BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY - CHAPTER 26 Nobody's State of Mind

If Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to

restrain himself from loving Pet, he would have lived on in a state

of much perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own

heart. Not the least of these would have been a contention, always

waging within it, between a tendency to dislike Mr Henry Gowan, if

not to regard him with positive repugnance, and a whisper that the

inclination was unworthy. A generous nature is not prone to strong

aversions, and is slow to admit them even dispassionately; but when

it finds ill-will gaining upon it, and can discern between-whiles

that its origin is not dispassionate, such a nature becomes

distressed.

Therefore Mr Henry Gowan would have clouded Clennam's mind, and

would have been far oftener present to it than more agreeable

persons and subjects but for the great prudence of his decision

aforesaid. As it was, Mr Gowan seemed transferred to Daniel

Doyce's mind; at all events, it so happened that it usually fell to

Mr Doyce's turn, rather than to Clennam's, to speak of him in the

friendly conversations they held together. These were of frequent

occurrence now; as the two partners shared a portion of a roomy

house in one of the grave old-fashioned City streets, lying not far

from the Bank of England, by London Wall.

Mr Doyce had been to Twickenham to pass the day. Clennam had

excused himself. Mr Doyce was just come home. He put in his head

at the door of Clennam's sitting-room to say Good night.

'Come in, come in!' said Clennam.

'I saw you were reading,' returned Doyce, as he entered, 'and

thought you might not care to be disturbed.'

But for the notable resolution he had made, Clennam really might

not have known what he had been reading; really might not have had

his eyes upon the book for an hour past, though it lay open before

him. He shut it up, rather quickly.

'Are they well?' he asked.

'Yes,' said Doyce; 'they are well. They are all well.'

Daniel had an old workmanlike habit of carrying his pocket-

handkerchief in his hat. He took it out and wiped his forehead

with it, slowly repeating, 'They are all well. Miss Minnie looking

particularly well, I thought.'

'Any company at the cottage?'

'No, no company.'

'And how did you get on, you four?' asked Clennam gaily.

'There were five of us,' returned his partner. 'There was What's-

his-name. He was there.'

'Who is he?' said Clennam.

'Mr Henry Gowan.'

'Ah, to be sure!' cried Clennam with unusual vivacity, 'Yes!--I

forgot him.'

'As I mentioned, you may remember,' said Daniel Doyce, 'he is

always there on Sunday.'

'Yes, yes,' returned Clennam; 'I remember now.'

Daniel Doyce, still wiping his forehead, ploddingly repeated.

'Yes. He was there, he was there. Oh yes, he was there. And his

dog. He was there too.'

'Miss Meagles is quite attached to--the--dog,' observed Clennam.

'Quite so,' assented his partner. 'More attached to the dog than

I am to the man.'

'You mean Mr--?'

'I mean Mr Gowan, most decidedly,' said Daniel Doyce.

There was a gap in the conversation, which Clennam devoted to

winding up his watch.

'Perhaps you are a little hasty in your judgment,' he said. 'Our

judgments--I am supposing a general case--'

'Of course,' said Doyce.

'Are so liable to be influenced by many considerations, which,

almost without our knowing it, are unfair, that it is necessary to

keep a guard upon them. For instance, Mr--'

'Gowan,' quietly said Doyce, upon whom the utterance of the name

almost always devolved.

'Is young and handsome, easy and quick, has talent, and has seen a

good deal of various kinds of life. It might be difficult to give

an unselfish reason for being prepossessed against him.'

'Not difficult for me, I think, Clennam,' returned his partner. 'I

see him bringing present anxiety, and, I fear, future sorrow, into

my old friend's house. I see him wearing deeper lines into my old

friend's face, the nearer he draws to, and the oftener he looks at,

the face of his daughter. In short, I see him with a net about the

pretty and affectionate creature whom he will never make happy.'

'We don't know,' said Clennam, almost in the tone of a man in pain,

'that he will not make her happy.'

