Mr Henry Gowan and the dog were established frequenters of the
cottage, and the day was fixed for the wedding. There was to be a convocation of
Barnacles on the occasion, in order that that very high and very large family
might shed as much lustre on the marriage as so dim an event was capable of
receiving.
To have got the whole Barnacle family together would have been impossible for
two reasons. Firstly, because no building could have held all the members and
connections of that illustrious house. Secondly, because wherever there was a
square yard of ground in British occupation under the sun or moon, with a public
post upon it, sticking to that post was a Barnacle. No intrepid navigator could
plant a flag-staff upon any spot of earth, and take possession of it in the
British name, but to that spot of earth, so soon as the discovery was known, the
Circumlocution Office sent out a Barnacle and a despatch-box. Thus the Barnacles
were all over the world, in every direction--despatch-boxing the compass.
But, while the so-potent art of Prospero himself would have failed in
summoning the Barnacles from every speck of ocean and dry land on which there
was nothing (except mischief) to be done and anything to be pocketed, it was
perfectly feasible to assemble a good many Barnacles. This Mrs Gowan applied
herself to do; calling on Mr Meagles frequently with new additions to the list,
and holding conferences with that gentleman when he was not engaged (as he
generally was at this period) in examining and paying the debts of his future
son-in-law, in the apartment of scales and scoops.
One marriage guest there was, in reference to whose presence Mr Meagles felt
a nearer interest and concern than in the attendance of the most elevated
Barnacle expected; though he was far from insensible of the honour of having
such company. This guest was Clennam. But Clennam had made a promise he held
sacred, among the trees that summer night, and, in the chivalry of his heart,
regarded it as binding him to many implied obligations. In forgetfulness of
himself, and delicate service to her on all occasions, he was never to fail; to
begin it, he answered Mr Meagles cheerfully, 'I shall come, of course.'
His partner, Daniel Doyce, was something of a stumbling-block in Mr Meagles's
way, the worthy gentleman being not at all clear in his own anxious mind but
that the mingling of Daniel with official Barnacleism might produce some
explosive combination, even at a marriage breakfast. The national offender,
however, lightened him of his uneasiness by coming down to Twickenham to
represent that he begged, with the freedom of an old friend, and as a favour to
one, that he might not be invited. 'For,' said he, 'as my business with this set
of gentlemen was to do a public duty and a public service, and as their business
with me was to prevent it by wearing my soul out, I think we had better not eat
and drink together with a show of being of one mind.' Mr Meagles was much amused
by his friend's oddity; and patronised him with a more protecting air of
allowance than usual, when he rejoined: 'Well, well, Dan, you shall have your
own crotchety way.'
To Mr Henry Gowan, as the time approached, Clennam tried to convey by all
quiet and unpretending means, that he was frankly and disinterestedly desirous
of tendering him any friendship he would accept. Mr Gowan treated him in return
with his usual ease, and with his usual show of confidence, which was no
confidence at all.
'You see, Clennam,' he happened to remark in the course of conversation one
day, when they were walking near the Cottage within a week of the marriage, 'I
am a disappointed man. That you know already.'
'Upon my word,' said Clennam, a little embarrassed, 'I scarcely know how.'
'Why,' returned Gowan, 'I belong to a clan, or a clique, or a family, or a
connection, or whatever you like to call it, that might have provided for me in
any one of fifty ways, and that took it into its head not to do it at all. So
here I am, a poor devil of an artist.'
Clennam was beginning, 'But on the other hand--' when Gowan took him up.
'Yes, yes, I know. I have the good fortune of being beloved by a beautiful
and charming girl whom I love with all my heart.' ('Is there much of it?'
Clennam thought. And as he thought it, felt ashamed of himself.)
'And of finding a father-in-law who is a capital fellow and a liberal good
old boy. Still, I had other prospects washed and combed into my childish head
when it was washed and combed for me, and I took them to a public school when I
washed and combed it for myself, and I am here without them, and thus I am a
disappointed man.'
Clennam thought (and as he thought it, again felt ashamed of himself), was
this notion of being disappointed in life, an assertion of station which the
bridegroom brought into the family as his property, having already carried it
detrimentally into his pursuit? And was it a hopeful or a promising thing
anywhere?
'Not bitterly disappointed, I think,' he said aloud. 'Hang it, no; not
bitterly,' laughed Gowan. 'My people are not worth that--though they are
charming fellows, and I have the greatest affection for them. Besides, it's
pleasant to show them that I can do without them, and that they may all go to
the Devil. And besides, again, most men are disappointed in life, somehow or
other, and influenced by their disappointment. But it's a dear good world, and I
love it!'
'It lies fair before you now,' said Arthur.
