BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES - CHAPTER 8 The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that 'It Never Does'

While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning

themselves for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily

being sketched out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and

likeness, by travelling pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and

Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous

clink of iron upon iron was heard there through the working hours.

The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into

sound trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious

devices, had done much to enhance the character of the factory. As

an ingenious man, he had necessarily to encounter every

discouragement that the ruling powers for a length of time had been

able by any means to put in the way of this class of culprits; but

that was only reasonable self-defence in the powers, since How to

do it must obviously be regarded as the natural and mortal enemy of

How not to do it. In this was to be found the basis of the wise

system, by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution Office, of

warning every ingenious British subject to be ingenious at his

peril: of harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by

making his remedy uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at

the best of confiscating his property after a short term of

enjoyment, as though invention were on a par with felony. The

system had uniformly found great favour with the Barnacles, and

that was only reasonable, too; for one who worthily invents must be

in earnest, and the Barnacles abhorred and dreaded nothing half so

much. That again was very reasonable; since in a country suffering

under the affliction of a great amount of earnestness, there might,

in an exceeding short space of time, be not a single Barnacle left

sticking to a post.

Daniel Doyce faced his condition with its pains and penalties

attached to it, and soberly worked on for the work's sake. Clennam

cheering him with a hearty co-operation, was a moral support to

him, besides doing good service in his business relation. The

concern prospered, and the partners were fast friends.

But Daniel could not forget the old design of so many years. It

was not in reason to be expected that he should; if he could have

lightly forgotten it, he could never have conceived it, or had the

patience and perseverance to work it out. So Clennam thought, when

he sometimes observed him of an evening looking over the models and

drawings, and consoling himself by muttering with a sigh as he put

them away again, that the thing was as true as it ever was.

To show no sympathy with so much endeavour, and so much

disappointment, would have been to fail in what Clennam regarded as

among the implied obligations of his partnership. A revival of the

passing interest in the subject which had been by chance awakened

at the door of the Circumlocution Office, originated in this

feeling. He asked his partner to explain the invention to him;

'having a lenient consideration,' he stipulated, 'for my being no

workman, Doyce.'

'No workman?' said Doyce. 'You would have been a thorough workman

if you had given yourself to it. You have as good a head for

understanding such things as I have met with.'

'A totally uneducated one, I am sorry to add,' said Clennam.

'I don't know that,' returned Doyce, 'and I wouldn't have you say

that. No man of sense who has been generally improved, and has

improved himself, can be called quite uneducated as to anything.

I don't particularly favour mysteries. I would as soon, on a fair

and clear explanation, be judged by one class of man as another,

provided he had the qualification I have named.'

'At all events,' said Clennam--'this sounds as if we were

exchanging compliments, but we know we are not--I shall have the

advantage of as plain an explanation as can be given.'

'Well!' said Daniel, in his steady even way,'I'll try to make it

so.'

He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character,

of explaining what he himself perceived, and meant, with the direct

force and distinctness with which it struck his own mind. His

manner of demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that it

was not easy to mistake him. There was something almost ludicrous

in the complete irreconcilability of a vague conventional notion

that he must be a visionary man, with the precise, sagacious

travelling of his eye and thumb over the plans, their patient

stoppages at particular points, their careful returns to other

points whence little channels of explanation had to be traced up,

and his steady manner of making everything good and everything

sound at each important stage, before taking his hearer on a

line's-breadth further. His dismissal of himself from his

description, was hardly less remarkable. He never said, I

discovered this adaptation or invented that combination; but showed

the whole thing as if the Divine artificer had made it, and he had

happened to find it; so modest he was about it, such a pleasant

touch of respect was mingled with his quiet admiration of it, and

so calmly convinced he was that it was established on irrefragable

laws.

Not only that evening, but for several succeeding evenings, Clennam

was quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued it,

and the oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and

the shrewd eye kindling with pleasure in it and love of it--

instrument for probing his heart though it had been made for twelve

long years--the less he could reconcile it to his younger energy to

let it go without one effort more. At length he said:

'Doyce, it came to this at last--that the business was to be sunk

with Heaven knows how many more wrecks, or begun all over again?'

'Yes,' returned Doyce, 'that's what the noblemen and gentlemen made

of it after a dozen years.'

'And pretty fellows too!' said Clennam, bitterly.

'The usual thing!' observed Doyce. 'I must not make a martyr of

myself, when I am one of so large a company.'

'Relinquish it, or begin it all over again?' mused Clennam.

'That was exactly the long and the short of it,' said Doyce.

'Then, my friend,' cried Clennam, starting up and taking his work-

roughened hand, 'it shall be begun all over again!'

Doyce looked alarmed, and replied in a hurry--for him, 'No, no.

Better put it by. Far better put it by. It will be heard of, one

day. I can put it by. You forget, my good Clennam; I HAVE put it

by. It's all at an end.'

