Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33

Mrs Merdle's Complaint

Resigning herself to inevitable fate by making the best of those
people, the Miggleses, and submitting her philosophy to the draught
upon it, of which she had foreseen the likelihood in her interview
with Arthur, Mrs Gowan handsomely resolved not to oppose her son's
marriage. In her progress to, and happy arrival at, this
resolution, she was possibly influenced, not only by her maternal
affections but by three politic considerations.

Of these, the first may have been that her son had never signified
the smallest intention to ask her consent, or any mistrust of his
ability to dispense with it; the second, that the pension bestowed
upon her by a grateful country (and a Barnacle) would be freed from
any little filial inroads, when her Henry should be married to the
darling only child of a man in very easy circumstances; the third,
that Henry's debts must clearly be paid down upon the altar-railing
by his father-in-law. When, to these three-fold points of prudence
there is added the fact that Mrs Gowan yielded her consent the
moment she knew of Mr Meagles having yielded his, and that Mr
Meagles's objection to the marriage had been the sole obstacle in
its way all along, it becomes the height of probability that the
relict of the deceased Commissioner of nothing particular, turned
these ideas in her sagacious mind.

Among her connections and acquaintances, however, she maintained
her individual dignity and the dignity of the blood of the
Barnacles, by diligently nursing the pretence that it was a most
unfortunate business; that she was sadly cut up by it; that this
was a perfect fascination under which Henry laboured; that she had
opposed it for a long time, but what could a mother do; and the
like. She had already called Arthur Clennam to bear witness to
this fable, as a friend of the Meagles family; and she followed up
the move by now impounding the family itself for the same purpose.
In the first interview she accorded to Mr Meagles, she slided
herself into the position of disconsolately but gracefully yielding
to irresistible pressure. With the utmost politeness and good-
breeding, she feigned that it was she--not he--who had made the
difficulty, and who at length gave way; and that the sacrifice was
hers--not his. The same feint, with the same polite dexterity, she
foisted on Mrs Meagles, as a conjuror might have forced a card on
that innocent lady; and, when her future daughter-in-law was
presented to her by her son, she said on embracing her, 'My dear,
what have you done to Henry that has bewitched him so!' at the same
time allowing a few tears to carry before them, in little pills,
the cosmetic powder on her nose; as a delicate but