking particularly well, I thought.’
‘Any company at the cottage?’
‘No, no company.’
‘And how did you get on, you four?’ asked Clennam gaily.
‘There were five of us,’ returned his partner. ‘There was What’s-his-name. He was there.’
‘Who is he?’ said Clennam.
‘Mr Henry Gowan.’
‘Ah, to be sure!’ cried Clennam with unusual vivacity, ‘Yes!—I forgot him.’
‘As I mentioned, you may remember,’ said Daniel Doyce, ‘he is always there on Sunday.’
‘Yes, yes,’ returned Clennam; ‘I remember now.’
Daniel Doyce, still wiping his forehead, ploddingly repeated. ‘Yes. He was there, he was there. Oh yes, he was there. And his dog. He was there too.’
‘Miss Meagles is quite attached to—the—dog,’ observed Clennam.
‘Quite so,’ assented his partner. ‘More attached to the dog than I am to the man.’
‘You mean Mr—?’
‘I mean Mr Gowan, most decidedly,’ said Daniel Doyce.
There was a gap in the conversation, which Clennam devoted to winding up his watch.
‘Perhaps you are a little hasty in your judgment,’ he said. ‘Our judgments—I am supposing a general case—’
‘Of course,’ said Doyce.
‘Are so liable to be influenced by many considerations, which, almost without our knowing it, are unfair, that it is necessary to keep a guard upon them. For instance, Mr—’
‘Gowan,’ quietly said Doyce, upon whom the utterance of the name almost always devolved.
‘Is young and handsome, easy and quick, has talent, and has seen a good deal of various kinds of life. It might be difficult to give an unselfish reason for being prepossessed against him.’
‘Not difficult for me, I think, Clennam,’ returned his partner. ‘I see him bringing present anxiety, and, I fear, future sorrow, into my old friend’s house. I see him wearing deeper lines into my old friend’s face, the nearer he draws to, and the oftener he looks at, the face of his daughter. In short, I see him with a net about the pretty and affectionate creature whom he will never make happy.’
‘We don’t know,’ said Clennam, almost in the tone of a man in pain, ‘that he will not make her happy.’
‘We don’t know,’ returned his partner, ‘that the earth will last another hundred years, but we think it highly probable.’
‘Well, well!’ said Clennam, ‘we must be hopeful, and we must at least try to be, if not generous (which, in this case, we have no opportunity of being), just. We will not disparage this gentleman, because he is successful in his addresses to the beautiful object of his ambition; and we will not question her natural right to bestow her love on one whom she finds worthy of it.’
‘Maybe, my friend,’ said Doyce. ‘Maybe also, that she is too young and petted, too confiding and inexperienced, to discriminate well.’
‘That,’ said Clennam, ‘would be far beyond our power of correction.’
Daniel Doyce shook his head gravely, and rejoined, ‘I fear so.’
‘Therefore, in a word,’ said Clennam, ‘we should make up our minds that it is not worthy of us to say any ill of Mr Gowan. It would be a poor thing to gratify a prejudice against him. And I resolve, for my part, not to depreciate him.’
‘I am not quite so sure of myself, and therefore I reserve my privilege of objecting to him,’ returned the other. ‘But, if I am not sure of myself, I am sure of you, Clennam, and I know what an upright man you are, and how much to be respected. Good night, my friend and partner!’ He shook his hand in saying this, as if there had been something serious at the bottom of their conversation; and they separated.
By this time they had visited the family on several occasions, and had always observed that even a passing allusion to Mr Henry Gowan when he was not among them, brought back the cloud which had obscured Mr Meagles’s sunshine on the morning of the chance encounter at the Ferry. If Clennam had ever admitted the forbidden passion into his breast, this period might have been a period of real trial; under the actual circumstances, doubtless it was nothing—nothing.
Equally, if his heart had given entertainment to that prohibited guest, his silent fighting of his way through the mental condition of this period might have been a little meritorious. In the constant effort not to be betrayed into a new phase of the besetting sin of his experience, the pursuit of selfish objects by low and small means, and to hold instead to some high principle of honour and generosity, there might have been a little merit. In the resolution not even to avoid Mr Meagles’s house, lest, in the selfish sparing of himself, he should bring any slight distress upon the daughter through making her the cause of an estrangement which he believed the father would regret, there might have been a little merit. In the modest truthfulness of always keeping in view the greater equality of Mr Gowan’s years and the greater attractions of his person and manner, there might have been a little merit. In doing all this and much more, in a perfectly unaffected way and with a manful and composed constancy, while the pain within him (peculiar as his life and history) was very sharp, there might have been some quiet strength of character. But, after the resolution he had made, of course he could have no such merits as these; and such a state of mind was nobody’s—nobody’s.