'We don't know,' returned his partner, 'that the earth will last

another hundred years, but we think it highly probable.'

'Well, well!' said Clennam, 'we must be hopeful, and we must at

least try to be, if not generous (which, in this case, we have no

opportunity of being), just. We will not disparage this gentleman,

because he is successful in his addresses to the beautiful object

of his ambition; and we will not question her natural right to

bestow her love on one whom she finds worthy of it.'

'Maybe, my friend,' said Doyce. 'Maybe also, that she is too young

and petted, too confiding and inexperienced, to discriminate well.'

'That,' said Clennam, 'would be far beyond our power of

correction.'

Daniel Doyce shook his head gravely, and rejoined, 'I fear so.'

'Therefore, in a word,' said Clennam, 'we should make up our minds

that it is not worthy of us to say any ill of Mr Gowan. It would

be a poor thing to gratify a prejudice against him. And I resolve,

for my part, not to depreciate him.'

'I am not quite so sure of myself, and therefore I reserve my

privilege of objecting to him,' returned the other. 'But, if I am

not sure of myself, I am sure of you, Clennam, and I know what an

upright man you are, and how much to be respected. Good night, MY

friend and partner!' He shook his hand in saying this, as if there

had been something serious at the bottom of their conversation; and

they separated.

By this time they had visited the family on several occasions, and

had always observed that even a passing allusion to Mr Henry Gowan

when he was not among them, brought back the cloud which had

obscured Mr Meagles's sunshine on the morning of the chance

encounter at the Ferry. If Clennam had ever admitted the forbidden

passion into his breast, this period might have been a period of

real trial; under the actual circumstances, doubtless it was

nothing--nothing.

Equally, if his heart had given entertainment to that prohibited

guest, his silent fighting of his way through the mental condition

of this period might have been a little meritorious. In the

constant effort not to be betrayed into a new phase of the

besetting sin of his experience, the pursuit of selfish objects by

low and small means, and to hold instead to some high principle of

honour and generosity, there might have been a little merit. In

the resolution not even to avoid Mr Meagles's house, lest, in the

selfish sparing of himself, he should bring any slight distress

upon the daughter through making her the cause of an estrangement

which he believed the father would regret, there might have been a

little merit. In the modest truthfulness of always keeping in view

the greater equality of Mr Gowan's years and the greater

attractions of his person and manner, there might have been a

little merit. In doing all this and much more, in a perfectly

unaffected way and with a manful and composed constancy, while the

pain within him (peculiar as his life and history) was very sharp,

there might have been some quiet strength of character. But, after

the resolution he had made, of course he could have no such merits

as these; and such a state of mind was nobody's--nobody's.

Mr Gowan made it no concern of his whether it was nobody's or

somebody's. He preserved his perfect serenity of manner on all

occasions, as if the possibility of Clennam's presuming to have

debated the great question were too distant and ridiculous to be

imagined. He had always an affability to bestow on Clennam and an

ease to treat him with, which might of itself (in the

supposititious case of his not having taken that sagacious course)

have been a very uncomfortable element in his state of mind.

'I quite regret you were not with us yesterday,' said Mr Henry

Gowan, calling on Clennam the next morning. 'We had an agreeable

day up the river there.'

So he had heard, Arthur said.

'From your partner?' returned Henry Gowan. 'What a dear old fellow

he is!'

'I have a great regard for him.'

'By Jove, he is the finest creature!' said Gowan. 'So fresh, so

green, trusts in such wonderful things!'

Here was one of the many little rough points that had a tendency to

grate on Clennam's hearing. He put it aside by merely repeating

that he had a high regard for Mr Doyce.

'He is charming! To see him mooning along to that time of life,

laying down nothing by the way and picking up nothing by the way,

is delightful. It warms a man. So unspoilt, so simple, such a

good soul! Upon my life Mr Clennam, one feels desperately worldly

and wicked in comparison with such an innocent creature. I speak

for myself, let me add, without including you. You are genuine

also.'