'Fair as this summer river,' cried the other, with enthusiasm, 'and by Jove I
glow with admiration of it, and with ardour to run a race in it. It's the best
of old worlds! And my calling! The best of old callings, isn't it?'
'Full of interest and ambition, I conceive,' said Clennam.
'And imposition,' added Gowan, laughing; 'we won't leave out the imposition.
I hope I may not break down in that; but there, my being a disappointed man may
show itself. I may not be able to face it out gravely enough. Between you and
me, I think there is some danger of my being just enough soured not to be able
to do that.'
'To do what?' asked Clennam.
'To keep it up. To help myself in my turn, as the man before me helps himself
in his, and pass the bottle of smoke. To keep up the pretence as to labour, and
study, and patience, and being devoted to my art, and giving up many solitary
days to it, and abandoning many pleasures for it, and living in it, and all the
rest of it--in short, to pass the bottle of smoke according to rule.'
'But it is well for a man to respect his own vocation, whatever it is; and to
think himself bound to uphold it, and to claim for it the respect it deserves;
is it not?' Arthur reasoned. 'And your vocation, Gowan, may really demand this
suit and service. I confess I should have thought that all Art did.'
'What a good fellow you are, Clennam!' exclaimed the other, stopping to look
at him, as if with irrepressible admiration. 'What a capital fellow! You have
never been disappointed. That's easy to see.'
It would have been so cruel if he had meant it, that Clennam firmly resolved
to believe he did not mean it. Gowan, without pausing, laid his hand upon his
shoulder, and laughingly and lightly went on:
'Clennam, I don't like to dispel your generous visions, and I would give any
money (if I had any), to live in such a rose-coloured mist. But what I do in my
trade, I do to sell. What all we fellows do, we do to sell. If we didn't want to
sell it for the most we can get for it, we shouldn't do it. Being work, it has
to be done; but it's easily enough done. All the rest is hocus-pocus.
Now here's one of the advantages, or disadvantages, of knowing a disappointed
man. You hear the truth.'
Whatever he had heard, and whether it deserved that name or another, it sank
into Clennam's mind. It so took root there, that he began to fear Henry Gowan
would always be a trouble to him, and that so far he had gained little or
nothing from the dismissal of Nobody, with all his inconsistencies, anxieties,
and contradictions. He found a contest still always going on in his breast
between his promise to keep Gowan in none but good aspects before the mind of Mr
Meagles, and his enforced observation of Gowan in aspects that had no good in
them. Nor could he quite support his own conscientious nature against misgivings
that he distorted and discoloured himself, by reminding himself that he never
sought those discoveries, and that he would have avoided them with willingness
and great relief. For he never could forget what he had been; and he knew that
he had once disliked Gowan for no better reason than that he had come in his
way.
Harassed by these thoughts, he now began to wish the marriage over, Gowan and
his young wife gone, and himself left to fulfil his promise, and discharge the
generous function he had accepted. This last week was, in truth, an uneasy
interval for the whole house. Before Pet, or before Gowan, Mr Meagles was
radiant; but Clennam had more than once found him alone, with his view of the
scales and scoop much blurred, and had often seen him look after the lovers, in
the garden or elsewhere when he was not seen by them, with the old clouded face
on which Gowan had fallen like a shadow. In the arrangement of the house for the
great occasion, many little reminders of the old travels of the father and
mother and daughter had to be disturbed and passed from hand to hand; and
sometimes, in the midst of these mute witnesses, to the life they had had
together, even Pet herself would yield to lamenting and weeping. Mrs Meagles,
the blithest and busiest of mothers, went about singing and cheering everybody;
but she, honest soul, had her flights into store rooms, where she would cry
until her eyes were red, and would then come out, attributing that appearance to
pickled onions and pepper, and singing clearer than ever. Mrs Tickit, finding no
balsam for a wounded mind in Buchan's Domestic Medicine, suffered greatly from
low spirits, and from moving recollections of Minnie's infancy. When the latter
was powerful with her, she usually sent up secret messages importing that she
was not in parlour condition as to her attire, and that she solicited a sight of
'her child' in the kitchen; there, she would bless her child's face, and bless
her child's heart, and hug her child, in a medley of tears and congratulations,
chopping-boards, rolling-pins, and pie-crust, with the tenderness of an old
attached servant, which is a very pretty tenderness indeed.