Mr Gowan made it no concern of his whether it was nobody’s or somebody’s. He preserved his perfect serenity of manner on all occasions, as if the possibility of Clennam’s presuming to have debated the great question were too distant and ridiculous to be imagined. He had always an affability to bestow on Clennam and an ease to treat him with, which might of itself (in the supposititious case of his not having taken that sagacious course) have been a very uncomfortable element in his state of mind.
‘I quite regret you were not with us yesterday,’ said Mr Henry Gowan, calling on Clennam the next morning. ‘We had an agreeable day up the river there.’
So he had heard, Arthur said.
‘From your partner?’ returned Henry Gowan. ‘What a dear old fellow he is!’
‘I have a great regard for him.’
‘By Jove, he is the finest creature!’ said Gowan. ‘So fresh, so green, trusts in such wonderful things!’
Here was one of the many little rough points that had a tendency to grate on Clennam’s hearing. He put it aside by merely repeating that he had a high regard for Mr Doyce.
‘He is charming! To see him mooning along to that time of life, laying down nothing by the way and picking up nothing by the way, is delightful. It warms a man. So unspoilt, so simple, such a good soul! Upon my life Mr Clennam, one feels desperately worldly and wicked in comparison with such an innocent creature. I speak for myself, let me add, without including you. You are genuine also.’
‘Thank you for the compliment,’ said Clennam, ill at ease; ‘you are too, I hope?’
‘So so,’ rejoined the other. ‘To be candid with you, tolerably. I am not a great impostor. Buy one of my pictures, and I assure you, in confidence, it will not be worth the money. Buy one of another man’s—any great professor who beats me hollow—and the chances are that the more you give him, the more he’ll impose upon you. They all do it.’
‘All painters?’
‘Painters, writers, patriots, all the rest who have stands in the market. Give almost any man I know ten pounds, and he will impose upon you to a corresponding extent; a thousand pounds—to a corresponding extent; ten thousand pounds—to a corresponding extent. So great the success, so great the imposition. But what a capital world it is!’ cried Gowan with warm enthusiasm. ‘What a jolly, excellent, lovable world it is!’
‘I had rather thought,’ said Clennam, ‘that the principle you mention was chiefly acted on by—’
‘By the Barnacles?’ interrupted Gowan, laughing.
‘By the political gentlemen who condescend to keep the Circumlocution Office.’
‘Ah! Don’t be hard upon the Barnacles,’ said Gowan, laughing afresh, ‘they are darling fellows! Even poor little Clarence, the born idiot of the family, is the most agreeable and most endearing blockhead! And by Jupiter, with a kind of cleverness in him too that would astonish you!’
‘It would. Very much,’ said Clennam, drily.
‘And after all,’ cried Gowan, with that characteristic balancing of his which reduced everything in the wide world to the same light weight, ‘though I can’t deny that the Circumlocution Office may ultimately shipwreck everybody and everything, still, that will probably not be in our time—and it’s a school for gentlemen.’
‘It’s a very dangerous, unsatisfactory, and expensive school to the people who pay to keep the pupils there, I am afraid,’ said Clennam, shaking his head.
‘Ah! You are a terrible fellow,’ returned Gowan, airily. ‘I can understand how you have frightened that little donkey, Clarence, the most estimable of moon-calves (I really love him) nearly out of his wits. But enough of him, and of all the rest of them. I want to present you to my mother, Mr Clennam. Pray do me the favour to give me the opportunity.’
In nobody’s state of mind, there was nothing Clennam would have desired less, or would have been more at a loss how to avoid.
‘My mother lives in a most primitive manner down in that dreary red-brick dungeon at Hampton Court,’ said Gowan. ‘If you would make your own appointment, suggest your own day for permitting me to take you there to dinner, you would be bored and she would be charmed. Really that’s the state of the case.’
What could Clennam say after this? His retiring character included a great deal that was simple in the best sense, because unpractised and unused; and in his simplicity and modesty, he could only say that he was happy to place himself at Mr Gowan’s disposal. Accordingly he said it, and the day was fixed. And a dreaded day it was on his part, and a very unwelcome day when it came and they went down to Hampton Court together.
