Little Dorrit

C >> Charles Dickens >> Little Dorrit

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75

'Papa Meagles,' returned the Dowager, with an affable smile, but
with the bloom on her cheeks standing out a little more vividly
than usual as the neighbouring surface became paler,'probably not.'

'Therefore, my good madam,' said Mr Meagles, at great pains to
restrain himself, 'I hope I may, without offence, ask to have no
such mystification played off upon me.'
'Mama Meagles,' observed Mrs Gowan, 'your good man is
incomprehensible.'

Her turning to that worthy lady was an artifice to bring her into
the discussion, quarrel with her, and vanquish her. Mr Meagles
interposed to prevent that consummation.

'Mother,' said he, 'you are inexpert, my dear, and it is not a fair
match. Let me beg of you to remain quiet. Come, Mrs Gowan, come!
Let us try to be sensible; let us try to be good-natured; let us
try to be fair. Don't you pity Henry, and I won't pity Pet. And
don't be one-sided, my dear madam; it's not considerate, it's not
kind. Don't let us say that we hope Pet will make Henry happy, or
even that we hope Henry will make Pet happy,' (Mr Meagles himself
did not look happy as he spoke the words,) 'but let us hope they
will make each other happy.'

'Yes, sure, and there leave it, father,' said Mrs Meagles the kind-
hearted and comfortable.

'Why, mother, no,' returned Mr Meagles, 'not exactly there. I
can't quite leave it there; I must say just half-a-dozen words
more. Mrs Gowan, I hope I am not over-sensitive. I believe I
don't look it.'

'Indeed you do not,' said Mrs Gowan, shaking her head and the great
green fan together, for emphasis.

'Thank you, ma'am; that's well. Notwithstanding which, I feel a
little--I don't want to use a strong word--now shall I say hurt?'
asked Mr Meagles at once with frankness and moderation, and with a
conciliatory appeal in his tone.

'Say what you like,' answered Mrs Gowan. 'It is perfectly
indifferent to me.'

'No, no, don't say that,' urged Mr Meagles, 'because that's not
responding amiably. I feel a little hurt when I hear references
made to consequences having been foreseen, and to its being too
late now, and so forth.'

'Do you, Papa Meagles?' said Mrs Gowan. 'I am not surprised.'

'Well, ma'am,' reasoned Mr Meagles, 'I was in hopes you would have
been at least surprised, because to hurt me wilfully on so tender
a subject is surely not generous.'
'I am not responsible,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for your conscience, you
know.'

Poor Mr Meagles looked aghast with astonishment.

'If I am unluckily obliged to carry a cap about with me, which is
yours and fits you,' pursued Mrs Gowan, 'don't blame me for its
pattern, Papa Meagles, I beg!'
'Why, good Lord, ma'am!' Mr Meagles broke out, 'that's as much as
to state--'

'Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Meagles,' said Mrs Gowan, who became
extremely deliberate and prepossessing in manner whenever that
gentleman became at all warm, 'perhaps to prevent confusion, I had
better speak for myself than trouble your kindness to speak for me.

It's as much as to state, you begin. If you please, I will finish
the sentence. It is as much as to state--not that I wish to press
it or even recall it, for it is of no use now, and my only wish is
to make the best of existing circumstances--that from the first to
the last I always objected to this match of yours, and at a very
late period yielded a most unwilling consent to it.'

'Mother!' cried Mr Meagles. 'Do you hear this! Arthur! Do you
hear this!'

'The room being of a convenient size,' said Mrs Gowan, looking
about as she fanned herself, 'and quite charmingly adapted in all
respects to conversation, I should imagine I am audible in any part
of it.'

Some moments passed in silence, before Mr Meagles could hold
himself in his chair with sufficient security to prevent his
breaking out of it at the next word he spoke. At last he said:
'Ma'am, I am very unwilling to revive them, but I must remind you
what my opinions and my course were, all along, on that unfortunate
subject.'

'O, my dear sir!' said Mrs Gowan, smiling and shaking her head with
accusatory intelligence, 'they were well understood by me, I assure
you.'

'I never, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'knew unhappiness before that
time, I never knew anxiety before that time. It was a time of such
distress to me that--' That Mr Meagles could really say no more
about it, in short, but passed his handkerchief before his Face.

'I understood the whole affair,' said Mrs Gowan, composedly looking
over her fan. 'As you have appealed to Mr Clennam, I may appeal to
Mr Clennam, too. He knows whether I did or not.'