'Yes, Doyce,' returned Clennam, 'at an end as far as your efforts

and rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as far as mine are. I

am younger than you: I have only once set foot in that precious

office, and I am fresh game for them. Come! I'll try them. You

shall do exactly as you have been doing since we have been

together. I will add (as I easily can) to what I have been doing,

the attempt to get public justice done to you; and, unless I have

some success to report, you shall hear no more of it.'

Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to consent, and again and again

urged that they had better put it by. But it was natural that he

should gradually allow himself to be over-persuaded by Clennam, and

should yield. Yield he did. So Arthur resumed the long and

hopeless labour of striving to make way with the Circumlocution

Office.

The waiting-rooms of that Department soon began to be familiar with

his presence, and he was generally ushered into them by its

janitors much as a pickpocket might be shown into a police-office;

the principal difference being that the object of the latter class

of public business is to keep the pickpocket, while the

Circumlocution object was to get rid of Clennam. However, he was

resolved to stick to the Great Department; and so the work of form-

filling, corresponding, minuting, memorandum-making, signing,

counter-signing, counter-counter-signing, referring backwards and

forwards, and referring sideways, crosswise, and zig-zag,

recommenced.

Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution Office, not previously

mentioned in the present record. When that admirable Department

got into trouble, and was, by some infuriated members of Parliament

whom the smaller Barnacles almost suspected of labouring under

diabolic possession, attacked on the merits of no individual case,

but as an Institution wholly abominable and Bedlamite; then the

noble or right honourable Barnacle who represented it in the House,

would smite that member and cleave him asunder, with a statement of

the quantity of business (for the prevention of business) done by

the Circumlocution Office. Then would that noble or right

honourable Barnacle hold in his hand a paper containing a few

figures, to which, with the permission of the House, he would

entreat its attention. Then would the inferior Barnacles exclaim,

obeying orders,'Hear, Hear, Hear!' and 'Read!' Then would the

noble or right honourable Barnacle perceive, sir, from this little

document, which he thought might carry conviction even to the

perversest mind (Derisive laughter and cheering from the Barnacle

fry), that within the short compass of the last financial half-

year, this much-maligned Department (Cheers) had written and

received fifteen thousand letters (Loud cheers), had written

twenty-four thousand minutes (Louder cheers), and thirty-two

thousand five hundred and seventeen memoranda (Vehement cheering).

Nay, an ingenious gentleman connected with the Department, and

himself a valuable public servant, had done him the favour to make

a curious calculation of the amount of stationery consumed in it

during the same period. It formed a part of this same short

document; and he derived from it the remarkable fact that the

sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted to the public service would

pave the footways on both sides of Oxford Street from end to end,

and leave nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Immense

cheering and laughter); while of tape--red tape--it had used enough

to stretch, in graceful festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to the

General Post Office. Then, amidst a burst of official exultation,

would the noble or right honourable Barnacle sit down, leaving the

mutilated fragments of the Member on the field. No one, after that

exemplary demolition of him, would have the hardihood to hint that

the more the Circumlocution Office did, the less was done, and that

the greatest blessing it could confer on an unhappy public would be

to do nothing.

With sufficient occupation on his hands, now that he had this

additional task--such a task had many and many a serviceable man

died of before his day--Arthur Clennam led a life of slight

variety. Regular visits to his mother's dull sick room, and visits

scarcely less regular to Mr Meagles at Twickenham, were its only

changes during many months.

He sadly and sorely missed Little Dorrit. He had been prepared to

miss her very much, but not so much. He knew to the full extent

only through experience, what a large place in his life was left

blank when her familiar little figure went out of it. He felt,

too, that he must relinquish the hope of its return, understanding

the family character sufficiently well to be assured that he and

she were divided by a broad ground of separation. The old interest

he had had in her, and her old trusting reliance on him, were

tinged with melancholy in his mind: so soon had change stolen over

them, and so soon had they glided into the past with other secret

tendernesses.

When he received her letter he was greatly moved, but did not the

less sensibly feel that she was far divided from him by more than

distance. It helped him to a clearer and keener perception of the

place assigned him by the family. He saw that he was cherished in

her grateful remembrance secretly, and that they resented him with

the jail and the rest of its belongings.

Through all these meditations which every day of his life crowded

about her, he thought of her otherwise in the old way. She was his

innocent friend, his delicate child, his dear Little Dorrit. This

very change of circumstances fitted curiously in with the habit,

begun on the night when the roses floated away, of considering

himself as a much older man than his years really made him. He

regarded her from a point of view which in its remoteness, tender

as it was, he little thought would have been unspeakable agony to

her. He speculated about her future destiny, and about the husband

she might have, with an affection for her which would have drained

her heart of its dearest drop of hope, and broken it.