The venerable inhabitants of that venerable pile seemed, in those times, to be encamped there like a sort of civilised gipsies. There was a temporary air about their establishments, as if they were going away the moment they could get anything better; there was also a dissatisfied air about themselves, as if they took it very ill that they had not already got something much better. Genteel blinds and makeshifts were more or less observable as soon as their doors were opened; screens not half high enough, which made dining-rooms out of arched passages, and warded off obscure corners where footboys slept at nights with their heads among the knives and forks; curtains which called upon you to believe that they didn’t hide anything; panes of glass which requested you not to see them; many objects of various forms, feigning to have no connection with their guilty secret, a bed; disguised traps in walls, which were clearly coal-cellars; affectations of no thoroughfares, which were evidently doors to little kitchens. Mental reservations and artful mysteries grew out of these things. Callers looking steadily into the eyes of their receivers, pretended not to smell cooking three feet off; people, confronting closets accidentally left open, pretended not to see bottles; visitors with their heads against a partition of thin canvas, and a page and a young female at high words on the other side, made believe to be sitting in a primeval silence. There was no end to the small social accommodation-bills of this nature which the gipsies of gentility were constantly drawing upon, and accepting for, one another.
Some of these Bohemians were of an irritable temperament, as constantly soured and vexed by two mental trials: the first, the consciousness that they had never got enough out of the public; the second, the consciousness that the public were admitted into the building. Under the latter great wrong, a few suffered dreadfully—particularly on Sundays, when they had for some time expected the earth to open and swallow the public up; but which desirable event had not yet occurred, in consequence of some reprehensible laxity in the arrangements of the Universe.
Mrs Gowan’s door was attended by a family servant of several years’ standing, who had his own crow to pluck with the public concerning a situation in the Post-Office which he had been for some time expecting, and to which he was not yet appointed. He perfectly knew that the public could never have got him in, but he grimly gratified himself with the idea that the public kept him out. Under the influence of this injury (and perhaps of some little straitness and irregularity in the matter of wages), he had grown neglectful of his person and morose in mind; and now beholding in Clennam one of the degraded body of his oppressors, received him with ignominy.
Mrs Gowan, however, received him with condescension. He found her a courtly old lady, formerly a Beauty, and still sufficiently well-favoured to have dispensed with the powder on her nose and a certain impossible bloom under each eye. She was a little lofty with him; so was another old lady, dark-browed and high-nosed, and who must have had something real about her or she could not have existed, but it was certainly not her hair or her teeth or her figure or her complexion; so was a grey old gentleman of dignified and sullen appearance; both of whom had come to dinner. But, as they had all been in the British Embassy way in sundry parts of the earth, and as a British Embassy cannot better establish a character with the Circumlocution Office than by treating its compatriots with illimitable contempt (else it would become like the Embassies of other countries), Clennam felt that on the whole they let him off lightly.
The dignified old gentleman turned out to be Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking, who had been maintained by the Circumlocution Office for many years as a representative of the Britannic Majesty abroad. This noble Refrigerator had iced several European courts in his time, and had done it with such complete success that the very name of Englishman yet struck cold to the stomachs of foreigners who had the distinguished honour of remembering him at a distance of a quarter of a century.
He was now in retirement, and hence (in a ponderous white cravat, like a stiff snow-drift) was so obliging as to shade the dinner. There was a whisper of the pervading Bohemian character in the nomadic nature of the service and its curious races of plates and dishes; but the noble Refrigerator, infinitely better than plate or porcelain, made it superb. He shaded the dinner, cooled the wines, chilled the gravy, and blighted the vegetables.
There was only one other person in the room: a microscopically small footboy, who waited on the malevolent man who hadn’t got into the Post-Office. Even this youth, if his jacket could have been unbuttoned and his heart laid bare, would have been seen, as a distant adherent of the Barnacle family, already to aspire to a situation under Government.
Mrs Gowan with a gentle melancholy upon her, occasioned by her son’s being reduced to court the swinish public as a follower of the low Arts, instead of asserting his birthright and putting a ring through its nose as an acknowledged Barnacle, headed the conversation at dinner on the evil days. It was then that Clennam learned for the first time what little pivots this great world goes round upon.
‘If John Barnacle,’ said Mrs Gowan, after the degeneracy of the times had been fully ascertained, ‘if John Barnacle had but abandoned his most unfortunate idea of conciliating the mob, all would have been well, and I think the country would have been preserved.’
The old lady with the high nose assented; but added that if Augustus Stiltstalking had in a general way ordered the cavalry out with instructions to charge, she thought the country would have been preserved.
The noble Refrigerator assented; but added that if William Barnacle and 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 with her, in the obscure distance?’ Thinking of her, he would have been troubled anew with a reproachful misgiving that it was not even loyal to her to dislike him, and that in being so easily prejudiced against him he was less deserving of her than at first.
