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

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 anyone in it, and therewith took a final farewell of Papa and Mama Meagles. Clennam stepped forward to hand her to the Pillbox 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.

IX 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