'I am very unwilling,' said Clennam, looked to by all parties, 'to
take any share in this discussion, more especially because I wish
to preserve the best understanding and the clearest relations with
Mr Henry Gowan. I have very strong reasons indeed, for
entertaining that wish. Mrs Gowan attributed certain views of
furthering the marriage to my friend here, in conversation with me
before it took place; and I endeavoured to undeceive her. I
represented that I knew him (as I did and do) to be strenuously
opposed to it, both in opinion and action.'

'You see?' said Mrs Gowan, turning the palms of her hands towards
Mr Meagles, as if she were Justice herself, representing to him
that he had better confess, for he had not a leg to stand on. 'You
see? Very good! Now Papa and Mama Meagles both!' here she rose;
'allow me to take the liberty of putting an end to this rather
formidable controversy. I will not say another word upon its
merits. I will only say that it is an additional proof of what one
knows from all experience; that this kind of thing never answers--
as my poor fellow himself would say, that it never pays--in one
word, that it never does.'

Mr Meagles asked, What kind of thing?

'It is in vain,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for people to attempt to get on
together who have such extremely different antecedents; who are
jumbled against each other in this accidental, matrimonial sort of
way; and who cannot look at the untoward circumstance which has
shaken them together in the same light. It never does.'

Mr Meagles was beginning, 'Permit me to say, ma'am--'

'No, don't,' returned Mrs Gowan. 'Why should you! It is an
ascertained fact. It never does. I will therefore, if you please,
go my way, leaving you to yours. I shall at all times be happy to
receive my poor fellow's pretty wife, and I shall always make a
point of being on the most affectionate terms with her. But as to
these terms, semi-family and semi-stranger, semi-goring and semi-
boring, they form a state of things quite amusing in its
impracticability. I assure you it never does.'

The Dowager here made a smiling obeisance, rather to the room than
to any one in it, and therewith took a final farewell of Papa and
Mama Meagles. Clennam stepped forward to hand her to the Pill-Box
which was at the service of all the Pills in Hampton Court Palace;
and she got into that vehicle with distinguished serenity, and was
driven away.

Thenceforth the Dowager, with a light and careless humour, often
recounted to her particular acquaintance how, after a hard trial,
she had found it impossible to know those people who belonged to
Henry's wife, and who had made that desperate set to catch him.
Whether she had come to the conclusion beforehand, that to get rid
of them would give her favourite pretence a better air, might save
her some occasional inconvenience, and could risk no loss (the
pretty creature being fast married, and her father devoted to her),
was best known to herself. Though this history has its opinion on
that point too, and decidedly in the affirmative.

CHAPTER 9

Appearance and Disappearance

'Arthur, my dear boy,' said Mr Meagles, on the evening of the
following day, 'Mother and I have been talking this over, and we
don't feel comfortable in remaining as we are. That elegant
connection of ours--that dear lady who was here yesterday--'

'I understand,' said Arthur.

'Even that affable and condescending ornament of society,' pursued
Mr Meagles, 'may misrepresent us, we are afraid. We could bear a
great deal, Arthur, for her sake; but we think we would rather not
bear that, if it was all the same to her.'

'Good,' said Arthur. 'Go on.'

'You see,' proceeded Mr Meagles 'it might put us wrong with our
son-in-law, it might even put us wrong with our daughter, and it
might lead to a great deal of domestic trouble. You see, don't
you?'

'Yes, indeed,' returned Arthur, 'there is much reason in what you
say.' He had glanced at Mrs Meagles, who was always on the good
and sensible side; and a petition had shone out of her honest face
that he would support Mr Meagles in his present inclinings.

'So we are very much disposed, are Mother and I,' said Mr Meagles,
'to pack up bags and baggage and go among the Allongers and
Marshongers once more. I mean, we are very much disposed to be
off, strike right through France into Italy, and see our Pet.'

'And I don't think,' replied Arthur, touched by the motherly
anticipation in the bright face of Mrs Meagles (she must have been
very like her daughter, once), 'that you could do better. And if
you ask me for my advice, it is that you set off to-morrow.'

'Is it really, though?' said Mr Meagles. 'Mother, this is being
backed in an idea!'

Mother, with a look which thanked Clennam in a manner very
agreeable to him, answered that it was indeed.