'Thank you for the compliment,' said Clennam, ill at ease; 'you are

too, I hope?'

'So so,' rejoined the other. 'To be candid with you, tolerably.

I am not a great impostor. Buy one of my pictures, and I assure

you, in confidence, it will not be worth the money. Buy one of

another man's--any great professor who beats me hollow--and the

chances are that the more you give him, the more he'll impose upon

you. They all do it.'

'All painters?'

'Painters, writers, patriots, all the rest who have stands in the

market. Give almost any man I know ten pounds, and he will impose

upon you to a corresponding extent; a thousand pounds--to a

corresponding extent; ten thousand pounds--to a corresponding

extent. So great the success, so great the imposition. But what

a capital world it is!' cried Gowan with warm enthusiasm. 'What a

jolly, excellent, lovable world it is!'

'I had rather thought,' said Clennam, 'that the principle you

mention was chiefly acted on by--'

'By the Barnacles?' interrupted Gowan, laughing.

'By the political gentlemen who condescend to keep the

Circumlocution Office.'

'Ah! Don't be hard upon the Barnacles,' said Gowan, laughing

afresh, 'they are darling fellows! Even poor little Clarence, the

born idiot of the family, is the most agreeable and most endearing

blockhead! And by Jupiter, with a kind of cleverness in him too

that would astonish you!'

'It would. Very much,' said Clennam, drily.

'And after all,' cried Gowan, with that characteristic balancing of

his which reduced everything in the wide world to the same light

weight, 'though I can't deny that the Circumlocution Office may

ultimately shipwreck everybody and everything, still, that will

probably not be in our time--and it's a school for gentlemen.'

'It's a very dangerous, unsatisfactory, and expensive school to the

people who pay to keep the pupils there, I am afraid,' said

Clennam, shaking his head.

'Ah! You are a terrible fellow,' returned Gowan, airily. 'I can

understand how you have frightened that little donkey, Clarence,

the most estimable of moon-calves (I really love him) nearly out of

his wits. But enough of him, and of all the rest of them. I want

to present you to my mother, Mr Clennam. Pray do me the favour to

give me the opportunity.'

In nobody's state of mind, there was nothing Clennam would have

desired less, or would have been more at a loss how to avoid.

'My mother lives in a most primitive manner down in that dreary

red-brick dungeon at Hampton Court,' said Gowan. 'If you would

make your own appointment, suggest your own day for permitting me

to take you there to dinner, you would be bored and she would be

charmed. Really that's the state of the case.'

What could Clennam say after this? His retiring character included

a great deal that was simple in the best sense, because unpractised

and unused; and in his simplicity and modesty, he could only say

that he was happy to place himself at Mr Gowan's disposal.

Accordingly he said it, and the day was fixed. And a dreaded day

it was on his part, and a very unwelcome day when it came and they

went down to Hampton Court together.

The venerable inhabitants of that venerable pile seemed, in those

times, to be encamped there like a sort of civilised gipsies.

There was a temporary air about their establishments, as if they

were going away the moment they could get anything better; there

was also a dissatisfied air about themselves, as if they took it

very ill that they had not already got something much better.

Genteel blinds and makeshifts were more or less observable as soon

as their doors were opened; screens not half high enough, which

made dining-rooms out of arched passages, and warded off obscure

corners where footboys slept at nights with their heads among the

knives and forks; curtains which called upon you to believe that

they didn't hide anything; panes of glass which requested you not

to see them; many objects of various forms, feigning to have no

connection with their guilty secret, a bed; disguised traps in

walls, which were clearly coal-cellars; affectations of no

thoroughfares, which were evidently doors to little kitchens.

Mental reservations and artful mysteries grew out of these things.

Callers looking steadily into the eyes of their receivers,

pretended not to smell cooking three feet off; people, confronting

closets accidentally left open, pretended not to see bottles;

visitors with their heads against a partition of thin canvas, and

a page and a young female at high words on the other side, made

believe to be sitting in a primeval silence. There was no end to

the small social accommodation-bills of this nature which the

gipsies of gentility were constantly drawing upon, and accepting

for, one another.

