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

bobbed himself derisively up and down on both legs, and finished by standing on one leg again, and pausing for a reply, with his head as much awry as he could possibly twist it.

“Sounds mercenary to ask what the gentleman is to get with the lady,” said Mrs. Merdle; “but Society is perhaps a little mercenary, you know, my dear.”

“From what I can make out,” said Mrs. Gowan, “I believe I may say that Henry will be relieved from debt⁠—”

“Much in debt?” asked Mrs. Merdle through her eyeglass.

“Why tolerably, I should think,” said Mrs. Gowan.

“Meaning the usual thing; I understand; just so,” Mrs. Merdle observed in a comfortable sort of way.

“And that the father will make them an allowance of three hundred a-year, or perhaps altogether something more, which, in Italy-’

“Oh! Going to Italy?” said Mrs. Merdle.

“For Henry to study. You need be at no loss to guess why, my dear. That dreadful Art⁠—”

True. Mrs. Merdle hastened to spare the feelings of her afflicted friend. She understood. Say no more!

“And that,” said Mrs. Gowan, shaking her despondent head, “that’s all. That,” repeated Mrs. Gowan, furling her green fan for the moment, and tapping her chin with it (it was on the way to being a double chin; might be called a chin and a half at present), “that’s all! On the death of the old people, I suppose there will be more to come; but how it may be restricted or locked up, I don’t know. And as to that, they may live forever. My dear, they are just the kind of people to do it.”

Now, Mrs. Merdle, who really knew her friend Society pretty well, and who knew what Society’s mothers were, and what Society’s daughters were, and what Society’s matrimonial market was, and how prices ruled in it, and what scheming and counter-scheming took place for the high buyers, and what bargaining and huckstering went on, thought in the depths of her capacious bosom that this was a sufficiently good catch. Knowing, however, what was expected of her, and perceiving the exact nature of the fiction to be nursed, she took it delicately in her arms, and put her required contribution of gloss upon it.

“And that is all, my dear?” said she, heaving a friendly sigh. “Well, well! The fault is not yours. You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You must exercise the strength of mind for which you are renowned, and make the best of it.”

“The girl’s family have made,” said Mrs. Gowan, “of course, the most strenuous endeavours to⁠—as the lawyers say⁠—to have and to hold Henry.”

“Of course they have, my dear,” said Mrs. Merdle.

“I have persisted in every possible objection, and have worried myself morning, noon, and night, for means to detach Henry from the connection.”

“No doubt you have, my dear,” said Mrs. Merdle.

“And all of no use. All has broken down beneath me. Now tell me, my love. Am I justified in at last yielding my most reluctant consent to Henry’s marrying among people not in Society; or, have I acted with inexcusable weakness?”

In answer to this direct appeal, Mrs. Merdle assured Mrs. Gowan (speaking as a Priestess of Society) that she was highly to be commended, that she was much to be sympathised with, that she had taken the highest of parts, and had come out of the furnace refined. And Mrs. Gowan, who of course saw through her own threadbare blind perfectly, and who knew that Mrs. Merdle saw through it perfectly, and who knew that Society would see through it perfectly, came out of this form, notwithstanding, as she had gone into it, with immense complacency and gravity.

The conference was held at four or five o’clock in the afternoon, when all the region of Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was resonant of carriage-wheels and double-knocks. It had reached this point when Mr. Merdle came home from his daily occupation of causing the British name to be more and more respected in all parts of the civilised globe capable of the appreciation of worldwide commercial enterprise and gigantic combinations of skill and capital. For, though nobody knew with the least precision what Mr. Merdle’s business was, except that it was to coin money, these were the terms in which everybody defined it on all ceremonious occasions, and which it was the last new polite reading of the parable of the camel and the needle’s eye to accept without inquiry.

For a gentleman who had this splendid work cut out for him, Mr. Merdle looked a little common, and rather as if, in the course of his vast transactions, he had accidentally made an interchange of heads with some inferior spirit. He presented himself before the two ladies in the course of a dismal stroll through his mansion, which had no apparent object but escape from the presence of the chief butler.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, stopping short in confusion; “I didn’t know there was anybody here but the parrot.”

However, as Mrs. Merdle said, “You can come in!” and as Mrs. Gowan said she was just going, and had already risen to take her leave, he came in, and stood looking out at a distant window, with his hands crossed under his uneasy coat-cuffs, clasping his wrists as if he were taking himself into custody. In this attitude he fell directly into a reverie from which he was only aroused by his wife’s calling to him from her ottoman, when they had been for some quarter of an hour alone.

“Eh? Yes?” said Mr. Merdle, turning towards her. “What is it?”

“What is it?” repeated Mrs. Merdle. “It is, I suppose, that you have not heard a word of my complaint.”

“Your complaint, Mrs. Merdle?” said Mr. Merdle. “I didn’t know that you were suffering from a complaint. What complaint?”

“A complaint of you,” said Mrs. Merdle.

“Oh! A complaint of me,” said Mr. Merdle. “What is the⁠—what have I⁠—what may you have to complain of in me, Mrs. Merdle?”

In his withdrawing, abstracted, pondering way, it took him some time to shape this question. As a kind of faint attempt to convince himself that he was the master of the house, he concluded by presenting his forefinger