'The fact is, besides, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, the old cloud
coming over his face, 'that my son-in-law is already in debt again,
and that I suppose I must clear him again. It may be as well, even
on this account, that I should step over there, and look him up in
a friendly way. Then again, here's Mother foolishly anxious (and
yet naturally too) about Pet's state of health, and that she should
not be left to feel lonesome at the present time. It's undeniably
a long way off, Arthur, and a strange place for the poor love under
all the circumstances. Let her be as well cared for as any lady in
that land, still it is a long way off. just as Home is Home though
it's never so Homely, why you see,' said Mr Meagles, adding a new
version to the proverb, 'Rome is Rome, though it's never so
Romely.'

'All perfectly true,' observed Arthur, 'and all sufficient reasons
for going.'

'I am glad you think so; it decides me. Mother, my dear, you may
get ready. We have lost our pleasant interpreter (she spoke three
foreign languages beautifully, Arthur; you have heard her many a
time), and you must pull me through it, Mother, as well as you can.

I require a deal of pulling through, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles,
shaking his head, 'a deal of pulling through. I stick at
everything beyond a noun-substantive--and I stick at him, if he's
at all a tight one.'

'Now I think of it,' returned Clennam, 'there's Cavalletto. He
shall go with you, if you like. I could not afford to lose him,
but you will bring him safe back.'

'Well! I am much obliged to you, my boy,' said Mr Meagles, turning
it over, 'but I think not. No, I think I'll be pulled through by
Mother. Cavallooro (I stick at his very name to start with, and it
sounds like the chorus to a comic song) is so necessary to you,
that I don't like the thought of taking him away. More than that,
there's no saying when we may come home again; and it would never
do to take him away for an indefinite time. The cottage is not
what it was. It only holds two little people less than it ever
did, Pet, and her poor unfortunate maid Tattycoram; but it seems
empty now. Once out of it, there's no knowing when we may come
back to it. No, Arthur, I'll be pulled through by Mother.'

They would do best by themselves perhaps, after all, Clennam
thought; therefore did not press his proposal.

'If you would come down and stay here for a change, when it
wouldn't trouble you,' Mr Meagles resumed, 'I should be glad to
think--and so would Mother too, I know--that you were brightening
up the old place with a bit of life it was used to when it was
full, and that the Babies on the wall there had a kind eye upon
them sometimes. You so belong to the spot, and to them, Arthur,
and we should every one of us have been so happy if it had fallen
out--but, let us see--how's the weather for travelling now?' Mr
Meagles broke off, cleared his throat, and got up to look out of
the window.

They agreed that the weather was of high promise; and Clennam kept
the talk in that safe direction until it had become easy again,
when he gently diverted it to Henry Gowan and his quick sense and
agreeable qualities when he was delicately dealt With; he likewise
dwelt on the indisputable affection he entertained for his wife.
Clennam did not fail of his effect upon good Mr Meagles, whom these
commendations greatly cheered; and who took Mother to witness that
the single and cordial desire of his heart in reference to their
daughter's husband, was harmoniously to exchange friendship for
friendship, and confidence for confidence. Within a few hours the
cottage furniture began to be wrapped up for preservation in the
family absence--or, as Mr Meagles expressed it, the house began to
put its hair in papers--and within a few days Father and Mother
were gone, Mrs Tickit and Dr Buchan were posted, as of yore, behind
the parlour blind, and Arthur's solitary feet were rustling among
the dry fallen leaves in the garden walks.

As he had a liking for the spot, he seldom let a week pass without
paying a visit. Sometimes, he went down alone from Saturday to
Monday; sometimes his partner accompanied him; sometimes, he merely
strolled for an hour or two about the house and garden, saw that
all was right, and returned to London again. At all times, and
under all circumstances, Mrs Tickit, with her dark row of curls,
and Dr Buchan, sat in the parlour window, looking out for the
family return.

On one of his visits Mrs Tickit received him with the words, 'I
have something to tell you, Mr Clennam, that will surprise you.'
So surprising was the something in question, that it actually
brought Mrs Tickit out of the parlour window and produced her in
the garden walk, when Clennam went in at the gate on its being
opened for him.

'What is it, Mrs Tickit?' said he.

'Sir,' returned that faithful housekeeper, having taken him into
the parlour and closed the door; 'if ever I saw the led away and
deluded child in my life, I saw her identically in the dusk of
yesterday evening.'

'You don't mean Tatty--'

'Coram yes I do!' quoth Mrs Tickit, clearing the disclosure at a
leap.

'Where?'