‘You are evidently out of spirits,’ said Gowan; ‘I am very much afraid my mother must have bored you dreadfully.’
‘Believe me, not at all,’ said Clennam. ‘It’s nothing—nothing!’
CHAPTER 27. Five-and-Twenty
A frequently recurring doubt, whether Mr Pancks’s desire to collect information relative to the Dorrit family could have any possible bearing on the misgivings he had imparted to his mother on his return from his long exile, caused Arthur Clennam much uneasiness at this period. What Mr Pancks already knew about the Dorrit family, what more he really wanted to find out, and why he should trouble his busy head about them at all, were questions that often perplexed him. Mr Pancks was not a man to waste his time and trouble in researches prompted by idle curiosity. That he had a specific object Clennam could not doubt. And whether the attainment of that object by Mr Pancks’s industry might bring to light, in some untimely way, secret reasons which had induced his mother to take Little Dorrit by the hand, was a serious speculation.
Not that he ever wavered either in his desire or his determination to repair a wrong that had been done in his father’s time, should a wrong come to light, and be reparable. The shadow of a supposed act of injustice, which had hung over him since his father’s death, was so vague and formless that it might be the result of a reality widely remote from his idea of it. But, if his apprehensions should prove to be well founded, he was ready at any moment to lay down all he had, and begin the world anew. As the fierce dark teaching of his childhood had never sunk into his heart, so that first article in his code of morals was, that he must begin, in practical humility, with looking well to his feet on Earth, and that he could never mount on wings of words to Heaven. Duty on earth, restitution on earth, action on earth; these first, as the first steep steps upward. Strait was the gate and narrow was the way; far straiter and narrower than the broad high road paved with vain professions and vain repetitions, motes from other men’s eyes and liberal delivery of others to the judgment—all cheap materials costing absolutely nothing.
No. It was not a selfish fear or hesitation that rendered him uneasy, but a mistrust lest Pancks might not observe his part of the understanding between them, and, making any discovery, might take some course upon it without imparting it to him. On the other hand, when he recalled his conversation with Pancks, and the little reason he had to suppose that there was any likelihood of that strange personage being on that track at all, there were times when he wondered that he made so much of it. Labouring in this sea, as all barks labour in cross seas, he tossed about and came to no haven.
The removal of Little Dorrit herself from their customary association, did not mend the matter. She was so much out, and so much in her own room, that he began to miss her and to find a blank in her place. He had written to her to inquire if she were better, and she had written back, very gratefully and earnestly telling him not to be uneasy on her behalf, for she was quite well; but he had not seen her, for what, in their intercourse, was a long time.
He returned home one evening from an interview with her father, who had mentioned that she was out visiting—which was what he always said when she was hard at work to buy his supper—and found Mr Meagles in an excited state walking up and down his room. On his opening the door, Mr Meagles stopped, faced round, and said:
‘Clennam!—Tattycoram!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Lost!’
‘Why, bless my heart alive!’ cried Clennam in amazement. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Wouldn’t count five-and-twenty, sir; couldn’t be got to do it; stopped at eight, and took herself off.’
‘Left your house?’
‘Never to come back,’ said Mr Meagles, shaking his head. ‘You don’t know that girl’s passionate and proud character. A team of horses couldn’t draw her back now; the bolts and bars of the old Bastille couldn’t keep her.’
‘How did it happen? Pray sit down and tell me.’
‘As to how it happened, it’s not so easy to relate: because you must have the unfortunate temperament of the poor impetuous girl herself, before you can fully understand it. But it came about in this way. Pet and Mother and I have been having a good deal of talk together of late. I’ll not disguise from you, Clennam, that those conversations have not been of as bright a kind as I could wish; they have referred to our going away again. In proposing to do which, I have had, in fact, an object.’
Nobody’s heart beat quickly.
‘An object,’ said Mr Meagles, after a moment’s pause, ‘that I will not disguise from you, either, Clennam. There’s an inclination on the part of my dear child which I am sorry for. Perhaps you guess the person. Henry Gowan.’
‘I was not unprepared to hear it.’
‘Well!’ said Mr Meagles, with a heavy sigh, ‘I wish to God you had never had to hear it. However, so it is. Mother and I have done all we could to get the better of it, Clennam. We have tried tender advice, we have tried time, we have tried absence. As yet, of no use. Our late conversations have been upon the subject of going away for another year at least, in order that there might be an entire separation and breaking off for that term. Upon that question, Pet has been unhappy, and therefore Mother and I have been unhappy.’
