Discord

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Little Dorrit

Copyright: Charles Dickens' estate/BBC

In a comfortable country house in Twickenham, in a sunny parlor, with a (mostly) contented after-dinner audience looking on, a gentleman was turning sheet music for a lady as she played the piano. He was tall, brown-haired, with a grave dignity in his air that made his smile look all the brighter; she was a golden-haired doll, dressed in pink, glancing coyly up at him through her eyelashes whenever the piece allowed it. He never took his eyes off her, not even for a moment. She giggled, and the sound chimed perfectly with the music.

It was a beautiful scene, and Harriet hated it.

How dare you? she wanted to scream. How dare you flirt with Mr. Clennam like this, making him hope for what you never mean to give? How can you be so thoughtless, so unfeeling? Do you care for nothing but yourself?

Her eyes went to Henry Gowan, lounging on a sofa and whispering to his cousin Barnacle. He – Gowan, that is – was watching the whole scene through heavy-lidded eyes, smiling with contempt, as if the man sitting next to his object of affection were a fly he would presently swat. He did not even have the decency to look jealous, so certain was he of his undisputed conquest of Pet's heart. Looking back from his smirk to the earnest admiration in Mr. Clennam's face, Harriet's hands itched to give her foolish little mistress a cuff upside the head.

Mr. Clennam was a good man. He was the only friend of the Meagleses who ever asked if she was well. He looked her in the eye when he spoke to her. He deserved so much better than to have his heart broken by the likes of Pet.

It was unjust. Unfair. She felt as she once had on Christmas morning at the orphanage, when some charitable ladies had been handing out toys, and an older girl had snatched the most beautiful, raven-haired doll right out of her hands. How could one woman take so much for granted – wealth, beauty, family, love – while another ate her heart out for what she could never have? One of these days, it would drive her mad.

To her horror, she realized that the whole room was staring at her. She had risen to her feet without thinking; God only knew what she might have said and done if the madness had not departed just in time.

Pressing her lips together against the scream about to erupt, she ran from the room.