'Mr Clennam,' returned Mrs Tickit, 'I was a little heavy in my
eyes, being that I was waiting longer than customary for my cup of
tea which was then preparing by Mary Jane. I was not sleeping, nor
what a person would term correctly, dozing. I was more what a
person would strictly call watching with my eyes closed.'

Without entering upon an inquiry into this curious abnormal
condition, Clennam said, 'Exactly. Well?'

'Well, sir,' proceeded Mrs Tickit, 'I was thinking of one thing and
thinking of another. just as you yourself might. just as anybody
might.'
'Precisely so,' said Clennam. 'Well?'

'And when I do think of one thing and do think of another,' pursued
Mrs Tickit, 'I hardly need to tell you, Mr Clennam, that I think of
the family. Because, dear me! a person's thoughts,' Mrs Tickit
said this with an argumentative and philosophic air, 'however they
may stray, will go more or less on what is uppermost in their
minds. They will do it, sir, and a person can't prevent them.'

Arthur subscribed to this discovery with a nod.

'You find it so yourself, sir, I'll be bold to say,' said Mrs
Tickit, 'and we all find it so. It an't our stations in life that
changes us, Mr Clennam; thoughts is free!--As I was saying, I was
thinking of one thing and thinking of another, and thinking very
much of the family. Not of the family in the present times only,
but in the past times too. For when a person does begin thinking
of one thing and thinking of another in that manner, as it's
getting dark, what I say is, that all times seem to be present, and
a person must get out of that state and consider before they can
say which is which.'

He nodded again; afraid to utter a word, lest it should present any
new opening to Mrs Tickit's conversational powers.

'In consequence of which,' said Mrs Tickit, 'when I quivered my
eyes and saw her actual form and figure looking in at the gate, I
let them close again without so much as starting, for that actual
form and figure came so pat to the time when it belonged to the
house as much as mine or your own, that I never thought at the
moment of its having gone away. But, sir, when I quivered my eyes
again, and saw that it wasn't there, then it all flooded upon me
with a fright, and I jumped up.'

'You ran out directly?' said Clennam.

'I ran out,' assented Mrs Tickit, 'as fast as ever my feet would
carry me; and if you'll credit it, Mr Clennam, there wasn't in the
whole shining Heavens, no not so much as a finger of that young
woman.'

Passing over the absence from the firmament of this novel
constellation, Arthur inquired of Mrs Tickit if she herself went
beyond the gate?

'Went to and fro, and high and low,' said Mrs Tickit, 'and saw no
sign of her!'

He then asked Mrs Tickit how long a space of time she supposed
there might have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she
had experienced? Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her
reply, had no settled opinion between five seconds and ten minutes.

She was so plainly at sea on this part of the case, and had so
clearly been startled out of slumber, that Clennam was much
disposed to regard the appearance as a dream. Without hurting Mrs
Tickit's feelings with that infidel solution of her mystery, he
took it away from the cottage with him; and probably would have
retained it ever afterwards if a circumstance had not soon happened
to change his opinion.
He was passing at nightfall along the Strand, and the lamp-lighter
was going on before him, under whose hand the street-lamps, blurred
by the foggy air, burst out one after another, like so many blazing
sunflowers coming into full-blow all at once,--when a stoppage on
the pavement, caused by a train of coal-waggons toiling up from the
wharves at the river-side, brought him to a stand-still. He had
been walking quickly, and going with some current of thought, and
the sudden check given to both operations caused him to look
freshly about him, as people under such circumstances usually do.

Immediately, he saw in advance--a few people intervening, but still
so near to him that he could have touched them by stretching out
his arm--Tattycoram and a strange man of a remarkable appearance:
a swaggering man, with a high nose, and a black moustache as false
in its colour as his eyes were false in their expression, who wore
his heavy cloak with the air of a foreigner. His dress and general
appearance were those of a man on travel, and he seemed to have
very recently joined the girl. In bending down (being much taller
than she was), listening to whatever she said to him, he looked
over his shoulder with the suspicious glance of one who was not
unused to be mistrustful that his footsteps might be dogged. It
was then that Clennam saw his face; as his eyes lowered on the
people behind him in the aggregate, without particularly resting
upon Clennam's face or any other.

He had scarcely turned his head about again, and it was still bent
down, listening to the girl, when the stoppage ceased, and the
obstructed stream of people flowed on. Still bending his head and
listening to the girl, he went on at her side, and Clennam followed
them, resolved to play this unexpected play out, and see where they
went.