Clennam said that he could easily believe it.
‘Well!’ continued Mr Meagles in an apologetic way, ‘I admit as a practical man, and I am sure Mother would admit as a practical woman, that we do, in families, magnify our troubles and make mountains of our molehills in a way that is calculated to be rather trying to people who look on—to mere outsiders, you know, Clennam. Still, Pet’s happiness or unhappiness is quite a life or death question with us; and we may be excused, I hope, for making much of it. At all events, it might have been borne by Tattycoram. Now, don’t you think so?’
‘I do indeed think so,’ returned Clennam, in most emphatic recognition of this very moderate expectation.
‘No, sir,’ said Mr Meagles, shaking his head ruefully. ‘She couldn’t stand it. The chafing and firing of that girl, the wearing and tearing of that girl within her own breast, has been such that I have softly said to her again and again in passing her, “Five-and-twenty, Tattycoram, five-and-twenty!” I heartily wish she could have gone on counting five-and-twenty day and night, and then it wouldn’t have happened.’
Mr Meagles with a despondent countenance in which the goodness of his heart was even more expressed than in his times of cheerfulness and gaiety, stroked his face down from his forehead to his chin, and shook his head again.
‘I said to Mother (not that it was necessary, for she would have thought it all for herself), we are practical people, my dear, and we know her story; we see in this unhappy girl some reflection of what was raging in her mother’s heart before ever such a creature as this poor thing was in the world; we’ll gloss her temper over, Mother, we won’t notice it at present, my dear, we’ll take advantage of some better disposition in her another time. So we said nothing. But, do what we would, it seems as if it was to be; she broke out violently one night.’
‘How, and why?’
‘If you ask me Why,’ said Mr Meagles, a little disturbed by the question, for he was far more intent on softening her case than the family’s, ‘I can only refer you to what I have just repeated as having been pretty near my words to Mother. As to How, we had said Good night to Pet in her presence (very affectionately, I must allow), and she had attended Pet up-stairs—you remember she was her maid. Perhaps Pet, having been out of sorts, may have been a little more inconsiderate than usual in requiring services of her: but I don’t know that I have any right to say so; she was always thoughtful and gentle.’
‘The gentlest mistress in the world.’
‘Thank you, Clennam,’ said Mr Meagles, shaking him by the hand; ‘you have often seen them together. Well! We presently heard this unfortunate Tattycoram loud and angry, and before we could ask what was the matter, Pet came back in a tremble, saying she was frightened of her. Close after her came Tattycoram in a flaming rage. “I hate you all three,” says she, stamping her foot at us. “I am bursting with hate of the whole house.”’
‘Upon which you—?’
‘I?’ said Mr Meagles, with a plain good faith that might have commanded the belief of Mrs Gowan herself. ‘I said, count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.’
Mr Meagles again stroked his face and shook his head, with an air of profound regret.
‘She was so used to do it, Clennam, that even then, such a picture of passion as you never saw, she stopped short, looked me full in the face, and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn’t control herself to go any further. There she broke down, poor thing, and gave the other seventeen to the four winds. Then it all burst out. She detested us, she was miserable with us, she couldn’t bear it, she wouldn’t bear it, she was determined to go away. She was younger than her young mistress, and would she remain to see her always held up as the only creature who was young and interesting, and to be cherished and loved? No. She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t! What did we think she, Tattycoram, might have been if she had been caressed and cared for in her childhood, like her young mistress? As good as her? Ah! Perhaps fifty times as good. When we pretended to be so fond of one another, we exulted over her; that was what we did; we exulted over her and shamed her. And all in the house did the same. They talked about their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters; they liked to drag them up before her face. There was Mrs Tickit, only yesterday, when her little grandchild was with her, had been amused by the child’s trying to call her (Tattycoram) by the wretched name we gave her; and had laughed at the name. Why, who didn’t; and who were we that we should have a right to name her like a dog or a cat? But she didn’t care. She would take no more benefits from us; she would fling us her name back again, and she would go. She would leave us that minute, nobody should stop her, and we should never hear of her again.’
Mr Meagles had recited all this with such a vivid remembrance of his original, that he was almost as flushed and hot by this time as he described her to have been.
‘Ah, well!’ he said, wiping his face. ‘It was of no use trying reason then, with that vehement panting creature (Heaven knows what her mother’s story must have been); so I quietly told her that she should not go at that late hour of night, and I gave her my hand and took her to her room, and locked the house doors. But she was gone this morning.’
‘And you know no more of her?’