Some of these Bohemians were of an irritable temperament, as

constantly soured and vexed by two mental trials: the first, the

consciousness that they had never got enough out of the public; the

second, the consciousness that the public were admitted into the

building. Under the latter great wrong, a few suffered

dreadfully--particularly on Sundays, when they had for some time

expected the earth to open and swallow the public up; but which

desirable event had not yet occurred, in consequence of some

reprehensible laxity in the arrangements of the Universe.

Mrs Gowan's door was attended by a family servant of several years'

standing, who had his own crow to pluck with the public concerning

a situation in the Post-Office which he had been for some time

expecting, and to which he was not yet appointed. He perfectly

knew that the public could never have got him in, but he grimly

gratified himself with the idea that the public kept him out.

Under the influence of this injury (and perhaps of some little

straitness and irregularity in the matter of wages), he had grown

neglectful of his person and morose in mind; and now beholding in

Clennam one of the degraded body of his oppressors, received him

with ignominy.

Mrs Gowan, however, received him with condescension. He found her

a courtly old lady, formerly a Beauty, and still sufficiently well-

favoured to have dispensed with the powder on her nose and a

certain impossible bloom under each eye. She was a little lofty

with him; so was another old lady, dark-browed and high-nosed, and

who must have had something real about her or she could not have

existed, but it was certainly not her hair or her teeth or her

figure or her complexion; so was a grey old gentleman of dignified

and sullen appearance; both of whom had come to dinner. But, as

they had all been in the British Embassy way in sundry parts of the

earth, and as a British Embassy cannot better establish a character

with the Circumlocution Office than by treating its compatriots

with illimitable contempt (else it would become like the Embassies

of other countries), Clennam felt that on the whole they let him

off lightly.

The dignified old gentleman turned out to be Lord Lancaster

Stiltstalking, who had been maintained by the Circumlocution Office

for many years as a representative of the Britannic Majesty abroad.

This noble Refrigerator had iced several European courts in his

time, and had done it with such complete success that the very name

of Englishman yet struck cold to the stomachs of foreigners who had

the distinguished honour of remembering him at a distance of a

quarter of a century.

He was now in retirement, and hence (in a ponderous white cravat,

like a stiff snow-drift) was so obliging 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 arm-

chair 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 UP

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!' 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 ecarte 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 relapsed again.

In that state of mind which rendered nobody uneasy, his

thoughtfulness would have turned principally on the man at his

side. He would have thought of the morning when he first saw him

rooting out the stones with his heel, and would have asked himself,

'Does he jerk me out of the path in the same careless, cruel way?'

He would have thought, had this introduction to his mother been

brought about by him because he knew what she would say, and that

he could thus place his position before a rival and loftily warn

him off, without himself reposing a word of confidence in him? He

would have thought, even if there were no such design as that, had

he brought him there to play with his repressed emotions, and

torment him? The current of these meditations would have been

stayed sometimes by a rush of shame, bearing a remonstrance to

himself from his own open nature, representing that to shelter such

suspicions, even for the passing moment, was not to hold the high,

unenvious course he had resolved to keep. At those times, the

striving within him would have been hardest; and looking up and

catching Gowan's eyes, he would have started as if he had done him

an injury.

Then, looking at the dark road and its uncertain objects, he would

have gradually trailed off again into thinking, 'Where are we

driving, he and I, I wonder, on the darker road of life? How will

it be with us, and with her, in the obscure distance?' Thinking of

her, he would have been troubled anew with a reproachful misgiving

that it was not even loyal to her to dislike him, and that in being

so easily prejudiced against him he was less deserving of her than

at first.

'You are evidently out of spirits,' said Gowan; 'I am very much

afraid my mother must have bored you dreadfully.'

'Believe me, not at all,' said Clennam. 'It's nothing--nothing!'

Read next: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 27 Five-and-Twenty

Read previous: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 25 Conspirators and Others

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