Everything about him tended to confirm him in the custom of looking

on himself as an elderly man, from whom such aspirations as he had

combated in the case of Minnie Gowan (though that was not so long

ago either, reckoning by months and seasons), were finally

departed. His relations with her father and mother were like those

on which a widower son-in-law might have stood. If the twin sister

who was dead had lived to pass away in the bloom of womanhood, and

he had been her husband, the nature of his intercourse with Mr and

Mrs Meagles would probably have been just what it was. This

imperceptibly helped to render habitual the impression within him,

that he had done with, and dismissed that part of life.

He invariably heard of Minnie from them, as telling them in her

letters how happy she was, and how she loved her husband; but

inseparable from that subject, he invariably saw the old cloud on

Mr Meagles's face. Mr Meagles had never been quite so radiant

since the marriage as before. He had never quite recovered the

separation from Pet. He was the same good-humoured, open creature;

but as if his face, from being much turned towards the pictures of

his two children which could show him only one look, unconsciously

adopted a characteristic from them, it always had now, through all

its changes of expression, a look of loss in it.

One wintry Saturday when Clennam was at the cottage, the Dowager

Mrs Gowan drove up, in the Hampton Court equipage which pretended

to be the exclusive equipage of so many individual proprietors.

She descended, in her shady ambuscade of green fan, to favour Mr

and Mrs Meagles with a call.

'And how do you both do, Papa and Mama Meagles?' said she,

encouraging her humble connections. 'And when did you last hear

from or about my poor fellow?'

My poor fellow was her son; and this mode of speaking of him

politely kept alive, without any offence in the world, the pretence

that he had fallen a victim to the Meagles' wiles.

'And the dear pretty one?' said Mrs Gowan. 'Have you later news of

her than I have?'

Which also delicately implied that her son had been captured by

mere beauty, and under its fascination had forgone all sorts of

worldly advantages.

' I am sure,' said Mrs Gowan, without straining her attention on

the answers she received, 'it's an unspeakable comfort to know they

continue happy. My poor fellow is of such a restless disposition,

and has been so used to roving about, and to being inconstant and

popular among all manner of people, that it's the greatest comfort

in life. I suppose they're as poor as mice, Papa Meagles?'

Mr Meagles, fidgety under the question, replied, 'I hope not,

ma'am. I hope they will manage their little income.'

'Oh! my dearest Meagles!' returned the lady, tapping him on the

arm with the green fan and then adroitly interposing it between a

yawn and the company, 'how can you, as a man of the world and one

of the most business-like of human beings--for you know you are

business-like, and a great deal too much for us who are not--'

(Which went to the former purpose, by making Mr Meagles out to be

an artful schemer.)

'--How can you talk about their managing their little means? My

poor dear fellow! The idea of his managing hundreds! And the

sweet pretty creature too. The notion of her managing! Papa

Meagles! Don't!'

'Well, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, gravely, 'I am sorry to admit,

then, that Henry certainly does anticipate his means.'

'My dear good man--I use no ceremony with you, because we are a

kind of relations;--positively, Mama Meagles,' exclaimed Mrs Gowan

cheerfully, as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for

the first time, 'a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this

world none of us can have everything our own way.'

This again went to the former point, and showed Mr Meagles with all

good breeding that, so far, he had been brilliantly successful in

his deep designs. Mrs Gowan thought the hit so good a one, that

she dwelt upon it; repeating 'Not everything. No, no; in this

world we must not expect everything, Papa Meagles.'

'And may I ask, ma'am,' retorted Mr Meagles, a little heightened in

colour, 'who does expect everything?'

'Oh, nobody, nobody!' said Mrs Gowan. 'I was going to say--but you

put me out. You interrupting Papa, what was I going to say?'

Drooping her large green fan, she looked musingly at Mr Meagles

while she thought about it; a performance not tending to the

cooling of that gentleman's rather heated spirits.

'Ah! Yes, to be sure!' said Mrs Gowan. 'You must remember that my

poor fellow has always been accustomed to expectations. They may

have been realised, or they may not have been realised--'

'Let us say, then, may not have been realised,' observed Mr

Meagles.

The Dowager for a moment gave him an angry look; but tossed it off

with her head and her fan, and pursued the tenor of her way in her

former manner.

'It makes no difference. My poor fellow has been accustomed to

that sort of thing, and of course you knew it, and were prepared

for the consequences. I myself always clearly foresaw the

consequences, and am not surprised. And you must not be surprised.

In fact, can't be surprised. Must have been prepared for it.'

Mr Meagles looked at his wife and at Clennam; bit his lip; and

coughed.

'And now here's my poor fellow,' Mrs Gowan pursued, 'receiving

notice that he is to hold himself in expectation of a baby, and all

the expenses attendant on such an addition to his family! Poor

Henry! But it can't be helped now; it's too late to help it now.

