Among the friends of Mrs Gowan (who piqued herself at once on being
Society, and on maintaining intimate and easy relations with that
Power), Mrs Merdle occupied a front row. True, the Hampton Court
Bohemians, without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an
upstart; but they turned them down again, by falling flat on their faces
to worship his wealth. In which compensating adjustment of their noses,
they were pretty much like Treasury, Bar, and Bishop, and all the rest
of them.
To Mrs Merdle, Mrs Gowan repaired on a visit of self-condolence, after
having given the gracious consent aforesaid. She drove into town for the
purpose in a one-horse carriage irreverently called at that period of
English history, a pill-box. It belonged to a job-master in a small way,
who drove it himself, and who jobbed it by the day, or hour, to most of
the old ladies in Hampton Court Palace; but it was a point of ceremony,
in that encampment, that the whole equipage should be tacitly regarded
as the private property of the jobber for the time being, and that the
job-master should betray personal knowledge of nobody but the jobber
in possession. So the Circumlocution Barnacles, who were the largest
job-masters in the universe, always pretended to know of no other job
but the job immediately in hand.
Mrs Merdle was at home, and was in her nest of crimson and gold, with
the parrot on a neighbouring stem watching her with his head on one
side, as if he took her for another splendid parrot of a larger species.
To whom entered Mrs Gowan, with her favourite green fan, which softened
the light on the spots of bloom.
'My dear soul,' said Mrs Gowan, tapping the back of her friend's hand
with this fan after a little indifferent conversation, 'you are my only
comfort. That affair of Henry's that I told you of, is to take place.
Now, how does it strike you? I am dying to know, because you represent
and express Society so well.'
Mrs Merdle reviewed the bosom which Society was accustomed to review;
and having ascertained that show-window of Mr Merdle's and the London
jewellers' to be in good order, replied:
'As to marriage on the part of a man, my dear, Society requires that
he should retrieve his fortunes by marriage. Society requires that
he should gain by marriage. Society requires that he should found a
handsome establishment by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise,
what he has to do with marriage. Bird, be quiet!'
For the parrot on his cage above them, presiding over the conference as
if he were a judge (and indeed he looked rather like one), had wound up
the exposition with a shriek. 'Cases there are,' said Mrs Merdle, delicately crooking the little
finger of her favourite hand, and making her remarks neater by that neat
action; 'cases there are where a man is not young or elegant, and is
rich, and has a handsome establishment already. Those are of a different
kind. In such cases--'