‘No more,’ returned Mr Meagles. ‘I have been hunting about all day. She must have gone very early and very silently. I have found no trace of her down about us.’
‘Stay! You want,’ said Clennam, after a moment’s reflection, ‘to see her? I assume that?’
‘Yes, assuredly; I want to give her another chance; Mother and Pet want to give her another chance; come! You yourself,’ said Mr Meagles, persuasively, as if the provocation to be angry were not his own at all, ‘want to give the poor passionate girl another chance, I know, Clennam.’
‘It would be strange and hard indeed if I did not,’ said Clennam, ‘when you are all so forgiving. What I was going to ask you was, have you thought of that Miss Wade?’
‘I have. I did not think of her until I had pervaded the whole of our neighbourhood, and I don’t know that I should have done so then but for finding Mother and Pet, when I went home, full of the idea that Tattycoram must have gone to her. Then, of course, I recalled what she said that day at dinner when you were first with us.’
‘Have you any idea where Miss Wade is to be found?’
‘To tell you the truth,’ returned Mr Meagles, ‘it’s because I have an addled jumble of a notion on that subject that you found me waiting here. There is one of those odd impressions in my house, which do mysteriously get into houses sometimes, which nobody seems to have picked up in a distinct form from anybody, and yet which everybody seems to have got hold of loosely from somebody and let go again, that she lives, or was living, thereabouts.’ Mr Meagles handed him a slip of paper, on which was written the name of one of the dull by-streets in the Grosvenor region, near Park Lane.
‘Here is no number,’ said Arthur looking over it.
‘No number, my dear Clennam?’ returned his friend. ‘No anything! The very name of the street may have been floating in the air; for, as I tell you, none of my people can say where they got it from. However, it’s worth an inquiry; and as I would rather make it in company than alone, and as you too were a fellow-traveller of that immovable woman’s, I thought perhaps—’ Clennam finished the sentence for him by taking up his hat again, and saying he was ready.
It was now summer-time; a grey, hot, dusty evening. They rode to the top of Oxford Street, and there alighting, dived in among the great streets of melancholy stateliness, and the little streets that try to be as stately and succeed in being more melancholy, of which there is a labyrinth near Park Lane. Wildernesses of corner houses, with barbarous old porticoes and appurtenances; horrors that came into existence under some wrong-headed person in some wrong-headed time, still demanding the blind admiration of all ensuing generations and determined to do so until they tumbled down; frowned upon the twilight. Parasite little tenements, with the cramp in their whole frame, from the dwarf hall-door on the giant model of His Grace’s in the Square to the squeezed window of the boudoir commanding the dunghills in the Mews, made the evening doleful. Rickety dwellings of undoubted fashion, but of a capacity to hold nothing comfortably except a dismal smell, looked like the last result of the great mansions’ breeding in-and-in; and, where their little supplementary bows and balconies were supported on thin iron columns, seemed to be scrofulously resting upon crutches. Here and there a Hatchment, with the whole science of Heraldry in it, loomed down upon the street, like an Archbishop discoursing on Vanity. The shops, few in number, made no show; for popular opinion was as nothing to them. The pastrycook knew who was on his books, and in that knowledge could be calm, with a few glass cylinders of dowager peppermint-drops in his window, and half-a-dozen ancient specimens of currant-jelly. A few oranges formed the greengrocer’s whole concession to the vulgar mind. A single basket made of moss, once containing plovers’ eggs, held all that the poulterer had to say to the rabble. Everybody in those streets seemed (which is always the case at that hour and season) to be gone out to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving the dinners they had gone to. On the doorsteps there were lounging footmen with bright parti-coloured plumage and white polls, like an extinct race of monstrous birds; and butlers, solitary men of recluse demeanour, each of whom appeared distrustful of all other butlers. The roll of carriages in the Park was done for the day; the street lamps were lighting; and wicked little grooms in the tightest fitting garments, with twists in their legs answering to the twists in their minds, hung about in pairs, chewing straws and exchanging fraudulent secrets. The spotted dogs who went out with the carriages, and who were so associated with splendid equipages that it looked like a condescension in those animals to come out without them, accompanied helpers to and fro on messages. Here and there was a retiring public-house which did not require to be supported on the shoulders of the people, and where gentlemen out of livery were not much wanted.