Only don't talk of anticipating means, Papa Meagles, as a

discovery; because that would be too much.'

'Too much, ma'am?' said Mr Meagles, as seeking an explanation.

'There, there!' said Mrs Gowan, putting him in his inferior place

with an expressive action of her hand. 'Too much for my poor

fellow's mother to bear at this time of day. They are fast

married, and can't be unmarried. There, there! I know that! You

needn't tell me that, Papa Meagles. I know it very well. What was

it I said just now? That it was a great comfort they continued

happy. It is to be hoped they will still continue happy. It is to

be hoped Pretty One will do everything she can to make my poor

fellow happy, and keep him contented. Papa and Mama Meagles, we

had better say no more about it. We never did look at this subject

from the same side, and we never shall. There, there! Now I am

good.'

Truly, having by this time said everything she could say in

maintenance of her wonderfully mythical position, and in admonition

to Mr Meagles that he must not expect to bear his honours of

alliance too cheaply, Mrs Gowan was disposed to forgo the rest. If

Mr Meagles had submitted to a glance of entreaty from Mrs Meagles,

and an expressive gesture from Clennam, he would have left her in

the undisturbed enjoyment of this state of mind. But Pet was the

darling and pride of his heart; and if he could ever have

championed her more devotedly, or loved her better, than in the

days when she was the sunlight of his house, it would have been

now, when, as its daily grace and delight, she was lost to it.

'Mrs Gowan, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'I have been a plain man all

my life. If I was to try--no matter whether on myself, on somebody

else, or both--any genteel mystifications, I should probably not

succeed in them.'

'Papa Meagles,' returned the Dowager, with an affable smile, but

with the bloom on her cheeks standing out a little more vividly

than usual as the neighbouring surface became paler,'probably not.'

'Therefore, my good madam,' said Mr Meagles, at great pains to

restrain himself, 'I hope I may, without offence, ask to have no

such mystification played off upon me.'

'Mama Meagles,' observed Mrs Gowan, 'your good man is

incomprehensible.'

Her turning to that worthy lady was an artifice to bring her into

the discussion, quarrel with her, and vanquish her. Mr Meagles

interposed to prevent that consummation.

'Mother,' said he, 'you are inexpert, my dear, and it is not a fair

match. Let me beg of you to remain quiet. Come, Mrs Gowan, come!

Let us try to be sensible; let us try to be good-natured; let us

try to be fair. Don't you pity Henry, and I won't pity Pet. And

don't be one-sided, my dear madam; it's not considerate, it's not

kind. Don't let us say that we hope Pet will make Henry happy, or

even that we hope Henry will make Pet happy,' (Mr Meagles himself

did not look happy as he spoke the words,) 'but let us hope they

will make each other happy.'

'Yes, sure, and there leave it, father,' said Mrs Meagles the kind-

hearted and comfortable.

'Why, mother, no,' returned Mr Meagles, 'not exactly there. I

can't quite leave it there; I must say just half-a-dozen words

more. Mrs Gowan, I hope I am not over-sensitive. I believe I

don't look it.'

'Indeed you do not,' said Mrs Gowan, shaking her head and the great

green fan together, for emphasis.

'Thank you, ma'am; that's well. Notwithstanding which, I feel a

little--I don't want to use a strong word--now shall I say hurt?'

asked Mr Meagles at once with frankness and moderation, and with a

conciliatory appeal in his tone.

'Say what you like,' answered Mrs Gowan. 'It is perfectly

indifferent to me.'

'No, no, don't say that,' urged Mr Meagles, 'because that's not

responding amiably. I feel a little hurt when I hear references

made to consequences having been foreseen, and to its being too

late now, and so forth.'

'Do you, Papa Meagles?' said Mrs Gowan. 'I am not surprised.'

'Well, ma'am,' reasoned Mr Meagles, 'I was in hopes you would have

been at least surprised, because to hurt me wilfully on so tender

a subject is surely not generous.'

'I am not responsible,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for your conscience, you

know.'

Poor Mr Meagles looked aghast with astonishment.

'If I am unluckily obliged to carry a cap about with me, which is

yours and fits you,' pursued Mrs Gowan, 'don't blame me for its

pattern, Papa Meagles, I beg!'

'Why, good Lord, ma'am!' Mr Meagles broke out, 'that's as much as

to state--'

'Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Meagles,' said Mrs Gowan, who became

extremely deliberate and prepossessing in manner whenever that

gentleman became at all warm, 'perhaps to prevent confusion, I had

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 any one in it, and therewith took a final farewell of Papa and

Mama Meagles. Clennam stepped forward to hand her to the Pill-Box

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.

Read next: BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES#CHAPTER 9 Appearance and Disappearance

Read previous: BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES#CHAPTER 7 Mostly, Prunes and Prism

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