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

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 écarté 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