This last discovery was made by the two friends in pursuing their inquiries. Nothing was there, or anywhere, known of such a person as Miss Wade, in connection with the street they sought. It was one of the parasite streets; long, regular, narrow, dull and gloomy; like a brick and mortar funeral. They inquired at several little area gates, where a dejected youth stood spiking his chin on the summit of a precipitous little shoot of wooden steps, but could gain no information. They walked up the street on one side of the way, and down it on the other, what time two vociferous news-sellers, announcing an extraordinary event that had never happened and never would happen, pitched their hoarse voices into the secret chambers; but nothing came of it. At length they stood at the corner from which they had begun, and it had fallen quite dark, and they were no wiser.
It happened that in the street they had several times passed a dingy house, apparently empty, with bills in the windows, announcing that it was to let. The bills, as a variety in the funeral procession, almost amounted to a decoration. Perhaps because they kept the house separated in his mind, or perhaps because Mr Meagles and himself had twice agreed in passing, ‘It is clear she don’t live there,’ Clennam now proposed that they should go back and try that house before finally going away. Mr Meagles agreed, and back they went.
They knocked once, and they rang once, without any response. ‘Empty,’ said Mr Meagles, listening. ‘Once more,’ said Clennam, and knocked again. After that knock they heard a movement below, and somebody shuffling up towards the door.
The confined entrance was so dark that it was impossible to make out distinctly what kind of person opened the door; but it appeared to be an old woman. ‘Excuse our troubling you,’ said Clennam. ‘Pray can you tell us where Miss Wade lives?’ The voice in the darkness unexpectedly replied, ‘Lives here.’
‘Is she at home?’
No answer coming, Mr Meagles asked again. ‘Pray is she at home?’
After another delay, ‘I suppose she is,’ said the voice abruptly; ‘you had better come in, and I’ll ask.’
They were summarily shut into the close black house; and the figure rustling away, and speaking from a higher level, said, ‘Come up, if you please; you can’t tumble over anything.’ They groped their way up-stairs towards a faint light, which proved to be the light of the street shining through a window; and the figure left them shut in an airless room.
‘This is odd, Clennam,’ said Mr Meagles, softly.
‘Odd enough,’ assented Clennam in the same tone, ‘but we have succeeded; that’s the main point. Here’s a light coming!’
The light was a lamp, and the bearer was an old woman: very dirty, very wrinkled and dry. ‘She’s at home,’ she said (and the voice was the same that had spoken before); ‘she’ll come directly.’ Having set the lamp down on the table, the old woman dusted her hands on her apron, which she might have done for ever without cleaning them, looked at the visitors with a dim pair of eyes, and backed out.
The lady whom they had come to see, if she were the present occupant of the house, appeared to have taken up her quarters there as she might have established herself in an Eastern caravanserai. A small square of carpet in the middle of the room, a few articles of furniture that evidently did not belong to the room, and a disorder of trunks and travelling articles, formed the whole of her surroundings. Under some former regular inhabitant, the stifling little apartment had broken out into a pier-glass and a gilt table; but the gilding was as faded as last year’s flowers, and the glass was so clouded that it seemed to hold in magic preservation all the fogs and bad weather it had ever reflected. The visitors had had a minute or two to look about them, when the door opened and Miss Wade came in.
She was exactly the same as when they had parted, just as handsome, just as scornful, just as repressed. She manifested no surprise in seeing them, nor any other emotion. She requested them to be seated; and declining to take a seat herself, at once anticipated any introduction of their business.
‘I apprehend,’ she said, ‘that I know the cause of your favouring me with this visit. We may come to it at once.’
‘The cause then, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘is Tattycoram.’
‘So I supposed.’
‘Miss Wade,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘will you be so kind as to say whether you know anything of her?’
‘Surely. I know she is here with me.’
‘Then, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘allow me to make known to you that I shall be happy to have her back, and that my wife and daughter will be happy to have her back. She has been with us a long time: we don’t forget her claims upon us, and I hope we know how to make allowances.’
‘You hope to know how to make allowances?’ she returned, in a level, measured voice. ‘For what?’
‘I think my friend would say, Miss Wade,’ Arthur Clennam interposed, seeing Mr Meagles rather at a loss, ‘for the passionate sense that sometimes comes upon the poor girl, of being at a disadvantage. Which occasionally gets the better of better remembrances.’
The lady broke into a smile as she turned her eyes upon him. ‘Indeed?’ was all she answered.
She stood by the table so perfectly composed and still after this acknowledgment of his remark that Mr Meagles stared at her under a sort of fascination, and could not even look to Clennam to make another move. After waiting, awkwardly enough, for some moments, Arthur said:
‘Perhaps it would be well if Mr Meagles could see her, Miss Wade?’