But all days come that are to be; and the marriage-day was to be, and it
came; and with it came all the Barnacles who were bidden to the feast. There was
Mr Tite Barnacle, from the Circumlocution Office, and Mews Street, Grosvenor
Square, with the expensive Mrs Tite Barnacle NEE Stiltstalking, who made the
Quarter Days so long in coming, and the three expensive Miss Tite Barnacles,
double-loaded with accomplishments and ready to go off, and yet not going off
with the sharpness of flash and bang that might have been expected, but rather
hanging fire. There was Barnacle junior, also from the Circumlocution Office,
leaving the Tonnage of the country, which he was somehow supposed to take under
his protection, to look after itself, and, sooth to say, not at all impairing
the efficiency of its protection by leaving it alone. There was the engaging
Young Barnacle, deriving from the sprightly side of the family, also from the
Circumlocution Office, gaily and agreeably helping the occasion along, and
treating it, in his sparkling way, as one of the official forms and fees of the
Church Department of How not to do it. There were three other Young Barnacles
from three other offices, insipid to all the senses, and terribly in want of
seasoning, doing the marriage as they would have 'done' the Nile, Old Rome, the
new singer, or Jerusalem.
But there was greater game than this. There was Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle
himself, in the odour of Circumlocution--with the very smell of Despatch-Boxes
upon him. Yes, there was Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, who had risen to official
heights on the wings of one indignant idea, and that was, My Lords, that I am
yet to be told that it behoves a Minister of this free country to set bounds to
the philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to fetter the public spirit, to contract
the enterprise, to damp the independent self- reliance, of its people. That was,
in other words, that this great statesman was always yet to be told that it
behoved the Pilot of the ship to do anything but prosper in the private loaf and
fish trade ashore, the crew being able, by dint of hard pumping, to keep the
ship above water without him. On this sublime discovery in the great art How not
to do it, Lord Decimus had long sustained the highest glory of the Barnacle
family; and let any ill-advised member of either House but try How to do it by
bringing in a Bill to do it, that Bill was as good as dead and buried when Lord
Decimus Tite Barnacle rose up in his place and solemnly said, soaring into
indignant majesty as the Circumlocution cheering soared around him, that he was
yet to be told, My Lords, that it behoved him as the Minister of this free
country, to set bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to fetter the
public spirit, to contract the enterprise, to damp the independent self-
reliance, of its people. The discovery of this Behoving Machine was the
discovery of the political perpetual motion. It never wore out, though it was
always going round and round in all the State Departments.
And there, with his noble friend and relative Lord Decimus, was William
Barnacle, who had made the ever-famous coalition with Tudor Stiltstalking, and
who always kept ready his own particular recipe for How not to do it; sometimes
tapping the Speaker, and drawing it fresh out of him, with a 'First, I will beg
you, sir, to inform the House what Precedent we have for the course into which
the honourable gentleman would precipitate us;' sometimes asking the honourable
gentleman to favour him with his own version of the Precedent; sometimes telling
the honourable gentleman that he (William Barnacle) would search for a
Precedent; and oftentimes crushing the honourable gentleman flat on the spot by
telling him there was no Precedent. But Precedent and Precipitate were, under
all circumstances, the well-matched pair of battle-horses of this able
Circumlocutionist. No matter that the unhappy honourable gentleman had been
trying in vain, for twenty-five years, to precipitate William Barnacle into
this--William Barnacle still put it to the House, and (at second-hand or so) to
the country, whether he was to be precipitated into this. No matter that it was
utterly irreconcilable with the nature of things and course of events that the
wretched honourable gentleman could possibly produce a Precedent for
this--William Barnacle would nevertheless thank the honourable gentleman for
that ironical cheer, and would close with him upon that issue, and would tell
him to his teeth that there Was NO Precedent for this. It might perhaps have
been objected that the William Barnacle wisdom was not high wisdom or the earth
it bamboozled would never have been made, or, if made in a rash mistake, would
have remained blank mud. But Precedent and Precipitate together frightened all
objection out of most people.
And there, too, was another Barnacle, a lively one, who had leaped through
twenty places in quick succession, and was always in two or three at once, and
who was the much-respected inventor of an art which he practised with great
success and admiration in all Barnacle Governments. This was, when he was asked
a Parliamentary question on any one topic, to return an answer on any other. It
had done immense service, and brought him into high esteem with the
Circumlocution Office.
And there, too, was a sprinkling of less distinguished Parliamentary
Barnacles, who had not as yet got anything snug, and were going through their
probation to prove their worthiness. These Barnacles perched upon staircases and
hid in passages, waiting their orders to make houses or not to make houses; and
they did all their hearing, and ohing, and cheering, and barking, under
directions from the heads of the family; and they put dummy motions on the paper
in the way of other men's motions; and they stalled disagreeable subjects off
until late in the night and late in the session, and then with virtuous
patriotism cried out that it was too late; and they went down into the country,
whenever they were sent, and swore that Lord Decimus had revived trade from a
swoon, and commerce from a fit, and had doubled the harvest of corn, quadrupled
the harvest of hay, and prevented no end of gold from flying out of the Bank.
