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

affection than usual, to express to her good father how much she loved him; that it was on this account that she fell behind the rest, both as they went to church and as they returned from it, and took his arm. He could not have sworn but that as he walked alone in the garden afterwards, he had an instantaneous glimpse of her in her father’s room, clinging to both her parents with the greatest tenderness, and weeping on her father’s shoulder.

The latter part of the day turning out wet, they were fain to keep the house, look over Mr. Meagles’s collection, and beguile the time with conversation. This Gowan had plenty to say for himself, and said it in an offhand and amusing manner. He appeared to be an artist by profession, and to have been at Rome some time; yet he had a slight, careless, amateur way with him⁠—a perceptible limp, both in his devotion to art and his attainments⁠—which Clennam could scarcely understand.

He applied to Daniel Doyce for help, as they stood together, looking out of window.

“You know Mr. Gowan?” he said in a low voice.

“I have seen him here. Comes here every Sunday when they are at home.”

“An artist, I infer from what he says?”

“A sort of a one,” said Daniel Doyce, in a surly tone.

“What sort of a one?” asked Clennam, with a smile.

“Why, he has sauntered into the Arts at a leisurely Pall-Mall pace,” said Doyce, “and I doubt if they care to be taken quite so coolly.”

Pursuing his inquiries, Clennam found that the Gowan family were a very distant ramification of the Barnacles; and that the paternal Gowan, originally attached to a legation abroad, had been pensioned off as a Commissioner of nothing particular somewhere or other, and had died at his post with his drawn salary in his hand, nobly defending it to the last extremity. In consideration of this eminent public service, the Barnacle then in power had recommended the Crown to bestow a pension of two or three hundred a-year on his widow; to which the next Barnacle in power had added certain shady and sedate apartments in the Palaces at Hampton Court, where the old lady still lived, deploring the degeneracy of the times in company with several other old ladies of both sexes. Her son, Mr. Henry Gowan, inheriting from his father, the Commissioner, that very questionable help in life, a very small independence, had been difficult to settle; the rather, as public appointments chanced to be scarce, and his genius, during his earlier manhood, was of that exclusively agricultural character which applies itself to the cultivation of wild oats. At last he had declared that he would become a painter; partly because he had always had an idle knack that way, and partly to grieve the souls of the Barnacles-in-chief who had not provided for him. So it had come to pass successively, first, that several distinguished ladies had been frightfully shocked; then, that portfolios of his performances had been handed about o’ nights, and declared with ecstasy to be perfect Claudes, perfect Cuyps, perfect phaenomena; then, that Lord Decimus had bought his picture, and had asked the President and Council to dinner at a blow, and had said, with his own magnificent gravity, “Do you know, there appears to me to be really immense merit in that work?” and, in short, that people of condition had absolutely taken pains to bring him into fashion. But, somehow, it had all failed. The prejudiced public had stood out against it obstinately. They had determined not to admire Lord Decimus’s picture. They had determined to believe that in every service, except their own, a man must qualify himself, by striving early and late, and by working heart and soul, might and main. So now Mr. Gowan, like that worn-out old coffin which never was Muhammad’s nor anybody else’s, hung midway between two points: jaundiced and jealous as to the one he had left: jaundiced and jealous as to the other that he couldn’t reach.

Such was the substance of Clennam’s discoveries concerning him, made that rainy Sunday afternoon and afterwards.

About an hour or so after dinner time, Young Barnacle appeared, attended by his eyeglass; in honour of whose family connections, Mr. Meagles had cashiered the pretty parlour-maids for the day, and had placed on duty in their stead two dingy men. Young Barnacle was in the last degree amazed and disconcerted at sight of Arthur, and had murmured involuntarily, “Look here! upon my soul, you know!” before his presence of mind returned.

Even then, he was obliged to embrace the earliest opportunity of taking his friend into a window, and saying, in a nasal way that was a part of his general debility:

“I want to speak to you, Gowan. I say. Look here. Who is that fellow?”

“A friend of our host’s. None of mine.”

“He’s a most ferocious Radical, you know,” said Young Barnacle.

“Is he? How do you know?”

“Ecod, sir, he was pitching into our people the other day in the most tremendous manner. Went up to our place and pitched into my father to that extent that it was necessary to order him out. Came back to our Department, and pitched into me. Look here. You never saw such a fellow.”

“What did he want?”

“Ecod, sir,” returned Young Barnacle, “he said he wanted to know, you know! Pervaded our Department⁠—without an appointment⁠—and said he wanted to know!”

The stare of indignant wonder with which Young Barnacle accompanied this disclosure, would have strained his eyes injuriously but for the opportune relief of dinner. Mr. Meagles (who had been extremely solicitous to know how his uncle and aunt were) begged him to conduct Mrs. Meagles to the dining-room. And when he sat on Mrs. Meagles’s right hand, Mr. Meagles looked as gratified as if his whole family were there.

All the natural charm of the previous day was gone. The eaters of the dinner, like the dinner itself, were lukewarm, insipid, overdone⁠—and all owing to this poor little dull Young Barnacle. Conversationless at any