He had hardly made the determination (though he was not long about
it), when he was again as suddenly brought up as he had been by the
stoppage. They turned short into the Adelphi,--the girl evidently
leading,--and went straight on, as if they were going to the
Terrace which overhangs the river.

There is always, to this day, a sudden pause in that place to the
roar of the great thoroughfare. The many sounds become so deadened
that the change is like putting cotton in the ears, or having the
head thickly muffled. At that time the contrast was far greater;
there being no small steam-boats on the river, no landing places
but slippery wooden stairs and foot-causeways, no railroad on the
opposite bank, no hanging bridge or fish-market near at hand, no
traffic on the nearest bridge of stone, nothing moving on the
stream but watermen's wherries and coal-lighters. Long and broad
black tiers of the latter, moored fast in the mud as if they were
never to move again, made the shore funereal and silent after dark;
and kept what little water-movement there was, far out towards mid-
stream. At any hour later than sunset, and not least at that hour
when most of the people who have anything to eat at home are going
home to eat it, and when most of those who have nothing have hardly
yet slunk out to beg or steal, it was a deserted place and looked
on a deserted scene.

Such was the hour when Clennam stopped at the corner, observing the
girl and the strange man as they went down the street. The man's
footsteps were so noisy on the echoing stones that he was unwilling
to add the sound of his own. But when they had passed the turning
and were in the darkness of the dark corner leading to the terrace,
he made after them with such indifferent appearance of being a
casual passenger on his way, as he could assume.

When he rounded the dark corner, they were walking along the
terrace towards a figure which was coming towards them. If he had
seen it by itself, under such conditions of gas-lamp, mist, and
distance, he might not have known it at first sight, but with the
figure of the girl to prompt him, he at once recognised Miss Wade.

He stopped at the corner, seeming to look back expectantly up the
street as if he had made an appointment with some one to meet him
there; but he kept a careful eye on the three. When they came
together, the man took off his hat, and made Miss Wade a bow. The
girl appeared to say a few words as though she presented him, or
accounted for his being late, or early, or what not; and then fell
a pace or so behind, by herself. Miss Wade and the man then began
to walk up and down; the man having the appearance of being
extremely courteous and complimentary in manner; Miss Wade having
the appearance of being extremely haughty.

When they came down to the corner and turned, she was saying,

'If I pinch myself for it, sir, that is my business. Confine
yourself to yours, and ask me no question.'

'By Heaven, ma'am!' he replied, making her another bow. 'It was my
profound respect for the strength of your character, and my
admiration of your beauty.'

'I want neither the one nor the other from any one,' said she, 'and
certainly not from you of all creatures. Go on with your report.'

'Am I pardoned?' he asked, with an air of half abashed gallantry.

'You are paid,' she said, 'and that is all you want.'

Whether the girl hung behind because she was not to hear the
business, or as already knowing enough about it, Clennam could not
determine. They turned and she turned. She looked away at the
river, as she walked with her hands folded before her; and that was
all he could make of her without showing his face. There happened,
by good fortune, to be a lounger really waiting for some one; and
he sometimes looked over the railing at the water, and sometimes
came to the dark corner and looked up the street, rendering Arthur
less conspicuous.

When Miss Wade and the man came back again, she was saying, 'You
must wait until to-morrow.'

'A thousand pardons?' he returned. 'My faith! Then it's not
convenient to-night?'

'No. I tell you I must get it before I can give it to you.'

She stopped in the roadway, as if to put an end to the conference.
He of course stopped too. And the girl stopped.

'It's a little inconvenient,' said the man. 'A little. But, Holy
Blue! that's nothing in such a service. I am without money to-
night, by chance. I have a good banker in this city, but I would
not wish to draw upon the house until the time when I shall draw
for a round sum.'

'Harriet,' said Miss Wade, 'arrange with him--this gentleman here--
for sending him some money to-morrow.' She said it with a slur of
the word gentleman which was more contemptuous than any emphasis,
and walked slowly on.
The man bent his head again, and the girl spoke to him as they both
followed her. Clennam ventured to look at the girl as they Moved
away. He could note that her rich black eyes were fastened upon
the man with a scrutinising expression, and that she kept at a
little distance from him, as they walked side by side to the
further end of the terrace.

A loud and altered clank upon the pavement warned him, before he
could discern what was passing there, that the man was coming back
alone. Clennam lounged into the road, towards the railing; and the
man passed at a quick swing, with the end of his cloak thrown over
his shoulder, singing a scrap of a French song.