Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

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 armchair 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!”