‘That is easily done,’ said she. ‘Come here, child.’ She had opened a door while saying this, and now led the girl in by the hand. It was very curious to see them standing together: the girl with her disengaged fingers plaiting the bosom of her dress, half irresolutely, half passionately; Miss Wade with her composed face attentively regarding her, and suggesting to an observer, with extraordinary force, in her composure itself (as a veil will suggest the form it covers), the unquenchable passion of her own nature.
‘See here,’ she said, in the same level way as before. ‘Here is your patron, your master. He is willing to take you back, my dear, if you are sensible of the favour and choose to go. You can be, again, a foil to his pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant wilfulness, and a toy in the house showing the goodness of the family. You can have your droll name again, playfully pointing you out and setting you apart, as it is right that you should be pointed out and set apart. (Your birth, you know; you must not forget your birth.) You can again be shown to this gentleman’s daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, as a living reminder of her own superiority and her gracious condescension. You can recover all these advantages and many more of the same kind which I dare say start up in your memory while I speak, and which you lose in taking refuge with me—you can recover them all by telling these gentlemen how humbled and penitent you are, and by going back to them to be forgiven. What do you say, Harriet? Will you go?’
The girl who, under the influence of these words, had gradually risen in anger and heightened in colour, answered, raising her lustrous black eyes for the moment, and clenching her hand upon the folds it had been puckering up, ‘I’d die sooner!’
Miss Wade, still standing at her side holding her hand, looked quietly round and said with a smile, ‘Gentlemen! What do you do upon that?’
Poor Mr Meagles’s inexpressible consternation in hearing his motives and actions so perverted, had prevented him from interposing any word until now; but now he regained the power of speech.
‘Tattycoram,’ said he, ‘for I’ll call you by that name still, my good girl, conscious that I meant nothing but kindness when I gave it to you, and conscious that you know it—’
‘I don’t!’ said she, looking up again, and almost rending herself with the same busy hand.
‘No, not now, perhaps,’ said Mr Meagles; ‘not with that lady’s eyes so intent upon you, Tattycoram,’ she glanced at them for a moment, ‘and that power over you, which we see she exercises; not now, perhaps, but at another time. Tattycoram, I’ll not ask that lady whether she believes what she has said, even in the anger and ill blood in which I and my friend here equally know she has spoken, though she subdues herself, with a determination that any one who has once seen her is not likely to forget. I’ll not ask you, with your remembrance of my house and all belonging to it, whether you believe it. I’ll only say that you have no profession to make to me or mine, and no forgiveness to entreat; and that all in the world that I ask you to do, is, to count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.’
She looked at him for an instant, and then said frowningly, ‘I won’t. Miss Wade, take me away, please.’
The contention that raged within her had no softening in it now; it was wholly between passionate defiance and stubborn defiance. Her rich colour, her quick blood, her rapid breath, were all setting themselves against the opportunity of retracing their steps. ‘I won’t. I won’t. I won’t!’ she repeated in a low, thick voice. ‘I’d be torn to pieces first. I’d tear myself to pieces first!’
Miss Wade, who had released her hold, laid her hand protectingly on the girl’s neck for a moment, and then said, looking round with her former smile and speaking exactly in her former tone, ‘Gentlemen! What do you do upon that?’
‘Oh, Tattycoram, Tattycoram!’ cried Mr Meagles, adjuring her besides with an earnest hand. ‘Hear that lady’s voice, look at that lady’s face, consider what is in that lady’s heart, and think what a future lies before you. My child, whatever you may think, that lady’s influence over you—astonishing to us, and I should hardly go too far in saying terrible to us to see—is founded in passion fiercer than yours, and temper more violent than yours. What can you two be together? What can come of it?’
‘I am alone here, gentlemen,’ observed Miss Wade, with no change of voice or manner. ‘Say anything you will.’
‘Politeness must yield to this misguided girl, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘at her present pass; though I hope not altogether to dismiss it, even with the injury you do her so strongly before me. Excuse me for reminding you in her hearing—I must say it—that you were a mystery to all of us, and had nothing in common with any of us when she unfortunately fell in your way. I don’t know what you are, but you don’t hide, can’t hide, what a dark spirit you have within you. If it should happen that you are a woman, who, from whatever cause, has a perverted delight in making a sister-woman as wretched as she is (I am old enough to have heard of such), I warn her against you, and I warn you against yourself.’
‘Gentlemen!’ said Miss Wade, calmly. ‘When you have concluded—Mr Clennam, perhaps you will induce your friend—’
‘Not without another effort,’ said Mr Meagles, stoutly. ‘Tattycoram, my poor dear girl, count five-and-twenty.’