Also these Barnacles were dealt, by the heads of the family, like so many cards
below the court-cards, to public meetings and dinners; where they bore testimony
to all sorts of services on the part of their noble and honourable relatives,
and buttered the Barnacles on all sorts of toasts. And they stood, under similar
orders, at all sorts of elections; and they turned out of their own seats, on
the shortest notice and the most unreasonable terms, to let in other men; and
they fetched and carried, and toadied and jobbed, and corrupted, and ate heaps
of dirt, and were indefatigable in the public service. And there was not a list,
in all the Circumlocution Office, of places that might fall vacant anywhere
within half a century, from a lord of the Treasury to a Chinese consul, and up
again to a governor-general of India, but as applicants for such places, the
names of some or of every one of these hungry and adhesive Barnacles were down.
It was necessarily but a sprinkling of any class of Barnacles that attended
the marriage, for there were not two score in all, and what is that subtracted
from Legion! But the sprinkling was a swarm in the Twickenham cottage, and
filled it. A Barnacle (assisted by a Barnacle) married the happy pair, and it
behoved Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle himself to conduct Mrs Meagles to breakfast.
The entertainment was not as agreeable and natural as it might have been. Mr
Meagles, hove down by his good company while he highly appreciated it, was not
himself. Mrs Gowan was herself, and that did not improve him. The fiction that
it was not Mr Meagles who had stood in the way, but that it was the Family
greatness, and that the Family greatness had made a concession, and there was
now a soothing unanimity, pervaded the affair, though it was never openly
expressed. Then the Barnacles felt that they for their parts would have done
with the Meagleses when the present patronising occasion was over; and the
Meagleses felt the same for their parts. Then Gowan asserting his rights as a
disappointed man who had his grudge against the family, and who, perhaps, had
allowed his mother to have them there, as much in the hope it might give them
some annoyance as with any other benevolent object, aired his pencil and his
poverty ostentatiously before them, and told them he hoped in time to settle a
crust of bread and cheese on his wife, and that he begged such of them as (more
fortunate than himself) came in for any good thing, and could buy a picture, to
please to remember the poor painter. Then Lord Decimus, who was a wonder on his
own Parliamentary pedestal, turned out to be the windiest creature here:
proposing happiness to the bride and bridegroom in a series of platitudes that
would have made the hair of any sincere disciple and believer stand on end; and
trotting, with the complacency of an idiotic elephant, among howling labyrinths
of sentences which he seemed to take for high roads, and never so much as wanted
to get out of. Then Mr Tite Barnacle could not but feel that there was a person
in company, who would have disturbed his life-long sitting to Sir Thomas
Lawrence in full official character, if such disturbance had been possible:
while Barnacle junior did, with indignation, communicate to two vapid gentlemen,
his relatives, that there was a feller here, look here, who had come to our
Department without an appointment and said he wanted to know, you know; and
that, look here, if he was to break out now, as he might you know (for you never
could tell what an ungentlemanly Radical of that sort would be up to next), and
was to say, look here, that he wanted to know this moment, you know, that would
be jolly; wouldn't it?
The pleasantest part of the occasion by far, to Clennam, was the painfullest.
When Mr and Mrs Meagles at last hung about Pet in the room with the two pictures
(where the company were not), before going with her to the threshold which she
could never recross to be the old Pet and the old delight, nothing could be more
natural and simple than the three were. Gowan himself was touched, and answered
Mr Meagles's 'O Gowan, take care of her, take care of her!' with an earnest
'Don't be so broken-hearted, sir. By Heaven I will!'
And so, with the last sobs and last loving words, and a last look to Clennam
of confidence in his promise, Pet fell back in the carriage, and her husband
waved his hand, and they were away for Dover; though not until the faithful Mrs
Tickit, in her silk gown and jet black curls, had rushed out from some
hiding-place, and thrown both her shoes after the carriage: an apparition which
occasioned great surprise to the distinguished company at the windows.
The said company being now relieved from further attendance, and the chief
Barnacles being rather hurried (for they had it in hand just then to send a mail
or two which was in danger of going straight to its destination, beating about
the seas like the Flying Dutchman, and to arrange with complexity for the
stoppage of a good deal of important business otherwise in peril of being done),
went their several ways; with all affability conveying to Mr and Mrs Meagles
that general assurance that what they had been doing there, they had been doing
at a sacrifice for Mr and Mrs Meagles's good, which they always conveyed to Mr
John Bull in their official condescension to that most unfortunate creature.
A miserable blank remained in the house and in the hearts of the father and
mother and Clennam. Mr Meagles called only one remembrance to his aid, that
really did him good.
'It's very gratifying, Arthur,' he said, 'after all, to look back upon.'
'The past?' said Clennam.
'Yes--but I mean the company.'
It had made him much more low and unhappy at the time, but now it really did
him good. 'It's very gratifying,' he said, often repeating the remark in the
course of the evening. 'Such high company!'
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